ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων
ethos anthropos daimon
Character is destiny. - Heraclitus
"The individual disposition is already a factor in childhood; it is innate, and not acquired in the course of a life." - Carl Jung
"they are the chains that weigh on me"--Millicent
9/1/00 9:32 PM Eastern Daylight Time
"Millicent, I know you're leaving."
The young girl stirred in her bed. She was staring at the wall, wishing and hoping that the woman didn't know she was awake. She knew it was silly, futile even. But she kept her back to her, and she kept still and silent. She willed her green eyes to stare daggers into the shadow her mother cast against the wall. Just a frail woman in an open, half lit doorway. Her doorway. It was her room. Nathan wasn't there.
"Milli, baby...pretty... I know.." the woman inhaled slowly. Something rattled in her lungs. "..you know I know. I just...I wanted to give you something.": she coughed and promptly added, "before you left." The woman spoke in a soft voice, but something restless and painful stirred in its wake. She was a woman bound between two planes- and not by choice. Her husband was out getting more of her sanity. Buying it by the bag. "Just something to take with you, I don't really believe that you're coming back." The woman sighed. "And that's ok...really. I understand."
She could hear her mother weaving a false smile. She heard some sort of pain in the woman's voice, but she knew it as something less animated than an automaton. The woman did it because she felt it was the right scene to play. She was a brilliant actress, Millicent's mother, even though she never graced a stage. Her life was her masterpiece, her daughter was her epitaph. Millicent stirred in her bed. Eventually she turned over, finding that her movement had coaxed her mother into nearing.
"Amelia said it was best for me. She said that it would be better in London. She promised I'd be happy, mommy." Her little voice was sweet and clear. A clean note from a polished bell. The only polished thing in the room, and it was on her insides. It was the voice of your favorite daughter. You're pretty little niece.
"I know." Reassurances were far and few between. Over the tattered blue comforter the woman placed something old. It had tea-stained pages and a worn cover. "Your grandma gave this to me when I came to America. It has your name in it, baby. Just keep it. It's a pretty story."
Millicent stirred but would not gratify herself by opening the old book. She wouldn't please her mother by accepting it quite like that. Millicent looked up at her mother. Just looking at her. Wishing she would say something else. Like a good-bye, or an apology, or an explanation. She did nothing of the sort. She didn't even look at her daughter's eyes, she was absently picking a scab on the inside of her elbow.
They both looked up when they heard her father's voice. Then woman finally looked at Millicent. Just something quick, and fleeting. She quickly got up and crossed the girl's room again. Never had Millicent ever seen a note or spark of life in her mother quite like that quick, sad glance. It was something she would remember, something she would treasure even more than the volume of George Elliot.
"Where the hell are you, I have your sh*t, c'mon!" barked Millicent's father from the other room. There was the sound of paper bags rustling, and keys being tossed on a table, or the floor.
At least she remembered to close the door behind her. Millicent had her back to it a moment later, when her father's face looked into the room. Milli saw his profile cast it's shadow on the wall. She didn't wish it had holes in it, she wished it wasn't there at all.
"Where the hell is Nathan? What have you done with my boy!?"
"If you were going to lose one of them, woman, why couldn't it have been the little whore? F cking thing, looks like you."
================
Millicent fell asleep. Silently appreciative that was the extent of her father's wrath tonight. Even if she was scared for Nathan- but happy she wouldn't have to say good-bye to him in the morning.
Before the sun rose, long before anyone in the house awoke. Milli had climbed down out of her window, and made the little dash to Amelia's family's car. Her cousin would give her a little hug, and ask her where she'd found the beautiful old book.
"Look, Leah, it has my name in it already. And I don't even think mommy wrote it. It looks old. It's pretty." She smiled reluctantly. "Oh, but Leah, if you want it, you can have it, it's ok."
"No no, Milli. That's all you brought. You keep it."
Millicent smiled. Moments later she was lulled to sleep, trying to figure out the vocabulary contained within the first paragraph of the book. She'd wake up half way to London.
London, Millicent Grim's new world. New home. She'd write Nathan letters, but she never remembered her parents address. To this day, she had a little stack of letters, all tied up in black velvet ribbons.
Dearest Nathan, they'd say. I miss you very much. Last night I couldn't sleep again, it's too cold here. I miss you. Remember how you'd used to twine your fingers in my hair....
And four years later, this was the book that Millicent gave to Ezra on a whim. On a walk through the city. The Mill on the Floss. Milli always cried at the ending. Everybody drowned.
_________________
l'histoire d'une fille
Moderators: Olivia Diogenes, Millicent Grim, Hunter White
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
"but trust can not be stolen, friendship must be earned and affection's not for sale"
--Millicent
6/6/01 7:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Millicent had woken up early for school. Or so her aunt and cousin believed.
She snuggled on her little plaid parochial school skirt. Most people in it wouldn't have been able to breathe, but Amelia always said that Millicent had hips like a boy and limbs like a 'colt proportioned fairy baby'.
The comment had made an awkward, funny looking, adolescent Millicent Grim cry on several occasions. But by now she was almost 16 and coming a little more into her own. Her strangeness had become an odd sort of pretty, with her big eyes and pointed features. Her white hair was now somehow attractive in its change from the norm, rather than a reason for playground hierarchies to ostracize the quiet little tomboy.
Tomboy, but she wasn't rough and tough per se, but she did what she liked and that included playing with the boys. So she was too much of one of them to be girly, and too much a girl to be a boy.
The 'funny lip shape' her aunt swore was a Blake family secret finally looked a little more natural on her maturing features. Before she had only looked like a petulant, spoiled child.
'Girls can wear a moue for coy boy-breaking habits, or not at all. Because otherwise they look like they're whining. And everyone hates whining girls.' Amelia's boyfriend had added into the conversation over high tea one evening on the back portico. It was the first time they'd said she looked pretty, so she took the criticism with a teaspoon of sugar and a sweet cracker.
But today, today was going to be different. She wasn't going to go to school. She'd skipped school a few other times. Once her aunt had laughed, the other time they didn't seem so pleased. She promised herself that if she ever skipped again, she'd have a very good reason.
Millicent was smiling while she was thinking about her reason. She pulled her little cardigan over her head, fixed her buttons and her low gathered pigtails. She even twirled once after she snuck on a pair of white fishnets instead of the classic white opaque stockings that were supposed to match the brown and green colours of her school.
She ran downstairs, grabbed her lunch from the maid and ran out the door before anyone said anything.
But she never got on the bus.
==============
She squealed loudly when she was grabbed. He had to put his hand over her mouth to keep her from causing a scene. Maybe Millicent Grim was a little high strung.
Her 45 minutes of walking had included a lot of staring at the sidewalk. Some lewd French runnaways had leered and jeered at her for several blocks. Her skirt was too short, breasts were too small, legs were too long, etc. etc. All of this prompted by her attracting attention. But boys wouldn't know what to do with her for several more years to come. Boys were horrible at that age. And now, on top of that, now she was being abducted.
"Millicent, Jesus. Calm down." He pulled his hand away.
"Sebastian!" she twittered. And hugged him wholly and completely. When one's little, it's cute; when one's getting older boys get a little too much enjoyment out of it.
Sebastion grinned. She kissed his cheek.
He wrinkled his nose at her, damn school girls. He pecked her lips and she blushed.
"Gah, don't do that, you make me feel guilty." Seb let her go and took a step back, getting a look at her. "Bloody hell you're pretty."
"Sebastian, shuttup." She swat at him. He grinned again.
"C'mon, we're late." Seb looked up and down the street. It was an hour into school time, and he was a street kid in black cut-off shorts, chains and tousled black hair like Robert Smith met a gothic Axl Rose. If he stood around with a Sacred Heart girl for much longer he wouldn't just be arrested, they'd probably castrate him for a public offense to virginity.
He shuddered and grabbed her arm.
They took the back roads out of uptown.
"I don't understand why you hang out with me, Milli. Your mom would kill me."
"She's not my mom, silly."
"Really?"
"Really." This was that awkward time when sneaking out to neck under some bleachers became some sort of relationship. That point in life when you told them things because it felt funny in your stomach. You kind of liked it. "I'm from America...well, kind of America. I'm from RhyDIn. It's weird."
"I knew you were from over there, or wherever, you have an accent."
She wrinkled her nose at him. "I wish I did. I mean, didn't."
"Bah, you sound fine. I like the way you sound, it's...it's exotic." That was the best word his 17 year old mind could come up with considering it was slowly being flooded with hormones. (He'd been talking for a half hour, it was a miracle.)
"Really?"
He looked at her she was watching him with all of her bright green eyes. "Yeah, 'really', you always say that like you mean it. I don't get annoyed by it like with other girls..." He thought for a moment, Milli usually liked how he analyzed other people. It took her a moment to realize he was commenting on how often she made him confirm his compliments. "You know why?"
She'd been slowly growing uncomfortable as he commented on her habits of speech. "No, why?" she said softly.
"Because you always sound like you mean it, like you really don't know. You're so...so self-deprecating."
"Sebastian, stoppit."
"No, really. Why do you do that, Millicent?" Sebastian's intellect was a lure, but sometimes a detraction.
She had resolved not to answer him, so he picked up her hand. She almost pulled It away, but decided not to. She didn't want to 'start anything'.
"Tell me something, Milli. Tell me about your home."
"I have a brother."
"Yeah? How old?"
"Same age, he's my twin brother."
"Hey, that's kind of cool, where is he?"
"I don't know, at home I guess."
"At your aunts?"
"No, that's not home. Home-home."
"Oh. Well, what's he do? Does he like music like you do?"
"I don't know."
Seb started to chew on his lower lip. He knew he was starting to ask the wrong questions, and once he started he just never stopped. (At least he learned from past mistakes.) She'll end up running home crying, and he'll feel horrible. That was the ending he saw looming ominously ahead of them. But he also saw their destination. He quickly changed his hold, and scooped his arms around his as-of-three-weeks-girlfriend.
"I'll stop talking if you want me to."
"It's not that, Seb." She smiled at him. He was nice, and for all his street-rat brutality, she trusted him. Sebastion was warm inside, somewhere in there he glowed, it made his black hair richer, and his voice more adult sounding. She saw his features change, waiting and content but eager.
"I like when you ask me things, it's ok." She pushed some of his black hair out of his face. They must have looked like a fairy tale, or a stereo-type, or even a bad cliche The white haired private school girl doting on her backdoor, black haired thug-boyfriend she's skipped school to kiss.
He let her kiss him first. Just so she knew that that wasn't the only reason he was here, or why he was curious about what she was thinking and where she'd come from.
He liked kissing her. He knew he was her first 'boyfriend' and that she hadn't really kissed anyone before. He had made her shy, and she had turned down his proposals on multiple occasions. But he'd eventually managed to persuade her that he wasn't going to make her do things she didn't want to. And even if they didn't do anything he didn't really mind. He just liked being with her and liked the idea that she didn't have to do anything with anyone else while they were together.
