Author's Notes
Nope. No sexy times just, yet. Sorry. I've got to take the scenic route, because that's just how I am. Again, had a blast writing this. Emily characterization is fun.
Warnings: frequent life-changing experiences, original American character, paint, sprinklers, hookahs, and catacombs
Special Note to Reviewer Wow! I have been craving a review like yours since I posted the prologue. I am so touched that you are enjoying this as much as you are. Thank you so much for your kind words.
Abnormally Attracted to Sin
Chapter 5: Starling
By Persephone's Nautical Nun
She lets the glow sticks drop, and we're left staring at each other across the span of the bed, the black light blurring our features, turning us into caricatures of our original selves. I think we both realize that we just shared a moving, once in a lifetime experience that can never be gotten back, and we have to have a moment of silence in remembrance.
"I think that was the most beautiful thing I've ever experienced," I think she says, but I'm not entirely sure I heard her. I saw her mouth move, but it felt as though the words just appeared in my head. That's kind of cool.
"Yeah," I say, because I feel like I've just returned from the moon.
She sighs and looks around us, finding her phone sitting on the floor next to the mattress. She opens it and squints against the light it shines into her eyes. It does seem awfully bright. She looks at it for a moment, and then exclaims, "Whoa!"
"What?" I ask, playing with my pacifier.
"All the letters on my screen just got up and shifted to the right," she explains evenly, like it happens every day. "That was cool," she adds as an after thought.
I dig my own phone out of my pocket to see what she's talking about. My letters don't get up and move, but they do look projected and kind of 3-D, which I think is cool. Hmm. It's only midnight. It seems like I've been here forever.
"It's time to move on," she says sadly, looking around the room. She's right. We've gotten what this room has to offer. It seems almost blasphemous to stay in here much longer.
She tosses one of her tiny pink glow sticks at me, and pushes herself up off the mattress. I slide my hand across the fabric to poke the strip of plastic, before finally picking it up.
"Come on," she says, extending a hand to me to help me up. "Let's go on an adventure."
I take her hand and let her help me up, but I haven't stood in a while, and I almost forget how. I have to brace myself against her for a few seconds before I regain my balance. Skin feels interesting. I find myself stroking her hand where out skin meets absentmindedly, just because it feels nice.
She presses her lips together and looks away, and it's only then that I realize I've made her uncomfortable. I let go of her hand and mumble an apology. I don't even know why I did it.
What was I thinking?
Was I thinking at all?
"It's okay," she says, and I find her voice difficult to read. Then again, I'd think I'd find reading anything fairly difficult.
And without further discussion, we're outside of the room and back into the close and heavy hallway, feeling our way down. I notice that the stone against my hand is smooth and clean. That's when I realize that everything's been spotless, and I understand that somebody must have scrubbed the place down before the party started.
There was a lot of effort on someone's part in order to throw this thing together.
Whoever that person is, is my new hero.
The hallway turns, and I think we're somewhere behind the main hall. The hallway opens up into a large square room. Someone's covered the floor with a shag carpet, and dyed it into a lime green and black spiral. Effy's lying in the center of the room, moving her arms and legs along the carpet. She seems to be staring at the ceiling.
There's a guy with long hair and a goatee sitting cross legged in the corner next to an amp with a guitar laid across his lap. He's playing with an effect pedal, and he seems to favor the delay function. Emily makes her way over to him, and I get the feeling they know each other.
"What are you doing?" I ask Effy, as I approach her.
"I'm falling," is all she says.
"What?"
She reaches up and grabs my hand, pulling me down next to her. She points up towards the ceiling, and that's when I realize it's one giant mirror. It looks as though we're both falling into the center of the spiral.
I start to believe I really am after looking at it long enough.
I roll over onto my stomach, running my fingers through the carpet. I close my eyes and try to focus on the sounds the guy with the guitar is making. He's plucking notes and simple rhythms, but it sounds layered and intricate, due in no small part to his delay pedal.
"There are parallelograms coming out of your music," Effy calls to him from beside me.
He stops playing. "What?" he asks, sounding excited. He's got an American accent.
"There are parallelograms coming out of your music," Effy repeats, more forcefully.
"I can't believe you just said that," he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. I open my eyes and look towards him to discover that he seems really moved by what Effy said. Emily's smiling, looking between him and Effy, clearly moved herself.
"Hey, do you want to run through that song?" he asks Emily after a few moments of silence. "I feel really like, in the zone, you know?" he says, gesturing to himself. "Whole albums are written on acid, man."
