You clicked on my story.
Therefore- you rock.
But, moving on. There are some things to note.
To note:
1 This is rated PG. The only thing that would make this any worse is a bit of swearing.
2 The title of this story is a small quote from a The Strokes song.
3 This is just Lord V. talking about something that happened. He's a lot younger and more carefree. So, the over all feeling of the story is pretty light. There's a reason.
4 I use the word "fag" in this. Well, pre-pubescent, uninformed American viewer—it doesn't mean what you think it means.
And… and that's all you need.
* - * - *
Up on a Hill is Where We Begin, This Little Story a Long Time Ago
Of course, she wasn't a real daughter. And I wasn't actually her father. Well, I was, obviously, but not in that real father-daughter sense. I mean, the two of us were related, is what I mean. We had the same blood in us, and the same hair color, and had a tendency to be pissed off at the same kind of things- but we weren't really a father and a daughter. We were… people who happened to share the same hair color. And get angry at the same kind of things.
The last time I saw her.. There was a dingy little hospital that was dead center in Edinburgh, with a little single sycamore out front that was choking from the pollution of those hideous muggle automobiles. This was back when they had those large ones, with vibrant colors and twenty pound doors that you couldn't not slam. Even I felt sorry for that little tree- I was tempted to blow up all surrounding cars- or at least throw them at people. Though I didn't. I almost did- five minutes before the real birth time of my pseudo-offspring, I had stepped outside for a cigarette. There was this young, unattractive overweight blonde man holding his boy and trying to open his hideous, lime green door of his equally hideous, equally green car. When he wasn't looking, I made him suddenly realize he had the wrong set of keys. About that same time, he also realized the correct set of keys were lying on the seat, inside his locked car.
Exactly following that event- all automobile owning persons within four blocks of where I stood suddenly realized they had forgotten their keys, or forgotten their cars, or forgotten that someone had just then slashed open their tires, but that their car was still managing to roll backwards down the steep hill it had been parked on.
It's really amazing, I thought, how much chaos one can ensue with the right words, wands, and imagination.
And so the chaos ensued.
I flicked away the cigarette, smiling a smile you'd see on a cartoon character. It was that one, establishing smile that let all the pint size viewers know: that one's the bad guy.
The doors to the hospital slid open for me (not because they were sliding doors). A dirty hospital. I thought, my menacing smile slipping off, isn't this quaint? I scowled at the greasy looking pigtailed woman as she licked her fingers of the industrial yellow sludge butter from her microwamed popcorn. Or perhaps it's microwaned popcorn. Muggle appliances were never my forte- thank god.
"So," she licked her pinky as I stopped in front of her low desk, which was covered coke bottles and microwamed popcorn bags and perhaps rock solid pizza crusts. (The second layer consisted of spilt sticky drinks, and little bugs drinking up the mess)
"Yer the daddy." She said, and she coughed flem around in her throat.
For a moment, all I did was stare. Horrified. I still feel dirty, really. Just thinking about it…
"I … suppose…." I was going to be sick.
"…I'm…. him." My voice implied I was going to be sick.
The woman scratched in her breast area. I almost said, 'wow, those are very large breasts.' But was too ill to trust my voice. But, wow, they were large, the way you think of gods as big. It was not a good big. It was an awful, horrifying big. I couldn't help but stare.
"Well," she said, her boobs wiggled slightly. I shuddered.
"You sure should be going back there. Due any second, daddy." I nodded slowly, and backed away from the desk.
"…Yeah." I said. I dashed down the hallway and opened the third door on the left to find a less disgusting, but in very close running to the desk woman sight.
People—mostly hippies—will tell you about how beautiful this 'miracle of life' stuff is. Well, let me tell you, they've obviously never seen it. It's one of the most foul things on this planet or any other. Not as tainted as those automobiles, or microwamed popcorn sludge, but very, very, very close. It is sordid – but not as bad as I couldn't hide my distaste for it, like with the fat person at the desk. This I could simply act calm and cool thru, or appear to. I watched the clock and waited for it to be over. My girlfriend- well, the woman who happened to get pregnant because of me- moaned and screamed and all I could do was wait and watch the clock, fighting the urge to leave the room.
