The paper is plain lined notebook paper. Sometimes it is vellum. Sometimes it is the back of a menu stolen from a roadside diner. There is neither rhyme nor reason to the rhythm of the her choices, there are simply her choices, pale and stark and changeable. The paper was torn, at somepoint, from a spiral binding, and the frayed edges - compacted in the mail - bristle on the leftmost edge.
Her hand is usually strong and clear, but sometimes slanting and driven, with only the rare affected flourish at the extremity of some particularly dramatic letter - a y or a p or a capital letter that seems to deserve some richness of ornamentation. There is no greeting, although sometimes she offers one, slapdash, haphazard, some random endearment engendered by a strange indulgence, some rush of wretched feeling.
----
Can you believe that I have found another, and so soon after my arrival in this godforsaken city? -- I should not say godforsaken. I am vehemently a-religious, and should never use such terms, but I know you will understand it for what it is, graceless shorthand, a verbal tic translated to the page.
Shall I tell you about him? Who he is, what he does, how he remains solid and fleshed and completely opaque to me as so few of them do? No - that pleasure must wait for another time, I'm afraid. I do not wish to contemplate the mysteries of this affection, this affectation,for too long. Doing so invites - ah, invites some sort of ruin. What object of desire withstands such prolonged scrutiny? One or the other - the lover or the beloved object - shall shatter and shard, and it shan't be me.
The last one - that lovely girl - how disappointing she was in the end, not broken but so thoroughly limited in ways I had not seen when I was first enchanted with her. Ordinary, but not ordinary in the delicious, subjective manner of the new one I have found, and I will say nothing more, lest I overintellectualize my latest obsession.
Will you ask me to say more? I don't believe you care for these flights of fancy to which I am prone. I'm not sure I care for them myself. Tucked inside the round, hollow cage of this shell, they are lovely and terrible, perfect obsessions, but translated to be voiced on the page they lose both their majesty and mystery.
Now, the rest of it, were I not so ridiculously self-sufficient I would be irredeemably bored in this bleak, northern city. Do you know, I think I feel the gritty wash of wasted time like sandpaper over my skin every time I find my way into society. Fortunately, the host has a taste for Cuban cigars, and is quite willing to share, which eases, but does not obviate, the rough, raw boredom of the situation. Tell me, should I become a society creature? Should I bind the sheep in my tangled webs and flay them with my dubious charms? I have too many options and too many questions. I make no decisions, not yet.
And now - you.
Come, come. Tell something, anything. Do you require a guide? Tell me something scandalous, something intimate, and something mundane.
ever yours,
ell
p.s. - do not harangue me about some chess game again. I categorically refuse, and continue to assert that far from sharpening the latent mind, chess makes one lazy. I will, however, consent to play Monopoly-by-mail. I have rolled twelve double-twelves, landed on and purchased Broadway, which now boasts a lovely red plastic hotel. I am playing the old rotten shoe, by the by, so you may have the Rolls Royce, the tophat, or the dog. It is now your turn.
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est solo. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est solo. Afficher tous les articles
jeudi, mai 13, 2004
mardi, mai 11, 2004
au crépuscule, un réveil
[Forum post]
he darkness is absolute, without relief. There is something (she thinks - awakening, if such an abrupt and unwholesome eruption to consciousness may be called awakening) textural about the unremitting shadow, the absolute absence of light, which appeals to her on a deep and wordless level. Here I am, she thinks, feels her mouth spreading over the sculpture of her skull, opening, just where I was, and she doesn't mean anything by it. Nothing at all.
It is strange, how the darkness swims around her, how she feels it parting and breathing for her, how the rhythms of life still seem embedded somewhere deep down in the intact shell of her body. Sometimes she imagines herself as an alien consciousness, a brain in a box attached to some constructed sham of a substitute corpse, and despises herself for it, despises her condition, with all its fatal lies, for it.
This shell - how easily immolated; how easily everything (I am, she considers, opening her right hand, fingers stretched to the limits of extension, pretending she can see the appendage - ghost-vision - floating like a pallid starfish in front of her, so fucking arrogant. And she is right, of course.) could be lost.
Five minutes or more after awakening (she is not human; they have other concerns. Slave to their bodies, driven by subliminal urges to eat, to piss, to ease whatever tension the night has brought, wakening is a hot-blooded process. She is a cold-blooded creature, deliberate and reptilian.) she takes in her first breath. It is not experimental. It is not for want of air. It is not to speak; she is alone and has no need for words.
No, she breathes to feel herself move and to assert herself against the darkness. She breathes to taste the acrid backwash of the closed and poisoned air, and to reassert the severed connection between that blazing mind and that cold body. And as she breathes, she imagines her lungs expanding and collapsing like withered balloons that have lost their elasticity. How much can she hold? It is a game she has played before; it is a game she will play again and strangely enough, it pleases her. She imagines herself expanding and exploding and then she simply imagines herself.
It isn't so hard.
Later, she will rise - restless, blood on her mind, the aftertaste thick on her tongue. Last night was the girl. The pale one with battered eyes and a headful of hair overdyed so many times that the texture is like shredded straw, who writes long paeans to the moongoddess and broods over her menstrual blood, who eats onions unrepentently and smells of chlorine and turpentine. Last night it was the girl, and tonight it will be another one - a different one - but not the one she really wants. Not him. Not yet. Another day. Wait for it. There is pleasure - starched and stretched - in such denial, in such anticipation.
Her restless, hungry mind pushes through the mental list that reads like the cast of characters in a script, faces and names and wordless, sensory impressions that serve as mere shorthand for the whole. Some are more distinct than others. Some float to the surface of her mind, and she half-follows the impulse, hungry - hungri-er - for whatever nameless spark they seem to possess, such small and lovely flames.
The restlessness finds echo in her limbs, phantom movements (another breath, she swallows it like blood; she is greedy now), base impressions that presage actual movement. From her low crouch to her knees - forward, fabric shhh-shhing against metal, all echoed back to her five-fold - until her knee slams against the lower release valve and she reaches up blindly for the rusting mechanism that is its twin above.
GGGKRKRRECHHHRTESSST - the release valve, the trickle of cool air against her colder skin, some swimming impression of faint smeared light. She stands, presses her hands on the lip of the opening, lifts herself from the old tank or vat or whatever the thing once was, settles - crouched - atop the metal skin, and finds her flip-phone, stocked with all the various phone numbers she fished from the crowd at last week's gathering.