They'd been casual friends first. Friends of friends. She would sneak out to hang out with him.
She gave in after a month, and she had nearly threatened him. 'If you try anything funny,' she had said. He'd laughed softly at her and kissed her forehead.
Since then she'd let him come closer to her. Put his arms around her sometimes. She let him use body language that fended off his friends, and he liked that. (So did she.) An arm around her waist, or her shoulders, a stolen kiss to her cheek, and sometimes her lips. He liked her, he really did.
She kissed with instinct, she was shy but she wasn't nervous. She always touched with the tip of her tongue, like she tasted everything. She had a vibrant passion in her somewhere, and he didn't want to bruise it. Because he knew that it bruised as easily as petals. Kissing her often left him with goosebumps. Sometimes he'd catch her with her eyes open, and he could never explain what the eye-contact they made then meant.
He had admitted to his friends that he had the most horrible and wonderful dreams about her. Twisted, hot dreams. More than kissing, but sometimes only kissing. And he liked both versions.
What he didn't know was that she'd always kiss like that.
With everything.
All he knew was that it meant more than he'd ever meant to let anyone know before. And he liked the mystery and her accidental charms.
Right now she kept her eyes closed, and they drank each-other's solitude and complexities like a rare, sweet nectar who's dosage should be carefully measured or it could reduce one to madness. Whether that madness was love or anger, it didn't matter. Both were too frightening to be welcomed by the two youths on the side of the road near a rundown bar on some random block in Camedon Town.
They hugged when they were done.
It was that early point in life where sharing it with someone else was a mystery in and of itself. It could only be taken in small sips. Sharing emotions was fascinating. Millicent would never stop.
She lay her head upon his chest, and he smoothed the gentle curve of her lower back under the cardigan. She had let him slip his hand there, and hadn't pushed him away.
She has always been a victim of vulnerability. She loved it.
When they finally slipped into the bar, they were laughing about some lewd escapade Sebastian was telling her about.
=====================
"Holy Christ, Seb, you're going to get arrested pawing something like that."
Sebastion rolled his eyes, "Bah, Milli, this is Damian. Don't listen to anything he says, it's a lie. He's an asshole."
"Yeah, I only say things to get school girls in my pants." Damian grinned at her, and finally shook her hand. "Enchante'." He kissed the back of it. Enchanted? Yes, she was.
She blushed.
Daemon and Sebastian looked funny together. They could have been brothers.
"All right, all right, break it up." Sebastian pulled away her hand. "I'll deck you if you look at her funny."
"Hey, don't look at me, it's always the chick who falls for the musicians." Damien grinned and returned to his set up. They were here to see his band. He was best friends with Sebastian (even though Damien was 4 years older.)
"Not when they make up their own names." Returned Millicent eventually.
"This is my real name, damnit. One day I'll show you what it really means."
"Damien..." Sebastian's timbre was rolling in the way that thunder rolls. Threatening.
"Yeah yeah."
===================
The band started, Milli spent most of the set in Sebastian's lap.
He got to keep his hand on skin the entire time.
"Millicent plays the piano, too. Don't you Milli?"
"Yeah, I'm not really that good though."
"Well show me what you got, baby."
"Damien."
"Yeah, yeah."
--Millicent
6/6/01 7:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Millicent had woken up early for school. Or so her aunt and cousin believed.
She snuggled on her little plaid parochial school skirt. Most people in it wouldn't have been able to breathe, but Amelia always said that Millicent had hips like a boy and limbs like a 'colt proportioned fairy baby'.
The comment had made an awkward, funny looking, adolescent Millicent Grim cry on several occasions. But by now she was almost 16 and coming a little more into her own. Her strangeness had become an odd sort of pretty, with her big eyes and pointed features. Her white hair was now somehow attractive in its change from the norm, rather than a reason for playground hierarchies to ostracize the quiet little tomboy.
Tomboy, but she wasn't rough and tough per se, but she did what she liked and that included playing with the boys. So she was too much of one of them to be girly, and too much a girl to be a boy.
The 'funny lip shape' her aunt swore was a Blake family secret finally looked a little more natural on her maturing features. Before she had only looked like a petulant, spoiled child.
'Girls can wear a moue for coy boy-breaking habits, or not at all. Because otherwise they look like they're whining. And everyone hates whining girls.' Amelia's boyfriend had added into the conversation over high tea one evening on the back portico. It was the first time they'd said she looked pretty, so she took the criticism with a teaspoon of sugar and a sweet cracker.
But today, today was going to be different. She wasn't going to go to school. She'd skipped school a few other times. Once her aunt had laughed, the other time they didn't seem so pleased. She promised herself that if she ever skipped again, she'd have a very good reason.
Millicent was smiling while she was thinking about her reason. She pulled her little cardigan over her head, fixed her buttons and her low gathered pigtails. She even twirled once after she snuck on a pair of white fishnets instead of the classic white opaque stockings that were supposed to match the brown and green colours of her school.
She ran downstairs, grabbed her lunch from the maid and ran out the door before anyone said anything.
But she never got on the bus.
==============
She squealed loudly when she was grabbed. He had to put his hand over her mouth to keep her from causing a scene. Maybe Millicent Grim was a little high strung.
Her 45 minutes of walking had included a lot of staring at the sidewalk. Some lewd French runnaways had leered and jeered at her for several blocks. Her skirt was too short, breasts were too small, legs were too long, etc. etc. All of this prompted by her attracting attention. But boys wouldn't know what to do with her for several more years to come. Boys were horrible at that age. And now, on top of that, now she was being abducted.
"Millicent, Jesus. Calm down." He pulled his hand away.
"Sebastian!" she twittered. And hugged him wholly and completely. When one's little, it's cute; when one's getting older boys get a little too much enjoyment out of it.
Sebastion grinned. She kissed his cheek.
He wrinkled his nose at her, damn school girls. He pecked her lips and she blushed.
"Gah, don't do that, you make me feel guilty." Seb let her go and took a step back, getting a look at her. "Bloody hell you're pretty."
"Sebastian, shuttup." She swat at him. He grinned again.
"C'mon, we're late." Seb looked up and down the street. It was an hour into school time, and he was a street kid in black cut-off shorts, chains and tousled black hair like Robert Smith met a gothic Axl Rose. If he stood around with a Sacred Heart girl for much longer he wouldn't just be arrested, they'd probably castrate him for a public offense to virginity.
He shuddered and grabbed her arm.
They took the back roads out of uptown.
"I don't understand why you hang out with me, Milli. Your mom would kill me."
"She's not my mom, silly."
"Really?"
"Really." This was that awkward time when sneaking out to neck under some bleachers became some sort of relationship. That point in life when you told them things because it felt funny in your stomach. You kind of liked it. "I'm from America...well, kind of America. I'm from RhyDIn. It's weird."
"I knew you were from over there, or wherever, you have an accent."
She wrinkled her nose at him. "I wish I did. I mean, didn't."
"Bah, you sound fine. I like the way you sound, it's...it's exotic." That was the best word his 17 year old mind could come up with considering it was slowly being flooded with hormones. (He'd been talking for a half hour, it was a miracle.)
"Really?"
He looked at her she was watching him with all of her bright green eyes. "Yeah, 'really', you always say that like you mean it. I don't get annoyed by it like with other girls..." He thought for a moment, Milli usually liked how he analyzed other people. It took her a moment to realize he was commenting on how often she made him confirm his compliments. "You know why?"
She'd been slowly growing uncomfortable as he commented on her habits of speech. "No, why?" she said softly.
"Because you always sound like you mean it, like you really don't know. You're so...so self-deprecating."
"Sebastian, stoppit."
"No, really. Why do you do that, Millicent?" Sebastian's intellect was a lure, but sometimes a detraction.
She had resolved not to answer him, so he picked up her hand. She almost pulled It away, but decided not to. She didn't want to 'start anything'.
"Tell me something, Milli. Tell me about your home."
"I have a brother."
"Yeah? How old?"
"Same age, he's my twin brother."
"Hey, that's kind of cool, where is he?"
"I don't know, at home I guess."
"At your aunts?"
"No, that's not home. Home-home."
"Oh. Well, what's he do? Does he like music like you do?"
"I don't know."
Seb started to chew on his lower lip. He knew he was starting to ask the wrong questions, and once he started he just never stopped. (At least he learned from past mistakes.) She'll end up running home crying, and he'll feel horrible. That was the ending he saw looming ominously ahead of them. But he also saw their destination. He quickly changed his hold, and scooped his arms around his as-of-three-weeks-girlfriend.
"I'll stop talking if you want me to."
"It's not that, Seb." She smiled at him. He was nice, and for all his street-rat brutality, she trusted him. Sebastion was warm inside, somewhere in there he glowed, it made his black hair richer, and his voice more adult sounding. She saw his features change, waiting and content but eager.
"I like when you ask me things, it's ok." She pushed some of his black hair out of his face. They must have looked like a fairy tale, or a stereo-type, or even a bad cliche The white haired private school girl doting on her backdoor, black haired thug-boyfriend she's skipped school to kiss.
He let her kiss him first. Just so she knew that that wasn't the only reason he was here, or why he was curious about what she was thinking and where she'd come from.
He liked kissing her. He knew he was her first 'boyfriend' and that she hadn't really kissed anyone before. He had made her shy, and she had turned down his proposals on multiple occasions. But he'd eventually managed to persuade her that he wasn't going to make her do things she didn't want to. And even if they didn't do anything he didn't really mind. He just liked being with her and liked the idea that she didn't have to do anything with anyone else while they were together.
They'd been casual friends first. Friends of friends. She would sneak out to hang out with him.
She gave in after a month, and she had nearly threatened him. 'If you try anything funny,' she had said. He'd laughed softly at her and kissed her forehead.
Since then she'd let him come closer to her. Put his arms around her sometimes. She let him use body language that fended off his friends, and he liked that. (So did she.) An arm around her waist, or her shoulders, a stolen kiss to her cheek, and sometimes her lips. He liked her, he really did.
She kissed with instinct, she was shy but she wasn't nervous. She always touched with the tip of her tongue, like she tasted everything. She had a vibrant passion in her somewhere, and he didn't want to bruise it. Because he knew that it bruised as easily as petals. Kissing her often left him with goosebumps. Sometimes he'd catch her with her eyes open, and he could never explain what the eye-contact they made then meant.
He had admitted to his friends that he had the most horrible and wonderful dreams about her. Twisted, hot dreams. More than kissing, but sometimes only kissing. And he liked both versions.
What he didn't know was that she'd always kiss like that.
With everything.
All he knew was that it meant more than he'd ever meant to let anyone know before. And he liked the mystery and her accidental charms.
