just_writing | Three Colours : Sage

The second part; there is at least one more part to come, and if I'm lucky I'll finish it there. My inability to know when to stop is hardly a secret. Again, first posted in main journal, now edited a reasonable amount, especially in the third bit and to try and make the second bit easier to read. I wonder if it might be best to write the second section in the form of a script - dialogue is an area where my grasp of punctuation runs off and joins the Foreign Legion.

I.

"'Ssssh," said Madelyne. She put two fingers against his lips, silencing him."
"He became a question."
"'You are wrong,'" she said to him."
"His brows furrowed."
"'It is not the city that is unreal. Real things often seem unreal to those who are themselves displaced.'"
"She removed her fingers from his mouth and took hold of his shirt-lapel between finger and thumb."
"'Wha-' He got no further."
"With a sudden motion she jerked her hand out and down, and without a sound he tore neatly in half."
Falling Up, Stephen Hewitt

II.

"So where do you get your ideas?" asked Jay.

I was sitting in a comfortable chair. Jay and Dee were on the sofa. It was night again. We were drinking something. I must have looked a little startled, because Dee chuckled.
"You look startled," he said, "don't worry, Jay and I were just talking before you turned up, he just wondered where you thought you got your ideas from."
"Which ideas?" I asked, stupidly.
"Us." Said Jay.
"I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it. I just made you up, I guess." I was uncomfortable talking about it.

Jay shook his head, disappointed.
Dee guffawed. "Really!" He exclaimed. "That's maybe a little egotistical of you, don't you think? You might as well say that I'm just a debonair, wittier version of yourself and add narcissism to the list."
"Well, you might be." I was on the defensive. I hate that. "You are dark haired, and you're a bit full of yourself."

Dee leant forward on the sofa. He put his glass down on the coffee table. He shook his head, slowly.
"That doesn't make sense at all, not to me." He looked suddenly at Jay. "Let's try something. What colour are Jay's eyes?"
I looked at Jay, but he had his eyes tight shut, smirking.
"I . . . don't know. Green? No, brown."
"Quite right," said Jay, opening dark brown eyes.
"I'm definitely not Andy Mason, either." he added, a little incongruously.

"Where are you going with this?" I asked Dee, feeling uncomfortable.

Dee gestured reassuringly.
"Are we lovers? Jay and I?"
They were both watching me now; Jay with his head slightly to one side, perched on the arm of the couch, Dee leaning forward, studying me.
I played with my glass for a moment, my discomfort growing. I hadn't expected this.

"I don't know. I . . . I thought so when I wrote that first piece, but now I'm not so sure. I still think you might be, but I don't think it's the defining thing about your relationship. You might be brothers, now I think about it."
Dee settled back, nodding and smiling approvingly.
Jay finished his drink.
He put his glass down, poured himself and Dee some more of the green liquid we were drinking, and raised the decanter questioningly in my direction.
I shook my head and covered my glass with my hand.
"I have to get back." I said by way of explanation.
Jay shrugged a one-shouldered shrug and smiled a lop-sided smile.
"'Course you do," he said quietly.

Even though we were all sat in the living room, there seemed to be a distance between us. I knew there was a computer here, and a glass door out onto the balcony, and a coffee table, and of course the couch and the chair but I realised how little I knew about the rest of the flat. Where was the toilet?

"What's the point of all this?" I asked Dee. I was feeling a little ambushed.
Dee just shook his head.
"Work it out for yourself." He said. "And while you're at it, ask yourself why you know I'm wearing a white shirt, leather jacket and jeans, but you don't have the slightest idea what Jay's wearing."
That was true. I tried to think of something but failed.
Jay sighed sadly.
"Typical. For all you know, I'm just wearing a linen skirt and sandals."
Both of them seemed amused by this suggestion. The quiet became awkward. I pulled myself together.

"Look, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm fairly sure I imagined you, Dee. Although now I think of it you do remind me a little of an old friend called Kenneth."
Dee smiled a secret smile.
"And who do you imagine he reminded you of?" He asked, crytpically.
"'Is this your first encounter with fictional reality.'" quoted Jay obscurely, sharing a look with Dee.

This was all making me even more uneasy, and I decided I'd had enough, and said my goodbyes. Jay walked me down the short hall to the door. He unlocked it with a shiney key. We shook hands awkwardly.

"You might wonder why we smile all the time." said Jay, not meeting my eyes.
I shook my head. "Maybe I'm just not being very imaginative at the moment?"
Jay smiled. Damn him.
I turned to walk towards the open doors of the dimly-lit elevator, which was not empty.
"Better not take the elevator!" Jay called after me as he closed the apartment door. "And head up, not down. You don't want to run across the spider baby."

III.

Fuck. Now where did that come from?

The spider baby. The most recent addition to my small menagerie of personal demons. It turned up a month ago, when I was lying in bed.

(I can't really explain how this works; it's not a dream, I'm wide awake. It's like an idea that swells out of my brain.
It's quite normal.)

I imagine I'm in a room with a wardrobe. It's not the same wardrobe I actually share the bedroom with. It's more like the one I used to sleep next to when I first left home. There's light from somewhere off stage. I hear the creak of the wardrobe, but can't see it. For a moment that's all.

I think at first that it might be one of the usual suspects, the Grinning Guy Who Hides Behind Furniture (I'll tell you about him another time. He's part Groglin Vampire, and I suspect owes something to a youthful encounter with "Salem's Lot").

Then, at the bottom of the bed (has to be the bottom, for maximum effect) I see this hairless, jointed leg-tip that might belong to Shelob or Ungoliant or one of that brood.

I can't move, of course.

There's another leg. They're both pale gray, with long spider-hairs on them.

Then the whole horror is just - there.

It's huge - and I mean huge, utterly immense against the ceiling - this bald thing hanging down between these four massive spider-legs. The legs grow out of it's sides or it's back, I can't tell. It's bloated and pale, like the girl's body from Silence of the Lambs. It's eyes are closed. It hangs above me, reaching down with both hands, pudgy-fat fingers splayed out. I think it's going to touch me.

Even describing it now shivers me. I have to fight the urge to check the room. I have to get up and put the light on. Which requires a mental battle with the Grinning Guy Who Hides Behind Furniture as often as not.

So I'm delaying and this chilly certainty that there's something behind me is bleeding through but if I look I make it real, you know?

I don't appreciate the fact that Jay mentioned it, to be honest.