The Lost Road
<h1 id="title">Elliquiy Role Playing Forums</h1>
		<h2 id="linktree">Play-By-Post: Bondage, D/s, S&amp;M =&gt; Bondage: Human Solos =&gt; Topic started by: Caustic on 05-08-2007, 06:30:13</h2>
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>05-08-2007, 06:30:13</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Only the sky is blacker than the highway.&nbsp; The abyssal night beyond the flats of scrub desert, where the headlights die in futility in an effort to find something to touch, consumes everything beyond that road.&nbsp; Only the steady wash of white lines-- line, after cracked, flecked white line-- persists like the cold pulse of a dead-head machine in the heart of a forgotten waste, as eac mark slips into the pool of her headlights for a flicker of life, then fades behind, left alone in that eternal dark to stare up at the vacant dome of a heavenless sky.<br><br>The car is like an animal's den, comfortable enough to stave off the emptiness beyond, but offering scant comfort-- only serving to dissuade the urge to run screaming and desperate into the bleak night beyond.&nbsp; For a moment, it is easy to believe that the night is animate, and the car is only a waypoint, an anchor in a sea of creeping night horizons, where the night sweeps by eternally.&nbsp; But to break that spell... to stop the car, to wait for morning... stopping mid-journey would destroy that illusion of protection, would remind her that there really is no safety in that tiny parlor of the driver's cabin, where the dingy glow of her speedometer lights her skin in a dusting of green luminescence.<br><br>The only sign she's passed in several minutes... perhaps minutes, perhaps hours-- how long is this night?... is a billboard, aged into a decrepit, stolid beauty of peeling layers beyond comprehension, mingled with a white so ivory that nothing will ever restore it.&nbsp; On it, someone has spent an entire can of spraypaint depicting an ellipse, pinched and twisted in the middle to an approximation of the helix-figure known commonly as 'the infinity symbol.'<br><br>Is it desert out there?&nbsp; Or swamp?&nbsp; Or is she driving the seventeen mile bridge to the Keys from Miami?&nbsp; <br><br>The radio crackles, picking up a station where she'd left it on white noise so faint that it was like silence.&nbsp; The radio has no off switch, and dialing only changes the pitch and whine of the static that the radio emits, but sometimes there is music.&nbsp; Now, it's a blues song she's heard before... Robert Johnson sang it, but this version sounds older, tinnier, and more haunting than even that legend of a blues singer-- the man who 'sold his soul' for the ability to play the blues-- could have ever produced.&nbsp; As if from the throat of a man not pre-damned, but in the act of damning himself while he sings, a man playing not on a guitar, but on the stings of his own sins.<br><br>She doesn't turn the radio off.&nbsp; Some people would, normal people would.&nbsp; They'd have their reasons, say that the singer wasn't their type, or sounded too sad, or that the sound crackled too much with static-- but they'd be lying.&nbsp; They'd turn it off because it would chill them, turn their bowels to water, bring tears to their eyes.&nbsp; &nbsp;<br><br>But the girl can listen.&nbsp; She can listen because she is that girl, the one who can pull herself out of her own grave every night-- or has so far.&nbsp; She can hear it and hear its beauty with the same calm acceptance that she can walk with the dead like old friends.&nbsp; Just as she can bare down with her pen, scratch the freakish nightmares of this journey into paper with the desperation of one on the brink of hell, fighting back the creeping swarm of madness with each stroke of ink as she frantically records every dream-fading moment in the notebooks on the seat beside her.<br><br>She can hear this song because there's wind on her face, fuel in the tank.&nbsp; Because she can, because she must, finish this trip... because the nightmare has to end someday.<br><br>A light up ahead, several lights-- amber glows like the candles of a vast, forgotten birthday cake, like lost souls.&nbsp; <br><br>Looks like this is her next stop.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>05-08-2007, 07:32:11</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				It was strange -- well, one of many strange things, these days -- but all the lights looked the same from this distance.&nbsp; Whether she arrived to discover crackling neon, harsh fluorescents, or even actual soft candlelight, the first glimpse was always the same, the warm, almost welcoming amber glow.<br><br>Almost welcoming.&nbsp; Almost.<br><br>Her hands tightened on the wheel and she leaned forward slightly, eyes focused on those distant lights.&nbsp; It was a waste of time to look at anything else.&nbsp; Slowly, painfully her eyes found shapes -- a candelabra -- no, a chandelier, lighting a grand hall, filled with the music of violins and the swirl of dancers, laughter and life.<br><br>Then she blinked, and the hall was empty, lit only with distant, feeble rays of electric light that only emphasized how much of the darkness it could not touch.&nbsp; The whole house was more shadow than light, more suggestion than substance, though it slowly grew more real.&nbsp; Finally, the car came to a stop, centered in the faint pool one of the lights cast on the drive.<br><br>The girl stared for a long moment, taking it in.&nbsp; The details were still lost in the dark, but it was clearly a large old house, once brilliant and shining, now fraying and worn, though still solid enough under the layers of neglect.&nbsp; A wide front porch opened to stairs down to the drive -- almost welcoming.&nbsp; The gardens were long buried under briars and young saplings, but it was possible to see an outline here, a shape there, that hinted at something grand.<br><br>Someone had loved this house once, she was sure.&nbsp; Whether they still did or not... well, perhaps she would find that out.<br><br>She picked up the top notebook, turning gently to the right page and smoothing her hand over it.&nbsp; Numbering the pages didn't work, she'd learned, but somehow there was always a right page on which to start.&nbsp; Now her fingers wrapped around the pen, her eyes flickering up to stare at the house for a moment.&nbsp; Then she stared at the page, watching almost as though someone else held the pen, as she wrote her name at the top.&nbsp; That was what she feared forgetting the most, and it graced the top of every page.&nbsp; Every page she remembered writing, at least.<br><br>She ran her fingers over the letters, lightly, like a braille-reader, then nodded.&nbsp; She set the notebook down and got out of the car.&nbsp; It was time to start again.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>05-08-2007, 09:57:04</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The music fades slightly before she touches the knob, as though the trickle of light through the window has washed it from the night air near this house.&nbsp; The engine cuts when she turns back the key-- only the one key, wound with a piece of braided fishing line-- and the engine sits ticking with heat as the dust billows, catching up with her.&nbsp; Palmettos and thornbrush line the dirt drive, but the brick porch is worn smooth, though dust pales the once fine brick to a modest, lethargic gray.<br><br>The vast doors are blistered with age and grayed with the weather where the swampy air has born down upon them-- <em>not the desert then...</em>&nbsp; and an iron bell sits by the door, its pull-chain thin and rusted.&nbsp; The lights within flicker, recalling the notion of servants lighting candles with long wands, of children huddling round single candles to peer at a dime novel neath a screen of hand-stitched quilts, of yule fires and house fires that made families go to their graves in closed boxes still warm.<br><br>No rug, no welcome.&nbsp; No one's sounded the bell in years.&nbsp; But what to say..?&nbsp; Lost motorist?&nbsp; Ask directions?&nbsp; The bell seems unnatural to use somehow-- perhaps too invasive, so she takes hold of the wrought-iron knocker by the door.&nbsp; Brown with age, it depicts a starling on a branch with open beak, chips of crumbling paint flecking it like fresh snowfall.<br><br>The knock is solid, does not echo, and does not stir any reply from within.&nbsp; The dusty bubble of a light bulb sizzles and flickers, but stubbornly persists at shedding its wan light and long shadows.&nbsp; A full minute trickles by before the door stirs, hesitantly, and opens, a slat of the amber light crosses the step-smoothed brick over the girl, up one leg and hip, over a breast and shoulder, over one eye, in a stripe of light in the black void.<br><br>A voice like wormwood and honey calls within, the consonants softened by drink.&nbsp; "You're later than I thought..."&nbsp; Footsteps, almost imperceptible whispers of skin on marble, carry the attendant away from the door.&nbsp; "Come in."&nbsp; The sound of papers shuffling-- the door opens upon a litter-strewn foyer, newspapers and typesheet yellowed with age and curled with moisture like a crone's skin litter a black and white marble floor hazed with want of cleaning.&nbsp; <br><br>"Did you bring it with you..?"&nbsp; the man speaking wears no shoes, and his thick-soled feet are long, the toes close from custom to shoes.&nbsp; He wears slacks, black ones, but the belt has missed a loop.&nbsp; His shirt is ivory and half-open, the buttons whiter than the fabric, and hangs on a lean form, wiry and without a paunch to match the middle-aged features half-obscured by the angle.&nbsp; <br><br>He turns.&nbsp; His hair is streaked with gray, but not receded, his features uneven... one half of the face seems middle aged, perhaps lower than the other with its weaker muscles and more stretched, papery flesh, whereas the other still has the taut grace of youth, though they are both bristled with a day's gray and black stubble.&nbsp; His eyes are stolid and hazel, and he stands with a weariness that either masks or incorporates any inebriation.&nbsp; <br><br>Couches, lamps fill the room, mostly unused, some serving as paper-holders, some soaked to the point of failure.&nbsp; But the door is left open, no chair is offered, and no one else waits within.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>05-08-2007, 16:31:02</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				She'd been expecting heat, but this heat clung to her, smothering, like the Spanish moss cloaking some of the more venerable trees, like excessive, unwanted love.&nbsp; The starling captured her attention as she waited, and she seemed to memorize every detail of the little bird.<br><br>Then the door opened, and the light caught her, freezing her for an instant before she stepped to the doorway, then, slowly, inside.&nbsp; The scattered papers reminded her with a faint, unpleasant jolt of the professor's office, now miles away and -- what, weeks?&nbsp; Months, years ago?&nbsp; <em>It'll be such an experience,</em> he'd said, and she'd agreed with what felt now like impossible naïveté.<br><br>"I wasn't sure of the directions," she heard herself saying, a faint note of apology in her voice.&nbsp; That was both true and false; she wasn't ever sure, but that was somehow never really a problem.&nbsp; No, finding a place to stop was never a problem.&nbsp; It was finding the way through, the way home...<br><br>Something about his face -- more so the young side of his face -- seemed familiar, but most things she saw these days seemed familiar in one way or another.&nbsp; It was almost comforting.&nbsp; "Yes, I did," she said, and the sound of those words coming from her mouth gave her another unpleasant jolt.&nbsp; Was it true, that she had some nameless something that this man wanted, something she'd found and forgotten?&nbsp; She drew breath to contradict herself, then stopped.&nbsp; Better, she'd found, to let things play out as naturally as possible, if natural was even a word that could be used here.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>06-08-2007, 11:16:40</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				A low roll of thunder chases the horizon far beyond the masonry walls.&nbsp; Nodding in assent, he flits his gaze over the wall behind her, as if searching for some invisible companion, and continues to look for a half a minute.&nbsp; The two of him gradually return to awareness, and the thunder lurches past again.&nbsp; Perhaps it's circling them, some five or ten miles away and spiraling its way home.<br><br>"Sounds like the devil's beating his wife."&nbsp; He almost looks like he'll smile at the archaic reference, but can't quite form the expression.&nbsp; <br><br>He lifts one hand, as if to gesture at the papers, and his hand wavers from pile to pile before surrendering any attempt to impose order by designation.&nbsp; "What you asked for," he says softly, "everything's here, what I could make sense of or find.&nbsp; There are some pictures... I've indexed the daguerreotypes, so I know exactly what's there--" there's something familiar about the shape of those small wooden boxes of green, black, and red.&nbsp; His words leak out of his mouth as vertigo draws her toward the photos, all but a few words fading from significance instantly, and it is as if she can feel the cold glass, fogged and stained in a perfect preservation of lives and faces etched out of silver fumes.&nbsp; They wait within those ornate covers, like the captured souls of the lost, waiting the soft release from the pain of their captivity on a tiny glass pane-- release that can only come from the slow, creeping fade of dissolution.<br><br>The man is waiting for an answer to something.&nbsp; "The men from the auction company will be here at nine, regardless..."&nbsp; he steps into a pair of unlaced, black patent shoes.&nbsp; For a brief moment she can feel the stiff, cracked leather of the inner liner against her own slender feet, the give of supple leather yielding to familiar pressure.&nbsp; "...you can't be stay past then, that's our agreement.&nbsp; Should give you..." he looks at his polished, bony wrist for a watch that hasn't been there in years, "... well, I hope long enough, to get what you need for your work."<br><br>He steps closer, and she can smell cardamom and violet gum on his breath.&nbsp; "Sometime, a woman of your age should enjoy the living."&nbsp; His eyes flit over her, the old side not moving much, and without seeming to notice he scrapes up a handful of jingling keys from the top of a stack of wilted newsprint.&nbsp; He stares a moment more, then takes three steps in reverse toward the door.&nbsp; He watches her with each step, a bird easing back from a coiled serpent, before pivoting towards the door and disappearing into a night full of rising wind.<br><br>There's too much to take in at once.&nbsp; A phonograph, one he's evidently been testing recordings on... the crank is half-wound still, though the lock is set.&nbsp; A pressing labeled in Italian stares up from under the propped lid, the recognizable words "Verdi" and "La Traviata" printed in black on the peeling, yellowed paper.&nbsp; The crate that holds the pictures is emblazoned with burnt letters, reading "Laudanum: LeCroix and Pachet, N.O.".&nbsp; There are seven cases of glass-- a few notable pieces, including a couple of brown Blatz bottles, a decanter shaped in racial caricature, an empty Baron de Lustrac vintage 1895, and a few hand-blown vases patinaed with age and fungi.&nbsp; Newspapers indicate the town to be Maraux, all local interest.&nbsp; There are trunks bearing customs-labels from every nation in western Europe.&nbsp; Iron and steel hinges, knobs, buckles, nails and other facetings rust together in a bushel basket, ranging from the crumbling blood smell of oxide red to glimmering, menacing black.&nbsp; Nothing silver is left.&nbsp; Books in French and English biographing civil-war officers, revolutionaries, inventors and constitutional draftsmen, cracked volumes of Shakespeare and Milton, etiquette, gardening, vague and misinformed documentaries of South American cultures and oceanic voyages... clothes, entire wardrobes packed into trunks, wilting cardboard boxes, and black plastic bags.<br><br>Among these centuries she may become lost. 
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>06-08-2007, 23:20:15</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The girl thought it was more likely the devil trying to beat her, but said nothing, only nodded.&nbsp; Words wouldn't come anyway.&nbsp; The photos drew her eye without even being in sight; the papers stirred in some unfelt breeze and whispered to her.&nbsp; This was what had pulled her here, the weight of this history, the soft amber glow of the faded lives captured long ago in silver and glass.<br><br>Was he still waiting for an answer she couldn't give, or perhaps for the mysterious something she'd promised him?&nbsp; No, he was leaving, backing away from her as though frightened of what she might do.<br><br>She was frightened too, though of what she might lose.&nbsp; This... this was too much to cope with, too much to sort through.&nbsp; Nine o'clock, he'd said, without giving any idea if that was two hours from now, or ten.&nbsp; The fact that it was nighttime helped not at all.&nbsp; She knew that could change in the blink of an eye, time robbing her of what little continuity she'd been able to scratch out for herself.&nbsp; How much time did she have?&nbsp; <em>Too much, and not enough,</em> she thought, and smiled, the expression stiff and unfamiliar.<br><br>She ignored the rest, she had to, and stared at the wooden boxes, running her fingers over the tops of them.&nbsp; At first all she felt was smooth, painted wood.&nbsp; Then, slowly, she felt a certain energy from them, the faint tingling of untapped possibilities and lost potential.&nbsp; Yes, this was what she needed, the next step in this strange, unstoppable journey she'd found herself taking.<br><br>She thought a moment longer, trying to place where she'd seen them before.&nbsp; Her professor's office?&nbsp; She'd remembered and imagined so many things about that last meeting there, it was too hard to distinguish fact from fancy anymore.&nbsp; He'd had boxes like these, holding his notes and pictures, scraps of poetry written on tiny square napkins, phone numbers scrawled on pieces of colored paper, all the detritus of his life and his travels.&nbsp; He had all that there, she'd seen it.&nbsp; Hadn't she?&nbsp; Something in that office had fascinated her, something had made her long to roam as he had, live as he had, but now there was nothing left.<br><br>Slowly, her hands reached out to the nearest box, a slick, shiny green, and opened the lid.&nbsp; The musty smell reached her first, the scent of age and mold and dust.&nbsp; Dust, she knew, was mainly human skin.&nbsp; She breathed in the whole history of this house, its soul, the endless patterns of all the lives that had been lived here, clashing and weaving together.<br><br>Gently, she took out the first photograph, or rather daguerrotype, so faded into a sea of sepia tones that she could not at first make out what it was.&nbsp; She leaned closer to the light, straining to see the shapes.&nbsp; A man, standing... a family portrait, of course.&nbsp; A husband standing next to his wife, perhaps -- impossible to make out their ages, with the details gone, their faces set, and their eyes fixed on some distant spot.&nbsp; The photographer, perhaps, or some tiny spot on the flecked wallpaper.&nbsp; And a child, was it, on the floor next to the woman's skirts?<br><br>She caught another detail -- the man's fancy stickpin holding his tie -- and another -- a cameo brooch at the woman's throat.&nbsp; The picture wasn't so faded as she'd thought... the tones were more distinct now, the details just a little sharper...
