PART 4.
This is a short story of sorts that might or might not be part of a larger cycle. If it is, then it is towards the end — part 4 of 6. Maybe. We’ll see. Anyway, rather than dump the story into one large post, I’m going to chunk it up and let it be consumed over a couple of posts. Enjoy.
A cavernous room lay before her, as large as any vaulted cathedral. Its light came from hundreds and hundreds of candles. Some in sconces along the cream-colored walls, but most placed, dripping, on stacks of wooden crates that piled up high along the columns that arched up and disappeared into a twilight high up overhead. Crates and candles placed willy nilly making the room glow with a warm light that was simultaneously diffuse and constellated.
However, what caught her attention was what was in the middle of the arched room.
There, resting securely in a metal ring, sat an enormous beating heart. With a whoosh and suck, the heart expanded and contracted, expanded and contracted. Steaming pipes converged and spread around it, and along these pipes shuttled what looked like ladybugs. They poured into the heart and swarmed out, before disappearing with the piping upward into the dusky dimness. Steps wound up along one side of the heart to a railing-ringed observation platform. With a whoosh and suck, the heart expanded and contracted, expanded and contracted, and the pipes steamed and quivered from the force.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said a woman’s voice.
She jumped. She had been so astonished by the sight before her, that she had not been aware of the woman who stood watching her. The woman was dressed in a form-fitting black dress and black elbow-length gloves. The woman had swept back blond hair, cut to the shoulders, and sparkling blue eyes. She was the most elegant woman the girl had ever seen.
“Um, yes it is,” she replied
“A bit hideous,” the woman gaily drawled. “But definitely not as hideous as that thing out there,” and she gestured toward the entrance.
“You know about that? What is it?”
“Oh, you don’t want to know, darling, trust me. But you’re safe. She never comes in here. I think I frighten her, the pathetic thing.”
The woman turned and sauntered away, waving one arm gracefully in the direction of the heart. “Such a good little worker.”
Whoosh-suck, went the heart. The girl, fell in behind the woman.
“Excuse me, but who are you?”
“Tut-tut. Mind your manners. Besides darling,” said the woman, turning to face her, “I was going to ask you the very same thing.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m, I’m…” And at that moment the girl was surprised that she could not remember her name. “Lisa?” she said uncertainly
The woman gave out a peel of laughter that sounded like a tinkling of bells. She approached the girl and put her hands on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes.
“Oh no, no, no. Trust me, my dear. You are not Lisa.”
“What?”
“Mmm. She never could keep her slimy hands to herself,” sighed the woman, and then under her breath she continues, “She’s as ugly as they come, and I say that as her loving sister.”
The woman pulled out a long slender cigarette, and casually lit it.
“Between you and me, though, she can keep her writhings and ink at the bottom of the sea. Some things are best repressed, right? Or at the very least, denied and locked away in the darkest depths. All that cold hard pressure!” And with that the woman shook herself with what seemed pleasure.
The girl was beginning to think that the woman before her was mad.
“Look, Miss…?”
The woman seemed not to be paying her any mind.
She continued, “Excuse me. I’m sorry, but can you tell me how to get ou…”
The girls was cut off mid-sentence by a cigarette butt bouncing off of her head.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I do that?” said the woman.
The woman then turned from the girl, who stood thoroughly confused, and sauntered over to the beating heart. With a casual flick of her hand through her perfectly groomed hair, she turned to face girl.
“Now, let’s get something straight, darling. This, she said like a game show model displaying a new refrigerator, “is Lisa.”
Whoosh-suck, went the heart. Click, click, click went the thousands of shiny, red bugs.
The woman reached out with one of her gloved arms and patted the heart affectionately.
“God bless her. Lisa might get riled up, but she’s not going anywhere.” She turned back to face the girl. Looking her up and down, the woman shook her head and clucked her tongue against her teeth. Her expression was one of pity.
“You? Let’s name you Angela. That was what I always wanted. Now Angela, we really need to get you into some new clothes.”
The girl-now-named-Angela looked down at her torn and soot-covered dress, and suddenly she felt very ugly, like a piece of gum stuck to someone else’s shoe. Her hair felt somehow dusty and greasy, and looking at her hands she saw that they were blackened with soot. Her knees were scraped and dirty.
“Comecomecomecome,” said the woman, and striding over to Angela she shooed her along to one of the many stacks of crates that lined the walls of the room.
“Top box. Go on. I’ve been saving them for you.”
Angela looked up at the pile of stacked crates. It did not look particularly sturdy, and the many candles stuck from corners and edges and tops.
“Go on! The clothes. They…Are…Adorable.”
Nervously, Angela reached out and grabbed hold of the wooden top of a crate. She gave it a shake, and it wobbled. Then taking great care, she began to climb, carefully edging her way around candles and up one step after another. The crates moved beneath her and large shadows drunkenly moved about the room, and a few times Angela froze, straining to bring the pile back into balance, before continuing her climb.