"Jeremy." How reasonable she sounds, how almost ordinary. "This is - " She does not even hear herself. These are words, are tools - rote little lures, the very first steps in a choreographed dance so familiar it has become mere instinct. Ah, evolution. Her voice doesn't change, but her whole stance does, shifting forward as if he were here, as if she were ready to pounce. " - yes, of course, from Mitch's party. I was thinking - about that drink you offered me, and your manuscript."
Here is her beast, waiting and wanting and wanton, blooming beneath her cold flesh like the pain from a blow: first in a round, concentrated starburst and then in a rolling concentric wave outward. She welcomes it with a raw, sharp pleasure that feels something like relief. The conversation ends, and she is rising, she is stalking, she is no longer thinking. She simply is as she is and what she is. It is time to hunger; it is time to hunt.
he darkness is absolute, without relief. There is something (she thinks - awakening, if such an abrupt and unwholesome eruption to consciousness may be called awakening) textural about the unremitting shadow, the absolute absence of light, which appeals to her on a deep and wordless level. Here I am, she thinks, feels her mouth spreading over the sculpture of her skull, opening, just where I was, and she doesn't mean anything by it. Nothing at all.
It is strange, how the darkness swims around her, how she feels it parting and breathing for her, how the rhythms of life still seem embedded somewhere deep down in the intact shell of her body. Sometimes she imagines herself as an alien consciousness, a brain in a box attached to some constructed sham of a substitute corpse, and despises herself for it, despises her condition, with all its fatal lies, for it.
This shell - how easily immolated; how easily everything (I am, she considers, opening her right hand, fingers stretched to the limits of extension, pretending she can see the appendage - ghost-vision - floating like a pallid starfish in front of her, so fucking arrogant. And she is right, of course.) could be lost.
Five minutes or more after awakening (she is not human; they have other concerns. Slave to their bodies, driven by subliminal urges to eat, to piss, to ease whatever tension the night has brought, wakening is a hot-blooded process. She is a cold-blooded creature, deliberate and reptilian.) she takes in her first breath. It is not experimental. It is not for want of air. It is not to speak; she is alone and has no need for words.
No, she breathes to feel herself move and to assert herself against the darkness. She breathes to taste the acrid backwash of the closed and poisoned air, and to reassert the severed connection between that blazing mind and that cold body. And as she breathes, she imagines her lungs expanding and collapsing like withered balloons that have lost their elasticity. How much can she hold? It is a game she has played before; it is a game she will play again and strangely enough, it pleases her. She imagines herself expanding and exploding and then she simply imagines herself.
It isn't so hard.
Later, she will rise - restless, blood on her mind, the aftertaste thick on her tongue. Last night was the girl. The pale one with battered eyes and a headful of hair overdyed so many times that the texture is like shredded straw, who writes long paeans to the moongoddess and broods over her menstrual blood, who eats onions unrepentently and smells of chlorine and turpentine. Last night it was the girl, and tonight it will be another one - a different one - but not the one she really wants. Not him. Not yet. Another day. Wait for it. There is pleasure - starched and stretched - in such denial, in such anticipation.
Her restless, hungry mind pushes through the mental list that reads like the cast of characters in a script, faces and names and wordless, sensory impressions that serve as mere shorthand for the whole. Some are more distinct than others. Some float to the surface of her mind, and she half-follows the impulse, hungry - hungri-er - for whatever nameless spark they seem to possess, such small and lovely flames.
The restlessness finds echo in her limbs, phantom movements (another breath, she swallows it like blood; she is greedy now), base impressions that presage actual movement. From her low crouch to her knees - forward, fabric shhh-shhing against metal, all echoed back to her five-fold - until her knee slams against the lower release valve and she reaches up blindly for the rusting mechanism that is its twin above.
GGGKRKRRECHHHRTESSST - the release valve, the trickle of cool air against her colder skin, some swimming impression of faint smeared light. She stands, presses her hands on the lip of the opening, lifts herself from the old tank or vat or whatever the thing once was, settles - crouched - atop the metal skin, and finds her flip-phone, stocked with all the various phone numbers she fished from the crowd at last week's gathering.
"Jeremy." How reasonable she sounds, how almost ordinary. "This is - " She does not even hear herself. These are words, are tools - rote little lures, the very first steps in a choreographed dance so familiar it has become mere instinct. Ah, evolution. Her voice doesn't change, but her whole stance does, shifting forward as if he were here, as if she were ready to pounce. " - yes, of course, from Mitch's party. I was thinking - about that drink you offered me, and your manuscript."
Here is her beast, waiting and wanting and wanton, blooming beneath her cold flesh like the pain from a blow: first in a round, concentrated starburst and then in a rolling concentric wave outward. She welcomes it with a raw, sharp pleasure that feels something like relief. The conversation ends, and she is rising, she is stalking, she is no longer thinking. She simply is as she is and what she is. It is time to hunger; it is time to hunt.
le main disposée
[Forum post]
The party was going well; Mitchell was pleased. Someone (else, thank god) had taken over the stereo and was keeping up a good, eclectic mix of music. Singer-songwriters, faster things, even dance numbers and kitchy-retro vibes, such that he sometimes found himself just bobbing his head like some sullen teenager in one of those bouncing-cars that figured into MTV videos in the late 90s so much. He'd never understood the point of those, incidentally, and he almost brought it up to the pretty psych student twirling her hair and staring up at him over her appletini, but thought better of it. It might come off as rascist or something, and he wasn't. Rascist, well not overtly.
Mitch felt himself smirking as he put a quick stop to the usual train of qualifications and contagions the filigree of modern thought left him to waddle through whenever he veered too close to any dangerous topic and distracted himself by staring down at the girl's cleavage. That was safe, so long as the glances were brief and he looked back into her eyes pretty quickly, which he did. He wasn't actually a boob. Er, he wasn't actually a bore, most of the time.
"So, it's not that I'm anti-marriage so much as I think the partnership should be, like, quantified elseways until we are - " He was smiling, not really listening. She was just babbling, spouting the things she thought she ought to say. She had a nice face, though, and a nice voice if he could ignore the almost valley-girl sounds of her various interjections and exclamations. " - oh, my god is that Sheila?" She leaned closer, an intimate distance, to share one of those pseudo-intimacies - a nice, gossipy tidbit - that passed for confidences in such a gathering. "Have you heard about - " He smiled and leaned closer, tilting his ear toward her mouth while glancing across the plane of her shoulder, casually studying the crowd and its shifting, amorphous groupings and definitions.
