When the rain starts to fall, as it has a tendency to do often, the walls go up. A thin metal dome, just enough to keep it out, covering the town within. But the rain still thunders and they can hear it, and it drives them to distraction. So, up goes the cloth covering. Thick and muffling it covers the sound of the rain, absorbing it to where the townsfolk don't even remember it was raining. In the worst hurricanes though, even that cloth is not enough. Then there is the glass. Premade solid glass dome covering the entirety of the town and some outlying areas. Because if it is good to cover one it is good to cover all isn't it? Keep the insides safe.
But oh, sometimes the outsiders pull at the coverings. When it is just the metal they can speak through it and be heard, and hear to some extent what goes on inside. When the cloth is on, the words get absorbed as if they never existed. Any effort to conduct communication is so garbled and muffled, both ways that is may as well be lost. The glass is even worse. Soundproofed. And the worst is there, the town forgets that it even has it up sometimes, they can see through it to what they want to see and do not have to hear or feel the reality.
So occasionally force is tried, the cover being ripped away, walls being assaulted. This is the only method that goes through the glass covering, thick and solid and all-encompassing as it is. The panic in the streets as the cracks begin to appear is overwhelming, frightening. They sometimes prepare to surrender, and other times run to patch the cracks with thicker stuff. If the assault is lifted early enough, they may still succeed, leaving the walls cracked but thicker than before, and it will take longer for the town to take them down. But if it succeeds... when the glass crashes in and the damage is done and they are open to the elements and the harsh realities... Ah, it is rare, but it is the only time they can feel the rain on their faces.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Driven - 1 - Musings
Chapter 1 - Musings
She stared up with half-lidded eyes at the ceiling fan slowly spinning on the roof above her, watching its blades barely miss the glow-in-the-dark stars hung from strings that peppered the roof of the white room. Her attention wandered slightly to the stars and the random patterns they made. Not so random perhaps, at least to her mind. In all the hours of staring at the ceiling she'd invented "constellations" in the patterns that she kept hidden away in the small places of her thoughts, only remembered now in the quiet and absolute emptiness. There was the Dolphin, an elongated diamond shape with a single star at the end for a tail. And the Tortoise, it's speckled ovoid shell and three limbs and head jutting out; she imagined that one missing leg must have been lost in a mishap with the Dragon, another shape right next to it, snakelike and twisted constantly up and around. Perhaps she should have called it the DNA, she contemplated idly, reaching one hand up into the empty air as if to touch the plastic stars, though they were as unreachable to her grasping fingers as the actual stars beginning to appear in the dusky autumn evening outside her closed blinds and curtains.
Maybe there was something to the randomness of things, she thought, turning her gaze towards the lidded window next to the bed she lay on. Maybe all the things we saw as random were really organized just in some way that didn't make sense to us right away. Perhaps there was some order to the universe? She sighed, and pushed the complicated musings back out of her head. She needed the empty space in there. Too many things going on, too much complication in everyday life, too much to not think about...
She shook her head and sat up, her meditation ruined. Sliding off the side of the bed she began to readjust the pink pillows piled at the top of her bed and pulled the white comforter up, tucking it underneath them. There was a disgruntled feline yowl as she did, causing her to shoot an irritated glance at the base of her bed. A grey and white furry mass was slowly unraveling itself there, stretching and very deliberately showing her its claws and fangs.
"Shut up, Tyrael. You're messing up the bed. Shoo."
The cat didn't even grace her with a backwards glance as it pooled to the floor, gracefully hopped up onto the beanbag chair in the corner of the room, and rehuddled into an indistinct form amidst the piles of stuffed animals already occupying the chair. Returning to the task of straightening the bed, the girl smoothed the last of the wrinkles out of the comforter and left the now-tidy bed for the much-less-tidy desk that housed her computer. She sat down in the desk chair and reached for one of the pile of young adult novels next to the laptop, her hand brushing her cell phone as she did so.
Changing her focus, she nabbed the phone and flipped it open. Her reaction to the screen was slight but sharp. Four forty-nine. He'd be here soon. Damn.
She dropped her phone into her jeans pocket and stretched back over the edge of the chair once before straightening back up and perusing her room. The desk was, as always, in a cluttered state. Books sat in small piles here and there, and somewhere buried under them her laptop lay quietly bemoaning its fate as a bookshelf. Not that she never used her computer, she just usually managed to get what little homework she needed to do done near the beginning of the week and pretty much glide through the remaining school days. Her cell phone could usually be found here, silent and slightly chipped at the corners, used more for the trial version of Tetris that came with it when her father had bought it for her than for its intended purpose as a communication device. Not that she didn't have friends at school, they just weren't the kinds of friends that were still friends outside of school, and she'd never felt the overwhelming urge to 'reach out and touch' any of them.