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>07-08-2007, 05:16:20</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The renderings are exquisite and haunting like nothing she's ever witnessed.&nbsp; Even the cases, agreed to be generally worthless out of a mutual agreement by collectors, are delicate little works of art, the outside lacquer chipped like a little girl's nails the day after Halloween, the inside pressed velvet shaved in logos, datums, names of studios from north of the Ponchartrain as well as south, all gone to ruin from the mind-rending vapors of silver fumes, the ravages of yellow fever, the slow spirals of addictions.<br><br>She tilts the tiny gray family to the light, and can make out the delicate hand-tinting that has been done... adding a faint blush of health to the drawn cheek, a tinge of peacock blue to the scarf of the imploring-eyed lady, a dusting of red to the stark-faced, hard-jawed man's cravat, but no color added to the babe.&nbsp; <br><br>The darkness around them isn't really darkness... its absence of light.&nbsp; In it is a perfect, clear mirror, clean and pressed in glass, fogged only slightly at the edged by tarnish.&nbsp; In that mirror the eyes take on curvature, glisten with life and fresh tears, hardly repressed.&nbsp; A coldness that can come only from life and its laments, and in that mirror, when the light is perfect, the images is more alive than her own reflection that waits, lurking in the wings like a waiting phantom for these captured souls to close their eyes.&nbsp; So they stare on, unrelentingly clinging to their dewdrop streak lives, frozen in the wan light of a silver moon.<br><br>The lips move, pursing in consideration, and the exquisite features of the woman tense into a mask of contemplation.&nbsp; "Weren't you beautiful..."&nbsp; the fingers trace her face, recognize her with a soft bat of long lashes.<br><br>But it's not the girl speaking.&nbsp; It's the mother in the photograph, caressing her image, daring to touch the brushstrokes of a vast canvas of autumn oils, lit with the soft luminous glow of a half-dozen tapers.&nbsp; <br><br>The loneliness about her is oppressive, consuming.&nbsp; The nice, pretty things, all so cold in the shade of the house as the night breeze crosses the foyer and fills the hall, stirring cream sheers sewn in Atlanta and rustling sprigs of lavender that almost mute the emptiness of the house.&nbsp; &nbsp;Is she watching her?&nbsp; This woman... <br><br>"Madame Thibedoux," grates a man's voice; the effort of such gravely determined pronunciation set bristling whiskers across a work wool collar and cotton shirt.&nbsp; "Won't you please reconsider..?&nbsp; This is no time for isolation... your humours--"<br><br>"-- my humors are for the devil," interjects Madame Thibedoux, "as are you, Mr. Lagrange."&nbsp; Her enunciation is clipped northern finishing school colored auburn with the languid vowels of southern aristocracy.&nbsp; That enticing, all-possessing determination draws her in like so many words cut short and so many challenges faded in trepidation at her black-heeled feet.&nbsp; <br><br>Accepting the insult with a reddening and nigh inaudible curse, Lagrange hurls from a hook at his waist a steel ring of keys.&nbsp; They clatter to the floor with a musical scrape and song, though not as beautiful as she'd hoped for.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>07-08-2007, 06:08:26</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The details were never the same twice, at least they hadn't been so far.&nbsp; But underneath it all was the same feeling of shifting, of taking a half-step... where?&nbsp; Through time, into the insubstantial world of ghosts, into someone else's mind?&nbsp; Perhaps it was only a step into her own subconscious, as she'd feared from the beginning.<br><br>Still, this stubborn, intense Southern lady seemed a strange thing to come from her subconscious.&nbsp; The lady was all silk and steel, immovable, unshakeable.&nbsp; The girl felt small next to her, and terribly young.&nbsp; Madame Thibedoux, she felt, could defy time itself.&nbsp; And she had.<br><br>The keys skittered to a halt at the girl's feet.&nbsp; Her hand reached out as Madame Thibedoux sent her cold gaze at Lagrange, her lips tightening.&nbsp; She bent to claim the keys as well, both hands closing seamlessly around them at the same instant.&nbsp; The girl shivered; Madame Thibedoux, unsurprisingly, showed no sign of anything amiss.<br><br>"Childish," she said crisply, and again the man could only accept the pronouncement, red-faced and scowling.<br><br>The girl looked at the keys, her fingers sifting through them, lightly tracing the shapes of each.&nbsp; But it was Madame Thibedoux who held them, her slender fingers touching each one as though memorizing its lines.&nbsp; And then the girl felt it, under the steel, under the determination bred into her bones over generations -- the tug of pain, of loss, carefully locked away from the world, and almost from the woman herself.&nbsp; But still it shaped her, drove her, and would not leave her.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>07-08-2007, 12:56:52</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				Lagrange's jaw works at the woman-- at the girl-- and the pang of regret and shame at having elicited such fury is only hers, only within the girl, and is soon swallowed by that icy lock of determination from Madam Thibedoux.&nbsp; <br><br>"I served your father, <em>Madame</em>.&nbsp; I stood by while you were swaddled... I heard everything that went on in this house for thirty-nine years."&nbsp; There is a chill this time.&nbsp; The girl would know it beyond doubt even if it hadn't emerged from the pit of the Madame's heart.&nbsp; "I've borne witness to <em>everything</em>, every noise in the night... every whispered conversation.&nbsp; And if you think that I fear... retribution... then know that <em>earthly</em> justice pales in comparison..."&nbsp; his whiskered face draws near-- the sweat soaks his collar in a dark ring.&nbsp; Poor Lagrange never could tolerate it.<br><br>The fury of his brown eyes fades as his breath stirs her hair... an old man by now, certainly, but a stout man.&nbsp; A man shaped by and to his work about the house for these years, since his transfer from an esteemed family in the old country... certainly, this nation must seem like the outskirts of hell to him.&nbsp; Perhaps it was this irony that caused his fury to dissapate, and the cold iron in her hand bears the weight of immense responsibility that, lifted from his hip, took with it his spit and valor.<br><br>His features soften, his nostril flaring subsides.&nbsp; Tears well, and it is with a piteous quiet that he slinks back, blinking in desperate disbelief before turning for the double doors.<br><br>They are cherrywood, deep red-stained, worn with use but clean, and through those doors Lagrange leaves forever.<br><br>Madame Thibedoux finds her gaze wandering up from the elegant lock; the metalwork was done in New England, shipped down from the Dutch country at a neat price of four dollars, and installed by... Lagrange, wasn't it?&nbsp; And it's now that she sets the lock into place with a delicate turn of her wrist, letting the heavy keys jingle meaninglessly together, that the finality of this change overwhelms her.<br><br>Now, back to business... She faces the diagonal white and black squares of marble.&nbsp; <em>It is time that all is done,</em> the Madame thinks, the girl thinks, as her feet cross the mirrors of floor.&nbsp; For a moment she can see the cold glare of a huge eye in that marble floor, of the girl's own eye as she adjusts the mirrored plate for best viewing, but it is gone and forgottend quickly.
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>07-08-2007, 22:47:48</strong>
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			<dd class="postbody">
				The girl shrank at such anger being aimed at her, however obliquely and through whatever haze of years and decades.&nbsp; The woman seemed outwardly completely unfazed, and had she not felt that sudden chill, that stab at the woman's heart, the girl would have thought Lagrange's words went completely unheard.<br><br>But whether it was Madame Thibedoux's apparent utter calm, or some inner urging, he backed down, and whatever slim chance he might have had to influence the woman was gone.&nbsp; Whatever dark path the woman was on, she could no more turn from it now than the girl could turn from hers.<br><br>The keys jangled in her hand, their off-key music sending a shiver through the girl.&nbsp; She was swept along with Madame Thibedoux's skirts, gliding across the floor with grim determination.&nbsp; But not entirely grim, no... there is, perhaps, a part of the woman that will be glad to get this done, even if only for the sake of finishing, of tying off the loose ends that pull her down.<br><br>The woman reaches for the photgraph again, and the girl's hand closes on it and sets it down nearby.&nbsp; They arrange it just so, altering its position minutely until they're both satisfied.<br><br>It's during these moments that the girl, for all practical purposes, dies.&nbsp; She loses so much of herself, and she can never find it all again afterwards, no matter what she does.&nbsp; And she has nothing to cling to, like a swimmer gone out too far and drowning in open ocean.&nbsp; She lacks the breath to scream, even the strength to fight.<br><br>Madame Thibedoux's path, she knows, is easily as dark and fearsome as her own, but now she must follow them both...
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			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>08-08-2007, 01:55:49</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The house is perceptibly empty.&nbsp; The hollowness of the rooms, the lack of echo and resonance among the black oak paneling and deep-hued oils is palpable.&nbsp; Now that Lagrange is gone, the last of the warmth of bodies in this home has has subsided, is seeping into the hardwood and darkness smoothly, allowing the wondrous cool and darkness of lonely peace to make its home once again among the stones and timbers.<br><br>She closes her eyes... lashes so long that they seem to tickle her cheek.&nbsp; She inclines her head, she clutches the cameo brooch, its ivory features rest in her palm like a talisman.&nbsp; Her grandmother's face.&nbsp; <br><br>"Humours," she uttered gravely at the empty house.&nbsp; Spells.&nbsp; Most recently 'hysteria'.&nbsp; But how could she be punished, shut into a room with no chest, no mirror, with nothing to do but lie still, or walk-- she'd paced a bare ring into the floor upstairs, in her 'recovery room'.&nbsp; She'd rested until she was weak, recovered until she was violently ill.&nbsp; No, her humours will not pass with their medicine; no country sun, desert air... her illness is grave indeed.&nbsp; <br><br>She laughs softly, soundless as dead, at her own joke, when she feels it--<br><br>--Like an icicle along her belly, she feels it.&nbsp; Eyes, watching her.&nbsp; Madame Thibedoux's eyes flit like a bat from corner to corner, searching out the eyes, knowing that they spy upon her now.&nbsp; She dares not show a reaction, she hides her chill.&nbsp; She's learned to supress its signs outwardly, for it is the same feeling as so many times before, when she's known with ALL certainty that somewhere beyond the paneling, or past the ivy-scrolling grates or the rose-climbed windows, HE was there and watching.&nbsp; <br><br>He watches her at strange times.&nbsp; He particularly seems to spy upon her at tea, or when she dresses from her bath.&nbsp; He saw the birth of Elizabeth, she knows... but he did not tarry for many nights long after, and did not return until Elizabeth's third year.&nbsp; He sees her at needlepoint, eyes her languidly as she draws the needle back and forth, edging violet flowers and black letters, crimson birds and verdant ivies.<br><br>Gone again, she realizes.&nbsp; She breathes again, and is aware of the constriction of her corset.&nbsp; Perhaps he lingers in the garden, she thinks.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>08-08-2007, 02:31:31</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				What little is left of the girl's memories scatter as Madame Thibedoux remembers, and for an instant, the girl can only reel and waver.&nbsp; She clings to one last awareness, the one thing that never leaves her, her only constant companion -- the knowledge that something must be done, and that she must do it.<br><br>Knowledge of what that something might be is more difficult to come by.&nbsp; But now, as memories of this spy creep into her mind and cast aside everything else, she thinks she knows where to go.&nbsp; Whether this is Madame Thibedoux's plan or not, the girl wants to follow this presence, find it, look at it.&nbsp; What will happen next isn't so clear, but that didn't matter.&nbsp; Nothing ever was clear anymore.<br><br>They still felt cold, that last icy touch refusing to leave them, the lingering warmth failing to drive it away.&nbsp; Slowly, stiffly, they walked towards the garden, forced by whalebone and stiff layers of fabric to stand ramrod straight, however much either might want to relax.&nbsp; Hands touch the walls, the velvet curtains, the furniture, as they move, perhaps drawing some last comfort from the polished wood and soft textures.<br><br>Eyes fixed ahead, they stepped out into the night air, a breeze catching at their skirts and pressing them against their legs awkwardly.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>08-08-2007, 07:33:06</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				She hasn't been to the garden for many days, and the early autumn afternoon finds it in a state of abandoned disarray.&nbsp; It seems more like weeks, perhaps, from the state of discombobulation; has it been so long?&nbsp; The low wall of mortar and clamshell is intact, but the asters and peonies are choked to browning knots, the hydrangeas are bushy, and the waxy-thick magnolia leaves are piling deep, and early.&nbsp; Two above-ground sepulchers, each no more than two feet by three, sit atop the granite slabs that Robert had ordered after each lost child... they form a neat symmetry to the marble angel she had shipped from Savannah; its face has taken on the eternal black tears of lichens as it looks down placidly at the garden, promising peace among the quiet surrender of cultivated order as it gives way to nature's encroaching, groping sprawl.<br><br>Robert... where is Robert?&nbsp; And Elizabeth... where has he taken her?&nbsp; <br><br>Madame Thibedoux's search for her mysterious voyeur takes a backseat to her sudden urge to call for Robert and Elizabeth.&nbsp; Why the garden?<br><br>She clutched once more for her brooch, trying to still the fluttering wings and squirming legs of a rising panic.&nbsp; "Where are they..?"&nbsp; Her lips flutter the words in a desperate silence, hunger for the answer.&nbsp; The question itself seems moot, seems answered by the silence that fills the garden with absolute stillness.&nbsp; <br><br>The silence is shattered by the mocking shrill of a jay some twenty yards away... a common bird to the region, said to spend its Sundays whispering to the devil.&nbsp; The girl feels Madame Thibedoux's immediate pang at the sound; her tight-laced, point-heeled boot almost throws her as she missteps in retreat from that sound before steadying herself, brooch dimpling the flesh of her fingers as she clutches it for her life.<br><br>She breathes once, steadying, bites her lip and forces her eyes to open.&nbsp; For this moment, the girl can see Mrs. Thibedoux as if in profile, see the rise and fall of her breasts as she regains her breath, resuming her search for the watcher.<br><br>The jay squawks again in irritation, and-- strange, that-- seems want to be seen as it takes flight, arching its path over the woman before banking steeply, drunkenly, and smashing through an upstairs window in an almost pretty arc.<br><br>She can hear the glass disperse into shards, simultaneous with the semi-muffled crack of feathered bones meeting with force.<br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>08-08-2007, 22:04:01</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The girl gasped, or perhaps it was the woman, letting more of her emotions show now that she was alone.&nbsp; What was left of the girl had already been saddened by the little graves, and the strange, pointless suicide of the bird shook her.&nbsp; But no, not pointless, perhaps.&nbsp; Was it the watcher upstairs, a lifeless pile of blue now lying at his feet?&nbsp; Or perhaps Robert and Elizabeth, the two from the sepia portrait, the little girl puzzled by the sudden crash?<br><br>But Lagrange had said that she was isolating herself.&nbsp; If there was someone, it must be the mysterious watcher -- the remnants of a person, no more.&nbsp; Still, odd that an angry, raucous jay would take time from its murmurings with demons to help the likes of them.<br><br>The girl ran her ghostly fingers over the angel's sad face, wondering if it could see her.&nbsp; Certainly it seemed to stare into the same dark eternity that had claimed her... Then the present, or rather, Madame Thibedoux's present, claimed her again, and she had to move, though it was only to pace along the garden's choked paths.<br><br>Her eyes turned to the broken window again and again, but some bit of her courage seemed to have failed the woman for the moment.&nbsp; Perhaps it was the presence of the grave markers, their straight, clean lines awkward and unnatural among the wild, roaming vegetation.&nbsp; Life fought to claim death, the leaves and mosses straining to soften those harsh shapes.<br><br>Slowly, the woman turned at last, whether having regathered her own determination or heard the girl's silent urging.&nbsp; She moved like a woman much older than herself, but she moved, her face set, her eyes again the flint and tinder that had cowed Lagrange.&nbsp; Slowly, they went back into the house and up the steps, together, spiralling slowly towards the bird's resting place.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>10-08-2007, 00:34:03</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Madame Thibedoux knows the way that the girl does not; the door remains open behind her, instinctually leaving the way open for a retreat.&nbsp; That was where Madame Thibedoux's heart tugged-- down the red dirt path of summers and winters, past the wrought iron fence and stone-lined dirt path (those small smooth grey stones, brought from the river bushel by bushel on strong, brown backs) past the fields to the water.<br><br>The river... why does that recall a steaming, late summer afteroon, thick with cicada calls and clouds that roiled in the sky?&nbsp; Is it Madame Thibedoux, or the girl, who feels the cool skin of the water glide along her bared thigh as her skirts pool about her?&nbsp; Was this baptism's of primorial green water, of sand and gravel shore creeping, pulling her down into the silt of the river bed-- was it real?<br><br>The irritating pinheel boots nearly spill her to the white and black marble floor-- <em>that's how my sister died</em> curses Madame as she rights herfself in a flurry of skirts, her ankle throbbing in a half-twist before she makes it right again, but she continues, infuriated and terrified, in a careening path through the hall to the parlor stairs.<br><br>Potraits-- not the fine oils of her forebears' likenesses, not on this level of the house-- stare back at her, their stoic repose or starched, ridiculous formality captured forever as a ludicrous denial of their own raving 'humours'.&nbsp; A small mahogany table at the top of the stairs waits like a looming sentinel, atop it a modest cross of brass atop a hand-tatted doiley.&nbsp; She avoids it, stares down at the stairs as she hefts her skirts a few inches in her delicate fingers and hurries up the smooth oak stairs.&nbsp; <br><br>Madame Thibedoux halts mid-stride, however, as she meets with the sound of the bird against the upstairs door. The sound is soft, with a hint of resonance, like the gentle rapping of a frill-cuffed servant, and disperses with a dessicated flutter.&nbsp; A few seconds later, she snaps back to awareness and rounds the staircase, floating down the dark hall past the oil portraits. Something in the girl wonders if the oils survive, or if they are lost-- if she's lost-- <br><br>Again, the noise, this time twice in a row, before the bird-- certainly terrified-- turns for the open room.&nbsp; Madame's hand hovers over the tarnished silver knob-- the wrought ivy and etching of a starling staring back at her hovering, ghost-white palm-- for a few seconds.&nbsp; She hears it flutter again, this time not at the door, and enters quickly, slipping through quickly like the air itself might escape from the room, before shutting it firmly behind.<br><br>Her own bedroom.&nbsp; The place where she watched Robert undress on their wedding night with her fingernail tips coyly between her teeth.&nbsp; It is thoroughly tainted with blood... who knew a bird could hold so much?&nbsp; Or is it that blood is simply the best material with which to effectively tint wallpaper?&nbsp; The space before her chiffarobe-- oddly the exact place where she'd woken with fever dreams of ruddy-skinned devils flaying a man alive, back in that long ago before her 'recovery-- is host to the hovering and falling, fether-strewing body of the jay, who flings miniscule droplets of crimson about&nbsp; as he rises, falls, and finally lands on his feet, black eyes shimmering and wings outstretched in a ruddy mockery of his once azure vestige.<br><br>He screaches once, the noise wet and meek, then one leg gives way and he half-settles on the emerald and saffron rug, his beak open like an expired seedpod.<br><br>Just past that space, the girl's eyes stare through Madame Thibedoux's into a mirror, where the meet Madame Thibedoux's and, thus, her own.&nbsp; The woman's face is delicate porcealin, her lips pretty and pursed as she catches her breath.&nbsp; The chestnut hair, pinned in a heaping knot by dozens of pins, has lost control of a few rogue strands that whisp into her face or plaster to the still-damp forehad.&nbsp; The girl smooths one from her brow, then tilts the MAdame's face to one side and, reflexively, lets slip a coy smile.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>10-08-2007, 23:54:50</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The girl still smiles for a long moment, studying her new face, forgetting where she was, forgetting where she was meant to be going.&nbsp; Then she catches sight of a droplet of blood on the mirror and frowns, snapping back to whatever passes for reality at the moment.&nbsp; Her eyes stray to the bird -- dead at last? or simply too exhausted to move as it bleeds to death?&nbsp; Its eye is fixed upon her angrily, or perhaps it is simply frustrated, but it does not move and the eye seems to grow slowly dull.<br><br>The dream, she thought, and whether it was the girl's thought or the woman's didn't matter.&nbsp; It was the dream that had brought the jay here to die, perhaps, to taint it as it had tainted the woman, as the bird's blood now tainted the room.&nbsp; Through the reek of the blood she caught a hint of fading flowers from the garden, sickly-sweet, more than half dead.<br><br>She glanced at the window.&nbsp; There was nothing out there for her, not now.&nbsp; She thought with a pang of the granite slabs, of the patiently waiting angel.&nbsp; She turned and knelt next to the bird, meeting its faded eye.&nbsp; Her skirt began to turn red, the fabric soaking up blood.&nbsp; The dream swam again before her eyes, the mans death mingling with the bird's.&nbsp; Robert.... She heard the devils cackling, distantly.&nbsp; Her head spun, and her hand moved instinctively to catch herself, her fingertips now stained crimson as she fought for balance, for understanding, even for her next breath as the room overwhelmed her.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>12-08-2007, 07:11:32</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The bird makes no move to escape her presence, mad with either pain or dying.&nbsp; Its black eyes stare her down in its hatred, its meager sacrifice so insignificant among these stately oaks laden with their Spanish moss and memories, among the ivory panels and yellow flowers of her bedchamber, on the rug woven in Persia, a place it would never see if it lived one hundred years-- so a natural, heartless world without, a constructed faux-world of humans within... but it's not the bird that is so furious, is it?&nbsp; Is it Robert, staring her down from the grave, from out of the river where she drowned him?&nbsp; Are the white glints in its black eyes so delicately shaped in the semblances of those cold gray slabs outside, of the two child-faces they covered?&nbsp; Or is it the devil, truly having traversed so far for someone so insignificant as her, a single starling among the most vast flock of humanity to be chosen so delicately for the slaughter?<br><br>The ancient chasm of a word springs to mind: Why?&nbsp; And the only true answer: Why not?<br><br>The girl is riveted to the spot where Madame Sarah Thibedoux stands, follows the slow swivel of her eyes to the bureau top, where the gray, shining surface of the daguerreotype lays exposed to the light, untouched by the bird's blood.&nbsp; Her own face, Robert's face-- which she last watched slip staring-eyed into the murky waters of the river-- and little Elizabeth's curiously hard stare... and yes, little Elizabeth, who sleeps outside in the garden, whom she could not bear to case in granite, whom she could not wrap in tulle and kiss away like yesterday's tears.&nbsp; <br><br>The bird stills and slumps, its broken wing slackening with a few spasmodic jerks, leaving behind a silence, the gracious dusting of blue and white feathers, the aspergillum-castings adding a virulence to this room that will last forever... and she in her verdant dress and skirts staring, crumbling under the weight of loss, madness, and rage.&nbsp; All of this belongs to Sarah Thibedoux, all of this belongs to the girl.<br><br>"He..."&nbsp; she feels the crackling of her dry mouth as the words strain for fetal movement, "he was going to leave us."<br><br>"Mama?"&nbsp; There is a warmth of elation at that sound, of something long missed, of something forgotten and desperately craved for, replaced suddenly with the icy recollection that the thing should not be.<br><br>Turning, pinpricks of cold fear traveling her spine like an army of diligent ants, she sees the girl's small silhouette in the doorframe, smells the damp earth-- the next flood will wash her out-- feels the bone clench of the corset like the girl's skeletal fingers around her ribs, and all control, all denial, falls to the floor like a broken string of pearls.<br><br>What happens is difficult to experience, but the girl has no choice.&nbsp; The madame, the girl, become aware of a shrill, bleeding noise, then realize it is the madame's voice as her vocal cords quiver and tear, rending out the last shrill protest of Madame Thibedoux's life before she crashes, mad as a rabid cat, to the stairs and tumbles-- was it because of those damnable pin-heeled boots...?