The gathering had grown beyond the quiet invitational cocktail party for a few faculty members and other graduate students he had initially intended. No longer his, no longer static, it was an organic thing, balanced on the cusp of another growth spurt. Most of the invited faculty members were still there, but other people - a younger crowd, a different crowd - were beginning to spill in from the hallway, and the multilayered echoes of music and conversation from the balcony suggested that more than one balcony was involved.
Not bad, he thought to himself, pleased with the tableau, not bad at all. Freakin' smug, actually. Didn't know I had it in me.
The gin was beginning to do its work; he felt the familiar warm flushed tide of good-natured ease creeping up on him, imagined a thermometer on a hot day, the mercury rising, as a perfect visual analog to what he was feeling. He wondered if others could tell, could see his knotted shoulder muscles loosen or the change in his grin, from dutiful to genuine. Weird, how that creeps up on you all of a sudden, how that feeling always surprises you, even when you know its coming, even when you're expecting it.
"Yeah? - " whats-her-name was still talking, and Mitch found himself inserting appropriate noises at the appropriate pauses without thinking about it, leaning too close to her, grinning his grin, - "mmmhmm?" She might have been boring him before, but now the whole fucking world seemed interesting, like someone had popped into actions in the dead moments between seconds and repainted everything in ever-so-slightly-more-intense shades.
He found himself putting his hand on whats-her-name's shoulder, her skin warm beneath his hand, and he was readying himself to ask her to dance (nuts, since he really couldn't dance), when he caught a glimpse of something: flaxen hair, flashing eyes and a supple, crimson mouth that made think of - think of -
"oh god."
Had he said that aloud? He looked down at psych-cleavage-girl and her face was closing in itself in a strange way, a ridged line between narrow, furrowed brows, her mouth opening, eyes narrowing. Time seemed to close and focus and string itself along and the chica was twisting away from him. Pressure on his wrist - "off me. Get your hands off me!" - not yelling yet, but soon, he looked away and back and felt himself distantly, stiffly releasing the psych major's shoulder and looking around, knowing that he should be embarrassed but not quite capable of summoning that feeling (usually so natural to him) to the forefront.
(He had seen her. He had seen her. Where?)
The girl was still there - perhaps a foot away - her arms crossed in beneath her breasts in a narrow-eyed display of feminine outrage. She was waiting for something and he frowned at her, irritated, couldn't she just go away? "Uh - " a moment, epiphany - apology, that's what she was waiting for - and he stammered something like it out, " - sorry. Saw m'ex. Didn't think she'd show."
He forced himself to look straight at the girl, fishing for some evidence that his mumbled apology had down the trick, and she was still standing there, just standing there like a stupid cow (he had to go find her. he was still dreaming about her. she had to know that.) and he realized that his psych major was waiting for something more than apology, that her tight, angry face was easing and there was room for more than mere forgiveness if he pushed the proper buttons in the correct sequence. Mitch was sufficiently outside himself that such arcane knowledge - which usually eluded him - just bubbled up in his mind, ridiculously clear.
"Yeah - " he continued, refocusing (half-focusing) on his psych major, " - thought she knew better than to show up around here. After what happened - " Mitchell tucked his voice into a lower register and reoriented himself, back in the subtle orbit of the girl, perfect shield, perfect weapon. Wasn't she? Wasn't she just made for this? Perfect distraction, perfect substitute.
He shot a hot glance over the girl's shoulder, found the creature, and devoured her with his eyes, if nothing else. His mouth felt sour, his body overheated. He wanted to crush something, to feel something shatter. (Throw a party. Invite me.) Of course she'd come. Of course she hadn't wanted him. Of course she wouldn't speak to him all night long. Maybe he should say something. Maybe she would notice - him, the girl - maybe she would stop it. Maybe she would get jealous, maybe she'd hit him, maybe she'd fuck him. All night long, closer, watching as she flitted from person to person like a bee from bloom to bloom, gathering numbers and names with an obsessive carelessness that reminded him of birds, something large and white and winged. He kissed the girl - his girl, the thought of her, not bothering to learn her name - with an aggression and possessiveness he had never expressed before, but all the time he was watching the other one, the creature, like a wolf, like a starved thing.
She glanced back only once, ten minutes to four in the morning, when the night seemed to have tied itself off and wrapped itself neatly around the edges of morning, the raw and intimate hours that still found a one and a half-dozen people reclining in various states of dress and repose throughout the apartment and balcony ("Great party, man - " and he knew it. Best party he ever gave), and her the center of sprawled group, holding herself elusively and certainly apart, fine fingers circling a smudge-eyed girl's slender wrist. She looked at him - then - as she rose, leading the girl toward the door with a great cat's perverse delicacy. She looked at him then, and smiled.
All night long, he had wanted nothing (so much) more than that.
The party was going well; Mitchell was pleased. Someone (else, thank god) had taken over the stereo and was keeping up a good, eclectic mix of music. Singer-songwriters, faster things, even dance numbers and kitchy-retro vibes, such that he sometimes found himself just bobbing his head like some sullen teenager in one of those bouncing-cars that figured into MTV videos in the late 90s so much. He'd never understood the point of those, incidentally, and he almost brought it up to the pretty psych student twirling her hair and staring up at him over her appletini, but thought better of it. It might come off as rascist or something, and he wasn't. Rascist, well not overtly.
Mitch felt himself smirking as he put a quick stop to the usual train of qualifications and contagions the filigree of modern thought left him to waddle through whenever he veered too close to any dangerous topic and distracted himself by staring down at the girl's cleavage. That was safe, so long as the glances were brief and he looked back into her eyes pretty quickly, which he did. He wasn't actually a boob. Er, he wasn't actually a bore, most of the time.
"So, it's not that I'm anti-marriage so much as I think the partnership should be, like, quantified elseways until we are - " He was smiling, not really listening. She was just babbling, spouting the things she thought she ought to say. She had a nice face, though, and a nice voice if he could ignore the almost valley-girl sounds of her various interjections and exclamations. " - oh, my god is that Sheila?" She leaned closer, an intimate distance, to share one of those pseudo-intimacies - a nice, gossipy tidbit - that passed for confidences in such a gathering. "Have you heard about - " He smiled and leaned closer, tilting his ear toward her mouth while glancing across the plane of her shoulder, casually studying the crowd and its shifting, amorphous groupings and definitions.
