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- Irell Starling 11 yrs ago
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"Metaphores" by Sylvia Plath
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Sorry I'm a bit slow with my reply. I do want to reply and I even know what it will be about but work has dictated that this week is not my week. I'll be flying out to my sister's graduation on Friday. If I don't get a chance before then, I'll type up my post while I'm in the air.
”Hey, Charles?” I asked knocking on his bedroom door. ”Are you awake? I was heading out and wanted to ask you something before I left for work.” I knew I was violating some sacred roommate agreement, but I needed my hands on something and Charles was the only way I knew how to get it without drawing suspicion.
I heard a grumble and a thump, making it obvious that he hadn’t been awake at all. Within a few seconds, the door opened up and Charles stuck his head out of it. His hair, which even on the best days was a bit unruly, had raged some sort of unholy rebellion in his sleep. His mouth was opened slightly as he blinked blearily at me. ”Yeah?” Clearly my roommate wasn’t a morning person. Strange the things you started to pick up once you actually interacted with someone.
”I was wondering if I could borrow one of the loner computers from your library. I…uh… can’t stop by after work to pick one up. I was wondering if you could just bring it…home?” Despite my mentally rehearsing this speech, my tongue tripped over the words left and right.
”Couldn’t you just borrow one from work?” Charles was becoming more lucid now and I couldn’t help but feel he left off the end of the sentence ‘that way you didn’t have to wake me up’.
”That’s not possible, one of the labs is having some serious crunch time. All of the computers are loaned out already.” This was a lie. I hated to do that but I didn’t have much choice. I doubted if the data I would be accessing was monitored but I knew the lab computers, even those that were checked out, were. And while the information wasn’t necessarily classified, I couldn’t find a good excuse to give my superiors about why I was scanning over it.
”Sure.” Charles said and shrugged. ”They’re a bit outdated so no one really checks them out anymore.”
”Right!” I said and offered my best smile. My brother always told me I could get away with murder with my smile. A borrowed computer would be good enough. ”Thanks.” With that he closed the door behind him and I headed off to work.
Sweat beaded on the back of my neck as I watched the progress bar scroll across the screen. I was uploading the files from Mildred Backer’s profile onto a portable drive. The process was going about as fast as a galloping llama. (Mind you, I’d never seen a llama and I’m not entirely sure they’re still around, but if they were I couldn’t imagine them running very fast.)
The slight tickle of breath behind my ears was the only indication that Dr. Lark was hovering right above me. I tried not to fidget at the sensation while I fought the urge not to turn around and face him. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I had to believe that if I had any shot of convincing him.
Fortunately, the good doctor’s voice broke the moment. ”What are you doing?”
At that moment I wished I could have been anywhere else. He leaned over, a wrinkled hand pointing to the progress bar on my screen. Thank the heavens it didn’t list what I was specifically transferring.
I began to lie through my teeth. ”I’ve had some free time in the evenings. Since we finally started getting some good data, I thought I’d bring it home and do a few analysis runs on it.”
”Good idea,” He said removing his hand from my computer screen and placing it on my right shoulder, squeezing it a bit. ”If only all the lab assistants were as… enterprising as you.”
He let my shoulder go and turned his attention to the wall lined with cages. I silently let go of the breath I didn’t know I was holding. There was something about Dr. Lark that had made me uncomfortable but it wasn’t until just now that I’d even considered the thought that he might have had something to do with Mildred’s disappearance. I gingerly rubbed the shoulder he had touched.
MST3K 4ever said
Yes you can...and you did it very well indeed.
Thanks!
MST3K 4ever said My next post I promise will be a solo Ellen post...I just needed to establish a little more trust between Martin & Ellen.
That's fine I don't mind.
I should have my next post up either this evening (if I finish it) or tomorrow evening.
See, I can play the "two characters, one post" game too! :P
I’ve always been a fan of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I found something oddly comforting in the strange absurdities that book presented. I felt less comfortable living them. I through the dark shadows of alleyway Marty - no it felt strange calling him that even in my mind- Prefect Wallace had disappeared into. Then the now shut metal door at the side of the building. Then the open male-hole at my feet.
”Be careful,” I whisper into the darkness even though the girl is now gone. Had she really just appeared like a jack-in-the-box from the dumpster and then vanished into the sewers? Her neat hair and clean nails seemed to state that she did, in fact, care about hygiene, at least occasionally. Not to mention what Wallace had said about being part of the upper class. The entire events of the evening were hard for me to wrap my head around.