I start to wonder, hearing him and Emily talk like this, if this wasn't her idea, rather than Cook's.
"Yeah, Shane, we can do that," she says, still smiling. She walks across the room, arching an eyebrow as she passes by me. I think I really like her from this angle.
In the opposite corner from Shane and his guitar, there's a mike stand and another amp. It's in one of the corners on the wall with the door, which would explain why I didn't see it. I didn't even bother looking behind me. I look over to the other two corners, and see both a bass and a keyboard respectively.
What, no drums?
"Testing, testing," Emily's voice comes to me, loud, from across the room. "Play something," she tells Shane. He starts to play a simple riff. "Testing, 1, 2," she says again, though I can barely hear her. "Testing, testing," one more time. She's turned up the volume, and now I can hear her against his guitar.
His riff changes, slows down, becomes more groovy than rock. I feel myself floating away on it, somewhere deceptively dark.
Emily starts to sing not long after, and I don't know if I can describe it. It was pretty, that's the big thing. She started soft, and her voice built up and built up over time, to where she was belting out some of the most horrible lines. No, really. The song was so wonderfully gorgeous, but the lyrics were full of pain, and anger. She took me to places I didn't want to go, didn't even know I was capable of going, and didn't even know they existed.
Can she really feel all of the things she's shown me tonight all of the time?
She fades out, and he starts to play. It's obvious that he has no direction. I finally bring myself to look at Emily, and she's swaying to his music, her eyes closed. She's got her bottom lip trapped between her teeth, and it looks like she's on the brink of something.
She opens her mouth and starts to sing along with the guitar. There are no words, she's just vocalizing, but I'm off again to far away lands I don't bother thinking about on a daily basis. It's surprisingly full of soul and over way too quickly.
"Oh, my god," Emily says as she slides down to the floor on the other side of Effy. "This feels fantastic."
"I know," Effy says, still watching us fall on the ceiling. "That was really good," she says, absentmindedly.
"Yeah," Emily says softly. "It's fun."
I remember that my hand's clenched in a fist around something, and when I open my fingers, all I notice is a strange pink glow coming from my hand.
"Those things again?" Effy asks, and I know she's talking to Emily.
"Hey, you know they're fun," Emily retorts, digging into her pocket and tossing one on top of Effy.
She picks it up and holds it between her thumb and forefinger, examining it. "Yeah. They are," she admits.
I see Emily raise a leg into the air, only to swing it back down again. She uses it as momentum to spring up, and I'm amazed at her coordination skills. Surely, that was a risk. There was no way she went into that knowing she'd land on both feet.
At least she wobbled a little. That makes me feel better. She walks over to me, and reaches down to help me up again. "Well, we're off," she says. "We have more adventuring to do."
Effy raises a brow slightly, but leaves it at that. I take Emily's hand and let her pull me up, because following her just makes a lot of sense right now.
I'm not exactly thinking about things. For once in my life, I'm just going with the flow.
We leave the opposite way we came in, and the hallway is exactly the same, except we pass two sets of stairs, one going up and one going down before we get to another room like the one we were in earlier with the black light.
The room is bare, and there are paint supplies in the middle of the floor. Cook and Freddie are in here, painting on the walls. It's obvious they weren't the first ones to do this. Freddie's got blue paint all along his left forearm, and Cook's head is covered in green. They both look like they're having fun.
It's good to see them together. They don't hang out like they used to.
They both look up when they enter, and smile brightly. "Hey!" Cook yells, waving his paintbrush, splattering paint everywhere. "Join us!" he says, pointing to the paint on the floor.
Emily wanders over to Freddie's side to see what he's working on. It looks like some kind of nightmare mushroom from where I'm standing, but I can't be sure. She tilts her head and stares for a minute, watching him work. Then she turns around and goes to the paint, pouring some bright red onto a palette. She returns to Freddie's side and looks at his painting some more.
I'm amazed when she sticks her fingers into the paint and smudges it onto Freddie's creation.
She's not covering it up. It's like she's working with him. She's spreading the red around the object, spreading it outwards, like this mushroom is exploding color onto everything within its radius.
"Why don't you paint something, Naomi?" Cook asks me in my ear. I realize I've just been watching Emily and Freddie the whole time. I turn my gaze to Cook, and he's just smiling happily at me. He bends down and picks up a paintbrush, thrusting it in my direction.
