A/N
I am very sorry for the delay. You see, I have done something stupid – I enrolled in a post grad degree. The chapters might be quite spaced apart, but whatever happens, I will see this story through to the end. Thanks to everyone who is still interested.
Very special thanks to my two betas (and lovely friends): Houseketeer and Tidwell. Without your advice and encouragement this chapter would not exist.
25
Can't get started,
Chemical heart
Every time I get started
You pull me apart
--
Chemical Heart
Grinspoon
--
She thinks it is odd, but the tears just stopped suddenly.
She wants to cry. She needs to cry, but she can't.
She is at a loss.
Something is brewing – hot, pungent, bitter.
Her mind is a caldron bubbling over, the nauseating concoction of anger, self-pity, hate, and the strongest, sharpest brand of melancholy is about to reach boiling point.
She paces aimlessly through the rooms of her apartment.
It is quiet. Quiet and still. Usually she can hear the dull drone of traffic, the soft hum of a neighbour's television, the purr of her cat winding itself around her ankles, the quiet buzz of dormant electrical appliances: PC, refrigerator, central heating.
Nothing.
She can hear nothing but her own thoughts: thunderously loud and lurid.
Stacy looked like a high-class hooker in that outfit – it was too staged, too purposeful. She wonders if he fucked her like he would a hooker, carelessly, bent over the back of his sofa with her expensive slacks caught around the heels of her stilettos. Maybe he stripped her and asked her to keep the shoes on. Maybe they went bare – for old time's sake.
She left you. She left you – gave up on you, threw in the towel, and this is what she gets? She is welcomed with open arms?
I have only ever been loyal, devoted – and this is what I get?
It's unfair.
She observes herself in the bathroom mirror.
The room is dark, she doesn't bother to flick the switch. A sliver of light cuts through the doorway from the kitchen, just enough so that she can make out her image.
Her lips are a straight line and her eyes are cold, but her face is that of person in mourning: puffy, sticky wet skin, her cheeks stained with tears like the glistening silvery trail of a snail's path on cement.
She feels numb. Unreal.
An outer body experience – as if her spirit has passed through her skin, her flesh and bones, blood and muscle – all the real, tangible, corporeal elements of her and has floated up, up, up to hover on the ceiling, looking down, watching…
…watching and pitying the poor, pathetic, victimised woman with the tear-stained face and bloodshot eyes.
Woman?
No, just a girl.
She turns the tap and bends at the basin to rinse her face.
………
She searches in the back of her wardrobe. There is a dress, a gift from an ex-boyfriend, worn only once (in privacy, and then hastily removed).
She finds it hanging in a drycleaner's bag. She had never taken it to the drycleaners, she would have been too shy. She had simply hidden it here.
A red slip of a thing, passible as lingerie.
Perfect for the occasion.
She feels like a whore, she figures she may as well look the part.
Her jeans and sweater are discarded on the bed. Upon the removal of her bra and panties, she briefly contemplates donning more appropriate underwear, before deciding against wearing any at all.
Ineffectual spaghetti straps, slippery sheer silk caressing her thighs, the hem finishing well above her knees.
She moves to her dresser and rummages through her cosmetics to find her most dramatic shade of lipstick.
Barcelona Red.
She thinks a more appropriate name would be: Sacrificial Slaughter.
After a heavy application of black liner around the rims of her eyes and a quick ruffle of her loose hair, she slips into a pair of gold stilettos, retrieves a small clutch purse, pulls a trench coat on and leaves her apartment to wait for a taxicab.
………
The taxi driver leers at her, offering her a wink and a crooked smile in the rear-vision mirror. She pulls her coat tightly across her chest.
His smile matches the interior of the cab – sleazy and decrepit.
Cracked vinyl on the seats, the smell of stale tobacco smoke mingling with old vomit.
She winds the window down, using the old fashioned crank handle. The frigid air, even though it causes her skin to prickle under the sleeves of her beige trench coat, is enlivening.
The moon catches her eye. High in the sky: full, spherical, ethereal.
It is an intense yellow tonight, and there are grey clouds hanging, as if by strings, nearby. The sky is like the painted backdrop of an elementary school play – sketchy, muddled, disorderly.
She mouths the lyrics of a song she found particularly haunting when she heard it for the first time – at an aunt's wedding, at the age of six.
"I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way…"
It had frightened her to the extent that she had stayed by her father, demanding to be held for the duration of the reception; she had performed a sensational tantrum when her mother had attempted to take her from his arms in order to walk her to the car.
"Don't go 'round tonight
it's bound to take your life
there's a bad moon on the rise…"
She orders the driver to deposit her in the main street and walks the footpath, waiting for one of the many nightclubs to distinguish itself above the others and lure her in with its throbbing beat. She chooses a little underground place, a place she wouldn't usually frequent, a place where she can play-act. Masquerade and never return.
She takes slow, careful steps in her high heels as she descends the spiral staircase, one hand on the wrought iron banister. The music assaults her, takes over from her heart in keeping the rhythm of her body constant.
Almost immediately she is claimed by a group of those she assumes are regular clientele at this establishment.
