Creative Writing -- Story the First

[thessalian]

Okay, there were no 'no' votes in the poll, and while I appreciate the "non-trolling" sentiments (after all, I've been trolled before and it caused me extreme stress at the time), I think I'm able to deal with that kind of shit now.

NONE SO BLIND

For a week after the news came, Simon Vadis sat in his room and looked out the window, not seeing the world as it passed by. His parents left meals by the door after the first day; scraped them down the garbage disposal some hours later, barely touched. They called in sick for him at Kinko's. They worried. He didn't notice. A single question burned in his mind and took everything else away.

Was it suicide?

Susan MacInnis, age 23, with the black hair and fair, freckled skin of the Irish colleen. Born in Columbus, Ohio; avid reader, intense film buff and nearly psychotic Blue Jackets fan. She and Simon had met at the University of Mississippi. She was an actress; his expertise ran to backstage work. She called him Scooter. She drank too much coffee and danced around campus to Nine Inch Nails on an antiquated Walkman held together by duct tape and love. She wore a lot of black, and a year into their friendship, she began wearing long-sleeved shirts exclusively. She stopped dancing, and her coffee intake increased. From the look of her, she stopped sleeping. He turned up at her dorm one day in April in their second year out of sheer concern; when he pulled up her sleeve, he saw the scars and scabs of attempted wrist-slitting. A quick glance at the coffee table indicated she'd just tried to solve her insomnia problem permanently by dissolving a hundred sleeping pills in a quart of milk and chugging the concoction. He'd forced her to throw up, then dialled 9-1-1.

Her parents had brought her to Gulf Oaks, a short-term psychiatric facility on the Gulf Coast. She stayed there for a few months and, after about a year of therapy and antidepressants, she returned to UMiss. She still didn't dance around campus, and she still wore long sleeves to hide the scars, and she didn't talk to many people because they all knew. But she talked to Simon, sometimes even about things that mattered, and he'd thought she was improving ... particularly when she took a summer job doing tech work and understudying at a Camden theatre. It amused him that he was working in a Kinko's and living with his parents in Palo Alto while she was playing Scooter in London before she even graduated. When the offer came through, she had danced, a quick jig her Irish ancestors would have been proud of, and she'd smiled. Her world was full of possibilities, and she knew it; he could see it. Even through the scratched bifocals she wore, he could see it in her eyes.

Susan had been in England for two weeks when the phone call came. A woman named Gloria Stevens, a friend of Susan's, had found his phone number in Susan's phone book. She'd told him...

Was it suicide?

He knew no one else was asking that. They were asking "why?". They asked what the techs at Gulf Oaks had missed, or if she'd stopped taking her medication, or if something bad had happened to her in London that drove her to it. They all knew it was suicide; they knew her history, and she hadn't really spoken to them since. But he had, and he wondered.

He wondered why there wasn't a note. Susan hadn't liked loose ends, and the last time she'd tried, she'd left a note. He'd read it, waiting for news on her condition in the hospital. He'd tried not to cry. He'd failed. He guessed there were others, from the times she'd cut, or done other things. He couldn't believe she'd go without leaving some statement, some final word to those she was leaving behind. It wasn't like her. He didn't think it was like her, anyway.

For a week, he tried to put himself into her mind, asked himself what she had been thinking in those final hours. He wondered what had happened when she heard that the defective train would not be stopping at Mornington Crescent. She could have been standing too close to the track. Maybe she'd been working too hard, the way she had at UMiss sometimes -- too much coffee, too little food and sleep and recreation. Maybe she'd fainted at just the wrong time. Or she'd been absorbed in something -- a book, a script, a new tape -- and just slipped. Or maybe she'd heard that announcement, carpe'd the diem and just jumped. And for the life of him, remembering every e-mail, every phone call, the one postcard of punks giving the camera the finger, he couldn't figure out which one it was.

And so he spent his days, pondering the one question, staring unseeing through his glasses and the window of his bedroom, until they came in the mail -- those same scratched bifocals through which he'd seen the joie de vivre return to her eyes some months before she died.

* * *

"What the fuck am I supposed to do with these?"

They were the first words he'd spoken in a week, shocked out of him by the sight of them lying in the small white box. On those words, he slammed the lid back on the box hard enough to feel the cardboard bend a little, as if he could slam a similar lid on the pain.

His mother had left the box beside his breakfast plate that morning; it had come wrapped in brown paper. Looking at the paper didn't prove any easier for Simon -- it bore his address in tidy copperplate handwriting. Susan's handwriting; Susan's glasses.

