15 January 2022

 le vampire comme guide à travers l'enfer 

🕳🏛S'il vous plaît soyez prudente🕣💋

Another story/ “I’m Not Your Unicorn”

 But it is when she hears a very loudly emphasized,

“ahem!” throat sound behind her that Beth swiftly turns round 

And as she turns, she slows in hesitation and then finds herself staring down at the floor, looking down at a pair of shiny gray boots —beneath nondescript gray trousers. 

“I am up here,” he says

Now she clears her throat, pretending a cough and fumbles with the cuff to stall for a moment of time, and mumbles, head still angled, looking at the floor,

“no, I just thought my shoe lace was untied.”

“Your boots don’t have laces, Beth….” 

she stands up slowly,

“Stefan, look —let’s just get this straight….I’m not your unicorn ok?”

“Beth….” she can see by the crinkles around his eyes that he smiles behind the mask and also seems to want to laugh but doesn’t 

She stands straight to look at him and they face each other. They remove their masks simultaneously 

He wears a gray trench coat over a gray turtleneck; his colors blend with his hair and eyes and she notices something too the photos had not shown 

He awkwardly acts as though they should hug but she seems unaware on how to go about that 

Then there is an awkward moment which between them in their private subjectivity, speaks volumes as time seems to slow and quicken in just this moment. Their eyes meet, but they are too astute in measuring the other to reveal anything of themselves

He sees those details not captured in photos stills nor would be in motion; the tension in which she holds herself, like one ready to bolt; aware of the subtlety of her scent that has a faint touch of lily of the valley…. the silent hesitation behind her every movement

“So….” she looks around at the airport surroundings, self consciously

“When is your flight?” Stefan asks

“Uhhh…” she reaches for her phone but he already sees it on the board 

“Look—it leaves at 13:46…. so, we ….have an hour and forty minutes….” Stefan points to the board, then, decisively says, “coffee,” spotting where to go points and as he looks at her, sees her expression reveal something 

as he looks at her before absently…. realizing something

then suddenly urges her towards it, lightly placing a hand on her arm 

It is only when they are sitting down that they let themselves look at each other face to face; that reality of the moment finally reaches Beth as she looks at him now as they sit there looking at each other over the table with their coffees. 

Then he says,

“why are you moving to Alaska?”

She looks away,

“you wouldn’t understand. And anyway —why should it even matter to you what I decide to do? Until now, we’ve never met and you know what? I just realized I don’t even know your last name. All those video lectures are under your website name; Stefan@—“

But before she finishes, at the very moment she says this, an announcement comes over the loud speaker:

<<ATTENTION! ATTENTION;WOULD STEFAN LOVE PLEASE REPORT TO YOUR AIRLINES CARRIER!!>>

Beth looks up at him as he begins to stand up, a concerned look now on his face as he reaches for his mask

“Love? That’s your last name? Like Courtney?”

“Well—“he glances around as he searches for where to go as he says, “— it was actually my middle name but—Beth….  can you …. please…? just wait right here, ok? uh—I’ll be right back….ok?”


10 January 2022

Another story continued/Pandemic reloaded’22

 


<why> her finger slips 



….before she has the chance to finish writing the message 


as she had paused to think but, too stumped on what to say, sat staring at the phone keyboard screen till her finger slipped 


<why?> comes his answer 


Shit….” she whispers aloud to herself 


<….why didn’t you tell me?>she replies 


But she turns the phone face down and looks again at the white-noise of the runway 


She thinks again about their ongoing almost “V for Vendetta” dialogue over the last three years 


you know, in the film…. 


where she’s half dead and he’s fucking with her and pretending to be a cell mate beside her ….


why does she think of that now? 


so what does she know of him anyway except —what he wants her to see


That and …. those accidental things he shares …. his reactions to her thesis’s sometimes are obvious but ….what does he ever  really expose? 


Still…. The truth is—she has wanted to know him in ‘real time’ 


no, does she mean ….


‘3-d’? she taps her finger nervously wondering why she wants to run …. run to the toilet to vomit …. actually but…. to flush away three years? seems extreme and excessive as running away now would be like burning bridges wouldn’t it? 

It all started with an article she had written covering years of research on a topic not too many people really know about. So, it was like finding a needle in a haystack when someone there being anyone even slightly aware of the subject and… . Over time she noticed 

his location and the IP address popped up in other places of her work as time went on when she was going through her old research online but, the weird thing was it was like his thought patterns 

….always triggered ideas by where he decided to search in the archives

 ….like that story all written in letters between Griffin and Sabine; her first letter appears as a stranger to him. As she saw his drawings appear as he did them —and when he changed them ….from a far away island as he drew


What does he even look like? Beth nervously looked around the airport filled with masked faces 


well…. she has seen his photos and some live footage of some interview he did; it was for the auction when she first stumbled upon him on Reddit 


….they never did FaceTime nor zoom ….. either he sensed she didn’t want to or he didn’t …. hologram, virtual conversations. so nauseating. she always felt—watching some freak gremlin version of yourself in hi-glow, migraine HD blinding tones and find the one you converse with looks even worse but technology is all anyone eats, sleeps and thinks about but this is the 


surreal …. Pandemic life …. faceless faces of society hidden behind masks. 


And how removed anything real has now become 


but what is real?


there is nothing real; real is relative and she thinks of that song by Radiohead, Fake Plastic  Trees 


Yes, she thinks looking around the airport …. it is life today, there are no more trees so we are left with tons of plastic instead ….


Her phone alerts a message 


She turns over her phone 


<look behind you>


At first she freezes. Then she replies:


<how would you know what I look like?>


<you showed me that one of a kind Nepal bag when you got it. Turn around….>




more thoughts off a shelf from a ‘Celf ‘

 


it was years ago when I read the novel Kitchen—decades; of so many things that touched me in her story, and of one I often reflect upon a character in it. It was long before how we see things now, you know—but her friend’s mother in the story, who is so very fragile, yet so strong and endearing, turns out to actually be the boy’s father. And I think what touched me— as so often I have stumbled to understand what it means in the whole of ‘self’, and the gender aspects in life experiences and perspectives —somehow it seemed to me this character longed so deeply for the boy’s mother that he became her to fill the void. I found this utterly moving