Author's Notes: This fic is dedicated to Shadowz, Deanne, prophecy_gurl, Echoes of the Mind and anybody who ever wrote me a review or expressed encouragement. You guys rock.
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From the Diaries of Darcy Milne Part II (alternatively known as the 'ravings of a maladjusted woman on the verge')
Entry 7
Things have gotten a bit better around here. Ever since that incident almost a week ago, the bastard is starting to be a little nicer. Sometimes he lets me pick the show on TV and he'll watch it with me. I think he's starting warm up to 'Lonely Planet' but I'm not too sure how he feels about the sitcoms. I think the laugh track gets on his nerves. However, he puts up with it. He also asks me if there's anything in particular I want from the grocery store and he buys it, even though he gets grossed out by the seaweed crackers and the wasabi chips.
Yesterday he told me that I could read anything I wanted from his bookshelf. A quick perusal of the titles shows that he does have some taste, even though it's quite eclectic.
He's got Brett Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho', G.K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday', Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', some Irvine Welsh, Palahniuk, Rushdie, Proust and J.T. Leroy's 'Sarah'. Then there are the old tomes that he says I can't touch because they're valuable first editions of some sort, and besides they're mostly in Latin which I can't read because I spent most of Latin class staring at the hunky guy, Keith Leighton, who sat in front of me (I heard from Solen that he was married to his perfect Stepford wife girlfriend now, and they're both raising children somewhere in the suburbs. How cute. Blech.)
Actually the guy has stacks and stacks of books- in the bedroom, on the coffee table, and even in the kitchen. He's even got some Anais Nin and 'The Story of O', but he doesn't strike me as the erotica reading type.
I asked him if the smut belonged to a girlfriend of his and he muttered something about how she liked to be read bedtime stories.
I'm assuming that he did have a girlfriend because he's got quite a bit of little knickknacks and stuff that have a feminine touch. Plus, he has a constant supply of these lacy vintage dresses and he doesn't exactly strike me as a part-time tranny. There are traces of this mystery woman all over him- she's like some sort of spectre that's haunting the place, leaving her imprint and her aura around everything. Maybe she's dead and that's why he doesn't want to talk about it. But her presence is definitely felt.
It reminds me of a story I once read where some guy kept all of his dead wife's things in order, as if one day she was going to come back and use them again. I'm getting the same tragic vibe here, but I'm not too sure I want to pry into it.
He watches me whenever I'm writing and I know he's curious about my journals. He tries to look over my shoulder at them or steals a few glances here and there when he thinks I don't notice. I finally got fed up and called him on it. I held up the sheaf of papers and said "Here, read it. Just stop trying to be covert and read the damn thing." To my surprise he just put his hands up and refused. I know that he still wants to read it, but I have a feeling that he won't. It'd be a violation of this little pact we have going, between abductee and abductor. (How bizarre is that.)
This morning I sort of felt… Um… You know. That time of the month come on. And for some reason I felt really shy about asking him to buy me some Tampax- I mean, I've never asked any of my boyfriends to do that for me. Some things are just a bit too personal and private.
Weird thing was that a couple of minutes after I got my period he got his coat, left, and came back fifteen minutes later with a variety pack of tampons and some pads. I didn't even have to ask him to do it for me- he just knew. It was really awkward but I said thanks anyway and he just grunted and lit up a cigarette. I think that means 'you're welcome' in Spike-speak.
That's another strange thing about him.
Whenever I listen to his phone calls, there are times when he speaks in an entirely different language. I know a bit of rudimentary linguistics but the sounds that come out of his mouth… They're not exactly typical of any language I know. There are about 75 phonemes in the entirety of human speech, give or take a couple. But I highly doubt that the sounds he makes can be classified as speech. Sometimes it's just a lot of growling and barking, and other times it's clicking noises. I highly doubt that he's talking to San bushmen in the Kalahari via cell phone (when did they go digital?) but who else could he possibly be communicating with?
I'm getting a feeling that I'm missing something here, but I'm not too sure what it is.
