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ACT I
What shall it be then, O my brothers?
Another grey morning in this flat the State so kindly gifted me, all peeling walls and flickering electric light that buzzed like a dying fly in the gulliver.
I, Alex DeLarge—once the prince of the night, terror of the streets, conductor of the old ultraviolence—now reduced to this. A nothing. A cured veck. A clockwork orange with all the lovely juice squeezed out and poured down the drain.
The Ludovico had done its filthy work. Beautiful it was in its way, the way they showed me the films and pumped the drugs and made my body betray itself. Now even the thought of a good tolchock sent waves of sickness crashing through me, and Ludwig van… my dearest Ninth, once all fire and glory… It made me retch like a weak ptista after too much moloko-plus.
I woke each day with the taste of bile already in my throat.
I dragged myself to the little mirror. The face that looked back was still sharp enough, thickened hair swept just so, but the eyes were duller.
“Come on, my brother,” I told it. “We were not made for this grey rot. We will rise again.”
But the words tasted hollow, and my stomach twisted at the mere fantasy of a britva flashing in the night.
My job was a joke. Night cleaner at the big State library. Mopping floors where students and boring dedushkas shuffled about their harmless little lives. The pay was enough for slop and a dingy room, nothing more.
I moved the mop in tedious circles, trying not to think of how once I would have smashed the place up lovely, books flying like electrocuted birds, krovvy on the marble. The sickness rose just at the picture in my head and I doubled over the bucket and vomited, thin and bitter. The supervisor, a fat bratchny with bad breath and a beard, only shook his head.
“Again, DeLarge? Sort yourself out, lad.”
After work I walked the streets along. No droogs now. Pete had gone soft, married some boring devotchka. Dim and Georgie… well. I already knew they’d sold their souls, found better ways to rot by joining the millicents. Proper traitors to the old ways, wearing the uniform and swinging their power like fat clubs. I tried not to think of them. Thinking led to sickness.
But the night came when they found me. Again.
It was past midnight, fog thick as milk, the streetlights bleeding orange halos. I was cutting through the alley behind the old sinny—the one where we used to take our pleasures—when I heard the boots. Heavy and official-like.
“Well well well… If it ain’t little Alex.”
Dim. Bigger than ever, stuffed into a police tunic that strained at the buttons, his face split in a stupid grin. Beside him stood Georgie, leaner, meaner, twirling a baton like it was an old chain.
I tried to smile my old smile. You must understand, O my brothers. I should never allow them to see my weakness again. They feared me once. They can fear me once more.
“Dimmy, Georgie-boy… Long time no viddy, O my once-droogs. How’s the new life treating you?”
Oh how it hurt the gulliver to pretend their twenty-to-one on your narrator never happened.
Dim laughed, a great wet sound. “Better than you, little brother. We heard you can’t even listen to your precious music no more without spewing your guttiwutts. That true?”
They moved fast. Georgie grabbed my arm and slammed me face-first into the brick wall. The pain was sharp, but nothing compared to what followed. I realised the bratchny must have planned their little excursion when out from Dim’s pocket came one of those portable players I once had. Then he turned it on.
The Ninth. Fourth movement. In all its gorgeousity.
The sickness hit like a tolchock to the brooko. My knees buckled. “Turn it off,” I gasped. “Please, O my brothers, turn the lovely, lovely music off—” But they only laughed. Georgie kicked the back of my legs and I went down hard on the wet cobbles. Dim crouched beside me, holding the player close to my ear while the chorus swelled.
“Listen to it, Alex,” he sneered. “You used to love this, didn’t you? Used to think you were the king. A real Bog. Now look at you. Cured. Weak. Pathetic.”
Georgie pressed his boot on my neck, grinding my cheek into the dirt. “We own the night now. Which means we own you. Beg for us, cured puppy.”
The music rose higher, brass and voices thundering in the gulliver. Nausea rolled through me in great sick waves. I expelled onto the alley floor, hot and shameful, while they smecked and booted me again and again; ribs, back, stomach. Every blow made the sickness worse.
I curled into a ball like a weak malenky child, retching even when there was nothing left to give.
Dim grabbed my hair and yanked my head up. His breath was sour.
