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madgirlwriting-archive-blog · 9 years ago

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❝We'll do everything on our own.❞ :: ❝How bad is it?❞ :: ❝I'll come back for you.❞ :: ❝It wasn't an act.❞ :: ❝Tell me what to do!❞

❝We’ll do everything on our own.❞

Summer in California wasprobably unbearable for the people who hadn’t lived in California their wholelives, it struck Alice. It was because she had. Sheknew that it was because she had, that the humidity that was neartangible in its heavy, lingering presence did not bother her. It, instead, justleft a delicate sheen of summer-time perspiration on her slowly tanning skin.The hair along her hairline, and under her ponytail, at the nape of her neckcurled because of the heat-wave – looking rather like wilted sunflower petals.And though there was no breeze, the skin exposed by a rucked up tank top thecolour of the ripest of strawberries felt good anyway, despite the heat fromthe sun-kissed metal ( which was nowhere near as enchanting assun-kissed tresses – not that the natural gold of her hair needed any kissesfrom the sun ) that pressed against the base of her spine.

She lay atop the hood of Yvonne’s car,already comfortable due to the familiarity of the place and the position, withher palms flat on either side of her denim-clad hips, and her elbow nudginginto her companion’s. It was so comfortable, and so familiar, that Alice didnot freeze, seize or in any way outrageously ( or, as it was quitepossible, embarrassingly – as that happened to be the way things likedto go with Yvonne in the equation, often ) react to the softnessof Yvonne’s words, let alone process the possible magnitude that might becurdling between the syllables.

When Yvonne painted such a picturein her mind, and on such a day, Alice found herself tempted; swept away, andinto the image. It was the colour of the ocean – possibly the taste of it, too– and the brightness of Yvonne Reichmann’s genuine, life-saving,heart-attacking smile. It made her put aside her plans – all of these big plansthat she’d had to keep herself going, to have something to strive for,because she needed to strive for something. It was like the breeze theday lacked, and Alice seemed to possess the lightness ( a rare lightness,since responsibilities & her overthinking, self-stimulating nature weigheddown on her shoulders near constantly ) and she let Yvonne make her feelit.

She knocked their elbows together, and shedid it on purpose, like a Hello, I’m glad to have you that she didn’thave the nerve to say out-loud just yet, but had begun to think more and moreoften. She turned her head, cheek pressing against and resting on hot metal,and smiled a smile to respond the one she could hear in Yvonne’s voice. “Maybewe could,” Alice hummed the words, and if her voice carried a dreamy note toit, it was easily blamed on ( no, not attributed to, but blamedon ) the fact that the blonde who might as well have been the goddamn sun, for all of the god damn light she exuded all of thedamn time, who made Alice feel like it wasn’t a hot car that they lay on topof.

It couldeasily have been a cloud.

❝How bad is it?❞

Lettie did notanswer – or, more accurately, she could not answer.

There was a lumpin her throat. If someone cut open that lump, they would find a scream. If theyput a hand inside the scream, they would pull out a sob – the sort to curdleblood; the sort that made the ground feel like it was quaking before everyonerealizes it’s not just the ground. This lump was not new, or at leastthe contents of it were not. But if she couldn’t have afforded to let it out adecade ago, then this was a whole another ball-game. She couldn’t afford to letany of it out. She had to let her split-open, bloodied bottom lip quiver theway her lungs had been doing, corrupted for as long as she could remember.Every cut and painful, throbbing bruise on her face could continue toache.

LettieBaudelaire did not fall apart. She did not know how.

Shejust knew how to be strong; a rock.

She had to keep it together.

She reachedacross the space between herself and Theo – into the pile of hastily-grabbedsupplies she had grabbed, everything she could think of and whatever they couldspend money on, on rumpled white sheets her sister’s open wound continued tostain – and her fist curled around the neck of a bottle of cheap liquor. Theclear liquid inside sloshed with the force with which she opened it, throwingthe cap of the bottle right back in the pile. If there was one thing that shehad learnt from her father, it was this: it wasn’t about the brand, it wasabout the bite. And when she threw back a mouthful, it bit badenough that she choked on it, gasping at the way it stung. Lettie gagged, andpoured another slosh of liquid back over her struggle. Her eyes stung andwatered, but she didn’t choke on it.

Instead, she swallowed.