Next to her door was her bookshelf. Deep and tall, it housed her growing collection of novels, comic books, movies, and even the occasional video game. It, at least, was well organized and accented in places with remnant dolls of childhood or models from one of her favorite television series. The books were in general arranged with an attention to detail that showed her passion for organization and tidiness, but suffered from gaps left by the books she'd pulled out and eventually left in the growing pile on her desk and nightstand. Her little television also sat here with her Playstation and DVD player hooked up next to it. These at least saw a decent amount of use, and did not suffer from the dust that seemed to pervade the rest of the items on the shelves.
Her closet sat closed with her name-sign she'd made in third grade hanging on the doors in front. The thought flashed through her head that she needed to do laundry, she was almost out of school shirts and she still had one day left in the week. Fuck laundry, she thought, it's never completely done and it always takes forever.
Quickly she ran her eyes over the neat pile of books next to her lamp and candles on her nightstand, lingering for a moment on her newly straightened bed. It was white with pink pillows and a white comforter with a large teddy bear sitting primly on it, and might have belonged to someone fifteen years her junior were it not for the calculus textbooks that sat on the nightstand next to it, papers sticking out of odd pages and a pencil hooked over the front cover.
She threw her closet doors open and grabbed the bin of laundry inside. Grunting with the effort it took, she hauled on the heavy thing, dragging it to the door and pausing only to undo the lock before heaving it out into the hallway. Down the stairs she and the heavy bin bumped and jostled until they finally achieved their destination: the laundry room beneath the staircase. She opened the door, stepping into the space between the washer and dryer that was barely big enough for one person and groaned. Not again... The washer was full of half-damp clothes she recognized as belonging to her brothers. Cursing under her breath in frustration she hauled the slightly wet laundry out of the washer and shoved it into the dryer, nearly breaking the knob as she turned it on. She proceeded to grab her hamper and began pulling clothes out of it and filling the evacuated washing machine.
A creaking and a muffled slam caused her heart to jump. Heavy footsteps came from the direction of the front door towards the stairs. She struggled to maintain her calm as she continued filling the washer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall masculine figure come into view through the open door of the laundry room. He stopped, his hands pausing in their task of untying his necktie, and smiled down at her.
"Hey, baby." he said. She formed her mouth into a smile and looked up at the man.
"Hey, Daddy, you're home! How was your day?" He shrugged and continued undoing his tie.
"Same. Boring. Glad it's Thursday though, almost through." He moved fully into the doorway of the little closet, and reached out to ruffle her hair. "How were classes?"
She snorted. "Boring too. Not bad though, Dr. Baas said he'd give us an extra assignment to complete instead of a midterm so at least that's one test I won't have to worry about."
He chuckled a little and reached for her, turning her as she came so her back was to his stomach, and wrapped his arms around her. "More time for wild partying to celebrate the holidays, then?"
"Oh of course, Daddy, you know me. I'll be out all week, drunk and getting high with all the bad boys from college. Blowing off my classes as usual." Her wry tone let him hear the humor in her voice, and he responded in mock seriousness.
"Well, be careful not to get caught. Wouldn't want you to get carted off to prison. It isn't safe there for little girls." She laughed out loud at this.
"Daddy, I'm twenty. And besides, I'd be careful not to drop the soap. And we all know they'd be too intimidated by my knowledge of Greek and Latin and my ability to parse chemical formulae to attack me."
He hugged her tighter momentarily as he gave an amused grunt in acknowledgement. She tensed a little then as his hands slid under her shirt and caressed her stomach.
"I'm so proud of you, honey. You are going to make a fantastic doctor."
He slid his hands up further under her shirt, eliciting an involuntary gasp from her as they slipped underneath her bra. She clenched her back teeth, closing her eyes as he groped her, pinching her nipples lightly and making small pleased grunting sounds. The growing hardness pressing into the small of her back gave her that slight sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that was so familiar, and as she did every time she pushed it down and away. It would all be over soon enough and she could get back to her laundry and her room. She thought about the book waiting for her on her nightstand, trying to ignore the sensation of one of his hands pushing its way past the waistband of her jeans and then of his finger shoving its way awkwardly into her over and over. She kept her eyes closed and her voice made the happy humming noise that she knew he liked as her mind worked to solve that last tricky calculus problem that she'd been putting off from today. She knew it had something to do with the way she was supposed to integrate the y term but for the life of her couldn't remember how to handle the logarithm it was encased in. There had to be something she was missing...