&nbsp; down the stairs, legs and arms flailing with no idea how to stop herself, or even that she has fallen... she feels the strange displacement of crushing bone, the jagged, confusing pain of her skull cracking, her vertebrae separating with an unfortunate severing of her spine above her fine-boned shoulders.&nbsp; She lays alive a few moments more, hearing the soft rattle of the madame's lungs failing, exhaling with spasming, death-reflex shudders of her thorax, sees the blood begin to pool over the white marble.<br><br>And then she sees it.&nbsp; The girl does because the Madame does.&nbsp; Her daughter is gone, but there, just beyond her reach across the marble floor, hangs her husband's traveling coat, where it fell behind the red-velvet armchair before he could place it properly away. Death is creeping in, but she has time to read a few words, to understand-- a letter protrudes from his pocket, one that he, perhaps, meant to show her.&nbsp; She can read "Black Ball Line" in the header-- a passenger company, and "Passage for You and Your Wife has been arranged".<br><br>She smiles, very faintly, as she black around the edges swallows her vision.&nbsp; She was half-right.&nbsp; He meant to take her along on his voyage.&nbsp; Still... he should have known that she could never leave Elizabeth, no matter the destination.<br><br>And so it shall be, she thinks.&nbsp; Now she shall never need to.<br><br><br><br><br>.... The girl snaps to, her head aching and her body saturated with cold sweat, the marble that half her face presses to has warmed to match the temperature of her blood.&nbsp; Her spine is not broken, her head is not bleeding.&nbsp; She stands, intact, and sore, but uninjured.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>12-08-2007, 14:42:29</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				She gasped as she woke, scrambling awkwardly to her feet in nameless panic.&nbsp; For a long moment, she was still more Madame Thibedoux than anything else, still the mad, bitter woman who had lost child after child, each one taking with it a piece of her mind, of her soul.&nbsp; She swayed crazily on her feet, hands gripping the banister.&nbsp; In her mind, she was still falling and spinning through the air, and her knuckles turned white and sore from clinging to the polished wood, her only lifeline.<br><br>Slowly, she realized first where she was -- not dead on the cold tiles, but standing in the hall, surrounded by the stale smell of memories and dusty papers.&nbsp; It was still dark outside.&nbsp; Impossible to say how long she had laid there, except that it had to have been some minutes, for her pale skin to warm the floor.<br><br>Equally slowly, she found herself again able to stand without something to grip on to, though for a time she moved like a toddler taking its first steps.&nbsp; Perhaps Elizabeth had walked in this very spot, just like this.&nbsp; She was the woman again for a blinding instant as she thought this, again the mother who had moved beyond grief into hell.&nbsp; If it was, perhaps, a hell she had helped to bring upon herself, it was just as torturous.<br><br>She wondered where the man was.&nbsp; It didn't matter.&nbsp; Achingly, she remembered those few small scarps of herself that were always the first to return -- she was a student, travelling to learn the world, as so many had before her and so many would after her.&nbsp; Though never, she hoped, in quite the same way... She was travelling, endlessly, it seemed, and she could not rest, not here, not now.<br><br>Then she remembered her car outside, and then the notebooks it contained.&nbsp; She needed them, needed to write this down while enough of it still lingered.&nbsp; The image of the fallen bird and its human, accusing eyes was still burned into her, as were the sad granite slabs.&nbsp; She had to write, though she hardly knew if this really helped.&nbsp; Perhaps it had helped her keep her sanity longer than she might have...<br><br>But her name was gone again, she realized, memory fluttering vainly after it like the dying jay.&nbsp; She bit her lip, and sobbed, and hurried towards the door, towards her scribblings and the night and whatever freedom she had left.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>13-08-2007, 21:34:43</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The moon hangs high as she leaves the amber-lit porch, the masonry beneath her feet seeming to shift and float as she struggles for balance that comes clean only when her feet find the dirt and scrub grass of the ground.&nbsp; The smooth-lined silhouete of the car-- she thinks it's an '84 Caprice, but can't remember with certainty-- is angular against the star-lit night, and she finds the door, opening it.&nbsp; The dome light works sometimes, and now's one of those times.&nbsp; She sits with the engine dead, the key pressed firmly to the flesh of her thigh through the thin pocket, and scrambles for a pen.&nbsp; She finds one, black and faded orange plastic, its half-ruined print advertising the Black Sands Hotel in Oresa Beach, Florida.&nbsp; She knows this because she has no idea where it came from, and thinks she's spent hours trying to remember wit no luck.&nbsp; <br><br>In the dingy light of the dome light-- which doesn't always seem to even work-- she scrawls in looping black ink every detail she can recall.&nbsp; She starts with "<em>my name</em>--" and stops, but instead of staring, rummaging through her memory for anything of significance that would jar that memory to life-- a family member's death?&nbsp; a first kiss?&nbsp; a favorite movie?&nbsp; a pet, a boyfriend, an abusive uncle?&nbsp; There were snatches of memory, harder than mercury to catch, but were ANY of them really hers?<br><br>She forces her hand to start moving again, and after that, the connection between her desperate need and the movement of fingers and hand in the furious scratching motions of letters, misspellings ignored-- repetition.&nbsp; She ignores anything that might slow her process; she spills the ink like a bloodletting, a release of the furious cacophony of voices in her head.&nbsp; She writes until her hand cramps, until her forearm clenches and spasms, she writes until fills the wrinkled, torn pages of the black-and-white covered notebook and she hurls it aside... it lands on the backseat with the others... then starts on another.&nbsp; Desperation draws more and more words, more ink, more pain, until the pen stops writing and leaves looping, pale grooves in its wake, no ink to stain the paper.&nbsp; She doesn't hunt for another pen, she just stares at her hand-- frozen into a painful claw-- and forces her muscles to unclench and let the pen fall to the floorboards.&nbsp; She'd been repeating the same words over and over anyway, she might as well be done.<br><br>The last page is the same as the one before... where the sentence bled into her writing over and over until her recollection became only a repetition of it, for a solid three pages, front and back, as the ink paled to nothing and died: <em>'I saw her, she saw me, they know who I am.</em>'&nbsp; And she did, didn't she... Elizabeth.&nbsp; She seemed puzzled.&nbsp; As if she knew.&nbsp; She did know.<br><br>The notebook, its paper, thread, and glue binding frayed at one black edge, falls still open on the seat.&nbsp; The lights in the house are out.&nbsp; Something's different... the windows are no longer stately and dusty in their abandonment, beyond care-- no, they are hazed and broken with years, ages past.&nbsp; They are boarded in places, some panes gone altogether.&nbsp; The Thibedoux house has been empty for a decade or more, overgrown and far beyond care.&nbsp; It looks as though fire stains the upper-half's walls-- must have been a fire, sometime after her last visit-- sometime between when she left that door and when she looked just now.<br><br>She stands again, the car's wan light spills from its interior still, and when she closes the door and waits, patiently, for her eyes to adjust to the moonlight, she hears a soft laugh, a child's laugh, from inside the shell of a home.&nbsp; Then soft voices, muffled from the meager, rotting walls, of a conversation within.&nbsp; Children... not like Elizabeth, no-- the children of a new age, where children grow old quickly but mature slowly.&nbsp; A soft glow where they wait, perhaps three of them?&nbsp; Teenagers, somewhere inside the house.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>14-08-2007, 00:07:54</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Her right arm was useless, numb to the elbow and barely there beyond that.&nbsp; Only when she tried to move it did it return to life, pain shooting through it until she hissed every breath, trying to stifle her screams.&nbsp; Had this happened before?&nbsp; No, she would have remembered the pain of it, at least.&nbsp; Perhaps.&nbsp; If she remembered anything, wouldn't it be agony like this?<br><br>Usually the writing made her feel better, she thought.&nbsp; At least it helped her move on, she was almost positive of that.&nbsp; But she was still here, though here did look a little different now.&nbsp; She wondered about the fire, about who and how much might have been lost, irreplaceable bits of history -- priceless, no matter how dark or frightening.&nbsp; What had pulled her back, or perhaps kept her here?&nbsp; Elizabeth, perhaps, the little girl who never had a chance to grow.&nbsp; The little girl who knew who she was, perhaps.<br><br>She stepped closer, soundlessly, slowly nearing the glow and the voices.&nbsp; A young man's voice, boastful.&nbsp; A girl, scolding.&nbsp; A male voice again -- the same one, or another?&nbsp; Too hard to tell.<br><br>The glow seemed to be from a camping lantern, not strong, but steady.&nbsp; She passed through a beam of the light, slowly, now less concerned with silence.&nbsp; She was meant to be here, after all, just as they were.&nbsp; Whatever else happened, she always found herself wherever she was truly meant to be.&nbsp; She had to think of it that way.&nbsp; That thought helped keep her going when other strengths failed her.<br><br>Her foot drew a creak from a floorboard.&nbsp; Suddenly she heard the screeching of the dying bird again, and she flinched, pausing for a moment before continuing on.&nbsp; The voices had stopped, replaced by a rustle of movement, and a long shadow skittered across the floor next to her.&nbsp; "Is that you?" a male voice asked, over-loud in the darkness with bravado.<br><br>By way of an answer, she stepped forward into the beam, lips parted, her eyes squinting very faintly to help make out the shapes against the lantern's glow.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>14-08-2007, 05:45:59</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The marble floor where Madame Thibedoux met her death has been removed and replaced with now-rotting plywood, spaced over makeshift studs in the floor in a makeshift crawlspace... an ideal breeding ground for water moccasins and swamp rats, no doubt.&nbsp; Many things are gone.&nbsp; <br><br>She knows, without looking, that the graves were moved decades ago, that the pearl-handled comb she could still feel tracing her scalp rests now in a display case at an antique shop in Macon, the daguerreotype of the family is shelved and stored with others like it, labeled '043-00233 FAMILY PORTRAIT: DOVRANE, LA', at the cultural history building at Tulane University.&nbsp; Other articles are likewise scattered, primarily they are destroyed in some fashion, but some survive.&nbsp; Almost all are gone... except...<br><br>Warm wetness in her hand.&nbsp; She opens her fingers, looks down at them... they're wet, sticky with a slow seep of blood, but even through a caking of red dirt and black tarnish, she can see it: A brooch, ivory inlaid on an onyx field, the backing silver, blackened with age and exposure, the pin-- though dulled-- is still sharp.<br><br>Where did it come from..?&nbsp; She sucks instinctively at the wound, the iron tang of blood mixing with the bitter taste of dirt and tarnish.&nbsp; That's how she appears as she rounds the corner to the old parlor, now empty but for some rotting wood paneling, a legless settee, and the current occupants, of which there are three: a young man and woman, close to her age, but a bit younger-- how old is she, again?-- and looking up expectantly.&nbsp; The boy sat with his arms draped over the his jean-clad knees; a black-labeled bottle of Jack Daniels propped beside him on the bare floorboards. The girl seems more relaxed; she wears jeans too, but no shoes, whereas the boy has full-length hiking boots that seem to disappear into the cuffs of his jeans, she's barefoot.&nbsp; <br><br>The girl and scratches in bold lettering with a gold barrel-pen on a spiral-bound notebook.&nbsp; The young man looks up, brown eyes flashing prettily, as do the girl's (is she his sister?).&nbsp; <br><br>"Everything okay?"&nbsp; He asks.&nbsp; His name is Josh, she thinks.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>14-08-2007, 23:00:31</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				"I've cut my hand," she says quietly to Josh, then looks quickly down at her hand.&nbsp; She remembers seeing the wound, remembers tasting the blood and dirt, but even so, for a moment she wonders if there's no wound there at all.&nbsp; Her mind has summoned more realistic illusions, she thinks.&nbsp; She doesn't remember that any more than anything else, but somehow she's almost positive of that.<br><br>But the wound is there, the brooch is there, at least to her eyes, and she relaxes a fraction.&nbsp; Her eyes flicker to the girl, envying the clean notebook, the pen that won't run out of ink before she finishes.&nbsp; This other girl can write when she pleases and stop when she pleases.&nbsp; Not for her the blinding, terrifying <em>need</em> to write, the desparation that exhausts and frightens.<br><br>This other girl knows her name without having to search for it in the dark on crumpled papers.<br><br>She steps further in, awkwardly, wondering if these people know who she is, or at least who she seems to be.&nbsp; At least they're not afraid of her.&nbsp; She thinks she's had people be afraid of her before.<br><br>She shifts the brooch gingerly to her unwounded hand, her eyes drawn again to the notebook, the smoothly moving pen.&nbsp; "What are you writing?" she asks.&nbsp; But perhaps she's supposed to know.&nbsp; She looks again, and for an instant she does know -- doesn't she?&nbsp; But the next instant it's gone again, and she can only look at the girl, a faint frown wrinkling her forehead.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>15-08-2007, 04:43:32</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Brows furrowed in concern, Josh reaches for her wounded hand.&nbsp; "Here, let me see..."&nbsp; The young man stands, and she can see that he wears a black t-shirt, faded to gray, emblazoned with a faded white line-art Icarus mid-fall.&nbsp; "Ouch, babe... that looks bad--"&nbsp; he takes off his shirt in one smooth motion, stretching it up over his head and wrapping it smoothly around her hand.&nbsp; His reaction seems a little unnecessary, but something in her-- or is it someone else?-- stirs with warmth at the sweet gesture.&nbsp; <br><br>His thin, pale body glows in the lamplight, his chest, stomach and arms are rich with the contours of youth and health.&nbsp; A stylized sun and moon, meshed together are blazed over his heart in black ink, a tattoo that couldn't be more than a year faded.&nbsp; "I hope you're up on your tetanus shot, Katelyn..."&nbsp; Katelyn, yes-- for a moment, she's absolutely sure that this is HER name, that she's herself-- but then there's the echo of doubt, deep in her, of voyeuristic awareness and unfamiliarity that warns her-- <em>I'm not Katelyn... I'm... I'm traveling... </em> before Katelyn swivels smoothly back into herself.&nbsp; <br><br>"Yeah, I'm ok, it's not deep.&nbsp; It just got me at the right angle..."&nbsp; she can see, in the lamplight, that the cut isn't as bad as she'd first thought.&nbsp; She accepts a bottle of water from the other girl-- <em>Laurie</em>, she realizes.&nbsp; Laurie is Katelyn's best friend, and Josh is her boyfriend.&nbsp; It is summer, and they're camping out... they picked this house to do a ghost-hunt in.&nbsp; There's a tape recorder, a couple of disposable cameras, and they brought lamps, sleeping bags...<br><br>The sagging plywood creaks when Laurie steps on it, and the shorter girl squeaks in surprise and springs back, laughing.&nbsp; Katelyn laughs too, Josh grins his boyish, beautiful grin, and Laurie pours some of the cool water over her punctured skin... she has, without meaning to do so, hidden the brooch in her back pocket.&nbsp; "I'll take some of that," she gestures to the bottle on the floor, causing Josh's thin, dark eyebrows to raise in disbelief.&nbsp; "For medicinal purposes," she says with a chiding, good-natured ribbing.<br><br>"Josh smirks and-- just as he's about to tear a wide swath from his t-shirt, Katelyn stops him-- "no no no-- that's your favorite Led Zep shirt."<br><br>Laurie rummages through a knapsack, setting aside her writing for a moment, and offers her a plastic-cased first-aid kit.&nbsp; "To answer your question, o-wounded-one-- we started a scene-swap.&nbsp; You want in?&nbsp; Three times around."&nbsp; They were aspiring writers... Laurie was the most serious about it, and would be going to UL in the Autumn, whereas Josh and Katelyn liked writing, but didn't seem set on it like she was.&nbsp; "Your turn, if you can write without bleeding all over it."<br><br>Laurie had soft features, strawberry-blond bobbed hair and a cleft palate-- almost unnoticeable, what old-timers used to call a subtle 'harelip'.&nbsp; She was quite pretty, regardless, though she seemed younger than her age, though not childlike.<br><br>The girl found it hard to fix an image of Katelyn, for the girl was too absorbed to self-reflect.&nbsp; The brooch occupied her mind... quite consuming, its unknown history and some strange significance tinged the extraordinary find with a sense of secrecy and curiosity she hadn't expected.&nbsp; Had some girl loved it intensely?&nbsp; Did it depict one of the forebears of the house?&nbsp; And what if there were really ghosts at the ruined house... would they be drawn to it?&nbsp; <br><br>Her scalp prickled with excitement at the notion, and she smiled as she settled beside her boyfriend on his sleeping bag.&nbsp; A pale ghost of a moth whipped orbital suicide attempts around their lamp, each dive producing a soft flutter of its body against the glass.&nbsp; The sound is oddly stirring.&nbsp; Seeing it bump its feather-antennaed head into the glass again and again, its black eyes staring into the glare of white... the hairs on her arm and neck stand completely on end, and she fights off the feeling with a brief shudder.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>15-08-2007, 18:14:20</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Again the girl has just enough awareness, just enough time, to realize what's about to happen.&nbsp; She always tries to fight it, though it never matters.&nbsp; She always falls just as quickly, loses herself just as completely, only this time there is also an extra, sickening sensation of déjà vu added to it.&nbsp; It was always familiar, but this time... hadn't she been to this house before, long ago?<br><br>There was one last wrench, one last vain struggle, and then there was only Katelyn, shivering at ghosts she hadn't seen yet and snuggling up to Josh.&nbsp; "Wow, you came prepared.&nbsp; You're such a girl scout," she teased Laurie, accepting the first aid kit and rummaging for a band-aid.<br><br>The wound covered, she gave Josh back his shirt.&nbsp; "I hope I didn't bleed on it too much," she said, pretending shyness as she kissed him lightly.<br><br>He'd picked up the bottle and was half-holding it out to her, looking doubtful.&nbsp; "You sure about this?"<br><br>Katelyn grinned.&nbsp; "Just one little sip.&nbsp; I'm cold, aren't you cold?"&nbsp; She wriggled closer, taking one tiny nip from the bottle before handing it back as the warmth spread through her, then looking at Laurie.&nbsp; "Nope, no bleeding.&nbsp; I'll take that," she said, grinning again as she took the offered notebook and pen.<br><br>Then the grin faded.&nbsp; She'd just done this, hadn't she?&nbsp; No, not a scene-swap, but she'd just been writing, frantically, in a notebook like this one.&nbsp; Her hand ached for an instant as it took up the pen, and then she was smiling again, reading over the lines already written, looking forward to getting started.&nbsp; A story about a lost girl in a haunted house, she thought, and she was right, much to her delight.<br><br>She looked up, alarmed at the sound of the bird, faint as it was.&nbsp; But no, it was only a moth.&nbsp; Why had she been so sure she would see a struggling bird, a blue and red bird, fluttering on the floor?&nbsp; She shook her head.&nbsp; It was the ghosts, getting to her already, drawn to their brooch.&nbsp; She shivered excitedly.<br><br>She turned back to the page in front of her, biting her lip as she put pen to paper.&nbsp; "You didn't give her a name," she said absently.&nbsp; <em>She needs a name, she needs one,</em> she thought with surprising vehemence, though she made no move to give her one.&nbsp; Her handwriting looked different, she thought, somehow not as she'd expected, but she focused on the story instead.&nbsp; Some stories needed to be told.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>15-08-2007, 20:11:07</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The writing is naturally cathartic to her... something about losing herself into the loops and slashes of ink until she no longer saw the page, no longer cared how her handwriting looked-- she found the plane between consciousness and subconsciousness and wrote with abandon, knowing that the paper existed and knowing the pen's familiar scratching, but with no less certainty than she possessed of the story she wrote; when she wrote-- REALLY wrote-- it didn't matter whether she was writing fact or fiction; it was all real, and it was all spilling from mer mind like a spring from a sheer cliff.&nbsp; For now, that spring was engorged by spring thaw, and sprayed like a waterfall that she could barely contain with a pen.<br><br>Before she knows it, she's turning the page again, whipping the paper aside with the satisfaction of feeling made word.&nbsp; Somehow, though, the darkness of her tale, the turns of phrase and capitulation to the story's will-- it's not enough.&nbsp; It fails her, makes her feel emptier and emptier by the moment.&nbsp; Her hand begins to cramp, familiarly, and something in Katelyn snaps back, figthts back... finds that what drives her hand is stronger than expected, not from within her.&nbsp; Something in Katelyn comes dangerously close to being discarded like a ragdoll from a mastiff's maw.&nbsp; She clings to control and flings the book away... the pen's clear plastic case cracks in her clenching grip, and she drops it too.&nbsp; <span style="font-size: 7pt;" class="bbc_size">...for some reason, she remembers a syringe's glass sides spiderwebbing with impact against a green tiled floor like seaglass...</span> The notebook lands on the floor two feet away, and the pen settles into a crack between two floorboards.<br><br>Katelyn looks up, and her boyfriend of a little less than two years is staring back at her, his full lips slightly apart in surprise.&nbsp; Laurie, too, had an innoccent-seeming wonder as she stared back at her friend and confidant.&nbsp; Katelyn shuddered subtly, resisting the urge to stand up, and shifts subtly.&nbsp; Through the denim of her jeans, she can feel the brooch, a hard knot against her skin.<br><br>Josh speaks first, leaning closer.&nbsp; "Are you okay..?"&nbsp; he half-stands and leans closer.&nbsp; He looks a little like a darker-haired River Phoenix, she thinks for a moment, especially when he's worried.&nbsp; "You're shaking..."&nbsp; he puts an arm around her and settles against her body.&nbsp; "You must be more cold than I thought--"<br><br>"You were..."&nbsp; Laurie begins, reaching for the notebook... <em>insane?&nbsp; possessed?&nbsp; freaking out, breaking down, almost gone...?</em> "... you were on a roll--" there's a quiet amazement, a sidelong grin of admiration.&nbsp; "Let's take five and READ this..." she settles just besie them, a little out of line from Josh.&nbsp; Her bare feet rest beside Katelyn, and she puts her 'writing jacket' gently across Katelyn's narrow shoulders-- a camel-hair coat she picked up at the thrift store, elbow-patches and all like a teacher two years from retirement.&nbsp; She then turns the notebook and starts to read Katelyn's writing. <br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>15-08-2007, 22:20:06</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				For some reason, it was Josh's prosaic comment about the cold that sank in first.&nbsp; "Yeah, I am," she said, smiling gratefully at Laurie for the coat and snuggling a little closer to Josh.&nbsp; But then she frowned, remembering what had just happened.&nbsp; Or trying to remember... it was all a little vague....<br><br>Laurie's sudden fascination with the notebook drew her away from her thoughts.&nbsp; "If it isn't any good, don't tell me, I don't want to know," she joked, shakily.&nbsp; What had she written that drew Laurie in so quickly?&nbsp; What had she written to make herself so... crazy?&nbsp; Loopy, whacked out?&nbsp; She didn't remember that, either, she realized with a sudden chill.<br><br>Her left hand rubbed absently at her right, feeling the cramp lingering.&nbsp; It seemed worse than it should; she really hadn't been writing that long, had she?&nbsp; She must have just been hanging on to the pen too hard.&nbsp; And she'd dropped the pen, she realized, obscurely embarrassed, and looked away from where it lay.&nbsp; She'd seen that image before too... no, not a pen, a syringe, an old-fashioned glass one...<br><br>She closed her eyes, then looked back at Laurie.&nbsp; "What's the verdict?" she asked lightly, but her stomach twisted with nervousness, almost fear.&nbsp; What had she written?&nbsp; It had been only moments ago, but the harder she tried to remember the less she knew.&nbsp; Maybe a ghost had possessed her, and suddenly hunting for spirits didn't seem like such a good idea.&nbsp; The brooch felt cold and awkward, the one thing out of place in their little circle of light.<br><br>She reached for Josh's hand and hung on.&nbsp; Such a relief to be with her friends, not alone and wandering and lost.&nbsp; She frowned again, now more bemused than concerned.&nbsp; Why should she suddenly be thinking of things like that?&nbsp; Of course she was with her friends, happy, where she belonged.&nbsp; There was nowhere else for her to be, no reason for her to be anything but who she was.&nbsp; No reason for her to be afraid, or to scribble on a page like a woman possessed...