Warm moisturetrailed out of the corner of her eyes, leaving salt-water tracks on her cheeks.She did not use a battered fist to wipe them away. Lettie let them linger, andpicked up the needle and thread she had just disinfected. “Vodka?” her tone wasall feigned humour – that was what coated the lump: lies. “Tastes likefucking lighter fluid, Christ.” She managed the words, even smoothly.The liquor had been sharp; she was willing to entertain the possibility of adisintegrated lump, of a scream and a sob drowned and decaying, dead.She still didn’t answer her sister’s question. She still couldn’t saythe words. Maybe her lack of reply had nothing to do with the lump in herthroat. Maybe it had everything to do with the fact that she couldn’t even lookTheo in the eye. Maybe she didn’t even want to think about it.

Cerulean iriseshooked on flesh sliced open. Her own wounds – each one of which she felt, andcould still ignore – did not bother her. She’d had a lifetime of feeling them.Before she had met her sister, they had been her best friends. They feltlike the version of ‘home’ she’d had most of her life. It was Theo’s,however, that made bile rise at the back of her throat. It tasted more toxicthan the vodka had. She swallowed that back down, too.

Shedidn’t look away.

Lettie grabbeda corner of the bedsheet and pulled, hard, ripping off a corner. “It’s a motel,Theo, I don’t care,” she sighed, dousing it in the same liquor she’dattempted and succeeded in pouring down her throat. She pressed it to thewound, disinfecting it.

How bad is it? She contemplatedTheo’s words as she dabbed at the wound, still thinking when her sister winced.Her tongue flicked out to wet her dry bottom lip, tasting the metallic tang ofdried blood she’d forgotten about as she focused on the colour of the girlsitting on the bed in front of her. She almost replied: Enough to kill himall over again.

❝I’ll come back for you.❞

Time was a ficklething, she knew. For others, undeniably, but for her and her beloved –well, they seemed to be in a league of their own: in this league, time didn’tjust fuck them over; no, time fucked them over thoroughly. It slippedthrough their fingers all of the time, whether it was good or bad, quicker andmore effective than water. It was like a particularly strong wave of the ocean:its salt burned and blinded, and it knocked them out of the game. No sharksnecessary – which was not to say they didn’t have those circling them, regardless.

It wasn’t just fickle forslipping, though. Oh no. Time trickled slower, somehow,when it was needed to quicken.

Her breathcaught. She fell back into a memory, trying to get it back, swimming irises rollingback in her head as consciousness gave way to something headier. The irresistiblyseductive scent of freshly-baked, flaky and buttered and still warm croissantsfilled the air. Rain and dirt made room for something that smelled likewhatever it was that humans called a home. There was a contraptionbetween slender, pretty fingers – someone called it an hourglass. Musicplayed, and Audrey meant to hum the words, the sound so sweet to her, but thesaccharine coating her throat drowned her, and pulled her back.

This taste had no rightto taste new. She had never not existed withit. Death had never tasted like this to her before; This was the irony of the death beingher own.

“You cannot,” Audrey pled. She felt like she was at thebottom of that very hourglass. Grains of sand fell on her, curled into crevicesand rolled into her system, replacing everything inside of her with it. She wasa witch, a banshee, and a sandbag. It was ridiculous. It was so preposterous,so characteristically scatter-brained of her fathom, and she couldn’t laugh. Allshe could do was choke on the sweetness in her mouth, this taste that she couldnot escape, that overwhelmed her and overpowered her as it had neverdone before.

She wouldn’t make it. She couldn’t lie to herself about it. Denial was not an option.

Her body heavedand flinched. Audrey was sure it was falling away, cracking the earth atopwhich her body lay. She no longer knew whether the sound of the thunder existedin her mind – from memory upon memory upon memory of the solace wherehers and Brynhildr’s love blossomed more infinitely than any of theroots Brynhildr had ever been – or whether it truly crackled in the sky hergaze focused and unfocused on, mocking them.

The sky did not matter. Nothing in it did.

Her hands werepaler than they had ever been; feeling, for the first time, as fragileas they looked. One lifted to Brynhildr’s face, a palm curving against the lineof a jaw she could spend an eternity curled under and not have enough of. “Youcannot come back. You must not.” If there was something her beloved said toher, Audrey was too lost in a sea ( of water that slipped, or sandthat suffocated – it didn’t matter, because it burned all the same ) tounderstand. Her voice was hardly a whisper, but Brynhildr would understand.Theirs was an intertwining beyond words, or even magic: theirs was asundeniable a lacing of souls as popcorn-butter-covered fingers laced on top ofa red-velvet arm-rest; tangible and transparent all at once.

“Dear heart,”her voice ached, “you cannot save me. In a choice between your safety and mysurvival, it is no choice at all. Leave.”

