City of the Dead.01: Chapter One, Part One.
the Park City series
City of the Dead, Book One
{ 1.01 | NEXT: 1.02}
Rating: PG-13.
Word Count: 1301
Workshop?: If you have thoughts, I'd love to hear them! There are a lot of changes I've been working on since the first drafts. The most immediately obvious one is the move from first person to third. Also, if there is any "[[ ]]" action going on, it's leftover wiki markup (I have a wiki for my project, I compile old drafts/write it there first); let me know and I'll delete it. Actual plot, less re-hashed shit you already know will pick up in the next post. At some point I'll give it numbers but right now we're just keeping it casual, don't want to put any ~labels~ on anything.
A Dizzy Past
“Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos.
The thing she liked best as a child was her private spinning game. She would tap her tip-toes quickly in the twinkling twilight, tightening her arms against herself to gain as much momentum as possible. On the nights when the stars hung from the sky and her young mind could see the strings connecting them to the ceiling of space, Raine McAllister with her white straw hair would orbit in circles around her own gravity until her legs ached. Just before the moment when she would stumble from exhaustion (legs unable to keep up their dance, tangling downward), she sprang, airborne as her limbs stretched outward: half to break her fall, half to go as high as possible.
Hazy dream-memories trailed her. She felt - not remembered - a grieving tensity. The perplexing sensation distilled down to an oppressive fear condensed so tightly that it could spark, conjuring up voices barely contained in growls and a rhythmic language she could only half understand. The words were more than a mother language small Raine was slipping away from: they were the very world around her speaking to a climax. Strokes of the scene sometimes solidified. Before her mind's eye was a laying of hands on a boy who frightened her childish eyes to look at. Droplets of sweat dripped through the stale air over the boy on the table, her father's careful composure momentarily washing over the panic and fear from the other adults. There had been no invitation for her to enter this place, where the air was obscured by thick smoke that turned to mere vapor upon touching her eyes her lips. The smoke distorted the room like a tar road on a hot day. She saw something, could feel it behind her - in the corner of her eye - no, she couldn’t quite make it out, no matter how she tried, it was faster than her, knowing her movements seconds before she herself did - and suddenly the boy’s crimson body was gone (her mother cried out at the loss of it - had she been there the whole time?). Yet, very suddenly and horribly not gone, as the boy now stood beside her, staring at the space he had once occupied. He was changed: sockets black against white hair and eyes so blinding from the glowing . She blinked and he was gone, back on the table. When pressed, her mother later blamed the jumble on her father's lax scary movie policy.
Raine grew. Her hair turned pitch while the leaves withered outside, obscuring her window in a haze of citrine - the shades she would always associate with the unhappy event.
“Raine- Sweetheart-” boomed her father’s voice behind her.
“Black!” she shrieked, running to the mirror in the front room. When she caught sight of herself, it broke her heart all over again. Her hair was dark obsidian, her reflection now a stranger. She balled her fists, tangling them into the strands and sunk. In the mirror, the stranger cried, too.
John McAllister stared hard at his daughter, the bones in his jaw strained from the effort of not grinding the enamel nuggets in his mouth together. She was still the spritely, white-haired child of yesterday.
“I don’t see it, kid. Now, no-”
“Dad-”
“Why are you pushing it Raine? I see nothing.” He looked hard at her reflection in the mirror and it returned his gaze. After a moment, he asked, “Do you understand why we live here and not with uncle Tim?”
“Yes.” But she never had so well as she did in that moment. Her experiences were disjointed, shredded ribbons of talk, and she had placed them back together about as well as one might build a house without a blue print. There was something wrong with their blood. Their time with Timothy Danes was highly planned and orchestrated for privacy. The details were something her family had avoided (or assumed she had picked up), and over the years she grew to assume the same, not questioning whether the absence of knowledge was the same as nonexistence. Everyone thinks they are whole and well until they see there is something which they lack.
“Then, no more.” He cocked his head and his eyes found hers. She held the gaze, marveling at the strangeness of hearing him say so much, never mind that he'd been almost mad with her. “I love you, kid, but if you’ve got what I’ve got, then - believe me - you’ll understand why you should keep it to yourself.”
“I’m crazy? We hallucinate-?”
“No. No, but - Raine, are you worried that you are losing your grip on reality?”
“I’m seeing things.”