He remembered a conversation he'd had with Susan once, shortly after their first meeting, about their respective vision problems. "It's an accommodation disorder," she'd explained. "Basically means instead of one lazy eye, I've got two. Mom and Dad say it's from all that reading under the covers with a flashlight I did as a kid. The top lenses are pretty weak -- if I lost them, I could walk around on the street without a seeing-eye dog. But I couldn't read or write worth a damn without these on."

The tidy writing on the parcel's wrapping -- how had she done it without her glasses? She could have written it on the packaging and then wrapped the box, but she hadn't. Examination of the box's lid revealed where a ball-point pen had engraved his address into the waxed cardboard. Maybe she'd got new glasses. But why send the old ones?

He went to his desk and picked up the phone. He knew someone who might be able to, if not answer his questions, then at least narrow the possibilities down.

* * *

"So what brings you by? Long drive up this way for you."

Andrew Perrins, a tall and awkward young man with a shock of sandy hair and green eyes innocent of guile, guilt and glasses, handed Simon a bottle of Labatts. Simon looked at the label on the bottle, then at Andrew. "You unpatriotic geek. What's wrong with American?"

Andrew grinned. "Like making love in a canoe, man." Born and bred in Buffalo, he was only ever serious about three things -- hockey, beer and computers. As Simon drank from his bottle, Andrew looked at him closely. "Here about Susan, I'm guessing."

"That obvious, huh?"

"Kinda." Andrew rumpled his hair, looking sheepish and a little sad. "I know the Playoff run's getting me like that. I keep thinking any minute now she's gonna call up; ask why that rainy pile of rock doesn't show hockey at a decent time of night, then get me to give her a reeeeally expensive blow-by-blow of game five."

Simon winced. He'd forgotten that he wasn't the only one who missed Susan. Simon and Andrew's friendship was based on role-playing games, sci-fi movies and long conversations about the respective merits of X-Men versus X-Factor; Andrew and Susan had shared a simpler and more masculine bond. A recording of a typical Andrew-Susan conversation would invariably involve the words "beer", "hip check", "Playoff run" and strings of inventive expletives. This began at UMiss and continued when Simon and Andrew had moved to Palo Alto and Santa Barbara respectively; Susan would turn up in holiday breaks, burn in the sun and watch ESPN on Andrew's wide-screen. A picture from her Spring Break visit sat on the wall unit; Susan in her glasses and Blue Jackets jersey, giving the finger to the camera.

"So come on," Andrew prompted. "Spill it." Simon reached into his jacket pocket and produced the box and its former wrapper, handing them over to Andrew. "What the hell...?"

"She sent them."

Rather than ask who'd sent them and what 'they' were, Andrew opened the box. After a long moment, he gently replaced the lid. After a moment, he collected himself enough to ask, "They hers?" Simon nodded. "So the hell you doing with 'em?"

Simon took another swallow of his beer, then muttered, "They came in the mail."

"From England? Why the..." Andrew uncrumpled the brown paper and frowned at it, then blinked. "This is weird."

"Huh?"

Andrew looked at Simon oddly. "Hello! Look at this. No customs tag. No postmark. No stamps. There should've been something on here. Celeste gets crap from this ... uh ... store-thing in Worthing -- Sussex -- England, anyway, and there's always customs tags and stamps and postmarks. So what's this?"

Simon paused. Until now, his focus had rested more on the box's contents than its packaging. But with his attention dragged there... "I wondered how she addressed it, but..." He tried to think beyond the grief, but all he could manage was the plea, "How did she do this?"

Andrew looked thoughtful. "You got anywhere to be right now?"

"I think my parents are glad I got out of the house; they won't expect me. Why?"

"Wanna hang out awhile? Have some beers, wait for Celeste to get back. I get the feeling this is more her scene than mine." Simon eyed Andrew warily, but nodded assent. Andrew obviously noticed the hesitance and gave a reassuring smile. "Just trust me and stick around, okay?" He handed the box back to Simon, who clutched it tightly, then drained his bottle. "Getcha another?"

Simon cut his eyes to the door. He still wasn't sure about meeting this Celeste, whatever her 'scene' was. Eventually, his need for answers won out and he nodded. Andrew clapped him on the back as he divested Simon of the empty, then headed for the kitchen.


Some fifteen minutes later, the front door banged open and a strident voice called out, "Yo, geek-boy! I'm home!"

"In here, Celeste!"