She came back to the present to find him kissing her forehead and straightening her shirt for her. She turned and put a smile on as he stepped back out of the little laundry closet.
"I love you, baby. Go on and finish your work, I have to go pick up your brother in a few, you're on your own for dinner." He started off down the hallway as she giggled and called in a too-high voice, "Love you too, Daddy!"
She let the smile drop and shook her head harshly. God, she wished he wouldn't interrupt her like that, she needed to get her laundry done. It wasn't like she particularly cared what he did, after all, he'd been doing it since her mother died six years ago and it wasn't like it hurt or anything really. She'd thought about trying to tell someone early on, since she'd known in a kind of academic way what was happening and that you were supposed to Tell An Adult if it happened. She even went to one of her favorite teachers once and tried to tell her about it. All she'd gotten were confused looks and finally a laugh and a demand to stop telling stories to get attention. She'd blushed and run out of the room, and had never brought it up with anyone again. To her, it was simply another fact of life. There's always more laundry, homework sucks, periods suck, and Dad gropes you. At least he never actually tried to do much more than that. She figured a couple of years back that he was too afraid of getting her pregnant to try anything like that. And it really wasn't a terrible way to live after all, he never bothered her in her room unless she left the door unlocked, and he made sure they were all taken care of and her college was paid for. Really, she couldn't ask for much more, could she? And it wasn't like she had friends around ever to start asking nosy questions.
Dumping the last of her laundry into the washer, she pushed the start button and meandered back up the stairs with the much-lighter bin. Back in her room she shut the door and put the bin back into her closet, closing it and leaning her back against it. She rested there for a moment, shutting her eyes and leaning her head back. There was the Turtle again. He was always her favorite, so tough and durable and always sitting there right next to the Dragon and still holding his own. A tired grin brushed across her face, and she pushed off of the closet doors. They made a protesting rattling sound that she ignored as she moved over to her bed and flopped down. Debating within herself for a minute, she came to a decision and grabbed her bear and her Calculus book. No point putting off the last bit of work there, she thought pragmatically, and maybe then she could finally get back to that fantasy novel she had picked up from the library. It was just beginning to get to the good parts.
She stared up with half-lidded eyes at the ceiling fan slowly spinning on the roof above her, watching its blades barely miss the glow-in-the-dark stars hung from strings that peppered the roof of the white room. Her attention wandered slightly to the stars and the random patterns they made. Not so random perhaps, at least to her mind. In all the hours of staring at the ceiling she'd invented "constellations" in the patterns that she kept hidden away in the small places of her thoughts, only remembered now in the quiet and absolute emptiness. There was the Dolphin, an elongated diamond shape with a single star at the end for a tail. And the Tortoise, it's speckled ovoid shell and three limbs and head jutting out; she imagined that one missing leg must have been lost in a mishap with the Dragon, another shape right next to it, snakelike and twisted constantly up and around. Perhaps she should have called it the DNA, she contemplated idly, reaching one hand up into the empty air as if to touch the plastic stars, though they were as unreachable to her grasping fingers as the actual stars beginning to appear in the dusky autumn evening outside her closed blinds and curtains.
Maybe there was something to the randomness of things, she thought, turning her gaze towards the lidded window next to the bed she lay on. Maybe all the things we saw as random were really organized just in some way that didn't make sense to us right away. Perhaps there was some order to the universe? She sighed, and pushed the complicated musings back out of her head. She needed the empty space in there. Too many things going on, too much complication in everyday life, too much to not think about...
She shook her head and sat up, her meditation ruined. Sliding off the side of the bed she began to readjust the pink pillows piled at the top of her bed and pulled the white comforter up, tucking it underneath them. There was a disgruntled feline yowl as she did, causing her to shoot an irritated glance at the base of her bed. A grey and white furry mass was slowly unraveling itself there, stretching and very deliberately showing her its claws and fangs.
"Shut up, Tyrael. You're messing up the bed. Shoo."
