Letters from the Other Side of the Rain.

Dear Humanity,

The good PPNers have taken me by the throat and ordered me to write V for Vendetta/PotO crossoverage. Well, who am I to deny them?

The Vicious Cabaret

Prolouge

The man in the mask was waiting. It was dark, and it was cold, and the fog of London seemed to permeate everywhere, like a thick gas. Men in the street shivered, reminded of half recalled news reports of gas ovens. But that was when there were news reports, other than the comforting, old leather Voice of Fate. But the fog did not reach behind the mask. The mask was smiling. The man in the mask was waiting.

The mask was the mask of a harlequin, smiling and frozen forever in its same position. It gave the impression of a terrifying amiability, the amiability of one who has been tortured too many times to let it stir him. That same amiability extended to other parts, more chilling parts. How little an effort it would take to stifle a life. What an amiable thought. What amiability. But you could not be sure. The mask covered everything. The man in the mask was waiting.

What he was waiting for no one could have said. The people on the street did not see him, did not see the paperback copy of Macbeth that he pulled from beneath his cloak. It was old, battered. It had been read many times.

"Good evening, London. It's nine o'clock and this is the Voice of Fate broadcasting on 275 and 285 on the medium wave. It is the fifth of the eleventh, nineteen-ninety-seven."

The man in the mask did not wait much longer, to hear the rest of the broadcast. He bent over his copy of Macbeth, opened it to a dog eared page. "Shakespeare," the man in the mask said softly. Hearing his own voice made him laugh, because he knew millions of people were hearing, right now, the Voice of Fate and believing it a hypnotic voice, a beautiful voice. What did they know? The Voice of Fate - of Lewis Prothero - was as insignificant as this government had now rendered the poetry that the man in the mask held in his hand.

The man in the mask murmured a few lines, reading words he knew by heart from the book. "Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak. . ." He trailed off, and stared for a moment at the rain. He smiled. Or perhaps it was just the mask.

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November. . ." said the man in the mask, and walked away on the streets of London, boots clicking smartly at the heel.

FIN

Sincerely,

Kat