"I got a couple of those suspense slashers you like, and stopped by The Sitar on..."

When she entered the room, Simon stared. Somehow, this was not what he had expected of Andrew's girlfriend. Opposites attracted, but this short, well-proportioned girl in a Make Love, Not War T-shirt and bell-bottomed hipsters, looking like a time traveller from the 60s without the dreamy too-much-weed cast, standing next to Andrew UberGeek ... it didn't gel. "Celeste," said Andrew, "this is Simon Vadis."

Celeste's grin was as sunny as it was sarcastic. In tones of ersatz good cheer, she said, "Oh, you're one of Andrew's RPG-freak friends who feed his addiction and treat witchcraft like some kind of joke! Would you like to stay for dinner?"

"Uh. Nice to meet you." This was directed at her back; after her first sally, she'd flounced off towards the kitchen.

"Pay no attention to the bitch behind the curtain," grinned Andrew.

"Oh, that's nice. Go on and insult me just before you ask me to do the RPGer a favour." Simon looked up at Andrew in shock -- how had she known? "I'm serving for three, right?"

"Oh, I don't want to put you to any trouble..."

"No trouble, honestly. So long as it's not about Orcs in some despair swamp or whatever little game you've got going, I don't mind."

"Celeste, leave the dinner for a bit, okay? We'll nuke it if we gotta, but this is weirdness of your scene."

Celeste peered around the door, brown eyes wary, as if she thought she was being teased. Perhaps she did, Simon reasoned; Andrew was like that. "And how do you know about weirdness of my scene, O God of Geekdom?"

"I don't," Andrew shrugged. "But it ain't weirdness of mine, so I figured..."

"So you figured if you didn't get it, it had to be a Wicca thing." Celeste stalked into the room, exasperated. "Come on, Andrew..."

"Wait." Simon was on his feet now, holding the box out in Celeste's direction. "You're a witch?"

"And what are you going to do about it," Celeste snapped; "burn me at the stake? God, get a clue! You..." Then she focused on the item in Simon's hand. Her voice died; for a moment, she froze. Then she stalked towards him and snatched the box.

"Hey!"

"Shut up!" She turned the box over in her hands, then opened it and peered inside. Finally, she looked up. "Where did you get this?"

Andrew took it upon himself to field that question; Simon was busy stifling the urge to take Susan's glasses back by force. "You remember Susan MacInnis?"

Celeste nodded to herself. "The one who went under the subway train; right. Should've guessed."

"Should've guessed?" There seemed to be too much information, none of it comprehensible. "Guessed what?"

"You know why all men are a little afraid of women?" Celeste sounded almost smug. "It's because we all have power. Some more than others, that's all. She had a lot. She didn't know, though, and couldn't take it. Didn't you wonder why she wanted to end it in the first place?"

"The doctors said ... a chemical imbalance. Clinical..."

"Clinical bull! The stuff they did for her worked okay because the antidepressants didn't let her think too hard and one of the things they do in psych wards is meditation. It helped her focus. Anything else was incidental."

"What about the glasses?" Andrew, always interested in the pure mechanics, cut straight to the point. "How'd she do that?"

Simon leapt in with the more important question; "Why'd she do that?"

Celeste smirked. "You know what you have there, you little role-playing freak? That ... is an object ... of power." Her tone patronised; she could have been teaching a very slow six-year-old. "In one of your little fantasies, you let that item by, you'd be kicking yourself so hard you'd be wearing the bruises on your butt for the rest of your life."

Her tone, contemptuous and unsympathetic, broke Simon. "What are you talking about? They're a pair of glasses!" Underfed, underslept and overwhelmed, two sentences of yelling drained him; he sank into his chair and muttered, "Hers, maybe, but just a pair of glasses."

Celeste rolled her eyes. "And you think you're the experts. Make a few pseudo-magi in some fantasy game and you think you know the unseen. You want to ignore me? Fine. Lose out. See if I care."

Andrew approached his girlfriend, reproach on his face. "Come on, Celeste... He's my bud. Ease up."

"The way he's eased on people like me?" She turned to look at Simon. Maybe she remembered the Threefold Rule, or decided to make life easier for her boyfriend ... or maybe she actually did care. For whatever reason, her eyes softened and her voice held less contempt as she said, "What I suggest you do is go home and take another very careful look at that box ... and then do what you have to."


He followed instructions. He didn't know what else to do. He rode home with the box of solid memory sitting on the dashboard of the family Volvo.