They smell potential. Fresh blood. A new recruit.
With a nervous smile, she offers a pseudonym: "Ellie," and hopes that she will never again meet any one of these individuals in the clinic or the emergency room at the hospital.
The gang introduce themselves one by one. Nathanial is a large man with a distinctive nose and untidy blue hair. He wears a black nylon shirt, unbuttoned to expose the greying hairs sprouting from his chest, and a Celtic crucifix dangling from a solid silver chain. His thick arm; tattooed with a collage of spider-webs, daggers, naked women and frightful beasts drapes around the shoulders of Cordelia, a frail woman: drawn, with a sullen expression and petulant, cupid's bow lips. She wears a black agate chocker around her impossibly long neck, and purple satin gloves to her elbows. She stares at Cameron with dead, unblinking eyes as if invoking a silent hex. Astra is a more vibrant type – Cameron casts her as the charismatic madam of a brothel. She has a Morticia Adams hair style, and a curvaceous figure – a black corset embroidered with red roses is struggling to contain her heaving bosom as she calls to the waiter in a booming voice. She raps her claw-like, glossy black fingernails on the tabletop and smiles warmly at Cameron. Damien, a lanky thin man resembling an undertaker in a top hat is obviously with Astra – he has hardly noticed Cameron's arrival because his head nods repeatedly towards Astra's cleavage while his hands grope and fondle excitedly.
And then there is Wesley.
He sits against the backdrop of the deep purple, crushed velvet upholstery lining the booth. The joint is crawling with unsavoury types, but Cameron finds this man's gaze particularly unsettling. He sits with his arms crossed, grinning wickedly at her as if he knows her secret. He wears a leather jacket and sports the moustache and goatee of a respectable bachelor from the Victorian era, perhaps a banker or a lawyer. Despite his sly expression, there is something engaging about his demeanour. He is actually rather handsome.
The party jostles and rearranges to accommodate her arrival and she finds herself shoved into the corner of the booth, her thigh pressing against Wesley's.
His eyes twinkle and his lips twitch – he seems delighted, like a spider who has just felt its web tremble with the weight of a fly becoming tangled in its sticky thread.
Immediately, his hands move to her shoulders and she flinches, anticipating an improper advance. He narrows his eyes, watching her carefully as he eases her coat off her shoulders, his fingertips lingering at the nape of her neck.
She folds her hands in her lap, breathes deep.
Act Natural
He asks her questions – endless questions and she stumbles over the answer for each one of them. She tells him she is originally from Boston, and that she works in a music store. Naturally, he inquires about her taste in music and realising she has ventured in too deep, she mumbles something about Marilyn Manson before quickly changing the subject, saying: "do you think I could get a drink? What are you having?"
He eyes her doubtfully before hailing the waiter.
………
She cringes as a jewel encrusted goblet is placed in front of her and she thinks that if she weren't too embarrassed to admit that she had been here, she would have an interesting story to tell about this place…
The ritualistic preparation of the drink – Absinthe – attracts the attention of the others. They cheer and clap as the waiter balances a sugar cube on an intricately engraved spoon above the goblet, before soaking the cube in more Absinthe, setting it alight and allowing it to drop, igniting the insipid yellow-green liquor. The waiter extinguishes the inferno with a jug of ice-water and presents Cameron with the end product.
While the others wait with bated breath, she scrunches her nose, before raising the heavy goblet to her lips, cautiously sampling the bitter anise flavoured spirit.
……..
Three goblets of Absinthe later, she finds herself giggling at Wesley's every word, allowing his warm hand to inch further and further up the inside of her thigh.
Apparently, Wesley is quite the magician. He pulls a quarter out of her ear and manages to transform it into a dollar coin before closing his hand and transforming it once more, into a bottle cap.
He closes his fingers over his palm once more, hiding the cap.
"You don't belong here, Ellie," he says, "but you've chosen this place, you've come here for a reason. You're looking to escape."
Slowly, he folds his fingers back. Her eyes widen in amazement. In the centre of his palm is a single, tiny white pill.
He tilts his hand so that the pill rolls from his palm to his fingertips, where he pinches it between his thumb and forefinger and holds it out to her.
She takes it from him without an ounce of the hesitation or apprehension one would expect to have in such a situation.
Using her forefinger, she rolls the little white pill around the palm of her own hand.
Ecstasy.
Ex. Stacy.
She scoffs at the irony before placing the pill on her tongue, closing her mouth, clenching her jaw and swallowing.
………
Bodies bumping and grinding beside her, against her. She can smell them, feel their heat. They are all so foreign, so alien.
Her head slumps down and she catches sight of her shoes and the parquet floor in the intermittent illumination cast by the flash of the strobe lights.
The dance floor?
With considerable effort she wrenches her head back to see a mirrored disco ball in the centre of the ceiling, and a sea of hands reaching up – swaying like a strange human forest – a dense thicket where the arms are the trunks of trees, the fingers are the branches and the disco ball is the moon, gleaming in all its glory.
