Disclamer: It all belongs to Her. You know Her. We all do.
Author's Note: Ok, ok, this is supposed to be funny, only I haven't arrived to the lighter part of the whole story yet. Some told me it was depressing. Well, I hope that impression goes away after they read the rest. This has a plot, albeit a strange one. If you have complaints, send me an owl. I'll try to make things clearer…
First I thought about pour all the beginning in this chapter, but it would ruin the plot so this is how much you learn for now.
Chapter One: The Tale of a baby's birth.
Once upon a time, there existed a young girl who had the sun in her eyes and the wind in her hair. She had very pale skin and very soft green eyes and two soft spots of pink on each cheekbone. When she laughed, the left dimple of her face would form the opening of a bracket, and he always traced the other closing bracket with his finger after she stopped laughing.
She was the most beautiful thing on earth. She was apparently happy sometimes too, but he knew her life prematurely consumed her. Her bracket hadn't been open enough. He knew that the only thing she wanted to do every night was to curl up in his arms and listen to the noises made by the cars in the streets.
He didn't really know where she came from. She was just there. She just appeared one day, like that. Well, no, not really. She had appeared in a party with a friend of his. He had asked for her name and she had answered that she had no name. Not anymore.
So he called her Angela, because she came from the unknown place where angels are made. She was his gift from heaven. He was going to be her everything, because he was all she had. She had no name, no family, no friends. Just him. She just had him and her soft green eyes.
She was so perfect. She was perfect in that messy fucked up way punk princesses were. She was one of the youth icons of the part of London she lived in. She was so pretty, with her tragic eyes and mysterious past.
They admired the way she had to make each one of her movements seen-worthy. She snorted cocaine almost in an aristocratic way. She never rolled a cylinder out of paper; she always snorted it clearly from her long nails without sniffing. She never sneezed or had nosebleed. She was a clean junkie.
When she was high, she was always more present then when she was clean. Only then, she was able to see the beauty of certain things. Only then she bathed during hours. Only then, her bracket was wide open on her cheek.
When she was drunk, she faded away, she returned there were she was before. Before she became Angela. She returned to that life where she was happy. Or maybe she wasn't happy there either. Maybe she lived in her own world, the one hidden inside of her.
The only time she was herself was when she woke up in the middle of the night. Then, she would pet his hair and tell him – or maybe herself, he wasn't sure- that she was okay, and that everything was wonderful. That she was happy with him. With him alone. And she'll thank him then, thank him with all her battered heart. She would cry too. She would bury her little head in his chest and cry, and he'll pretend she was asleep. He loved those moments. And she loved them too, because she was sure now that she'll never be alone again.
But when the sun was in the sky, she would become the ghost of herself again. But sometimes, if he did the right thing at the right moment, the bracket would open and make life worth living.
The right things to do were small things, like open an umbrella over her if there was too much sunshine outside. Those small things could be to drive around town in the subway blindly, without thinking where to go. She would open her bracket when he gave her ice-cream in winter, and burning hot chocolate in summer. Her smile would appear if he kissed her in the rain, or hid away every single green thing within reach. She hugged him when he would burn roses and when he gave her buttercups plucked from the park.
She never set her foot in a rollercoaster or in a museum. She hated Halloween, but adored All Saint's day. She would carry as much chrysanthemums as she could and put them on graves long forgotten. She went to the movies, but refused to go to the theatre. She swam in swimming pools, never in rivers or lakes. She liked to hear words like 'synthetic' and 'artificial', but loathed the words 'tradition' and 'folklore'.
She listened to Bach, the Beatles, Beethoven, Berlioz, the Buzzcocks and Bowie (David). She always admired art books in shops and had postcards from every Dali's and Delvaux's paintings. She ate litchis, lasagne and lens soup whenever she could.
She talked like French people, swallowing the 'h' so they didn't come out.
She used the 's' sound as little as possible. Her tongue didn't roll when she pronounced the 'r' so it sounded like 'l' sometimes. She had obviously forgotten that 'g' existed in the English language.
The only thing she loved was him. She never said it, but the way she had to lean against him and touch his hand made it clear. Her back was always in a position that suggested that some one was holding her waist. Her body melt on his often when they were seen together. She always traced the lined of his face when he was about to lit a cigarette.
She was odd, but beautiful whilst doing it. She was so covered in her perfectness that no one ever would have touched her. She was like a statue, pretty but so cold to the touch. He was the only one who could make her melt. It wasn't unusual to see tears escaping from her eyes when he kissed her cheeks. When the tears were seen, every one turned their head away, as if her tears would be something intimate and holy.
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They were together a long time. Months, years –maybe even decades. He did everything he could to make her happy. He paid for her drugs. He made her food. He worked all the time just to able to see her smile. She was desperate when he left her early in the morning and was almost crying when he came home late in the evening.
She tried – with all her force, to stop drugs, but she couldn't. She searched help, but couldn't have it, because she had no other name than Angela. And nowadays even angels can't be helped. So she continued snorting cocaine, but taking less every day.
He hadn't noticed this. He had other things on his mind. He tried to concentrate fully on her, but his three part-time works took their toll on him. But he never complained, and he was never tired. He didn't sleep more than four hours a night. When he made love to her, his body received such a boost that he didn't need to sleep on those nights.