I guess appearing to look alright occupied most of my time, because honestly, I don't remember a single detail about the birth itself. Ah—you can scratch that, I remember the mothers name was Lily. Or was that the nurses? Oh well.
I remember what happened after the entire deed was done with. Lily, or whoever it was I made the mistake of sleeping with, was asleep, and would probably be asleep for a small lifetime. And as she slept, I met my daughter that was not and still isn't quite my daughter… I couldn't help but smile.
"You have adorable little toe-sies." I said, once I was positive that no one in this world or any other could have heard me. My fake daughter stared at me with disconcertingly identical eyes. I didn't know it was possible for babies to be born with red eyes.
"And cutie little handsywandsies." She stared. Although if babies could glare maliciously she was doing it right then and there with her red eyes. With my red eyes…After she won the staring contest, and didn't seem to mind me uttering a curse word in front of her, or my lighting a cigarette- I decided that I liked her. I also decided I would name her. She was sort of my own, wasn't she? I decided she was. Naming babies isn't my forte either. (Thank god- can you imagine, going to a dinner party and having to tell the high priced lawyer that you named fat pink things for a living? Well, bad example maybe. Maybe they would just wink conspiritively and say, "No bother.. I'm a lawyer too.")
After some deliberation, I remembered my current book: Prague which has to do
With a young lady on a trip to which was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and this young
Lady encountered another young lady, this one a housemaid, who was called Liean…. I filled out a piece of script informing the world that this girl was Liean. Not Sally, or Lindsey, or Melissa, or any other sort of foul, useless and overused name like that. She was Liean- and she was going to bloody appreciate it.
I wrote it down in black cursive on the slip of paper. "Liean Velician Dark." Velician was the name of the author of my favorite story when I attended Hogwarts. I had to think about this before I left—this sort of, half daughter that was kind of mine, would she wonder about me? No, I decided. I decided that not so far off into the future, the woman I slept with would be married to a young uppity professional named Frank- and that Liean wouldn't care who her father was, as long as she had this Frank bloke. But I couldn't help thinking I was leaving her alone. I decided to help out Liean, even though that's not quite my fashion. I swallowed, stared around the room for a moment, and took out my wand. "Prefarious Traft of Albersays, shocks of tomorrow and permanent ways." A strip of silver light spurt out of my wand and landed daintily in her half open tiny mouth- as was the fashion. This was to merely ensure she'd be offered certain niceties in her life. You know, the basics. Her peers would like her, she could make people do whatever she wanted she wouldn't be a muggle. Her teachers would favour her, and all the main characters would readily fall in love with her. I smiled to myself. Maybe Mary was the proper name for this girl. I've always liked the traditional names. Mary. And Sue. I'm only joking, of course. Who was I to plan out what her life could be like? After all, I wasn't even her father. What did I know? About her? About people? If she could be independent? All I knew was that she had adorable toe-sie-woe-sies. I grinned.
"And very little hair!"
We held a few more moments of similar conversation, Liean and I, until I passed her off to the doctor. "Out for a fag." Is what I said, and I slipped out the hospital the back way. Cigarette breaks take- what- five minutes. I didn't come back after a hundred thousand cigarette breaks- and even then, I wasn't ready to see anyone from that hospital again.
Of course, it wasn't that I was afraid to go back there. I was just more or less afraid to see someone as repulsive looking as my own daughter. Or maybe it was all about the lady at the desk. I can't be certain. Guilt is funny, you never know when it's going to creep up on you for something you do on a regular basis. They're slow things, consciences.
But, here we are--I lied about not knowing the name of her mother. Her name was Teresa Vesk. Bloody conscience. I also lied about why I didn't want to go back and see anyone or have anything to do with either of them. It was, true enough, because I hated that girls mum more than anyone who has ever called my downfall. So of course, I figured the best torture would have been leaving her alone in that bloody dingy hospital- or that's how it worked for me, anyway.
Couldn't have been easier, either. There ought to be laws against this sort of thing. Scratch that, there are! Sometimes my conscience gets me about being above the law, strangely enough. What's the use of being above the law if your going to feel bad about it? Don't you get to be to this level by not caring? Some things just have a way of working out to fuck you over. This was one of those things. What can you do? Nothing. You've got to take things as they are. Then you can cheer yourself up by doing something like throwing automobiles at people.