Chocolate Chip Mint 29, Cantaloupe 6, Rocky Road 4
Title: Easier Said Than Done
Story Continuity: Beastly Creatures (Big Bang novel)
Flavors: Chocolate Chip Mint #29: invisible, Cantaloupe #6: crack the whip, Rocky Road #4: alley
Topping: Whipped Cream (Calliope is a child in some parts)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Or, six times Calliope wished her life wasn't just a chain of anecdotes waiting for a cocktail party to break out.
1.
Sometimes, in childhood, there is a defining moment where, some time after reaching adulthood, a person can look back upon the event and say, "That was the story of my life." Calliope was eight when she locked herself in a coat closet.
She didn't intend to, in all fairness; what she intended was to hide in the coat closet and jump out suddenly and loudly in order to scare her mother before the poor woman went off to work. What actually happened was, while opening the closet door, Calliope's sleep-addled brain didn't acknowledge her thumb pressing down against the lock on the doorknob until she was reviewing the act in hindsight.
Calliope stopped sobbing sometime after the four minute mark, when she realized the oxygen in the closet would not kindly regenerate because she had a burning need to breathe. When she had the thought she was going to die, no matter how loud she screamed, she even began to enjoy the dark quiet. There were worse ways to die, even if she couldn't think of them. Calliope still managed to give her mother a heart attack when the closet door was opened, which was a win in her admittedly not very detailed book, but years later she would still wish it hadn't happened; Calliope grew to believe in the most untouched abysses of her mind that that was when she started on the road of colossal bitchdom. A small girl closes herself in a small, dark place in an attempt to emulate the bogeyman, and comes out of it with a fondness for cramped, dark places and a desire for a repeat performance? If it didn't set her on the road of cynical bitchery, it certainly was a probable cause of her later nymphomania. At least.
After that, Marianne Bishop might admit to having monsters in her closet, and might then have introduced the monster by name - her daughter's name. In retrospect, that probably had a hand in fucking with Calliope's fragile little brain, too.
2.
The last time Calliope saw her father in person, she was eleven, and living with her maternal grandparents. Harvey called Jack Bishop the crossroads devil, promising the world but delivering hell. Of course, even if Jack wasn't directly involved in his wife Marianne's suicide, he broke her heart with more care than he accepted it, and neither Blackstone seemed inclined to soon forget it.
It was July, and Jack was spending time with his brood before heading off to Haiti to research his next novel. He divided his time equally between his son and daughter, visibly more concerned with his trip than his children; his attention wandered often and obviously. One day, while they were talking about his plans for the novel, Calliope mentioned offhand something that mystified Jack - she had made a hobby of writing, and she was damn good at it for her age. Jack discovered this was true; she was clever and inventive and, best of all, sense-making. Jack became quickly the most attentive, encouraging father figure Calliope could have asked for. He was a little alarmed by her interest in the more graphic and shocking pulp novels, but it didn't deter him. He was proud of his little girl, his little prodigy. And whenever he spoke of her, that was what he called her - his prodigy, his future heir. In ways, it was just as bad as Marianne calling her the monster in her closet.
Calliope knew things. She thought, and even when she didn't empathize - which was often - she understood. It was part of why she was a good writer. It was also why she began to hate Jack during this time. She understood Jack, but she had none of the maturity or restraint to properly handle the situation. She knew he wanted to mold her into a miniature version of him. She knew he was giving her preferential treatment because she was a writer, which tickled him but didn't really make him love her any more. She knew that he was bitter as a result of the writing, and that he only wrote because it was the best way to fund his alcoholism at the time.
Calliope quit writing, and Jack eventually lost interest, treating her the same as he did Blake, but with a little extra disappointment. He sent her his novels every year after she quit to remind her of what she was giving up, and Calliope kept every one of them. They reminded her, not of the high and fun of writing, but of one of the better decisions she made in her life. Love, no matter what else you thought of it, was nothing without affection.
3.
There was a girl, there was a vampire, and there was a fascination. The storyline of every cheap, schmaltzy vampire romance, and somehow Calliope is the one who gets short-shifted with the vampire who kills eight escaping - thanks mostly to her - and god knew how many in celebration of his freedom. She is the girl who thinks back to their meeting and curses her curiosity.