Below her the woman casually paced back and forth, looking up at her with a bored expression.
At last Angela found herself beside the top crate. She blew out the two candles there, and lifted up the lid, and saw inside neatly folded piles of clothes. Reaching in she pulled out a black newsboy hat, a kaki skirt with buckled pockets and a cream colored blouse. Then crouching beside the crate she quickly pulled off her dress, buttoned up the blouse, and began to pull on the skirt. The blouse was long-sleeved and tapered ever so slightly at the waste, and the skirt was snug so that Angela needed to take small jumps as she pulled them up. The mountain of crates shifted beneath her.
“You know, you and I are going to be the best of friends,” called up the woman.
At that moment, though, the crates gave way beneath Angela, and with a loud crash they tumbled to the ground with Angela in their midst. For a moment the room was absolutely still.
Whoosh-suck went the heart. Click-click-click-click went the bugs.
Angela lay outstretched on the speckled grey marble of the floor, and her head pounded from where it had banged against a crate. Slowly, she stood, holding a hand to her head.
About her crates and candles — some still flickering and some now out and streaming smoke — lay strewn like rubble. Many of the crates had smashed open and disgorged their contents on to the floor — clothes, photos, wrappers, ticket stubs, receipts, and spool after spool after spool of thread. They rolled and pirouetted across the floor of the room. And if the girl-now-named-Angela had looked closely she would have noticed the squashed pink of a small, tattered walrus, baby teeth, the blue shell of a robin’s egg, and a card brushed over with colored paint. But she didn’t because at that moment the woman gave out a wail and collapsed to the ground.
“You clumsy girl! Now look what you’ve done!” She pushed pieces of wooden crate from her, and sat upright. Spools of thread fell from her no-longer-perfect hair.
And then the strangest thing happened. Before Angela’s eyes the woman began to change. Streaks of grey appeared in her hair, and wrinkles slowly began to spread from her eyes to her forehead and cheeks. It was if, like a balloon, she was deflating. With another wail, the woman leapt to her feet, tottered over to the steps beside the heart.
“This is the thanks I get. I give you everything,” babbled the woman. “Everything!”
As the woman mounted the steps, her pace slowed, and her posture became more stooped. With each step she leaned more heavily on the railing, until finally she slowed to a stop.
Still holding a hand against her throbbing head, Angela nervously walked over and climbed the steps until she stood just behind the old crone. “She looks like a little girl playing dress-up,” thought Angela.
“Is there anything I can do?” asked Angela, leaning in close to the woman’s face.
“Youth is wasted on the young,” muttered the crone, and collapsed back into Lisa’s arms. She was as light as a doll, and Lisa hefted her up and held the old woman against her chest.
“Take,” wheezed the woman, “take me…to the platform.”
Cradling the woman, Angela climbed the remaining steps. The red bugs swarmed along pipes, and the throb of the heart made the platform quiver.
“Closer,” gasped the woman.
Angela edged forward. Daring to look down, she saw the red muscle of the heart pulsing and contracting.
Suddenly, a long, thin tongue shot out from the aging woman’s mouth. It darted out, struck one of the red bugs, and before Angela could even blink, bug and tongue disappeared back into the woman’s mouth. With a sigh the woman closed her eyes and her mouth crunched and chewed. Angela was so surprised by this that she dropped the woman, with a thump, to the platform floor. She took several steps back, and watched.
Once again, the woman was changing. Except this time, she was a balloon taking on air. The stoop straightened, the hair colored, and curves filled out the dress. The woman propped herself up with long, elegant arms, and gracefully got to her feet. She pressed her dress out along her filled form. She turned this way, and she turned that, as if checking for any imperfections, and then she turned to face Angela. Her expression was one of bemusement.
“We women have to have our little secrets, no?”
“I…I,” stammered Angela.
“No darling, we’ve already been through all that. Not ‘I,’ ‘Me!’”
The woman turned and surveyed the wreckage of the boxes on the floor below.
“My goodness what a mess you’ve made.”
She paused with her hands on her hips.
“Well, we can’t worry about that now. It’s time to go. It’s what you said that you wanted. Come along.” And without waiting the woman descended the steps to the room’s floor. She marched over to a small wooden door that Angela had not noticed before. It was recessed in the wall, and standing beside it, the woman waited for Angela to join her.
“Now,” said the woman, “Make me proud.” She reached out and patted Angela’s clothing and, licking her fingers, she rubbed them against Angela’s forehead. She stepped back to admire her handiwork. “They’re going to love you.” She pushed open the door. “Oh, and darling, try to have fun!”
Perplexed, Angela peered at the door, and then slowly walked through it. With a soft clack the door closed behind her.
