The way they were kissing disgusted me. They were each chewing on the other's lips in a way reminiscent to that of someone masticating a particularly touch steak. Their facial expressions, like those of the steak chewer, was one of extreme concentration, with a hint of boredom on the edges, the eternal wondering of 'when will this end?'
Think of the 'Masticator', if you will, as a modern day 'Thinker', whose the 'Thinker' is bound to his rock, forever seeking enlightenment, so the 'Masticator' is bound to his chair, forever seeking to finish his mouthful. So were the couples sentiments toward each other, two people bound to each other, forever seeking true love and unable to find it in the inadequate arms of their partner.
Surely, I thought as they embraced one another stiffly, rather than love they'd be better off seeking contentment, which is both easier to obtain and far more pleasing.
Thursday 20 October 2011
Sunday 16 October 2011
Stray -1
It had been raining the day she died.
It was a romantic sort of death, a gradual fading away. A pallor that settle over her skin, a loss of interest in what was around her, a loss of her mind.
By the end she was an animated statue of cold pearly grey. And then she died.
It had been raining on the day of her interment.
Her parents had chosen the word, put it on the top of the notice tat was posted on the Parish church's noticeboard, and the village newspaper and the front of the little booklets with the order of service:
Interment of Jessica Ann Lewis
Saturday, January 1st 20—
They’d asked him to speak, too.
He’d declined.
It had been raining the day he left.
The perpetual rain, the pain of the last half a year of watching the girl he loved die had shown on the car he drove.
It was not a bad car, nor was it a particularly old one.
But he had forgotten it as he took her out for walks, trying to get he to see the beauty of the village that she had once shown him.
Trying to get her to admire the living green that crawled over the grey stone that made up almost every building in their little village.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t.
His car had been left to sink into the soggy, mossy ground; the pain to chip; the body to rust around the edges, becoming a sunset orange that she once would have loved.
He’d gone to the wake, for the briefest time, to say goodbye to all the people she had known.
They were people who had never liked him. Who had mistrusted, despised and shunned him, but they appreciated that he had loved her as just as keenly as and more desperately than they had done, and so they let their bad feelings and ill feeling get buried when Jessica was, and they said goodbye to him with real warmth and a desire to see him again.
He had left in his sunset car that night.
He drove through the dark, through the rain, drove till he was clear through the other side of both.
Daybreak brought a sunrise that begged to be committed to a canvas.
It was one of the many thousands of things she would once have loved.
It was a Sunday.
He found a church.
It was a Catholic church, with a noticeboard advertising the times of Mass.
He parked his car under the board and went in, two full hours before the first Mass started.
It was beautiful inside. An opulent and decadent gift of adoration to the Lord Jesus they all loved.
He had only been inside one church before; the stone and moss church of Jessica’s hometown, and that only to please her. Only because she was by his side.
He had never been a Godly man, but he had admired God when he had seen Him in inside of Jessica. He loved the capacity for love God gave her, the boundless joy, the constant wonder at the beauty of the green and grey and town she had known all her life.
He had not believed it when she had said God had given those qualities her. He had scoffed.
He believed it now.
He stayed for all four masses.
He sat at the front, with his head down, listening to everything that passed with a heavy sort of emptiness in his heart.
He left at sundown, carried on driving east.
It was a romantic sort of death, a gradual fading away. A pallor that settle over her skin, a loss of interest in what was around her, a loss of her mind.
By the end she was an animated statue of cold pearly grey. And then she died.
It had been raining on the day of her interment.
Her parents had chosen the word, put it on the top of the notice tat was posted on the Parish church's noticeboard, and the village newspaper and the front of the little booklets with the order of service:
Interment of Jessica Ann Lewis
Saturday, January 1st 20—
They’d asked him to speak, too.
He’d declined.
It had been raining the day he left.
The perpetual rain, the pain of the last half a year of watching the girl he loved die had shown on the car he drove.
It was not a bad car, nor was it a particularly old one.
But he had forgotten it as he took her out for walks, trying to get he to see the beauty of the village that she had once shown him.
Trying to get her to admire the living green that crawled over the grey stone that made up almost every building in their little village.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t.
His car had been left to sink into the soggy, mossy ground; the pain to chip; the body to rust around the edges, becoming a sunset orange that she once would have loved.
He’d gone to the wake, for the briefest time, to say goodbye to all the people she had known.
They were people who had never liked him. Who had mistrusted, despised and shunned him, but they appreciated that he had loved her as just as keenly as and more desperately than they had done, and so they let their bad feelings and ill feeling get buried when Jessica was, and they said goodbye to him with real warmth and a desire to see him again.
He had left in his sunset car that night.
He drove through the dark, through the rain, drove till he was clear through the other side of both.
Daybreak brought a sunrise that begged to be committed to a canvas.
It was one of the many thousands of things she would once have loved.
It was a Sunday.
He found a church.
It was a Catholic church, with a noticeboard advertising the times of Mass.
