WHO: Melpomene and Will WHEN: Tuesday evening WHERE: Will and Alan's place WHAT: The hurt people left behind WARNINGS: Smuttiness
The urge to scream hadn’t stopped in four nights. It coiled inside her chest, snakelike, venomous fangs dripping and ready - no, longing to sink into some deserving arm. Her sisters had been no help, but they were right – she didn’t want help.
Still, she held on tight to the bitterness that not one of them had come over, that Clio had gone silent when she’d mentioned Apollo, that Urania had drawn her into a fight and then just as swiftly cut it off, that Erato had not lamented harder, that all Calliope did was tell her to scream and let it out, as if this grief was something external to her, something she could release, instead of a part of her that felt permanent as her bones.
There was too much pity and sympathy in her sisters. Melpomene didn’t want the softness of pity and sympathy. She wanted to crash her ship onto the rocks of Urania’s 'insurmountable incompatibility'.
Insurmountable incompatibility. Melpomene refused to admit Urania could be right. Not one bone in her body was going to accept those words. Yet she had no counter to them, just the urge to lash out at anyone who dared agree with Urania’s proclamation.
And she tormented herself with Urania's earlier words Fighting like a furious caged animal against your own inevitable ending; I can hardly blame you for something so fitting. And she lashed herself with Alan's And that isn't your fault... We're our own stories, written and out of our control.
No! She would accept NONE OF THIS!
The weather outside suited her mood perfectly. The wind thrashed snow against her face and howled around the skyscrapers like it was trying to bring them down. Cars with their headlights on in the dying light made a gray brown slurry of the street, and she added her boots as foot soldiers to the destruction of the snow on the sidewalks. Despite her coat, the wind bit through her like a thousand starving mice, her face, her neck, her feet, her arms all suffering from the cold while the furnace in her womb burned on, making her body a study in contradictions.
Good. She felt contradictory. She loved Alan; she wanted to grab him by his jacket and scream at him. She wanted him to make her cry again; she wanted to make him cry. She wanted to see him and crawl without words into his bed, where they could cocoon themselves in soft silence against the storm and emerge as something better. She wanted to see him again, and feel that insurmountable incompatibility burn into her like a brand. Let it hurt let it hurt let it hurt.
The wind stole her hair out of her hood and the snow soaked and froze her curls. The subways had stopped running, the cars on the road slowed to a crawl. By the time she arrived at his place she couldn’t feel her hands or feet, but her heart was aflame. Dull pain echoed down her arms as she banged on his door, and her breath puffed out in clouds as she called his name.
She didn’t know why she was here, but Melpomene didn’t feel the need to know. She was riding this wave of emotion and didn’t care where it took her, weather it dashed her on the rocks or pulled her under, deep down into the unknown black.