“You’re not. If you are - crazy - I am, and I’m not. It feels like going mad, doesn’t it? But we can’t help it - it's another sense, but it’s maddening - just brushing against my fingertips. If I could translate it, master it, I could help so many people. There would be some…”
His daughter, only just beginning along paths well-worn to him, stared into his eyes with a look of confusion that was familiar; he often spoke to Raine at levels that operated above her own.
“If you see or feel anything else, let your mother or me know. I’m not going to send you to a shrink, Raine. This is in the blood and I’m not going to let them turn you into a neurotic shut-in. There is nothing wrong with you. This - does not invalidate your experience. Take away some of your details being off, and there’s nothing wrong. You’re questioning old memories? There's no need. It’s hair. It’s just hair. Just little details that are off. Nothing is really different. The hair is not shorter, nor longer. Nothing exists that should not, nothing is absent that should be. You might see more things out of line with consensus, soon. Or maybe not. But that doesn’t change you. People are still unable to afford housing, education, kittens and puppies, and all that… those things still bother you- you’re still a bleeding-heart little girl, who’d get riled up at anyone who said people didn’t deserve those things. Right?”
She nodded again, cautious of some trap he was setting with his words.
“Then calm down. If it gets worse, let us know. Be honest with us. If it bothers you, ignore it. If you like it, embrace it. Keep a journal or something. Just stop polluting this house with your pointless shrieking. I can’t hear the radio.”
The summers in Quincy were hot and sweet. One of the summers, she was pronounced old enough to walk home from school alone (with the lone addition of pepper spray). One of the summers, her father lost his battle with cancer. Summers were a mixed bag.
At the side of her father’s bed, when he had passed and she had cried, his brother Timothy gave her the second piece to enter her collection. The banjo was a physical reminder of how she shook from the efforts of stoicism, only for her features to be occluded by sorrow, bested by her sobs. She did not remove the instrument from the second drawer down of her dowdy dresser for months. By the time she was ready for it, December had passed, and only a dim sense of humor remained inside of her; the banjo was named Ukelele. She brought it everywhere with her, hoping secretly that the rich wood would be scratched, distressed or otherwise sundered beyond repair. Sometimes she would strum familiar chords half-heartedly, but mostly she left it to fend on the ground, breathlessly watching as passersby avoided crushing it beneath their feet.
{ 1.01 | NEXT: 1.02}
City of the Dead, Book One
{ 1.01 | NEXT: 1.02}
Rating: PG-13.
Word Count: 1301
Workshop?: If you have thoughts, I'd love to hear them! There are a lot of changes I've been working on since the first drafts. The most immediately obvious one is the move from first person to third. Also, if there is any "[[ ]]" action going on, it's leftover wiki markup (I have a wiki for my project, I compile old drafts/write it there first); let me know and I'll delete it. Actual plot, less re-hashed shit you already know will pick up in the next post. At some point I'll give it numbers but right now we're just keeping it casual, don't want to put any ~labels~ on anything.
A Dizzy Past
“Matter is composed chiefly of nothing.” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos.
The thing she liked best as a child was her private spinning game. She would tap her tip-toes quickly in the twinkling twilight, tightening her arms against herself to gain as much momentum as possible. On the nights when the stars hung from the sky and her young mind could see the strings connecting them to the ceiling of space, Raine McAllister with her white straw hair would orbit in circles around her own gravity until her legs ached. Just before the moment when she would stumble from exhaustion (legs unable to keep up their dance, tangling downward), she sprang, airborne as her limbs stretched outward: half to break her fall, half to go as high as possible.
Hazy dream-memories trailed her. She felt - not remembered - a grieving tensity. The perplexing sensation distilled down to an oppressive fear condensed so tightly that it could spark, conjuring up voices barely contained in growls and a rhythmic language she could only half understand. The words were more than a mother language small Raine was slipping away from: they were the very world around her speaking to a climax. Strokes of the scene sometimes solidified. Before her mind's eye was a laying of hands on a boy who frightened her childish eyes to look at. Droplets of sweat dripped through the stale air over the boy on the table, her father's careful composure momentarily washing over the panic and fear from the other adults. There had been no invitation for her to enter this place, where the air was obscured by thick smoke that turned to mere vapor upon touching her eyes her lips. The smoke distorted the room like a tar road on a hot day. She saw something, could feel it behind her - in the corner of her eye - no, she couldn’t quite make it out, no matter how she tried, it was faster than her, knowing her movements seconds before she herself did - and suddenly the boy’s crimson body was gone (her mother cried out at the loss of it - had she been there the whole time?). Yet, very suddenly and horribly not gone, as the boy now stood beside her, staring at the space he had once occupied. He was changed: sockets black against white hair and eyes so blinding from the glowing . She blinked and he was gone, back on the table. When pressed, her mother later blamed the jumble on her father's lax scary movie policy.
