Exchange Fic #5: November 12, 11:55 pm
The actual identity of the writer will remain secret until all the submissions are in and posted.
****
Title:November 12, 11:55 pm
Author: moon_lover68
Recipient: jamethiel_bane
Prompt: Obsessive Jareth. Sarah constantly feels eyes on her.
Rating: M
Plot Summary/Author's Notes: You have just found this lovely red leather journal in a rummage sale. This is its only entry.
November 12, 11:55 pm
He has left me another gift, and it is a beautiful thing. The cover is the softest red leather, supple and velvety like suede that makes my skin tingle when I touch it. The colour is exactly the same shade of red that binds the other Book I know so well. Inside the pages are unlined, the paper heavy and off white and a little uneven along the edges to let me know they’ve been cut by hand. It was on my doorstep this afternoon, wrapped in layers of purple and gold paper so thin they all but dissolved in my hands.
I suppose I can do with it what I like, so I will use it as a journal and make this my first entry.
Although I may not write in it at all, because I have just noticed that if I close the cover and turn the book this way and that I can see his eye motif, the very same one that appears in many forms and mediums in the Labyrinth. Is this a magic thing then? Are my words materialising in another such journal far away to be perused by a Faerie King and his squabbling minions?
I have just made a rude gesture at the book and nothing has happened. Not even a roll of thunder to shake the house as he is overly fond of doing. I’m waiting then.
The house is silent of course. It’s mine now, this place. My father calls me every Sunday from their luxurious new abode on the west coast, afforded by a generous work opportunity and persistent badgering by my step-mother and her sun tanned relations. I could have gone with them, but I like it here. My college is close by, my work in the bookstore is paying my bills (although the proceeds from a fist sized sapphire could buy me half this town should I decide to sell it, no?) and of course Merlin likes the cool and damp climate as much as I always have.
Jareth is here. He’s probably everywhere actually. I don’t think the mere physics of location on my plane of existence have any bearing on his comings and goings between our worlds. So it would have been pointless to uproot myself only to find him watching me from the swirling green depths between the waves on a Californian beach.
Writing his name is a risk I suppose, this being a gift of his and it being so close to midnight, but then I can never command him to go away anymore than he can command me to come to him.
Do you want to know how this all began?
Jareth has been watching me for many years and probably influencing me since the very first time I opened The Book. I do remember that day, exactly. This was in the first few months since my father and I had been 'given a break' to our mother and wife. That was how she had put it. I think we both lived in a state of hopefulness at that time. Of course she would come back. Any day now, she would come waltzing through that front door, huge suitcases in tow, making that announcement in those theatre trained tones she has. Never mind the newspaper clippings that piled up in my room: Linda Williams gets breakthrough role! Williams nominated for such and such award! Williams seen out dancing with so and so! At first I had enjoyed reading about my mother through the press releases. What child wouldn't? But weeks turned to months, to years, and that woman in the scoop section started to look more and more like some unattainable phantom. I watched her movies religiously, and still do, but she is a stranger up on the screen. A stranger playing a role, like she had once played for me.
Thinking back to that day, I think I must have been only ten years old. Karen had not yet come 'on the scene'. It was just my father and me, and we went walking one afternoon in summer to a local fair. This was one of those fairs that let people come and set up stalls to sell things they didn't want anymore. My father gave me a dollar.
"Sarah, why don't you run off and find something you like" he said absently, patting the top of my head. I needed no further encouragement, that's for sure, though even at that young age I think I was aware of how he tried so hard to fill my life with meaning by way of objects and gifts. My room then had been as stuffed with trinkets as it has ever been. But not all of my furry friends and curios left at my door were gifts from my father, as I was later to find out!
But more than the dollar, it was the mass of stalls that drew my attention. Why, a little girl could so easily become lost here, couldn't she? I loved being lost. Positively loved it. Where other children whimpered and howled at losing sight of their parents, it always instilled in me a feeling of recklessness. I suppose being lost gave me a sense of aloneness that I craved. Besides, I lived for the look on my parent's faces when they 'found' me again.