Right now she kept her eyes closed, and they drank each-other's solitude and complexities like a rare, sweet nectar who's dosage should be carefully measured or it could reduce one to madness. Whether that madness was love or anger, it didn't matter. Both were too frightening to be welcomed by the two youths on the side of the road near a rundown bar on some random block in Camedon Town.
They hugged when they were done.
It was that early point in life where sharing it with someone else was a mystery in and of itself. It could only be taken in small sips. Sharing emotions was fascinating. Millicent would never stop.
She lay her head upon his chest, and he smoothed the gentle curve of her lower back under the cardigan. She had let him slip his hand there, and hadn't pushed him away.
She has always been a victim of vulnerability. She loved it.
When they finally slipped into the bar, they were laughing about some lewd escapade Sebastian was telling her about.
=====================
"Holy Christ, Seb, you're going to get arrested pawing something like that."
Sebastion rolled his eyes, "Bah, Milli, this is Damian. Don't listen to anything he says, it's a lie. He's an asshole."
"Yeah, I only say things to get school girls in my pants." Damian grinned at her, and finally shook her hand. "Enchante'." He kissed the back of it. Enchanted? Yes, she was.
She blushed.
Daemon and Sebastian looked funny together. They could have been brothers.
"All right, all right, break it up." Sebastian pulled away her hand. "I'll deck you if you look at her funny."
"Hey, don't look at me, it's always the chick who falls for the musicians." Damien grinned and returned to his set up. They were here to see his band. He was best friends with Sebastian (even though Damien was 4 years older.)
"Not when they make up their own names." Returned Millicent eventually.
"This is my real name, damnit. One day I'll show you what it really means."
"Damien..." Sebastian's timbre was rolling in the way that thunder rolls. Threatening.
"Yeah yeah."
===================
The band started, Milli spent most of the set in Sebastian's lap.
He got to keep his hand on skin the entire time.
"Millicent plays the piano, too. Don't you Milli?"
"Yeah, I'm not really that good though."
"Well show me what you got, baby."
"Damien."
"Yeah, yeah."
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
" 'sacrifice for me, be humility' it said...' -some things you can't forget'"--Millicent
11/18/00 3:14 PM Eastern Standard Time
The clock ticked away the moments in the room. They thundered past the ears in metronome beats that held a special kinship to the act of pressing an ice-pick in the ear. Silence was deafening-- and the hard, stiff stain of tobacco on the walls made the room a chamber of cancer and evenly segmented decay. tick tick tick tick.
Her wrist was bent at a sixty degree angle and the cigarette that dangled from her fingers was adding to the ash-grey colour of the carpet and the smother-welcoming of the air. Her body was languid and radiated a bluish tint that sang like voices in a choir- pure, beautiful and lonely. Her stare was the hardest part of her. It pushed out the mad absinthine colour of her eyes. It filtered itself through her white lashes as she watched, with no small solace in bitterness and disgust, the woman who sat across from her.
The woman had red hair, and her ribs protruded from the shamble of a stomach she once had. Her hair was fire while her skin was pale and almost olive coloured. For all the light in the room she looked dead, and Millicent was waiting for her to move, as though she'd know what to do with the body once it did.
She'd been staring forever- her eye-corners sharp, self-assessed, bored and holding a cup-full of responsibility. I made you, I will take you from the world.
The red haired woman looked up, and though Millicent couldn't see the colour of her eyes, she remembered. Her mother opened her mouth, and in the black cavern of her decaying hole a sound howled out with her exhale. And it was only when she saw the things racing tracks under her skin (raised pock-marks that shot like time-elapsed fungus eating the insides in some abstract pattern), did she know it was a dream.
She woke up from that falling feeling- knowing familiarity when it stung her.
>Ring< screamed the phone.
She picked it up with white fingers.
"H-hello?" she still felt the dream slipping away- revealing no more secrets than does snow. 'snowlight blinds- heatless fire- pale- apocalyptic-'
"Millicent Grim?"
She felt responsibilities fall away from her to the end of a chain. They dangled there, half forgot and half a constant, gleaming reminder pulling at her ankle.
"Ma'am?"
"Y-yes, this is Millicent, who is this?"
"I work for the town miss, it was a long and hard battle to find your phone number." There was a nervous laugh. "ehem, and I'm sorry, we usually do this face to face. But-" don't let the light shine on me "- it seems like your address is even harder to get. Your manager gave me your number, Johnathan Davis. He's a-"
"What...what happened?"
"Ah, ..well, miss- Ma'am. I'm calling because, well, it seems that... well, your mother." save me "..Mrs. Rowan Grim, yes well, she passed away a few days ago." The man on the phone swallowed. "I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner, but like I said. ...It's hard to get the number of...well....singers...in ...bands. Mrs? Ehem, Miss?"
"Was my father with her when she died?"
"I..we don't know Miss. We were hoping you could tell us where he might be." Pages flipped. "As of right now, it seems that noone has seen Blaine Grim in quite a while.... >static is all you hear when the world falls away. white noise in the ear while the rest of the world keeps speaking. what was it she heard in his voice, what was it he had said. more than a name, a decade< ... and that's all I know about your father at present, Miss. I was hoping you knew more."
"No," she whispered, "I know nothing of my father."
"Miss, will you come down to the station to identify the body? I mean, we're pretty sure it's your mother...don't... it's just that we don't have the best sources, no family members. They like it better when it's family members."
"It is my mother."
"Excuse me?"
"I haven't seen my mother in years." perhaps you rather hear the excuses.
"True, but at least you're better then ...than some of the neighbors here."
"Do they still live in that...do they still live on 177th street?"
"Uh..." pages were flipped, the sound of rustling paper "-y-yes, yes they do. Did. That's where we found her, yes."
"How did she die?" responsibility yanked on the links that bound itself to her ankle.
"Miss, I think we better-"
"How did she die?"
"Well, that's the funny thing...I.." did he hurt her, did he finally hurt her? "it seems like she starved to death, Ma'am. See, look, I think you should come down to the 13th precinct and we can talk about it there. How's that?"
"Alright, I'll leave now."
"So I'll see you down here in- Oh, sorry, I'm Detective Noth by the way. Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'll see you in a few minutes though?"
"No, I'm walking."
11/18/00 3:14 PM Eastern Standard Time
The clock ticked away the moments in the room. They thundered past the ears in metronome beats that held a special kinship to the act of pressing an ice-pick in the ear. Silence was deafening-- and the hard, stiff stain of tobacco on the walls made the room a chamber of cancer and evenly segmented decay. tick tick tick tick.
Her wrist was bent at a sixty degree angle and the cigarette that dangled from her fingers was adding to the ash-grey colour of the carpet and the smother-welcoming of the air. Her body was languid and radiated a bluish tint that sang like voices in a choir- pure, beautiful and lonely. Her stare was the hardest part of her. It pushed out the mad absinthine colour of her eyes. It filtered itself through her white lashes as she watched, with no small solace in bitterness and disgust, the woman who sat across from her.
The woman had red hair, and her ribs protruded from the shamble of a stomach she once had. Her hair was fire while her skin was pale and almost olive coloured. For all the light in the room she looked dead, and Millicent was waiting for her to move, as though she'd know what to do with the body once it did.
She'd been staring forever- her eye-corners sharp, self-assessed, bored and holding a cup-full of responsibility. I made you, I will take you from the world.
The red haired woman looked up, and though Millicent couldn't see the colour of her eyes, she remembered. Her mother opened her mouth, and in the black cavern of her decaying hole a sound howled out with her exhale. And it was only when she saw the things racing tracks under her skin (raised pock-marks that shot like time-elapsed fungus eating the insides in some abstract pattern), did she know it was a dream.
She woke up from that falling feeling- knowing familiarity when it stung her.
>Ring< screamed the phone.
She picked it up with white fingers.
"H-hello?" she still felt the dream slipping away- revealing no more secrets than does snow. 'snowlight blinds- heatless fire- pale- apocalyptic-'
"Millicent Grim?"
She felt responsibilities fall away from her to the end of a chain. They dangled there, half forgot and half a constant, gleaming reminder pulling at her ankle.
"Ma'am?"
"Y-yes, this is Millicent, who is this?"
"I work for the town miss, it was a long and hard battle to find your phone number." There was a nervous laugh. "ehem, and I'm sorry, we usually do this face to face. But-" don't let the light shine on me "- it seems like your address is even harder to get. Your manager gave me your number, Johnathan Davis. He's a-"
"What...what happened?"
"Ah, ..well, miss- Ma'am. I'm calling because, well, it seems that... well, your mother." save me "..Mrs. Rowan Grim, yes well, she passed away a few days ago." The man on the phone swallowed. "I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner, but like I said. ...It's hard to get the number of...well....singers...in ...bands. Mrs? Ehem, Miss?"
"Was my father with her when she died?"
"I..we don't know Miss. We were hoping you could tell us where he might be." Pages flipped. "As of right now, it seems that noone has seen Blaine Grim in quite a while.... >static is all you hear when the world falls away. white noise in the ear while the rest of the world keeps speaking. what was it she heard in his voice, what was it he had said. more than a name, a decade< ... and that's all I know about your father at present, Miss. I was hoping you knew more."
"No," she whispered, "I know nothing of my father."
"Miss, will you come down to the station to identify the body? I mean, we're pretty sure it's your mother...don't... it's just that we don't have the best sources, no family members. They like it better when it's family members."
"It is my mother."
"Excuse me?"
"I haven't seen my mother in years." perhaps you rather hear the excuses.
"True, but at least you're better then ...than some of the neighbors here."
"Do they still live in that...do they still live on 177th street?"
"Uh..." pages were flipped, the sound of rustling paper "-y-yes, yes they do. Did. That's where we found her, yes."
"How did she die?" responsibility yanked on the links that bound itself to her ankle.
"Miss, I think we better-"
"How did she die?"
"Well, that's the funny thing...I.." did he hurt her, did he finally hurt her? "it seems like she starved to death, Ma'am. See, look, I think you should come down to the 13th precinct and we can talk about it there. How's that?"
"Alright, I'll leave now."
"So I'll see you down here in- Oh, sorry, I'm Detective Noth by the way. Sorry, I should have introduced myself. I'll see you in a few minutes though?"
"No, I'm walking."
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
"when she walks on the street, you can hear the strings"--Millicent
4/2/01 5:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time
The smell of industry and soot had permeated the room for the last few noxious minutes. Such was the only stable tradition in the Grim household-- the evening 6:25 pm train after rush hour. It slowed to a halt not more than a few blocks away; where it unloaded its workers and driver at the local train graveyard.
It wasn't a rare occurrence to find the two white children out there, covered in the carbon-monoxide and left overs of RhyDin's ever moving populace. It took a good long bath to cull the cream of their skin from the grey milk of society- haphazard emissions of the town's need to constantly evolve. (Or devolve, as it may have been this far uptown.)