The gathering had grown beyond the quiet invitational cocktail party for a few faculty members and other graduate students he had initially intended. No longer his, no longer static, it was an organic thing, balanced on the cusp of another growth spurt. Most of the invited faculty members were still there, but other people - a younger crowd, a different crowd - were beginning to spill in from the hallway, and the multilayered echoes of music and conversation from the balcony suggested that more than one balcony was involved.
Not bad, he thought to himself, pleased with the tableau, not bad at all. Freakin' smug, actually. Didn't know I had it in me.
The gin was beginning to do its work; he felt the familiar warm flushed tide of good-natured ease creeping up on him, imagined a thermometer on a hot day, the mercury rising, as a perfect visual analog to what he was feeling. He wondered if others could tell, could see his knotted shoulder muscles loosen or the change in his grin, from dutiful to genuine. Weird, how that creeps up on you all of a sudden, how that feeling always surprises you, even when you know its coming, even when you're expecting it.
"Yeah? - " whats-her-name was still talking, and Mitch found himself inserting appropriate noises at the appropriate pauses without thinking about it, leaning too close to her, grinning his grin, - "mmmhmm?" She might have been boring him before, but now the whole fucking world seemed interesting, like someone had popped into actions in the dead moments between seconds and repainted everything in ever-so-slightly-more-intense shades.
He found himself putting his hand on whats-her-name's shoulder, her skin warm beneath his hand, and he was readying himself to ask her to dance (nuts, since he really couldn't dance), when he caught a glimpse of something: flaxen hair, flashing eyes and a supple, crimson mouth that made think of - think of -
"oh god."
Had he said that aloud? He looked down at psych-cleavage-girl and her face was closing in itself in a strange way, a ridged line between narrow, furrowed brows, her mouth opening, eyes narrowing. Time seemed to close and focus and string itself along and the chica was twisting away from him. Pressure on his wrist - "off me. Get your hands off me!" - not yelling yet, but soon, he looked away and back and felt himself distantly, stiffly releasing the psych major's shoulder and looking around, knowing that he should be embarrassed but not quite capable of summoning that feeling (usually so natural to him) to the forefront.
(He had seen her. He had seen her. Where?)
The girl was still there - perhaps a foot away - her arms crossed in beneath her breasts in a narrow-eyed display of feminine outrage. She was waiting for something and he frowned at her, irritated, couldn't she just go away? "Uh - " a moment, epiphany - apology, that's what she was waiting for - and he stammered something like it out, " - sorry. Saw m'ex. Didn't think she'd show."
He forced himself to look straight at the girl, fishing for some evidence that his mumbled apology had down the trick, and she was still standing there, just standing there like a stupid cow (he had to go find her. he was still dreaming about her. she had to know that.) and he realized that his psych major was waiting for something more than apology, that her tight, angry face was easing and there was room for more than mere forgiveness if he pushed the proper buttons in the correct sequence. Mitch was sufficiently outside himself that such arcane knowledge - which usually eluded him - just bubbled up in his mind, ridiculously clear.
"Yeah - " he continued, refocusing (half-focusing) on his psych major, " - thought she knew better than to show up around here. After what happened - " Mitchell tucked his voice into a lower register and reoriented himself, back in the subtle orbit of the girl, perfect shield, perfect weapon. Wasn't she? Wasn't she just made for this? Perfect distraction, perfect substitute.
He shot a hot glance over the girl's shoulder, found the creature, and devoured her with his eyes, if nothing else. His mouth felt sour, his body overheated. He wanted to crush something, to feel something shatter. (Throw a party. Invite me.) Of course she'd come. Of course she hadn't wanted him. Of course she wouldn't speak to him all night long. Maybe he should say something. Maybe she would notice - him, the girl - maybe she would stop it. Maybe she would get jealous, maybe she'd hit him, maybe she'd fuck him. All night long, closer, watching as she flitted from person to person like a bee from bloom to bloom, gathering numbers and names with an obsessive carelessness that reminded him of birds, something large and white and winged. He kissed the girl - his girl, the thought of her, not bothering to learn her name - with an aggression and possessiveness he had never expressed before, but all the time he was watching the other one, the creature, like a wolf, like a starved thing.
She glanced back only once, ten minutes to four in the morning, when the night seemed to have tied itself off and wrapped itself neatly around the edges of morning, the raw and intimate hours that still found a one and a half-dozen people reclining in various states of dress and repose throughout the apartment and balcony ("Great party, man - " and he knew it. Best party he ever gave), and her the center of sprawled group, holding herself elusively and certainly apart, fine fingers circling a smudge-eyed girl's slender wrist. She looked at him - then - as she rose, leading the girl toward the door with a great cat's perverse delicacy. She looked at him then, and smiled.
All night long, he had wanted nothing (so much) more than that.
sur les coins
[Forum post, follow-up to scene w/Teagan]
It happened overnight. The corner of Fifth and Sullivan, the corner of Seventh and Trade, the corner of Two-Hundred Twenty-Eighth and Grand, and elsewhere, too. Fliers, small piles of them on brightly colored paper, in brightly colored inks, on a few select corners throughout the greater Chicagoland area, in a few select El stops, near the downtown YMCA, near the Lighthouse Mission, near Cabrini Green, and so on.
The fliers are clear and straightforward. No need to mince words, after all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
FREE FREE FREE
BEER BEER BEER
XXX, XXX Street
Chicago, Illinois
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The address printed in bold relief at the bottom is recognizeable only to Kindred as Elysium. To assorted crazy down-n-outs, bums, dealers, pedophiles, night watchmen, frat boys and the like, however, it is merely the address promising a crazy-good time, full of free girls and beer. Sometimes beer commercials really do come to life. Maybe they're even filming one at this big fancy estate. Maybe you'll get some, or at least watch a couple of twins getting it on. Right, wingman?
And the guards at Elysium would recognize, of course, the slow but steady stream of bums, stoners, and horny businessmen as something like trouble.
Strange, really. Quite strange.
---
Teagan is walking home, back toward the Church when a hoard of young teenagers scamper past her- all hormones and acne- and one of them drops a flier.