Calliope knows what went wrong, of course. Edward and Eli are fictional; the Undying Man is not. The blood he draws and the fortune he borrows aren't, either. Fiction is always better than reality, or else it wouldn't sell. The reality, a compelling man-like shape draining life from someone's beloved but lonely husband, wife, or child in an anonymous dark alley somewhere - that didn't need to sell, because sooner or later, like herpes in a sex club, everyone got it, or a form of it. Sometimes people never got a chance to live - stillbirths, child mortality, professional basement-dwelling forum lurkers - but absolutely everyone died.
Sometimes, reality really pissed Calliope off.
4.
Of all the boroughs in all the cities in all the country, Calliope chose a seedy part of the 11th district in lower Manhattan to move into. When Calliope moved to New York to escape Aunt Lana, she thought it would be like living in Chicago. The problem with this reasoning was that, like Chicago, New York was a city divided, and Calliope chose a side that was divided on the issue of whether or not it would be better off having martial law declared on it. Calliope and Blake were safely ignored as vanilla oddballs because, compared to the post-op, pre-sideshow furry crackheads next door, that was exactly what they were.
One day, Blake called Calliope at work, refusing to say what was wrong, only that she needed to come home five minutes ago. Calliope came home twenty minutes later to discover that, because Blake had forgotten to lock the door on his way to school that morning, a hobo had freely wandered in and settled down in his bed. Given the right spin, Calliope recognized later that it had the makings of a fine story, if she ever quit her day job and took the coattails of her father for a ride. At the time, though, she was mostly concerned with whether or not she would lose Blake if she called for backup, and what the law might have to say about beating home invaders off with a bat. In the end, it was as simple as waking the man and sending him off on his way with a few unambiguously vicious threats of stabbing him and tossing his useless flesh sack in the Hudson if he ever came around again, but Calliope sure as hell made sure to repeat the threat to Blake if he ever forgot to lock the door on his empty-headed way out again.
Calliope didn't know why she ever wanted to grow up for; sure, sex was fantastic, and being taken seriously was something she'd never get tired of, but when you were a kid, you could stick the bumbling adults with all the responsibility and no one would take your family away for it.
5.
Calliope and Dinah's partnership was a romance novel waiting to be written. It began with mutual disdain, had twists and bends, and was fraught with misunderstandings, but there was a deep, real affection that remained invisible to the rest of the world even after. Calliope thought that if she was ever going to go lesbo, it would be because of Dinah. She was hardly the walking, predictable cliche she pretended to be. Likewise, Dinah liked Calliope for exactly the reasons she hated her; the girl was candid, honest, and was as quick with a glaringly disrespectful quip as she was a gun. Dinah's affection for her is one of the most wonderful misunderstandings in Calliope's life, and she's glad she met Dinah. There are more crazy, highly quotable stories involving Dinah than Calliope remembers, but she keeps each to herself. Dinah's memory, and the box full of the girl's personal office effects, are the only things Calliope has left of her, and she hoards them jealously.
She tells anyone who will hear that she'd give up the memories if she could. That people think she means this because she was quick to loathe anyone who she was partnered with is the last misunderstanding, but also the most bittersweet. Dinah once thought the same; how many other Dinahs were there in the precinct?
How many more would she lose?
6.
Some people, mostly people who knew her, said Calliope was incapable of love. Calliope agreed with them because no one would believe the truth.
Calliope still has the ancient, hopelessly broken pocket watch that Blake gave her for her thirteenth birthday. She tells him she's waiting for it to turn into a TARDIS, because clearly someone so amazingly fabulous and full of awesome as herself wouldn't be human, Blake makes fun of her for watching British television shows, and everyone gets what they want. Calliope used to wonder if she would ever tell him that the watch meant something more to her than a beautiful watch - that she remembers how stupidly, amusingly proud he'd been when he presented it to her, and that she remembers thinking what a stupid, gullible beta male he would grow up to be - but it wasn't exactly something she could explain. Plus, telling your little brother you loved him? What would be the point of that little exercise in humiliation? Life and soap dramas were separate entities, and never the twain shall meet, and the world was a better place for it.