❝It wasn’t an act.❞

In her most (albeit intentionally ) human forms, she called herself AudreyChaplin. She held no relationship with, let alone an intricate and thoroughlyshamed one, the magical world. She was nothing but a person – and thesweetness in her mouth, cloying to the point where it ought to very well prompta tooth-ache, were better attributed to the cherry-flavoured lollipop’s sheliked to pop from one side of her mouth to other, the lump teasing from one pinkcheek to another. She liked to hold conversations with anyone that would have her,and then she would chatter their ears of. She was a spotlight in her ownright, surprising no one who’d had the pleasure of basking in her light,when it was under one where she looked best.

People spoke ofstage-fright. But, though she’d never be tactless or cruel enough toridicule a soul for it, she never understood. The warmth of the light, the wayit blinded her and liberated her in one fell swoop, was what freedom was.Audrey Chaplin knew how to revel in it. She could step on a stage, her shoesbelonging to the role she dominated in that opportunity, and she would not stopat merely owning it – no, Audrey became them.

There would be no magic or sweetnessbeyond her own. This could not be taken from her. This was who she was.

And yet,perhaps it was that this was who she was, and it came naturally enoughto her ( that was, more naturally than an inhalation of oxygen ) thatbrought this review from the woman’s beautiful, pleased-looking mouth. Somehow,Audrey was not the least bit sheepish about it. The grin that curled her own paintedmouth was honest, in the way that all of her smiles were. It was to the beingshe smiled at, however, that the undeniable reverence in her gazehad to be attributed.

She did not refute Brynhildr’sstatement. It hadn’t been an act.

With a bat ofthick, heavily mascaraed lashes, she winked. She was brighter than the gold glitter feathered over her eyelids. Not a witch, not a banshee, butwith the appeal of a siren. Her hands caught on Brynhildr’s, slotting their palms together and squeezing, every shift in expression and gesture a screaming, loud representation of her unconcealed and unpunished pride and pleasure. “Thank you for coming to see, my love. I amglad you enjoyed it.”

❝Tell me what to do!❞

How had she gottenhere? Millie had no idea.

Twenty-sevenyears of life, and one corner of it had seen a side of her – more broken, andmuch darker, than anything she could have dreamt up in one of the nightmaresthat had plagued her behind the hangings of her red-and-gold four-poster – thatthe other would not even recognise. To the person to whom the questionwas addressed, the ginger-haired girl with laughter that was equal partsobnoxious and infectious was nothing but a distant memory, nothing but justenough battered bauble to stick into a box after the party was over, useful fornothing more than an ill-advised, yet inevitable, tumble down Memory Lane.

This person hadhair a shade of blonde that touched on the idea of platinum blonde, butnever quite got there. She spent more time working than she did anything else,and she made a difference – a difference that she could see, which waswhat she had needed, because it was all that could overpower the grating voiceinside her head that told her to strive for redemptions for sins that she hadnever committed and carried the weight of, simply because there had been noother shoulders rigid enough to be able to suffer this suffering that hadbecome hers to keep. She did not have as much of an appetite anymore:not for food, not for life. The smudges under her eyes, permanently-etched buteasily hidden by the right amount of makeup, spoke multitudes about how sleep,and the peace meant to come with it, had lost its appetite for her, aswell. Gone was her love for impulse, replaced instead by the safety ofroutine and habit that was much more appreciated by her than it wouldhave ever been by a red-haired, wisp of a girl.

Andyet, the witch did not crumble over it. She had quit crumbling along, long while ago.

Where one versionMillie Elwyn would have been horrified, she had been drowned in the past for avery good reason. This version was stronger. This one might look more broken onthe outside, at least to those who had been attached enough to admire her zealfor every aspect of life, but it was in moments such as this one that therealisation struck, and struck hard: this person was no sandcastle; shewas the one suited up in armour, assigned and determined to protect any shakyfoundation, morally bound by the need for a peace of mind that came hither no otherway.

Tell me what to do! Panicflooded the words.

Onceupon a time, she would have gotten carried away in the tide of it. Now, shecould square her shoulders. There would be no tears or trembling fingers, onlyyears and years of training, education and experience that kept her shouldersstraight and confident, and kept a sort of resilience and intrinsic power thatwas more infectious – and more useful, to be frank – than any silly, naïvechild’s laughter had ever been. She may have been tainted ( madejagged, pain-stained ), but she was still a person that could lookinto someone’s eyes and say, “Trust me,” and not fear any untimelydemise.

angsty starters ( + sad quotes / song lyrics. )

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