The Malkavian scoops it up and reads it over once, her lips part and a soft chuckle escapes. There is a slightly triumphant gleam to her eyes as she folds it up and slips in into her pocket, glancing around before continuing on her way.
---
**With hands tucked snugly into her business suit pockets, she liesurely made her way around a corner, only a few blocks from Elysium, in which she was going to pay a little if quiet visit. Nothing else to do for the night, might as well take a walk. But a walk is not the only thing she gets. **
**Upon making her turn of the blind sided corner, a few men, no more than 20 or so nearly collide right into her. Giving a feigned gasp of her pert lips she scowls those dark green eyes at the impertinant little fools. They stop only for a moment to look her up and down, those stupid grins on their faces like true dogs of sexual perversion.**
"Monsieurs, do be so kind as to watch where your going!"
**The guys chuckle, one of them raising a beer to his lips. Edesna had to hold back the sneer from her mouth, the mere scent of the pisswater invading her senses. Wisps of dark blonde hair cross over her high cheek bones as one of the guys speaks, obviously the bold one of the group.**
"Hey lady, ya know where this address is?"
**The man holds up a rather crude flyer only inches from Edesna's face. Nearly growling with impatience at the two she snatches the flyer away, glancing at it and sneering at them while she spoke in her thick french voice.**
"Morons! I would never even think of a place like..."
**Her words trail off, and she blinks, reading the address. That can't be right. How in the world...? Her face seemed to cloud over, thinking this was some sort of childish prank. But by who? One of her own kind? Certainly not anyone from HER clan. It would be unthinkable.**
"There's no party at this location, now move."
**She shuved the dirty flyer back into the man's hands and pushed through them with a suprising bit of strength. Walking away she made sure they did not follow. What was going on???**
It happened overnight. The corner of Fifth and Sullivan, the corner of Seventh and Trade, the corner of Two-Hundred Twenty-Eighth and Grand, and elsewhere, too. Fliers, small piles of them on brightly colored paper, in brightly colored inks, on a few select corners throughout the greater Chicagoland area, in a few select El stops, near the downtown YMCA, near the Lighthouse Mission, near Cabrini Green, and so on.
The fliers are clear and straightforward. No need to mince words, after all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The address printed in bold relief at the bottom is recognizeable only to Kindred as Elysium. To assorted crazy down-n-outs, bums, dealers, pedophiles, night watchmen, frat boys and the like, however, it is merely the address promising a crazy-good time, full of free girls and beer. Sometimes beer commercials really do come to life. Maybe they're even filming one at this big fancy estate. Maybe you'll get some, or at least watch a couple of twins getting it on. Right, wingman?
And the guards at Elysium would recognize, of course, the slow but steady stream of bums, stoners, and horny businessmen as something like trouble.
Strange, really. Quite strange.
---
Teagan is walking home, back toward the Church when a hoard of young teenagers scamper past her- all hormones and acne- and one of them drops a flier.
The Malkavian scoops it up and reads it over once, her lips part and a soft chuckle escapes. There is a slightly triumphant gleam to her eyes as she folds it up and slips in into her pocket, glancing around before continuing on her way.
---
**With hands tucked snugly into her business suit pockets, she liesurely made her way around a corner, only a few blocks from Elysium, in which she was going to pay a little if quiet visit. Nothing else to do for the night, might as well take a walk. But a walk is not the only thing she gets. **
**Upon making her turn of the blind sided corner, a few men, no more than 20 or so nearly collide right into her. Giving a feigned gasp of her pert lips she scowls those dark green eyes at the impertinant little fools. They stop only for a moment to look her up and down, those stupid grins on their faces like true dogs of sexual perversion.**
"Monsieurs, do be so kind as to watch where your going!"
**The guys chuckle, one of them raising a beer to his lips. Edesna had to hold back the sneer from her mouth, the mere scent of the pisswater invading her senses. Wisps of dark blonde hair cross over her high cheek bones as one of the guys speaks, obviously the bold one of the group.**
"Hey lady, ya know where this address is?"
**The man holds up a rather crude flyer only inches from Edesna's face. Nearly growling with impatience at the two she snatches the flyer away, glancing at it and sneering at them while she spoke in her thick french voice.**
"Morons! I would never even think of a place like..."
**Her words trail off, and she blinks, reading the address. That can't be right. How in the world...? Her face seemed to cloud over, thinking this was some sort of childish prank. But by who? One of her own kind? Certainly not anyone from HER clan. It would be unthinkable.**
"There's no party at this location, now move."
**She shuved the dirty flyer back into the man's hands and pushed through them with a suprising bit of strength. Walking away she made sure they did not follow. What was going on???**
lundi, avril 19, 2004
Blue the Night (prelude)
Blue is the color of night -
Darkness. No heat. No electricity. None of the dubious comforts of home, the trappings of humanity. (She hardly needed a kitchen.) And so she had only darkness, vast and empty, magnifying the subtle sounds of each little fidget and refracting them back to her. The self, squared. Or perhaps cubed.
There were more iterations than that, lingering traces of who she was almost anyplace she had been. Cubed: what was next? There should be more convenient English terms for such concepts. (I am manifold. I am legion. I am still in the darkness. The darkness is a womb and I am - ) No. Her mouth fell into a narrow grimace, which she could feel distorting her features, puckering her cheeks and crinkling her brow in her deliberate exaggeration. She had not liked the analogy years ago, and it certainly had not aged well.
No light seeped in through the stormblinds covering the high windows that lined the massive space: the only color was the imagined color, the motes of should-be-color, imposed either by her eyes or her mind. Or maybe there was more, maybe she was evolving. Maybe she could see all colors - black is every color, every single color wrapped together and tied with a big funereal bow; black means something, something trite and casual, some imputed sense of tragedy or danger, but, really, it's a rip-off. Her wide mouth curved into the subtle suggestion of a smile: she loved rip-offs.
Meaning
less.
It was still twilight outside. The sky would be blue. Not pale blue, not robin's-fucking-egg blue, not winter-sky blue, and certain not navy blue. The twilit sky would be the sheer essence of blue, after all the detritus of yellow and white and green and pale and pleasant and soothing had been distilled from it, leaving some concentrated substance that would flare against the horizon for 3.5 seconds, perfect, irreconcilable, irredeemable. She could taste it, some other-ache in the back of her throat, some remnant hunger subsumed by the other hunger, the one that drove everything (every. thing). But now - now, the one spurs on the other, piledriver, driving her from her coiled, long-limbed crouch to her feet. And onward: she stalks through the darkness with furious assurance, claiming every single step along the way.
