Topic: The Kick

Lerida · Date: 2008-06-25 00:29 EST

Situation wasn't the same anymore. The tide had turned. A window had been shut. A back door left open. An incident that took place sixteen miles out of Barstow now mattered more than it had immediately after it had taken place. Lerida was locked in a room of the Inn, fed, washed, cared for, and then left to silence, prey to memories, to the dull knife of withdrawel. It wasn't a pain so much as an ongoing discomfort.

There was a lot that would have to explored before she got better.

It was getting better, or it was death.

It was funny how it took a killer to save her life.

Lerida · Date: 2008-06-25 23:54 EST

Her fault. She'd been the one to hold scissors to her lifeline.

Outside in the sweltering sun on a strip in Desdichado, covered in tiny pebbles and unshone pearls, a dress of sorts, made of smoothed dust, she screamed at the sky, kept falling to the ground, rolling onto the back and wailing.

Such were her frightful, fitfull dreams locked in her room.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-06 19:36 EST

Back on her own two feet. Shakily. But on her own two feet.

Some optimism was rife in her in place of abandon. That lonely stretch of dirty mile looping back on itself in a sunny shoreline now. Mental imagery changing the masks on her dreams.

Glistening.

She blinks open her eyes alone in the field, stretched and sprawled. Body felt sodden with the rain that had poured, and the scent of snuffed suns. Sand was no where to be found, but when she tasted the air, inhaling of it, it was ash. All ash. Her skin crawled. But she wanted him.

The field was glowering under the sunset sun. It was a strange brightness. Rain came in soft patters, it was summer rain. It was sunny and cloudy, a confused vista. She walked slowly. Hoping to see the shape of his ridgid charcoal in the brush. She felt a loose-noose choke on her neck still. Felt him behind her. On her. Trying to get in her.

There had been many months where she had been in and out town, since the tide changed in the last months of the year prior. Upside down for the most part.

Turning off from the glen, she hurried for the Inn. Lest Mish'Cael discover her gone.

But as she moved she kept the Drifter in her mind. What tangle had he got her in" And why"

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-06 19:43 EST

He asked me if he was what I had run from, left Desdichado because of, or what I had hoped to find. I told him we are more alike than we knew before. But paths recross for a fate to function. Will we war or come to some understanding" I feel more is put out there now, that I do not have to hide. He tests me for my fear, weighs it, and I test him for curiosity.

But he asked the question, the golden one. I cannot shake him from thought now.

He threw me to the ground, held me there, compared himself to a wolf. I get the feeling he's only just begun to chase me down.

The last time I saw him he scratched me, and I saw his eyes colour in lust. I thought perhaps it was because he seems more beast than man, but last night it was not so, and he was man, he was handsome, more than I saw ever before. I am scared of myself around him.

But we are alike. It is a comfort. I am not a woman of crowds, though having common kin is a relief. Is that what I was left with' He throttled me. Spoke sayings in my ear. Divine chaos....and is it"

I can't tell Mish. I can't tell anyone of this. He makes me feel like I might do bad things. Things that'll change me.

I know his name now. And he knows mine.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-06 21:35 EST

Curled up in her bed, showered and steamy, cheeks red from scorching water, she turned onto her side and closed her eyes. It scared her to do so. She found that when she opened them these days the world was changed. Not in increments, but drastic cuts and severe adjustments.

It had taken years for her to get to where she was now. Things were good, and things were also very bad. The scale tipped. Seasaw hearts. She buried her face into the pillow and fought for sleep. It did not come.

Outside, the wind turned the leaves and she smelt autumn come through the gaps between glass and wood. She smelt faraway come in on the air.

Later that night, without heed to Mish's words, no matter how good he had done by her, she packed to go. She couldn't be a broken winged, songless bird anymore. She had to fight her own fight alone. It was though Domikai was a vision more than real. Some drug induced mirage. They fought with one another, when really, were they fighting themselves" What shard was in the other person' Would she end up needing him for the fight' Could she really do this by herself"

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-07 01:05 EST

I drove into Desdichado proper on the sundown of a May winter. The weather was backwards, pulled me outside myself and into twisters. Lost my shoes and belt first night in to a handsome man named Jim. Took my hand and read fortunes like upturned china cups and said salvation was between four corners of a poster bed. I believed him and eagerly lost my graces at eighteen in the shelter of the lies on a broken compass. But I was young and Desdichado opened its arms to me, gave me a chance to sing in English, to learn the mechanics of a way in the west. Each makes his own.