It was late when he sat on his bed and removed the lid of the box again. He hesitated before reaching in and taking the glasses out of their cotton nest. He held them in his hands, looked them over, then reluctantly set them aside. He peered into the box again, dug out the cotton batting ... and found a slip of paper underneath.

His heart sank. Sure that he had found the note a week after her suicide, he unfolded it. The handwriting was hers, but the message ... it wasn't a conventional suicide note. Puzzled, he read the message aloud. "'Let me show you the world in my eyes'?"

A solitary flare rose from the silver frames of the glasses. A trick of the California sunlight through his window, he decided absently. His mind was focused on the message, trying to decipher its meaning. It seemed to be an invitation to try the glasses on, but that wasn't like Susan either. She had refused to let him try on her glasses so he could measure the prescription against his own. "I would, but bifocals ... they're a little disorienting," she'd said. "They'll give you a massive headache. I don't want that on my conscience."

I'm already disoriented, he thought, taking off his glasses and putting then on his bedside table. His world view reduced to a blur. How much worse can this make me feel? Then he sat down on his bed, unfolded the arms of Susan's glasses by feel, and put them on.

A flash. Then near-darkness, lit only by streetlights and the headlights of passing cars. The sight of pavement, moving before his eyes...

Panicked, he grabbed the glasses off his face and threw them across the room. He groped for his own, put them on and then stared at the conglomeration of glass, metal and plastic now lying in the far corner of his bedroom. They looked so normal, lying there. Had he dreamed the whole thing?

He got off his bed, walked to the corner and picked the glasses up again. He unfolded the bows and peered through them. Nothing but variegated blur. He took his own glasses off again and hesitantly peered through Susan's lenses, from a distance. With his bad eyes, he wasn't even sure what he was looking at. He put her glasses on again...

A flash, then steady bright fluorescent light. Moving downward and forward, seeing posters on walls, catching words; jumbled advertising slogans, partial addresses -- London... The downward motion stopping with the posters, vision moving across tunnel-like white corridors plastered with larger posters. Downward motion beginning again, jerkier this time, the difference between automation and human locomotion, perhaps; a map, a straight black line divided in two places. The Northern Line...

He took the glasses off slowly this time. The vision, or whatever it was, vanished. He put his own glasses on and stared at Susan's again, lying innocently in the palm of his left hand.

The one question that had so consumed him for seven days was now shoved to the back of his mind by a myriad of others, all centred around this one piece of Susan's life. Had she done something to these? What exactly was he seeing through these lenses, now that Susan was dead? How did she do this? And what precisely was it that she had done, to make the glasses show things in this way? Had she done anything? Maybe he was just going insane with grief or confusion or the repetitious cycling of that one previous question. Was he having hallucinations?

What I suggest you do is go home and take another very close look at that box ... and then do what you have to.

Is this what he had to do?

* * *

He made an effort with dinner that night, managing fully half before anxiety and pain closed his throat. Then he sat down on the bed again, asking himself the question again.

Is this what I have to do?

Was it suicide?

Maybe that note -- spell, whatever it was -- wasn't the note, after all. Maybe the glasses were. He put them on again, barely realising it.

A flash, then darkness lit by streetlights again. Passing cars -- this time noticing how they drove on the left side of the road. Catching brief glimpses, in passing, of signs for Indian restaurants and 'off-licences' and a couple of car dealerships. The sights moving with the speed of a determined walker with a destination in mind. Turning a corner onto a darker street with no neon signs, only residential buildings with weed-choked gardens. Moving up a path that was almost an alley, stopping in front of a peeling yellow door. And a sound ringing out -- a muted jingle of keys as they moved into the line of sight, aimed at the lock -- and the sound of traffic sussurating in the ears...

He pulled the glasses away from his face. If the glasses were the note, what if, when that moment finally came, he saw her jump? If it was suicide, could he bear it? Maybe blissful ignorance was best; without certainty, hope remained that it had all been a horrible accident.

He put the glasses on the bedside table next to his own, turned off the lamp. Closed his eyes. Didn't sleep.

Hours passed, and he couldn't help himself. Lying in the dark, he groped not for his glasses, with their sturdy square frames, but for her somewhat more delicate round ones.

A flash, then darkness that was almost pure. No sound. A bright red light glowing in the background, from a small portable stereo. A bed in the foreground; in that bed a figure barely visible in the off-blue of the moonshine and streetlight afterglow filtering in through curtains somewhere out of visual range. Long dark hair spread over a pillow, strands drifting over a pale, sleeping face. Her face. The glasses sitting on her bedside table, keeping watch over sleeping Susan MacInnis -- her smiling in her sleep...

