Allegorier, Allegoriest

Lamia places her palms rigidly, queenly, on the arms of the overstuffed bookstore armchair. It is sage green, nondescript. The fabric has pilled in all of the places on which a multitude of anonymous people has sat. She fidgets slightly, warmly. She has been awake for 23 hours, maybe now a full cycle of 24. Having been awake so long and for no purpose, she feels excessively American: were it not for the iced coffee stirring in her stomach, Lamia is sure she would’ve nodded off to sleep in her comfortable-enough pillowy chair.

But her back is rod-straight, as it’s been for as long as she’s been in the store: shoulders rolled back, posture erect as a model. The chair threatens to swallow the diminutive childish figure she makes swimming in a much-too-large jersey dress. Her hair is soft, unwashed, a tangled mass of bleached-white curls and diminished shine. Lamia’s dress is expensive-looking but frumpy, a design tailored for a middle-aged woman, not for a girl her age. Yet somehow it suits her, its sequins in all of the wrong places, its blasé shade of purple appearing to make her delicate skin appear even more like pearl: this statue-girl sitting stilly with eyes like glass, hearing past the dull gentle roar of the Barnes & Noble patrons huddling into their overpriced coffees and unpaid-for books.

She could call Schützen. She knows that she could and knows that she won’t: it has been too long, and it hasn’t been long enough. When they last spoke he had said, “Bee. Rely on me if you must.” He had spoken and left the room for who-knows-where—again. Schü had business to worry about, business more important than his wayward and unmanageable younger sister. He had the hotel to run. Lamia had left then: hitched a ride to the train station and ended up at Hunter’s doorstep, where she’d lived like a vagrant since.

Until last night. Now she was nowhere again.

Lamia hadn’t intended to love him. She certainly hadn’t planned it, hadn’t acknowledged her capacity for loving, even. Not since Laila had she been so comfortable with another person—and there was the entirety of the problem. She’d been careless. And now here she is: huddled in a scavenged dress she’d found forgotten in an attic storage bin, her suitcase stuffed with Vivienne Westwood plaids and thrift store T-shirts left behind at Hunter’s. Her hands were shaking when she woke spooning his still-warm body. He smelled of her lavender soap and of something sharp. Lamia had been wearing her favorite outfit—a tartan skirt over a faded Mistula T-shirt—but as her senses returned knew she’d have to burn it: she’d have to burn the red away, the red of the tartan and the red of him.

She knew she couldn’t drag her suitcase through the streets all night, much as it pained her to leave her baubles and sundries behind. Lamia didn’t have the money for a hotel room, and using her credit card would have tipped off her father to her whereabouts as soon as the transaction cleared. Out of the question. She wasn’t ready to return to that place, even if it meant returning to Schützen. So Lamia left her pretty things behind while she walked the streets—aimlessly floating like some specter of a lost dream—until the rouged hush of morning arrived hand-in-hand with the opening of a store in which she could hide.

Now Lamia sits, increasingly aware of her immense and burning stupidity. She has no tears. She was prepared for this inevitability as much as she had dreaded it, had insisted that it would never happen. She hadn’t planned to love him and therefore didn’t see her love for what it was: a tender, yawning hole that couldn’t close until it engulfed him, too. Alone again, feeling the seconds tick by unperceived by the laughing crowd surrounding her, Lamia knows that she will have to call Schützen, knows that she will always rely on him like this—that he wants her to rely on him as much as doing so repels her. As much as doing so makes her love him enough to kill.

"I believe I told you to wait for me upstairs, Bee."

Lamia sighs with that familiar mix of frustration and delight only a sister can feel for an older brother. It has been months―a year, probably, at this point―since she has last seen Schützen, and she expects that this will be the last time they will meet for perhaps another year. From her perch upon a love-seat in the lobby of the Hotel Clematis, she smiles at his appraisal of her, his supreme cool detachment. She knows that he is angry with her for disobeying his wishes (orders, really; it is not like him to "wish"), and that fills her with an absurd sense of joy. Their relationship is like this: calculated, brisk, businesslike. Secretly she revels in it, loves him terribly for it.

"I know, Schü. I wanted to see if you'd actually come down here to find me, or if you would just blow me off like last time."

He smirks: a small twitch of the lip that, were Lamia not his sister, she would not have understood. "I'd never do that to you, dear one."

"Of course not." This is her role in his game: to placate him. "Shall we go up to your office, then?"

Schützen takes a watch out of his vest pocket, checks it, and tucks it away in one deft movement. "You've wasted too much of my time already." Lamia's heart swells: she is proud of this, of making herself a nuisance, of making herself some creature of import to Schützen. They have been apart so long that takes she consolation in whatever attention he gives her. "You know that the wedding is soon."

Suddenly her smile disappears.

