Novel #2 - Untitled
So. I once again take to the page to bring you this second novel attempt, as of yet untitled. This is the very rough form of it, and since it's public, I'll cut it for you.
This is sci-fi, rather futuristic, but it's a flood-story. If Noah lived during the technoage of cloners and mad scientists, this would be the story of the people that were drowned out.
“I hate cloners,” she said, lighting a cigarette. She brought it up to red lips before waving the match out and throwing it in the street, a black puddle sending up a thin trickle of smoke. The jacket was leather, black, embossed letters on the back in a language he barely remembered anymore, characters foreign.
There was nothing to be said. He ignored her, looking out over what had once been an overpass to the water below. A lot of things had once been an overpass, once been a second story, once been above ground. There were still ramps that arched down into the black, tossing water, but anything that went down those would find things better left alone.
“My dad was one,” she said, looking away from him, leaning skyscrapers rising out of the waters.
“A cloner?” he asked, leaning on his bike, and she nodded, crossing her arms.
“He made me a cat, once. A miniature tiger.” She looked up, blond hair falling in her face as she pushed it away absently. “I named it Tybalt. It was a good pet.”
“What happened to it?” he asked, looking at her. She looked at him.
“I shot it,” she said, absently. “While it was attacking my mother. I went into the kitchen and it was leaping for her throat; didn’t even think twice. I was…in the police, back then. I think.”
“Did she live?” he asked, and she shook her head.
“Her throat had been snapped.” She took a nervous drag on the cigarette, looking down at it. “I had forgotten to feed it that morning.”
There was a short silence, and they both smoked nervously. “Talk about a guilt complex,” he said finally, throwing the end of his cigarette over the bridge, where it sunk immediately in the black water below, not even a white speck. She shrugged.
“Yeah. It’s hard to remember, though. You know how it is.”
“They say it’s mass trauma,” he said. “Or something like that. Why nobody remembers. There are pictures-the city before, the city after. They say there was a park once, down there.” He gestured off to the left, between the narrow maze of buildings. “Underwater now.”
She shrugged. “So much of everything. It’s too much to worry about, nobody cares anymore. Nobody wants to remember, nobody cares what happened. We build on what’s here, we’re just trying to survive.”
“I saw a sign,” he said after a minute. “In a window. There was a girl with pink hair. She wrote ‘find me’ on the window.”
There was silence. The girl threw her cigarette over the bridge and got on her motorcycle, ripped fishnet stocking stretching over her knees. “Everyone’s lost,” she said shortly. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged and watched her stick the key in the ignition. “I didn’t know her,” he said. “I don’t remember her.”
“But what do you remember?”
“Nothing, Azul.” He shook his head. “Don’t drive through the sixth way.”
“Thanks,” she said, revving up the bike. “David?”
He looked up as she paused.
“Don’t,” she started to say, and words tumbled through her head, sunlight streaming through shadows in her mind, red pigtails reflected in the kitchen floor, blue crayon on white paper, the smell of chocolate. She looked at David, and saw a glimmer of resemblance, something in his eyes, something lost. “Don’t get lost,” she said, and he nodded in acknowledgement.
“Be safe, sis,” he said, and Azul nodded briefly before speeding off. David looked around, down into the dark water behind him, as Azul sped away, blond hair flying before she disappeared out of sight. Something stirred in the black water, and he watched it until ripples began to touch the surface. Then, with speed born of necessity, he jumped on the bike and sped off, never daring to look over his shoulder.
Bad things could happen to you if you looked over your shoulder. Monsters hid there that you could never get rid of.
Amelié had been missing for six days.
Gloria was banging the pots and pans together nervously in the apartment, radio tuned to nothing but static. David had searched the radio for days, trying to find a station, and he had found one station that broadcasted in a strange language, nothing he or Gloria knew, the same panicked voice. And occasionally, classical music. The last two days had been nothing but piano, and Gloria sometimes missed the piano; she’s pretty sure she used to play, because her hands know the music. Eventually, the piano had faded out into nothingness, just more static on the radio. Gloria hadn’t bothered to change it, and David didn’t want to crush her hopes.
“Calm down,” he told her, holding her close, and she had pushed him away, hands on the sink, staring out the window angrily.
“She’s not gone,” Gloria had said, denial and irritation in her voice. “She didn’t just leave, she didn’t fall into the water, she didn’t drown or get eaten or mobbed. They took her! The damn psychologists took her, and I want her back.”