The cat didn't even grace her with a backwards glance as it pooled to the floor, gracefully hopped up onto the beanbag chair in the corner of the room, and rehuddled into an indistinct form amidst the piles of stuffed animals already occupying the chair. Returning to the task of straightening the bed, the girl smoothed the last of the wrinkles out of the comforter and left the now-tidy bed for the much-less-tidy desk that housed her computer. She sat down in the desk chair and reached for one of the pile of young adult novels next to the laptop, her hand brushing her cell phone as she did so.
Changing her focus, she nabbed the phone and flipped it open. Her reaction to the screen was slight but sharp. Four forty-nine. He'd be here soon. Damn.
She dropped her phone into her jeans pocket and stretched back over the edge of the chair once before straightening back up and perusing her room. The desk was, as always, in a cluttered state. Books sat in small piles here and there, and somewhere buried under them her laptop lay quietly bemoaning its fate as a bookshelf. Not that she never used her computer, she just usually managed to get what little homework she needed to do done near the beginning of the week and pretty much glide through the remaining school days. Her cell phone could usually be found here, silent and slightly chipped at the corners, used more for the trial version of Tetris that came with it when her father had bought it for her than for its intended purpose as a communication device. Not that she didn't have friends at school, they just weren't the kinds of friends that were still friends outside of school, and she'd never felt the overwhelming urge to 'reach out and touch' any of them.
Next to her door was her bookshelf. Deep and tall, it housed her growing collection of novels, comic books, movies, and even the occasional video game. It, at least, was well organized and accented in places with remnant dolls of childhood or models from one of her favorite television series. The books were in general arranged with an attention to detail that showed her passion for organization and tidiness, but suffered from gaps left by the books she'd pulled out and eventually left in the growing pile on her desk and nightstand. Her little television also sat here with her Playstation and DVD player hooked up next to it. These at least saw a decent amount of use, and did not suffer from the dust that seemed to pervade the rest of the items on the shelves.
Her closet sat closed with her name-sign she'd made in third grade hanging on the doors in front. The thought flashed through her head that she needed to do laundry, she was almost out of school shirts and she still had one day left in the week. Fuck laundry, she thought, it's never completely done and it always takes forever.
Quickly she ran her eyes over the neat pile of books next to her lamp and candles on her nightstand, lingering for a moment on her newly straightened bed. It was white with pink pillows and a white comforter with a large teddy bear sitting primly on it, and might have belonged to someone fifteen years her junior were it not for the calculus textbooks that sat on the nightstand next to it, papers sticking out of odd pages and a pencil hooked over the front cover.
She threw her closet doors open and grabbed the bin of laundry inside. Grunting with the effort it took, she hauled on the heavy thing, dragging it to the door and pausing only to undo the lock before heaving it out into the hallway. Down the stairs she and the heavy bin bumped and jostled until they finally achieved their destination: the laundry room beneath the staircase. She opened the door, stepping into the space between the washer and dryer that was barely big enough for one person and groaned. Not again... The washer was full of half-damp clothes she recognized as belonging to her brothers. Cursing under her breath in frustration she hauled the slightly wet laundry out of the washer and shoved it into the dryer, nearly breaking the knob as she turned it on. She proceeded to grab her hamper and began pulling clothes out of it and filling the evacuated washing machine.
A creaking and a muffled slam caused her heart to jump. Heavy footsteps came from the direction of the front door towards the stairs. She struggled to maintain her calm as she continued filling the washer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall masculine figure come into view through the open door of the laundry room. He stopped, his hands pausing in their task of untying his necktie, and smiled down at her.
"Hey, baby." he said. She formed her mouth into a smile and looked up at the man.
"Hey, Daddy, you're home! How was your day?" He shrugged and continued undoing his tie.
"Same. Boring. Glad it's Thursday though, almost through." He moved fully into the doorway of the little closet, and reached out to ruffle her hair. "How were classes?"
She snorted. "Boring too. Not bad though, Dr. Baas said he'd give us an extra assignment to complete instead of a midterm so at least that's one test I won't have to worry about."
He chuckled a little and reached for her, turning her as she came so her back was to his stomach, and wrapped his arms around her. "More time for wild partying to celebrate the holidays, then?"
"Oh of course, Daddy, you know me. I'll be out all week, drunk and getting high with all the bad boys from college. Blowing off my classes as usual." Her wry tone let him hear the humor in her voice, and he responded in mock seriousness.
"Well, be careful not to get caught. Wouldn't want you to get carted off to prison. It isn't safe there for little girls." She laughed out loud at this.
"Daddy, I'm twenty. And besides, I'd be careful not to drop the soap. And we all know they'd be too intimidated by my knowledge of Greek and Latin and my ability to parse chemical formulae to attack me."