“Mind the old days, Alex? Always had to be the big chelloveck. Always telling us what to do. Now you can’t even lift a fist without a right messy bog-and-keesh heave.” He pressed the baton between my legs, rubbing it crude against me through my trousers. “Bet you can’t even get it up no more, eh? All that old in-out-in-out gone for always. What a right weeping shame.”
Georgie joined in, clapping me in the litso lightly, mockingly. “Say it, Alex. Say you’re nothing now. Say we’re the big chellovecks.”
The Ninth reached its peak. My body viddied a massive turn and convulsed. I sobbed—O, brothers, I brayed hot and hard on my sick-stained litso. Real honest, hot tears. “I’m nothing… you’re the big chellovecks—agh! Dear Bog in heaven, please!”
They left me there in the alley like a discarded rag, the player still going until the battery died. The music faded into the dog, but the sickness stayed, throbbing in the gulliver long after they’d vanished.
For hours I lay there shivering and covered in my own filth. The old Alex, the real one, the glorious one, stirred in the wreckage. He did not speak soft. He snarled.
They will pay, O my brothers. I will tear this sickness out of myself with my bare hands if I have to.
No more clockwork. No more weakness.
What a right baboochka sight I must have viddied that night, crawling back to my miserable little flat with blood and sick dried on my platties like some common drunk.
Once again I stood before the cracked mirror, wiping filth from my cheeks.
“You will be cured, Alex,” I whispered to him hoarsley. “A cure for the cure. My way. And when it’s done, the night will tremble again.”
I clawed at the reflection like I could pull the sickness from my plots right there and then.
“And it will be real horrorshow.”
ACT II
I began real small, like a malenky child learning to walk again.
In my dingy room I set up the old record player I’d scavenged—cheap and scratchy, but it did its turn. I put on the Ninth, very low at first, just the whisperings of the strings. In my moldy wooden chair I sat with newspaper clippings I’d collected: all old stories of my glorious crimes, the devotchka-takings and the tolchocks and the lovely red krovvy.
Ludwig van accompanied me as I read them.
It came quick. My stomach twisted, my gulliver pounded, cold sweat broke out. I wanted to vomit, to curl up and die. But I stayed in the chair.
“I am Alex DeLarge,” I repeated through gritted teeth, “Leader of droogs, prince of the nocht. This music is mine. These deeds are mine.” I held on until I couldn’t, then emptied my keesh into a bucket I kept handy. After, I cleaned it up and tried again.
Every night. Longer and longer.
Progress was slow and painful, my brothers. Some nights I brayed like a weak ptista. But I did not stop.
When the music alone was no longer enough to break me complete, I took the next step. I bought a sharp miniature knife from a back-alley veck. Nothing fancy, just honest steel.
I sat on the edge of my bed with the Ninth playing a touch louder now, the second movement swelling grand and terrible. I pressed the blade to my forearm and made the first cut. Shallow. Clean. A thin line of red welled up.
It roared. Nausea crashed over me in waves. But the pain—the pain was mine.
“Viddy?” I hissed at myself, watching as the krovvy trickled down my arm. “This is real. This is not State poison. This is Alex.”
I cut again. And again. Malenky, deliberate lines while the chorus thundered. I hurled twice that night, but I laughed through it, wild and broken.
By the end of that week, the sickness was weaker when the blade kissed my skin. The music no longer made me collapse so skorry.
But there would always come a time when cuts were not enough.
So I went hunting in the night streets for desperate devotchkas. The kind who sold their plots cheap in doorways and under flickering lamps. I picked them real careful. Rough ones. The ones with hard eyes who wouldn’t screech for the millicents. I paid them extra—good cutter from my chepooka cleaning wages—and brought them to cheap rooms or dark corners.
I am man enough to say the first time was difficult. I took a skinny ptitsa with dyed hair to a derelict domy. I played the Ninth on a portable, loud enough to fill the dusty room. When I tolchocked her against the wall and slapped her hard across the litso, the sickness hit like a heavy hammer. I doubled over, retching, while she stared at me like I was stark mad.
But it was fought. I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back.
“You will take it.”
I tolchocked her again and choked her light while I pushed my hand between her foots. It raged, oh it raged, but I insisted. I performed some of the rough in-out-in-out against the wall, biting at her neck, leaving marks, all while Ludwig van crashed around us. I finished with a shout that was half triumph, half vomit.