It didn't take me long to get lost that day, as I recall. There were hundreds of stalls, row upon row of gaily painted signs and fluttering tablecloths proclaiming a wilderness of junk. And it was junk, mostly. Yet people still happily haggled over dented pots, rusty old tools, second hand books and musty piles of clothing. Stuff that they no doubt did not need, and would eventually end up on their own trestle table one day.
I dawdled and wandered my way in and out of the stalls as any child would do, overlooked for the most part by the adults, except at one stall where an old man barked at me for tipping over an old vase. Well, he would put it right on the edge of the table of course! But I backed up too quickly and all but fell into another stall behind me. Managing to scramble to my feet, I found myself eye to eye with a giant stuffed bird. It was in fact a very large owl. It's glass eyes were so realistic as they winked in the sun that for a moment I was sure it was about to launch itself from it's perch.
"You like him, liddle gurl?" rasped a voice. It was a strong accent, with that odd squeak and rasp that really old folk (from a childs perspective, of course) had, and I found myself having a hard time following what the speaker was saying. It came from an old lady who lifted her hand to stroke the back of the stuffed owl. In truth I thought it a ghastly thing, it smelt moldy and someone had replaced one of its eyes with one from another dead animal so they didn‘t really match at all, but I was a polite child so I just nodded. The lady chuckled. "Ahh, 'an he likes you methinks." she added. I looked sideways at her, trying to see if she was making a joke. What would a long dead owl like or not like, after all? But she continued to pat the long white back of the thing, and my eyes fell on what she held in her other hand.
A book, dark red leather bindings, gold lettering down the spine. Now, at this age I was just beginning to enjoy the escapism afforded by books. I had a shelf load already. As the old woman stirred, the sun flashed on the lettering. LABYRINTH. At that very moment, a great crack of thunder shook the entire fair, but I scarcely jumped an inch, so fixated had I become on that Book. I had to have it.
I have to laugh at myself now, because back then I didn't even know what the title meant! LABYRINTH? What or where was that?
Anyway, an hour might have passed as I stood there, stupidly gazing at the Book. But in reality it was probably only a few seconds, and the gnarled hand of the old lady gripped my shoulder.
"Tis no ordinary book, this. Tis for no ordinary gurl." she said in my ear. Something about the way she said 'ordinary' got my ten year old back up. Of course I wasn't ordinary! My mother...she was a movie star! I think I might have been about to blurt something to that extent when I felt a soft thing come into my hands. It was the Book. I turned it over in my hands. It was slimmer than I had thought it to be, with no other marks upon it save the gold lettering of it's title.
"How... how much?" I asked timidly, daring a glance at the lady. Of course I fully expected her to rattle off some large amount, far beyond what I had in my pocket. Even at ten I knew it was a thing of quality.
"You can pay... later, child." the old woman murmured so softly I had to lean to hear her. Pay later? What did she mean? But she was pushing me away now, gently but firmly. "Go, go, liddle gurl. Someone is looking for you, see?" she said, pointing away up the crowded aisles. Did her eyes sparkle with tears? My head turned to follow her finger and as my gaze passed over the old stuffed owl its head turned, just a tiny fraction and those glittering eyes vanished for a second behind a slow, rather deliberate blink. The old lady clucked like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh at my expression or clout the bird behind its head. She was spinning me around and I turned, becoming dizzy as the colours and sounds of the crowd suddenly washed over me. The sun seemed overbright, and glaring in my eyes as I darted away. Soon enough, my father did indeed find me, like he always had before.
"There you are!" he laughed, making little of his worries. "What's that you've got there?" I showed him the Book, holding it up carefully. All of a sudden, I did not want him, or anyone else to touch it. "That's nice dear," he said, peering at it with what I supposed was an artificial interest. "Did you get that for a dollar?"
"No, I didn't pay Daddy."
"Oh really? Well you should, you know. Even if it's just a token," he said seriously, though he was not angry. "Come on, lets go back where you got it, and we'll see, hey? But you know something Sarah? You are so beautiful that I'm sure that anyone, even a King in his castle, would give you everything you wanted for just one of your smiles!"
