Kiona Washington (wildparadise) wrote in savingthegames, @ 2014-10-13 22:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | adios sandoval, edith olson, gabriel barnes, hassan el-amin, kiona washington, narrative, samuel shepard, vance harlow, violet bishop |
Who: Samuel, Kiona, Violet, Gabriel, Edith, Vance, Adiós, Hassan
What: Moments
When: All the time
Where: Everywhere
Warnings: Some graphic imagery
Status: Narrative/COMPLETE
Violet has never experienced autumn on this side of the glass. She feels a sort of nostalgia for memories she’s never had and a soul she’s never connected with before. As she walks back into the park - quickly becoming a favorite spot for her - she witnesses a musician with his opened guitar case littered with dollars and small change. He plays a song she doesn’t know, but by the smiles and nods of the other bystanders, by some glossy story in their eyes, she knows it reminds them of days past. It evokes what one calls a trip down memory lane. She has no such stories and instead clutches her peacoat closer, her red hair whipping around her face as the wind picks up. Some of the dollars fly out of the guitar case and her mechanoid eye scans each darting dollar, calculating his loss at twelve. Twelve dollars means nothing to her, but the man stops playing, resting his guitar in the case to keep anything else from escaping. Nobody moves to help him despite what a gift he has apparently just bestowed for mere pennies. And he returns two minutes later with four of the twelve dollars and no more onlookers. Violet traces the patterns of the wind in meticulous process, moves about like an untouchable monolith as the cool autumn air does not seem to penetrate her mechanical form. She finds the dollars, each of them, though it takes a good twenty minutes. By the time she has returned to where the performer is located, money in hand and childishly pleased with herself, she finds that he is gone. Violet stands in the spot where he used to be, hand outstretched as if expecting some invisible stranger to take the bills from her, unsure of what to do now. And she waits. The beach is most beautiful at sunrise, Eddie thinks, but she’s a few hours away from it. Another nightmare has claimed the majority of her night, and rather than make a fuss about it, she has wrapped herself in her favorite cardigan and walked down to the shore. The moon shines a distant horizon for the ocean and everything is navy and silver and sanded diamonds. But she keeps dreaming about nothing but the color black and the smell of wood chips and the feeling of concrete under her knees. She can’t get out of the box. She hears breathing. Turns her head just to the left and is confronted by the rotting corpse of her mother. It reaches out a withered, bony hand towards her and as she screams and pushes away, she discovers that this is not a box, but a coffin, and she has been buried with Rabah. Her mother’s hands become many. Jack Frost’s hands. The officer’s. Max’s. Those who had been her “friends” in the Coalition. She feels them holding her, digging inside of her chest, needling great holes to pull her apart. She hears the squelching of her organs, can feel them being seized. And her mother's rasping voice whispers that the punishment must fit the crime. Eddie looks bleakly up at the stars, tries counting them, but for the first time in her life there are too many. She returns to her room with Tristan, slides into bed and curls up against him, her fingers latched onto his shirt. It is because of the scent of him and the cadence of the waves that she finds sleep at all. Today Hassan is Lao Tzu. His world history class is coming along swimmingly and the kids seem far more entertained by his teaching style than those of professors past. It’s certainly a popular topic of conversation around school, but for most of the right reasons. Sometimes there are questions as to if his costumes are necessary, but it excites his classrooms and the students actually show up curious and invested in learning more. Though most history teachers stick strictly to European and western history, he makes sure the students understand the importance of all history, as much as he is able to cover in one year, and now he is detailing the early civilizations and groundwork of China and Asia. He passes by Cadwalader’s office after hours and pauses when he sees a young woman at his desk. She’s not a student and she’s decked out in tattoos, with her ankles crossed on his desk and a dagger between her fingers. A startled encounter reveals she’s Eddie and she’s waiting on Julian Alvarez so they can go out to dinner. She’s not what Hassan expected, but he’s almost pleasantly surprised. They talk for a few moments. “Confucius?” “Lao Tzu.” “Oh. Taoist guy, right?” He nods, pleased someone knows something about the man, but suggests she probably shouldn’t be playing with weapons on school property. She agrees with a goofy grimace and tucks it away. Their conversation ends when Julian shows up, and he goes on his way. Western culture is different, but he likes it. He learned a lot in his time out here for college and while he doesn’t exactly prefer it over his home, it’s simply that going back home isn’t an option right now. Or perhaps ever. It hasn’t hit him yet that he misses his family. Maybe he doesn’t and only years later when his sisters and brothers are all full grown and leading their lives will he think he ought to be there for them. Most of them are hardly teenagers or just in the middle of their teenage years, clumped together thanks to a father with three wives. Because he is the third oldest of maybe fourteen children, he has come to love younger kids. It’s why teaching feels so natural to him. And as he sits on Kas’ windowsill as an American Bald Eagle some couple hours later, watching as the boy tries to determine if he’s spooked or excited by the creature, he thinks about the other children he has left behind. But this is satisfying enough for now. Press conferences all blur together after a while. Vance is the hardest-working hero in the city and everyone knows it. They don’t know why. He doesn’t know why. It’s just the way things are. If he were anyone else - anyone of lesser conviction and stubbornness - he’d have collapsed under all of this weight. The name “Atlas” is fitting. Having