She left with extra notes and a bruised throat, while I lay on the floor shaking for a whole hour afterwards.
After that, it seemed to get easier.
Your narrator grew bolder. I paid them to let me tie their wrists. To let me use the knife; only malenky cuts on their thighs while I took them hard from behind. Made them call me “master” and “leader” while I choked them and pounded into their plotts. I could still feel the bile in my throat, but their gasps and whimpers were anchors. The pleasure started to return, sharp and sweet, mixing with the old ultraviolence like two rivers becoming one.
One night, my brothers, I had a curvy devotchka with frightened but willing eyes. I played the full Ninth and made her kneel.
I clapped her litso red while she slobbered on me, then bent her over and did the old in-out-in-out till the bed broke. I cut shallow lines across her back while I was still inside her, and when she cried out, I laughed. A real laugh, grand!
The sickness barely touched me that time and I spilled inside her with a roar of victory.
Your strengthened narrator was winning.
But I needed one final test. The greatest one yet.
I returned to the old abandoned theatre—the very same stage where me and my droogs once played our games. The mattresses were still there, mouldy and stained. I dragged in a stolen projector and some smuggled sinny-films. Real violent ones, the kind with proper krovvy and screeches. I chained my left wrist to a rusty pipe so I couldn’t run away easily.
Then I set everything going.
Ludwig van at full blast. The sinnies playing on the cracked wall. Tolchocks. Feisty unwilling devotchkas naked and crast. Glorious ultraviolence in black and white.
I sat in the centre of the stage surrounded by my own red krovvy from fresh cuts, and I forced myself to watch.
For hours.
My plotts shook like it wanted to die out and rot into the earth. The music tried to kill me, the images tried to break me. But I brayed back at it all with unintelligible yells and howls.
I passed out twice. Woke up covered in all kinds of bad filth. The Ninth was still playing, the sinnies still flickering, and my ruka was raw from pulling at the chain.
But something oh so strange happened then. Even as the final movement swelled to its glorious end.
I did not vomit.
But I smiled.
A slow, terrible, beautiful smile.
ACT III
The fog lay heavy upon the city that night, O my brothers, like a silken shroud drawn across the litso of some decrep Bog.
Studying Dim’s habits was nothing short of easy. Tonight, the fat traitor had chosen the narrow passage behind the old canning factory where the river stank of rust and discarded chepooka. I heard him before I viddied him; the wet sounds of struggle, the low animal grunting.
There he was, the thick and clumsy bolshy beast.
A young devotchka pressed against the dripping bricks, her platties torn open, her skirt shoved roughly up to her waist. One of Dim’s thick hands smothered her mouth while the other remained invisible between them, somewhere down low and doing the crude, impatient in-out-in-out. Her glazzies were wide with terror above his fingers, tears cutting clean lines through the dirt on her litso. She made malenky, broken sounds that pleased some ancient part of me.
For a moment I simply viddied. Savouring the tableau without a trace of guttiwutt gymnastics and only a cool, crystalline detachment.
But your Humble Narrator had other plans.
One quiet step brought the heavy sap down behind fat Dim’s earhole with real surgical precision. He gave a surprised grunt and went down like a slaughtered ox, his pathetic yarbles all bare to the cold nocht air. The poor malenky ptitsa slid down the wall, gasping.
I went down on my knees before her, all gentleman-like. “He will not touch you again tonight, little sister. Take this cutter and forget my face. Speak of this to no lone soul, yes?”
She clutched the notes and skorry ran off into the mist, a shadow swallowed up by more shadows.
Now it was only Dim and Alex.
I dragged his heavy carcass through the back streets with surprising ease, the old strength returning to my limbs. The abandoned theatre welcomed us like an old friend, its broken roof letting in blades of moonlight, the stage still littered with the remains of my self-administered conversion-aversion therapy.
Just like I had myself, I chained him there, wrists high to the rusting pipes. The millicent uniform hung in tatters. The Ninth I set playing at a volume that filled the vast space without overwhelming it—a living presence, not a weapon.
And I waited real patient. I had all the time in the world, and the world deserved this slice of sweet karmic justice.
