Key Objects as Storytelling
i.Randy wasn’t good at sauntering. He felt kind of awkward holding his head high and acting like he knew where he was, what he was doing. So he opened the door to Old Main cautiously. It was heavy, like history.
The stairs were grooved with age and wet with rain. He nearly slipped as he tried not to look down.
When he found 201, he paused momentarily. Straightened his shirt. Coughed a bit. First impressions could be important; he never really knew from class to class how he looked to the room.
The room looked aged, like some forgery artist had dragged a teabag over it and singed the edges with a Zippo. It was nearly empty, except for the professor.
He decided sauntering would be a bad idea. Instead, he shuffled. He barely lifted his hiking boots from the carpet as he moved toward the center of the classroom and sat. Front and center. Good impression.
The short-sleeved Oxford was a good choice. It blended with the colors of the room, browns and greens, but the plaid stood out. Clashed, but he didn’t notice. Even the thin stripes of white made him less distinguishable from the back wall.
ii.
It’s a blanket. When I breathe, it smothers me. With the suffocation come hallucinations. That’s what the doctor said.
My breathing slows as I let the night fill me. No stars to stop them. Not a sliver of moon to cut open the blanket and rescue me.
The first voice is a man’s. It says my name like a fact. “Bess.” He is a man of the smothering void. Deep voice, but not deep enough to be truly frightening or comforting.
I close my eyes and wrap the night closer. Maybe it will kill me this time, but at least I’ll be warm. If the screams start again, maybe I won’t hear them.
A cricket penetrates the death.
It will begin any second now. The voice that should be beautiful but calls to me instead. She would have my help. She would have my life. “Bess!” she screams. It’s far away, the voice no one else knows.
Smell is essential to any good night. Sometimes I wish for fire, just so it will fill my nostrils and proclaim itself. Grass is acceptable. Rain, by far the greatest. The deepest. You can spend hours on the rain’s smell, seeing where it came from. I like it when it comes from Canada. Then I know my love is wearing too much perfume.
Tonight is only dry and odorless. I hate it.
“Bess!” she screams again, and I have no sense with which to block it out.
iii.
I have to wonder why they chose this room. The room with the antenna, down the stairs from the thermometer. And why I got caught up in all of it: me, the frail little Christian girl with the “issues”.
We were discussing them (him? her? it?) when the room went cold. It was instantaneous but subtle, except in Amanda’s feet. They turned blue and shook until she ate the sea salt. My arm was forced forward. The cold swirled.
It was a man holding my arm forward. I know by how he forced it. Until I put my fist through his face, he tried to control me, like the boys in kempo class who put me in locks until I called Sensei. They don’t hold on long if you push them back hard enough.
Erin put sea salt all over the floor. It gets stuck between my toes now, but I suppose that’ll keep me safe in some way. Then she yelled at it for a while, telling it to get out before she forced it, but Amanda just shook more and I locked up, my whole body this time. He, whatever he was, hadn’t gotten in my mind yet, but he was certainly trying. If I couldn’t hit him, he could do what he wanted with me.
Hope waned thinner and thinner as the wind, invisible but chilling, picked up and took our sanity with it. Erin was still shouting, Amanda was frozen and shivering, and I was pinned to the top bunk.
“Kyrie eleison,” I whispered through racking breaths. “Christe eleison.”
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy.
Again and again, I moved my lips, forcing my mind through the prayers I knew by heart. The service goes Kyrie, Gloria, Credo (not really a prayer, I thought), Sanctus, Benedictus… The Lord’s Prayer.
I moved my lips to the familiar words. “Give us this day our daily bread…”
“You’re scaring it,” Erin said, with sudden realization. Amanda joined with me and we drove the rhythm into the room. I had tears streaming down my face. He had released me, and I could smile. Fearlessness filled us with warmth. It was divine courage.
“In the name of Jesus, be gone!” Amanda said firmly.
The chill disappeared. I climbed down and collapsed on Amanda, exhausted but filled with new life.
“Your first exorcism.” Erin put a hand on my shoulder. “I was tired, too.”
iv.
It’s called a galvanometer. I have no idea what it does, but it looks like it could use a good polishing. The black metal casing is thick and bold. Steel needle, maybe, for measuring something on either the positive or negative side of an aged piece of paper. The scale goes 0-5 on both sides.
It must be sensitive, the galvanometer. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have that strong, rough black iron protecting it. Or the sheet of glass, the only piece of this confusing machine that casts a reflection.
So dead.
v.
She sharpened her pencils cautiously. After all, they could break, and then she’d have to start all over.
Of course, this took a very long time on the ancient wall-mounted sharpener. The blades were dull and the handle caught at least twice per rotation. Electric sharpeners were a luxury the school couldn’t afford for its classrooms.
Damn the SAT! she thought suddenly and angrily, breaking off a #2 in the machine, and then: Shit…
Mrs. Moore grumbled as she took a screwdriver from her desk and set about fixing her malevolent friend, who had stood by her for thirty-two years and then decided to betray her. Proctoring the SAT. What was she thinking? Thirty kids, sweating over reading comprehension and trying to make their two number-two pencils last for three hours. The smart ones ended up staring off into space between questions or erasing stray marks around answer ovals, making them perfect, simply because they had time to burn. More mediocre students hurt their wrists trying to fill in perfect bubbles in the biggest hurry of their lives. And it was all for a grade that would matter for a year at the most. Shit.
vii.
