Chapter 1

“ ... FOUR!! - FIVE!! - SIX!! - SEVEN!! - EIGHT!!!! - NINE!!!! - OUTTT!!!!!!!! The referee finished counting over the limp body of the girl sprawled, dazed and bleeding on the canvass. The girl in the corner, still just about on her feet after fourteen punishing rounds of a fight to the finish with one of the illegal kickboxing world’s most fearsome female contenders, stepped forward at the ref’s signed command. He grasped her hand in his and raised her battered, weary arm.

“The winner, ladies and gentlemen, in the Blue Corner - The Naked Avenger!!”

A crescendo of cheers, that had started to build the moment the favored contender had been floored, gathered strength, and the winner’s ears began to ring painfully in tune with the buzzing in her head, battered as it had recently been by so many terrible kicks and punches.

She gazed in triumphant disbelief at her dreaded opponent over whom she just prevailed after a mammoth fight which had left her bloody and exhausted. She raised one bruised and bleeding leg, lifting her sore foot, bruised and raw after delivering so many kicks to that well-padded body, now lying shattered beneath her, and placed the said foot on the fallen girl’s stomach, raising her other arm high above her head in a gesture of victory as she did so. The cheers continued to grow and she turned away to return to her dressing room, the ringing in her ears and inside her head becoming ever more painful and insistent.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRNNGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

Penny Lyle’s hand reached out from under the bedclothes and firmly silenced the alarm. She groaned. Bloody Monday Morning Again! She raised herself and pushed back the bedclothes. Where was Mr. Smith, she wondered? Probably in the kitchen waiting for his breakfast - he certainly wasn’t on the bed any longer. Well, let him wait - do him good, the greedy little sod!

Wearily, she made for the bathroom and got under the shower, feeling the sleepiness leave her by degrees. She always liked this cleansing cascade over her body in the morning, so warm and invigorating. Just possibly, Monday wasn’t such a bad day as all that! After all, said and done, she liked her job. She liked her immediate colleagues, and they all liked her. People always had liked her, ever since she was a cheery, sunny little mite at nursery school.

After drying herself she went over to the washbasin and brushed her white and perfect teeth, noting sadly the yellowish coating on her tongue! It had been a good weekend, over much too soon, as ever.

She looked down at her feet and her eyes travelled up her body. “Not quite the trim little girl I was a year ago”, she thought. “In a year or two, I’ll be an obese old bitch and I’m not quite twenty-one!”

Then she looked in the mirror and almost died from shock! She was looking at her own face, but it was an appalling sight. The puffiness that had lately begun to mar the fresh girlish beauty, whose passing she had just regretted, had gone. Bright healthy eyes stared back at her from a face whose youthful vitality was quite restored. There was, though, one terrible way in which this rejuvenated face was not pretty to behold! It was bruised and cut. Badly bruised and terribly cut.