David looked at her curiously. “Why would the psychologists want her?” he asked.
Gloria shook her head. “She made me swear not to tell,” she said distractedly, pacing, jeans rustling in the silence, the quiet hum of static on the radio. Her shoes squeaked on the floor, irritating, nervous. “She made me swear not to tell but something happened and they found out. She had memories, was saying stuff. About cloners, about Judge, about everything. She told me she was remembering stuff. She didn’t tell anyone else, I don’t know how they found out. But they did. They called the house, asking about Amelié, asking if she had been remembering anything. I hung up on them. But they took her.”
“Calm down,” David said, and rising swiftly from his chair he crossed the room and grabbed her arms. “Calm down, Gloria, stop. Calm down.”
“I don’t even know where they took her!” she nearly screamed at him, then buried her head in his shoulder. Not crying; Gloria hadn’t cried in a long time, not since last Friday. Just breathing, just trying to think, trying to exist without falling apart, clutching David tightly like a lifeline.
The building had been a store, once. Racks of clothes still hung around the aisles, countless clothes that no one had even worn, that no one would ever wear. Water was trickling in from under a door, and Gloria’s shoes made ripples as they clicked on the once-marble floors. The silence was broken by a very soft humming, constant and soulful, a low, indistinguishable tune. Her neck prickled, chills racing down her spine at the echoing, unearthly humming, and she turned around uncomfortably, looking for the source. “Myriad,” she called, turning around, her voice too loud. “Myriad! I need to find Yvonne!”
There was no sound, no answer, except for the humming. Gloria’s shoes made tiny splashes on the marble floors as she turned, water soaking through the black fabric. “Myriad! Where are you? I can’t remember!”
“We all remember, we never forget,” a voice said suddenly. “It’s very silly to say someone was remembering.”
Gloria turned around, looking up. A girl was sitting on the railing, precariously perched and rocking back and forth absently, though no longer humming. Her eyes were slanted and gray, her hair electric blue in the dark.
“You should go back and get her,” Gloria said, walking towards her. “Come down, please.”
“I can’t without David’s motorcycle,” Myriad said calmly. “He needs the motorcycle to get to the lost people, and I need it to back that far. I can’t make it home as it is.”
Gloria looked up at the girl. “We need to find Yvonne,” she said, her voice sounding smaller than Myriad’s in the echoing emptiness.
“I know,” Myriad said, and slid down off the railing, landing catlike on the floor below. She wore a blue striped dress over jeans, with electric blue shoes that matched her eyes.
“Can you take me with you?” Gloria asked. “You can use the motorcycle, then. But I can’t let you take it alone, David made me promise.”
Myriad didn’t answer immediately, but stared past Gloria, eyes unfocusing. “You don’t know what you want me to do,” she said finally. “I…” she focused on Gloria sharply-the woman was looking at her. The words got lost in her mouth, but Myriad only shook her head. “Um. I don’t like things like this…the butterflies kept coming. The blue ones, you know, like her eyes, azul-colored. And then there were the green ones for David, and the gray ones for you, and Amelié’s, only Amelié’s changed colors because something was wrong with them.”
Gloria stared at her with faint traces of horror. “What are you talking about,” she asked, and checked herself, her voice filled with uncertainty.
”It’s very hard to learn how to fly when the wind is blowing the wrong way,” Myriad mused. “I think that is why I can’t get home. I’m very far away from home, and the wind that blew me here is still blowing the wrong way so it can’t take me back. The butterflies told me that, too.”
“What did they tell you?” Gloria demanded. “Where are you from, Myriad?”
“Oh, that’s a very insane question to ask,” Myriad said, suddenly looking very serious. “That is very, very not something you would want me to answer.” Sighing, she leaned back on a countertop. “Sarah was looking for Yvonne,” she mused aloud. “Sarah the Red, you must know Sarah.”
“Is she a psychologist?” Gloria asked, but Myriad shook her head.
“Who is she? What does she do?”
“She brings forth from the dust, life,” Myriad said, singsong.
Gloria stared past Myriad. “A cloner.”
“Splicer, she prefers.” Myriad ducked her head, pushing her hair behind her ears. “She doesn’t do full-blown cloning. But she was looking for Yvonne.”
“Why?” Gloria asked.
“Don’t know, haven’t a clue. I asked the butterflies for her, they’re very bright red, but they didn’t know either.”
“Where is she?” Gloria demanded, grabbing Myriad’s arm.