(On est million à rire
Du million qui est en face
Mais deux millions de rires
N`empêchent que dans la glace.)
It's important to know this: she isn't forgetful, even when she indulges. Facts, dates and times, appointments, little fillips of information stain her brain the way neon stains the night, the way the sun stains the horizon at twilight, and the way the twilight sun would stain her flesh: a smoking brand. There's a bag in her hand, an empty dress, something all-too-appropriate, the necessary tools of the trade, snatched from the otherwise empty floor. From the loading dock to the Barracuda (it no longer appeals to her: she can feel the heat seeping from the pavement. She wants a convertible, something that will be blasted by Chicago's summer wind), and then into traffic, another moving blind crawling thing, inching along the surface of the world. All it takes is perspective.
The flickering fluorescent lights of the 7-11 highlight her pallor and hollow her already sharp features, so that she looks like death's understudy, something out of a made-for-TV horror flick (the cruel headmistress?). The shopgirl - insolently flipping through the latest issue of Hotrods Monthly and smoking a Doral - flicks a dull glance up as the creature disappears into the bathroom. (She may not need a kitchen. She does, however, require a shower. Or, a sink, running water at the least.) Twenty-five minutes later she emerges, transformed. The clerk flickers a disinterested glance upward, takes a drag from her cigarette, snaps her gum, and drops her attention back to the magazine. The freaks come out at night; it isn't the weirdest thing she's seen all night, the transformation from hung-over horror-house extra in filthy jeans to fashion plate in a crimson bias-cut dress and lucite heels. Still, something draws her attention again, up and over and out, the insolent swish of the skirt against the woman's lean thighs, the perfect drape of the silk across her torso, the raw confidence of her walk, the after image of the vibrant dress, the color a still-spreading stain.
---
They are to come bearing their talent: undead magi with gifts of dubious magnitude and uncertain quality. Fortunately, although she felt specifically exempted (there was that Nigerian...) from the precise letter of the Primogen's exhortation, she could be deemed to have complied with the spirit, at least, simply by attending. The dress, the hair, the artfully artless elegance, all constructed in less than a half-hour in the bathroom of a 7-11 sitting in the shadow of an empty industrial park in the midst of Chicago's vast urban blight. Few such masterpieces have been completed so quickly, or in such circumstances, though from her sure skill, this is not her first attempt.
She is the first to arrive, a bare invitation, a murmured word passed from mouth to dry, dead mouth, and so on. Somehow, all the energy, all the fire, all the I-don’t-know-what-I-need(oh-yes-I-do) has been consumed and subsumed and contained by sure and subtle flame of the cold, confidant figure: flaxen hair, twilit eyes, blood-red dress, blooded mouth. She is the very first to arrive (certainly not a coincidence, that. This, too, is part of her art.) and she finds a space to inhabit equidistant from the door and the center of the room, from which she appears to be observing and cataloging the furnishings. In truth, she is observing and cataloging the arrivals via the door.
(Quelque chose est toujours laissée la brûlure, se refroidissent au contact, mais en flammes.)
Darkness. No heat. No electricity. None of the dubious comforts of home, the trappings of humanity. (She hardly needed a kitchen.) And so she had only darkness, vast and empty, magnifying the subtle sounds of each little fidget and refracting them back to her. The self, squared. Or perhaps cubed.
There were more iterations than that, lingering traces of who she was almost anyplace she had been. Cubed: what was next? There should be more convenient English terms for such concepts. (I am manifold. I am legion. I am still in the darkness. The darkness is a womb and I am - ) No. Her mouth fell into a narrow grimace, which she could feel distorting her features, puckering her cheeks and crinkling her brow in her deliberate exaggeration. She had not liked the analogy years ago, and it certainly had not aged well.
No light seeped in through the stormblinds covering the high windows that lined the massive space: the only color was the imagined color, the motes of should-be-color, imposed either by her eyes or her mind. Or maybe there was more, maybe she was evolving. Maybe she could see all colors - black is every color, every single color wrapped together and tied with a big funereal bow; black means something, something trite and casual, some imputed sense of tragedy or danger, but, really, it's a rip-off. Her wide mouth curved into the subtle suggestion of a smile: she loved rip-offs.
Meaning
less.
It was still twilight outside. The sky would be blue. Not pale blue, not robin's-fucking-egg blue, not winter-sky blue, and certain not navy blue. The twilit sky would be the sheer essence of blue, after all the detritus of yellow and white and green and pale and pleasant and soothing had been distilled from it, leaving some concentrated substance that would flare against the horizon for 3.5 seconds, perfect, irreconcilable, irredeemable. She could taste it, some other-ache in the back of her throat, some remnant hunger subsumed by the other hunger, the one that drove everything (every. thing). But now - now, the one spurs on the other, piledriver, driving her from her coiled, long-limbed crouch to her feet. And onward: she stalks through the darkness with furious assurance, claiming every single step along the way.
(On est million à rire
Du million qui est en face
Mais deux millions de rires
N`empêchent que dans la glace.)
It's important to know this: she isn't forgetful, even when she indulges. Facts, dates and times, appointments, little fillips of information stain her brain the way neon stains the night, the way the sun stains the horizon at twilight, and the way the twilight sun would stain her flesh: a smoking brand. There's a bag in her hand, an empty dress, something all-too-appropriate, the necessary tools of the trade, snatched from the otherwise empty floor. From the loading dock to the Barracuda (it no longer appeals to her: she can feel the heat seeping from the pavement. She wants a convertible, something that will be blasted by Chicago's summer wind), and then into traffic, another moving blind crawling thing, inching along the surface of the world. All it takes is perspective.
The flickering fluorescent lights of the 7-11 highlight her pallor and hollow her already sharp features, so that she looks like death's understudy, something out of a made-for-TV horror flick (the cruel headmistress?). The shopgirl - insolently flipping through the latest issue of Hotrods Monthly and smoking a Doral - flicks a dull glance up as the creature disappears into the bathroom. (She may not need a kitchen. She does, however, require a shower. Or, a sink, running water at the least.) Twenty-five minutes later she emerges, transformed. The clerk flickers a disinterested glance upward, takes a drag from her cigarette, snaps her gum, and drops her attention back to the magazine. The freaks come out at night; it isn't the weirdest thing she's seen all night, the transformation from hung-over horror-house extra in filthy jeans to fashion plate in a crimson bias-cut dress and lucite heels. Still, something draws her attention again, up and over and out, the insolent swish of the skirt against the woman's lean thighs, the perfect drape of the silk across her torso, the raw confidence of her walk, the after image of the vibrant dress, the color a still-spreading stain.