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>16-08-2007, 23:44:42</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Laurie scans the page quickly, her brow furrowing, as she tilts it closer to the light and re-reads it, carefully.&nbsp; Katelyn can see through the page, the lantern behind it making it a luminous sheaf of cellulose made heavy with deep, dark-inked grooves.&nbsp; She writes in cursive, and seeing her hand in reverse this way makes it seem like someone else's.&nbsp; That and the sensation of being overwhelmed and utterly consumed only moments before... <br><br>"This is good--"&nbsp; Laurie is speaking, but not conversing... she's consumed too, reading it.&nbsp; Her eyes fload down the neat rows of words quickly-- pausing for a second glance here and there, but never stopping.&nbsp; She's leaning forward, her free hand flitting from a pointing-gesture to the relaxed half-claw of a 'natural hand position...' the position for a hand when no muscles are stimulated, or when no nerves are left alive.&nbsp; Her hand is white and small, a smudge of blue ink along the outer edge of her pinkie.&nbsp; She stands up, starts to pace, her shadow taking great strides like a black carousel around what remains of Madame Thibedoux's parlor, while she shuffles idly around the gas lantern.&nbsp; Josh's hand is warm on Katelyn's, squeezes it gently, firmly, in question and reassurance.<br><br>She passes the page around the spiral binding, it hangs like a leaf before she smoothes it to the back.&nbsp; Laurie's eyes move down the page, her lips try to form a word, but do not.&nbsp; She reaches the end, lets her eyes slowly slide up from the page to meet Katelyn's, before she looks back to re-read the last line... her brow tightens again, she re-hashes the conclusion.&nbsp; "I don't..."&nbsp; she looks back up again, unable to reconcile this, the last, like she did the rest.&nbsp; "This sounds beautiful, but I..."&nbsp; she shakes her head.&nbsp; "It's sad, wistful... it's eerie, but..."&nbsp; Josh gives her leg a squeeze, and she thinks, just for a moment, how comforting it would be to have his long body alongside hers.&nbsp; He reaches for the notebook and reads it while Laurie continues to puzzle over it.&nbsp; <br><br>"WHat did you mean," she asks, walking through the pool of light mid-room as she studies the exposed beams and remnants of plaster ceiling frieze that remain, "what gave you that last image, with the cave?"&nbsp; She turns, arms folded over her small breasts.&nbsp; Her long-sleeved gray t-shirt is oversized, the stretched wrists droop like wilted flowers to swallow all but the fingers of her hands now.&nbsp; The analyst, the over-thinker, in Laurie begins to prattle in attempt at imposing order where, perhaps, there is only chaos.&nbsp; "It's sort of surreal... I guess that you could do a Freudian reading and see it a child's return to the womb, but since she's a girl herself, it might be a self-exploration--" <br><br>"Stop it--" Josh says, and she can see over his shoulder scraps of it, pieces of the convoluted madness that sprang from her hand like blood.&nbsp; "-- just, not yet, Laurie."&nbsp; He reads on.&nbsp; <em>Something about a girl on the road, a never-ending road.&nbsp; Her name is Elizabeth, and she's lost, beyond the point-of-no-return on a lonely desert road.&nbsp; </em><br><br>Katelyn remembers the image now, as if it passed through her, and she's caught its scent and is following it, chasing it out of her mind. "It's very dark," Josh begins, reading the description of her isolation and sorrow, of her loss without name.&nbsp; &nbsp; <br><br><em>She wanders into a cave and finds a doll-- but it's not a doll, it's a girl's remains, very small, like a mummified princess from ancient Egypt.&nbsp; She's still wearing a blue dress, faded and worn but pretty, preserved in the desert heat.</em><br><br>The cavern is still vivid in her mind, dark, lit from the reflection of something that shimmers like gold in sunlight.&nbsp; <br><em>There is no fear.&nbsp; The girl's memory is still tender, still intact in this place.&nbsp; She's not lost, she's only waiting.&nbsp; She's not in torment, merely... uncomfortable.&nbsp; Incomplete.</em><br><br>"Katelyn," Laurie says very close to her, picking up the bottle and taking a drink-- she manages not to choke this time, and Katelyn stares back with mirrored pools of eyes at her pixie-friend's curious stare.&nbsp; <br><br><em>The girl's remains whisper from nowhere.&nbsp; 'My tongue burns with what I cannot say.'</em><br><br>"You've got something here," she murmurs, passing the bottle to her friend.&nbsp; The brown whiskey burns her throat-- Katelyn's mouth-- like liquid fire.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>17-08-2007, 17:18:06</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Katelyn felt like there was a lot she couldn't say herself, like all her words had poured out onto the page and left her with only the dregs of language.&nbsp; <em>That's good, I should tell Laurie that,</em> she thought, but she didn't, suddenly too tired.&nbsp; But no, it was more that she was too unsettled, too afraid.<br><br>She'd thought she'd start to remember the words, as the other read scraps of them aloud and she caught sight of some of them over Josh's shoulder, but they were gone, gone from her head as though they'd never been there at all.&nbsp; Maybe they hadn't.&nbsp; Maybe they had always been in someone else's head.&nbsp; She couldn't write like that, it wasn't her.&nbsp; Elizabeth, perhaps, some long ago ghost that had only borrowed her hands to write, her eyes to see.<br><br>Laurie hovered like the moth, waiting, looking at Katelyn with mingled concern and something like awe.&nbsp; Certainly surprise.&nbsp; Laurie knew she couldn't write like that, too.&nbsp; Katelyn handed the bottle back, wishing for a moment that her friend wouldn't overanalyze, just this once, wouldn't catch all the details others missed...<br><br>She leaned her head against Josh's shoulder.&nbsp; He didn't like what he was reading, it was too dark, it was making him nervous.&nbsp; She wished she'd never written it.&nbsp; Her left hand again rubbed at her right as it suddenly felt cramped and exhausted again.&nbsp; "I think this place is getting to me," she murmured.&nbsp; She had the sudden conviction that she was waiting for something, that something was about to happen, something that would divide everything into before and after.<br><br>She bit her lip, trying not to shiver.&nbsp; It was only a silly, harmless ghost hunt.&nbsp; Josh was there, Laurie was there.&nbsp; Nothing so terrible would happen.&nbsp; It was only words scrawled in a notebook, only strange feelings in her head.&nbsp; Nothing so terrible, nothing that wouldn't seem foolish when the sun shone on it.<br><br>But she stared at the faded pattern on a threadbare patch of carpeting, feeling the brooch pressing against her, feeling the wound on her hand throb, and kept shivering.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>17-08-2007, 22:31:47</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Laurie took the bottle for another sip, easing the bottle from Katelyn's hand with the same delibarate ease as before.&nbsp; She seemed lost in thought now.&nbsp; "So... good thing we didn't bring the Ouija board, huh?"&nbsp; <br><br>Josh laughs slightly with clear relief, the feeling of his warmth and the memory of joviality lulls the girl back into her slumbering awareness of Katelyn's world, of this prolonged waking dream of life after her ceaseless journey.&nbsp; Josh is starting to stand up, and something in his leaving frightens her.&nbsp; "C'mon," Josh says as he reaches his feet.&nbsp; "I think we've had enough.&nbsp; Let's go."<br><br>"But--"&nbsp; Laurie whirls from where she's been staring, deep in though, her eyes half-focused a piece of the cracked plaster frieze work.&nbsp; "--we haven't even told the story yet," she protests half-heartedly... but somethingin Katelyn's eyes eases her down-- "But, hey... we can tell the story somewhere else.&nbsp; No more writing, I promise-- scout's honor."<br><br>Josh smiles, "Yeah, like... in the car.&nbsp; C'mon," and Katelyn is aware, suddenly, of the girl's fear... her fear that to break this moment will cast her back onto the road, or back down those parlor stairs to a cold marble floor to die again, or somewhere worse.&nbsp; And Katelyn responds protectively to the girl behind her eyes.<br><br>"No," she says crisply, working up an encouraging smile.&nbsp; "It's okay.&nbsp; I've got a cramp, I'm tired from work... maybe I got a little too much sun today--"&nbsp; where had they been?&nbsp; More clearly than her own name, the girl realizes that Katelyn is working the summer as a vendor at an outdoor mall, peddling pastic things with no use.&nbsp; She gets to see Josh every day, though... he works there too.&nbsp; "But I definitely want to hear the stories."<br><br>Laurie's faint, gentle smile drifts through the lamplight, and she gives an open-hand smack to a sheet-covered dustmite farm of a couch up againt the wall, sending up a cloud of dust.&nbsp; Mostly human skin...<br><br>With a wary smile, Josh eases back down beside Katelyn.&nbsp; "Well--"&nbsp; he shuffles slightly, resettles on the rain-warped particle board next to her again, and reaches for her hurt hand to take it, gingerly, like a wounded animal.&nbsp; "--it you want."&nbsp; He glances at her hand again.&nbsp; "How did you hurt this, anyway?"<br><br>Taking their complacence as an invitation, Laurie's feline smile spreads and she pushes up the sleeves on her gray t-shirt.&nbsp; She seems more comfortable in it now, and Katelyn, too, finds the night warmer.&nbsp; She shrugs off Laurie's camel-hair coat and stretches it high over her head to hang it on a jutting piece of wood from the hearth.&nbsp; The wind must have died down suddenly, she realizes, for the house has grown quite warm, and the cool on Katelyn's skin as her shirt moves up from her waistband is relieving.<br><br>"What happened in this house," Laurie begins, "no one knows for sure.&nbsp; Everyone who lived here has died, and we've only hearsay to go by.&nbsp; But it is clear that this house, once the home of the Thibedoux family, is cursed."<br><br>She smiles very faintly as she sees their rapt approval, and Laurie continues.&nbsp; "The lady of the house, Sarah Thibedoux, lived in in the mid-19th century, and had only one child survive past infancy.&nbsp; Some say she went mad.&nbsp; Her husband, Henry Thibedeaux, disappeared one day... the family servant said that he left his wife, but others in the area-- mostly plantation land then-- rumored that he'd killed himself, or been killed by a jealous lover... some said it was the lady herself."&nbsp; <br><br>The summers in this house must have filled the high-ceilinged rooms with maddening heat in an age where ice could not even be purchased, where electricity was unthinkable.<br><br>"Her last child drowned mysteriously--"&nbsp; in the river, wasn't it? "--and the madame took a mysterious tumble down the stairs not one week later, terminating the cursed family line-- but not the curse."&nbsp; Katelyn could not respond, not inwardly comprehend the bearing, and deep inside her, the girl shivered.<br><br>She had a sick premonition of what would follow.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>18-08-2007, 20:32:41</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The girl was relieved at staying, and uneasy, as she always was, at watching someone else's life through their own eyes.&nbsp; But these were all the lives she had, all the normality she could find to cling to, and she could not willingly let go.&nbsp; There was a friend here to talk to, a boyfriend to hold, a tantalizing taste of what she might have left behind, somewhere, long ago...<br><br>Katelyn wondered that she could have been cold enough to shiver only a few moments ago; the air now seemed so hot and close.&nbsp; It would have been nice to shrug off her shirt as well as Laurie's borrowed coat, and lie on the cool smooth sleeping bag with Josh...<br><br>But Laurie was talking, in her element, spinning these stories for them, and she dismissed the thought to focus on the girl before her.&nbsp; She told a good story, even without pen and paper, and Katelyn was content to listen, managing to ignore, or perhaps not quite feel, the small pool of dread forming at the back of her mind.&nbsp; She hadn't had the chance to answer Josh's question, and she squeezed his hand as though reassuring him they could do all that later -- talk and hold each other close and forget blood and strange deaths and mournful houses.<br><br><em>Drowned.&nbsp; In the river.</em>&nbsp; Awful, Katelyn thought, while the girl tensed and would have screamed if she could have.&nbsp; These stories were not what she craved, not really, but they drew her in and held her just the same.&nbsp; And Laurie knew them well.&nbsp; Her eyes gleamed as she spoke, reflecting the pale lantern light.&nbsp; The moth -- the same moth, not yet dead? -- or perhaps another like it fluttered noisly for a moment, its shadow flickering over Laurie's shirt and then vanishing.<br><br>"The house sat empty for a while.&nbsp; No one here wanted it because of the stories and whispers they'd heard.&nbsp; Then a northerner bought it, a man named Palmer.&nbsp; He had a wife, and a little girl, and within a few months of moving here, the girl died.&nbsp; They blamed it on swamp fever, but the mother had to be sent away after that, because of her ravings."<br><br>Laurie paused importantly, long enough for Katelyn to realize how strange it was that her friend should know all these things so well, say them so smoothly, as though she'd seen them.&nbsp; "The house was empty even longer after that.&nbsp; It was a brothel for a while. Rumrunners used it during Prohibition.&nbsp; But still no one wanted to live here.&nbsp; A woman tried to burn it down years ago -- to burn out the curse, she said -- but that didn't help.&nbsp; Nothing like that could."<br><br>Again a pause, long enough for the girl to tense, to panic afresh.&nbsp; "Then some descendant of the last owner came down, to clear the place out and give everything to a museum.&nbsp; A writer came, too, doing research for a book she wanted to write.&nbsp; At least, that's who she <em>said</em> she was....<br><br>"When the people from the museum came the next morning, the first thing they found was a body at the foot of the stairs... just where Mrs. Thibedoux had landed and broken her neck all those years ago.&nbsp; The owner said it was the writer, and he didn't know what had happened.&nbsp; But then the writer appeared, alive and well, and totally confused at being thought dead.<br><br>"They never found out who the girl was.&nbsp; Some people wanted the owner arrested, but it looked as though she'd only slipped and fallen, and they couldn't find any motive anyway.&nbsp; If she was killed, then the murderer is free to this day..."<br><br>Katelyn turned and buried her head in Josh's shoulder.&nbsp; She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream, but she fought against doing either.&nbsp; They would think she was crazy for sure this time.&nbsp; She had to be calm, for the sake of--<br><br>"You're too good at this scary stuff, Laurie," Katelyn complained, her voice sounding almost, very nearly, just as it should.&nbsp; She turned to smile at her friend, Josh's body keeping her face mostly in shadow, hiding whatever tension there was.&nbsp; Her hand squeezed Josh's again, then her fingers lightly toyed with his, trembling.<br><br>Josh frowned, she could feel it.&nbsp; "You tired, babe?&nbsp; You must be," he said, as though that explained everything, and perhaps it did.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>19-08-2007, 07:24:07</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				"Maybe," Kaitlyn's heavy lips manage to Josh before she plants them on the underside of his jaw, where they work for a moment in a half-kiss, half-whisper that is not entirely her own, but the warm wet kiss burns on his skin like the words she leaves.&nbsp; "Tired, but not dead."&nbsp; He starts to laugh, but the sound deepens from jovial to sensual, and his eyes half close, girlish lashes hiding his dark eyes for a moment.<br><br>Laurie watches them, the familiarity of her sweetest friends overriding the tinge of jealousy... odd, though, it's hard to tell which of them she's jealous of.&nbsp; "So do you think it's true?" she asked through half-slitted blue eyes, faintly smiling as she turned the half-empty bottle of whiskey to her lips for a long, slow pull.&nbsp; "Do you think this place is evil?&nbsp; Or just lonely?"&nbsp; A crooked grin spreads over one half of her smile.&nbsp; "Was it the Thibedoux's child needing a playmate?&nbsp; Or the same hungry power that consumed her children before?"&nbsp; <br><br>A long silence fills the room, the peeling wallpaper seems to hang on her words as if they will finally ease its suffering with a finality of truth.&nbsp; It was as if letting that story go, releasing the meager grasp she had on the two of them, would cause Laurie to be alone again with the reality of it; so long as she could spin the thread, it was only a thread.&nbsp; But if left alone with it, the shadow in the closet, she would have to deal with it.&nbsp; And she might never, ever know what IT was, even after it was well and through with her.<br><br>Josh's hand was a tentative, roaming cub on her thigh for a moment, but it froze at a sudden creaking groan from the upstairs.&nbsp; <br><br>Laurie's cool eyes swiveled slowly up to the ceiling.&nbsp; "Is that her?"&nbsp; She asked softly, "Or, maybe it's her child... or maybe it's that girl who said she was the writer, or a betrayed rum-runner..."&nbsp; she grinned.&nbsp; "Maybe its one of the whores, waiting on her next John."&nbsp; When Laurie's face fixes on theirs, she's half-cast in shadow from the flickering of the lantern, making her soft face more jagged than it should be, a chiseled Medusa of paralyzing beauty once safe, once true, but cleft in twain by divine humiliation and a dark, lonely fate.&nbsp; "If ever we were not alone, it is now.&nbsp; Knowing our company's name would make it no less real."&nbsp; 
