Snippets of things that were
Mar. 15th, 2014 10:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
screwlowprofileTake 1: Plan For the Witch
There's something about the older ones. The dresses faded and worn from years of washing, outdated and shapeless. It's not the pull of the cougar, older but still vivid, everything still in the right place before gravity and age have taken their toll, with a knowing look that speaks of Experience, tricks not yet seen; it's more than that, beyond it. Some days it's the old witch with the gingerbread house, kindly grin to hide the sharpened teeth and bony claws, and on those days you stay away, find other streets to frequent because you don't want to wind up in a cage, poked and prodded and fattened up like a cow before slaughter, no matter how welcoming the outside. And no amount of pleading justification will pacify your brother for a broken granny, even if there was an evil witch lurking inside.
But more often than not they're harmless, sincere smiles sunken in wrinkled faces, and you're drawn to the novelty, the potential, the empty void a rootless childhood left behind. Visions of freshly baked goodies, plied like coke on the streets but without the too-bright rush, and you've never even been close to it but it doesn't stop you from imagining, drawing from years of mainlined sitcom families to fill in the blanks. She would smell like cinnamon and mothballs and old age, skin paper thin and translucent, hair that silvery blue it turns when the color fades. There would be cookies and pie and glasses of milk pushed until you were past full, approving noises over the latest escapades, everything painted over with warmth and good humor, and everything would be perfect. Quiet.
But it isn't, and it won't be, and Seth nudges your shoulder to keep you moving because you're staring again. She's smiling, that one you knew was there all along, so you smile back but you have to go; you can't linger, he won't let you, even if you won't do anything to her. Even if you say as much.
Because Seth always plans for the witch. Even if he doesn't see her.
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Take 2: A Rabbit in a Dress at Least Has Principles
Richie wasn't picky when it came to cartoons. Not really; they were all kind of the same when you got down to it, just riffs on the same things with different talking critters to mix it up. Sure, some companies did it edgier than others, cut close to the things you weren't supposed to say on television while others steered clear and kept it to the kiddie stuff, but it was all the same when you rooted the rest out. Life lessons cut down to a few minutes with a candy coating of comedic violence where nobody ever died no matter how many times you blew up the duck or smacked the dog in the face with a hammer.
"Mickey used to be a rabbit, you know," Seth commented one morning, when Richie was about fifteen and trying to waste time so he wouldn't have to make the bus. A bowl of cereal was pushed into his hands as Seth dropped down next to him, but he barely noticed around the sequence of wolf and pigs running across the screen.
"What?"
"Yeah. He started out life as a rabbit named Willie. He had a steamboat; I'm surprised you don't know this already, with how much you plant yourself in front of that stuff."
Crunch crunch as he remembered breakfast, then, around the mouthful: "Why'd they change it?"
Seth just chuckled and ruffled his hair, like it was no big deal. And it wasn't, not really; it's not like it meant the end of the world. "Fuck if I know, buddy. They just did. Maybe he didn't test well with audiences. C'mon, eat up, we gotta go."
"Maybe."
But it wasn't a good enough answer, it didn't actually answer anything. Why was a mouse better than a rabbit? What was wrong with rabbits? Maybe the guy who'd drawn him wanted him to be a rabbit named Willie, who was Disney to tell him he couldn't be? A rabbit on a steamboat, that was a pretty fucking cool idea. Better than a mouse with a friend who was a dog and a dog that couldn't talk who had to walk around with a leash on all the time. What the hell was that all about? How had that seemed like a better idea than a rabbit with a boat?
No, fuck Mickey. Bugs might be a tranny fag, but at least he didn't change what he was to do better.
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Take 3: Black and White and Red All Over
Richie dreams in black and white. In harsh edges and bottomless pits, in pretty faces with teeth lurking under the skin, in shapeless forms that linger at the edges of vision, just waiting. Watching. Sleep is as much a wild expanse of hostile uncertainty as being awake is, only the rules never apply, they're never written down and they're always changing. He can never keep up, no matter how hard he tries.