He parked his car under the board and went in, two full hours before the first Mass started.
It was beautiful inside. An opulent and decadent gift of adoration to the Lord Jesus they all loved.
He had only been inside one church before; the stone and moss church of Jessica’s hometown, and that only to please her. Only because she was by his side.
He had never been a Godly man, but he had admired God when he had seen Him in inside of Jessica. He loved the capacity for love God gave her, the boundless joy, the constant wonder at the beauty of the green and grey and town she had known all her life.
He had not believed it when she had said God had given those qualities her. He had scoffed.
He believed it now.
He stayed for all four masses.
He sat at the front, with his head down, listening to everything that passed with a heavy sort of emptiness in his heart.
He left at sundown, carried on driving east.
Friday 8 July 2011
London For Lovers
There is heat.
It seems that as soon as the sun comes out the clothes go in. Already Auriana has seen three casually shirtless men strolling down the road, bright red beer bellies proudly on display like some animalistic attraction technique, turn on it’s head. In the park earlier, there had been a girl who had clearly decided that the heat was too much, who had simply taken off her top.
There had been an old lady in a bikini.
Was everywhere like this or was it just London?
Either way, Aurianna strongly disapproved, and she did not disapprove of much.
She trudged through the heat- herself dressed in a silk maxi skirt and cotton shirt- chic, conservative and it kept her just as cool as shorts and a vest top.
The conservatism was for the benefit of her boyfriend’s parents, who she was meeting for the first time.
They were rich- lived in Maida Vale, sent their boy to UCS- and they had Views. Riley had not been specific on how severe these views were but Aurianna wasn’t willing to take any chances.
Aurianna had met Riley when walking home from a party. She had gotten drunker than she had intended, danced with more strangers than she had wanted and stayed out later than she had planned.
At the best of times, South Tottenham is not exactly the place to be. At three thirty seven, when it’s raining and the buzz from the (quite frankly disgusting) amount of alcohol you had consumed is wearing off and leaving a distinctly nauseous feeling in its place well… it’s not very nice at all.
She met him as she was stumbling her way up towards West Green Road. At first she figured he was one of those crazy junkies who always stood round the entrance to Tesco’s asking for money.
It took a while for her to figure out that he was asking if she was okay- clearly not. He offered to walk her to the bus stop and she’d assented although, on reflection, that had been a stupid thing to do.
Luckily, he had turned out not to be a crazy junkie, or a stray gang member or anything more awful than an almost terminal optimist and celibate.
He’d asked for her number but, with a thought to self-preservation, she’d given him her e-mail instead.
She’d pretty much forgotten about him by the time she received his e-mail the next evening, a testament to just how drunk she had been because Riley was nothing if not breathtakingly beautiful. Since, he’d managed to burn his visage into her mind for good. The darkness behind her eyelids had been replace by the image of him.
She was, at present, seventy-nine per cent sure that she was in love with him.
He met her at Maida Vale tube, and they walked down the wide, leafy roads with their beautiful redbrick houses to his parent’s house.
It was jaw-droppingly large. Auriana thought that she had seen large before, but Riley’s parent’s house was something else entirely. The atrium alone looked to be the size of her living room.
They sat in the living room a little awkwardly after introductions had been made.
“So, Auriana,” Mrs Julietta Clifton-Riley said, after a pause of the aching variety. “That’s an interesting name. What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure. I think my mum made it up,” Auriana admitted.
“Julietta’s something of an etymologist,” Mr Harold Riley said with a chuckle.
Auriana nodded and smiled.
“Auriana dabbles a bit too,” Riley returned, the pride in his voice unmistakable.
“Oh, do you dear?” Julietta asked.
“Yeah,” Auriana nodded, incomprehensibly shy all of a sudden. “Names, mostly. So it’s a bit of a sore spot for me, not knowing what my own name means.”
Light chuckles ensued, and very slowly the awkward atmosphere melted into something rather more relaxed.
Dinner was delicious, if not a little bland for Auriana’s tastes.
“They loved you,” Riley assured her later on. They’d decided to take a walk through the Heath.
Their walk was hampered by the fact that Riley had to keep pulling her into these lovely, bone-crushing, breath-stealing hugs.
“I liked them too,” Auriana replied, and was promptly hugged once again.
This hug resulted in the two of them taking a painful but happy fall to the ground.
“I’m so happy. This is great,” Riley sighed, rolling onto his back in the grass so as to better enjoy the splendour of the evening.
“How should we celebrate then?” Auriana asked, only half seriously, stretching out of her front so as to better watch the strollers, the dog-walkers and the joggers. A pretty Asian girl jogged past, talking animatedly to a ginger male who must have been taller than her by half.
Auriana smiled at the cute couple, and moved closer to Riley.
“Cheese and wine,” he said. “My treat.”
“Damn well better be your treat otherwise it’s gonna be Lambrini and Tesco’s value cheddar for us,” she giggled. Her comparative poverty was a subject of amusement to her.