I bet you can guess what happened next, right? Well, we never did find that old lady. My dollar bought my father and me an ice cream each to lick on the way home!
Odd how that day, and those memories are still so clear, when most else of those times have faded away. They stand as brightly in my mind as those gold letters did when the sun flashed on them all those years ago.
Ten years old and ten years ago. It wasn’t fair, really and I don’t care about his interpretations of fairness. What chance did I have? Jareth was the invisible friend who was as bright and clear to me as to make the rest of the world dull by comparison. As a child I knew my steps were shadowed by magic, like a wind blown autumn leaf that follows you down the footpath. It made me bold, reckless and petulant, always searching for a way out. At fifteen it had caught me up, sweeping past with a riot of laughter and song and leaving me finally with a face, a voice to go with those merciless eyes that had watched my every step. I was like a fawn that could no longer ignore the hidden hunter behind his camouflage of the real world, yet unable to turn away.
Unable, or merely unwilling? Time may tell, but if a journal is a place of secret thoughts and confessions, well then here is mine: I like that he watches me. I like the attention, and its nothing so crass as what my mother seeks with her scandals and interviews. I don’t want the adoration of millions, just the focus of one. My window drapes are always drawn back; I hide nothing from him, not my mundane tasks, nor my lovers, not even my musings as I sit at my desk and stare out into darkness.
He is here now.
In the corner of my eye even as I write these words, the gentle sway of the oak branch that reaches out to caress the side of my house gives him away. Not the owl tonight, I see, but then there is nothing human like either about this form; long limbs folded around themselves and head forward upon his knees, the whole being swathed in a cloak that doesn’t move with the wind but of its own accord, like it’s alive. The leaves on the tree curve themselves around, even the flame from my candle on the desk wavers, bending towards him.
My fingers tingle, my arm aches from holding this pen steady. Other parts of me ache in a different way. My hand wants to reach out, just mere inches from the window, flip the latch…
Closer now, light like a cat he is creeping along the bough towards me, his fingertips are up to the glass…..
****
Title:November 12, 11:55 pm
Author: moon_lover68
Recipient: jamethiel_bane
Prompt: Obsessive Jareth. Sarah constantly feels eyes on her.
Rating: M
Plot Summary/Author's Notes: You have just found this lovely red leather journal in a rummage sale. This is its only entry.
November 12, 11:55 pm
He has left me another gift, and it is a beautiful thing. The cover is the softest red leather, supple and velvety like suede that makes my skin tingle when I touch it. The colour is exactly the same shade of red that binds the other Book I know so well. Inside the pages are unlined, the paper heavy and off white and a little uneven along the edges to let me know they’ve been cut by hand. It was on my doorstep this afternoon, wrapped in layers of purple and gold paper so thin they all but dissolved in my hands.
I suppose I can do with it what I like, so I will use it as a journal and make this my first entry.
Although I may not write in it at all, because I have just noticed that if I close the cover and turn the book this way and that I can see his eye motif, the very same one that appears in many forms and mediums in the Labyrinth. Is this a magic thing then? Are my words materialising in another such journal far away to be perused by a Faerie King and his squabbling minions?
I have just made a rude gesture at the book and nothing has happened. Not even a roll of thunder to shake the house as he is overly fond of doing. I’m waiting then.
The house is silent of course. It’s mine now, this place. My father calls me every Sunday from their luxurious new abode on the west coast, afforded by a generous work opportunity and persistent badgering by my step-mother and her sun tanned relations. I could have gone with them, but I like it here. My college is close by, my work in the bookstore is paying my bills (although the proceeds from a fist sized sapphire could buy me half this town should I decide to sell it, no?) and of course Merlin likes the cool and damp climate as much as I always have.
Jareth is here. He’s probably everywhere actually. I don’t think the mere physics of location on my plane of existence have any bearing on his comings and goings between our worlds. So it would have been pointless to uproot myself only to find him watching me from the swirling green depths between the waves on a Californian beach.
