London, England -- Dock #A1: Whitehall. The smell is overwhelming. The smell of dead fish, rotting birds, and the sweat of chemicaled water flows and ebbs. Beneath the edge of the Strand is another world, one of maritime laws and a life shared by few. Large posts anchor the dock's planks together, and layers of stone marked by waterlines tell the age. This is one of the older city docks.
A harbormaster's shed fills the end of the dock, a single-room space. Just enough to take records, have tea, perhaps sleep. The other end of the dock seems to disappear towards stone walls, perhaps linking with other places. A few fish float in the brown, brackish sludge that is the river upclose, but how many truly ever sink to this level?
Anyone passing by at two in the morning would have seen a strange sight. Nothing too strange, really, but strange enough. A solitary figure, settled on the railing over a stone pylon of the bridge, bent forward and scribbling madly in a tiny hand - odd place to choose to write, but they do say the Muses choose their time on whim known to no man.
Well. I'm not entirely sure why I'm even writing this, except maybe to try and order my thoughts and my feelings once and for all before I do It. This. Not sex, just ... I need to get this over with, once and for all. Can't be putting it off any longer, it's driving me mad, and I can feel it. So, where do I begin? Getting in touch with my feelings - there's a bloody laugh. I guess ... start with the first one to make enough of a crack in my armour for me to notice.
That'd have to be Dei. I don't know what happened, there, one moment things were... well, not fine, things are never fine, but not so bad. I won't say things were easy, or perfect, but I felt like he understood things, like he knew all the raw spots inside me that've been scraped and bruised, because he'd had them too. And it was like a magnet, like there was a light in him, and then he ... suddenly didn't understand anymore, and the magnet lost its charge. Maybe it's me. Probably. But it still hurt. I didn't handle it well - I still feel guilty over how I dumped him, running and then just blurting it out.
And of course there's Hwyll, who actually bloody outranks me - there's a first. I don't know, if he'd been into me because of who I am, I might even have been into him, but he only liked me because I reminded him of his ex. Oh, there's a reason to go with a bloke. He was always so hyperactive, too, after a while I just wanted to give him a sedative. There. Now sit still for a while, won't you? He had an underlying strength, though, that I rather liked, but - hopeless. I still don't understand why he pretended to care what happened to me, or why he wanted to protect me. Just to be near the image of his ex? Great, now don't I feel second-rate.
Can't go very far without mentioning Davydd, now can I? Took me forever to realize I was attracted to him, and half again of forever to realize why - because he didn't bloody listen, put up with me even when I was trying to tear him a new one literally, and ... just picked me up, dumped me across his shoulder and plonked me down until I was ready to listen. Even if not to talk, not really. Can't trust him entirely, of course, it's perfectly bloody obvious he's been lying to me, and I still don't understand why, but - his business, I guess. Just makes me realize even more how few people there are who really let me in. Probably why I don't let anyone else in myself. Why should I, after all? But it hurts, sometimes, and I wish I could remember how to make it stop.
If I'm mentioning Davydd, I have to mention William. And if I don't trust Davydd, I don't know how to mention how much I don't trust him. Sex on toast, and he knows it, you can't help looking at him and sort of wondering. But, damned if I know why. Really, I'd much rather he liked me, or at least respected me, but I've gone and bollocksed that one to hell and back. Figures. Well, it's not like I ever did anything much right to begin with.
And, of course ... Huw. Sometimes I think I'm in love with him. Sometimes, I think I hate him. I got drawn to him for the same reasons as to Davydd - he exposed my vulnerabilities, took advantage of them to a point, and then just ... stopped. But it sort of hurts, too, being involved with someone like him. He's dead honest with me, never saying anything about love or anything, but sometimes I'd murder for a comforting little lie. But ... well, it figures, right? I can't expect anything more, and I shouldn't. But sometimes, it hurts so much...