Myriad didn’t move or say anything, but to turn her head to look slowly into Gloria’s eyes. “Please don’t touch me,” she said, her voice cold and closed.
Gloria let go. “I’m sorry Myriad, please tell me where Sarah is-”
Myriad shook her head. “I don’t want to,” she said, and her voice was very cold and very clear. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore. Don’t come back here anymore.”
“Myriad!” Gloria shouted, staring at the girl, but she was gone. A blue ribbon lay on the countertop, and Gloria stared at it. The rain beat softly on the roof.
Little ripples in the water crashed against the counter as Gloria started the motorcycle, driving away from the empty shop.
“Lucky.”
“How so?”
“You’ve got wings.”
“You know I hate flying in the rain.”
“Yea, well, you can dry.”
“But it takes forever and it’s a pain.”
“Yes, well, at least you’re not stuck in one place.”
“Neither are you, Myriad.”
“Yes, I am. I can’t get home.”
“Neither can I. Not until all this stops.”
“It’ll never stop raining, Angelique.”
“You don’t know that. The world ends twice, you know.”
“I didn’t know angels smoked.”
“Dominique got me on it.”
“Dominique. You associate with him.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think you could do that, you know. With him being fallen and all…”
“Oh, shut up. The world is ending.”
“In rain?”
“Rain and fire. There’ll be something after this, if nothing more than a great burning.”
“Won’t all the water stop it?”
“I don’t know. I’m not Him.”
“Do you think they’ll ever get around on their own?”
“…no, Myriad.”
…
“Can you see the butterflies, Angelique?”
“Which ones?”
“The blue ones, the gray ones, the rainbow ones. They follow me everywhere. They tell me secrets. I think I’m going crazy. But they’re always right, Angelique.”
“They’re your butterflies, Myriad. You are not crazy.”
“….but Angelique…”
“Yes?”
“…I think…my butterflies…I don’t like them.”
“Look, Myriad. It’s snowing.”
“Will that stop the rain?”
“No. Snow is rain.”
“Yvonne is lost, you know.”
“Everyone’s lost these days.”
“But Yvonne is Gloria’s sister. Gloria wanted me to find her. They’re sisters, they’re all they’ve had. They couldn’t have survived without each other.”
“Did you find them?”
“I…I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because Gloria touched me. She grabbed my arm.”
“Will you be able to go home?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I was so mad, I wanted to kill her. I wanted to strangle her or throw her to the monsters.”
“You didn’t, though.”
“Yeah. I didn’t.”
“She’s okay, isn’t she?”
“Yes. I didn’t get into her mind.”
“You’re doing good, Myriad. You have to learn about these things.”
“I could find Yvonne if I wanted to, Angelique. I could. But I have to want to. I can’t make myself do it because somebody wants me to…it doesn’t work like that. It only works for me.”
“That’s most things in life, Myriad. You have to live around it. But you can do it.”
“I’m sorry I’m telling you all this.”
“It’s okay. I’m very old, and you’re very young. We have to help each other.”
“You don’t look old.”
“That’s what Dominique tells me. I don’t know if I can really believe him, though. He’s a demon, after all.”
“It’s true. You should give Dominique more credit.”
“I try.”
“Try harder.”
“Hypocrite.”
“Blonde.”
“Smurf!”
“Vulture!”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this! You are so….strange, Myriad. You’re bizarre.”
“Yes, well, you’re not exactly normal either.”
“But quite a bit more mature than you. I’ve got to fly. It’s easier to fly in the snow.”
“Will the snow last?”
“Until tonight. Enjoy it, Myriad. Stop worrying so much. There are other people in the city besides Gloria’s, you know.”
“The bikers tell me that.”
“Well, believe them. Have fun.”
“Keep your wings dry.”
“With what I paid for them, you better believe it.”
“Hey, Dominique, it’s snowing.”
The dealer looked up from his cards, glancing briefly out the window. Tiny white flakes drifted past on the wind, and, looking up into the sky, he saw something white fly upward that was not a snowflake. Keeping his eyes on it, he absently dealt out himself a hand, laying the deck down.
“Good flying weather,” he said, turning back to the deck.
Kenneth snorted. “We’re drivers, not helicopter pilots,” he said wryly, stretching out. “Not like there’s much to fly these days.”
“Like you could fly it if it were there,” Dominique returned, throwing some chips into the pile. “You need a brain bigger than a kraken’s to fly one of those, and that counts you out.”