Ah. Hand cramp. Must stop writing now.
Entry 10
I'm on a break right now, since the slave driving son of a bitch has had me cleaning up the place all day. He left for a while and came back again with this huge crate of something that he put in the closet. The he untied me and handed me a mop, a broom and some cleanser and told me to make the place absolutely sparkling clean. When I asked him why he was being such a prick he told me that we had guests for the evening and that I had to make the place look more presentable.
Stupid patriarchal, chauvinistic asshole!!! After over fifty years of progress for women the world over I'm back in a kitchen, washing glasses and plates and mopping up a man's mess. My mother would be sooo pissed about this. He's setting up a poker table right now, fixing up cards and the booze but every once in a while he yells out "How's it going over there…" or "Hurry up, chop chop!" until I felt like pulling a Lorena Bobbit and just chopping something of his off, pacifist tendencies be damned.
There's some sort of strange coagulated tomato juice or whatever at the bottom of some of those mugs, and boy do they reek! It's disgusting how I have to scrape off the stuff at the bottom since it's all cakey. They have that dead fish smell of something rotting- yuck. This is probably karma for all of those times I bailed out on housekeeping duty with Solen.
I wonder what she's doing now. Things weren't really so good between us before she left for France, but I still miss her a lot. She was just the rock of Gibraltar, always so steady and always helping me out through everything. Everybody needs somebody who understands. I worry about her though, coz her craziness isn't on the outside like mine, but it's on the inside all bottled up. There was never a more discreet confidante in the world, but the scary thing about her was that she could really keep secrets even from me. She's supposed to be coming back soon- if I estimate correctly, her semester should be over.
Shite. She's going to kill me for not picking up the dry cleaning and paying the rent. But hey, I was KIDNAPPED.
Damn. I have been discovered by the merciless bleach head once more. Gotta go back to the grind and grime. Crap.
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Well it's party time right now and if I thought that Spike was a freak, it was obviously because I hadn't seen his friends who epitomize the word. I have never seen such weird looking people with so many deformities in my entire life.
I think that they're carnies or something. They must be.
Behold, the Man with Too Much Skin! And right beside him is the Man with Three Eyes! And to their left, ladies and gentlemen, is Someone (something?) Who Has Blue Skin and Horns like a Ram atop his head! Feast your eyes on the freaks, folks.
The Man with Too Much Skin seems like a nice guy and he was going to shake my hand until some signal from Spike made him decide against it. Spike told me that I wasn't allowed to talk to them but I could stay in the room as long as I was quiet. Then he let me loose for while, saying that I shouldn't try anything because all four of them would hunt me down if I got any ideas.
As if I could plot a daring escape after having to do all that manual labor. This is bordering on exploitation, I tell you. So I sat on the couch and started to read 'Sarah' until I realized that what was going on was a lot more interesting than the book. I'm writing all of this stuff down for the sake of posterity since I doubt I'll ever see anything like this again for as long as I live.
Spike went over to the closet and took out that crate that he brought in earlier and I found out that inside were all of these kittens. Inhuman bastard! The poor things must have been starved. It's weird that I didn't hear any mewing… He must have soundproofed the closet.
Anyway, he started to take out two kittens and put them in the middle of the table, and all of these other guys took out their own kittens and somehow I don't remember my college games of poker being played that way. I mean, I was pretty much too stoned to notice but I'm quite sure we didn't use little kitties.
The guy with the third eye kept giving me strange looks and whispering something to Spike. I couldn't hear what they were saying and I'm sure I wouldn't understand it anyway, but both of them were staring at me and it gave me the creeps. The thing with Blue Skin looked at me as well and he joined in on the conversation they were having. The one with the Loose Skin was just oblivious to them, drinking his beer and grinning like an idiot.
It reminded me too much of high school, when all of those bitchy cliques would sit around and criticize people. I don't like being appraised like a piece of meat. I bade them goodnight and turned in early, just to get away from the scrutiny.
