Topic: Part 1 - Black Flowers Blossom

Wren Juke · Date: 2008-04-04 12:14 EST

In a state of total unease, Wren stood staring in thought at the ceiling above her, and the single light bulb that hung from it. It was a cold, open plan venue that she had taken herself off to, by no real plan, and without any measure of time or distance, just a vague, if foolishly casual optimism and idea of what she would be able to do, if and when trouble struck its ugly tongue into the night, spreading its grotesque whispers in various ears.

The warehouse, from what she could smell and see, had once been a storage sector, a lockerhouse, for butchers. Hanging from the very furthest righthand, top corner were rows and rows of hook and chain, brown with age, red like grapejuice towards the bottom with the smell and rust of dried, long ago blood. In the corner directly opposite sat numerous packets and pans and even what looked to be a knife lacking a handle, propped against a cannister filled with something she couldn't identify from her view at a safe angle, and next to that large, industrial freezers, turned off and empty and silver; steel that looked freshly cleaned at first glance, but upon closer inspection reveal itself to be caked with grease stains, which she imagined was the oil from blood or fresh muscle moved across it at some point in time, and dust, finely coated and covering the walls.

Along and up to the lefthand side was the back office style room she sat in, which would have served at some point as a very meagre work room for perhaps a superior, or perhaps even only as a lunch room. There were no books, no papers, pens, cabinets, nothing smelt of people, nothing felt like human life had been here. Just a single, old, tattered pillow, out of place for what the spot was, and what Wren surmised to have been left behind by an urchin or bum, who had been curious enough to get inside and decided to stay a night, before being spooked, as Wren was feeling frightfully so now.

Heaving herself up she realised what it was that bothered her so much. It wasn't the lack of human presence, with her at the time, or that uneasy feeling that something had happened here, it was that life had never been here, that the warehouse had always felt like a boarded up wasteland, an empty, giant, lonely, still, sterile, cold to the touch atmosphere, and it was raw. It was like some horrible narrative lived in the air within the enclosed walls.

Standing, she gave a refreshing shake of the head, checked the gun clipped to her side and headed out of the room, having gone over the place several times, it was now twilight and she didn't want to be here for sundown. Her pace across the expanse between her and the main exit was brisk, and her eyes constantly panned left to right.

Outside, she jerked, clutching her chest a moment, as a rat scampered off down the very side of the warehouse and in through one of the small slats of the facade. She stared after it a moment, drawing that had down along the front of her blouse and giving a sigh.

Something was wrong.

Wren Juke · Date: 2008-04-09 00:16 EST

Wind in the wires
It?s the sigh of wild electricity
I?m on the edge of a cliff
Surpassing
Comfort and security

But here comes a gale
A crippling anger
Sea birds are blown
Into the rocks
Grace is lost to thunder

Thunder
Pressure
Getting
Lower

But see her waters break
Rain falling to the sea
Into a granite wave

A unit
A family

It?s just a sigh
Just a sigh

This wild electricity
Made static by industry
Like a bird in an aviary
Singing to the sky
Just singing to be free

- Patrick Wolf "Wind in the Wires"

Wandering along the edges of the desks, alone in the office, she looked over the decorations set up by the other girls. She hadn't met them yet, with all her running around, and she supposed it was best that way, that she was just another face in the crowd, someone that nobody really knew, even if that meant suspending knowledge of herself, from herself, pretending that she didn't do what she did when she wasn't roaming the streets with a very certain eye.

But it was becoming harder to do this, to be like a spy, a slowhand, killing off the part of her that was pensive, that averted her eyes. It was ticking over in her mind the worry for herself, that maybe she wasn't cut out for this. It didn't stem from insecurity within her own abilities, she knew she was smart, that she was good with people when she had to be, that she had a good head on her shoulders, it came from, instead, the part that reckoned, that wondered whether she had the strength of heart to make believe for as long as she had to, in the face of friends and foe.

But Wren, wasn't that thinking too far ahead, wasn't that tying yourself up in chains for no reason? Alain had told her directly, "You're on top of your game", she was out there making contacts, gaining business, and maybe too, some trust. But at what price did she have to distance herself? She didn't feel she could tell anyone about her doubts, though in Faenix's face she knew she had a friend, there was holding back. She'd not told her boyfriend a thing, and certainly she would slip, she was to him an open book, a tea leaf face, with lifelines that he read like braille when fingers held her own.