“Exactly. It’s gotta be the best for you my darling.”
“Chocolates?” Auriana teased. The sun began to sink below the horizon very, very slowly. Neither Auriana nor Riley noticed, although it was incredibly picturesque, incredibly romantic.
“Yeah. Flowers too. And strawberries, before you ask.”
“You know me too well, my love. What about oysters?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oysters?”
“Oh, yes,” Auriana nodded. “I hear they’re very nutritious. Provide vitamins, give you stamina. Very helpful.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his eyebrow arching further up his brow.
Auriana nodded and giggled. This was the cue for Riley to pounce on her, tickling and kissing until breathing became difficult.
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world,” Riley whispered a little later, when three thirds of the sun had dipped into the netherworld.
“Even more beautiful than that Asian girl who jogged by earlier?” Auriana asked jokingly.
“You always ask the difficult questions,” Riley complained after pausing for thought, but the corners of his mouth were turned up, and Auriana could only slap him playfully and kiss his beautiful smile.
They walked back through the village-y beauty of Highgate, admiring the greenery, and down through Crouch End, past all the boutiques and artisan bakeries to Auriana’s road of mix’n’match houses.
Just down the road are estates where the kids sat on the front steps all day long, blasting music and pissing off motorists. It wasn’t awful, as estates go, but it wasn’t exactly great either.
Round the corner were and through an alleyway are three-storey giants, wide, deep and with large gardens to boot.
The ladder of roads on which Auriana’s house sits occupies a sort of tentative, awkward middle ground between the two.
Auriana’s house itself reaches into the lower scales, thanks to myriad unfinished DIY projects.
It is always either very noisy or very quiet. That evening was the latter kind, and Auriana and Riley were glad for it.
They enscombed themselves in her room and had an intimate moment on her bed with the curtains wide open and the streetlamp outside of her window illuminating them.
Afterwards, they cuddled up and watched Despicable Me with wine pilfered from Auriana’s parents drinks cabinet, and they drank to themselves and to each other and to Riley’s parents and fickle little London town with it’s hordes of naked people; and in Auriana’s head she was eighty per cent sure that she loved him; and in Riley’s head he was making up his mind to marry her.
It seems that as soon as the sun comes out the clothes go in. Already Auriana has seen three casually shirtless men strolling down the road, bright red beer bellies proudly on display like some animalistic attraction technique, turn on it’s head. In the park earlier, there had been a girl who had clearly decided that the heat was too much, who had simply taken off her top.
There had been an old lady in a bikini.
Was everywhere like this or was it just London?
Either way, Aurianna strongly disapproved, and she did not disapprove of much.
She trudged through the heat- herself dressed in a silk maxi skirt and cotton shirt- chic, conservative and it kept her just as cool as shorts and a vest top.
The conservatism was for the benefit of her boyfriend’s parents, who she was meeting for the first time.
They were rich- lived in Maida Vale, sent their boy to UCS- and they had Views. Riley had not been specific on how severe these views were but Aurianna wasn’t willing to take any chances.
Aurianna had met Riley when walking home from a party. She had gotten drunker than she had intended, danced with more strangers than she had wanted and stayed out later than she had planned.
At the best of times, South Tottenham is not exactly the place to be. At three thirty seven, when it’s raining and the buzz from the (quite frankly disgusting) amount of alcohol you had consumed is wearing off and leaving a distinctly nauseous feeling in its place well… it’s not very nice at all.
She met him as she was stumbling her way up towards West Green Road. At first she figured he was one of those crazy junkies who always stood round the entrance to Tesco’s asking for money.
It took a while for her to figure out that he was asking if she was okay- clearly not. He offered to walk her to the bus stop and she’d assented although, on reflection, that had been a stupid thing to do.
Luckily, he had turned out not to be a crazy junkie, or a stray gang member or anything more awful than an almost terminal optimist and celibate.
He’d asked for her number but, with a thought to self-preservation, she’d given him her e-mail instead.
She’d pretty much forgotten about him by the time she received his e-mail the next evening, a testament to just how drunk she had been because Riley was nothing if not breathtakingly beautiful. Since, he’d managed to burn his visage into her mind for good. The darkness behind her eyelids had been replace by the image of him.
She was, at present, seventy-nine per cent sure that she was in love with him.
He met her at Maida Vale tube, and they walked down the wide, leafy roads with their beautiful redbrick houses to his parent’s house.
It was jaw-droppingly large. Auriana thought that she had seen large before, but Riley’s parent’s house was something else entirely. The atrium alone looked to be the size of her living room.
They sat in the living room a little awkwardly after introductions had been made.
“So, Auriana,” Mrs Julietta Clifton-Riley said, after a pause of the aching variety. “That’s an interesting name. What does it mean?”
“I’m not sure. I think my mum made it up,” Auriana admitted.