I'd rather sit alone in my room than put up with that, and besides I'm pretty tired.
TBC
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From the Diaries of Darcy Milne Part II (alternatively known as the 'ravings of a maladjusted woman on the verge')
Entry 7
Things have gotten a bit better around here. Ever since that incident almost a week ago, the bastard is starting to be a little nicer. Sometimes he lets me pick the show on TV and he'll watch it with me. I think he's starting warm up to 'Lonely Planet' but I'm not too sure how he feels about the sitcoms. I think the laugh track gets on his nerves. However, he puts up with it. He also asks me if there's anything in particular I want from the grocery store and he buys it, even though he gets grossed out by the seaweed crackers and the wasabi chips.
Yesterday he told me that I could read anything I wanted from his bookshelf. A quick perusal of the titles shows that he does have some taste, even though it's quite eclectic.
He's got Brett Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho', G.K. Chesterton's 'The Man Who Was Thursday', Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', some Irvine Welsh, Palahniuk, Rushdie, Proust and J.T. Leroy's 'Sarah'. Then there are the old tomes that he says I can't touch because they're valuable first editions of some sort, and besides they're mostly in Latin which I can't read because I spent most of Latin class staring at the hunky guy, Keith Leighton, who sat in front of me (I heard from Solen that he was married to his perfect Stepford wife girlfriend now, and they're both raising children somewhere in the suburbs. How cute. Blech.)
Actually the guy has stacks and stacks of books- in the bedroom, on the coffee table, and even in the kitchen. He's even got some Anais Nin and 'The Story of O', but he doesn't strike me as the erotica reading type.
I asked him if the smut belonged to a girlfriend of his and he muttered something about how she liked to be read bedtime stories.
I'm assuming that he did have a girlfriend because he's got quite a bit of little knickknacks and stuff that have a feminine touch. Plus, he has a constant supply of these lacy vintage dresses and he doesn't exactly strike me as a part-time tranny. There are traces of this mystery woman all over him- she's like some sort of spectre that's haunting the place, leaving her imprint and her aura around everything. Maybe she's dead and that's why he doesn't want to talk about it. But her presence is definitely felt.
It reminds me of a story I once read where some guy kept all of his dead wife's things in order, as if one day she was going to come back and use them again. I'm getting the same tragic vibe here, but I'm not too sure I want to pry into it.
He watches me whenever I'm writing and I know he's curious about my journals. He tries to look over my shoulder at them or steals a few glances here and there when he thinks I don't notice. I finally got fed up and called him on it. I held up the sheaf of papers and said "Here, read it. Just stop trying to be covert and read the damn thing." To my surprise he just put his hands up and refused. I know that he still wants to read it, but I have a feeling that he won't. It'd be a violation of this little pact we have going, between abductee and abductor. (How bizarre is that.)
This morning I sort of felt… Um… You know. That time of the month come on. And for some reason I felt really shy about asking him to buy me some Tampax- I mean, I've never asked any of my boyfriends to do that for me. Some things are just a bit too personal and private.
Weird thing was that a couple of minutes after I got my period he got his coat, left, and came back fifteen minutes later with a variety pack of tampons and some pads. I didn't even have to ask him to do it for me- he just knew. It was really awkward but I said thanks anyway and he just grunted and lit up a cigarette. I think that means 'you're welcome' in Spike-speak.
That's another strange thing about him.
Whenever I listen to his phone calls, there are times when he speaks in an entirely different language. I know a bit of rudimentary linguistics but the sounds that come out of his mouth… They're not exactly typical of any language I know. There are about 75 phonemes in the entirety of human speech, give or take a couple. But I highly doubt that the sounds he makes can be classified as speech. Sometimes it's just a lot of growling and barking, and other times it's clicking noises. I highly doubt that he's talking to San bushmen in the Kalahari via cell phone (when did they go digital?) but who else could he possibly be communicating with?
I'm getting a feeling that I'm missing something here, but I'm not too sure what it is.
Ah. Hand cramp. Must stop writing now.