She always laughed when they made love. He could feel her laugh bubble in her stomach. When he was inside of her, it felt like she had penetrated him. She had him now. He was hers. He didn't belong to himself anymore. And then she would laugh, guessing his thoughts, and work her muscles to make him understand what a power she had over him. He would try to stay serious and let her win, but she always did. She knew him to well. The only times they didn't fight whilst making love was when they played cards at the same time.
Playing cards in bed was their favourite pastime. He would climb over her and she would deal the cards, and they'll play 'Chinahand' on her belly. Each time one would set a card on the belly, they thrusted into each other. The one to win the game would have the honour of cuming first. She always won, or he pretended she did.
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Seasons passed, and suddenly they felt that something was about to change. They had felt it a long time, but they knew that one night after some New Year, that things were going to change forever. Nothing is going to be the same again.
She had managed to be clean the two weeks following New Year's Eve. She had the urge to be completely drug free then. She had to.
He had taken each and every nightshift he could only do. He had taken a fourth job. He worked all the time and now he felt every waking moment tired. But he knew deep inside of him that this would pay off well. He knew all this had a purpose. He felt the strange urges to caress cashmere, to get used to the softness of that fabric. He started to get fascinated by her elbows and eyebrows.
All this had a purpose. And suddenly, it became clear.
She was pregnant. She was with child. She hadn't touched to drugs to prepare her body. And everything was worth it. The bracket on her face often appeared on her face by surprise, and he found it fascinating to always stare at her face to catch the split second before the bracket would appear.
He was deeply in love, and he was falling madly in love with his child too, only he didn't that yet. He didn't caress her belly or pass his arms around her and rest his hands on the growing bump. He did however draw the curve of her belly every second week on a piece of paper and stare at it lovingly during those few hours without work.
She was terribly afraid. So, so afraid that her child would be affected by her drug abuse from earlier of her life. She didn't want her child to be like her: a failure. She did everything she could to have a good, healthy pregnancy. She had managed to get false papers (which had cost a lot, but she didn't care, as long as her baby was fine) to be able to go to a doctor.
The doctors never asked her anything, but she was sure they could read her eyes and body and tell of her past. She followed all of their advices blindly. She cooked her meals herself and with such a care it looked like her life depended on it. She walked during hours in London, alone, something she didn't do before. She visited him often, almost every day.
Noticing her growing belly, he received more money from his work givers and winks from his colleagues. Every time she stepped in, every one became silent and followed the happy mother within the corner of their eye. She looked adorable, with her expanding belly and thin legs. She looked like a tiny fairy.
The pregnancy went well, but the girl carrying the baby wasn't. She was anxious. She hoped that her pregnancy started after she stopped snorting cocaine. She hoped it so much it robbed her energy.
He was worried about her and decided to do a thing he wouldn't have done if he wasn't so worried.
He called his parents. He called his parents and told them he had a real life now, and a fiancée and a child soon too.
His parents were old, conservative puritans whose ideas of a good education is to kick the children from home without money and let them survive by their own ways. This had worked well for his elder brother. But he wasn't as prepaid as his brother had been. They had 'disgraced' him when he started to take drugs. The only contact they still had with each other was the postcards they sent each other for Christmas.
His brother was another story. His brother was nice and had helped him, but he had to move away, to France. He hadn't seen him in many years. The only thing he knew was that his brother had married some girl he knew from university.
His brother heard the news, and came right away to meet him.
He was shocked to see how tired and mature his younger brother was. And he couldn't repress a shudder as he saw the thin, too thin girl with her enormous stomach. He shuddered of jealousy, of envy of disgust. He couldn't have children. But he brother could, and he knew, he felt it that the thin girl would make a wonderful mother. If she would survive the birthing process.
And so she rejoined his family and patiently listened to their small talk, and she would lightly open up.
He still didn't act like a father. He acted like an uncle, but not as a father. He let her take care for everything. She and his brother found a bigger apartment in a better environment for the baby. She decorated the house with soft carpets, light brown wooden furniture. She painted the walls in bright colours and patterns, she put red and purple light bulbs in every room.
When the time had come to deliver the child, she had calmly walked to his work and gently asked for him. The baby was almost born on the filthy floor of a pizzeria if it wouldn't have been for his quick thinking.
If he hadn't though t so quickly, both would have been dead. She wasn't in labour; her placenta had cracked open and bled. An hour later and she would have died, baby with her.
She didn't deliver the child with pain. She was drugged –this time against her will, and the doctor's kidnapped her child from her. They cut her open and ripped her apart to come across the little baby resting in her.
The child had screamed as they had touched her. She had released a piercing scream, making every one expect her parents deaf for a split minute. She protested vehemently to be born in a cheated way. She wanted to struggle; she wanted to come to life by herself.
Because she was her and him at the same time. She was the world she had hidden so long in herself. She was the hybrid of their love and of their world. She was the guardian of their secrets, of all of them. She was theirs, and theirs only.
He suddenly realized why he had been awake all those nights; he synchronised himself with her biological clock. He couldn't ever thank her enough or the Gods to put her and her child in danger; he knew now that his heart was split in two: one side was for her and one side for his child.
He knew now that she would never leave again. She was bound to him and their baby was their anchor.