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>19-08-2007, 19:30:20</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The faint flicker that is all that's left of the girl no linger wants to stay.&nbsp; She wants to run, because desolate as her wanderings are, at least they are almost familiar, the little she remembers almost friendly, in its cool, distant way.<br><br>But Katelyn is leading her on, into the horror above.&nbsp; The girl thinks she knows what it is, she's almost sure, but that almost, that faint doubt, is all she has to hang on to now.&nbsp; No, not quite all... The vicarious friendship of Laurie can't soothe her any more.&nbsp; Laurie has become as fearsome as the stories she tells, her gaze steely and triumphant, just like-- like some other gaze she'd seen in some other face, not long ago.&nbsp; But she can feel the bond with Josh, the caring between him and Katelyn, that (almost, almost) encompasses her as well.<br><br>"Knock it off, Laurie," Josh says, angry, too loud in the pale light, but the loudness does nothing to dispel the weave of the stories, the near-harshness of Laurie's gaze as the lantern gleams in one darkened eye.&nbsp; He holds Katelyn's hand tightly, reassuring them both.<br><br>"Maybe we should go up," Katelyn says, while the girl tries to weep.&nbsp; "Show her there's nothing there... just an old house creaking."&nbsp; She looked at Laurie almost challengingly, her gaze steady even when a second sound was added to the first, fainter but still there.<br><br>"Then let's go up," Laurie replied, sounding exactly like the mistress of the house inviting her guests to take a tour.&nbsp; Josh frowned, made token objections, but picked up the lantern and moved to the doorway.<br><br>Katelyn hesitated faintly in the entryway, her eyes drawn to the foot of the stairs.&nbsp; For a moment, it was all squares of marble, polished and gleaming by candlelight.&nbsp; Then they were no longer polished, but stained with dark blood, black in the gloom.&nbsp; Then it was only a half-rotted wooden floor, tricky to walk on but nothing more.<br><br>They picked their way up the steps, slowly, Josh protesting most of the way that he was only humoring them and this was dangerous, they'd fall through.&nbsp; Gradually, even his protests stopped as they climbed higher.&nbsp; There was still that noise, indistinct, but louder with each step...<br><br>They stopped in front of the first door, hanging half open in unsettling invitation.&nbsp; Josh shoved it open a little further, shining the light in.&nbsp; Nothing but dust and broken furniture was revealed, but the noise continued.&nbsp; The next door was open only the merest crack, revealing nothing but blackness beyond.&nbsp; And there was the sound, a fluttering, then a soft, almost wet thump.<br><br>Laurie smiled, though there was fear in her eyes.&nbsp; Josh swallowed, still looking brave.&nbsp; Again he reached out to push the door open.&nbsp; Something creaked, perhaps the door, perhaps something else, and the fluttering grew louder.<br><br>The room was revealed inch by inch, the light slowly creeping inside.&nbsp; There was something red, then a flash of bright blue, and Katelyn gasped.&nbsp; A bird, bloody and dying, stared at them accusingly, its beady eye seeming to fix each of them in turn.&nbsp; It flopped against the remains of a dresser, one wing outstretched as though pointing into the shadows beyond the beam of light.&nbsp; Katelyn flinched again, but didn't look away.&nbsp; The girl shook, in denial, in disbelief, then finally in acceptance of her fate, whatever that was to be.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>21-08-2007, 00:07:14</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Laurie watched the jay stare back at her, tilting her face in consideration of it, her blue eyes narrowing with mingled curiosity, revlusion, and pity.&nbsp; Katelyn felt it too, and as Josh turned to protectively steer her away-- desperate to protect her from what he could never understand, the bird's black gaze disappeared into black shadows and ancient dust.<br><br><span style="font-size: 6pt;" class="bbc_size">run away.&nbsp; run now.</span><br><br>The white flame of the lantern danced, met the floor, cast wicked shadows up the framgents of wood, plastic trash and brown glass left in scattered heaps along the hall.&nbsp; Katelyn could see beyond the pool of white light to the shadows beyond; where the light could not reach the halls of the old Thibedoux house waited, watched her from a hundred years' distance like the light from a dying star, trickling farther and farther into space.<br><br>Josh cradled her face-- "It's just a bird, it's just a bird--- shhh-- it's okay--"<br><br><span style="font-size: 6pt;" class="bbc_size">run away.&nbsp; run now.</span><br><br>Laurie stood silently by, and Katelyn realized that she was shaking again.&nbsp; The girl within thrashed, contorted, tore at her hair, but all that came through was a rapid pulse, a fluttering of breath.&nbsp; <br><br>"That poor thing," Laurie intoned numbly.&nbsp; &nbsp;The fluttering and thumping had subsided, and she could feel the lost hope of that room, the maddening desperation that had taken up residence there and waited for a century of criminals and dissidents, addicts and violators.&nbsp; The lantern hissed silently, the only sound now except Kaitlyn's shallow, rapid breaths.&nbsp; Josh's slow caressing fingers wound into her hair, cradled her close as she calmed, found solace in him and this darkness, the heat of the swamp and the dust of ages.<br><br><span style="font-size: 8pt;" class="bbc_size">run away.&nbsp; run now.</span><br><br>A shuffling sound, the soft scrape of Laurie's bare feet.&nbsp; How could she have come up here barefoot, Katelyn wonders, before Laurie steps softly toward the end of the hall, the last door.&nbsp; This one seems undisturbed, perhaps left for years.&nbsp; The spintered remnants of its casings have been replaced at some point, then destroyed anew when a half-dozen deadbolts and other security devices were removed, perhaps no more than a few years ago.&nbsp; <br><br>"What was this room?" Laurie asks, her pale birds of feet crossing that floor.<br><br>Josh interrupts her.&nbsp; "We should go."<br><br>Laurie's hand hovers near the iron knob, now black with rust, a starling barely visible in the delicate srollwork thanks to the direct shadows-- perhaps overlooked by the scavengers that picked all the meat they could from the structure.&nbsp; She looks back at Josh, her hand closing on the knob.&nbsp; Katelyn can only watch for the moment, is saddened and afraid, but unaware of the horror that rages behind the one-way glass of her consciousness.&nbsp; If the girl in her head even exists still, and has not been dead for years.<br><br>Below a repeatedly-applied whitewash, the letters, "perdu pour toujours" still gleam up. "But I haven't told you everything yet," Laurie whispers, and opens the door.<br><br>A black shape, too ragged-edged to be called a silhouette, stands in the dorway on two long, thick legs.&nbsp; Hands emerge into the pool of white light, hands pallid and cadaverous, the thick nails rimmed with black, chopped square as if by machetes, colorless, swollen veins and cords of tendons bulge at the surface.&nbsp; They take Laurie, take her within, and the door meets the frame soundly enough to send trickles of dust down from the ceiling.<br><br>The house groans, and now, from beyond the two-inch oak door, Laurie screams.&nbsp; The bird begins to dance in a thrashing, suicidal frenzy in the room beyond, but all else is brutally silent.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>21-08-2007, 21:53:27</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				"No!" Katelyn cries, the sound tangling with Laurie's scream and the bird's raucous calls, and drowning out the girl's shriek, no more than a faint whisper.&nbsp; Josh swore, yelling, fighting with the ancient doorknob that had turned so easily in Laurie's hand and now refused to budge.&nbsp; He threw his weight against the door, the stunned Katelyn suddenly recovering enough to add her own panicked strength.&nbsp; No ghosts, but a monster just the same...<br><br>Dust and plaster fell around them like snow, but the door was the last part of the house that still seemed as sturdy as the day it was built.&nbsp; Katelyn sobbed, Josh yelled until his voice was hoarse, but there seemed to be no sound from beyond, no more screams.&nbsp; Even the bird has fallen silent, Katelyn realizes, as she slowly cries herself out.&nbsp; "Laurie, Laurie," she whispers helplessly.<br><br>Josh will not give up, running to the rooms next door, finding nothing, no way into that chamber of horrors.&nbsp; The bird suddenly shrieks again, even more harshly, then falls into a deeper silence.&nbsp; Katelyn shakes her head in denial, the girl whimpers quietly, both craving the fragile protection of Josh's embrace.&nbsp; He does put his arms around Katelyn, but only for an instant, only long enough to tell her that everything will be all right.<br><br>He disappears long enough for her to panic, reappears with a part of a heavy bedframe, slamming it into the door.&nbsp; The frame snaps, the door, shockingly, gives beneath the blow, swinging open as though nothing had ever held it in place.&nbsp; They both freeze, neither able to make a sound, frozen, as the door swings open and they stare at nothing.<br><br>A room scattered with bits of broken furniture, a shattered window letting in enough breeze to move the tattered remnant of the curtain.&nbsp; Nothing more.<br><br>Katelyn whimpers, Josh suddenly moves, refusing to believe, refusing to stop until there is nowhere else to go.&nbsp; Finally he moves back to her, holding her close, breathing in the dust from her hair.&nbsp; They cling to each other, the girl finding some tiny threads of comfort to cling to, keeping her from spiralling into the darkness.<br><br>The dust begins to settle, coating the unmoving bird, covering the blood, hiding the traces of their passage.&nbsp; The silence fills the house, fills them, until it is as if there was never any sound in the world at all.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>22-08-2007, 00:56:53</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				<br>Josh's shoulder is like a cooling slab under Kaitlyn's shivering face.&nbsp; She's sweating, pores wide open, like Josh's, but she shakes.&nbsp; Amid the broken furniture and scraps of cloth, broken bottles, used condoms and cigarette butts, she can see a charcoal smudge pattern on the floor.&nbsp; In her state of shock, it is fascinating, vivid and clear.&nbsp; Katelyn stares at it curiously, sorting out a puzzle from the fragments she can see.&nbsp; The girl is aware of her state of mind, feeling intensely as if her fingertips rest on some core in her mind, how Katelyn is shattered, fragmented, by this.&nbsp; "He's taken her," the girl says softly, and the words spill from Kaitlyn's lips.&nbsp; The girl hears them in echo.&nbsp; Kaitlyn keeps staring at the black smudge, traces out a whorling pattern, a spiral here, a curleque there.&nbsp; Is it a bird?&nbsp; Kaitlyn's voice in her mind, weak and distant, 'no birds.'&nbsp; Josh is picking her up, because-- the girl realizes too late-- she can't stand.&nbsp; She can barely keep the girl breathing, and her breath has become rapid and shallow, like a dying girl's. But she can, and must speak.&nbsp; "I don't know my name.&nbsp; I'm lost and I write what I can but I always forget it all.&nbsp; I have to get home again, I'm not this girl-- please help me-- you're good, can't you help me?&nbsp; I can't feel anything of mine anymore, it's all someone else, different every time-- the girl's gone, I'm sorry-- I don't know where she is-- he's got her, I don't know who he is..."<br><br>Josh goes faster than he should on the stairs.&nbsp; He's terrified by the ceaseless torrent of words from who he thinks is Kaitlyn.&nbsp; "please don't be scared just listen I know you love her and she's ok-- she's here, she's just scared, please please talk to me... I can't feel myself anymore, I don't know where I am--"&nbsp; Josh's foot, carrying her weight as well, though Kaitlyn is slight, is too much for the rotting stairs, and a board gives way.&nbsp; "Oh god not the stairs again I don't want to fall down the stairs again oh god oh god--" he regains his footing, she's slumped on the stairs like a broken doll.&nbsp; He is screaming-- what's wrong with him?<br><br>Kaitlyn's body is still, shivering and panting slowly, as the girl continues to speak through Kaitlyn's pale, bluing lips.&nbsp; "It's not too late, stay calm-- don't be afraid-- don't" a cloud surrounds Josh, a cloud.&nbsp; It spill from the stairs.&nbsp; What is this cloud?&nbsp; It's not a cloud.&nbsp; Its a hundred bodies, little devils with pitchforks, stabbing at him-- no, they're just bees, yellow and venemous, big as cat's paws, swarming him from inside the stairs. He's screaming in panic, she can see their wings like brown propellers, in slow motion as they swarm him, little heavy bodies of shell and pain.&nbsp; Josh is screaming, beating at them.&nbsp; "Josh, Josh, please be--"&nbsp; He falls, the rail splinters into dust.&nbsp; Her eyes can't move from the fixed point on the far wall.&nbsp; She hears him strike the ground, she hears him screaming in pain.&nbsp; She can hear him. The hornets seek him out, dispersing, hunting him, their elusive invader who will pay.&nbsp; "KAITLYN!&nbsp; KA-- MY LEG, I CAN'T--" then screams, many of them.&nbsp; Persistent, rapid, ceaseless.<br><br><em>Kaitlyn weeps somewhere.&nbsp; The girl tries to comfort her, holds the girl's soft-skinned face in her hand and kisses her cheek.&nbsp; "It will be over soon."<br><br>Kaitlyn tilts her face at her, the tears glistening on her pale cheeks like the sheen of light on a daguerreotype.&nbsp; She's wracked with violent sobs, fear and horror, futility.&nbsp; "You're-- her-- aren't-- you?&nbsp; Every word has extra syllables from the sobs she tries to contain.<br><br>The girl embraces her, holding her skin-to-skin.&nbsp; Maternally.&nbsp; "I suppose that I am," she says delicately, stroking her fingers through Kaitlyn's hair.&nbsp; <br><br>"Is Josh dying?"&nbsp; The sobs won't subside, come faster, making Kaitlyn's voice a sharp-edged bleat, pained in the way only children can be pained.<br><br>The girl lays her down, cradles her, soothing her.&nbsp; "Everyone dies," she says softly, hollowly.<br><br>Kaitlyn snaps her eyes up with a sudden realization.&nbsp; She grips the girl's face, her red eyes welling and spilling over, her mouth half-opened and desperate for the next words to be heard; her white teeth gleam in her red mouth as she forces the words between wet, gasping sobs.&nbsp; "It was an EYE... there was an EYE on the floor--" </em><br><br>Josh's screams continue for long time, then fade to pitiful sobbing groans, then stop.<br><br>*<br><br>The house creaks with a soft summer wind, a branch taps at the remnants of the upstairs hall window.&nbsp; It's pitch black.&nbsp; The latern is gone, Josh and Kaitlyn are gone.&nbsp; She sits in the pool of light from a full moon that spills its light in a cold cascade through the shell of a house.<br><br>The girl hauls herself to her feet, her breath coming rapidly and in deep, desperate draws.&nbsp; She scrambles at the dusty boards, picking up splinters that bite her flesh visciously and, for a moment, remind her of the hornets, and she cries out.&nbsp; She stops herself, forces control, eases ehr way up the stairs like a blind woman with her hands in front of her.&nbsp; The broken rail is gone, all remnants left from this house.&nbsp; &nbsp;<br><br>The worn, dusty boards creak under her weight.&nbsp; Musty air causes her to choke.&nbsp; turns to the end of the house where Laurie had disappeared, feels her way along the walls, finds doorknobs.&nbsp; She opens the first, and in the wash of light between awkward, sloping boards on the vacant, glassless window, she can see the utter emptiness of the room, no dead bird, no broken glass.&nbsp; At the far end of the hall is the door with the starling knob.&nbsp; She shuffles toward it, producing a series of snaps from broken glass under her shoe.&nbsp; <br><br>She reaches for the starling-etched knob, turns it, and lets the door swing inward-- the light is vivid from the stars up above, the gutted room open to clear sky.&nbsp; The room no longer exists... after a foot of tattered floor, there is nothing.&nbsp; The fire whose remains she witnessed-- it's been obliterated, as much of the room beneath, which is now a silo of dead leaves and trash.&nbsp; The room never was.&nbsp; There is sky above, and for a moment she is a bird, hovering on her branch while below, where no floor separates the above and below, there is only the earth.&nbsp; All is empty sky and mooon and nothing.&nbsp; No eye.&nbsp; No Laurie.&nbsp; Nothing.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>22-08-2007, 17:31:01</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The girl still has to fight for breath, though otherwise a sort of calm is slowly returning to her.&nbsp; No, not calm.... numbness, perhaps, exhaustion.&nbsp; But along with the fear, the memory is also ebbing away, and now she feels another sort of panic.&nbsp; The hornets, she remembers the hornets.&nbsp; They'd stung her... no, they'd stung someone else and she'd only been able to watch.&nbsp; There'd been someone else here, a boy, being stung, yelling, screaming in pain.<br><br>She squeezed her eyes shut, stepping back from the abyss before her to reel against the wall.&nbsp; She wanted to remember, ached to remember, but not that.&nbsp; Not death and fear.&nbsp; That was all she could ever remember, and even that only distantly, haphazardly.&nbsp; Even those memories slipped away from her whenever she tried to catch them.<br><br>But there should be someone else here, she remembered that.&nbsp; A girl?&nbsp; Katelyn?&nbsp; Was that her own name?&nbsp; No, that was someone else.&nbsp; There should be a girl here, and the boy being stung <em>don't think about that, don't, don't</em>, and someone else.&nbsp; Someone she was afraid of...?<br><br>But there should be people here, that was all that mattered.&nbsp; Where were they?&nbsp; Why was she left behind?&nbsp; It was dark, dirty, frightening.&nbsp; There was a dying bird, a moth, the moon shining coldly down, but no people, only her, and she wasn't sure she was really there.&nbsp; She wasn't sure she was real.<br><br>Her fists struck at the peeling scraps of wallpaper, showers of old paint and plaster raining down.&nbsp; Maybe her hands were bleeding, maybe they were broken, but she kept hitting at the wall, screaming until she could scream no more.&nbsp; "Where are you?&nbsp; <em>Where are you, where are you, where are you....</em>"<br><br>--<br><br>She was in the car, writing, scribbling disjointed phrases that she couldn't even make out in the faint moonlight.&nbsp; Something dark was smeared across the pages, too, obliterating words that she was sure must be vital ones.&nbsp; The pen fell from her suddenly numb hand, vanishing into the darkness.<br><br>She looked up, out the window.&nbsp; There was a house there, a large, grand old place, now partly destroyed by fire... but no, it was whole, she saw now.&nbsp; A trick of the light, that was all.&nbsp; It was old and worn, certainly, but intact.&nbsp; Someone might buy it and fix it up, she thought vaguely.<br><br>Her eyes turned back to the notebook in her lap, staring at the smudges and scribbles.&nbsp; Slowly, she closed her eyes, burying her face in her hands.&nbsp; It was gone, everything was gone.&nbsp; Somehow she knew this was not the first time, but that made it no less bitter, and she was no less lost.&nbsp; Tears washed away the ink and the blood from her hands.&nbsp; Her sobs were too quiet to break the awful silence, just as though there was no one there at all.