Dot's still around. We've been friends for ages, ever since we used to giggle over boys and discuss who we'd marry, and how our parents would react. Well. At least the latter half hasn't changed much. She's probably the only one who knows at all what happened, and even she doesn't know the full deal. Every time I close my eyes, I can still remember it, and I shouldn't, not anymore, it's been so long... him, asking me out - God, I wished I'd said no. Wish I'd turned and ran, anything. Glad I broke his nose, even if only for all the times he kissed me behind the school before running off to fuck his girlfriend and tell her how I was the perfect dupe, and probably'd be lousy in bed, the frigid bitch that I am. Sieg better be good to Dot. If he's like that asshole, I'll have to hurt him. Maybe I can do some pro bono publicity, get them back in Paris, for Dot's sake.
Then there's Sandrine. Davydd's girlfriend. That's how I know her best, really. I don't quite know what to make of her - she's always so perfectly calm and composed. She seems to want to help me, but ... I don't think anyone can. Well - if I survive this, guess I'll get to know her eventually.
I'm stalling, aren't I. I'm scared. I don't want to die. But I have to do this, have to hit the crossroads before I can make a choice, and I've been putting this off for too many years. Guess it's time.
The paper's folded a few times, shoved into a pocket, and she climbs onto the ledge, poised there for a moment with a quick glance around. And then ...
She jumps...
There we are, the leap into The Unknown. Martyrs do it. Saints do it. I think he was right when he called you that. William Plantagenet is more on-target than he knows, but then he's seen the show nearly a thousand times over. He knew you when he saw you. He could call you by a hundred names of a hundred slain saints. And maybe you've done it before. I think you have. I'll have to look it up in the Book of Past Lives when I get home.
There she goes right over the edge and into the murkiness of the Unwritten Future -- a substance even more murky than The Thames, and that takes some doing. But as soon as you leap, you write it. Today I jumped off a bridge. I will never be the same again.
You've met so many interesting people lately, and so many of them absolutely fatal to you. Old spirits left alive, somehow, past the purity of Uriel's fire, which at the advent of Christianity sought to burn out the old. I don't find it surprising that Christians tend to burn things -- buildings, libraries, books, one another. It's what they know. Purification by fire. Or, in your case, by jumping into polluted water. Even I don't want to know where this river's been...
But you won't die, Fiona. Drancy. Whatever you call yourself -- oh, and by the way, you'll be needing a new name after this. Dying is really too easy. Anyone can do it. It's living that's hard. And you have a lot to live for, beginning Now. To live to get out of this water, first and foremost.
Guts. That's what I'll call it in my report: guts. To sit across the table from Andrealphus and not lose yourself in the process. To sit across from vampire princes and men of ...suspect character and not to be seduced by it, ultimately. You may not know what you're doing, but then, that's my job.
My name is Oriel, and I am your Destined guide...
Some distance away, sitting on the edge of a pier and watching this all is a man in his mid-thirties, wearing an overcoat of brown leather and a hodge-podge of other dark clothing. Not that you'd notice this. In fact, he's quite indistinct. Like you, sitting in an odd place and writing. Well, you know... when the muse strikes...
Maybe he's a reporter...
The water is cold, very cold. Very smelly. Very murky. It's not the cleanest river in the world. It's a bit on the brown side, and that can never be a good thing...
It isn't the pollution or the smell, or even the taste that hits her first - it's the temperature. Frigid. Colder than she'd ever be, no matter what stupid teenage boys out to use her and discard her might've said or thought. And it would be so tempting, just for a moment, to give in to the shock of it, let it make her forget how limbs work, which way is up, when to breathe and when not to. Belatedly, she remembers an old rumour : even the Thames runs out to sea, and moray eels and sharks sometimes come in...
She really doesn't want to die, you see. Drancy surfaces, thrashing, and manages somehow to stay afloat, gulping and gasping for air, spitting out water, coughing a bit. There's rocks along the bank, there's the docks, there's even boats. But, well, she's disoriented, and as is so customary for her, she aims for a less savoury, a less easily attained goal.