Sometimes it's empty, blank. Pure nothing, whitewashed with the peace Seth promised but could never deliver on. Quiet. He wakes refreshed, calm, without the perpetual cloud of cynicism and doubt and wariness that usually paints over everything, and as a result there are fewer Incidents, fewer moments where truth and fancy blur, fewer messes that need to be cleaned up by people with a firmer grip on things.
Sometimes it's nothing -- mostly it's nothing -- but nothing born from darkness, presence rather than absence. Nothing that swallows whole, tears apart, leaves senses overwhelmed and ragged until even the slightest addition is too much. There's Something in the Nothing, something that stalks and waits and lurks, waiting for him to drop his guard. He leaves it just as he entered, worn thin, hyper-aware, as if he'd never slept at all. Every face is a hostile one, every shadow a monster poised to pounce, every word or gesture or look one that promises only betrayal, death.
Sometimes he dreams of that too. He usually wakes before they get too bad, before the shapes in the gloom resolve and catch him, before they can make good on their own promises, but not always. In these the things he does when he's awake always catch up to him, always paint in red alongside the white and black, huge sweeping brushstrokes that drip and splash and taste of salt and pennies. Sometimes they're half-remembered images, almost memories; a woman gone still while a shape looms over her, both stained crimson and surrounded by deafening silence, and he knows he should recognize it but he doesn't. Sometimes they're real memories, the convenient excuses stripped away to leave behind only cold reality hidden in faces he does know. And sometimes they're things that should be; scenes pulled from Dante's images, or at least the ones he can remember, and the pictures had always stuck with him longer than the words ever did. He didn't believe in Hell, or in Heaven for that matter, he'd never seen the point (or more accurately Seth never had, so he'd never followed), but the images stayed nonetheless. He wakes from these trembling and restless, as if worried they followed him to wakefulness, worried he'll open his eyes to see that it wasn't a dream at all, that they're tearing and lashing and all the rest even now, but they never are.
Because it's only dreams, and dreams aren't real.
There's something about the older ones. The dresses faded and worn from years of washing, outdated and shapeless. It's not the pull of the cougar, older but still vivid, everything still in the right place before gravity and age have taken their toll, with a knowing look that speaks of Experience, tricks not yet seen; it's more than that, beyond it. Some days it's the old witch with the gingerbread house, kindly grin to hide the sharpened teeth and bony claws, and on those days you stay away, find other streets to frequent because you don't want to wind up in a cage, poked and prodded and fattened up like a cow before slaughter, no matter how welcoming the outside. And no amount of pleading justification will pacify your brother for a broken granny, even if there was an evil witch lurking inside.
But more often than not they're harmless, sincere smiles sunken in wrinkled faces, and you're drawn to the novelty, the potential, the empty void a rootless childhood left behind. Visions of freshly baked goodies, plied like coke on the streets but without the too-bright rush, and you've never even been close to it but it doesn't stop you from imagining, drawing from years of mainlined sitcom families to fill in the blanks. She would smell like cinnamon and mothballs and old age, skin paper thin and translucent, hair that silvery blue it turns when the color fades. There would be cookies and pie and glasses of milk pushed until you were past full, approving noises over the latest escapades, everything painted over with warmth and good humor, and everything would be perfect. Quiet.
But it isn't, and it won't be, and Seth nudges your shoulder to keep you moving because you're staring again. She's smiling, that one you knew was there all along, so you smile back but you have to go; you can't linger, he won't let you, even if you won't do anything to her. Even if you say as much.
Because Seth always plans for the witch. Even if he doesn't see her.
Take 2: A Rabbit in a Dress at Least Has Principles
Richie wasn't picky when it came to cartoons. Not really; they were all kind of the same when you got down to it, just riffs on the same things with different talking critters to mix it up. Sure, some companies did it edgier than others, cut close to the things you weren't supposed to say on television while others steered clear and kept it to the kiddie stuff, but it was all the same when you rooted the rest out. Life lessons cut down to a few minutes with a candy coating of comedic violence where nobody ever died no matter how many times you blew up the duck or smacked the dog in the face with a hammer.