He ripped the glasses off his face. He'd worn glasses most of his life; by now it was instinct to take them off if he started to cry. Salt water spotted lenses badly.

* * *

The next morning, he completely ignored the breakfast sitting by his bedroom door. He sat in his desk chair, facing out on the window, and put her glasses on, and stared at a world he immediately ceased to see. And then he stopped hearing it, too, and then the smells and physical sensations were gone as well. He saw the world through her eyes, and more.


Seeing the face of Susan MacInnis in the mirror as she brushed her hair, dragging it back into a high ponytail. Feeling the texture of it, smooth and warm in her hands. Feeling the slightly proud smile on her face, and the movement of lips and air in her throat as she murmured, "A good hair day. Nifty!" Tasting her strong coffee. Leaving the house; smelling diesel fumes over the bergamot oil on her wrists and throat, feeling the light drizzle on her face.


His mother picked up the plate bearing the untouched sandwich, then opened the door to Simon's room. He didn't even turn to face her; it was like he was in another world. Nadia Vadis sighed and vowed she'd speak to Darren about their son. Maybe he should talk to someone.


Seeing the world from a great height, looking down from a walkway while rigging stage lighting, and a male voice calling up, "Hey, careful there, MacInnis!"

"I'm careful! I'm careful! I won't splatter all over your clean stage, honest!" Feeling it as her words escaped her throat, as if the throat and words were his.

"And you've got travel insurance, yeah? Don't want to leave you to the tender mercies of the NHS!"

Hearing the laughter. Her laughter, and the feel of rickety boards underfoot...


Dinner grew cold outside his bedroom door.


Seeing a crowded bar, hearing the thumping music and tasting the drink go down. Sitting among friends, laughing with them, making plans, making promises. Preparing a future.

Was it suicide? Could it have been?

Feeling her footfalls on the stairs, hearing their echoes in the empty station. The almost empty station -- seeing one man, a tall and wiry man of Andrew's build in a tatty brown leather jacket, standing alone on the platform. Reaching into her purse, the brush of leather on her hand and the smooth buttons of a Walkman under her fingers, then hearing Nine Inch Nails. Barely hearing a voice on the PA; the brush of leather and the grooved volume control dial under her fingers; catching "...for the inconvenience. The next train will not be stopping at this station." Turning the volume up again while mouthing a curse. Seeing a movement by the tracks, peering down to see a small black mouse, matching the floor of the tunnel perfectly. Feeling the smile spread across her face at the well-camouflaged creature. A rush of wind brushing her hair, straightening to step back while reaching up to straighten slipping glasses, catching the right lens between thumb and forefinger...

Feeling firm hands touch her back, one on each shoulder blade, and push.

And at the last, the answer to Simon Vadis's question came from Susan's own last words.

Was it suicide?

No.

* * *

Later on that evening, when it was all finally over, Celeste Nieman lay awake, looking at the ceiling, listening to Andrew's breathing ... and hating herself.

She knew something about items of power, more than she'd let on to Andrew's friend Simon. She could have told him a lot of things about whatever glam Susan had inadvertently thrown on those spectacles of hers. For instance, there was the possibility that the wearer would become so attuned to the life he was experiencing that they would experience everything about that life ... including its end. And now there was this bad feeling. This was one of the ones she always trusted, that had the force of something Other behind it. It told her that Simon Vadis was slumped in a chair, or maybe lying on his bedroom floor, with blood dripping out of his eyes and ears and a look of sheer epiphany on his face. It was not a good feeling to have, and her heart went out to Andrew, losing two friends in such a short period of time.

And she hated herself. Hated herself for letting it happen, for being unable to fight the compulsion, inherent in the spell so inadvertently cast, to not say anything more than what she'd said. "Do what you have to", she'd said. What a crock. He went in blind, saw the light, and never came out again.

All the same ... he did find out. He got into her mind, at the very end. He knew his best friend inside and out. Not many people are granted the truest wishes of their heart before they die. Remember, please; no gift that rare, that special, comes without a price. He might have been willing to pay it.

That voice, however comforting, was a crock too. So Celeste lay in the darkness, wondering what penance she would have to pay, not for her silence but for her unkindness, her conceit. Whatever would happen, it would come threefold, and she'd accept it. At least she wouldn't be going into it blind.

END

Okay, be warned. It's kind of long as far as journal entries go, so don't click unless you have a fair bit of time on your hands.