I looked around the alley again. The way my fellow colleagues had disappeared into the night left me feeling a bit stranded, like I wasn’t doing my part unless I sprouted wings and zoomed off into the night sky. Sneakers would have to be good enough. I stooped down and slid the manhole cover closed, hoping that, wherever the girl was, she’d be able to get back out easily enough. Suddenly, taking the city’s public transportation back to my apartment wasn’t so bad.
I was surprised when I found the door to out apartment wasn’t locked. Nym usually stayed out late most nights, thus increasing our ability to avoid each other. Clearly my roommate wasn’t playing by the rules either. She was curled up on the couch in the middle of the living room. Her knees were tucked up under her chin while her brown hair hung limply to her feet.
”Oh. Hi,” she said when I came in, making it clear I’d startled her from her thoughts. ”I..uh… made some spaghetti. It’s on the kitchen counter.” If her posture hadn’t made it clear enough that something was up, her last statement sealed the deal. Nym never made spaghetti and on the odd chance she did, Nym never bothered to share it with me. I felt obligated to take a plate and since I hadn’t grabbed anything to eat on the way home, was thankful for the impromptu dinner plans.
Since she was facing away from me, it gave me the opportunity to study her figure while I dished out the noodles and meat sauce. The recent activities of the night were buzzing through my head at such a rate I felt my brain would explode if I kept them in any longer. The police raid. The cook with some mysterious book. A high ranking police officer helping out the Rebels. A mysterious (and rather shapely) woman named Ellen Westlake. Her last name thrummed in my head. I was sure I’d heard it somewhere. Prefect Wallace certainly knew who she was.
”Hey, Nym, do you remember…”
”Charles, have you ever heard of…”
Our voices sounded out simultaneously. Then our eyes met and my gut wrenched. Who was I kidding? This woman was a white-collared, high bread worker. She was far smarter, far more connected, and had far more to gain by ratting me out than almost anyone else I knew.
”What were you saying?” I added quickly. Hoping she’d forget I’d also been about to ask her a question.
I looked at Charles Plygard, fork in the ready to scarf down the spaghetti I’d cook. It wasn’t his posture that upset me however, but the expression on his face. It was a mixture of irritation and fear. What had I ever done to him? I had wanted to ask him about Vitamin 546 or Mildred Backer or a number of other topics that I’d been fixating on for the past hour. Instead I claimed I forgot. The minute it was out of my mouth I wish I could have taken it back. Charles’s face grew so guarded.
”Uh… you?”
But he turned and waved me off. ”It’s nothing.”
”It must have been something,” I insisted, trying to make amends for whatever crime I’d committed against him.
”Do you remember reading the book Alice and Wonderland?”
”I’ve never read the book. I don’t think it’s on the regulation reading list for…” But I stopped talking because I had the feeling Charles had stopped listening. I also had the feeling it hadn’t been what he meant to ask me. I turned back around as I heard the sound of a bedroom door close. Suddenly I felt more alone than ever.
I try not to pace around the small entry way of my apartment. It had only taken me forty-seven minutes to take a shower, wash my hair, blow-dry my hair, apply make-up, touch up my manicure, and slip into a strappy sky blue dress. Now I had three minutes left to wait around, my heart fluttering with anxiety. The shimmering fabric, while appropriate length (meaning the dress came just above my knees) clung to my curves as I made my seventeenth round across the area rug.
I was acting juvenile. I knew I was acting juvenile. I had to get ahold of myself. I was just going to dinner. We were probably going to continue the conversation we had been having in his office about Section 8. Perhaps it was customary for someone to take their employee out when they got a raise? I frowned at the thought. While the money was good, and I’d certainly be spending a large portion of it to my parents, I wasn’t particularly pleased by the idea. More money meant more worth and like it or not I was climbing higher and higher on the list of eligible bachelorettes. It was one thing to have a crush on your boss when you were unattached and quite another when you were married. Affairs weren’t uncommon, even my best friend Claudette who was married, seemed to run through men faster than an office ran through tissue. But it wasn’t an idea I was comfortable with even in the best of circumstances.
Maybe this was a terrible idea. Maybe I should call and cancel? Pretend I…
But the thought vanished as I heard the front door bell ring. I didn’t have to check the safety camera to know who was standing on the other side. Even though my brain knew I should be careful and not get too involved with Lockheart, my heart had other ideas entirely. My libido as well, but that was something I didn’t like to think too much about. Swallowing back my nervousness, I slowly opened the door.
The problem, when working for the Rebels, wasn’t the fact that at any moment the government would find me out and drag me into some dark corner, - it was the fact that one always had to be on one’s toes. I felt the added weight in my pocket as I walked exited the city bus on my way to my second job of the day.