---
They are to come bearing their talent: undead magi with gifts of dubious magnitude and uncertain quality. Fortunately, although she felt specifically exempted (there was that Nigerian...) from the precise letter of the Primogen's exhortation, she could be deemed to have complied with the spirit, at least, simply by attending. The dress, the hair, the artfully artless elegance, all constructed in less than a half-hour in the bathroom of a 7-11 sitting in the shadow of an empty industrial park in the midst of Chicago's vast urban blight. Few such masterpieces have been completed so quickly, or in such circumstances, though from her sure skill, this is not her first attempt.
She is the first to arrive, a bare invitation, a murmured word passed from mouth to dry, dead mouth, and so on. Somehow, all the energy, all the fire, all the I-don’t-know-what-I-need(oh-yes-I-do) has been consumed and subsumed and contained by sure and subtle flame of the cold, confidant figure: flaxen hair, twilit eyes, blood-red dress, blooded mouth. She is the very first to arrive (certainly not a coincidence, that. This, too, is part of her art.) and she finds a space to inhabit equidistant from the door and the center of the room, from which she appears to be observing and cataloging the furnishings. In truth, she is observing and cataloging the arrivals via the door.
(Quelque chose est toujours laissée la brûlure, se refroidissent au contact, mais en flammes.)
jeudi, avril 15, 2004
la vie en rose
15 April 2004
10:03 p.m.
Intersection of South Byrne Road & Detroit Avenue
Maumee, Ohio
Sometimes, life is just a gift. Sometime it's just like a beer commercial: chicks and cars, cars and chicks, each more effing gorgeous than the last. Sometimes you don't even know where to look and Christmas morning makes an unexpected appearance on tax day.
Or, so thought Ronnie Ward, the night clerk at the Speedway at the corner of South Byrne Road and Detroit Avenue, in the shadow of I-80. He didn't notice the car at first, obscured as it was by the glare of fluorescent lights against the safety glass of the big display windows, but a couple of local kids in for cigarettes and beer mentioned it. He pressed his face against the window between a pair of posters advertising Marlboros, cupped his hands to further shut out the bright white lights, and narrowed his eyes in focus.
It was sweet.
1970 Plymouth Barricuda 440, with that long, low-slung profile looking like... like a f'ing viper about to strike, man, black as sin. The windows were rolled down, and the chick was leaning against the back-end in one of those hip-jutting poses found only in Playboy and fashion magazines, dialing a flip-phone as she casually pumped gas. It was just like living in his television, the sun and the road and the bottles of beer or cola sweating condensation, fresh from a barrel of ice.
Like most of his customers, the chick made some barbed comment about gas prices when she wandered in to pay, as if Ronnie had anything to do with them. Unlike most of his customers, she didn't head to the back of the store to grab a couple of cokes or some cheap beer, but rather just browsed the tobacco products while talking some foreign talk on her phone.
«Papa, comment ça va? -- Extérieur Toledo. -- Non, Toledo, Ohio.»
Ronnie glanced up, looked around, blinking against the glare. She was fingering the Blunts, just idling there while having her foreign conversation. There wasn't anyone else waiting, so he turned back to that beautiful 'cuda.
«Vous savez ceci.»
She sounded aggrieved; the way he did when his moms called him at Brenda's and started asking all kinds'a stupid questions when he was high, querulously demanding that he bring her a pack of Dorals whenever he came home, wondering what he saw in that slut, Brenda. He didn't take kindly to anyone calling his Brenda a slut, not even his moms. Even if she was probably right, it was the principle of the thing. It was all about respect.
«J'arriverai en Chicago avant la nuit plus de -- Oui. J'ai appelé. J'ai l'adresse. Naturellement, je respecte les traditions. Ils ne sont pas les sauvages complets, ici.»
Chick was still talking, ( «Non - naturellement - je pas - mais naturellement.» )one of those halting one-sided half-assed interrupted conversations that might not make sense even if you were listening in on both sides of the conversation, even if it happened in an actual language that people actually talked in, and not that Spanish crap, because it was all about what the people who were talking weren't saying. It was all about how they shut each other up, and how they knew what would come next.
«Ah, attente.»
He sensed movement. His second sense, his sixth sense, developed during his three years on the nightshift at Speedway : animal instinct, eyes in the back of his head. The chick was headed down the aisle toward the counter, a pack of cigarillos in one hand, phone still firmly planted in the other, held a couple of inches away from her ear. Reluctantly, he stepped away from the window with its little oval of fog from his hot breath and shuffled over to the cash register. She was still on the phone, not talking anymore, but rolling her eyes, half-smirking at him, the way people do when someone just won't shut up. Sometimes Brenda was like that, too, listening to her mom complain about her dad, smirking at him and rolling her eyes, crawling into his lap without letting up with the phone, thinking they could start getting busy while she was still talking to her mother, which wasn't ever going to happen because that was just gross, that was just creepy, man. Ronnie had no idea what was up with that girl's head when she pulled that shit. It made him go all cold.
«Vous vous cassez vers le haut. Non, je dois raccrocher. Non, je dois.»
The chick sidled up to the counter - there wasn't any other word for it, that sidelong gait she had, swinging through the hips and then scissoring down those long, long legs all the way to the floor - and tossed the cigarellos onto the counter. She started digging around in her hip pocket, dislodging a crumpled condem package, a lighter, and an empty Marlboro soft pack before finally fishing out a twenty and a ten which followed the cigarellos onto the counter. He started to ask for ID, but she gave him this knowing little wink that got him a bit flustered, and he figured (later) it didn't matter anyway, cause the Maumee P.D. wasn't like to be employing underaged foreign chicks in its fucking department of fucking convenience store sting operations. (Don't even get him started on that bullshit.)
«Pere, je ne peux pas vous entendre! Au revoir ! Non - pas - au revoir.»