“Julietta’s something of an etymologist,” Mr Harold Riley said with a chuckle.
Auriana nodded and smiled.
“Auriana dabbles a bit too,” Riley returned, the pride in his voice unmistakable.
“Oh, do you dear?” Julietta asked.
“Yeah,” Auriana nodded, incomprehensibly shy all of a sudden. “Names, mostly. So it’s a bit of a sore spot for me, not knowing what my own name means.”
Light chuckles ensued, and very slowly the awkward atmosphere melted into something rather more relaxed.
Dinner was delicious, if not a little bland for Auriana’s tastes.
*
“They loved you,” Riley assured her later on. They’d decided to take a walk through the Heath.
Their walk was hampered by the fact that Riley had to keep pulling her into these lovely, bone-crushing, breath-stealing hugs.
“I liked them too,” Auriana replied, and was promptly hugged once again.
This hug resulted in the two of them taking a painful but happy fall to the ground.
“I’m so happy. This is great,” Riley sighed, rolling onto his back in the grass so as to better enjoy the splendour of the evening.
“How should we celebrate then?” Auriana asked, only half seriously, stretching out of her front so as to better watch the strollers, the dog-walkers and the joggers. A pretty Asian girl jogged past, talking animatedly to a ginger male who must have been taller than her by half.
Auriana smiled at the cute couple, and moved closer to Riley.
“Cheese and wine,” he said. “My treat.”
“Damn well better be your treat otherwise it’s gonna be Lambrini and Tesco’s value cheddar for us,” she giggled. Her comparative poverty was a subject of amusement to her.
“Exactly. It’s gotta be the best for you my darling.”
“Chocolates?” Auriana teased. The sun began to sink below the horizon very, very slowly. Neither Auriana nor Riley noticed, although it was incredibly picturesque, incredibly romantic.
“Yeah. Flowers too. And strawberries, before you ask.”
“You know me too well, my love. What about oysters?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Oysters?”
“Oh, yes,” Auriana nodded. “I hear they’re very nutritious. Provide vitamins, give you stamina. Very helpful.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his eyebrow arching further up his brow.
Auriana nodded and giggled. This was the cue for Riley to pounce on her, tickling and kissing until breathing became difficult.
“You’re the most beautiful woman in the world,” Riley whispered a little later, when three thirds of the sun had dipped into the netherworld.
“Even more beautiful than that Asian girl who jogged by earlier?” Auriana asked jokingly.
“You always ask the difficult questions,” Riley complained after pausing for thought, but the corners of his mouth were turned up, and Auriana could only slap him playfully and kiss his beautiful smile.
*
They walked back through the village-y beauty of Highgate, admiring the greenery, and down through Crouch End, past all the boutiques and artisan bakeries to Auriana’s road of mix’n’match houses.
Just down the road are estates where the kids sat on the front steps all day long, blasting music and pissing off motorists. It wasn’t awful, as estates go, but it wasn’t exactly great either.
Round the corner were and through an alleyway are three-storey giants, wide, deep and with large gardens to boot.
The ladder of roads on which Auriana’s house sits occupies a sort of tentative, awkward middle ground between the two.
Auriana’s house itself reaches into the lower scales, thanks to myriad unfinished DIY projects.
It is always either very noisy or very quiet. That evening was the latter kind, and Auriana and Riley were glad for it.
They enscombed themselves in her room and had an intimate moment on her bed with the curtains wide open and the streetlamp outside of her window illuminating them.
Afterwards, they cuddled up and watched Despicable Me with wine pilfered from Auriana’s parents drinks cabinet, and they drank to themselves and to each other and to Riley’s parents and fickle little London town with it’s hordes of naked people; and in Auriana’s head she was eighty per cent sure that she loved him; and in Riley’s head he was making up his mind to marry her.
Serenity
Saturdays were for watching Come Dine With Me omnibuses and Doctor Who at Serenity's flat.
Serenity had chosen her name, and was quite proud of it, which says all you really need to know, but we put up with her, mainly because she was the only one of us with both a TV and a TV License.
Marie
Marie was an insomniac.
Most of the time, this was good. It meant she didn't have to spend half as much on drugs as she was tripping balls near constantly anyway.
But other times it was horrible. I'd catch her shuddering when no one else was there to see, her whole body rippling and spasming with pain when she didn't think any one would notice. Tears spilling over the lids of her eyes only to be scrubbed away fiercely before they could even start their pilgrimage down her cheeks.
From what I figured, the only rest she ever got was when she passed out on those nights when she hit the bottle hard enough that it decided to hit her back.
Adam
Adam was group property. It was an unspoken agreement. We were none of us exclusive anyway, but Adam, as the irresistibly hot group member, was the person who we knew in our hearts could not be tied down.
Myfanwy, apparently, did not.
Myfanwy Lewis
It was Myfanwy Lewis' first night out with us, ever. She was sitting opposite me, with her perfectly made up face and pristine shirt and jeans.