Writing his name is a risk I suppose, this being a gift of his and it being so close to midnight, but then I can never command him to go away anymore than he can command me to come to him.
Do you want to know how this all began?
Jareth has been watching me for many years and probably influencing me since the very first time I opened The Book. I do remember that day, exactly. This was in the first few months since my father and I had been 'given a break' to our mother and wife. That was how she had put it. I think we both lived in a state of hopefulness at that time. Of course she would come back. Any day now, she would come waltzing through that front door, huge suitcases in tow, making that announcement in those theatre trained tones she has. Never mind the newspaper clippings that piled up in my room: Linda Williams gets breakthrough role! Williams nominated for such and such award! Williams seen out dancing with so and so! At first I had enjoyed reading about my mother through the press releases. What child wouldn't? But weeks turned to months, to years, and that woman in the scoop section started to look more and more like some unattainable phantom. I watched her movies religiously, and still do, but she is a stranger up on the screen. A stranger playing a role, like she had once played for me.
Thinking back to that day, I think I must have been only ten years old. Karen had not yet come 'on the scene'. It was just my father and me, and we went walking one afternoon in summer to a local fair. This was one of those fairs that let people come and set up stalls to sell things they didn't want anymore. My father gave me a dollar.
"Sarah, why don't you run off and find something you like" he said absently, patting the top of my head. I needed no further encouragement, that's for sure, though even at that young age I think I was aware of how he tried so hard to fill my life with meaning by way of objects and gifts. My room then had been as stuffed with trinkets as it has ever been. But not all of my furry friends and curios left at my door were gifts from my father, as I was later to find out!
But more than the dollar, it was the mass of stalls that drew my attention. Why, a little girl could so easily become lost here, couldn't she? I loved being lost. Positively loved it. Where other children whimpered and howled at losing sight of their parents, it always instilled in me a feeling of recklessness. I suppose being lost gave me a sense of aloneness that I craved. Besides, I lived for the look on my parent's faces when they 'found' me again.
It didn't take me long to get lost that day, as I recall. There were hundreds of stalls, row upon row of gaily painted signs and fluttering tablecloths proclaiming a wilderness of junk. And it was junk, mostly. Yet people still happily haggled over dented pots, rusty old tools, second hand books and musty piles of clothing. Stuff that they no doubt did not need, and would eventually end up on their own trestle table one day.
I dawdled and wandered my way in and out of the stalls as any child would do, overlooked for the most part by the adults, except at one stall where an old man barked at me for tipping over an old vase. Well, he would put it right on the edge of the table of course! But I backed up too quickly and all but fell into another stall behind me. Managing to scramble to my feet, I found myself eye to eye with a giant stuffed bird. It was in fact a very large owl. It's glass eyes were so realistic as they winked in the sun that for a moment I was sure it was about to launch itself from it's perch.
"You like him, liddle gurl?" rasped a voice. It was a strong accent, with that odd squeak and rasp that really old folk (from a childs perspective, of course) had, and I found myself having a hard time following what the speaker was saying. It came from an old lady who lifted her hand to stroke the back of the stuffed owl. In truth I thought it a ghastly thing, it smelt moldy and someone had replaced one of its eyes with one from another dead animal so they didn‘t really match at all, but I was a polite child so I just nodded. The lady chuckled. "Ahh, 'an he likes you methinks." she added. I looked sideways at her, trying to see if she was making a joke. What would a long dead owl like or not like, after all? But she continued to pat the long white back of the thing, and my eyes fell on what she held in her other hand.
A book, dark red leather bindings, gold lettering down the spine. Now, at this age I was just beginning to enjoy the escapism afforded by books. I had a shelf load already. As the old woman stirred, the sun flashed on the lettering. LABYRINTH. At that very moment, a great crack of thunder shook the entire fair, but I scarcely jumped an inch, so fixated had I become on that Book. I had to have it.
I have to laugh at myself now, because back then I didn't even know what the title meant! LABYRINTH? What or where was that?
Anyway, an hour might have passed as I stood there, stupidly gazing at the Book. But in reality it was probably only a few seconds, and the gnarled hand of the old lady gripped my shoulder.