Crumbling rocks and bricks alike where a pier once was, long since collapsed and vanished below the river's surface draw her eye, and she starts floundering her way towards it. It's a slow current at best right now, thankfully. She's lost one sneaker to the muck - Drancy's contribution to the detritus - and it only helps to not slow her down as much. The note? That's gone, whether with the river or when she jumped. Either it'll end up in someone's hands, or it won't, but she's not thinking of anything, singleminded determination to get OUT her only thought or motivation as she pulls herself up, clay and stone crumbling under her hands as she scrabbles, finally hauling herself up to a low plateau.
She lies there, gasping, saying nothing as she shivers, for a long moment.
There's a thin line between letting Destiny take its form, whatever form It Wills, and interfering. The trick is to let You, The One Jumping From Bridges, pick a path and then I, the One Who Watches, opens up doorways and windows for you that come with that choice. Destiny is, of course, predicated upon one using the Free Will that the Creator Of Us All bestowed. You jump. You survive. You crawl through the muck and water and slime -- I mean, extra credit for you there -- and you get yourself to the bank in safety. And what do I do?
I provide a view of stars not usually seen from London streets. The kind you'd need to jump off a bridge and survive in order to see. I give you Your Beginning.
So, now that you've gone and done it, what do you feel?
Some distance away, the man rises from his seat, tucks away his notepad and turns to leave the pier, his makeshift writing desk...
I bet you wish you had a blanket or a towel right about now. Pity I'm not into random prestidigitation, or one who answers wishes. That's not my bag, really, though I suppose I do, in roundabout fashion.
The clouds move away, you see stars more brightly than ever before. You know what it's like? It's like being born. So... what name are you going to give yourself. Would Joan have called herself 'Joan' if she had lived through the fire that burned her?
You're braver than any of those stupid teenage boys. Braver than boys who flirt with girls to cheat on their mid-term exams. Braver than those who would take things from you. You... don't have to give up your body, your self or your soul to anyone. Well, anyone but God. But then, fair is fair. You wouldn't have had it without Him.
So now what. So now what, indeed...
"Miss... miss!" a young man, let's say he's sixteen, whomever he is he shouldn't be out at 2:00AM, but you know how The Strand gets. The kids are out at night. At any rate, he runs over to you, he begins coming out of his jacket. "Are you alright? Can you hear me?" He looks at you, worried young punk, with a bright pink mohawk and dreadfully polite, just as his mum raised him to be. You feel his jacket come over you like a blanket -- and I said I didn't answer wishes? -- warm with his body heat and smelling of a young man's attempt at cologne. Cheap. Polo.
She coughs feebly, and almost laughs. Punk's changed, these past years, for him to be so polite, so concerned, so helpful. "...'m fine. Really." Cough, cough. Spit.
Drancy struggles to sit up, even with the jacket, but she's still a little weak, and she subsides back again. Getting home sounds like a magnificent idea, right about now, even as life flickers and returns to some vague semblance of conscious thought again.
I have no clue now, what to do... That's the thought running round in circles in her mind. But then, what new-born, infant or otherwise, ever knows? Purpose comes with learning, or action, or need. And so she cocks one eye at the teenager. Curious, that. "Your timing," she manages gravely, "is incredible."
"Yeah, well... I was hanging out on a pier, smoking," among other things that 16-year old boys shouldn't do. "I saw you jump...Ah, I don't have any money," yet, he was about to make some on his knees. Let's just say that Destiny sometimes intervenes, and affects more than one person at a time. The boy didn't end up on his knees, contracting a disease and dying in an alley. He now gets a chance to become the next Dylan Thomas. We still need a few years, though. No promises, of course. Depends on how he finishes his exams.
"...You're alright. ah, look... I should go, I'm going to be skinned," contrition is good for the soul, look at his, "...if you're going to be alright that is. Do you need any help or... I can flag down a cab for you, I just can't pay the fare..."
And down the way, a thirtiesh looking gentleman in a leather overcoat and rumpled clothing, turns up The Strand.