I wanted to mess her up. I think we all did.
She knew she had something to prove to us, you could see it in her eyes. So she gulped down six shots without even smudging that pillarbox lipstick of hers.
Brigitte
Brigitte was a perfect being.
Not the same kind of perfect as Myfanwy, not by a long shot.
Brigitte's perfection was harder to find, and even when you found it you couldn't name it.
It was something about the way she held her tiny figure. Something about the way you felt when you held her tiny figure. It was a little how she bit her plump lips. The fact that no matter what you did she seemed innocent.
How she fit in the world so perfectly.
Whatever it was, it had me well and truly hooked.
Sam, Alex, Jordan and all the others, well they were good. They had their strengths and they were sweet, but Brigitte made me feel as though I was a world away.
Monday 13 June 2011
Apearances Can Be Decptive
I live in squalor. In splendid, unclean solitude. In a small room at the top of a very tall house. This is where I live.
In my very small room, at the top of my very tall house, there is a box.
It is not in any way distinguished- I have neither labled it, or given it a tidy corner to live in. It looks like all the other boxes: cardboard, fragile and expendable.
But in this box are cherished things, which I have collected and, although they are hidden, knowing they are there makes my small room, full of squalor and gloom, seem less forsaken.
In this box are special moments. I keep them, in my box, where they are safe and untouched by monsters.
There are photographs, of a beautiful day, a heart-stopping storm, a tragic accident, a lovely view, a handsome couple of two ugly people, special photographs, good or bad.
In this box, there are scraps of paper, letters describing events, or invitations, even to myself, for vent. There are poems and short stories, memories captured with someones pen, or the perfect phrasing, on paper. There are drawings of moments so fragile and fleeting that words alone are not enough: these are not beautiful drawings, I am no artist. But they evoke beautiful memories.
In this box, there are objects. A piece of string, a sharp rock, and a shiny one, a small plastic toy, a bit of material, an old burnt pen, the spent lighterm and a useless, broken fan.
I collect thoughts, in a small box, in a small room, at the top of a tall house.
The box is not important.
The contents are.
Saturday 11 June 2011
There were a set of steps you walked down to get into the club, but Mariel didn’t see them as an entrance so much as a warning. They were filthy, narrow, treacherous and they stunk of piss.
She didn’t mind though. She was a regular. She and Mikey, the doorman, went way back. Long enough that they didn’t bother embarass themselves with the whole fake ID charade, just a nod and a smile.
He’d look after her, too, if she got into any trouble she couldn’t handle. He was more of an older brother to her than her older brother.
She made her way down the steps and then looked back at the one friend she’d left cowering at the top.
When Eva had arrived on her doorstep Mariel almost had a fit. She’d specifically said not to dress too cute. Eva had come out in a strapless sweetheart dress- white, with white wedge sandals, pink lips, nails and eyelids. It had taken all of Mariel’s strength not to stop breathing there and then.
She’d done what she could, but that wasn’t much. Eva was much smaller than Mariel- practically a midget, she always said.
“Eva, if you’re not sure about this we can go somewhere else,” Mariel begun, but Eva cut her off by beginning to make her way down the stairs.
“No, I’m sure. I want to see where you hang out,” her clear, high voice was lost amidst the fear fear, but she made it to where Mariel was standing without any major palpitations.
“Well okay. But stick close by me, okay?” Mariel said, taking Eva’s hand and pushing open the first door.
Mikey was standing inside under a fluorescent strip. Like always, he smiled at Mariel. Then he caught sight of Eva.
“Who’s this?” he asked, not hostily, but it was a question all the same.
“This is my friend Eva,” Mariel said, raising their hands as if that was solid proof of whatever it was Mikey was looking for.
“I’m going to need ID,” was what Mike said in reply.
“No you dont!” Mariel said, sharply. “She’s with me, why the hell do you need ID?”
Mikey looked agonized. “Look, Mary-” he persisted in calling her that although she hated it- “it’s okay for you because- well, it’s you. I know you, Roba and Jack know you, Management knows yous. But if anything happens to… your friend it’s my neck. Besides, she looks about twelve.”
“Mikey, that’s ridiculous-” Mariel begun, and she would have gotten into an argument that could have blown her welcome at The Firehouse forever had Eva not produced a passport.
“Here. I’m eighteen,” she said, quietly. Mikey took the passport, scrutinized it, found no fault with it and handed it back.
“Oh,” he said. And then to Mariel, “why the hell did you kick up such a fuss when she’s older than you?” His words were heavy, but he said them with a laugh.
“Because,” Mariel replied, still a little indignant but prepared to let it go, “it’s the principle of the thing.” She sniffed a little, and tossed her nose up into the air.
Mikey just laughed, and opened the second door into the darkness of the club.
“Welcome to The Firehouse ladies. I hope you enjoy your night…”
Thursday 9 June 2011
I remember my first love exquisitely.
He had been a labourer, a woodcutter, and aside from my brothers and my father, he was the first man I had known.