Story Continuity: Beastly Creatures (Big Bang novel)
Flavors: Chocolate Chip Mint #29: invisible, Cantaloupe #6: crack the whip, Rocky Road #4: alley
Topping: Whipped Cream (Calliope is a child in some parts)
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Or, six times Calliope wished her life wasn't just a chain of anecdotes waiting for a cocktail party to break out.
1.
Sometimes, in childhood, there is a defining moment where, some time after reaching adulthood, a person can look back upon the event and say, "That was the story of my life." Calliope was eight when she locked herself in a coat closet.
She didn't intend to, in all fairness; what she intended was to hide in the coat closet and jump out suddenly and loudly in order to scare her mother before the poor woman went off to work. What actually happened was, while opening the closet door, Calliope's sleep-addled brain didn't acknowledge her thumb pressing down against the lock on the doorknob until she was reviewing the act in hindsight.
Calliope stopped sobbing sometime after the four minute mark, when she realized the oxygen in the closet would not kindly regenerate because she had a burning need to breathe. When she had the thought she was going to die, no matter how loud she screamed, she even began to enjoy the dark quiet. There were worse ways to die, even if she couldn't think of them. Calliope still managed to give her mother a heart attack when the closet door was opened, which was a win in her admittedly not very detailed book, but years later she would still wish it hadn't happened; Calliope grew to believe in the most untouched abysses of her mind that that was when she started on the road of colossal bitchdom. A small girl closes herself in a small, dark place in an attempt to emulate the bogeyman, and comes out of it with a fondness for cramped, dark places and a desire for a repeat performance? If it didn't set her on the road of cynical bitchery, it certainly was a probable cause of her later nymphomania. At least.
After that, Marianne Bishop might admit to having monsters in her closet, and might then have introduced the monster by name - her daughter's name. In retrospect, that probably had a hand in fucking with Calliope's fragile little brain, too.
2.
The last time Calliope saw her father in person, she was eleven, and living with her maternal grandparents. Harvey called Jack Bishop the crossroads devil, promising the world but delivering hell. Of course, even if Jack wasn't directly involved in his wife Marianne's suicide, he broke her heart with more care than he accepted it, and neither Blackstone seemed inclined to soon forget it.
It was July, and Jack was spending time with his brood before heading off to Haiti to research his next novel. He divided his time equally between his son and daughter, visibly more concerned with his trip than his children; his attention wandered often and obviously. One day, while they were talking about his plans for the novel, Calliope mentioned offhand something that mystified Jack - she had made a hobby of writing, and she was damn good at it for her age. Jack discovered this was true; she was clever and inventive and, best of all, sense-making. Jack became quickly the most attentive, encouraging father figure Calliope could have asked for. He was a little alarmed by her interest in the more graphic and shocking pulp novels, but it didn't deter him. He was proud of his little girl, his little prodigy. And whenever he spoke of her, that was what he called her - his prodigy, his future heir. In ways, it was just as bad as Marianne calling her the monster in her closet.
Calliope knew things. She thought, and even when she didn't empathize - which was often - she understood. It was part of why she was a good writer. It was also why she began to hate Jack during this time. She understood Jack, but she had none of the maturity or restraint to properly handle the situation. She knew he wanted to mold her into a miniature version of him. She knew he was giving her preferential treatment because she was a writer, which tickled him but didn't really make him love her any more. She knew that he was bitter as a result of the writing, and that he only wrote because it was the best way to fund his alcoholism at the time.
Calliope quit writing, and Jack eventually lost interest, treating her the same as he did Blake, but with a little extra disappointment. He sent her his novels every year after she quit to remind her of what she was giving up, and Calliope kept every one of them. They reminded her, not of the high and fun of writing, but of one of the better decisions she made in her life. Love, no matter what else you thought of it, was nothing without affection.
3.
There was a girl, there was a vampire, and there was a fascination. The storyline of every cheap, schmaltzy vampire romance, and somehow Calliope is the one who gets short-shifted with the vampire who kills eight escaping - thanks mostly to her - and god knew how many in celebration of his freedom. She is the girl who thinks back to their meeting and curses her curiosity.