That gets another laugh out of her, low, a bit husky, not quite a croak, and Drancy digs into her pocket until she comes up with her wallet, soggy as it is. She peels off wet notes from a bundle. "You don't look like you're on any of the hard stuff," and her look is suddenly fierce, almost savage, "and if you're not, stay off it. Here. Take this." Two hundred pounds are shoved at the boy.
"Use it to keep out of trouble, yeah? There's enough in this old world without you adding to it. Don't dig yourself into any holes you'll need a ladder for."
She pulls herself up, and this time, it works, and she sits up for a long moment, without moving, scarcely breathing, blonde hair dripping water and slime onto the borrowed jacket before she then finally stands, holding onto the stone. "Don't get skinned if you can avoid it," Drancy adds with dry almost humour. "It's no fun."
"Oh no... I couldn't possibly..." he obviously comes from a good family. But you know, everyone could use two hundred pounds. Even the soggy and now smelly variety. But you probably won't take it back and he'll get it by default. It will be as it was supposed to be.
He stands up after you. "Nah, it was just regular cigarettes..." he blushes about as pink as his hair, stuffing the money in his pants. "You can keep the jacket," with all his patches and painting and scratching on the leather, a proper punk's jacket. Consider it a trophy for surviving. He turns and heads up the hill. You can hear him calling out: She's alright. Maybe to a friend. Maybe to a passerby...
Getting home would be good. A good idea. Before you end up on the nightly news or in a ward somewhere. Funny thing is, when you pull yourself up and head up the bank and toward the street, you see a cabbie waiting on you. A few wet pound notes in his hands...
And the thirty-ish man?
He's nowhere to be seen just now. That's not how he usually travels anyway. But just between me and the lamp-post, he's in the cab too. Just like he's everywhere you go. Maybe tonight you realize you have a guardian angel -- even though that's not really what he is -- maybe you don't know why you seem to come out of these situations. Not unscathed, of course, but you do survive them. Explosions, breaking glass, transformations, demons, vampires, tattooed beings, possession, jumping off bridges.
That's gotta be worth something? Right?
So, get in the cab already, She Who Once Was Drancy. Go to your flat. Make yourself some tea. And laugh.
"Pashmina's," she says curtly to the cabbie, climbing into the back and ignoring the mess it'll no doubt make of the upholstery. Ah, well, she'll give the man the rest of the money in her wallet to make up for it, and leave it at that. Drancy's tired, still, and still a little numb. After all.
It's not every day you jump off a bridge, and survive it.
Head tipped back, she passes the time of the ride in something of a stupor, somewhere between meditation and passing in and out of consciousness, snippets of sound making through the fog.
"-Parliament decided today-"
"OI! Gerrof, ya bleedin' wanker!"
"-this next piece, by Stravinsky, was-"
"Miss? Pashmina's." Mrf. She sits up. She pays. She climbs and staggers out, moving to the side entrance - the nice folks downstairs don't need to see her like this. Not like this. And finally, she gets home, leaning on the door as she unlocks it, almost falling in. Tea sounds good, indeed.
There's no one in your apartment, waiting. A message from Dot, inviting you to go shopping. Well, it's on your recorder. No faeries. No notes. No gifts. No stray cats. Nothing you wouldn't expect to see. It's all just like you left it.
But you're different. You jumped off a bridge...
So, how does the room look? What do you think of 'normalcy'. Does this seem like a game of charades, this life. Which is the one you consider more real? The one you've made up for yourself, Fiona-Drancy, the one you were born to live, or the one that begins right now? For whether or not you know it, you have Changed It All. Nothing can be like it was. You closed a door. You opened another one.
I wonder how long it will take you to notice...
I wonder what you have done...
Unbeknownst to you, there is an angel in the corner, invisible, unseen, unfelt, undisturbed, dispassionate, watching his assignment move about the rest of her evening. Noting that she should shower or she'll never get that smell from her hair. Scripting his angelic tongue upon a tablet that at once seems like stone but is not stone. The words of angelic tongue are scripted in a gilded fire, that can neither be seen nor felt. Nor do the words remain visible even to those of his own kind. They are written here, they go into The Book Upstairs, shelved in a library and kept in the Record of Your Existence.