I pretended for a few years that I only wanted to sing the blues and do acrobatics and know the darkness of this city of Bourbon Streets, one after the other. The rest was gravestones, supersonic belltowers, cathedrals for the damned and aliens we called Priests or Teachers or merchants. Heard rumours of the Venera sisters, Venusians, of John Twist who had escaped death and now made a living out of it. That was, until he actually died.

It's a great big world out there, plenty of them, I said to myself one day, and hitched a ride with a wayward star called Jammy, on his last buck and who taught me how to hold a pistol and aim for the moon my whole life.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-07 02:21 EST

I think it is time I kill Lerida. I can't pretend anymore.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-07 19:14 EST

I bought a bottle of Moet' tonight, to give to Mish. Bought him a colt, too. Just to say sorry. He saved my life, it's the least I can do, and all I have permission to. I can't be anything more to him than I am, and I'm not going to try again.

Time I just get on with it. See what I can manage.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-07 19:18 EST

Last night I met a man I haven't seen before in town. I tentatively made an appearance at the Inn after stowing myself away to a back room of a clothing shop in WestEnd I saw for rent. Anyhoo, this man, his name is Marek. Reminds me of old days. He's a road man too, drifter. Always will be compelled to know these folks. He's broad and tall and his leather reminded me of the thousand sunshines on the road, how the sky changes on the back of a motorcycle, and with my face buried into someones back I felt I was flying. I asked him for a ride on his bike, but a storm hit Rhy'Din by then and the Nexus crackled and burped and sent him elsewhere and me too.

I want to feel like I'm flying again. That's all.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-07 19:21 EST

Rumour has it a certain Australian Collector is in town.

She got under my skin that one.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-08 20:11 EST

Some nights she came out to visit the city, to watch the passerby and moonlight from the porch. She sat with her whiskey, sharing it with a stranger, hiding away her laughter in conversation with someone she'd never seen before while Horam raged inside at his bad luck.

The streets were different, had changed with the autumn wind in her life. She tread carefully, in and out of avenue, speech slow and refrained, she didn't say a lot. There was something about strangers she liked. More that she could be, because they didn't know. Her pulse quickened.

Changing the guards in her mind, there was a track to nowhere still. Wine cooling in a fridge. A blue butcher on the distance. Her mind didn't go to those that she had loved and cared about before. She didn't think on anyone from the last two years. Those people she had counted. Only three remained as reminders. As friends. As ones she turned to for various engagements.

A hand rises out of the silk of skirt where she massaged a tight calf, to run fingers over her back. It hurt. A bruise had blossomed. It was gray and purple. The back of her head felt to ache sometimes, she only noticing so when trying to sleep.

Autumn had come. The leaves were dying. The tree was naked.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-08 21:42 EST

If there was a time when the winds had blown over and through the hallways of her bones, it was now. Movement hurt. The pain of what was taken no longer beginning to rush through her. Exits and entry ways. Nothing more.

Poring over pages in dusted, faded old catalogues, she satiated herself with fantasy. Pretending escape. Feigning a smile. It was beginning to take its toll.

Outside, the sky was bitter. Filled with blue. No clouds. She lowered her eyes and lifted up the small vial. Should she?

With a launching arm she threw the harmless glass into the distance, watched it hurtle to the ground. Sand sprayed in its falling. Ether drowning into the dust. She fought back the tears.

Turned, and made her way to makeshift home.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-11 06:20 EST

Frustration had permeated her actions. Taken to a bottle of whiskey a few nights in a row. Been strumming her guitar so hard her nails peeled back and edges bled.

She decided she needed some resolve to get back up.

To make the kick.

She would build a home, out in Marban. Do it good.

Lerida · Date: 2008-07-15 18:55 EST

Getting up off dusty road, running, sun dress bleached from the sky..

running, thunder storm and muddied heels, running..

Up the incline through the cemetary for the hills..

running, lightning and treading murky water, running

Steep chasm love bad luck dead love going down the drain spinning...spinning...

Running, running..

On the road.