I take it, but don't keep it for long. My eyes have caught sight of some pastels lying off to the side. My hands are going to hate me for days, but I just can't seem to help myself. I find a spot on the wall between a totem pole and an alien and start to draw without direction. I mix colors, and create curly cues the drive into darkness. I don't know how long I sat there for, but eventually, I have to reach in order to add onto anything, and the totem pole and alien have become a part of the reaching.
"Wow, that's really something, Naomi," Freddie says, and I nearly jump out of my skin. I had forgotten I wasn't alone.
"Oh, yeah," I hear Emily say. She sounds like she's in awe. "I love the use of color."
"Way to go, Naomikins," Cook says, coming up to me and wrapping an arm around my shoulder. "I get the feeling that that," he says, pointing to my spot on the wall, "is going to be one of the last things covered up in this layer of art."
I'm not quite sure I know what he means, but I smile at the compliment he's obviously trying to give.
Except now that I've stopped working I feel the pastel residue on my hands, and they feel unbearably dirty. This must be what Lady Macbeth felt in the infamous "spot" scene, because I really don't think they'll ever be clean. There's color caked into the creases of my palms and fingers, and no amount of rubbing is going to make it go away.
Emily grabs my hand before I can drive myself insane. "Calm down," she says softly, and I do. It just makes sense, after all.
Cook points to a door in the room that isn't the one we cam in, and I think he's trying to tell us to go through it. Emily nods and guides me over to the door, making sure to avoid the paint supplies strewn across the floor.
I don't know if there was a drain in the middle of the floor of this next room when the church was built, which is giant by the way, but there is, now. Someone has managed to set up a sprinkler system, and there are people running through them. On the far side of the room, I can see Katie and JJ running around each other and laughing.
"Come on," she says, lifting both of her shirts up and over her head and dropping them next to the door. "This'll make you feel better," she continues, unbuckling her belt. I don't know what she's talking about. I'm not even sure I register that she's speaking English to me. All I know is that she's standing in her bra and panties, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, now.
She sighs and her shoulders slump and I'm fascinated with the way her collarbone moves. "Come on, Naomi," she says, stepping closer to me and pulling at the hem of my shirt. "Trust me; you don't want to do this fully clothed." She tugs upwards on my shirt, and my arms instinctively go up to let her disrobe me.
Oh, fuck!
She moves on to trying to undo my pants, and that's when my body starts responding to me. Her hands feel like fire, and I gasp at the sensation. I grab her wrist and push her away from me, my eyes wide. She looks at me gently, like you would a confused child. "It's okay," she says. "Just take your pants off and run through the sprinklers," she explains. "You'll feel better," she says again.
Oh. So that's what we're doing.
Well, okay.
I slide my pants down my leg and set my clothes in a heap next to Emily's. When I look up, she's already gone, and I've lost her in the mist.
Why does that bother me?
I walk out into the spray, and jump at how cold it is. The temperature is quickly overshadowed by how wonderful the water feels. I can feel every drop sliding against my skin, and I feel myself becoming rejuvenated by the second. I rub my hands together, watching as the water turns a dark purple as it runs across my palms and down my wrists. I run my hands through my hair, and across my face, and I feel better than I've ever felt before.
I start to run, because it just makes sense. I feel my muscles working in my legs, and I don't think I've ever been more aware of my own body.
Until I tripped over someone and we both went colliding onto the stone floor.
"Sorry, sorry," JJ's saying, scrambling to get up, and help me at the same time. I wonder what tonight's been like for old JJ. I'm sure it's been an experience.
Just like mine.
"Oh, good god," he says distractedly, and I turn to look at what has caught his eye.
This is fucking weird.
There are two Emilys.
There she is, standing in front of me, looking worried, and there she is, standing to the side, looking amused. I look between the two of them, trying to convince myself that I'm not going crazy.
I start to fold into myself, because the conundrum of Emily being in two places at once is such that I can't really handle. It completely defies the laws of physics, and my mind just can't wrap itself around the idea. It feels as though the entire world is pushing down on my head.
I think I even start to whimper.
"Fuck sake," the Emily standing off to the side mutters. The Emily standing in front of me glares at her, and looks at me with a sadly amused smile.
Wait a minute.
Katie.
Sisters.
Twins.
Right.
I look at both of the Emilys again, and quickly figure out which one is Katie. I don't believe they're identical like they say they are. Katie's got a rounder face, and wider eyes. Emily's eyes are soft. All of her features are generally softer. Emily's nose is also just a little bit thinner than Katie's.
I sigh and force myself up to my feet. I walk between Emily and Katie, back towards the door we came in at. I put my clothes on quickly; glad Emily talked me into taking them off in the first place. It felt good to get into something dry and warm.