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>22-08-2007, 23:33:40</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				A long, slow buzzing sound sparks up from the canopy of trees near her open window like something electric coming to life.&nbsp; It's a cicada, starting its ceaseless, buzzing dirge.&nbsp; She looks at the boughs of the tree as they fan out before her, time-frozen bloodclouds in a night-cast sea of stars, and feels the cooling tears on her cheek evaporate, become sticky, fade.&nbsp; The constellations, she can remember.&nbsp; She sees Virgo.&nbsp; She clears her throat, wipes her eyes.&nbsp; She feels hungry.&nbsp; <br><br>The paper beside her smells faintly of iron.&nbsp; She pushes it away.&nbsp; Her hand throbs, aches... what's wrong?&nbsp; And something jabs at her hip when she straightens in the bucket seat.&nbsp; "Ouch," she says, not out of pain but habit.&nbsp; She lifts one thigh and cheek from the seat and digs out whatever's in her hip pocket-- <em>strange,</em> she thinks. Something small and hard... she tilts it to catch the moonlight, sees an ivory face-- <em>eerie...</em> It's quite a pretty thing, really, a bit dirty and tarnished, but rather nice.&nbsp; Probably antique.&nbsp; <br><br>With it in her hand she starts the car... her sandaled foot presses the clutch to the floor, and she turns the key-- the engine cranks for a second or two and, knowing what it wants, she gives it a single pump of gas, careful and light.&nbsp; The engine shrugs itself to life, the motor shuddering faintly side to side before vibrating in a steady purr.&nbsp; She pulls the stem on the headlight controls and the pools of yellowish-white lanterns fall across the crumbling brick of the old house.&nbsp; The car's not in gear yet... she clears her throat again, adjusts her seat, and opens the ashtray-- no ashes in there, she doesn't smoke, so by the moonlight and console indicator lights, she places it in the tray carefully.&nbsp; It fits quite snugly, so she smiles.&nbsp; <br><br>She checks her mirrors and levers the car into gear, easing off the clutch as she backs down the driveway, leaving the broken-transformer buzz of the cicada and the hungry, eyes of the house behind.&nbsp; She turns the knob on the radio, and there was a low whine of static.&nbsp; She intends to adjust it, but as she aligns the wheels on the road and turns smoothly to straighten, pointing her headlights in the direction she knows, by heart, to be going, the radio comes back to life.&nbsp; She can hear tinny AM music, static-edged, but nice enough.&nbsp; The dated harmony of muted horns, a lady's voice who sings 'ess' like'esh' when she sings 'so much tiiiime, so much time spent waiting'.<br><br>She drops the transmission into drive, the engine changes its pitch, and with a puttering hum of the accellerator, she's rolling again.&nbsp; She's driving into the headlights on the black river to nowhere, past miles of old farm fences, sprawling trees thick with spanish moss, past the thousands of lost souls that stare waiting into the night.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>24-08-2007, 01:12:06</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				It's still dark, or maybe it's dark again.&nbsp; It was also cool, though, and she thought -- she was almost sure it should be warmer.&nbsp; She must have driven a long way, she supposed.&nbsp; Maybe she was almost there, she thought contentedly, though it didn't occur to her to wonder where, exactly, <em>there</em> might be.<br><br>There was a light coming into view up ahead, though, a warm, welcoming light, and her eyes focused on it immediately.&nbsp; Yes, that was right, that was what she should see, a sign that she was on the right road, going the way she should be going.&nbsp; Now it occurred to her to wonder why she was so sure of that, the faint, nagging doubt quickly becoming the uneasy awareness of something about to happen, something about to change.<br><br>Her hands tightened on the wheel.&nbsp; Now she could see buildings ahead, roofs peeking over the sweep of low hills, a rounded shape like a turret -- no, a silo, she realized.&nbsp; A farm.&nbsp; A fence, there, running along the crest of a hill; a two-story farmhouse; a long, low building with many small windows.&nbsp; There was the light she'd seen, shining through, making squares of pale yellowish light on the grass below.&nbsp; And there was movement, shadows inside, disturbing the light as they passed from window to window.<br><br>The car pulled up slowly, tires crunching on gravel, rolled gently to a halt at the curved top of the horseshoe-shaped driveway, opposite the house.&nbsp; It felt like the right place to stop, somehow.&nbsp; Is this where she usually parks?&nbsp; Has she even been here before?&nbsp; Now that the questions have started, the vague panic begins to set in, the fear of doing something terribly wrong -- of already having done something terribly wrong, or why would she be in the state she's in in the first place?<br><br>The music was gone, the radio staticky.&nbsp; There had been music, not long ago, she was sure, though the words and the tune escaped her.&nbsp; Jazz, maybe, something a little sad.&nbsp; She should shut off the car anyway.&nbsp; There was nowhere else to go for the moment.&nbsp; Perhaps for a long time.<br><br>She turns the key back, and feels a sudden whiff of fear.&nbsp; Not enough to dissuade her... whatever she's forgotten, which was clearly a great deal, she at least remembers that there was never any turning back.&nbsp; She rests a hand on the notebook next her on the seat.&nbsp; She should write... but no, there was no time now, and she couldn't recall what she was supposed to write, anyway.<br><br>The door of the long building opens, a rectangle of light staining the ground ahead of her.&nbsp; More movement, faint sounds -- horses, whinnying faintly, stamping their hooves onto the straw-covered floors.&nbsp; The silhouette of a man appears against the yellow, a large, powerful man, and her body shook, weakly, as something -- memory? -- fills her mind with panic.<br><br>Then it was gone, and it was only a man in a doorway.&nbsp; He steps closer, the door swinging shut behind him.&nbsp; She gets out of the car, slowly, her eyes never leaving him.&nbsp; He knows her, she thinks, or at least knows who he believes her to be.&nbsp; "You're late," he says, gruffly, a faint drawl hidden beneath the gravelly voice.<br><br>Someone has said that to her before like this, she thinks suddenly.&nbsp; "Sorry," she murmurs, unconvincingly, though the man seems to take the word at face value.<br><br>"Let's get inside," he says, and the girl gets the distinct impression that his voice is rough from disuse.&nbsp; She pauses, looks back at the car uncertainly, turns to follow him as he walks towards the dark, solid shape of the house.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>24-08-2007, 21:41:26</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The farmhouse's clapboard siding is elegantly dilapidated, shedding decades’ layers of white paint in fragments and chips, leaving holes of rich brown staring out like voids of memory. The grass is soft beneath her feet, softer than the wiregrass of the deep south, the coastal, salinated earth next to the coast—had she felt that wiregrass recently?—and invited her to remove her shoes, to savor the cool condensation of a summer night as it cradled her feet.<br><br>There’s a low peal of thunder from over her shoulder, rumbling and distant like a great rolling boulder, miles and miles away.&nbsp; She turns, sees the night sky… no clouds.&nbsp; She picks out Saggitarius, Cygnus.&nbsp; Thunder from a clear sky.&nbsp; “Devil’s beating his wife,” she murmurs, inaudible to any but she as the hulking man opens the front door.&nbsp; Breaking the silence the follows is the deep, muted whinny of a horse, complaining, but not desperate.<br><br>Darkness waits within for some light to dispel it.&nbsp; A flight of stairs to the second floor, the spindles like whale’s ribs from newel to newel before the door closes, shutting out the starlight.&nbsp; The man’s boots fall heavily with each step, producing a light tinkling noise from something delicate and ceramic quivering gently on a shelf somewhere in the dark.&nbsp; There’s the slow, deep ticking of a clock. The slow slide of&nbsp; a steel chain clicking from one side to the next as the mechanism moves insistently, patiently toward its end.<br><br>Amber light floods the hall, and she is disoriented by it, blinks blindly as she assimiliates the outlines of things—a doorway to her left, an armchair beyond.&nbsp; Wallpaper, deep red.&nbsp; It was ivory, textured, has been varnished darker by someone with sensitive eyes.&nbsp; The man with bull’s shoulders is hanging his hat by the door, tucking his work gloves into the bib pocket of his overalls.&nbsp; <br><br>“The horses alright?” she asks softly, a faint tremelo in her voice.<br>
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>25-08-2007, 07:26:49</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The man turns to look at her, his gaze dark, and something inside her shrinks away from that look.&nbsp; She's said something wrong.&nbsp; No, anything would have been wrong.&nbsp; Best to get that over with.<br><br>"They're all right.&nbsp; I know how to look after 'em."&nbsp; His voice is clipped, not one wasted syllable.&nbsp; The girl reels as he speaks, pieces of herself falling away into the spaces between his words.&nbsp; She whimpers silently.&nbsp; It's happened before, she knows that somehow, but that vague familiarity makes it no less frightening, no less like dying.<br><br>She can't quite look at the man.&nbsp; John?&nbsp; No, Tom.&nbsp; She knows his name, but not her own.&nbsp; He's her husband.&nbsp; No, brother.&nbsp; But she lives here, she's sure of that, helping tend the place.&nbsp; He takes care of the horses himself, not trusting them to anyone else for even a day if he can help it.&nbsp; She is there almost on sufferance, a faint concession to the realization that no one person can do everything, even on a small farm.<br><br>The young woman who lives there shrugs.&nbsp; "I know they're jumpy, that's all," she says, not quite defensively.&nbsp; The girl isn't sure there's enough fight in her to be defensive.&nbsp; Something about the place, the work, or the man before her has ground her down, slowly, a little each day until suddenly there was nothing left.&nbsp; Her eyes flicker around the hallway again.&nbsp; She's supposed to be doing something, she was sure.&nbsp; He'd said she was late... late for what?&nbsp; Dinner?&nbsp; The clock reads eight almost exactly -- much too late for dinner on a farm, isn't it?<br><br>The silence spins on.&nbsp; He's waiting for her to do something, and she doesn't know what it is.&nbsp; The more she fights to remember, the less there is to hang on to.&nbsp; Her eyes focus on a tiny tear next to her, a little spot where the wallpaper has come away from the wall and left behind dry remnants of paste.&nbsp; It holds her gaze for a moment, her thoughts skittering away from her.<br><br>She remembers then, and words come tumbling out with desparate speed.&nbsp; "Alice wasn't home when I got there.&nbsp; I had to wait for her."&nbsp; The veneer of calm is still there, though the nails of one hand are now digging in to her palm.&nbsp; Her eyes meet his, tentatively, ready to dart away at the slightest sign of displeasure, about anything.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>27-08-2007, 20:30:59</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				"Had to wait."&nbsp; Hishuge, heavy hands.&nbsp; The girl can feel alice recoil from his thinly veiled anger, the squirming hive beneath his skin, ready to erupt from him in a column of vile rage from his mouth.&nbsp; The hive, in him, worked his nerves like puppet strings, tripped in their eagerness the subtle twitches of fury in his face, his huge hands.&nbsp; <br><br><em>Oh god, it's happening... </em> the girl knows it now.&nbsp; Yes, so very, very like dying, she can feel herself melting into nothing, like ether in the mouth, cold vapors sliding down the throat of this specter of a frightened girl who wore her skin.&nbsp; <br><br>No longer... no longer hers.&nbsp; The girl can't remember her hands, can't feel her breath.&nbsp; She can't recall herself, her name.&nbsp; The Other is getting stronger.&nbsp; Taking her.<br><br>Is her.<br><br>She melts into the black shadows between the big man's teeth, shivering fear crawling across her spine with little warm rat's paws.&nbsp; <em>no, no... I'm not this.&nbsp; this isn't me.&nbsp; i'm... </em><br><br>"Josie."&nbsp; He tilts his huge, square-jawed face to once side.&nbsp; When he speaks, she thinks of the fairy tale.&nbsp; Her father read the ogre's voice in a deep, gravely rasp, and she always snuggled against his chest, comforted in the sweat-smell of his t-shirt, his big hands.&nbsp; <br><br>Those big, heavy hands, the voice, were inseperable now from the man.&nbsp; His name... his name is <span style="font-size: 8pt;" class="bbc_size"><em>I DON'T KNOW H--</em></span> is not Tom.&nbsp; How silly of her... it's Don.&nbsp; She's called him Donnie since they met at Videla's wedding.&nbsp; He was the best man for Pauline's brother, and she remembered being in awe of him... he grew up fourty miles away, played football for West Vacosa-- he was one of the biggest boys out there.&nbsp; Maybe he could've gone to school with it, but there was the war.<br><br><em>Donnie died in the war, </em>she sometimes tells herself.&nbsp; She pretends, lives a vivid fantasy life where she struggles to go one without her gentle husband, without the bouyance he brought to her life, without curling next to his huge-shouldered form, without having her girlfriends or the other girls at Silver Springs making their tactfully crude, painless insinuations about what it must be like to share a nightcap with an ox, and why didn't he stay with the horses out back?&nbsp; Did he scare them, or vice-versa? Without those trivialities, she would have been strong, independent... kept on at Silver Springs long enough to go back to college... forged a path, found another man-- had children this time.&nbsp; Her life would be pivotal around this singular tragedy of Donnie's tragic, abrupt, but patriotic death. <br><br><em>But Donnie didn't die in the war.&nbsp; Not really, anyway.&nbsp; He just came back changed.</em><br><br>Barely sedated most of the day-- stilled by the labor of the horses, whose wild rage he had swallowed like a sin eater for decades and had, perhaps, accumulated in him like arsenic and poisoned his soul-- his deadened stupor of fury wore off by the day's dusk, and with the night came his needs, his rages.&nbsp; His scathing insensitivity, his blame, his hatred.&nbsp; Came huge, heavy hands, black fire in his eyes.&nbsp; With night came sins demanding to be freed, original sin within him alive and recovering, anxious by night to lash out.&nbsp; She'd limped some mornings after he came to her in bed.&nbsp; She'd called in sick to work to hide marks.&nbsp; She'd done it all, all the classic behaviors of self-destruction in favor of preserving her denial.<br><br>"That silly bitch." he asks flatly, boulders crumbling in the vowels he speaks.&nbsp; "Why didn't she come in and say so?"<br><br>Josie's mouth works, she points back to the door.&nbsp; "No-- I mean--" she tips her face.&nbsp; "I drove--"<br><br>His jaw grinds, granite teeth meeting.&nbsp; "You drove what?"<br><br>Josie flutters to the door.&nbsp; The girl stares through her eyes, slides down Josie's throat like a clear, tasteless skin, disappears into the blackness of her mouth.&nbsp; The girl and Josie are both suprisingly confused, for just a moment, as they stare into the blackness in front of the house.&nbsp; Donnie's pickup is, as always, at the barn, and what's left is... nothing.&nbsp; The horseshoe driveway is utterly empty, a cold arch of silvery-white gravel in the moonlight.&nbsp; 
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>28-08-2007, 23:28:42</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				This, this the girl could always remember, no matter what else was lost.&nbsp; She could always remember the way she died.&nbsp; Even her name was fading, falling away from her, leaving her defenceless, as helpless as the girl she was becoming.<br><br>She was a woman, though, really.&nbsp; Josie.&nbsp; A young woman, worn old around the edges.&nbsp; His rough edges have scarred her, made her ugly to herself.&nbsp; Maybe to him, too, at least right now, when he looks at her that way.&nbsp; Like he was looking at a bug, or listening to bad news.&nbsp; Neither of them could bear to look back and meet that gaze.<br><br>They both stared out into the darkness, stared hard.&nbsp; The girl <em>knew</em> there was a car there, was sure of it with a fierce stubbornness born of desperation.&nbsp; The other has lost all talent for certainty, shivering with confused terror.&nbsp; "I don't know," she finally whimpers, shoulders hunched, waiting for a blow from one huge fist, praying for it.&nbsp; One quick blow now she could bear, that was all right.&nbsp; It was different when he saved the anger, held it close and nursed it like a sickly colt, waiting until it was strong enough to lash out at her without warning, without reason.<br><br>The seconds ticked by, and Josie sobbed quietly.&nbsp; She'd learned to cry almost soundlessly.&nbsp; The girl rebelled at this, trying to scream the house down, for all the good it would do either of them even if she could make a single sound.<br><br>Still no blow fell, and she gave up, preparing dully for future, cold revenge, part of her wondering clinically what form it would take.&nbsp; Once he'd waited until she was asleep, then hauled her out of bed and halfway down the stairs by the hair.&nbsp; She'd deserved that one, though.&nbsp; She'd arranged lunch with Alice that day, but when Alice had to cancel at the last moment, she'd gone to the movies instead, eating too much popcorn and chocolate covered raisins, and pretended she had gone to lunch as planned.&nbsp; Donnie had found out, of course.&nbsp; He always did.<br><br>She didn't lie anymore.&nbsp; But he must think she was lying again now.<br><br>"I don't know," she said again, her breath catching in her throat.&nbsp; "I'm sorry, I don't -- I don't remember, exactly."&nbsp; She stopped, sensing somehow that it would not take many more words for him to snap.<br><br>He didn't like her to talk, or at least that was what she thought sometimes, late at night.&nbsp; To distract herself from his body pressing down on hers, or simply to ease the often sleepless hours, she would try to pinpoint exactly what about her made him so angry, and often she ended up blaming her voice.&nbsp; Perhaps it was unpleasant somehow, or perhaps she just talked too much, though she was as silent as she could stand.&nbsp; Sometimes she just needed to hear a voice, any voice.<br><br>She turned away from the window at last, looking down at the floor near his feet.&nbsp; Sometimes she thought he didn't like the way she looked at him, either...