It was time to go out and play in the train yards. Millicent was standing in the doorframe of her living room-- trying to make out what the image was on the static-happy television that had been on since morning. Even her 12 year old mind shouldn't have been expected to understand what information or contact the blurry sitcoms and talk shows offered to the obviously-engrossed stare of her mother. In fact, it was rare that anyone looking in
on this simple scene would be able to discern the meanings that hid beneath the surface.
The mother, Rowan, had left her eyes locked upon the ever-changing screen of the t.v. for most of the day. Her body was posed just as it was, in a place near two cereal bowls that were neither quite old (for the milk hadn't curdled) nor quite new (for the pieces of wheat based mass-produced breakfast had saturated the milk till they could saturate no more). Rowan had sat like this since her husband had left. Yet, even this simple arrangement of words in explanation forces several assumptions that prove to be tests of perception. To understand the implications of the typical Grim day, one would have to dissect at least two of these assumptions.
The first alteration that would need to be made clear, to the casual reader, is that Rowan's husband did not have a particular 'job' or 'occupation' that one would have expected him to visit each day at 8am. He didn't sit at a desk or computer; he didn't drink coffee or speak with anyone who remotely resembled a secretary or craftsmen. He woke, dressed and left after a meager breakfast (which he usually consumed less of than his wife) nearly each day of the year. Yet even with these strange circumstances, Rowan could find her husband most any time of the day that she needed him. (Though such a situation had not occurred in 13 years.) The second alteration to the assessment of this scene would be to point out that the woman, Rowan, didn't really sleep at all. And that, in fact, she could have been sitting upon this couch or chair, for days.
Even Millicent couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her mother in a state of genuine slumber. Though, she also couldn't remember a time when she would consider her mother as coherent and awake as the people she passed on the street. Or say, one of the people or children she encountered when she went to school. Or even more closer to home, and more human in the eyes of the little girl, Rowan was never as salient and alive as she or her brother Nathaniel.
It was with this uncommon knowledge and awareness that Millicent Grim perceived the spectacle of her matrilineal heritage. The understanding showed itself in the tools through which she deciphered this scene; the same matching pair of too-green eyes the ancestral line was known for. It was this knowing, and the strange, usually-dormant emotions that came with it that had paused the little girl in the hazy, end-of-day dust motes of the
doorframe.
"Momma?" she said.
The woman just barely waved her hand at the girl to dismiss her.
"I'm going to go outside, ok momma?"
Met with just the continuation of the lusty, hungry stare at the pop-culture ricocheting through the pixels of the television screen, Millicent assumed that was enough of a warning. She turned to go out to play in the hazy sunset and dirty streets of uptown RhyDin.
She'll make sure to come home before daddy comes home. She promises.
4/2/01 5:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time
The smell of industry and soot had permeated the room for the last few noxious minutes. Such was the only stable tradition in the Grim household-- the evening 6:25 pm train after rush hour. It slowed to a halt not more than a few blocks away; where it unloaded its workers and driver at the local train graveyard.
It wasn't a rare occurrence to find the two white children out there, covered in the carbon-monoxide and left overs of RhyDin's ever moving populace. It took a good long bath to cull the cream of their skin from the grey milk of society- haphazard emissions of the town's need to constantly evolve. (Or devolve, as it may have been this far uptown.)
It was time to go out and play in the train yards. Millicent was standing in the doorframe of her living room-- trying to make out what the image was on the static-happy television that had been on since morning. Even her 12 year old mind shouldn't have been expected to understand what information or contact the blurry sitcoms and talk shows offered to the obviously-engrossed stare of her mother. In fact, it was rare that anyone looking in
on this simple scene would be able to discern the meanings that hid beneath the surface.
The mother, Rowan, had left her eyes locked upon the ever-changing screen of the t.v. for most of the day. Her body was posed just as it was, in a place near two cereal bowls that were neither quite old (for the milk hadn't curdled) nor quite new (for the pieces of wheat based mass-produced breakfast had saturated the milk till they could saturate no more). Rowan had sat like this since her husband had left. Yet, even this simple arrangement of words in explanation forces several assumptions that prove to be tests of perception. To understand the implications of the typical Grim day, one would have to dissect at least two of these assumptions.
The first alteration that would need to be made clear, to the casual reader, is that Rowan's husband did not have a particular 'job' or 'occupation' that one would have expected him to visit each day at 8am. He didn't sit at a desk or computer; he didn't drink coffee or speak with anyone who remotely resembled a secretary or craftsmen. He woke, dressed and left after a meager breakfast (which he usually consumed less of than his wife) nearly each day of the year. Yet even with these strange circumstances, Rowan could find her husband most any time of the day that she needed him. (Though such a situation had not occurred in 13 years.) The second alteration to the assessment of this scene would be to point out that the woman, Rowan, didn't really sleep at all. And that, in fact, she could have been sitting upon this couch or chair, for days.
Even Millicent couldn't remember the last time she'd seen her mother in a state of genuine slumber. Though, she also couldn't remember a time when she would consider her mother as coherent and awake as the people she passed on the street. Or say, one of the people or children she encountered when she went to school. Or even more closer to home, and more human in the eyes of the little girl, Rowan was never as salient and alive as she or her brother Nathaniel.
It was with this uncommon knowledge and awareness that Millicent Grim perceived the spectacle of her matrilineal heritage. The understanding showed itself in the tools through which she deciphered this scene; the same matching pair of too-green eyes the ancestral line was known for. It was this knowing, and the strange, usually-dormant emotions that came with it that had paused the little girl in the hazy, end-of-day dust motes of the
doorframe.
"Momma?" she said.
The woman just barely waved her hand at the girl to dismiss her.
"I'm going to go outside, ok momma?"
Met with just the continuation of the lusty, hungry stare at the pop-culture ricocheting through the pixels of the television screen, Millicent assumed that was enough of a warning. She turned to go out to play in the hazy sunset and dirty streets of uptown RhyDin.
She'll make sure to come home before daddy comes home. She promises.
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
"all great things to come"--Millicent
9/4/00 1:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time
She was sitting upon a bench in her childhood family room. The electric drone of a tv was somewhere in the background. It was more static than syllables. The grey-blue light flickered on the dark couches and the broken lay-z-boy. It resounded in a harsh sheen on the hospital white walls and thundered down the dimly lit hallway to the kitchen. The violent colour it created was broken only by a few stains, an old picture of some place in London only her mother remembered- and then there was the t shaped anti-shadow.
It was a t of brilliant white. Somehow softer than the rest. But it was luminescent like nothing else around it - if that were possible. It was made by the subtle dullness of cigarette smoke and time. It was the only memory the house had of a time when it wasn't so Grim. This pristine sanctuary was a relic onto itself. It had been the place where some family before them had kept a crucifix. Sometimes Millicent would imagine what it looked like. She imagined it as wood with the slim, sickly twisted man hanging from his wounds in a gentle angle. His face was never turned towards her, but always tipped just half a chin-length in the other direction. She imagined him sad, but serene. Someone who had been filled with a sense of being full. She knew little of Catholicism, but the story had been picked up in time, by people, playmates, and Nathan. She remembered the first time she'd heard it, when she was even smaller than she was now. It had been told to her by a teacher with grey hair and oval shaped glasses.
Twelve year old Millicent smiled at her imaginary crucifix. Then she returned to her pecking away at the old piano she sat in front of. Her mother had collected this for her in one of her few fits of sanity.
Millicent heard her mother slithering in that disjointed way of hers- half awake and moving in the kitchen, half euphoric and yet asleep. The kitchen rattled with the sounds of spoons and glasses. Somewhere in the mind of the young girl she was imagining that her mother was cooking something sweet to be placed out on a table with a tender effort at stability and love. But she knew this to be a tame naivete even then. In the kitchen her mother was replacing naivete with needles.
Millicent's father was not home. Millicent never touched the little piano when he was. With all the focus of her will she tried to cloak the instrument with mundanity whenever he was near. She tried to impose a feeling of dullness and dust onto it, always praying quietly that her father would never find it polished with care or scrubbed clean. Millicent pretended she didn't love it when he was in this room. She veiled her focus of delight from all the eyes in the house. Hoping that hope alone could disguise it as being as stale as everything else. Nathan knew, but her mother hand long forgotten the piano existed or that she'd given anything besides breath and witchery to her daughter. Millicent cloaked her little sanctuary with a thin layer of un-love, pretending it wasn't there and that it meant nothing. Just like her father did with her.
Even when he came thundering into the room.
She'd already scrambled away from her corner by the time she had heard the familiar jingle of his keys. That sound was the alarum that always pushed the little girl into chaos and dissonance. She was halfway to her room before her father caught her, swiping her up by her middle. His muscular arm held her ribs tight, and it could have been an embrace, if he wasn't simply swiping her from the floor to direct her onto the couch. Tossed there like so much fabric and sawdust.
"Where's your brother?" It was the only thing he ever asked her.
"I don't know...he was outside playing."
"Why the hell are you in here alone? He barely goes anywhere without you, you dirty little thing. Go out there and get him."
"...I don't know where he went...he wasn't there when I looked ..."
"You know where he is! Just like I know what you do with him at night! You little beast, go find him. Go find him!!"
"D-, I don't-" He was all teeth and snarling in her face. Her reflexes had been worn away like old teeth, she didn't even move back. She just turned away her eyes in supplication.
"Go out there and find him, I don't care if you have to lift up your skirt like your mother does. Call him with your scent. God knows I can smell you on him all the time."
Millicent slunk from the couch and passed by the little t shaped light on the wall. It had lost its moon-glow.
9/4/00 1:46 PM Eastern Daylight Time
She was sitting upon a bench in her childhood family room. The electric drone of a tv was somewhere in the background. It was more static than syllables. The grey-blue light flickered on the dark couches and the broken lay-z-boy. It resounded in a harsh sheen on the hospital white walls and thundered down the dimly lit hallway to the kitchen. The violent colour it created was broken only by a few stains, an old picture of some place in London only her mother remembered- and then there was the t shaped anti-shadow.
It was a t of brilliant white. Somehow softer than the rest. But it was luminescent like nothing else around it - if that were possible. It was made by the subtle dullness of cigarette smoke and time. It was the only memory the house had of a time when it wasn't so Grim. This pristine sanctuary was a relic onto itself. It had been the place where some family before them had kept a crucifix. Sometimes Millicent would imagine what it looked like. She imagined it as wood with the slim, sickly twisted man hanging from his wounds in a gentle angle. His face was never turned towards her, but always tipped just half a chin-length in the other direction. She imagined him sad, but serene. Someone who had been filled with a sense of being full. She knew little of Catholicism, but the story had been picked up in time, by people, playmates, and Nathan. She remembered the first time she'd heard it, when she was even smaller than she was now. It had been told to her by a teacher with grey hair and oval shaped glasses.
Twelve year old Millicent smiled at her imaginary crucifix. Then she returned to her pecking away at the old piano she sat in front of. Her mother had collected this for her in one of her few fits of sanity.