"No, actually, I didn't," she replies, eyes flashing as she looks past him toward the front desk. A group of schoolgirls in uniform mill about the desk, improbably amounts of luggage barricading them from the leers of suited middle-aged passers-by. They giggle as the men pass, as conscious of their power as they are afraid of it. Their laughter reminds her of the tides of the ocean: spontaneous, organic. "I don't recall ever receiving an invitation."

"I sent one to whichever address you gave me last time you moved." His voice is smooth, malicious. "Rather, Mae sent it out."

The name hangs in the silence between them: a curtain, thick damask and dark. Lamia is sure this is a test of her fidelity, her allegiance to him, and she knows that she will submit. She always has. "Give me the date and I'll be there."

"I thought you would say that." Schützen smirks again, handing her a small ivory envelope retrieved from a pocket of his crisp, pinstriped suit. "It's the 28th of this month. Here, of course, in the Grand Ballroom. I do hope you'll attend." They both know he means: Of course you'll attend.

Her heart is heavy in her chest, dead weight. Without words, she nods. It is enough to appease him. A full, rich smile plays at the corners of Schützen's lips: a knowing thing. "We'll see you there. Now you'll excuse me―I have a meeting."

As abruptly as he appeared, he is gone. Lamia watches the throng of schoolgirls, suitcases and cell phones in tow, board the elevator, before readying herself to leave. As the elevator's door shuts, the lobby becomes thick with quiet, and Lamia is alone.

Tonight I glimpsed you in your old age. Why a man's voice deepens as he moves past his prime into his factorial self I'll never understand; my voice will thin and stretch as I become round and full with daughters, rich blood. Even so, your unkempt elder-self, humming a verse like a Degas painting, passed through the door stridently, as if commanding me: Distill these thoughts into words. Like this dark stranger you will be untrained and coercive, an unintentional muse, your notes insistent as they descend from your sharp tenor to the bass I do not yet know but already love; you too will pass through the door into the dim, unremarkable streets.

Uh, I seem to have redesigned Cyanotic. For the first time in well over a year. I also seem to have designed a new site for mine and Cass' dolls: Instant Karma. Visit and enjoy the fruits of my NaNoWriMo procrastination, kids!

The beautiful part of picking up a girl who works the deli counter at a supermarket is that she must always be at least eighteen. There are no questions of a woman's age, then; no awkward admissions that one is underage and therefore not a real target for my lust. A utilitarian concept, for sure, but then, I'm like that: a utilitarian kind of guy.

As I'm sure you are all aware, National Novel Writing Month begins at midnight. Unlike in years previous, I will not be posting my progress on a website somewhere so people can follow along. I'll probably end up posting some snippets up on this-here creative writing blog as I encounter some of Chris Baty's "unexpected successes from the novel-writing front," but on the whole, don't expect much out of me. (Or maybe you'll see more of me than you'd expect -- procrastination is a marvelous thing.)

I mentioned up on Cyanotic in my last entry that I was considering allowing the document to be viewed on Google Docs for any interested parties to peruse while it's being written. I'm going to do just that, as I've received some interest from a few parties. If you'd like to be added as a shared user with read-only privileges, please comment on this entry with your Google account name, or shoot me off an e-mail with your Gmail account. You'll receive an invitation to the document soon enough (as in, once I actually add something to it! It is currently blank).

Be warned that there will be really no formatting in this document. I've decided to use Q10 for my novel this year, as it is a no-frills, full-screen, plain text editor that gives me exactly what I need to get this thing finished: a word count tool at the bottom and no other distractions. Since it's plain text, I can't do any fancy formatting; so if you open up the uploaded document and see weird symbols everywhere, it's because I haven't bothered to change anything. For that matter, I can't even italicize, bold, or underline text, so there will be a lot of *boooooom!* for emphasis (as, again: text editor, people! This is Notepad, not MS Word!). Formatting can come in December. In November, I must write.

And I will write, damnit!

To that end, if you would like to read what is tentatively titled Non-Fiction, I would be more than happy to have you on board. As much as I like to pretend that I work best in a vacuum, I don't; I need to know that there are people in the background, cheering me on, willing me to persevere even though all I want to do is go read a book that's better-written than mine. I don't really want to hear any kind of extensive feedback, or "HAY ALLI  WHYYY U NOT WRITIN MORE!!1" -- I need some pressure, but damnit people, don't harrass me! Like my boyfriend is currently doing: watching me write out this post while he brushes his teeth. The bastard. This will be a good month.

Anyway, yeah. That's it! Go back to your lives now, citizens! If you need me, I'll be counting down the hours and the words.

When her life begins to parallel the circumstances leading to her childhood molestation, twenty-eight year-old Jacqueline Hardy's relationship with her fiance disintegrates because she can no longer distinguish the reality of the present versus her halfway-fictionalized account of the past.

In 1890, as eccentric heiress Sarah Winchester tirelessly moves to add rooms to her so-called "Winchester Mystery House," a servant and a builder feud to win their mistress' favor and come to understand what it means to love.

"There ain't no heaven and I been doin' fine, jus' fine."

Hello, rain. Hello, vanity.