Dim stirred slow, groaning. His thick bolshy gulliver lifted, blinking against the nocht light and the disorientation. When his gaze finally locked on me standing before him, britva in hand, understanding dawned like a slow, terrible sunrise.
“Alex?” His goloss was stupidly confused. Then his glazzies widened as he felt the chains, the exposure, the chilled air on his bare plotts. “What the fuck is this? Let me go, you crazy bastard! I’m a millicent, I’ll have you–”
“Ohh Dim!” I interrupted, inhaling deep with the swell of Ludwig van around us. “Look at you, my once-faithful droog. Now a bloated parody in a stolen uniform. You who helped break me in that alley, kicking me while the Ninth played, grinding your baton against my plotts like some cheap amusement. Do you remember how I brayed? How I vomited at your foots while you laughed?”
I stepped closer, circling him slow, the heels of my boots echoing in the empty theatre.
“You thought they killed me. You thought they turned your old leader into a whimpering lamb. But I have bled myself free of their poison, O dreadful Dim. I have cut and fucked and suffered my way back to myself. And now… here we are. On this stage where we once ruled and played and tolchocked together.” Our glazzies met straight and hard.
“How poetic.”
Dim began to struggle against the chains, his litso reddening with panic. “Alex, come on, brother… we was only havin’ a laugh that night. Georgie’s idea, mostly, I didn’t mean nothing by i–”
I laughed then, low and cultured. “A laugh? A laugh to reduce me to nothing and take my music and make it my torture? To take my plotts and betray me with it? And that poor devotchka in the alley you were about to do the very same to… No sympathy left in me for you, old friend. None at all.”
I picked up his police baton from where it lay beside his discarded belt. Heavy. Solid. Still warm from his pocket. I weighed it in my hands, turning it slow so the moonlight caught its length.
Dim viddied the baton and realisation crept over his litso like oil across water.
“Alex… oh, no. Don’t. Please, brother, not that.”
I said nothing for a long moment. Only let the Ninth build in its grand and inexorable waves. Behind him, I ran the smooth end of the baton lightly up the inside of his thigh. He shuddered.
“You feel that, brother?” I murmured with disdain. “The object you pressed against me in mockery. How fitting.”
I took my time with old Dim. First the rounded tip, letting him feel the pressure at his yahma and the inevitability. Ragged breathing and his plotts tensing against the chains. He gave such useless resistance.
“Please…” he whispered, goloss cracking. “I’m begging you, my brother…”
I pushed forward.
It slid inside inch by inch, relentless and unyielding. A scream tore through the theatre—raw, animal, beautiful in its honesty. I continued the invasion, resistance giving way, watching his plotts stretch and accept what it could not refuse.
Deeper. Harder. Until a good length was buried deep.
It was then that I paused and stepped away, simply viddying my masterpiece.
There he hung, my once-droog, chained and naked under silver beams, the black baton protruding obscenely from between his spread foots. His gulliver hung forward, shoulders shaking with his sobs. The Ninth swelled and filled and infiltrated every corner with divine intervention.
A rush unlike anything I had felt since before the Ludovico took my soul. Not mere pleasure. Not simple revenge. It was aesthetic. Artistic. The perfect composition of power and suffering and music. I drank it in, indifferent to his pain as one might be indifferent to the colour of the sky. And it was real glorious.
The rest was methodical. A deliberate rhythm of in-out-in-out, matching the cadence of sweet Ludwig van. Dim’s brays became hoarse whimpers, then broken pleas, until he could speak no more. I exacted those malenky lines across his back and chest with my britva, thin ribbons of krovvy crimson threads.
When the Ninth reached its final, crashing crescendo, I tolchocked both his knees. Two clean, devastating blows that reverberated like gunshots. Then came the tendons behind his ankles.
He would never walk as a veck again. Never wear those millicent platties with pride. Never prey on the weak in dark alleys like his name began with Alex and ended in DeLarge.
Before I left him chained and bleeding on the stage, I had one last message to deliver to my once-brother.
“Listen well, O my fallen droog,” I said, lifting his chin with two fingers so his glazzies had to meet mine. “When they find you—and they will—tell Georgie his receipt his coming.” I leaned in, my nails digging into his fat litso.
“Tell him the Ninth is back. And it’s got real horrorshow plans for him.”