As I pick up my pants, I notice something on the floor. It's the little glow stick again. It must have fallen out of my pocket.
Emily's putting her clothes on next to me, but I'm too busy looking at the glowing piece of plastic in my hand. "Is it supposed to change color?" I ask, noticing how the glow pulsated. It turned a darker shade of pink with every pulse.
Emily just laughs, and refuses to answer. Maybe there are no right answers right now.
"Come on," she says, smiling gently and leading me back out of the paint room and into the hallway.
"I wonder what's up those stairs," I say, noticing them for the second time.
"Let's find out," Emily says, grabbing my hand and leading me up the stairs.
It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the red light. We've managed to make our way up into the choir balcony. Emily goes down to the front row, sitting down next to a couple of guys and a hookah. I follow her, because really, what else am I going to do? I take a seat next to her and continue to examine the glow stick.
A few minutes go by, and then she's offering me a hose. I try to decline, but she's not having any of it. I take the hose and hold it to my mouth, inhaling whatever it is they've got going in the bowl.
I exhale slowly, savoring the taste of the smoke as it passes over my tongue. I can't place it, but the sheesha is delicious. Kind of fruity, but with a mellow sweetness to it. Emily smiles at my obvious approval.
I pass the hose on, and start playing with the glow stick she threw at me earlier. It's not as bright as it used to be, but it still glows. I move it in my fingers, turning it over and over. I think Emily and the two guys are pointing people out on the floor below us and profiling them for fun, but I'm not really paying attention.
"Oh, holy shit!" I exclaim a few minutes later.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Emily asks, whipping her head around to face me.
"My hand has six fingers," I explain, staring at it in horror.
She laughs and sighs, and I think she's relieved. Well, I'm not. My hand is not supposed to have six fingers. "It's just the tracers, dear," she says, stilling my hand. "You were moving all of your fingers and it only looked like there were six of them," she explains. "Look," she says, turning fully to me and taking my hand in hers. She counts out each of my fingers, finishing on five. "See? Only five," she says, smiling.
Well, that's a relief.
"How are you feeling?" she asks me. I wish I knew what to tell her. I don't really know how to describe anything right now. "Kinda heavy? Maybe numb?" she elaborates.
I nod dimly, and I realize I do feel these things. She nods slightly. "You're coming down," she says. "Things are going to start getting unpleasant," she explains.
I'm fairly certain that's something you should never tell a person in the waves of LSD.
Before I have time to panic over what she said, she's up and dragging me down the stairs, away from the red light and the men with the hookah. She guides me across the hallway and down another set of stairs.
It takes me a minute to figure out where we are. The hall is narrow and keeps branching off into other halls, which look like they branch off in turn. The walls are lined with old fashioned lanterns, though they're electric.
Oh, how fun. We're in the catacombs.
She guides me through turn after turn, and I'm afraid we're going to get lost down here. I feel a rush of panic course through me and reach for Emily's hand, not knowing what else to do. I look around, and realize that the shelves have been knocked out for the allowance of larger cubicles. There are old, gross mattresses lying in most of them, many of them already occupied.
That's just morbid.
It gets darker the deeper we go, until I can just make out Emily's figure in the dark. Finally, she chooses a spot, and sits herself down, patting the spot next to her. I do her one better, and lay down next to her.
She pulls the spliffs that Freddie rolled us earlier out of the wooden box in her pocket and lights them both. She hands the larger one to me, and tells me to smoke it. All of it.
I do as she tells me, and the pressure in my head lessens. There are just so many thoughts, and they all want to be heard, and I don't know how to sift through them. My mind is going a two hundred kilometers an hour, and I'm afraid it's going to explode.
The weed slows it, though, and now I know why Cook told us to hold onto them until we needed them.
"Jesus, it's nearly four in the morning," Emily mumbles, putting out her spliff on the floor. "Come here," she says, taking mine from me and putting it out as well. She turns me to face her, and lies me down next to her. "Try and get some rest," she says, brushing the hair out of my eyes. Her touch is anchoring somehow, and I take comfort in it.
"I don't know that I can," I say, curling into her. "My head…"
"I know," she whispers in my ear, wrapping an arm around me, and making tiny circles on my back with her fingertips. "But try anyway. Just close your eyes."
I did, and shortly after, my body began to feel as though something was crawling, just underneath the surface of my skin. I tensed, and Emily tightened her hold on me.
Thank god, because I think I would have tried to tear my own skin off if she hadn't been holding onto me.
They say the come down from LSD is the hardest there is.