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>29-08-2007, 01:10:18</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Donnie doesn't flinch.&nbsp; Not looking at him doesn't help, not speaking.&nbsp; He just looms there, the devil's doorman, waiting for her to step through.&nbsp; The huge shoulders glide up, like the heaving flanks of sleeping lions, the hands hang loose, two huge&nbsp; meat-sheathed paddles, at his thighs.&nbsp; Still not moving.&nbsp; <em>oh god</em>, she thinks, again and again.&nbsp; Not knowing, not seeing it coming, and not knowing how it will happen, whatever it might be... the helplessness, the crippling fear, is agnonizing.&nbsp; &nbsp;Her soul has gone numb like a limb, gone to pins and needles with lack of blood, cold and agonizing, terrified to flinch, for&nbsp; flinching with fear brings more pain, more flinching.&nbsp; A maddening cycle.<br><br>Not speaking still.&nbsp; <em>oh god</em> The girl, somewhere within, screams for her to leave.&nbsp; Leave forever.&nbsp; Never ever go back,&nbsp; unless there's someone with you, and they have a gun. Simple.&nbsp; GO.&nbsp; Go now.&nbsp; <br><br>The clock ticks softly, and he's still not moving.&nbsp; Daring her, tormenting her.&nbsp; How exquisite was her destruction, how perfect... he'd sowed her spirit with so much&nbsp; salt that he need not touch her, curse her, raise his voice... he need not flinch, only to look, and look well.&nbsp; The evil eye... a cartoon pops into her head, Lil' Abner-- Evil Eye Fleegle, putting the whammy on someone.&nbsp; It snapped her, broke something deep inside with lightning-bolt lines of bright newsprint yellow.&nbsp; <br><br>Minutes pass, end upon end, a ceaselessly, slowly tumbling roll of iron minutes.&nbsp; Indeed, exquisitely broken, she knows what's coming, and knows what she must do.&nbsp; Her eyes creep across the floor, up the huge, bare foot, nails like saucers of bone.&nbsp; Overalls dusty, work gloves protruding from the bib pocket.&nbsp; She follows the thick jaw, the burning shadows where eyes should be.&nbsp; The horror of his flawless and efficient mastery.&nbsp; She couldn't hold her bladder, her lower lip quivered, and she dared not speak, for nothing tinged her voice so horribly-- angered him more-- than her sobs.<br><br>A prelude, his eyes say coldly, wordlessly.&nbsp; The softest kiss of what will follow.&nbsp; When she breaks eye contact again, her mouth his quivering uncontrollably, but silent.&nbsp; Hypothermia of the heart.&nbsp; She slinks toward the kitchen, can't move away.&nbsp; She fixes her gaze to his feet and wishes, so humbly, only to melt into the floorboards.<br><br>There's a grinding click as the hour hand moves an increment closer toward IX.&nbsp; Turning away is the last wound of this chapter, only one movement in the greater symphony.&nbsp; Even ending her torment, the slow turn of his head, as if he forgot she was even there, turning his head, not his eyes... even this says 'you are nothing.'<br><br>All she can do is shiver, sob, weep, taste bile and dig blood from her palms with her gnawed-blunt, ragged nails.&nbsp; He no longer even must look upon her to torment her.&nbsp; Now, he is gone, settled into his armchair, staring at a blank wall and waiting for her, but the shadow of his cruelty lingers before her.<br><br><span style="font-size: 6pt;" class="bbc_size">Leave.&nbsp; Leave.&nbsp; Leave.</span><br><br>She stumbles when she tries to walk, shadows clouding in at the fringes of her vision.&nbsp; My god, she almost blacks out.&nbsp; Her knees locked so sturdily that she nearly blacks out.&nbsp; Forcing herself onward, she moves to the kitchen.&nbsp; Donnie will want his drink.&nbsp; <br><br>his... drink...<br><br>something...&nbsp; <br><br>Remembering with a flash of color, she reaches to the pocket of her jeans.&nbsp; <em>How could I forget--</em> a plastic bag, tiny.&nbsp; sized for finishing screws, computer parts, or the most delicate of beads-- but frequently used for-- pills.<br><br>Two red.&nbsp; One white.&nbsp; One black.&nbsp; They glitter like nothing else in the house, brilliantly colored, friendly.<br><br>Eager to serve.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>29-08-2007, 19:01:36</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Josie knows nothing of the girl's pleadings, though she cries them out, thinks them hard, with all her fragile strength.&nbsp; Fear smothers the words, despair muffles them.&nbsp; But the girl has to save this woman, save them both, from the animal in the next room.&nbsp; He's destroying her, slowly, piece by piece, and the girl is trapped with her, suffering that same slow dissolution.&nbsp; She can't bear that again, not again.<br><br>But Josie is trapped also, pinned by that dark look, those huge hands, that muscled body pressing her down without being anywhere near her.&nbsp; She's as conditioned as the horses outside, as one of Pavlov's dogs.&nbsp; She's nothing, she knows that, that one certainty heavy on her soul, and she would be less than nothing without him.&nbsp; The torment is terrible, acid etching into her skin, but it's something she can feel, something she can hold on to and know she exists.&nbsp; Without him, she wouldn't even have the pain.<br><br>Is there evil in the world, real, true, Biblical-style evil?&nbsp; Is he evil?&nbsp; Those are also questions she muses on in the darkness sometimes, and she's never yet arrived at a yes or a no.&nbsp; If he is, then evil is her fate, somehow.&nbsp; No use dwelling on it, except as the most hypothetical exercise.<br><br>He's waiting, she realizes with a stab of terror that nearly makes her black out after all.&nbsp; He's waiting for her, for the drink, for the pills in her hand.&nbsp; Yes, he wants these, they'll help him.&nbsp; She doesn't remember what they're called, if she ever knew, but these will help him, make him less... less.&nbsp; Strange that she remembers the framework so well, the outlines of her life, the way she feels, but details are so slippery.&nbsp; The pills, her confusion over the name of her own husband, the gap in her mind that leave her not even remembering how she got home, all these things give the night a dreamlike quality that might be soothing if she weren't afraid to relax, afraid to think of these things.<br><br>She was pouring the drink, her hand shaking, and she didn't remember getting the glass or picking up the bottle.&nbsp; Whiskey, three fingers, the good stuff.&nbsp; Whatever else they skimp on, there's never bad whiskey in the house.&nbsp; She can't stand it, the smell makes her ill.&nbsp; Soda...?&nbsp; No, straight, she remembers that now.&nbsp; Pure whiskey, that's all he wants.&nbsp; Should he take pills with whiskey?&nbsp; No, of course not, but she couldn't do anything about that.<br><br>She takes the glass, carefully, using her right hand to wrap her left around it securely as though that hand was numb.&nbsp; Dropping a glass, spilling good whiskey over the floorboards, was more grievous a sin than lying in Donnie's tangled map of transgressions, she knew that.&nbsp; Pills in her right hand, the bag clenched a little harder than necessary.&nbsp; Good.&nbsp; Everything was all right.<br><br>She moves slowly but steadily, proud of her legs for being so cooperative suddenly.&nbsp; Now she's out of the kitchen, now stepping carefully over the edge of the large rag rug in the living room, now reaching his chair.&nbsp; He stares at nothing, as he so often does.&nbsp; Even staring at her is only staring at nothing, after all, and a bubble of hysterical laughter nearly bursts out of her.&nbsp; She fights it back with desperate strength, biting the inside of her cheek as she offers up the glass like a crown, a priceless, jeweled artifact.&nbsp; Everything is all right, he'd drink, he'd take the pills.&nbsp; He might forget about her for a while.&nbsp; She could nurse her pain the way he nurses his anger, quietly, alone, imagining the war hero's glorious funeral.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>29-08-2007, 20:41:31</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				There would be lillies from all of his classmates, all of her classmates that got the news.&nbsp; Vernon Florists on Beech Street was big on lillies for funerary arrangements, had a fixation on them... she worked there for a few summers when she was in high school.&nbsp; Mr. Vernon needed help for summer weddings, events at the lake, graduation parties and the funerals.&nbsp; Some places, winter was the place to die.&nbsp; Here, outside Tulsa, summer was the time to drop.&nbsp; <br><br>She enjoyed the work... the heat and light of the old house, its kitchen turned to a refrigerator room, its upstairs full of wedding decor for rent, the sprawl of mystical, sweltering greenhouses like glass undersea tunnels, like cross-cut swaths of jungles.&nbsp; He had a whole room of cacti, and she sometimes stared at them, handled them.&nbsp; She was fearless with them, though she was pricked again and again.&nbsp; She grew to appreciate them.&nbsp; <br><br>One day, at seventeen, she pricked her finger on the leftover, thorny stub of a rose bush she'd just trimmed... she was taking an order from Francis Patterson for lillies.&nbsp; A grandmother had passed.&nbsp; She had watched that tiny bead of red form on her fingertip, squeezed it flat, watched it re-well, sting.&nbsp; She had snapped off the offending thorn, held it, a tiny little dagger, between her thumb and blood-tipped forefinger.&nbsp; She drove it into the raw green stalk where it had come, piercing the piercer, doing in the rose stem with its own thorn.&nbsp; "Yes, Mrs. Patterson, I'll have them wrapped by three."<br><br>Vertigo... back to the living room.&nbsp; This is step one.&nbsp; She stands at a two-o'clock position to his six-o'clock stare, waits for him to ask.&nbsp; The whiskey glass can't spill, can't hover too close, can't pester him.&nbsp; The nothing he sees cowers from the noting in his eyes.&nbsp; He speaks of something, usually something that unsettles her, upsets her.&nbsp; The time that her favorite black had a bad foaling and died, and the foal too.&nbsp; The little girl he'd seen blow herself up in Saigon next to a handful of servicemen and a baby carriage.&nbsp; The girl he'd fucked in highschool after prom, how they were both drunk and he did it twice, his first time, and how good it was.&nbsp; The man he'd seen dead in the street when he went to Kansas City six winters ago, curled up and hard like a dead beetle in the shadows of a cardboard tent, and how he didn't even stop walking.&nbsp; The prostitute he'd stabbed in the face with a broken bottle in Tien-Bin-Phu because she tried to give him head with broken glass in her mouth.<br><br>She wondered, sometimes, if any of them were true, or if they were all exhausted, sick fantasies of his diseased, scarred brain.&nbsp; Years ago, she thought he'd go to a doctor... he refused.&nbsp; The rift grew.&nbsp; She thought she was his only chance, and she failed... she couldn't fix his shell shock (now they call it PTSD, whatever the hell that is...) and she'd lost her husband, not to a grenade, a mine, a bullet, a mosquito bite, a plane crash.&nbsp; She lost him to the whole damned war.<br><br>Tonight, like so many other nights, Josie just stares, waits, watches the glint of light and swirl of brown whiskey in the glass.&nbsp; The pouch of pills in her other hand, dangling like sick fruit of the plastic tree from her thin, but still young, hands.<br><br>Vertigo again, wrenching, nauseating.&nbsp; Violent this time.&nbsp; Ghosts tapdance on her grave, fear thrashes in her skull like a caged rabid simian.&nbsp; <br>Something's wrong, something's wrong... something... <br>he'll kill me, he'll kill me... what's wrong, something... THE PILLS--<br><br>If he saw, she'd be dead.&nbsp; He'd know WHAT she was doing (what am I doing?).&nbsp; He would actually do it this time, actually terminate her life in a slow breaking of every bone from toe to spine, and he'd enjoy it. Finally let her have what he'd been saving for her.&nbsp; <br><br>If he sees, I will die.&nbsp; (sees... what..?)<br><br>Sees what.<br><br>Moving as little as possible, she flicks her fingers together, splits the seam of the zip-seal and pinches the pouch open, turns it with deft, little movements, spills the pouch to its side.&nbsp; The four pills tumble weightlessly into her palm.<br><br>The black pills do not belong.&nbsp; They are horse suppository painkillers, Sigle-dose each.&nbsp; <br><br>She separates them with nimble fingers, slips the red and white back into the pouch, pinches it shut.&nbsp; She closes her palm on the black pills and he turns, he looks, <em>he saw it oh my god he saw--</em> he takes the drink from her hand without seeing her. This is step two: delivery from the invisible maidservant.<br><br>She backs a half-step away.&nbsp; Another.&nbsp; She has completed step two, moves to three; the invisible wife must be clean when she's needed.&nbsp; <em>what in the name of god have I done... what did alice do?!</em><br><br>The carpet-lined stairs are soft under her feet.&nbsp; Step three is to bathe, put on perfume, a silk robe, nothing else... then make the coffe for step four.&nbsp; That is how it goes, then she must wait.<br><br>Upstairs is confiningly tight.&nbsp; White paper with a too-tight grid of vines, blooms, and tapestry lines.&nbsp; The vertigo hasn't subsided, she almost falls as she steps over the 3rd stair... it squeaks.&nbsp; Last time she squeaked it he broke the doll from her great aunt Persie.&nbsp; Didn't bother to explain.&nbsp; She just came downstairs and its porcealin face was split in two.<br><br>Step four will be easy.&nbsp; The pills go into the grinder first, get broken up a bit, fined out.&nbsp; Then the decaf beans-- ground not too coarse, not too fine.&nbsp; The tranquilizer becomes syrup in the hot water, two in one cup, 24 hours worth of horse heroin.&nbsp; <em> he always drinks it in one swallow.&nbsp; </em>&nbsp; 24 hours of a stoned horse is twice enough to kill him.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>30-08-2007, 17:43:17</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				She's in the bathroom, door not quite shut.&nbsp; He didn't like it when she shut the door, any door in the house, all the way.&nbsp; She might get up to something.&nbsp; She <em>is</em> up to something, my god, my god, what is she doing?&nbsp; Her hand presses hard over her mouth, smothering her sobs and hysterical giggles.&nbsp; What is she doing, what else has she forgotten?&nbsp; She's having blackouts, she's going mad...<br><br><em>...these things do happen... a shame, of course, but you could always sell the ranch... work there again, maybe take over the place when he retires...</em><br><br>Had she said those things?&nbsp; No, Alice had.&nbsp; Right?&nbsp; Alice had joined in the game of pretending, helped her build on to her imaginings.&nbsp; It was all a game, only a game.<br><br>But the pills are here.&nbsp; They're real.<br><br>She whimpers again, the sounds drowned by the running water. <em>oh god please don't let him hear</em> She turns off the taps, sinks quickly into the tub.&nbsp; There's still time, she could stop, she could let herself sink further, just fall asleep under the water... But she rebels, the girl rebels.&nbsp; She had always hurt herself, always turned her anger inward.&nbsp; Her hands still bear the faint tracery of scars from those thorns, her stabbing of that stem her one small retaliation, the only time she'd ever fought back.&nbsp; But she will fight back now, quietly, desperately.<br><br>She bathes automatically, the ritual second nature, scrubbing herself hard.&nbsp; It was always strangely soothing, and she suspects he would have found a way to make it deeply uncomfortable if he'd known that.&nbsp; She wants to bathe afterwards even more, of course, but that she's not allowed to do.<br><br>Towel then, rubbing herself dry, quickly.&nbsp; She can't be late, though she never knows exactly when she's expected.&nbsp; Perfume.&nbsp; Honeysuckle.&nbsp; It's too sweet, she hates it almost as much as the whiskey, but he likes it, maybe.&nbsp; As much as he likes anything.<br><br>The robe from the hook, snatched down and tied quickly around her.&nbsp; She never thinks of it as hers, though it's the only nice thing he ever bought her.&nbsp; It's real silk, deep blue, patterned with golden flowers and almost Oriental designs.&nbsp; She supposes it reminds him of the prostitutes. <em>Don't think about that.&nbsp; Move, go, don't stop to think.</em>&nbsp; She was hurtling down a hill, slowly at first, but faster with every passing moment.&nbsp; Soon she'd hit the bottom, soon she'd crash to a halt...<br><br><em>Don't think.</em>&nbsp; Coffee, that's all she can think of.&nbsp; The grinder, the pills, the beans, oh god, the pills, the pills, no, don't think of them.&nbsp; Just move, just act, for once in your life, DO SOMETHING.<br><br>She shudders, almost falls over the step again.&nbsp; Every time she blinks, it seems, she's somewhere else, has moved a little farther than expected.&nbsp; She is having blackouts.&nbsp; She can plead insanity with a clear conscience and not have to add lying to the police to her list of sins.&nbsp; Will the police find out?&nbsp; The sheriff might forgive her, look the other way.&nbsp; She went to school with his daughter, he'd always liked her, felt sorry for her, like everyone else.&nbsp; Oh god oh god...<br><br>The grinder, the pills, don't think about what you're doing.&nbsp; It's a special ingredient for the coffee, an extra treat.&nbsp; It's nothing bad, nothing so vile as murder.&nbsp; Not even so vile as putting down a wounded horse or rabid dog.&nbsp; It's nothing, it's only what she has to do.<br><br>As the pills become a fine grey powder, she's much less afraid of them.&nbsp; Now there's nothing so odd to see.&nbsp; Her mother had flavored the coffee with licorice sometimes, and that had been a powder much like this.&nbsp; Now the beans, hurry, don't let him notice the pause while the powder is scooped out.&nbsp; It's too hard to tell how much he notices, but she has to pretend it's everything.&nbsp; He seems to know what she's thinking.&nbsp; Maybe it's good that she's having blackouts.<br><br>The beans are ground, but she doesn't remember doing that.&nbsp; Should she start it brewing now?&nbsp; She never knows when he'll want it, any more than she knows when he'll want her, or when he'll hit her or destroy one of the few things left that she still values.&nbsp; Her soul... but she's losing that now.<br><br>She has everything ready to brew now, and again she's not sure when she did that.&nbsp; But it's ready.&nbsp; She plugs it in, hears the familiar sounds.&nbsp; He'll hear that, yes, he'll know when it's ready.&nbsp; Maybe he'll come looking for it.&nbsp; No, he's never done that before, he won't do that now.&nbsp; It's only guilt making her think that.<br><br>Where does she usually wait?&nbsp; The living room, of course, right?&nbsp; Yes, and sometimes he does what he needs to do right there, and sometimes he drags her up the stairs.&nbsp; It's all right if he makes the step squeak.&nbsp; She just has to wait, just wait.&nbsp; She can do that, she can, she must, oh god, she can't, she has to... Her face is blank, utterly blank, showing nothing.&nbsp; It's best to show nothing.&nbsp; She can do that for a little while longer.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>31-08-2007, 05:16:11</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				There's a change here.&nbsp; The girl inside Josie can feel it, can feel Josie's mild disorientation become a natural hypnosis.&nbsp; The world becomes black and white and shades of gray, vision stuttering, and she's watching herself from the outside.&nbsp; No, she's watching Josie.&nbsp; She's watching a film of Josie, grains of white and threads dance from the lowest edge of her vision and fly into the ceiling.&nbsp; It's all a movie, it's just one of those stupid movies they show you in school--<br><br>There's even the tinny trumpet fanfare, and the soundtrack drags in places like the film and makes the music go sour and low, then suddenly tinny and high again before leveling back out.&nbsp; This happens occasionally with old, gritty films... nothing unusual.&nbsp; She can see Josie in her flower-print silk robe, but it's not really even Josie.&nbsp; It's Josie meets Phyllis Coates.&nbsp; Instead of her towel-dry hair hanging in shoulder-length, straight-cut drollness&nbsp; <span style="font-size: 8pt;" class="bbc_size"><em>haircuts are expensive... can't you do it yourself?</em></span>&nbsp; it's dry, styled, wavy and permed.&nbsp; It looks like it could stop a bullet.&nbsp; <br><br>And there is glib, radio-voice narrator speaking.&nbsp; "And here's Alice, ever the dutiful wife..." the word gets distorted halfway through, making 'dutiful' into a seven-syllable word, "... she knows exactly what her man wants at night.&nbsp; She knows how difficult his day can be, and juuuuust look at her, isn't she a beaut?&nbsp; Talk about making herself nice for her man to come home to," pseudo-Josie winks at the camera, just after the 'for' gets stuck, sounds like Beelzebub for a moment, resettles and the film continues.&nbsp; <br><br>Pseudo-Josie peeks inside an old fashioned, chromed percolator, then gives a satisfied "gee whiz" nod and sets out a pristine ceramic mug.&nbsp; <br>"After a long day, isn't it great to have a nice, relaxing cup of coffee?&nbsp; But night time is NO time for that jittery, go-go-go feeling you get.&nbsp; What's a man to do?&nbsp; Well... let's ask Alice--" Pseudo-Josie squares up to the camera, intentionally over-corrects to give an 80-degree semi-profile.&nbsp; &nbsp;Everything matches perfectly in Pseudo-Josie's kitchen. <br><br>"Just because the sun is down, it's not too late for a niiice cup of coffee... thanks to the miracle workers at H&amp;C!"&nbsp; There's a rough-cut in the film, the frame is locked on Josie's face, a tight close-up.&nbsp; She's holding up a metallic cannister, and the H&amp;C Coffee logo is emblazoned right above 'decaf'.&nbsp; It's as big as, and right next to, her head.&nbsp; A coy smile is on pseudo-Josie's lips.&nbsp; "THIS coffee won't keep MY man awake... he'll be sleeping like a baby tonight, but not until he's good and ready-- and not a moment after!"&nbsp; A killer wink, complete with the quavering 'ding' of a struck triangle, then the close up cuts away and you can see the coffee being poured into the perfect china cup, but the subtleties of the shimmering texture of the black liquid get lot to the black and white film.<br><br>The narrator again.&nbsp; "What a gal, that Alice... three cheers for this lovely lady."&nbsp; Pseudo-Josie's holding a silver tray with a little bud-vase, a white daisy protruding.&nbsp; "Remember, coffee doesn't have to make you go-go-go," she says to the camera, her posture painfully erect and her square bust jutting out at an angle that Josie's never has since she quit stuffing socks in her bra at 14.&nbsp; "Nighty-night!"&nbsp; She backs through a swinging door to the parlor with the grace of a ballet dancer.<br><br>A little girl stands in the corner of the parlor, her hands loose at her sides.&nbsp; Her face is a blur, a flaw in the film, or the direction, obscuring it.&nbsp; "Come on, Elizabeth, let's get you ready for beddy-bye!&nbsp; Daddy's going to have his evening coffee, and we'll need our peace and quie--" the film catches mid-frame, a black line and torn sprocket holes gaping.&nbsp; The heat of the lens melts the film away, and it's nothing but white light, white light and the squelching death-croack of the burning soundtrack, then nothing but silent, beautiful white.<br><br>The past few seconds return to Josie's mind.&nbsp; The girl can see through Josie's mind enough to sort them out... Josie giving Donnie the coffee, him ignoring it for three and a half minutes.&nbsp; If Josie hadn't been catatonic, she'd have broken during that three and a half minutes, started sobbing and gone fetal from the strain, had a nervous breakdown.&nbsp; But it went by smoothly in her stupor, and Donnie finally took the coffee, drank half, then started sipping the rest.&nbsp; Again, if she's seen it happen, she'd have screamed and collapsed into fits.&nbsp; But she didn't really <em> see </em> it, did she?<br><br>It had started with Donnie looking droopy-eyed, suddenly.&nbsp; Pissed, he had slugged back the rest of the coffee and stood up, his body struck the floor like a freight-bag of coffee beans, and he had begun to shiver and cough.&nbsp; Something had gone wrong, she had realized somewhere... he was supposed to just tip forward and sleep, then die slowly and peacefully.&nbsp; But he didn't, she knows now.&nbsp; Must have been the red and white pills.&nbsp; Isn't the red a stimulant, the white a narcotic?&nbsp; Fuck, she doesn't know, just knows that he's still dying, and it isn't pretty.<br><br>Out of the white she has been seeing, she can now pick out the texture of ceiling plaster, or a circular light fixture cover.&nbsp; White light everywhere, and she's thrown his robe into the trash can.&nbsp; She's lying naked on his bedspread, her hand between her thighs and touching herself, getting close to getting off as she listens to him make gurgling and flopping sounds downstairs.&nbsp; She hasn't gotten off with him in years, but the occasional indulgence-- if caught, he'd have found a way to take that from her, too-- had been worked into her routine.&nbsp; In the car at night, in the bathroom when he was drunk and snoring, in the shower when he was gone on a weekend hunt with his brothers.&nbsp; <br><br>She gripped his pillow in her fist-- it was stronger than usual, drawing out something in her that she'd felt bottled up, unable to reach, unable to realize until now, with Donnie dying messily downstairs, her fingertips working furious circles on her clit as she bucked her thighs in self-satisfying waves of desire, smiling, biting her lip and breathing heavy, quick gasps through her nostrils.&nbsp; She came when his breathing quit being breathing and became a rapid spasm as his autonomic nervous system lost all control and became a biological clusterfuck.&nbsp; She came hard, gripping and frigging herself with a fury that produced audible friction and made her, too, stop breathing as she bucked with torrents of crashing tension and release, again and again, one after the next after the next until it ebbed, subsided, her tired body relaxed and her lungs sucked air in rapid panting breaths.<br><br>The downstairs had gone quiet at last... damn the red and white, it was finally over.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>31-08-2007, 16:36:36</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				She doesn't move for a long time, just as still as Donnie, only the rise and fall of her chest marking the difference between her quiescence and his contorted, final stillness.&nbsp; Finally her breaths slow, until even that difference is barely noticeable.&nbsp; Perhaps she's dead, too... yes, perhaps part of her has died at last, that hidden, frightening part of her.&nbsp; Her darker half.<br><br>Suddenly she smiles, almost laughs.&nbsp; She's cold now, that faint sheen of sweat drying on her flesh and leaving her as cold as death.&nbsp; Again she almost laughs, biting back the sound instinctively.&nbsp; She can't let Donnie hear.&nbsp; He hasn't been gone long, maybe he can still hear.&nbsp; Slowly, the smile fades, but not the contentment.&nbsp; Soon she'll have to move, get up and cover herself, but for now she lies still, her hand resting lightly over her sex as it throbs in faint echo of her pleasures, her body at peace.&nbsp; And if her mind is still in turmoil, at least it's a distant turmoil.&nbsp; She can still relax.<br><br><em>No, no.</em>&nbsp; Somewhere the girl shivers, stunned by both horror and pleasure.&nbsp; This was not the way to escape, no, not even from such a monster.&nbsp; Or had he only been a rabid dog?&nbsp; She doesn't know, can't know, can't make herself think, not even in the broken way she does think now, when she's like this.&nbsp; It's too late anyway, always too late...<br><br>Finally Josie does move, slowly, stretching as though waking from a pleasant nap.&nbsp; She smiles, looking more like pseudo-Josie than herself.&nbsp; But she doesn't want to be herself, anyway.&nbsp; Being Alice will do, for now.&nbsp; Alice is much better at getting things done.<br><br>She puts on a robe, a plain, practical flannel robe, glad to be warm again.&nbsp; Slippers on her feet -- her hair is tangled from her thrashing, but that can wait.&nbsp; Her husband is waiting for her, and she mustn't be late.&nbsp; She turns briskly, walks down the steps, slowly and deliberately making the third stair squeak, long and loud.&nbsp; Josie panics, whimpers in terror, but Alice keeps walking, the cool, practical housewife taking care of the chores.<br><br>The same brisk step, into the living room.&nbsp; Josie cracks then, shatters into tiny pieces, falling into near-nothingness.&nbsp; The girl tries to reach out to her, tries to soothe, murmurs meaningless phrases.&nbsp; <em>It's all right.&nbsp; Let her take care of it.&nbsp; It's all right.&nbsp; It's not your fault.&nbsp; Everyone dies...</em><br><br>Alice is fearless.&nbsp; Even the girl can't quite watch.&nbsp; Hands, suddenly strong and infinitely capable, shift him from floor to armchair, ignoring the urine and bile that stains him and soaks into the rug with the dregs of the coffee.&nbsp; <em>Such a terrible stain,</em> Alice tuts to herself, deigning to acknowledge the mess.&nbsp; His face is contorted, warped the way it would be when he was in one of his rages, but he's silent now, the rage having leaked out onto the rug along with everything else.<br><br>Alice goes to get rubber gloves, cleansers, the big, heavy-bristled scrub brush.&nbsp; Josie is still and quiet, no longer even whimpering.&nbsp; Perhaps she's lost herself again, the girl thinks, with Elizabeth, in that strange celluloid world.&nbsp; Elizabeth... she knows her, doesn't she?&nbsp; Knows that name, that lost little girl face.&nbsp; But she's dead and buried, she's waiting in the corner, she's lost on a lonely road at night.<br><br>The rug is clean, at least as clean as harsh bleaches and mechanical, steady scrubbing can make it.&nbsp; She does what she can to clean Donnie, too, but even Alice can't quite bring herself to change his clothes.&nbsp; But she smiles as she tidies away the cleaning things, then turns to the dishes.&nbsp; She scrubs each glass, each plate, and especially the coffee cup.&nbsp; And the grinder and coffeepot, too, she mustn't miss them.<br><br>Everything is clean and tidy.&nbsp; She's house-proud again, ready for company now, ready for anything.&nbsp; Her brisk step carries her to the phone, she dials, smiling the same smile, then speaking in the perfectly enunciated, over-bright voice of the film.&nbsp; "Hello, I'd like to report an accident, please."
