A/N: My "long-lost twin", Jordan (Jordie, sorry…covers head to avoid pitchforking), or MTL or MasqueradingThroughLife to those of you who are familiar with her FFnet or DBCA persona, dared me to write a self-insertion phic when I told her that all my previous attempts at writing phiction of that particular type had failed miserably.
Never one to pass up an intriguing dare, I laughed a bit and decided to give it a really good try…and suddenly I let my fingers tap out a rhythm of their own instead of trying so hard to be funny and random like I had before, and was truly, utterly amazed that I actually managed to begin writing something of this nature that was…coherent.
(Though I doubt that it's better than Jordie's, Adi's, Naomi's, Sam's, Misty's, or any other brilliant authoress that has managed to rock the phandom with their self-insertion genius.)
So, my age-discrepant Californian twin, this one's for you, since you started it. Again. :D
Lurve and brownies (and berry smoothies),
Echo
The girl stared out of the rainy window, fingers to the beaded, dripping glass, fogged with her breath and nature's condensation.
I tremble before your genius…your blackened madness of soul…my love for you is like the shadows in a dreary window, rain-spattered and shining…
"Waxing poetic," she said to the grey, fogged afternoon beyond the glass. "Rainy days may do that to a person."
The outdoors looked enticing, for a moment. To walk amongst the falling, thundering droplets and raise her face lovingly to the weeping sky, hands stretched out in supplication, seemed like a poetically enjoyable idea.
"Wish I had a slicker," she murmured to the rain. "'T'would make things easier."
Nevertheless, she shrugged on a less protective jacket and raced out through the large back door, grinning at the wet, green, breathing life around her, soaking up the much-needed moisture with relish.
"It seems like such a magic day," she whispered, raising her face to the sky and opening her mouth to catch a taste of sweet, melancholy bitterness, the tears of a polluted and crying world.
A roll of thunder came broiling through the saturated air, as the sky lit up with nature's pyrotechnics and the girl, without the slightest bit of warning, vanished.
"Vortex," she whispered, dizzying from the spinning, whirling colors, wondering if she was dreaming simply, or if her body had indeed been torn from earth's atmosphere and hurled throughout a continuum that defied all natural law with its slightly psychedelic starbursts and spinning, spinning world.
"Help me," she gasped. "Help me…"
And the world went dark.
A mismatched eye glanced briefly through a spy-hole at the figure of a lithe, half-nude woman embracing the leading tenor, but the hole closed abruptly. He was tired of getting thrills from stolen looks. It made him feel like a guilty child.
He glided down his passageways and poled himself through the depths, sighing and weary.
Disembarking, he slid to his organ and began to play a tune of such mourning, such depressive despair, that he nearly wept with the pain that covered him like an errant blanket.
It is useless, worthless now. Never will I need to use such clandestine knowledge…never will I have to perform such acts…or even want to.
The last was a lie.
He did want to.
But with whom? Who would accept such a one as me into their bed willingly?
It was the old, worn-out argument, trite and thankless, and he blew it out as he would a melting candle, pushing it away and closing it up, like one of his skull-embossed envelopes bearing his seal.
He picked up a book, one of his favorites, and flipped through it, reading with half his attention, for his mind drifted elsewhere, flying through the skies to the one he loved so desperately, so painfully, that his soul nearly came loose from his body with the consuming fire of passionate, aching love.
She is married.
It has been three days now.
Three days.
Three, miserable, horrible, detestable days.
Three days that had been like three hundred weary years.
They had been wed almost at once. It had been in the paper, a short but scandalous paragraph about the strange rush of their unlikely courtship.
Perhaps his family will not allow it. Perhaps the marriage will be annulled. Perhaps…
His mind beat out an agonizing litany of "Perhaps," and his soul was drained, numb.
I cannot live without my life…
I cannot live without my soul…
He let the copy of Wuthering Heights fall from his fingers as he sat, broken.
I should end it, someday. Caress my own neck with the loving embrace of the Punjab lasso…
But he could not, so long as there was hope burning brightly in his breast that perhaps…perhaps…there would be something. God would be merciful. He would…
God! he scoffed, feeling like weeping all over again. When was He ever merciful to me?
When did I begin to believe in His very existence?
The answer slipped at the corners of his mind, like a writhing, elusive shadow, and as he reached his mental fingers out to grasp it, a noise was heard, a tremendous crash of clanging metal and the thick, glopping thud of splattered wax.
One of his immense candelabras had fallen over…
He refused to go and right it. He was too tired, and what did it matter? But it would sit there for days if he did not. He would probably slip on the wax and break his neck.
Not such a terrible contemplation. But after all…there is some hope.
Grumbling under his breath, he stalked through the shadowy gloom to clean up the mess, when he stopped, stricken.
Standing there, looking horrified, was a wet, bedraggled girl, her hair hanging in soaked tendrils, and her extraordinarily odd clothes smeared with grime and wax.
