I was compelled.
Rewrite No.4 and... hm.
Post writing: This chapter... Past to present to past to present. I wrote it as it came. Screw what the story was or is. Writing is writing.
Chapter 13 / Oslo Doesn't Fall
Dollhouses for little girls and little men of gingham and faded tapestries, rich and royal hues filled the vagabonds, both returning to one's home. It wasn't the grand penthouse with it's windows praying to the sky or the wrought iron elevator doors that creaked when pushed but her own little dollhouse with makeshift inhabitants to make up for the lost pieces that disappeared some age ago. It was the weathered wooden gate that shrieked and whistled as she pushed it open. The familiarity was gone and it is now the missing era of Valhalla, the ride of the Valkyrie; her fingers bury into the wrist of her immortal, heroic Viking.
For a second, she feels hyper-aware of all that is around her while being so deftly mute and dumb to it all. She pulls him with her, pulls him up the front steps, to the front door, the front hallway, up the stairs and to the first bedroom to the front of the house. It isn't there to wonder why the front door wasn't locked or why no one was home or even why the comforting smells that permeated every upholstered piece of furniture now seemed rancid.
His mind reels in the engulfing sea of purples – lilacs, aubergines, huckleberries, dusky sunrise sunset purple all with its indigo and cerulean cousins. For a moment, he has to admit that he is afraid but of what, he can't define. Maybe it was the unknown that scared him or the echoes of a child on the floor, it is inexplicable. He feels his adrenaline run and the momentary endorphin-high just after. He is afraid of this room.
The previous conversation seemed to melt into her soft oatmeal rug, Oscars and kites riding the sheer curtains and drifting far out in the illusionary ocean. She leaves him to stand alone in the middle of the tightening room, taking a seat at the window. The sunlight now seems sinful in the icy confines of her walls; blazing into her pupils and having her relive all of the tired days and restless nights she spent within them. She wonders of lost treasures she now sees and understands, their importance something so hauntingly real.
"Jude, are you okay?" He can't take his eyes off her face, so iridescent and deathly pale in the white-washing sun. He wants to move, to go to her, but the frightening room won't let him. Her eyes dart up at him, so clear yet so murky in their ambiguity.
She returns to the view below; she can't help but think of Jaime. She shakes her head violently, hoping to dispel all of the darkness that wants to seep into the frayed edges.
"I forgot how much I hated this house." She pushes the curtain back over the little window, going to the rescue of the paralyzed man in the center of her floor. She pushes him gently to the bed, taking the personal space next to him. She holds his hand over her own, twisting her fingers in his, his fingertips resting squarely against her thigh. For the first time, she notices the small tattoo on his ring finger, some curling motif she can't make out. The ink transcends ideas and burns itself into the back of her eyes. It seems to mock her, never realizing it there. "This house drove me crazy. Don't you hear the screaming? I do. Fighting and yelling and Sadie crying in the next room. She was supposed to be the strong one, but I knew she wasn't."
He empathizes with her to a disgusting degree. He thinks of his own childhood, the rich father who left early in the game and the poor mother, shattered, with nothing but the monthly alimony. Unlike Jude, he had no siblings. It was them and the television always tuned into the children's programs she enjoyed more than he did.
"I'm tired of talking, Tommy." She hums painfully as she turns away from him only to rest her legs over his. "Tell me a story."
For a mere moment, he thinks she means a fairy tale, some passive-aggressive thing of gingerbread houses and wicked witches. It doesn't take any time to realize that she means of him, something about his life rather than her always giving the details. He weighs and releases a heavy sigh, So many tragedies he could tell.
He looks down at her, her expectantly drifting off to another kind of life.
"My mother was a lot like you." He skips a beat and misses the tempo, the idea of letting it out so beyond him. "She had this abstract way of looking at things and this infectious smile that just ate you up."
He rubs along the length of her calf softly, her skin peeking through the rips comforting.
"She had issues though. She... wasn't really... there. She was..." Again, the flow stops. Painful memories of her tightly drawn curtains and fear of sleeping at night replays itself over and over.
"She was what?"
He stares at the open air earnestly and swears he can count each and ever molecule floating before his eyes.
"She was crazy. She... lost it after my dad walked out. She wouldn't go out and she was always busy around the house, trying to make everything so neat and organized. She would say that if everything was perfect, he'd come back." He sniffs ever so softly, searching out her hand but not being able to look at her after his confession. "It scares me sometimes how much you remind me of her."
She gives his hand a gentle squeeze in the hopes of aiding them both. The time seems eternal before the clatter and chatter from below knocks them out of the wilderness of which they've been roaming. She holds her breath, eager for it to be some mental manifestation rather than the music she is about to face. She sees his posture straighten and his emotional face return back to the open, blank stare that he's turned into art and knows that it is indeed reality.
She knows that now Valhalla is the underworld instead of Odin's paradise, Viking to now lead Valkyrie.