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>31-08-2007, 20:32:13</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Astonishment, so sincere it could pass as admiration, bled through the phone line from Susanne Barker, the Sherriff's OFfice dispatcher.&nbsp; Susanne was three years Josie's junior in school and is, when she read Tom Sawyer, who Josie envisioned as Becky Thacker.&nbsp; "I'll stay on the line, Josie, you just hold on--" <br><br>"Oh, that's quite alright..."&nbsp; the telephone is secured to the kitchen wall next to a decorative plate, depicting an enormous-eyed girl in prayer with a saccharine-sweet smile over a bounty of fruit and baked goods.&nbsp; Sophie traces her finger over the tiny fissure where she glued it back together after Donnie slammed the door in a rage.&nbsp; "I'm going to need to make coffee for the police and the paramedics.&nbsp; But thank you."&nbsp; She can hear Susanne trying to sputter out a reply as she hangs the receiver back on the twin metal prongs of the cradle.&nbsp; <br><br>It feels incredibly good to be doing something that would be appreciated by someone.&nbsp; <br><br>The coffee grinder sparkles, every crevice now devoid of unfortunate residue, and she sings softly to herself as she pours the grinder full of beans-- regular this time.&nbsp; She sings softly, "Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you..."&nbsp; and loads the coffee maker with a fresh filter.&nbsp; The white basket has been scoured and bleached.&nbsp; <br><br>Turning towards the front door, she checks her reflection in the hall miror-- long and narrow, it's scrolled with an etched elm tree in white on the polished surface.&nbsp; She ensures that her faded, blue-cotton robe is chastely tied over the comfortable slip beneath.&nbsp; She tousles her hair, goes to brush it again... certainly a fresh style is in order, and soon.<br><br>Standing on the pale hardwood of her bedroom floor she hears the clock downstairs slip another link on its chain, then begin its solemn, muffled but loveley chiming, low chords of metallic strumming like the resonance of a Castillian monk's hymn.&nbsp; One, two, three... she closed her eyes, breathing easier.&nbsp; The worst was over, and as she scooted aside the honeysuckle perfume, she picks up a tissue and dabbed at her glistening eyes, "He just... just... fell down," she mews.<br><br>Siz, seven, eight... "I... I just couldn't have anyone see him like that--"&nbsp; <br><br>Ten, eleven, twelve.&nbsp; "You understand," her eyes cold and blue, level, quivering pools of liquid.&nbsp; "Don't you?"&nbsp; It isn't&nbsp; question at all, really.<br><br>Something bumped downstairs, almost like the screen door meeting its frame after a wind drew it back.&nbsp; There was no breeze, was there?&nbsp; Panic flutters in her, its name is Josie.&nbsp; She doesn't care.<br><br>The rustling of the oak, breeze shaking its summer leaves as if from a coming storm, but there were no clouds.&nbsp; She cuts off the light, the small robin's-egg blue bathroom is cast in shadow, with the saffron tinge of her a nightlight by the medicine cabinet glazing across the whiter surfaces.&nbsp; The bump again, the breeze through waxy leaves, brittling themselves against the coming autumn.&nbsp; She turns back to the hall and goes to check the coffee.<br><br>Donnie is still where she left him, and the slow procession of minutes are tedious, annoying beyond tolerance. Donnie hasn't flinched, his eyes, partly open, are fixed and dialated to pinpoints of black, and there's a peace on his face... a placidity that she hasn't seen in years, that almost stirs nostalgia.&nbsp; There isn't time for it, though, thre's just the frustration of waiting, of living so far out in the country that the fire department volunteers will arrive before anyone else, and that the coffee is just hissing its way to completinon.&nbsp; The waiting will help her to be more convincing when the police arrive, she's certain.&nbsp; It can't be much longer...<br><br>There's a bray among the horses outside, one of alarm, of the pure animal fear that only horses know, and that men shudder to understand.&nbsp; Some men, anyway.&nbsp; Humans not like her, not like Josie.&nbsp; Josie knows its sound, knows its root.<br><br>The high whinny again, this time another horse, some thumping of one kicking at its stall.&nbsp; Probably the bay; the bay was a skittish gelding, always had been.&nbsp; His hoof resounds against the inside of the clapboard stall, repeats.&nbsp; She edges her way to the side window, in the dining room that they never used, next to the shelf of Hummel figurines from Donnie's mother.&nbsp; There was no light in the stables, but shadows stirred within.&nbsp; That darkness, that void of possibility, holds terror.<br><br>More horses are growing upset,terrified by something in their nature to fear.&nbsp; More buck, bray.&nbsp; Their cries aren't quite screams, but they might become that way.<br><br>Without thinking, Josie's hand closes on the doorknob.&nbsp; She didn't recall crossing the hardwood, didn't recall slipping into Donnie's huge boots left by the door, big enough for two of her feet each.&nbsp; She would not let anything harm the horses... Donnie never hurt them, the only thing he never hurt, the only reason she didn't kill him sooner.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>31-08-2007, 22:23:55</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				The girl shrieks in protest, Josie's whimpering providing counterpoint.&nbsp; Soon, very soon, every uniformed official the county could muster would be here, with cars and lights and guns.&nbsp; They could check the horses, they could keep them safe.<br><br>But still the woman moved, stepping outside now, gripping a flashlight.&nbsp; Is she still Alice?&nbsp; Certainly she shows a bravery Josie seldom did, though with the horses in danger, perhaps it isn't so strange to see her marching forward.&nbsp; The beam is strong and steady -- Donnie would never have tolerated weak batteries in a flashlight, any more than he tolerated lies from her.&nbsp; Maybe now she'll let every battery in the place die.<br><br>The chaos in the stables can be clearly heard.&nbsp; Horses are thudding against walls, hooves stomping.&nbsp; The furious, panicked edge to the cries grows stronger, and she quickens her pace.<br><br>Then a huge slam, a thunderous sound, echoing through the yard.&nbsp; She finally hesitates, flinching as though against one of Donnie's blows.&nbsp; Something has brought down one of the wooden dividers, perhaps, though they have withstood kicks before.&nbsp; But there's never been such panic before, never such struggles....<br><br><em>They know he's dead.</em>&nbsp; The thought strikes her like the blow she'd been waiting for, and she reels back a step.&nbsp; It can't be, no, not that.&nbsp; They might sense her distress, if she felt any, but they could not know such a thing.&nbsp; <em>Donnie had such a way with the horses, a bond.</em><br><br>She shakes off the thoughts, waving her hand as though shooing away a cloud of gnats.&nbsp; There's danger, she has to help them, that's all that matters.&nbsp; She presses on, moving awkwardly in the heavy boots.&nbsp; She has to reach them.&nbsp; Another sharp thud, another flinch, but she doesn't slow down this time.<br><br>Her hand pushes against the bar that holds the main door, lifting it up and out of the way.&nbsp; The cries are screams now, like the screams of frightened people.&nbsp; <em>They're afraid of you.</em><br><br>Again she shakes her head, grips the flashlight hard, whimpering.&nbsp; "It's not true," she says, not loudly, but defiantly.&nbsp; Her free hand takes the door handle, tugs, and it flies open, splinters and hooves cutting through the air, cutting through her, and her scream is lost among the horses' cries, the bright beam of light cartwheeling crazily over the yard as the flashlight spins from her grasp and falls to the mud.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>05-09-2007, 00:59:15</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Death takes time this way.&nbsp; It is lazy, lugubrious when it is painful, when it is the product of contusions or tumors, ruptures or hemmoragging.&nbsp; The smooth white heat of the guillotine takes much less time, but come with the tinge of humiliation as one is bantied about, tossed like a plaything, all the while with no breath to scream and no body to thrash.&nbsp; Somehow, the girl thinks she knows them all by now, though they slip away faster, come on with less and less warning, with each death.&nbsp; <br><br>The barn creaks around her, the black-wooded whale belly of this death's return.&nbsp; She can't move, she's too stiff.&nbsp; Her arms and thighs and legs ache, her back throbs with knotting cramps, muscles uncertain, oxygen starved.&nbsp; Eyes don't want to open, are so dry that they ache.&nbsp; The memory of horse cries fills the barn, their ghosts more palpable and real than the hay that molds and mildwes on ths floor, where shoots of shade plants and bone-ridges of fungi ripple across round, hand-hewn beams.&nbsp; There is a creaking echo as the old pulley in the rafters swings gently in the breeze that lazily stirs the dust of this old, dead barn, that seeps in undeterred through sheaves of missing boards, gaping holes through which the night sky peers, tranquil and cold beyond the ozone of earth's respiratory waste.<br><br>In the dank, musty air of the abandoned barn, the smell of horses lingers.<br><br>*<br><br>Habit, this time, is what drives her back to the car.&nbsp; Is what has desensitized her, conditioned her not to even try the house; if it is occupied, it will be closed.&nbsp; If abandoned, nothing will be left.&nbsp; She half-staggers, half-walks across the lumpy, overgrown yard, sending nocturnal rabbits scattering through the grass in their zig-zag paths, off and away, disappearing from sight and sound with their black eyes flashing, accusatory and paranoid.&nbsp; Grasshoppers flit up like spirits arching toward heaven, failing in their flight, landing with awkward, terrified snags at the long blades.&nbsp; Her feet swish in the grass, her steps are heavy, she almost steps into a groundhog's den... could have broken an ankle, doesn't care.&nbsp; She moves.&nbsp; She can see the car.&nbsp; It's dudty, like her throat, like it's been there for weeks.&nbsp; It groans when she slams the door shut behind her.<br><br>By the light of the moon, which is full now, brilliant and white through the windshield as she perches against the passenger side door and sleepily writes until her head bobs, dips on its own and her eyes flutter shut.&nbsp; She fights it back, writes more.&nbsp; She wakes with her chin tipped, unable to finish a sentence, until there are no sentences left, and her handwriting is a long, blue trail down the page where it went dead, slid, and she fell slack.<br><br>Time to go.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Valerian</strong> on <strong>05-09-2007, 02:30:47</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				She wakes suddenly, blinking and uncertain.&nbsp; Was she awake?&nbsp; It was hard to tell.&nbsp; She looks down at the notebook in her lap, the pen resting loosely in her relaxed hand.&nbsp; She tries to grasp it, nearly knocks it to the floor, but manages to take hold.&nbsp; Hadn't her pen run out of ink?&nbsp; She writes, or rather draws, tracing around the straight blue line running down to the bottom of the page, like an ivy twining around a dead tree, watching in faint, fascinated confusion as the ink flows smoothly.<br><br>Her eyes wander back to the words, but she can't read them.&nbsp; She can't remember how she could see to write them, but right now they're only blurs on the page.&nbsp; Lightly, curiously, her fingers trace over the letters, in some places very deeply carved into the page, almost as though for the blind.&nbsp; Houses? she wonders.&nbsp; No, horses.&nbsp; Why is she writing about horses?&nbsp; That doesn't seem very important, but no other word is clear enough for her to learn more.<br><br>The pen slips from her hand again, suddenly cramped and exhausted.&nbsp; Her hand always gets cramped.&nbsp; She stiffens, frowns, her memory scrambling after the feeling, but there's nothing there to catch.&nbsp; Her body remembers more than her mind, perhaps, sense memories somehow more durable than any others.&nbsp; Cramping, pain, bones breaking, blood slowly escaping to stain old floorboards -- once she starts thinking of them, they threaten to overwhelm her, and it's hard to stop the flow.<br><br>She looks at the pile of notebooks, and has to turn away.&nbsp; There's blood on them, the stink of death, and she can't imagine why she has them.&nbsp; But she has to keep them, she has to.&nbsp; And she has to go now... yes, it's time to leave.<br><br>She starts the car, tuns on the headlights and flinches as they reveal the yard -- the half-collapsed barn, the faded house <em>she's seen one like this before, she has, an old and tired building just like this</em>, the horseshoe driveway.&nbsp; On the crest of the slight hill, the fence has broken slats, jagged edges sharp against the faint moonlight, barely shining through the clouds.<br><br>She has to go, she has to.&nbsp; She doesn't belong here, no one does.&nbsp; The car moves, tires crunching on the gravel, and she can't bear the sound.&nbsp; She turns the radio up, strains to hear the music, which refuses to get louder no matter how far she turns the knob.&nbsp; A man sings, distantly, murmuring faint words about waking up in strange places, about ghosts.&nbsp; The car reaches the road, pauses there for a moment, as the girl rests her head on the wheel, fighting to breathe.<br><br>Then, finally, she looks up again, turning her head slowly to look up and down the road.&nbsp; The moon hangs low over the horizon to her right, and she turns the car toward it without thinking.&nbsp; Sooner or later, she'll see what she's looking for.&nbsp; She'll find it somewhere.&nbsp; It can't be too much further now.
			</dd>
			<dt class="postheader">
				Title: <strong>Re: The Lost Road</strong><br>
				Post by: <strong>Caustic</strong> on <strong>17-09-2007, 09:26:23</strong>
			</dt>
			<dd class="postbody">
				Black asphalt faded to gray, cracked like the never-ending skin of some black dragon, stretches past the spreading, piss-white pool of headlamps.&nbsp; So many places gone, so far behind... maybe the books will help.&nbsp; Whatever her notebooks say, whatever they contain, the iron-smelling pages must be important, so she leaves them on the seat beside her in a scratched-together stack.&nbsp; She sighs, shakes her head, unconcerned, feeling poorly rested... there's something in them, she's certain.&nbsp; Something of the journey... gone now, though.&nbsp; Hopefully, it's good work... she's a little ashamed of the wear, that she hasn't cared for them better.&nbsp; But, for now, she must simply find where she's going. <br><br>Where's she going again..?<br><br>A faint glow on the horizon, it must be a town... must be, can't be too far.&nbsp; Somewhere like the barn...&nbsp; what barn was that again..?&nbsp; Oh, well, it must be in the notes... <br><br>She almost missed the sign, overgrown with the low-hanging sprawl of a cottonwood tree, ragged leaf-cover obscuring the faded black and orange to signify a sharp curve.&nbsp; Slowing into it, she smells something-- burnt rubber, certainly, perhaps oil... something wrong with the car--?<br><br>No.&nbsp; Black swaths on the road, still reeking, fresh skid marks , leading into the curve, off the road... a two-door car, a 1960s model, sits off the highway reversed, driver's-side window spiderwebbed to a semi-opaque curtain... an accident?&nbsp; She slows, pulls the lever to activate the high-beams... seized by a panic, a sense of urgency and unpreparedness, fear of being called upon, perhaps... <br><br>Vertigo...<br><br>It's happening again. <br><br>She stops the car, eyes huge... a girl in the road, fairly young, close to her own age... (I'm twenty-one, my name's Miranda... I was a student, and i had this teacher...)<br><br>Shadows creeping into her mouth, spiraling, unease and shivers.&nbsp; The feeling of being consumed... <br><br>The girl in her headlights is pretty, but half her face is ruddy with blood... her pale eyes are wide, staring, frightened, perhaps, or in shock.&nbsp; Her thumb is out, she's hitching, injured... <br><br><em>Where was I?</em><br><br>*<br><br>Please continue in Lost Road: Twilight's Crossing.
			</dd>
		</dl>
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