A sigh, and she starts undressing, oblivious to angelic peeping toms. She takes off her one remaining sneaker, holding it up as if not sure what to do with it - finally, Drancy walks over to the window and opens it up, and chucks the sneaker out through it. Its mate is somewhere at the bottom of the river, after all, by now.
She undresses, bit by bit, in a smelly trail of waterlogged clothing, until she reaches the bathroom, turning on the taps until clouds of steam rise to fog the mirror, and - leaving the bathroom door open, for once - she climbs inside. Rosemary and lavender shampoo, carrot and honey conditioner, chamomile body soap ... it's an herbalist's wet dream, innit? Or a faerie's.
For once, she luxuriates in it. For the first time in a long time, she lets herself feel what she's doing - really feel it, eyes going dreamy and unfocused as she washes away the lingering physical effects of her jump. And when she climbs out, an hour or so later, wrapping herself in a towel, one of the first things she does is draw on the mirror - almost absently, as dampness drips off her, random words and patterns, flowers and hearts and anarchy symbols. Well. Noone ever said she'd give up everything...
No, to be a Peeping Tom, one must desire to look. To see the forbidden. To silently rape. To have lustful thoughts and to not be able to restrain oneself from looking. None of which applies to the angel in the corner, who's not actually looking at you at all -- it's really unnecessary -- but jotting down his own notes, whatever they may be, into his journal, for whatever divine purpose might require them. He doesn't care what you look like, if you are female or male, there's no sexuality to it. That's a human trait. Or God's. Comes with procreation. And he, as an angel, does not procreate.
And really, he's been here for a while. He's seen the kiss with the Demon Prince of Lust in Guitarist's Guise. He's seen the vampire. He's seen the fairies. He's seen you not give into any of them. He has, however, seen you give yourself over to Destiny...
There is an air of quiet and peace around you. No interruptions. No one after your body or your soul. No one asking anything of you. Just yourself.
So, what are you going to ask, I wonder...
You made a choice tonight... to leap... to see what would happen to you... to answer your questions, or perhaps even to escape them. So... what are your conclusions?
Fiona's first conclusion appears to be a need for a cup of tea. Slipping into an old t-shirt, worn down to ratty comfortableness, she sets about making just that, moving with ease and without tension - another first - to put things together. The moment exists.
Once tea's ready, she settles down with the newspaper, hair still wrapped in another towel, and her teacup. With a pencil, she starts going through the want ads, looking for something which seems to particularly catch her eye, or her fancy, a tug on some or other thread...
"Suppose if worst comes to worst," she mutters to herself, "I can always see about getting promoted. Transferring to something a little ... upscale ... or I could go back to university, get another degree, though I don't think I could go back to being an ordinary student. Or - ordinary anything... Hah." She chuckles, amused. "Maybe I should just become a poet... dissolute, living on the Continent, off my forebears' wealth. Time-honoured tradition, there."
Sorry, can't help you there, Duchess, but at least you're asking the questions...
That is an important part of this all, one that should not be overlooked. You're actually asking the questions. Rather than hang-it-all, damn-it-all stubbornness. You have, dear girl, come out of your inertia.
Aspiration is not my specialty. I'm like the... angelic Monty Hall. You pick a door, I open it and give you your prize. Tonight, you picked Door No. 2: The Bridge. I shifted your universe accordingly. Now, you're mulling over another set of doors. Having picked one, then again I would shift your universe accordingly. Sort of like one of those children's games, when you rattle a plastic container trying to get all the balls in the proper notches...
Just move, Drancy-Fiona-Girl To Be Named. That's the secret. Just keep moving...
It could be worse. She could just slide into becoming someone's girlfriend/someone's lover/someone's wife, and never think of any more identity to herself than that. But ... that's never been an option, not to her, not even Way Back Then. Rising, Fiona crosses to the telephone, picking it up and calling her office.
"Hello? - Yes, it's me. Drancy, that's who. - Mm, I don't know. Listen, can I speak to Joseph? Yes, I'll hold."