Millicent heard her mother slithering in that disjointed way of hers- half awake and moving in the kitchen, half euphoric and yet asleep. The kitchen rattled with the sounds of spoons and glasses. Somewhere in the mind of the young girl she was imagining that her mother was cooking something sweet to be placed out on a table with a tender effort at stability and love. But she knew this to be a tame naivete even then. In the kitchen her mother was replacing naivete with needles.
Millicent's father was not home. Millicent never touched the little piano when he was. With all the focus of her will she tried to cloak the instrument with mundanity whenever he was near. She tried to impose a feeling of dullness and dust onto it, always praying quietly that her father would never find it polished with care or scrubbed clean. Millicent pretended she didn't love it when he was in this room. She veiled her focus of delight from all the eyes in the house. Hoping that hope alone could disguise it as being as stale as everything else. Nathan knew, but her mother hand long forgotten the piano existed or that she'd given anything besides breath and witchery to her daughter. Millicent cloaked her little sanctuary with a thin layer of un-love, pretending it wasn't there and that it meant nothing. Just like her father did with her.
Even when he came thundering into the room.
She'd already scrambled away from her corner by the time she had heard the familiar jingle of his keys. That sound was the alarum that always pushed the little girl into chaos and dissonance. She was halfway to her room before her father caught her, swiping her up by her middle. His muscular arm held her ribs tight, and it could have been an embrace, if he wasn't simply swiping her from the floor to direct her onto the couch. Tossed there like so much fabric and sawdust.
"Where's your brother?" It was the only thing he ever asked her.
"I don't know...he was outside playing."
"Why the hell are you in here alone? He barely goes anywhere without you, you dirty little thing. Go out there and get him."
"...I don't know where he went...he wasn't there when I looked ..."
"You know where he is! Just like I know what you do with him at night! You little beast, go find him. Go find him!!"
"D-, I don't-" He was all teeth and snarling in her face. Her reflexes had been worn away like old teeth, she didn't even move back. She just turned away her eyes in supplication.
"Go out there and find him, I don't care if you have to lift up your skirt like your mother does. Call him with your scent. God knows I can smell you on him all the time."
Millicent slunk from the couch and passed by the little t shaped light on the wall. It had lost its moon-glow.
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
"this disease i gave to myself"--Millicent
Date: 9/4/00 2:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time
He pulled her out of bed by her hair. That's the way she woke up. She woke up with her coils tangled round his murderous fingers and her body being pulled off the sheets and falling to the floor. Her skin screeched as it stuck to the wood with summer sweat. All at once she felt like everything was being torn away. Her skin, her scalp, and the body of her sleeping brother. (who was more a part of her than anything bound by blood and flesh)
"Get out of his bed! What are you Doing in here?! What the hell do you think you're Doing?!" he was actually in a panic. His eyes half crazed, the look of a man who could lose anything by someone else's greedy mistake.
"Daddy he was hurt, he was hurt!! You hurt Nathan!" her child's voice broke the Sunday morning into splinters.
"Shut the fck up about Nathan! He has nothing to do with you." he was taking her, kicking and squirming, trying to stumble to her feet. It was all a tumble of senses till she was being taken towards the door. She vividly remembered Nathan's face. Finally processing what was happening. She saw him lean up. She saw him move. "I want you away from him. You're disgusting."
"I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything...." she was choking on the wings that were beating in her chest. Tears welled up when the door shut and closed. She was locked away from the other side. Barricaded. Sequestering her from their own room. From her only source of serenity. "..you hurt him..." She murmured to her father - a dark shadow seething near by.
He left her in a heap against the doorframe and the closed door. She was pulling her legs to her, trying to hide all her skin away from him. Hiding away the little girl's body that had no right to be called that anymore. (degrees of separation - his chemicals were already in her)
"Don't you tell me what I do to him." He yanked a fist full of her white hair, roughly showing it to her and shoving it into her face. It smelled like both of them combined. "This..This, this is what hurts your brother. You. You ruined Logan, you ruined that boy. He fked up and he's not even my son anymore - but you did it. Don't ever think I don't know."
"Just like your mother. I don't know what you b*tches do." He was a stuttering detective, trying to figure out his personal crime. "What did you do to him? Did you tell him how to take it? Did you rub up against him, did you coat him with your sweat, your spit..what did you do?" He'd been holding her hair against her nose and lips for the duration of his accusations. She'd lifted up her arm to shield her cheek and pull the white strands from her mouth.
"I don't understand....I don't know what you mean.... Daddy, please. I don't know. You made Logan leave...you did..."
"He ruined you. I could have fixed you, taught you right." a sweet hypocrisy that made so much sense if you just listened to the timbre of his voice. "He ruined you. You make me sick- I don't know what G-d was doing to me when he gave you your brother's face." He was spitting and shaking. He was rough fingers on her shoulders, he didn't even realize he was holding her up against the wall now. She was crying quietly.
"Don't ever talk to me again. You don't exist. You'll ruin everything."
Date: 9/4/00 2:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time
He pulled her out of bed by her hair. That's the way she woke up. She woke up with her coils tangled round his murderous fingers and her body being pulled off the sheets and falling to the floor. Her skin screeched as it stuck to the wood with summer sweat. All at once she felt like everything was being torn away. Her skin, her scalp, and the body of her sleeping brother. (who was more a part of her than anything bound by blood and flesh)
"Get out of his bed! What are you Doing in here?! What the hell do you think you're Doing?!" he was actually in a panic. His eyes half crazed, the look of a man who could lose anything by someone else's greedy mistake.
"Daddy he was hurt, he was hurt!! You hurt Nathan!" her child's voice broke the Sunday morning into splinters.
"Shut the fck up about Nathan! He has nothing to do with you." he was taking her, kicking and squirming, trying to stumble to her feet. It was all a tumble of senses till she was being taken towards the door. She vividly remembered Nathan's face. Finally processing what was happening. She saw him lean up. She saw him move. "I want you away from him. You're disgusting."
"I didn't do anything, I didn't do anything...." she was choking on the wings that were beating in her chest. Tears welled up when the door shut and closed. She was locked away from the other side. Barricaded. Sequestering her from their own room. From her only source of serenity. "..you hurt him..." She murmured to her father - a dark shadow seething near by.
He left her in a heap against the doorframe and the closed door. She was pulling her legs to her, trying to hide all her skin away from him. Hiding away the little girl's body that had no right to be called that anymore. (degrees of separation - his chemicals were already in her)
"Don't you tell me what I do to him." He yanked a fist full of her white hair, roughly showing it to her and shoving it into her face. It smelled like both of them combined. "This..This, this is what hurts your brother. You. You ruined Logan, you ruined that boy. He fked up and he's not even my son anymore - but you did it. Don't ever think I don't know."
"Just like your mother. I don't know what you b*tches do." He was a stuttering detective, trying to figure out his personal crime. "What did you do to him? Did you tell him how to take it? Did you rub up against him, did you coat him with your sweat, your spit..what did you do?" He'd been holding her hair against her nose and lips for the duration of his accusations. She'd lifted up her arm to shield her cheek and pull the white strands from her mouth.
"I don't understand....I don't know what you mean.... Daddy, please. I don't know. You made Logan leave...you did..."
"He ruined you. I could have fixed you, taught you right." a sweet hypocrisy that made so much sense if you just listened to the timbre of his voice. "He ruined you. You make me sick- I don't know what G-d was doing to me when he gave you your brother's face." He was spitting and shaking. He was rough fingers on her shoulders, he didn't even realize he was holding her up against the wall now. She was crying quietly.
"Don't ever talk to me again. You don't exist. You'll ruin everything."
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
[infinity serpent: oroborus twisted into two ellipses; head]
8/9/01 3:06 PM Eastern Standard Time
Mathematical instant (bell curved for organic error). She had opened her hand, her knuckles upon the floor,
and released from the wings of her fingers a protean thing. It hummed and tasted like the green of envy. It was infused
with the veins from the underbelly of leaves; from the schematics of cobwebs (the first one, the core and heart of all that
followed). Its soft-as-sunlight layers slowly fluttered like a drowning jelly-fish as it pressed itself through the detritus
of dead-l/hives on the floor. [matchbook; guitar pick; picture of a girl in jeans; a flower pressed in wax paper, labeled
in a European�s script Saintpaulia ionantha ; a video tape the colour of blood and cracked in 3 symmetrical places; a
cat that watches as of yet unconvinced; a rosary; a rabbit�s foot; an icon; a memory; a schism]
Separation Anxiety/Fusion Suspense. She lay the facets of her face against the words of his surfaces. Cool
cells against warm leather. It purred and hissed beneath her nails that pet the arch of his foot as though it were a
pet and a peasant. Her nail >scritched< and >scratched< while her neck >tick, ticked< into the supplication bow.
She closed the curl of her lashes to contend with the perfect radii of his calf. She exhaled leather and breathed out his
body. He formed like a thick black ichor -mercury racing together only to breathe him again. Deconstructing as the
splinter shards of metal imbedded into soft muscle and wore away there. Wounds that would forever weep until they
disappeared completely. Her ivory bones already sewn inside the flesh and metal of his form. She wrapped her arm
around the tide of him and fell soundly asleep. And she could sleep through his violence(because she was the other
side).
Discourse in 7 Minor. �I am coming back around again.� �It has broken till the point where I can taste you
with my mind.� �Please keep the petals, I think they were mine once.� �Can you possess?� �Does the sultry b tch of
time leave her stain where we laid?� �Your water marks are rising.� �I am dying.� �I am everything.� �Shall I puppet
your strings again, darling?� �I can almost hear the bottom now, rising up beneath the bruises.� �Have I left nothing
for you?� �I see one thousand of one thousand through my eyes.� �Here.� �Can you be pulled out from under me?�
�Disease is relative.� �Evolution is binary.� �Death is as hot as the fires of conception.�
Nitro fluid beaded to near petrifaction on the thighs of Marilyn Monroe.
�Why, there is not a soul around who does not know the secret a woman hides in her skirts. Why should we be so
appalled by the lifting of this one or that?� Her narrow shoulders rose in the valley of dying art deco and discard.
�So they call it unhealthy, unethical? A display of parts better left unknown?� She drank coffee in the descending dusk.
4ams to come. �Do you not know me?�
�To hell with them, they don�t understand a single thing you�ve said. They cry for your candor and sew their lips to
sear by their betrayal.�
�I say show me the way back again, the world within the world. I will meet you there again. The most pure vessel.�
�To destroy we must become nothing. And she had nothing there. Neither do I." Lips pursed. "But you know this,
scream as you did inside."
�I love hearing you cry, my pet. I feel as though I am then worthy of love.�
�I could give you a small world. But I think you misunderstand my map of meaning.�
�You can not break what was never whole. And she, my dear, was never the most holy.�
�More to drink?�
�I am the system error in your eyes.�
Somnambulant metaphor for the newly deceased. Oh the rustle of papers is just the tarnish of her passing.