I knew better than to look around to see who had deposited the note in my jacket pocket. A few blocks away from the stop, I finally reached in and found a mysterious pack of gum. It was almost empty 5-pack of spearmint. You had to really hand it to whoever’s job it was to get messages around. Even da Vinci would have been amazed at their creativity- the underside of bottle caps, the cards inside library books were due dates were stamped, a misplaced newspaper add. If you knew what you were looking for, hidden messages were everywhere. This one was on the inside of the wrapper.
I popped the piece of green gum in my mouth and quickly scanned over the message. There was a small triangle sketched on the top,( the archaic symbol for change) with the code “430SEC87P”. April 30th, Sector 8, 7pm. So they’d moved the time for the bombing up by several hours. I wasn’t sure why but worried that the events surrounding the acquisition of the fingerprints might have had something to do with it. I looked down at my watch as I pushed past the back door of Club Esscro. Less than twenty minutes to go until the main event.
The place was about as empty as one would expect a club to be before seven on a week night. A few regulars were haunting the bar while a couple employees walked around, cleaning up the place from the previous night. Kassie was nowhere to be seen, but I didn’t expect her to show for a few more hours, at least. Mind you, it was possible I wouldn’t get to see her tonight at all if the government decided to shut the entire city down after the attack.
I'm working on my next post. I was going to post as only Louisa and then I had an idea...
I'm assuming these suggestions are okay?
Change of subject.
Have you read A Tale of Two Cities? A few friends of mine, when I was back in high school, said it was terrible. I've read all of A Christmas Carol (an achievement, I know :P), most of Oliver Twist, stopped on page 104 of Great Expectations but am currently working on David Copperfield. So far I like the last title the best.
Have you read A Tale of Two Cities? A few friends of mine, when I was back in high school, said it was terrible. I've read all of A Christmas Carol (an achievement, I know :P), most of Oliver Twist, stopped on page 104 of Great Expectations but am currently working on David Copperfield. So far I like the last title the best.
We danced.
Heat welled up from the dancers all around me. We moved our bodies to the beat, each of us drops in an unending current of music. Faces blurred. Songs ran into other songs, each more intense than the last. It was exhilarating but relaxing all at the same time. Men and a few women would dare to dance close me and Claudette. Skin on skin, lips on lips, hands caressing. Around us other people were coupling up. It meant nothing. It was the shadow of what any being would craved. It was loving without love. But it was an escape.
”I need another drink,” Claudette said and directed me back to the bar. By this time our seats were already taken and we had to stand by the edge of the dance floor as we sipped on a cool refreshment.
”Hey,” I said, ”I was wondering, do you ever want to have children?”
Claudette looked at me over her third martini, her large fake eyelashes almost hitting the glass rim. ”You feel your biological clock ticking or something? Don’t worry. I’m sure the government will get your partner sorted out soon enough.”
”Claudette, I’m serious. Do you?”
”Sometimes I really don’t understand you, Nym.” she said, half joking, half not. ”I wish Lousia had tagged along tonight. She’s better at dealing with this sort of thing.” The look I gave her made it clear that she wasn’t getting off so easily. ”I mean, why does it matter if I want to have kids or not. You have as many as you have.”
I understood what she meant. We had both sat through reproductive anatomy. Everyone, regardless of their station in life had to take that. Restraint was built with a finite amount of resources, it was a thriving metropolis sealed inside a fish bowl. The population had to be kept in check while still maintaining a degree of genetic diversity. If the government wanted you to have two children, you had two children either by natural or artificial means if necessary. If the government deemed your genes weren’t needed, you weren’t supposed to have children. Sure, accidents happened, but most were dealt with in a hasty factor. More recently, an unplanned child was rare. I’d never understood why until tonight.
”But if you could choose?”
Claudette let out an irritated sigh. ”You know some days, I don’t understand how you managed to score higher than me. We can’t choose so why does it matter? I’ve never really thought about it. And neither should you.” She turned to walk away but I caught her by the arm.
”Are you taking Vitamin 546?”
”No. When I asked my doctor about it for my headaches, he told me it was only for pleabs. I don’t know why. Everyone says it works.”
”Right,” I said and nodded, ”Well I’m going to head out. I’ll call you later.”
Claudette nodded briefly and headed back into the crowd. I didn’t know it but that would be the last time I’d see one of my best friends. Days would go by when my phone calls would go straight to voicemail. A few days later I’d find out Claudette had disappeared. Eventually they’d find her body. At her funeral, I wouldn’t be able to keep my eyes off the smug face of her recently widowed husband. This was the city of Restraint. You didn’t get what you wanted. You didn’t want what you got. Some people learned to live with this fact. Others worked to change it.
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