He had hair that seemed to be made of spun gold and sapphires for eyes, just like the mother I never knew. His skin was a rich tan colour, from being so often exposed to the sun. Across his cheeks and his nose, and the breadth of his back were freckles, small dark-brown patches. He looked very much like the cinnamon whirls the cook would make me before I fell out of favour, and I often wondered if he would taste like they did, too.
His family lived on the edge of the Great Forest, at one of the furthest reaches of my father’s kingdom.
The woodcutter thing did not work out. The family kept me with them for two weeks, during which time they put me to all sorts of work. I proved useless at everything, of course.
The last night of my stay there, we had gone for a midnight walk through the forest, my first love and I. We had talked about everything under the stars, and we danced to no music in a glade.
Thursday 6 January 2011
Roses
“You have to do it. You have to,” the man hissed. His face was smeared with dirt and his eyes sparkled in it like shards of ice; light blue, so light they were almost white, and right now they were cold. There was no remorse in them, no sorrow, no pity, no way out for the girl he was talking to.
“But what if I hurt them? What if I do something wrong and… and God, what if one of them dies?”
The man’s hand at this point, blacker than his face, reached up quickly and slapped her, hard.
“They won’t die. If you do it right, there is a chance that none of you will die. But if you do it wrong, or if you just don’t do it at all, then there is no hope of your survival.”
The girl- and she was a pretty girl, under all that muck, nodded earnestly, doubt in her own green eyes.
“You can’t let them have you, because if they have you they’ll win,” he said, and his eyes had melted a little bit and he was the man she fell in love with once more.
He spun her round quickly and twisted her blonde locks into a bun. They always seemed to shine, as if illuminated from within, like her skin.
All three girls were like that. Undisguisable.
Even with dirt inches thick caked on them and every last strand of long hair tucked away, one would know them at a glance.
Until this day, it had always worked out to their advantage.
When he was finished, the man’s hands rested at the base of her neck for a second, before she spun around again and wrapped him in a hug.
He caught her lips up in a last kiss, so he could remember the taste of them.
“Can’t you come with us?” she begged, breaking away.
“No, I can’t.”
She did a very bad job of suppressing a sob.
“I love you,” she choked out.
“I love you too, Luciana,” he murmured.
She tried one more time: “Are you sure you can’t-”
“I can’t. Now go, quickly. And stay aware, or they will kill you.”
And, as if to prove his point, a rebel arrow shot out from nowhere and went right through his neck.
He died so quickly his face didn’t have time to register the pain.
The girl had only time to cast a hazy image of a rose over him before she ran. She had to find her sisters.
The story could have been so different.
It should have been so different.
It should have been the story of the Princess who fell in love with the Stable Boy, and all would have gone well for them.
But something had changed and before she knew it, it was the story of the brave princess fighting to save her sisters and herself from the bloodthirsty rebels and the boy she loved had died and nothing would ever be right again.
She found her sisters stumbling around in an inner chamber.
They had been drugged; there was no time to wonder by whom. It made her job easier anyway.
“Sit,” Princess Luciana commanded, and they sat.
“Sleep,” she said, and her voice was a little shaky, and they slept.
She began to sleep too, letting her mind drift away and her mouth take control.
And after a while, she no longer felt herself, and then after that, she did not know that there was a self for her to feel with.
Their lives were safe.
They would be okay.
Here is a town with a gate.
It leads to a field, in which houses are often to be seen grazing.
There is nothing special about the field, unless of course you know that actually it’s a walled city surrounded by beautiful, dense and dangerous forest.
There’s nothing special about the gate either.
Excitable types would call it a portal, but it’s nothing of the sort. The most you can say about it is that it’s a portcullis, which is really just another type of gate.
In fact, the gate, the field and the walled city are classic examples of a place where there is not enough universe for everyone. It’s the cosmic equivalent of a tower block.
People never realize this because they never think, upon seeing a field with horses in it that they are going to walk through the gate and find themselves in an enclosed city. And it works the same from the other side, too.
Most people are –somehow- completely ignorant of this fact.
But the Princesses, when they walked through their city’s gates in a haze of sleep so thick that no-one outside of it could see them, they were knowing that they would end up in a small English town because that’s what Princess Luciana’s Voice had told them.
That was the last thing they ever knew, and when they woke up, as they were due to do in about three minutes time, they would not remember that they knew.
But the knowledge is there.
They were found slumped against the fence by a couple of boys in blue and black school uniform.
They both stopped at the same time, and shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to make looking after these girls their business, but knowing they couldn’t just leave them there.
After a minute of dithering, one of them- the one with black curly hair and brown eyes- nudged the closest girl with his foot and the reaction was instantaneous, as if the kid had touched them all.
They jolted awake as one, rising like puppets.
“Umm,” the other boy, the one with brown hair and blue eyes, said after a long pause. The girls stared up at him blankly. “Are you okay?”
He regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth. They were lying in a heap by a fence, covered in dirt, blood and burns. They were not okay.
“Umm…” he said again, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the road nervously. “Would you like us to call you an ambulance?”
There was no reply, and so he pulled out his phone and dialed 999.
The operator thought it was a prank, and hung up in disgust when he tried to explain the situation.
“I’ll call my mum,” the other boy said finally. “She can give us a lift home, too.”
And that’s how the three girls ended up in the back of an old Ford Picnic.
The oldest sat in the front, and the others two sat in the middle.
All attempts to find out who they were had been foiled by an insurmountable language barrier, and so they sat in silence, save for the youngest girl who talked non-stop, not caring that no one else was listening.
They were taken to a large house just five minutes from the town center.
They were cleaned up by ‘mum’; a fine-boned lady with masses of curly dark hair and olive skin, and then sat in borrowed clothes in the kitchen, their own clothes and belongings stashed away to be hand washed and dry cleaned.
“What is your name?” she asked, slowly and clearly to the oldest, Luciana.
All she got was a blank stare. She sighed, and pointed to herself.
“Caroline,” she said.
“Caroline,” the youngest repeated happily and perfectly.
Caroline smiled as well, and pointed to the youngest.
The youngest girl- possessed of black locks and eyes and a deep tan- pointed to herself and said: “Carolin…a?”
Caroline sighed. Names were clearly too vague a concept to begin with. She’d have to start elsewhere.
When Caroline’s eldest son, Robert, came home, he found his mother sitting in the kitchen with three beautiful complete strangers, having a deep and earnest conversation about hands.
“Middle finger- no, no, that’s rude- oh, hello Robert!”
Robert frowned. “Mum. Hi. Umm, who are these girls?”
Caroline smiled. “Well I’m not sure but as far as I can tell, this-” she pointed to Luciana, “is Anae. This-” the middle Princess- “is Juillietta and this-” the youngest- “is Aurora. Will found them.”
“William found them? What do you mean, ‘William found them’? They’re not stray cats, they’re human girls!”
“Girls,” Aurora echoed proudly, pointing and herself, then her sisters and Caroline. She pointed at Robert. “Boy.”
The middle princess- Juilietta- whispered something to the eldest, who shook her head at her giggles.
“They were sleeping- or unconscious by Topps field. They were filthy, and quite badly burnt in places, and they don’t speak a word of English. Didn’t.”
Robert was silent for a second while this information sunk in, and then he said: “Oh. Umm… do you need any help, or anything?”
“No thanks,” his mother dismissed him with a wave of her hand and the changed her mind. “Actually Robbie, can you go and set up the spare room for these girls and… oh, God, there are only two beds, we can’t let them sleep on the floor! Shit! Robbie, darling, would you mind letting one of the girls take your bed?”
“Why my bed?” He complained, frowning. “Why not William’s? He was the one who brought them here,” he grumbled, but he knew he would relent, and his mother knew he would too.
“But what if I hurt them? What if I do something wrong and… and God, what if one of them dies?”
The man’s hand at this point, blacker than his face, reached up quickly and slapped her, hard.
“They won’t die. If you do it right, there is a chance that none of you will die. But if you do it wrong, or if you just don’t do it at all, then there is no hope of your survival.”
The girl- and she was a pretty girl, under all that muck, nodded earnestly, doubt in her own green eyes.
“You can’t let them have you, because if they have you they’ll win,” he said, and his eyes had melted a little bit and he was the man she fell in love with once more.
He spun her round quickly and twisted her blonde locks into a bun. They always seemed to shine, as if illuminated from within, like her skin.
All three girls were like that. Undisguisable.
Even with dirt inches thick caked on them and every last strand of long hair tucked away, one would know them at a glance.
Until this day, it had always worked out to their advantage.
When he was finished, the man’s hands rested at the base of her neck for a second, before she spun around again and wrapped him in a hug.
He caught her lips up in a last kiss, so he could remember the taste of them.
“Can’t you come with us?” she begged, breaking away.
“No, I can’t.”
She did a very bad job of suppressing a sob.
“I love you,” she choked out.
“I love you too, Luciana,” he murmured.
She tried one more time: “Are you sure you can’t-”
“I can’t. Now go, quickly. And stay aware, or they will kill you.”
And, as if to prove his point, a rebel arrow shot out from nowhere and went right through his neck.
He died so quickly his face didn’t have time to register the pain.
The girl had only time to cast a hazy image of a rose over him before she ran. She had to find her sisters.
The story could have been so different.
It should have been so different.
It should have been the story of the Princess who fell in love with the Stable Boy, and all would have gone well for them.
But something had changed and before she knew it, it was the story of the brave princess fighting to save her sisters and herself from the bloodthirsty rebels and the boy she loved had died and nothing would ever be right again.
...
She found her sisters stumbling around in an inner chamber.
They had been drugged; there was no time to wonder by whom. It made her job easier anyway.