She is like oxygen on silver, galvanizing and scrutinizing and stuck inside the decay of beveled glass. She is the
lives as she passes them, and she treads down the wires of his vertebrae on the fragments he has allotted her to tread.
She will kiss him till electrocution, and magnify the sky till it ruptures her empty sea. She knows another horizon, but
he is eventhorizon, and it/he/they will know the combination to her contagion. She is sick for the first time, and asks
him to replace the lost. She asks him to be tender, she is tired. And to carry her to some place to rest a while.
[format inspiration: j.g.ballard]
8/9/01 3:06 PM Eastern Standard Time
Mathematical instant (bell curved for organic error). She had opened her hand, her knuckles upon the floor,
and released from the wings of her fingers a protean thing. It hummed and tasted like the green of envy. It was infused
with the veins from the underbelly of leaves; from the schematics of cobwebs (the first one, the core and heart of all that
followed). Its soft-as-sunlight layers slowly fluttered like a drowning jelly-fish as it pressed itself through the detritus
of dead-l/hives on the floor. [matchbook; guitar pick; picture of a girl in jeans; a flower pressed in wax paper, labeled
in a European�s script Saintpaulia ionantha ; a video tape the colour of blood and cracked in 3 symmetrical places; a
cat that watches as of yet unconvinced; a rosary; a rabbit�s foot; an icon; a memory; a schism]
Separation Anxiety/Fusion Suspense. She lay the facets of her face against the words of his surfaces. Cool
cells against warm leather. It purred and hissed beneath her nails that pet the arch of his foot as though it were a
pet and a peasant. Her nail >scritched< and >scratched< while her neck >tick, ticked< into the supplication bow.
She closed the curl of her lashes to contend with the perfect radii of his calf. She exhaled leather and breathed out his
body. He formed like a thick black ichor -mercury racing together only to breathe him again. Deconstructing as the
splinter shards of metal imbedded into soft muscle and wore away there. Wounds that would forever weep until they
disappeared completely. Her ivory bones already sewn inside the flesh and metal of his form. She wrapped her arm
around the tide of him and fell soundly asleep. And she could sleep through his violence(because she was the other
side).
Discourse in 7 Minor. �I am coming back around again.� �It has broken till the point where I can taste you
with my mind.� �Please keep the petals, I think they were mine once.� �Can you possess?� �Does the sultry b tch of
time leave her stain where we laid?� �Your water marks are rising.� �I am dying.� �I am everything.� �Shall I puppet
your strings again, darling?� �I can almost hear the bottom now, rising up beneath the bruises.� �Have I left nothing
for you?� �I see one thousand of one thousand through my eyes.� �Here.� �Can you be pulled out from under me?�
�Disease is relative.� �Evolution is binary.� �Death is as hot as the fires of conception.�
Nitro fluid beaded to near petrifaction on the thighs of Marilyn Monroe.
�Why, there is not a soul around who does not know the secret a woman hides in her skirts. Why should we be so
appalled by the lifting of this one or that?� Her narrow shoulders rose in the valley of dying art deco and discard.
�So they call it unhealthy, unethical? A display of parts better left unknown?� She drank coffee in the descending dusk.
4ams to come. �Do you not know me?�
�To hell with them, they don�t understand a single thing you�ve said. They cry for your candor and sew their lips to
sear by their betrayal.�
�I say show me the way back again, the world within the world. I will meet you there again. The most pure vessel.�
�To destroy we must become nothing. And she had nothing there. Neither do I." Lips pursed. "But you know this,
scream as you did inside."
�I love hearing you cry, my pet. I feel as though I am then worthy of love.�
�I could give you a small world. But I think you misunderstand my map of meaning.�
�You can not break what was never whole. And she, my dear, was never the most holy.�
�More to drink?�
�I am the system error in your eyes.�
Somnambulant metaphor for the newly deceased. Oh the rustle of papers is just the tarnish of her passing.
She is like oxygen on silver, galvanizing and scrutinizing and stuck inside the decay of beveled glass. She is the
lives as she passes them, and she treads down the wires of his vertebrae on the fragments he has allotted her to tread.
She will kiss him till electrocution, and magnify the sky till it ruptures her empty sea. She knows another horizon, but
he is eventhorizon, and it/he/they will know the combination to her contagion. She is sick for the first time, and asks
him to replace the lost. She asks him to be tender, she is tired. And to carry her to some place to rest a while.
[format inspiration: j.g.ballard]
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
[defending my muse] (2002-08-22 22:53) -
Laurent: �Neil�ll make me a tree.�
Millicent pitter-pattered through the gaping maw of the dining room. The stone was thick and cold here and she lent it no echo� this room was far more secure in its foundations than she. Yet, there was a more peculiar difference between the siren and this expanse of her forest-swaddled mansion� unlike the ghost-glow the blue-white singer gave off, this room wept shadows. Every corner, every tile, every spanning arch and nook and cranny littered the ground with nasty shapes. There were clawed and sweeping things, there were tendrilling finger-like things, things that were
stuck in perpetual grabs for her slender ankles, and things that slithered, searching for the blood of her children.
Or so she thought when she looked down at them and hopped the unthreatening and lighter shapes like a child�s hop-scotch game. She flitted from moon-glow to moon-glow, ignoring the other distortions from the stained glass windows. She stopped in a particularly well-lit patch, and adjusted the things she held that had been jostled by her mode of transportation.
The distinct hiss of a match being lit. The flare of light. Millicent gave a good �AGHCK!� yelp and tossed all of her accouterments a good three feet in the air.
�Millllliiiicceeeennnttttt, my pet. What a welcome.� The grey man�s grey lips carved a smile of the planes of his face. He lit his cigarette. And then he softened. �Hmm. I always wanted to do that.� Smoke snaked from his mouth.
�Holy f***ing Christ, Laurent. Holy f***ing christ. You Suck.� She bent over to pick up her knick-knacks, hastily hiding the baby things as if she could dodge the topic of conversation through the particular concept of �out of sight, out of mind�.
�Mmmm, No, that�s Maile�s job.� He smirked again. For some reason the gesture was never boring on Laurent�s features. He pushed back his silver hair and it lost its definition in the chiaroscuro mess of smoke and night-light.
�Sick.�
�Actually, I think she likes it.�
�Laurie, you did not come here to talk to me about Maile�s...�
�No.� As if he realized this as he spoke. �You�re right, I did not.� A habitual and somewhat melodramatic sigh.
�Soooo, what was it?�
�Ah. I came to...well...� the cherry of the cigarette flared. �To say good-bye.�
�For good?�
�Mm. Yes. For good.�
�For-good for-good?�
�Yes, Millicent.�
�Have you seen Gabriel?�
�Mayhaps.�
�Not a good enough answer, ...for g-d�s sake, Laurie he�s your��
�A hundred times removed.� There was a feeling of motion and a light breeze emanating from the light point. Milli could almost imagine the spidery wave of the synth-playing fingers.
There was a pause, and then. �A hundred?� Curiosity kills the Milli-cat.
�No, not a hundred.� Laurent laughed. A whispery, thing that was much more frail sounding than it actually was.
�Right.� Vague annoyance.
�So, ...well, then this is good-bye, my dear.� A shuffle of feet, but Millicent distinctly heard the sound of something slithering. Scales?
�I....I�m not saying good-bye to you.� She rose her chin in adolescent defiance-- preconceived and underdeveloped.
�Oh? Have I offended my lady in some way?�
�No. I�m just not saying good-bye to you. I will not relieve you of your attachments just so you feel better. And I won�t relieve you of them because they are ...they are.... you just shouldn�t go.�
�How can you say that, when you don�t even know why I came in the first place?�
�...�
Laurent leaned in close, and Millicent could see him. Though she wasn�t quite sure where the light came from, and wasn�t really sure if it Was light that illuminated him. Something dog-tongue-grey flickered on the man�s lips a moment before he smiled. �Care for a baby-sitter? One could coax me into staying if I could procure a perch in your nursery. I promise I shant play cuckoo... hmmm. Though that is a phenomenal idea.� Laurent leaned away near purring at the thought.
�Don�t you talk like that in front of Me� Millicent was shaking a finger in the snaky features �Don�t you dare. I don�t find that funny in the Slightest.�
�I could teach them french. Je parle francais tres bon, of course. Ah, but you have that british nanny don�t you?�
�F*** you, Laurie.�
�Ah, threat�s and pet-names, it sounds like a movie Logan would rent.�
Millicent frowned, and Laurent reached his spidery grasp to pet back her tousled coils of hair. �I overstep my bounds, I apologize.�
�...why so Formal Laurie?� What emotions are there under the mercury-slick exterior.
�I am always �formal�, ma petite chat.�
�Not like this.....what�s bothering you?�
Light glinted in the creature�s eyes and he leaned in even farther. Millicent was compelled to take a step back. It was instinctual, she couldn�t help herself.
Laurent�s mouth parted to speak, the >hiss< nearly breaking the crest of his sea-lulling patois. The air around them thickened, and the edges of him tasted her for just a moment� testing the limits and vectors from which it was all the better to pounce her from. (From every direction. For, he was every one of them.)
And then he relinquished her space to her once again.
�Good Evening, Millicent. I shall see you again, be certain of it.�
�I always, and ever will be, Laurie.�
�Mm. So you say.�
*Title by Tori
Laurent: �Neil�ll make me a tree.�
Millicent pitter-pattered through the gaping maw of the dining room. The stone was thick and cold here and she lent it no echo� this room was far more secure in its foundations than she. Yet, there was a more peculiar difference between the siren and this expanse of her forest-swaddled mansion� unlike the ghost-glow the blue-white singer gave off, this room wept shadows. Every corner, every tile, every spanning arch and nook and cranny littered the ground with nasty shapes. There were clawed and sweeping things, there were tendrilling finger-like things, things that were
stuck in perpetual grabs for her slender ankles, and things that slithered, searching for the blood of her children.
Or so she thought when she looked down at them and hopped the unthreatening and lighter shapes like a child�s hop-scotch game. She flitted from moon-glow to moon-glow, ignoring the other distortions from the stained glass windows. She stopped in a particularly well-lit patch, and adjusted the things she held that had been jostled by her mode of transportation.
The distinct hiss of a match being lit. The flare of light. Millicent gave a good �AGHCK!� yelp and tossed all of her accouterments a good three feet in the air.
�Millllliiiicceeeennnttttt, my pet. What a welcome.� The grey man�s grey lips carved a smile of the planes of his face. He lit his cigarette. And then he softened. �Hmm. I always wanted to do that.� Smoke snaked from his mouth.
�Holy f***ing Christ, Laurent. Holy f***ing christ. You Suck.� She bent over to pick up her knick-knacks, hastily hiding the baby things as if she could dodge the topic of conversation through the particular concept of �out of sight, out of mind�.
