Doctor Who: Rags by Mick Lewis

challenge. And his grin grew wider. Cassandra King had entered the bar from the lounge.
    She might have been nearly thirty, but she still had a waist you could easily strangle, a chest you could lose yourself in and eyes wild, green and dancing. Her hair was teased into a semblance of punky disorder without being too prominently spiked. Cassandra was following fashion, not politics.
    ‘Well, hello,’ Kane drooled. ‘Condescended to come in the bar with all the scum, huh?’
    ‘I only see one piece of scum round here, Kane.’ But she said it with a smile that pushed him off the bar and brought him a step closer to her, close enough to lick her. So of course she stepped back to compensate, as if she was frightened he was going to do just that.
    ‘I only had a little kip, rich bitch,’ he threw at her. ‘Hardly a reason to sack a bloke.’ He had been assigned a road to dig, along 47
     
    with Andy the Letch, his groundwork mate, and had got bored riding the jackhammer. So he’d snuck off into a newly constructed house to see if he could get some shuteye, which had seemed perfectly reasonable to him on account of the fact he had a bitch of a hangover and so should hardly be expected to do too much work. The ganger had disagreed with that philosophy and sacked him on the spot.
    ‘How old are you, Kane? Thirty?Thirty-one? You’re no longer a teenager. You don’t have to keep playing the rebel. No one cares any more. Isn’t it about time you started using your brain for once?’ She stared up at him with those dazzling green eyes. ‘You have got one, haven’t you?’
    Kane scooped his half-empty pint off the bar counter just as Trevor made to snatch it away. ‘I ain’t allowed to use it, am I? I’ve been branded a waster ever since I was a kid...’ He belched for emphasis. ‘So I might as well stick to what I do best. Two questions for you, Cassandra: one, do you get off on playing all concerned when we both know you don’t give a damn...’ He paused and sucked his cigarette, still grinning like the wolf he always wanted to be.
    ‘And two?’ She folded her arms over her breasts, and she was smiling too.
    ‘Aren’t you supposed to contradict me before we get to two?’
    ‘And two,’ she repeated, still smiling.
    ‘Two’s obvious; d’youwanna come back to my place?’
    That got a laugh from some of the drinkers, who until this point had been pretending not to listen to the conversation.
    Cassandra sighed. ‘I’ve got something for you. You might find it interesting.’ She held out a square of yellow paper. A flyer. He let her wait there with it in her hand while he took his time finishing his pint, and then he plucked it off her.
    ‘What’s this shit?’ He studied it, and then he felt the blood fill his face, felt a fist clench inside his gut. The flyer said: SIMON KING PROUDLY PRESENTS;
    THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH,
     
    48
     
    A MORALITY PLAY OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS OLD
    CIRBURY VILLAGE HALL 19TH & 20TH JUNE
     
    Kane scrumpled the flyer into a ball and tossed it into his empty glass on the bar counter. His grin had gone. He turned and left the pub without a final line.
    Cassandra came out into the street after him and caught hold of his elbow. Sunlight made him squint. He tried to shake her off.
    ‘If you I ain’tgonna bed me, do me a favour and get lost,’ he snapped.
    ‘You can’t hate him for ever, Kane,’ she said, tightening her grip. He turned and lunged at her before she could move. He pinned her up against the outside wall of the Falcon and had thrust his tongue between her lips before she could do anything more than utter a muffled squeal. Then, just as suddenly, he shoved her from him and strode off up the street. She came after him again.
    He kept walking, up the long incline of the high street. ‘Want some more?’ he said without turning.
    ‘You’re a pig, Kane.’
    ‘So they tell me. I’m no good, good for nothing, fit for nowt, a bum, loser, long-haired hippie. You can’t