"I see a bad moon rising
I see trouble on the way…"
The lights flash frenetically. It is if she is viewing her surroundings as a quick slide show – a series of indecipherable photographs. Like stop motion animation; snap shot after snap shot of faces and dancing poses.
The lights slow to their initial intermittent flashing speed.
Suddenly, the disco ball shudders and explodes and she ducks, holding her hands over her head, sheltering herself. Strangely, no one seems to notice, they carry on with their dancing and their graphically erotic kissing and fondling. She stands, watching in awe as thousands of tiny stars seemingly made from fine cut glass – like glittering snowflakes, fall from the distorted, gaping shell of the disco ball.
Delicately beautiful, each one is unique: brilliant, multi-faceted. They drift slowly down, quivering like dove's feathers caught in a gentle breeze, dispersing over the crowd and dissolving. Cameron holds her hand out to catch one. It comes to rest in the palm of her hand and almost immediately, it pops – evanescent, like a bubble.
Now everything is black, the human forest closes in around her. Tall, ominous shadows loom over her and hands – hundreds, no, thousands of pairs of greedy hands are grabbing for her.
She stoops low, managing to evade the onslaught and escape through an opening in the crowd.
………
In the women's restroom, she barricades herself inside one of the stalls, ignoring Astra's enquiries:
"Are you alright honey?"
She sits with her knees knocking together and her teeth chattering, panting harshly and blinking in the glaring white fluorescent light.
As her mind sobers, she reprimands herself.
She retrieves her cell phone from her purse and pauses for a moment. Her thumb trembles as she scrolls through her address book, frantically searching for the name of an appropriate aide – someone trustworthy, someone dependable and unquestioning.
She presses the 'call' button, raises the phone and waits.
The voice down the line is eager, concerned. "Cameron?"
"I need your help, can you come and get me?"
………
Pain is subjective. It can be placed along a spectrum. There is a wide variation of intensities and types.
In the clinic, they use a 'pain scale.' Patients are asked to provide the location of the pain, the intensity on a scale of one to ten, and to describe the pain – choosing from a number of adjectives including: throbbing, stinging, burning, aching, tingling, stabbing, prickling…
Right now, she rates her pain as an 8.
Location: head (brain: occipital lobes – to be specific). Type: sharp and strangely cold. Something like Chinese water torture – like the sensation of a steady, ice-cold stream of water drilled into the temples.
No matter how tightly she squeezes them shut – the light permeates the thin skin of her eyelids.
She smacks a hand on her forehead and lets it slide down to cover her eyes. She blinks her lids open, allowing her eyes to become accustomed to the small amount of light under the cupped shell of her hand. Removing it causesher pupils to contract in defence of the full assault – yellow sunshine streaming in through tall windows.
The stiff, starchy dull grey sheets and minimalistic décor betray the fact that she is in a man's bedroom.
But, this is not a familiar man's bedroom. It is not House's dark, cave-like bedroom, with its rich mahogany and oak wood furniture, his curious trinkets and ornaments, his Native American design blankets and rugs, his grand inviting bed – deep folds of soft, worn-in linen. No, as she looks around this room, she can only make out cheap, imitation Ikea furnishings.
Spotting her small clutch purse on the Berber carpet beside the bed, she retrieves it quickly in search of her cell phone. Flipping it open, she erases the message informing her of the 37 missed calls and reads the time as 6:00am.
She jolts in surprise when the phone begins vibrating in her hand, brrrrringing and buzzing hysterically. The screen displays her home phone number.
Her finger quickly finds the button to answer the call.
"What are you doing at my apartment?" she whispers into the phone.
"I've been waiting here for you since 10pm last night!" House exclaims, his voice even deeper and smoother than usual, though she detects hint of panic, "where the hell are you?!"
"Um…" she eyes the resting body beside her, "I'm at a friend's place."
"Look, I'm no good at this shit," he says, "so I am just going to cut to the chase…"
The chase?
The Chase stirs beside her, grumbling and shifting his weight on the mattress. He props himself up on an elbow and squints at her.
"Hey…" he starts, but she silences him with a stern look and a finger crushed to his lips.
"I can't believe you would think that I slept with her," House continues, "but that's obviously what you're thinking so: no, we didn't have sex. How stupid do you think I am?"
We didn't have sex…
Sex.
She eyes Chase's apparently naked form, draped in grey sheets. He watches her, yawning before displaying an idiotic expression of befuddlement.
She eyes her own apparently naked form, draped in the same grey sheets.
A new wave of nausea rises in her.
"…she was in town for a conference, she stopped in to…"
She is surveying the room, collecting the evidence as House's voice continues in her ear.
"Cameron…"
Box of condoms on the side table. Bad.
No sign of any open wrappers. Good.
Wait, no, that could be bad.
"Cameron…"
No recollection…
Bad.
Unequivocally bad.
Her attention is suddenly focused on House's voice again.
"Look, I… love you, ok?" he spits.
She is still – stunned, flabbergasted.
"Ok?!" House demands.
She nods slowly, before realising the uselessness of this gesture.
"Oh…ok," she stammers.
"Just – come home," he says, before ending the call.