�Mmmm, No, that�s Maile�s job.� He smirked again. For some reason the gesture was never boring on Laurent�s features. He pushed back his silver hair and it lost its definition in the chiaroscuro mess of smoke and night-light.
�Sick.�
�Actually, I think she likes it.�
�Laurie, you did not come here to talk to me about Maile�s...�
�No.� As if he realized this as he spoke. �You�re right, I did not.� A habitual and somewhat melodramatic sigh.
�Soooo, what was it?�
�Ah. I came to...well...� the cherry of the cigarette flared. �To say good-bye.�
�For good?�
�Mm. Yes. For good.�
�For-good for-good?�
�Yes, Millicent.�
�Have you seen Gabriel?�
�Mayhaps.�
�Not a good enough answer, ...for g-d�s sake, Laurie he�s your��
�A hundred times removed.� There was a feeling of motion and a light breeze emanating from the light point. Milli could almost imagine the spidery wave of the synth-playing fingers.
There was a pause, and then. �A hundred?� Curiosity kills the Milli-cat.
�No, not a hundred.� Laurent laughed. A whispery, thing that was much more frail sounding than it actually was.
�Right.� Vague annoyance.
�So, ...well, then this is good-bye, my dear.� A shuffle of feet, but Millicent distinctly heard the sound of something slithering. Scales?
�I....I�m not saying good-bye to you.� She rose her chin in adolescent defiance-- preconceived and underdeveloped.
�Oh? Have I offended my lady in some way?�
�No. I�m just not saying good-bye to you. I will not relieve you of your attachments just so you feel better. And I won�t relieve you of them because they are ...they are.... you just shouldn�t go.�
�How can you say that, when you don�t even know why I came in the first place?�
�...�
Laurent leaned in close, and Millicent could see him. Though she wasn�t quite sure where the light came from, and wasn�t really sure if it Was light that illuminated him. Something dog-tongue-grey flickered on the man�s lips a moment before he smiled. �Care for a baby-sitter? One could coax me into staying if I could procure a perch in your nursery. I promise I shant play cuckoo... hmmm. Though that is a phenomenal idea.� Laurent leaned away near purring at the thought.
�Don�t you talk like that in front of Me� Millicent was shaking a finger in the snaky features �Don�t you dare. I don�t find that funny in the Slightest.�
�I could teach them french. Je parle francais tres bon, of course. Ah, but you have that british nanny don�t you?�
�F*** you, Laurie.�
�Ah, threat�s and pet-names, it sounds like a movie Logan would rent.�
Millicent frowned, and Laurent reached his spidery grasp to pet back her tousled coils of hair. �I overstep my bounds, I apologize.�
�...why so Formal Laurie?� What emotions are there under the mercury-slick exterior.
�I am always �formal�, ma petite chat.�
�Not like this.....what�s bothering you?�
Light glinted in the creature�s eyes and he leaned in even farther. Millicent was compelled to take a step back. It was instinctual, she couldn�t help herself.
Laurent�s mouth parted to speak, the >hiss< nearly breaking the crest of his sea-lulling patois. The air around them thickened, and the edges of him tasted her for just a moment� testing the limits and vectors from which it was all the better to pounce her from. (From every direction. For, he was every one of them.)
And then he relinquished her space to her once again.
�Good Evening, Millicent. I shall see you again, be certain of it.�
�I always, and ever will be, Laurie.�
�Mm. So you say.�
*Title by Tori
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
[Throwing Muses.] (2002-08-23 11:55)
Prologue: /\/\
Black and white filter for this scene:
She was a chiaroscuro mess of milk in an obsidian puddle of street-fluid. The alley was midnight-starved,
missing all stars to the dark matter that would finally turn her in. Black-black-black. She lay there, her skin
white/blue as moonlight, twisted into a bone-bareing spinal landscape. Her switchblade hip bones protruded in their
unnatural angles and her little sylvan curves pressed down onto the concrete to affect some modesty she did not
have in life. The black rook/raven wings needled into her back were always malformed by the weight of our perfect
humanity. The silver wires that bound them in archaic-tribal tethers shone like metal rising up from her insides,
exposing modifications from our mechanical future. Even her once absinthetic eyes had greyed in the cataracts of this
death, and her white hair suckled the black blood of the city.
A siren�s last song� the yellowing-blue bruise around her throat still carried the shape of your fingers as you
strangled the eternal victim with the first beautiful glimpse of your second, true personality.
EV: Fragile, fine-boned, resilient as mythology�s burden of meaning and self-evisceration.
[dead- she�d fold like a flower in your arms- petalshaped lips parting just wide enough for your tongue]
Body: |
One must always adjust one�s filter-appropriate. Perhaps Sepia this time:
She gritted her teeth and hissed at him. The last curling plume of air pressed opacity out through the black
keys in the piano of her grimace into the cold night air. His fingers just held her tighter. Becoming whiter at their tips
as they bled some colour through pressure into her neck.
�What was that?� he said. With the voice of Everyone and Everything. And with their Power and with their Force (with their Validity)
he slammed her shoulder blades into the brick of the alley wall. The tatters of ribbons and
corset fluttered, and did not protect the wing-bones from the scratches they received from the rough of the wall. �Say
something, sweetheart. You always had so much to say.�
She croaked her Fear at him, but she did not produce Hate. Nor even Anger. She had seen this coming a hundred times. The Sibyl Says ��
But she did grip his arm, his wrist, she marred it with the moon cycles of her nails. It was not at the tightening
force but at the weight of her he was pulling from the ground. He was raising her to Hekate who hid behind the
cast iron fire-escapes and the falling shingles of the audience-buildings. She fumbled uselessly with him, as he fumbled
expertly with the hem of her taffeta and tulle.
He licked her face from chin-tip to cheekbone when he was ready. And he silenced her incantation with the
full cup of his hand when All of him pressed All of her to the bricks. His hot breath condensed against her skin,
and dripped his fluid down the slope of her neck, building the reservoir at the nape in a pattern of perfect, diamond
drops. She could finally enter her crystallized world, wrapped in a chrysalis of Their polar molecules. He told her a
thousand stories in the rhythm of his breathing. And she returned them finished to him, tails of a thousand endings.
The tendrils of her chin-length hair tapped these out to him in Morse code, sticking each dot and dash to his sweaty
features while tracing out a network of veins for blood he never had.
Jabberwocky, she thought.
The red they all had. She imagined them thanking her through him. Tearing flesh was the only way they
knew how-- she recalled their communication correctly. She watched the red blossom of his Self unfold, reflecting an
unseen sunlight in scarlet over her hips, her stomach, her legs. Like a game of buttercups beneath the sharp chins of
children.
He shook her by her throat, as if to get every last drop of scent and sight and sound out of her. She had
been such a wasteful receptacle, hoarding her shadow of understanding and doling it out one by one when she had
never realized she could just contaminate the water and reach Everyone. She loved the blue around her throat. She
loved him too. Afterall, she loved and f***ed everything on the level at which she met everyone. Even under the last
curling insult of his tongue, pricking a pink, skewered piece of her that no longer knew how to react to the touch of a
man (or woman, whomever.) She was beyond poetry and had entered prose.
He composed himself, and as surely as the yellow spread through the veins around her necklace, he swiftly
toed her ribs with the solidity of his boot. She twisted, half of her rolling into the obsidian rain water puddle on the
ally floor. All the meanwhile the metal of her tattoos winked irony into the starless night. He couldn�t help but bend
over and try to make sense of the sigils she�d carved into her back, lost to time and Hope years ago. He thought he�d
taken Everything from her �all her secrets. [You silly thing, you always had them.] And he was angered by the fact
he could not decode this one confusing detail of her own story. Her own story? .... Lo, Defeat! You selfish creature!
The translation was imperfect! Auto-narcisissm. Her existence was doomed in the very incarnation of existing itself.
You are not a story teller if you have a story to be told, my sweet.
He kicked her one good, last time as her eyes dulled over. You kicked her as your eyes dulled over. But she
had long since disappeared and left the white larvae of her body. Incorporeal. She�d been gone for years, given her
greatest faculty to a boy who had more slender hands and gentler eyes.
At least for her.
And that was all that mattered now.
Epilogue: E
Two fictions.
Non-fiction.
Two deaths.
Vanity in creating an archetype.
I apologize.
Tying up loose Ends.
Prologue: /\/\
Black and white filter for this scene:
She was a chiaroscuro mess of milk in an obsidian puddle of street-fluid. The alley was midnight-starved,
missing all stars to the dark matter that would finally turn her in. Black-black-black. She lay there, her skin
white/blue as moonlight, twisted into a bone-bareing spinal landscape. Her switchblade hip bones protruded in their
unnatural angles and her little sylvan curves pressed down onto the concrete to affect some modesty she did not
have in life. The black rook/raven wings needled into her back were always malformed by the weight of our perfect
humanity. The silver wires that bound them in archaic-tribal tethers shone like metal rising up from her insides,
exposing modifications from our mechanical future. Even her once absinthetic eyes had greyed in the cataracts of this
death, and her white hair suckled the black blood of the city.
A siren�s last song� the yellowing-blue bruise around her throat still carried the shape of your fingers as you
strangled the eternal victim with the first beautiful glimpse of your second, true personality.
EV: Fragile, fine-boned, resilient as mythology�s burden of meaning and self-evisceration.
[dead- she�d fold like a flower in your arms- petalshaped lips parting just wide enough for your tongue]
Body: |
One must always adjust one�s filter-appropriate. Perhaps Sepia this time:
She gritted her teeth and hissed at him. The last curling plume of air pressed opacity out through the black
keys in the piano of her grimace into the cold night air. His fingers just held her tighter. Becoming whiter at their tips
as they bled some colour through pressure into her neck.
�What was that?� he said. With the voice of Everyone and Everything. And with their Power and with their Force (with their Validity)
he slammed her shoulder blades into the brick of the alley wall. The tatters of ribbons and
corset fluttered, and did not protect the wing-bones from the scratches they received from the rough of the wall. �Say
something, sweetheart. You always had so much to say.�
She croaked her Fear at him, but she did not produce Hate. Nor even Anger. She had seen this coming a hundred times. The Sibyl Says ��
But she did grip his arm, his wrist, she marred it with the moon cycles of her nails. It was not at the tightening
force but at the weight of her he was pulling from the ground. He was raising her to Hekate who hid behind the
cast iron fire-escapes and the falling shingles of the audience-buildings. She fumbled uselessly with him, as he fumbled
expertly with the hem of her taffeta and tulle.