Kenneth rolled his eyes and raised Dominique’s bet.
“See, what I never understood,” Morris broke in, tossing chips into the pile, “was how a creature that’s so huge can have a brain smaller than a human’s. How did the cloners do it?”
“Luck,” Kenneth said shortly.
“Had nothing to do with it,” Dominique dismissed shortly. “It was only the one who made the kraken, you know. Then replicated them. There was a kraken before….you know. It was just really small. And the cloners took it and made it bigger.”
“Who was it?” Jean asked, drawing a card.
Dominique shrugged. “Don’t know, don’t care. Not the one who did the job on me. That one was a pretty little redhead who was great with her hands.”
There was general laughter from the four assembled bikers. “Think the snow’ll make the roads freeze?” Morris asked, taking a drink from his bottle. “Last thing we need is a crash.”
“Nah,” Jean said, shrugging her shoulders dismissively. She threw in a blue chip, and Morris put his hands in his head.
“Fold,” he said, setting his hand down.
“Wimp,” Kenneth said, tossing in another coin. “She’s bluffing.”
“Up to you,” Jean said, tossing another one in. “Your chips.”
Dominique glanced out the window and absently put his cards down. “Fold,” he said. “I’ve got a crappy hand.”
“Hurry this up, guys,” Morris said, taking another drink. “I don’t wanna get stuck her all night, and I don’t want to drive home if this keeps up.”
“Fine,” Kenneth said. “Show.”
Deuces were wild. Jean won by one card.
“This stuff is delicious perfection,” she told him lightly, licking the last of the cream off her fork. He watched her, amused, and she laid her fork down with a sigh of regret. “I almost think you’re conspiring to get me addicted.”
“Maybe, maybe,” he said. “But just to make you come see me.”
“Oh yes, I love your dining style,” she said, gesturing around. The table and chairs were on the top of the building, where misty rain fell around them, thrown off by an umbrella he had erected over the table. “Quite quaint, you know.”
“I wouldn’t like you to be bored,” he told her. “I know how you get when you’re bored.”
“Just because I stick needles in people doesn’t make me bad,” she chided him seriously. “They pay me for it, anyway.”
“You bikers and your vanity,” he said, waving it aside.
She grinned. “Splicing is the new tattooing,” she said, and he rolled his eyes in disdain.
“Please.”
“Yes?” she smiled, and he raised an eyebrow at her.
“Seriously, though. You must know that they took the girl, don’t you?”
“The blonde one?” She frowned. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Ask David, he’s a biker. I heard it through him. Yvonne, or something, was her name; he thinks the psychologists took her. They’re trying to get her back.”
“She’s already dead by now,” the woman said. “If the psychologists took her.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s true.” She sipped her drink absently, red nails tapping against the side. “The psychologists don’t give any slack, don’t give any hope. They’re the modern-day inquisition.”
“Have you had run-ins with them before?”
She waved it off. “Who hasn’t? They don’t like the bridge-builders, though they support them. They need the bridges. They’re just searching.”
“Everyone’s searching,” he said dryly. “I’m looking for Angelique, myself.”
The woman grinned, red lips curling in a smile. “If you want an example of top-notch splicing, Angelique’s your girl. Made by Elijah. Mad, of course, he was off his rocker crazy, but it’s very difficult to create wings that work-you have to implant so many muscles and nerves and train an entire section of the brain. And Angelique’s are marvelous. Plus various other features he gave her.”
“Yes, well I’m hardly looking for her so I can snap a photo for Splicer’s Weekly,” he said dryly. “So you’ll have to forgive my lack of interest. Do you know where she is?”
The woman shrugged. “She has wings,” she pointed out. “Could be anywhere.” She drummed her fingernails on the glass tabletop, obviously thinking-the man refrained from interrupting her. “Do you know Dominique?” she asked abruptly, looking at him.
“No,” he said decisively. She merely touched the side of her glass, carving into the condensation with a fingernail.
“Made after Angelique, in the same model-except as a demon. Not quite as high-class, you know, much less alteration and no wings. I hear they’ve hooked up.” She flicked her nails gently against the side of the glass, then stopped the ringing with a finger. “I get the biker news, you know.”
“Sarah, my dear, what would I do without you,” he said, rising. He took her hand, touching his lips to it briefly, and helped her out of her chair.
“Faust, you never change,” she said wryly. “When will you ever get a sense of humor?”
“When I let you operate on me,” he said, turning to walk away. “Now, I have an angel to catch.”