He hugged her tighter momentarily as he gave an amused grunt in acknowledgement. She tensed a little then as his hands slid under her shirt and caressed her stomach.
"I'm so proud of you, honey. You are going to make a fantastic doctor."
He slid his hands up further under her shirt, eliciting an involuntary gasp from her as they slipped underneath her bra. She clenched her back teeth, closing her eyes as he groped her, pinching her nipples lightly and making small pleased grunting sounds. The growing hardness pressing into the small of her back gave her that slight sick feeling in the pit of her stomach that was so familiar, and as she did every time she pushed it down and away. It would all be over soon enough and she could get back to her laundry and her room. She thought about the book waiting for her on her nightstand, trying to ignore the sensation of one of his hands pushing its way past the waistband of her jeans and then of his finger shoving its way awkwardly into her over and over. She kept her eyes closed and her voice made the happy humming noise that she knew he liked as her mind worked to solve that last tricky calculus problem that she'd been putting off from today. She knew it had something to do with the way she was supposed to integrate the y term but for the life of her couldn't remember how to handle the logarithm it was encased in. There had to be something she was missing...
She came back to the present to find him kissing her forehead and straightening her shirt for her. She turned and put a smile on as he stepped back out of the little laundry closet.
"I love you, baby. Go on and finish your work, I have to go pick up your brother in a few, you're on your own for dinner." He started off down the hallway as she giggled and called in a too-high voice, "Love you too, Daddy!"
She let the smile drop and shook her head harshly. God, she wished he wouldn't interrupt her like that, she needed to get her laundry done. It wasn't like she particularly cared what he did, after all, he'd been doing it since her mother died six years ago and it wasn't like it hurt or anything really. She'd thought about trying to tell someone early on, since she'd known in a kind of academic way what was happening and that you were supposed to Tell An Adult if it happened. She even went to one of her favorite teachers once and tried to tell her about it. All she'd gotten were confused looks and finally a laugh and a demand to stop telling stories to get attention. She'd blushed and run out of the room, and had never brought it up with anyone again. To her, it was simply another fact of life. There's always more laundry, homework sucks, periods suck, and Dad gropes you. At least he never actually tried to do much more than that. She figured a couple of years back that he was too afraid of getting her pregnant to try anything like that. And it really wasn't a terrible way to live after all, he never bothered her in her room unless she left the door unlocked, and he made sure they were all taken care of and her college was paid for. Really, she couldn't ask for much more, could she? And it wasn't like she had friends around ever to start asking nosy questions.
Dumping the last of her laundry into the washer, she pushed the start button and meandered back up the stairs with the much-lighter bin. Back in her room she shut the door and put the bin back into her closet, closing it and leaning her back against it. She rested there for a moment, shutting her eyes and leaning her head back. There was the Turtle again. He was always her favorite, so tough and durable and always sitting there right next to the Dragon and still holding his own. A tired grin brushed across her face, and she pushed off of the closet doors. They made a protesting rattling sound that she ignored as she moved over to her bed and flopped down. Debating within herself for a minute, she came to a decision and grabbed her bear and her Calculus book. No point putting off the last bit of work there, she thought pragmatically, and maybe then she could finally get back to that fantasy novel she had picked up from the library. It was just beginning to get to the good parts.
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Streetlight Dreams
Sometimes.
When it's dark out.
And stars are only little burning gaseous masses from somewhen far away.
And streetlights flare with manufactured starlight, dying in neon with their ancient counterparts.
And the wind chaps lips and chills raw skin with cold, not even having the decency to bear comfortably anthropomorphized teeth or claws.
When the background hum of electricity and distant blaring car alarms seems loud enough to drown out any music the night might have had.
When trees don't whisper and the shadows on the moon are just craters.
When there is no magic left in the universe.
I roll over on my pillow.
I take your hand and place it on my cheek.
And I fall asleep.
When it's dark out.
And stars are only little burning gaseous masses from somewhen far away.
And streetlights flare with manufactured starlight, dying in neon with their ancient counterparts.
And the wind chaps lips and chills raw skin with cold, not even having the decency to bear comfortably anthropomorphized teeth or claws.
When the background hum of electricity and distant blaring car alarms seems loud enough to drown out any music the night might have had.
When trees don't whisper and the shadows on the moon are just craters.
When there is no magic left in the universe.
I roll over on my pillow.
I take your hand and place it on my cheek.
And I fall asleep.
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