"Tis no ordinary book, this. Tis for no ordinary gurl." she said in my ear. Something about the way she said 'ordinary' got my ten year old back up. Of course I wasn't ordinary! My mother...she was a movie star! I think I might have been about to blurt something to that extent when I felt a soft thing come into my hands. It was the Book. I turned it over in my hands. It was slimmer than I had thought it to be, with no other marks upon it save the gold lettering of it's title.
"How... how much?" I asked timidly, daring a glance at the lady. Of course I fully expected her to rattle off some large amount, far beyond what I had in my pocket. Even at ten I knew it was a thing of quality.
"You can pay... later, child." the old woman murmured so softly I had to lean to hear her. Pay later? What did she mean? But she was pushing me away now, gently but firmly. "Go, go, liddle gurl. Someone is looking for you, see?" she said, pointing away up the crowded aisles. Did her eyes sparkle with tears? My head turned to follow her finger and as my gaze passed over the old stuffed owl its head turned, just a tiny fraction and those glittering eyes vanished for a second behind a slow, rather deliberate blink. The old lady clucked like she couldn’t decide whether to laugh at my expression or clout the bird behind its head. She was spinning me around and I turned, becoming dizzy as the colours and sounds of the crowd suddenly washed over me. The sun seemed overbright, and glaring in my eyes as I darted away. Soon enough, my father did indeed find me, like he always had before.
"There you are!" he laughed, making little of his worries. "What's that you've got there?" I showed him the Book, holding it up carefully. All of a sudden, I did not want him, or anyone else to touch it. "That's nice dear," he said, peering at it with what I supposed was an artificial interest. "Did you get that for a dollar?"
"No, I didn't pay Daddy."
"Oh really? Well you should, you know. Even if it's just a token," he said seriously, though he was not angry. "Come on, lets go back where you got it, and we'll see, hey? But you know something Sarah? You are so beautiful that I'm sure that anyone, even a King in his castle, would give you everything you wanted for just one of your smiles!"
I bet you can guess what happened next, right? Well, we never did find that old lady. My dollar bought my father and me an ice cream each to lick on the way home!
Odd how that day, and those memories are still so clear, when most else of those times have faded away. They stand as brightly in my mind as those gold letters did when the sun flashed on them all those years ago.
Ten years old and ten years ago. It wasn’t fair, really and I don’t care about his interpretations of fairness. What chance did I have? Jareth was the invisible friend who was as bright and clear to me as to make the rest of the world dull by comparison. As a child I knew my steps were shadowed by magic, like a wind blown autumn leaf that follows you down the footpath. It made me bold, reckless and petulant, always searching for a way out. At fifteen it had caught me up, sweeping past with a riot of laughter and song and leaving me finally with a face, a voice to go with those merciless eyes that had watched my every step. I was like a fawn that could no longer ignore the hidden hunter behind his camouflage of the real world, yet unable to turn away.
Unable, or merely unwilling? Time may tell, but if a journal is a place of secret thoughts and confessions, well then here is mine: I like that he watches me. I like the attention, and its nothing so crass as what my mother seeks with her scandals and interviews. I don’t want the adoration of millions, just the focus of one. My window drapes are always drawn back; I hide nothing from him, not my mundane tasks, nor my lovers, not even my musings as I sit at my desk and stare out into darkness.
He is here now.
In the corner of my eye even as I write these words, the gentle sway of the oak branch that reaches out to caress the side of my house gives him away. Not the owl tonight, I see, but then there is nothing human like either about this form; long limbs folded around themselves and head forward upon his knees, the whole being swathed in a cloak that doesn’t move with the wind but of its own accord, like it’s alive. The leaves on the tree curve themselves around, even the flame from my candle on the desk wavers, bending towards him.
My fingers tingle, my arm aches from holding this pen steady. Other parts of me ache in a different way. My hand wants to reach out, just mere inches from the window, flip the latch…
Closer now, light like a cat he is creeping along the bough towards me, his fingertips are up to the glass…..