“Sit,” Princess Luciana commanded, and they sat.
“Sleep,” she said, and her voice was a little shaky, and they slept.
She began to sleep too, letting her mind drift away and her mouth take control.
And after a while, she no longer felt herself, and then after that, she did not know that there was a self for her to feel with.
...
Their lives were safe.
They would be okay.
***
Here is a town with a gate.
It leads to a field, in which houses are often to be seen grazing.
There is nothing special about the field, unless of course you know that actually it’s a walled city surrounded by beautiful, dense and dangerous forest.
There’s nothing special about the gate either.
Excitable types would call it a portal, but it’s nothing of the sort. The most you can say about it is that it’s a portcullis, which is really just another type of gate.
In fact, the gate, the field and the walled city are classic examples of a place where there is not enough universe for everyone. It’s the cosmic equivalent of a tower block.
People never realize this because they never think, upon seeing a field with horses in it that they are going to walk through the gate and find themselves in an enclosed city. And it works the same from the other side, too.
Most people are –somehow- completely ignorant of this fact.
But the Princesses, when they walked through their city’s gates in a haze of sleep so thick that no-one outside of it could see them, they were knowing that they would end up in a small English town because that’s what Princess Luciana’s Voice had told them.
That was the last thing they ever knew, and when they woke up, as they were due to do in about three minutes time, they would not remember that they knew.
But the knowledge is there.
...
They were found slumped against the fence by a couple of boys in blue and black school uniform.
They both stopped at the same time, and shifted uncomfortably, not wanting to make looking after these girls their business, but knowing they couldn’t just leave them there.
After a minute of dithering, one of them- the one with black curly hair and brown eyes- nudged the closest girl with his foot and the reaction was instantaneous, as if the kid had touched them all.
They jolted awake as one, rising like puppets.
“Umm,” the other boy, the one with brown hair and blue eyes, said after a long pause. The girls stared up at him blankly. “Are you okay?”
He regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth. They were lying in a heap by a fence, covered in dirt, blood and burns. They were not okay.
“Umm…” he said again, scuffing the toe of his shoe on the road nervously. “Would you like us to call you an ambulance?”
There was no reply, and so he pulled out his phone and dialed 999.
The operator thought it was a prank, and hung up in disgust when he tried to explain the situation.
“I’ll call my mum,” the other boy said finally. “She can give us a lift home, too.”
....
And that’s how the three girls ended up in the back of an old Ford Picnic.
The oldest sat in the front, and the others two sat in the middle.
All attempts to find out who they were had been foiled by an insurmountable language barrier, and so they sat in silence, save for the youngest girl who talked non-stop, not caring that no one else was listening.
They were taken to a large house just five minutes from the town center.
They were cleaned up by ‘mum’; a fine-boned lady with masses of curly dark hair and olive skin, and then sat in borrowed clothes in the kitchen, their own clothes and belongings stashed away to be hand washed and dry cleaned.
“What is your name?” she asked, slowly and clearly to the oldest, Luciana.
All she got was a blank stare. She sighed, and pointed to herself.
“Caroline,” she said.
“Caroline,” the youngest repeated happily and perfectly.
Caroline smiled as well, and pointed to the youngest.
The youngest girl- possessed of black locks and eyes and a deep tan- pointed to herself and said: “Carolin…a?”
Caroline sighed. Names were clearly too vague a concept to begin with. She’d have to start elsewhere.
...
When Caroline’s eldest son, Robert, came home, he found his mother sitting in the kitchen with three beautiful complete strangers, having a deep and earnest conversation about hands.
“Middle finger- no, no, that’s rude- oh, hello Robert!”
Robert frowned. “Mum. Hi. Umm, who are these girls?”
Caroline smiled. “Well I’m not sure but as far as I can tell, this-” she pointed to Luciana, “is Anae. This-” the middle Princess- “is Juillietta and this-” the youngest- “is Aurora. Will found them.”
“William found them? What do you mean, ‘William found them’? They’re not stray cats, they’re human girls!”
“Girls,” Aurora echoed proudly, pointing and herself, then her sisters and Caroline. She pointed at Robert. “Boy.”
The middle princess- Juilietta- whispered something to the eldest, who shook her head at her giggles.
“They were sleeping- or unconscious by Topps field. They were filthy, and quite badly burnt in places, and they don’t speak a word of English. Didn’t.”
Robert was silent for a second while this information sunk in, and then he said: “Oh. Umm… do you need any help, or anything?”
“No thanks,” his mother dismissed him with a wave of her hand and the changed her mind. “Actually Robbie, can you go and set up the spare room for these girls and… oh, God, there are only two beds, we can’t let them sleep on the floor! Shit! Robbie, darling, would you mind letting one of the girls take your bed?”
“Why my bed?” He complained, frowning. “Why not William’s? He was the one who brought them here,” he grumbled, but he knew he would relent, and his mother knew he would too.
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