Entry 10
I'm on a break right now, since the slave driving son of a bitch has had me cleaning up the place all day. He left for a while and came back again with this huge crate of something that he put in the closet. The he untied me and handed me a mop, a broom and some cleanser and told me to make the place absolutely sparkling clean. When I asked him why he was being such a prick he told me that we had guests for the evening and that I had to make the place look more presentable.
Stupid patriarchal, chauvinistic asshole!!! After over fifty years of progress for women the world over I'm back in a kitchen, washing glasses and plates and mopping up a man's mess. My mother would be sooo pissed about this. He's setting up a poker table right now, fixing up cards and the booze but every once in a while he yells out "How's it going over there…" or "Hurry up, chop chop!" until I felt like pulling a Lorena Bobbit and just chopping something of his off, pacifist tendencies be damned.
There's some sort of strange coagulated tomato juice or whatever at the bottom of some of those mugs, and boy do they reek! It's disgusting how I have to scrape off the stuff at the bottom since it's all cakey. They have that dead fish smell of something rotting- yuck. This is probably karma for all of those times I bailed out on housekeeping duty with Solen.
I wonder what she's doing now. Things weren't really so good between us before she left for France, but I still miss her a lot. She was just the rock of Gibraltar, always so steady and always helping me out through everything. Everybody needs somebody who understands. I worry about her though, coz her craziness isn't on the outside like mine, but it's on the inside all bottled up. There was never a more discreet confidante in the world, but the scary thing about her was that she could really keep secrets even from me. She's supposed to be coming back soon- if I estimate correctly, her semester should be over.
Shite. She's going to kill me for not picking up the dry cleaning and paying the rent. But hey, I was KIDNAPPED.
Damn. I have been discovered by the merciless bleach head once more. Gotta go back to the grind and grime. Crap.
* * * *
Well it's party time right now and if I thought that Spike was a freak, it was obviously because I hadn't seen his friends who epitomize the word. I have never seen such weird looking people with so many deformities in my entire life.
I think that they're carnies or something. They must be.
Behold, the Man with Too Much Skin! And right beside him is the Man with Three Eyes! And to their left, ladies and gentlemen, is Someone (something?) Who Has Blue Skin and Horns like a Ram atop his head! Feast your eyes on the freaks, folks.
The Man with Too Much Skin seems like a nice guy and he was going to shake my hand until some signal from Spike made him decide against it. Spike told me that I wasn't allowed to talk to them but I could stay in the room as long as I was quiet. Then he let me loose for while, saying that I shouldn't try anything because all four of them would hunt me down if I got any ideas.
As if I could plot a daring escape after having to do all that manual labor. This is bordering on exploitation, I tell you. So I sat on the couch and started to read 'Sarah' until I realized that what was going on was a lot more interesting than the book. I'm writing all of this stuff down for the sake of posterity since I doubt I'll ever see anything like this again for as long as I live.
Spike went over to the closet and took out that crate that he brought in earlier and I found out that inside were all of these kittens. Inhuman bastard! The poor things must have been starved. It's weird that I didn't hear any mewing… He must have soundproofed the closet.
Anyway, he started to take out two kittens and put them in the middle of the table, and all of these other guys took out their own kittens and somehow I don't remember my college games of poker being played that way. I mean, I was pretty much too stoned to notice but I'm quite sure we didn't use little kitties.
The guy with the third eye kept giving me strange looks and whispering something to Spike. I couldn't hear what they were saying and I'm sure I wouldn't understand it anyway, but both of them were staring at me and it gave me the creeps. The thing with Blue Skin looked at me as well and he joined in on the conversation they were having. The one with the Loose Skin was just oblivious to them, drinking his beer and grinning like an idiot.
It reminded me too much of high school, when all of those bitchy cliques would sit around and criticize people. I don't like being appraised like a piece of meat. I bade them goodnight and turned in early, just to get away from the scrutiny.
I'd rather sit alone in my room than put up with that, and besides I'm pretty tired.
TBC