He licked her face from chin-tip to cheekbone when he was ready. And he silenced her incantation with the
full cup of his hand when All of him pressed All of her to the bricks. His hot breath condensed against her skin,
and dripped his fluid down the slope of her neck, building the reservoir at the nape in a pattern of perfect, diamond
drops. She could finally enter her crystallized world, wrapped in a chrysalis of Their polar molecules. He told her a
thousand stories in the rhythm of his breathing. And she returned them finished to him, tails of a thousand endings.
The tendrils of her chin-length hair tapped these out to him in Morse code, sticking each dot and dash to his sweaty
features while tracing out a network of veins for blood he never had.
Jabberwocky, she thought.
The red they all had. She imagined them thanking her through him. Tearing flesh was the only way they
knew how-- she recalled their communication correctly. She watched the red blossom of his Self unfold, reflecting an
unseen sunlight in scarlet over her hips, her stomach, her legs. Like a game of buttercups beneath the sharp chins of
children.
He shook her by her throat, as if to get every last drop of scent and sight and sound out of her. She had
been such a wasteful receptacle, hoarding her shadow of understanding and doling it out one by one when she had
never realized she could just contaminate the water and reach Everyone. She loved the blue around her throat. She
loved him too. Afterall, she loved and f***ed everything on the level at which she met everyone. Even under the last
curling insult of his tongue, pricking a pink, skewered piece of her that no longer knew how to react to the touch of a
man (or woman, whomever.) She was beyond poetry and had entered prose.
He composed himself, and as surely as the yellow spread through the veins around her necklace, he swiftly
toed her ribs with the solidity of his boot. She twisted, half of her rolling into the obsidian rain water puddle on the
ally floor. All the meanwhile the metal of her tattoos winked irony into the starless night. He couldn�t help but bend
over and try to make sense of the sigils she�d carved into her back, lost to time and Hope years ago. He thought he�d
taken Everything from her �all her secrets. [You silly thing, you always had them.] And he was angered by the fact
he could not decode this one confusing detail of her own story. Her own story? .... Lo, Defeat! You selfish creature!
The translation was imperfect! Auto-narcisissm. Her existence was doomed in the very incarnation of existing itself.
You are not a story teller if you have a story to be told, my sweet.
He kicked her one good, last time as her eyes dulled over. You kicked her as your eyes dulled over. But she
had long since disappeared and left the white larvae of her body. Incorporeal. She�d been gone for years, given her
greatest faculty to a boy who had more slender hands and gentler eyes.
At least for her.
And that was all that mattered now.
Epilogue: E
Two fictions.
Non-fiction.
Two deaths.
Vanity in creating an archetype.
I apologize.
Tying up loose Ends.
-
Millicent Grim
- Adventurer
- Posts: 91
- Joined: Wed May 23, 2018 12:43 pm
- Location: The Sacrifice Club
Re: l'histoire d'une fille
"he sure could yell"� Millicent
7/05/04 6:41pm
Stairway to glory.
Spinal delivery down the superhighway.
Excuse me I'm coming through.
Excuse me where have you been?
Excuse me f*** you.
Excuse me that's
...for f***'s sake, Millicent. Wake up.
She shook her head, waking up from a terrible tumble through her consciousness. One that left her bitter and broken at the bottom of a glass she'd left on her night table. Laced with something. Laced with laces. Wrapped up in lace. She wasn't quite sure where she was going with this. She picked her hand up from the floor, where it had dangled and then laid in her slumber. She lay on the edge of her bed, the corner of it having left a bisecting mark on her cheek.
Bisected.
Irony.
She tasted her mouth, pushing the dry top of her tongue up against the dry roof. Where was she?
The apartment. Who's apartment? She squinted at the clock. 10pm. Must be ... must be Casey's apartment. With no Casey. Right now, that's the best case scenario. So in theory, she was content.
She pulled the lace boyshorts back over her hips, pulled the sheets up around her tiny shoulders and pressed the smooth,high threadcount cotton against her milkwhite skin. Her morning pout looked perfectly picturesque as she pushed her snow-white curls away from her face. They licked her neck, the bite marks there, covered her up, lay lounging and luxurious behind her, over a knick of shoulder. You couldn't take a better picture of Millicent this year.
"Wren.."
That was the significance of last night. Wren. Her son. Her boy. Time had kept going for him while it had stopped for her. Time kept speeding forward, wrenching that creature's bones into new shapes, making a man of him. A "man" like his father. Millicent knew no men, and knew not what was happening to her son. But she remembered his eyes, cool, calculating, wiser than his years should have allowed but ... Not wise enough. Not beyond the lies that numbers weave, not beyond the bias that is belief. Not in full bloom, not in full flower. He had notions in his heart, and they played with the way he saw things. You have to forsake the world to forgive it, to take it into yourself. To imbibe it as it is and open your eyes past where it wants to take you. Where it wills you. With everyone else. Where everyone else wants to take you.
F*** every one else.
She didn't want him to be that way. She wanted him to be perfect. She didn't want him to make the mistakes that humanity has made. She didn't know what to say to him. She wanted to consume him to save him. But she held no illusions. Her idea of consumption in this case was to take him with her. She was the devourer. Show him. But she knew she did not have the answer, and had fallen far from it. But she had realized this too late. It was not too late from him. Who should she give him to? Who would teach him? She would weep at the answer, for she knew the only teacher was time. And time was what none of us had. None. Lethe had taken the easy way out.
Lethe had freed herself.
Lethe had stepped completely into her shadow and was taken by the ichor. Transmutated into something sick, and perfect, Perfectly different from us all. She was the underscore in a world gone bad-translation. She was the better orchestra for the final piece. She was the bookey, the tomb. Lethe walked the strings of the streets, and now listened to them hum for her in their atomic chords. Lethe was grace... Lethe was Logos.
Millicent wiped the underside of her nose with the back of her arm. She coughed a morning cough and pulled herself to the windowsill. She said good afternoon to the world, as an opaline monument in the large window. RhyDin proper shone and reflected off the street and into her absinthe-coloured eyes.
"Casey... god."
Why do you let me wake up every morning. For out there, somewhere, is Gabriel.
She could hear his heartbeat. Feel his blood running through the street. If she closed her eyes she could follow the vibrations, run like electricity through circuits and find him at the core. Wherever he was. Shew knew him like her circulatory system. Though he ran thin in soul these days of late, he had left it like a snail trail through the city. Each day, each footstep he diluted into merely the wake of his passing. Taking more and more from the thing that lead the trail. He unwound like a sweater, he shimmered as his portion ran out. She wondered when there was nothing left, if he would live in the trails and the expanse of his wanderings. Gabriel the network beast. Gabriel in all his mutations of his past--his future. Or would it all just...wink out.
Regardless. She wanted to mainline him.
Pull up one of the trembling, silken lines he left, and push it like a needle under her skin. She wanted to shock his system. Remind her insides. Punish him for leaving with the wretched home she had for him. God.... She shivered and pressed her aching body against the cold glass. Anit-cauterizing herself. She came.
7/05/04 6:41pm
Stairway to glory.
Spinal delivery down the superhighway.
Excuse me I'm coming through.
Excuse me where have you been?
Excuse me f*** you.
Excuse me that's
...for f***'s sake, Millicent. Wake up.
She shook her head, waking up from a terrible tumble through her consciousness. One that left her bitter and broken at the bottom of a glass she'd left on her night table. Laced with something. Laced with laces. Wrapped up in lace. She wasn't quite sure where she was going with this. She picked her hand up from the floor, where it had dangled and then laid in her slumber. She lay on the edge of her bed, the corner of it having left a bisecting mark on her cheek.
Bisected.
Irony.
She tasted her mouth, pushing the dry top of her tongue up against the dry roof. Where was she?
The apartment. Who's apartment? She squinted at the clock. 10pm. Must be ... must be Casey's apartment. With no Casey. Right now, that's the best case scenario. So in theory, she was content.
She pulled the lace boyshorts back over her hips, pulled the sheets up around her tiny shoulders and pressed the smooth,high threadcount cotton against her milkwhite skin. Her morning pout looked perfectly picturesque as she pushed her snow-white curls away from her face. They licked her neck, the bite marks there, covered her up, lay lounging and luxurious behind her, over a knick of shoulder. You couldn't take a better picture of Millicent this year.
"Wren.."
That was the significance of last night. Wren. Her son. Her boy. Time had kept going for him while it had stopped for her. Time kept speeding forward, wrenching that creature's bones into new shapes, making a man of him. A "man" like his father. Millicent knew no men, and knew not what was happening to her son. But she remembered his eyes, cool, calculating, wiser than his years should have allowed but ... Not wise enough. Not beyond the lies that numbers weave, not beyond the bias that is belief. Not in full bloom, not in full flower. He had notions in his heart, and they played with the way he saw things. You have to forsake the world to forgive it, to take it into yourself. To imbibe it as it is and open your eyes past where it wants to take you. Where it wills you. With everyone else. Where everyone else wants to take you.
F*** every one else.
She didn't want him to be that way. She wanted him to be perfect. She didn't want him to make the mistakes that humanity has made. She didn't know what to say to him. She wanted to consume him to save him. But she held no illusions. Her idea of consumption in this case was to take him with her. She was the devourer. Show him. But she knew she did not have the answer, and had fallen far from it. But she had realized this too late. It was not too late from him. Who should she give him to? Who would teach him? She would weep at the answer, for she knew the only teacher was time. And time was what none of us had. None. Lethe had taken the easy way out.
Lethe had freed herself.
Lethe had stepped completely into her shadow and was taken by the ichor. Transmutated into something sick, and perfect, Perfectly different from us all. She was the underscore in a world gone bad-translation. She was the better orchestra for the final piece. She was the bookey, the tomb. Lethe walked the strings of the streets, and now listened to them hum for her in their atomic chords. Lethe was grace... Lethe was Logos.
Millicent wiped the underside of her nose with the back of her arm. She coughed a morning cough and pulled herself to the windowsill. She said good afternoon to the world, as an opaline monument in the large window. RhyDin proper shone and reflected off the street and into her absinthe-coloured eyes.
"Casey... god."
Why do you let me wake up every morning. For out there, somewhere, is Gabriel.
She could hear his heartbeat. Feel his blood running through the street. If she closed her eyes she could follow the vibrations, run like electricity through circuits and find him at the core. Wherever he was. Shew knew him like her circulatory system. Though he ran thin in soul these days of late, he had left it like a snail trail through the city. Each day, each footstep he diluted into merely the wake of his passing. Taking more and more from the thing that lead the trail. He unwound like a sweater, he shimmered as his portion ran out. She wondered when there was nothing left, if he would live in the trails and the expanse of his wanderings. Gabriel the network beast. Gabriel in all his mutations of his past--his future. Or would it all just...wink out.
Regardless. She wanted to mainline him.
Pull up one of the trembling, silken lines he left, and push it like a needle under her skin. She wanted to shock his system. Remind her insides. Punish him for leaving with the wretched home she had for him. God.... She shivered and pressed her aching body against the cold glass. Anit-cauterizing herself. She came.
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