Calliope knows what went wrong, of course. Edward and Eli are fictional; the Undying Man is not. The blood he draws and the fortune he borrows aren't, either. Fiction is always better than reality, or else it wouldn't sell. The reality, a compelling man-like shape draining life from someone's beloved but lonely husband, wife, or child in an anonymous dark alley somewhere - that didn't need to sell, because sooner or later, like herpes in a sex club, everyone got it, or a form of it. Sometimes people never got a chance to live - stillbirths, child mortality, professional basement-dwelling forum lurkers - but absolutely everyone died.
Sometimes, reality really pissed Calliope off.
4.
Of all the boroughs in all the cities in all the country, Calliope chose a seedy part of the 11th district in lower Manhattan to move into. When Calliope moved to New York to escape Aunt Lana, she thought it would be like living in Chicago. The problem with this reasoning was that, like Chicago, New York was a city divided, and Calliope chose a side that was divided on the issue of whether or not it would be better off having martial law declared on it. Calliope and Blake were safely ignored as vanilla oddballs because, compared to the post-op, pre-sideshow furry crackheads next door, that was exactly what they were.
One day, Blake called Calliope at work, refusing to say what was wrong, only that she needed to come home five minutes ago. Calliope came home twenty minutes later to discover that, because Blake had forgotten to lock the door on his way to school that morning, a hobo had freely wandered in and settled down in his bed. Given the right spin, Calliope recognized later that it had the makings of a fine story, if she ever quit her day job and took the coattails of her father for a ride. At the time, though, she was mostly concerned with whether or not she would lose Blake if she called for backup, and what the law might have to say about beating home invaders off with a bat. In the end, it was as simple as waking the man and sending him off on his way with a few unambiguously vicious threats of stabbing him and tossing his useless flesh sack in the Hudson if he ever came around again, but Calliope sure as hell made sure to repeat the threat to Blake if he ever forgot to lock the door on his empty-headed way out again.
Calliope didn't know why she ever wanted to grow up for; sure, sex was fantastic, and being taken seriously was something she'd never get tired of, but when you were a kid, you could stick the bumbling adults with all the responsibility and no one would take your family away for it.
5.
Calliope and Dinah's partnership was a romance novel waiting to be written. It began with mutual disdain, had twists and bends, and was fraught with misunderstandings, but there was a deep, real affection that remained invisible to the rest of the world even after. Calliope thought that if she was ever going to go lesbo, it would be because of Dinah. She was hardly the walking, predictable cliche she pretended to be. Likewise, Dinah liked Calliope for exactly the reasons she hated her; the girl was candid, honest, and was as quick with a glaringly disrespectful quip as she was a gun. Dinah's affection for her is one of the most wonderful misunderstandings in Calliope's life, and she's glad she met Dinah. There are more crazy, highly quotable stories involving Dinah than Calliope remembers, but she keeps each to herself. Dinah's memory, and the box full of the girl's personal office effects, are the only things Calliope has left of her, and she hoards them jealously.
She tells anyone who will hear that she'd give up the memories if she could. That people think she means this because she was quick to loathe anyone who she was partnered with is the last misunderstanding, but also the most bittersweet. Dinah once thought the same; how many other Dinahs were there in the precinct?
How many more would she lose?
6.
Some people, mostly people who knew her, said Calliope was incapable of love. Calliope agreed with them because no one would believe the truth.
Calliope still has the ancient, hopelessly broken pocket watch that Blake gave her for her thirteenth birthday. She tells him she's waiting for it to turn into a TARDIS, because clearly someone so amazingly fabulous and full of awesome as herself wouldn't be human, Blake makes fun of her for watching British television shows, and everyone gets what they want. Calliope used to wonder if she would ever tell him that the watch meant something more to her than a beautiful watch - that she remembers how stupidly, amusingly proud he'd been when he presented it to her, and that she remembers thinking what a stupid, gullible beta male he would grow up to be - but it wasn't exactly something she could explain. Plus, telling your little brother you loved him? What would be the point of that little exercise in humiliation? Life and soap dramas were separate entities, and never the twain shall meet, and the world was a better place for it.