Whoever's on the other end must be marvelling at her patience and forbearance. She's never been so willing to be put on hold before...
"Hi, Joseph? Yes. Yes, it's me. What? No, I'm not on anything, I don't care what your latest office drone's saying." She still can't help sounding more amused than pissed. "Listen. I've been writing for you for God knows how long, you've always been pushing me to take on more and more assignments, stretch myself, cover more and more bizarre, less related items. I don't mind covering the punk circuit, but I'm getting a little past the atmosphere - not for seven days a week, all month every month. You got anything a step or three up for me, or should I start looking into a new line of work?"
And somewhere across London, the unseen Joseph has just dropped the telephone receiver, and his jaw, simultaneously, while Fiona frowns. "Hello? Joseph? Hello?"
Several moments later, just long enough for him to pick up the phone and futz around with the pens on his desk and wave away the offer to help him by his secretary, Ms. April Mivvens, his sometimes mistress, Joseph's voice can be heard...
"You know," he begins, "I have always thought you were wasted on that beat. You and I, we've talked about this before." A pause. "What do you think you'd be interested in doing? You could probably name it, Drancy, and I could arrange it. You've been a four-star writer on a half-star gig, you know that..."
Another pause. "Do you want to continue writing, or would you like to move more toward editing and pre-production management?" You hear his office door closing. "Are you wanting more responsibility, or another type of writing challenge..."
This is how it begins...
The opening of a door...
A moment's hesitation, barely perceptible, and then Fiona answers, voice cool. "Both, actually. Mind, I'd like to still keep my hand in now and again - after all, it wouldn't do, would it, to forget one's roots." She drags the towel off her head, tossing it to the empty chair and settling to the floor with the phone.
"Something a little more upmarket, though, would be nice. Let's face it, my liver could probably use the break, if nothing else, from the hard stuff, and I know my eardrums should get a bit of a break." Especially from some of those new bands. Sure, there's Deus Ex, but for every Deus Ex, there's two thousand no-talent bands that have to be covered, just in case... "Responsibility, though, isn't a bad thing."
Running her fingers through still damp hair, Fiona smiles, and it's almost audible, transmitted through the wire as she speaks. "So, tell me, Joseph, how much of my soul you going to try and get me to bargain away with the deal?" She'll bend... but she still won't sell...
"Come by my office tomorrow, let's aim for noon-thirty... we'll meet for lunch." His tone is crisp, but warm. Business-like, naturally, he's nothing if not professional, but you have his ear. His attention. And his curiosity. "It will give me time to do a little research. We'll discuss what's out there, what you'd like, what I can offer you, salary, benefits. Come prepared to bargain." You can hear the smile. "I think we will be able to come to agreeable terms..."
Yes, something will come of that. A new start. A monthly publication. One of the more upscale magazines, one that could use a makeover. A dash of something new. Something that needs to be revitalized. And you're just the girl to do that.
You know all about jumping off of bridges afterall...
It will be a more nine-to-five environment. You will have an office, a window, a view of the park, a staff of five writers, two fellow editors, who likewise manage five staff each. All of whom contribute to getting London's most fashionable monthly journal out to the streets and in the hands of discriminating consumers and socialites. London's version of 'The New Yorker', so to speak.
Oh, and about the pay...
You'll be able to afford a new flat, closer to work... if you want it...
Not that that was ever the reason for her living here. She likes it here. Simple life. Simple environment. But ... she might need the room, it's true ... and now she needn't feel quite so guilty, after all, about the money she's always had, all along ...
"Of course. I'll be there," a pause, "With bells on..." And Fiona laughs. That must be a shock - has Joseph ever heard her laugh, after all? Without it being grudging, or cynical, or sardonic? And she will - bells in her hair and a fashionable outfit, something slightly timeless and yet tailored. She does know about clothes.
And about changes. "Then I'll talk to you later, mm? I've got a few ... people to call..."
Posted by rowan at June 05, 2003 08:25 PM