selected it in his teens to represent his strength, it now appears to take a more haunted turn. He carries this city on his shoulders. So young and with his own demons and almost no friends to speak of. He misses his sister. He misses his mother and his father and as each day passes he forgets a little more of their faces. He misses simple times. He misses thinking he will one day graduate from college. He misses thinking he might make it to thirty. A representative for Stars and Stripes is speaking, but the cameras are on him. Dressed in his uniform, he’s just single-handedly apprehended three powered bank robbers with minimal collateral damage. Some people call him a savior. Others call him part of the problem. The reporters and the photographers don’t care about what the woman is saying. They want to hear him speak. He doesn’t know what to say that hasn’t already been scripted for him. But they listen to him anyway. There’s an ache in his back that runs up his neck and across his shoulders. It gives him constant headaches. An invisible world was perched upon him, but he steps up to the podium with the same bright-eyed smile they’ve come to love and forgive his failures for. And he speaks. “Hola, chica,” Adiós grins as she calls Roxana, chatting happily with her on the phone. Their conversation is so nonchalant, so airy and pointless, as they talk about how well the benefit went and how they’re excited about Halloween, that one would never pair the conversation with the image of a woman sitting on a bathroom counter pouring lye into a tub filling with water. Worse yet is the image of a man tied over the tub, his body laid out on some horizontal boards, his hands tied behind his back and his legs as a paired tourniquet. The water is rising and now with the alkali liquid mixed in, it is a potent funeral for the gagged man whose face hangs mere inches above the splashing pool. She turns the water off and continues in effervescent, singsong Spanish about these new Prada shoes with flower heels. The man is gasping against his gag, expending energy keeping his head above the water. He can’t roll off the tub - she has strapped him down and any amount of struggling to move gets his nose burned off. The conversation goes on for good ten minutes and she can see, in fragments, his head lowering, his inability to keep it above the water. As she gossips about the latest kill orders from Syndicate 9, she hears sizzling, smells burning flesh, and his body starts seizing as his face has fallen into the lye water. He rattles as if electrocuted, tries to raise his face up, but every gasp for air causes him to swallow the burning water. His insides are melting. The skin of his face is peeling globs into the water. He is screaming through his gag. “Un momento,” Adiós sighs as she moves over to the tub. Her nose wrinkles at the stench and she places a gloved hand against his scalp. “And now we know, don’t we, that we never call Miss Sandoval ‘a second-rate performer’ ever again, right?” The celebpop reporter is still screaming. His ears are seared into the sides of his head. “Oh well.” She shrugs and pushes his face back into the water. One of Kiona’s brothers calls to make sure she’s remembered their mother’s birthday. Of course she has - why wouldn't she? After sacrificing so much to make sure her children had good lives, she now has three adult kids who go above and beyond every chance they get to show her how much they appreciate her. This year LaToya is turning sixty. Kiona wants to fly home, but it’s a ridiculous notion after just coming out here. So she Skype chats with her mother, makes sure she got the gift and that she likes it. They talk for hours and she talks to her step-dad too, before he takes her mother out for dinner. Kiona signs off and decides to take a walk around the city. She’s not used to mittens and lattes, but as the weeks go on she finds herself settling nicely into the new lifestyle. She’s met new people, has learned where it’s okay to go at night and where it isn’t, and knows what gang signs to look out for. It sounds horrible, but it’s not like she didn’t know going in. Besides, she’s already made friends with her neighbors. Though she doesn’t quite know the impact until she walks upstairs to her apartment and sees a tray with cookies in front of her door. People always gravitate towards her and she isn’t sure why, but she’s already making a name for herself on her floor for being one the nicest young ladies to be there in a while. Macadamia and white chocolate chip. Her favorites. The woman next door must have remembered. Kiona smiles and goes inside, thinking about how nice it is to have small-town friends in a huge city. Sam picks up the payphone. Puts it down. Picks it up. Puts it down. He has change in his pocket. He’s desperate for a lifeline. He wants to see his brother. He wants to talk to Siobhan. He wants to go home. Sam picks up the payphone. Puts it down. Walks back to the warehouse. Gabe is sixty-six years old and throwing balls in the lake and laughing. He’s in a dog park. And he thinks he can get away with drowning this poor lady’s schnauzer because he’s supposed to be old enough to know better. Or maybe too old to know better. The point is people are a little less threatening when you’re possibly senile than when you’re a teenage hooligan. He’s driven out of the park anyway by concerned dog owners. As he walks, he realizes he has homework that’s due. Some more assignments for at least three classes. But it’s Saturday and it’s the city and his dad’s too busy with his wife and daughter to care where his son is. So Gabe morphs into his twenty-something self, makes a pass at a couple of gullible girls, and gets himself invited to their table at the bar. He drinks and he takes in the scene, but it’s pretty clear that the drunker he gets, the younger he sounds. And the less likely he’s going to hit on them and instead hit on the male bartender. And then suddenly he is too young and the women are screaming and running away and he’s stuck with their tab. Except he’s sixteen now so he threatens the establishment for serving drinks to an underage kid. A lucky and daring bluff for someone who can barely tie his shoelaces with how inebriated he is. But they oblige and he leaves, trotting off back to the school’s dorms just before curfew. |