"Mickey used to be a rabbit, you know," Seth commented one morning, when Richie was about fifteen and trying to waste time so he wouldn't have to make the bus. A bowl of cereal was pushed into his hands as Seth dropped down next to him, but he barely noticed around the sequence of wolf and pigs running across the screen.
"What?"
"Yeah. He started out life as a rabbit named Willie. He had a steamboat; I'm surprised you don't know this already, with how much you plant yourself in front of that stuff."
Crunch crunch as he remembered breakfast, then, around the mouthful: "Why'd they change it?"
Seth just chuckled and ruffled his hair, like it was no big deal. And it wasn't, not really; it's not like it meant the end of the world. "Fuck if I know, buddy. They just did. Maybe he didn't test well with audiences. C'mon, eat up, we gotta go."
"Maybe."
But it wasn't a good enough answer, it didn't actually answer anything. Why was a mouse better than a rabbit? What was wrong with rabbits? Maybe the guy who'd drawn him wanted him to be a rabbit named Willie, who was Disney to tell him he couldn't be? A rabbit on a steamboat, that was a pretty fucking cool idea. Better than a mouse with a friend who was a dog and a dog that couldn't talk who had to walk around with a leash on all the time. What the hell was that all about? How had that seemed like a better idea than a rabbit with a boat?
No, fuck Mickey. Bugs might be a tranny fag, but at least he didn't change what he was to do better.
Take 3: Black and White and Red All Over
Richie dreams in black and white. In harsh edges and bottomless pits, in pretty faces with teeth lurking under the skin, in shapeless forms that linger at the edges of vision, just waiting. Watching. Sleep is as much a wild expanse of hostile uncertainty as being awake is, only the rules never apply, they're never written down and they're always changing. He can never keep up, no matter how hard he tries.
Sometimes it's empty, blank. Pure nothing, whitewashed with the peace Seth promised but could never deliver on. Quiet. He wakes refreshed, calm, without the perpetual cloud of cynicism and doubt and wariness that usually paints over everything, and as a result there are fewer Incidents, fewer moments where truth and fancy blur, fewer messes that need to be cleaned up by people with a firmer grip on things.
Sometimes it's nothing -- mostly it's nothing -- but nothing born from darkness, presence rather than absence. Nothing that swallows whole, tears apart, leaves senses overwhelmed and ragged until even the slightest addition is too much. There's Something in the Nothing, something that stalks and waits and lurks, waiting for him to drop his guard. He leaves it just as he entered, worn thin, hyper-aware, as if he'd never slept at all. Every face is a hostile one, every shadow a monster poised to pounce, every word or gesture or look one that promises only betrayal, death.
Sometimes he dreams of that too. He usually wakes before they get too bad, before the shapes in the gloom resolve and catch him, before they can make good on their own promises, but not always. In these the things he does when he's awake always catch up to him, always paint in red alongside the white and black, huge sweeping brushstrokes that drip and splash and taste of salt and pennies. Sometimes they're half-remembered images, almost memories; a woman gone still while a shape looms over her, both stained crimson and surrounded by deafening silence, and he knows he should recognize it but he doesn't. Sometimes they're real memories, the convenient excuses stripped away to leave behind only cold reality hidden in faces he does know. And sometimes they're things that should be; scenes pulled from Dante's images, or at least the ones he can remember, and the pictures had always stuck with him longer than the words ever did. He didn't believe in Hell, or in Heaven for that matter, he'd never seen the point (or more accurately Seth never had, so he'd never followed), but the images stayed nonetheless. He wakes from these trembling and restless, as if worried they followed him to wakefulness, worried he'll open his eyes to see that it wasn't a dream at all, that they're tearing and lashing and all the rest even now, but they never are.
Because it's only dreams, and dreams aren't real.