I carve the sun lazily into my desk. It’s hot. All I can think about is the power of the heat burning my legs through my jeans.
It’s usually a circle, but today the heat is so methodical that the sun must be a triangle. You can’t break a triangle, they say in math class. Besides, straight lines are easier to force into the aging wood than curves.
I wish I had a chisel. A chisel and a hammer, so I could leave a whole story about the heat and my life and how they always seem to coincide.
Someone else has already left a mark here. More than one “someone” by the looks of it. Eons of fraternity cave paintings decorate the desk’s surface. Apparently Sigma Nu rocks… So does Fiji… There’s also a long string of commentary about adultery, in two colors of pen. It’s a debate, in two different hands. Some of the choice words have worn away, but the fact remains that two people who never met argued human sexuality on my desk. I should be honored. Maybe the sun will make me a nice, runic halo to commemorate the occasion. It ought to be just as angular as the burning star itself.
vii.
Backstory: Duenne Cartier (LARP character)
Duenne took in the dusty room with a slow, analytical eye. There was certainly enough room for her materials; a cutting table, a sewing machine, a dressmaker’s model… She would have to buy that bed upstairs, the old French four-poster like the one she had as a child.
“How much?” she asked the kindly lady who owned the room for rent in the basement of the Galesburg Antique Mall.
“Seven hundred a month. That includes utilities, of course.” Duenne smiled. The woman must be desperate. “Of course, if you would be willing to part with one of your pieces every once in a while, we could lower that considerably.”
“It sounds wonderful,” Duenne answered. “You said something about private shows?”
“Oh, yes,” the woman said hurriedly, “we’d be more than happy to host evening events if you need somewhere a bit closer than Chicago to show your work. There’s a lovely hall upstairs, and we have wonderful contacts with musicians in town.”
“Beautiful. May I move in tonight?”
“Tonight?” The old woman looked confused. “Wouldn’t you rather wait till morning?”
“Oh, I am sorry. I just flew in, and I’m on French time. I don’t have much, but I’m quite awake enough to get it in tonight. All I would need from you is the bed from the second floor so I can rest when I’m finished, and then I can take care of myself.” Duenne rummaged in the purse she had made on the train last night. “Is cash all right?”
The woman’s eyes seemed ready to fall from their sockets. “Oh… yes… of course, Madame…”
“And please, do not disturb me during the day. I do my best work at night.”
She showed no sign that this was odd behavior. Duenne was quite proud of her abilities with convincing mortals. “Consider it done.” She rushed upstairs happily to call her sons, the furniture movers. “You’ll like them. Strong young men. Single!” she called back over her shoulder.
Duenne shook her head with a sly smile as she carefully hung three drafts on the wall over the corner desk. One week to make a new gown for her introduction to the Galesburg Camarilla.
Her sire, Georges Theil-Rabier, had arranged for her to leave Paris for a first-hand study of American history and fashion. “It is so different from our own haute-couture,” he had remarked. “There is much to learn, much that could aid your already well-developed skills with new ideas.” She had left with the blessings of the Parisian Camarilla for this dull, underdeveloped city but two days ago. With luck, the help of her clan, and the proper inspiration, she could surely bring beauty to the heartland.
ix.
Peter’s cat crept with the dawn. Gradually, his pale form shone yellow in the new sunlight. He stretched, sinking his front end into the floor and lazily preparing to leap.
The wind rustled outside Peter’s cat’s east-facing window. A bird heckled him mercilessly as he cleaned behind his ear. These would-be distractions were nothing to Peter’s cat. He was a professional.
For a moment, he appeared to be settling himself on the rug with his species’ renowned grace. Then he perked up. He pushed against the floor, ears flattened to his head and a low growl in his throat. The airborne cat was marvelous to behold; he was a flash of brilliant blonde across the gray bedroom.
Peter just didn’t appreciate art, Peter’s cat thought as his roommate knocked him to the floor.
x.
Mother says it’s “marvelously damp”.
There’s always a trickle of water on the wall, pouring through the cracks in the Underhaven’s cement foundation. It gives a sound to the otherwise dead room. There are no real pictures on the wall, not with glass frames; just Enna’s colorful fish drawings and a magazine photo of a ballerina dressed in pink. The fish have bled their magic-marker color across the pages now; they’re trying to escape, too. Enna has always wanted to meet a fish.
xi.
“What are you doing in a Baptist church?” Norman asks me.
It’s hard to answer him. I don’t want to insult the sweet nearly-deacon of the Anglo-Catholic church back home. So I go on for a while about spontaneity in worship and the Fundamentals and the other usual arguments. He doesn’t really understand. Liturgical-types hardly ever do.
Really, it’s that I can fly. When I close my eyes and raise my hands, and smile for Jesus, he picks me up. Spins me around like a little kid who runs to Daddy. I feel fifty pounds lighter, twenty years younger. You just can’t do that in the Anglican Church. Only Baptists can fly.
No comments:
Post a Comment