Raine grew. Her hair turned pitch while the leaves withered outside, obscuring her window in a haze of citrine - the shades she would always associate with the unhappy event.
“Raine- Sweetheart-” boomed her father’s voice behind her.
“Black!” she shrieked, running to the mirror in the front room. When she caught sight of herself, it broke her heart all over again. Her hair was dark obsidian, her reflection now a stranger. She balled her fists, tangling them into the strands and sunk. In the mirror, the stranger cried, too.
John McAllister stared hard at his daughter, the bones in his jaw strained from the effort of not grinding the enamel nuggets in his mouth together. She was still the spritely, white-haired child of yesterday.
“I don’t see it, kid. Now, no-”
“Dad-”
“Why are you pushing it Raine? I see nothing.” He looked hard at her reflection in the mirror and it returned his gaze. After a moment, he asked, “Do you understand why we live here and not with uncle Tim?”
“Yes.” But she never had so well as she did in that moment. Her experiences were disjointed, shredded ribbons of talk, and she had placed them back together about as well as one might build a house without a blue print. There was something wrong with their blood. Their time with Timothy Danes was highly planned and orchestrated for privacy. The details were something her family had avoided (or assumed she had picked up), and over the years she grew to assume the same, not questioning whether the absence of knowledge was the same as nonexistence. Everyone thinks they are whole and well until they see there is something which they lack.
“Then, no more.” He cocked his head and his eyes found hers. She held the gaze, marveling at the strangeness of hearing him say so much, never mind that he'd been almost mad with her. “I love you, kid, but if you’ve got what I’ve got, then - believe me - you’ll understand why you should keep it to yourself.”
“I’m crazy? We hallucinate-?”
“No. No, but - Raine, are you worried that you are losing your grip on reality?”
“I’m seeing things.”
“You’re not. If you are - crazy - I am, and I’m not. It feels like going mad, doesn’t it? But we can’t help it - it's another sense, but it’s maddening - just brushing against my fingertips. If I could translate it, master it, I could help so many people. There would be some…”
His daughter, only just beginning along paths well-worn to him, stared into his eyes with a look of confusion that was familiar; he often spoke to Raine at levels that operated above her own.
“If you see or feel anything else, let your mother or me know. I’m not going to send you to a shrink, Raine. This is in the blood and I’m not going to let them turn you into a neurotic shut-in. There is nothing wrong with you. This - does not invalidate your experience. Take away some of your details being off, and there’s nothing wrong. You’re questioning old memories? There's no need. It’s hair. It’s just hair. Just little details that are off. Nothing is really different. The hair is not shorter, nor longer. Nothing exists that should not, nothing is absent that should be. You might see more things out of line with consensus, soon. Or maybe not. But that doesn’t change you. People are still unable to afford housing, education, kittens and puppies, and all that… those things still bother you- you’re still a bleeding-heart little girl, who’d get riled up at anyone who said people didn’t deserve those things. Right?”
She nodded again, cautious of some trap he was setting with his words.
“Then calm down. If it gets worse, let us know. Be honest with us. If it bothers you, ignore it. If you like it, embrace it. Keep a journal or something. Just stop polluting this house with your pointless shrieking. I can’t hear the radio.”
The summers in Quincy were hot and sweet. One of the summers, she was pronounced old enough to walk home from school alone (with the lone addition of pepper spray). One of the summers, her father lost his battle with cancer. Summers were a mixed bag.
At the side of her father’s bed, when he had passed and she had cried, his brother Timothy gave her the second piece to enter her collection. The banjo was a physical reminder of how she shook from the efforts of stoicism, only for her features to be occluded by sorrow, bested by her sobs. She did not remove the instrument from the second drawer down of her dowdy dresser for months. By the time she was ready for it, December had passed, and only a dim sense of humor remained inside of her; the banjo was named Ukelele. She brought it everywhere with her, hoping secretly that the rich wood would be scratched, distressed or otherwise sundered beyond repair. Sometimes she would strum familiar chords half-heartedly, but mostly she left it to fend on the ground, breathlessly watching as passersby avoided crushing it beneath their feet.
{ 1.01 | NEXT: 1.02}