Spanish, or maybe Russian. Who effing knew? He rang up the gas and the cigarellos and started to make change, but she waved him off with one of those beauty-contestant high-falutin' finger waves and sauntered out the door while flipping the phone closed. Half-dreaming, half-drooling, Ronnie shuffled back to the window to watch the chick climb into the car and the car pull away. He pressed his face closer and closer to the gas, watching as the 'cuda turned right onto the entrance ramp for I-80 westbound, taillights dwindling until they were just specks of red light merging with other specks of red light in an endless, evermoving continuum of red light until they were nothing, nothing at all.
Twelve hours later, pouring himself a Bud Light (...he's doing the low carb thing, yo. Brenda thinks he's getting a beer gut and pats his belly and makes fun of what used to be his six-pack) and yammering to his shit-faced roommate about the encounter, Ronnie won't remember any details about the girl (aside from: she was hot man, she was f'ing hot and I really think she dug me. Probably wanted to take me back around behind the - ), but he'll remember everything about the car.
10:03 p.m.
Intersection of South Byrne Road & Detroit Avenue
Maumee, Ohio
Sometimes, life is just a gift. Sometime it's just like a beer commercial: chicks and cars, cars and chicks, each more effing gorgeous than the last. Sometimes you don't even know where to look and Christmas morning makes an unexpected appearance on tax day.
Or, so thought Ronnie Ward, the night clerk at the Speedway at the corner of South Byrne Road and Detroit Avenue, in the shadow of I-80. He didn't notice the car at first, obscured as it was by the glare of fluorescent lights against the safety glass of the big display windows, but a couple of local kids in for cigarettes and beer mentioned it. He pressed his face against the window between a pair of posters advertising Marlboros, cupped his hands to further shut out the bright white lights, and narrowed his eyes in focus.
It was sweet.
1970 Plymouth Barricuda 440, with that long, low-slung profile looking like... like a f'ing viper about to strike, man, black as sin. The windows were rolled down, and the chick was leaning against the back-end in one of those hip-jutting poses found only in Playboy and fashion magazines, dialing a flip-phone as she casually pumped gas. It was just like living in his television, the sun and the road and the bottles of beer or cola sweating condensation, fresh from a barrel of ice.
Like most of his customers, the chick made some barbed comment about gas prices when she wandered in to pay, as if Ronnie had anything to do with them. Unlike most of his customers, she didn't head to the back of the store to grab a couple of cokes or some cheap beer, but rather just browsed the tobacco products while talking some foreign talk on her phone.
«Papa, comment ça va? -- Extérieur Toledo. -- Non, Toledo, Ohio.»
Ronnie glanced up, looked around, blinking against the glare. She was fingering the Blunts, just idling there while having her foreign conversation. There wasn't anyone else waiting, so he turned back to that beautiful 'cuda.
«Vous savez ceci.»
She sounded aggrieved; the way he did when his moms called him at Brenda's and started asking all kinds'a stupid questions when he was high, querulously demanding that he bring her a pack of Dorals whenever he came home, wondering what he saw in that slut, Brenda. He didn't take kindly to anyone calling his Brenda a slut, not even his moms. Even if she was probably right, it was the principle of the thing. It was all about respect.
«J'arriverai en Chicago avant la nuit plus de -- Oui. J'ai appelé. J'ai l'adresse. Naturellement, je respecte les traditions. Ils ne sont pas les sauvages complets, ici.»
Chick was still talking, ( «Non - naturellement - je pas - mais naturellement.» )one of those halting one-sided half-assed interrupted conversations that might not make sense even if you were listening in on both sides of the conversation, even if it happened in an actual language that people actually talked in, and not that Spanish crap, because it was all about what the people who were talking weren't saying. It was all about how they shut each other up, and how they knew what would come next.
«Ah, attente.»
He sensed movement. His second sense, his sixth sense, developed during his three years on the nightshift at Speedway : animal instinct, eyes in the back of his head. The chick was headed down the aisle toward the counter, a pack of cigarillos in one hand, phone still firmly planted in the other, held a couple of inches away from her ear. Reluctantly, he stepped away from the window with its little oval of fog from his hot breath and shuffled over to the cash register. She was still on the phone, not talking anymore, but rolling her eyes, half-smirking at him, the way people do when someone just won't shut up. Sometimes Brenda was like that, too, listening to her mom complain about her dad, smirking at him and rolling her eyes, crawling into his lap without letting up with the phone, thinking they could start getting busy while she was still talking to her mother, which wasn't ever going to happen because that was just gross, that was just creepy, man. Ronnie had no idea what was up with that girl's head when she pulled that shit. It made him go all cold.
«Vous vous cassez vers le haut. Non, je dois raccrocher. Non, je dois.»
The chick sidled up to the counter - there wasn't any other word for it, that sidelong gait she had, swinging through the hips and then scissoring down those long, long legs all the way to the floor - and tossed the cigarellos onto the counter. She started digging around in her hip pocket, dislodging a crumpled condem package, a lighter, and an empty Marlboro soft pack before finally fishing out a twenty and a ten which followed the cigarellos onto the counter. He started to ask for ID, but she gave him this knowing little wink that got him a bit flustered, and he figured (later) it didn't matter anyway, cause the Maumee P.D. wasn't like to be employing underaged foreign chicks in its fucking department of fucking convenience store sting operations. (Don't even get him started on that bullshit.)
«Pere, je ne peux pas vous entendre! Au revoir ! Non - pas - au revoir.»
Spanish, or maybe Russian. Who effing knew? He rang up the gas and the cigarellos and started to make change, but she waved him off with one of those beauty-contestant high-falutin' finger waves and sauntered out the door while flipping the phone closed. Half-dreaming, half-drooling, Ronnie shuffled back to the window to watch the chick climb into the car and the car pull away. He pressed his face closer and closer to the gas, watching as the 'cuda turned right onto the entrance ramp for I-80 westbound, taillights dwindling until they were just specks of red light merging with other specks of red light in an endless, evermoving continuum of red light until they were nothing, nothing at all.
Twelve hours later, pouring himself a Bud Light (...he's doing the low carb thing, yo. Brenda thinks he's getting a beer gut and pats his belly and makes fun of what used to be his six-pack) and yammering to his shit-faced roommate about the encounter, Ronnie won't remember any details about the girl (aside from: she was hot man, she was f'ing hot and I really think she dug me. Probably wanted to take me back around behind the - ), but he'll remember everything about the car.