But she had direction, more than the back and forth between factory and home. She wasn't built for that life, she was small of frame, she was a delicate thing, even with the resolve underneath, her fingers were rough, though getting smoother away from the machinery and chemicals, and her knees bruised for the work she had done there, bumps and scrapes, even now, weeks after the Storm. She didn't miss watching the grease and soot run down the drain every night, and forgetting she was a woman. Afterall, didn't she look more human these days, less ghost. No more were the days of layered shirts, vests and baggy pants, oil streaked cheeks, only her old faithful, the blue, frayed beanie remained, and only because of sentimental reasons.

To live this life suited her character more than she realised, she was being doubtful when one of her greatest qualities was her pragmatism.

Circling around one of the spare desks she walked up the center of the office to the chair she had slung her jacket over, and pulled it on, and from a pocket that tired old beanie. It was then she half turned to the window, at the howling wind blaring down the lane outside, startled some by shudder along her back. She stood listening to the gusty wail, very nearly shutting her eyes, smiling, in the deserted, coloured shadows of the office, as streetlight and moonlight intermingled and refracted through the glass, throwing themselves like streamers along the walls, shivering with the effect from branches on the curb, their silhouettes waving in the rough wind.

Wren moved for the window.

Gazing out into the night, she placed a gloved hand to the windowpane and stared at the street, blindly. She was tired. Even so, she was happy, and she had a lot to be thankful for. Intuition was something for the realm, in her mind, of the supernatural, even the occult, but something did stir inside, an overwhelming sense, standing there, solitary and frozen, of well being, and calm. That everything was going to be ok.

Wren Juke · Date: 2008-04-09 22:25 EST

Squeak went the metal that clung to the rubber of the tire she was draped across, some swan, some sylph, in the shadows of an overgrown willow, by the abandoned fairground. She slumped back, and turned rolled back gaze to the sky, upside down, until the grass was her sky, and she swung from the chandelier of the earth, to and frough, little bird.

The moon was peaking, but the sun was still around, lurking on the outer edges of the forest line. Between her and them, those dark trees of the black wilderness there, were twigs and rust and dust, a cemetary for the forgotten, outside of the town and the city, far from the sea by the docks, here it smelt wild, it smelt old.

She falls back and barefoot, shivering in the thrill of twilight cold over her body with the twitching touch of a tentative lover, she moved through the trees nearest her, leaping over stone, skirting bramble and fallen log, and drifting into the hedges and around and through and under arches of roses and thimble sized turtledoves, and into this broken wonderland, smiling to herself with some queer excitement, as she walked hurriedly, on the balls of her feet to the largest structure here; the Loste Hope Ferriswheel.

It loomed, it towered, it creaked, it bent gently to sway, it promised and it forgave the light that revealed its scars. Wren, in wistful effervescence, leaped onto one of the old, cracking seats, tight with dirt, and swung her legs out wide, kicking of her shoes, and staring at the world around her. Fingers curled about the handles beside her, in this cage, this cage upon which was a ceiling, painted in waves of a faded blue sea, trimmed in green, with mermaids, barebreasted and teasing, swimming along the edges. Wren got onto her knees to look at the next one up, and on its ceiling was a sideshow scene, and the ringmaster.

She grinned.

The darker it got, the more lonely and desperate the landscape. She walked past old Gravatrons, rollercoasters in their dead serpent trails, like fallen beasts, slaughtered and left to be eaten of by times teeth.

She comes to a pause, by a fairyfloss stand, and stares inside the cubed glass. Flies and a giant spider knotted in threads of web returned her stare, a mirror beyond, painted in flowers. It was a dream, something that pulled at her hyperlogic; this place, safe haven, own world to be tread within, no fear, and sundown was never, really.

Sighing, she walked to a plot of daisies and sat within them, combing her fingers through her hair, and laying on her side, to stare at a once joyful place, now at half mast.

Wren Juke · Date: 2008-04-10 02:12 EST

Sometime during the morning light she awoke, lifting her eyes up and staring at the world upside down as she rolled her head backwards into the grass, leaning back on her elbows as she gently, gingerly rose her sleep tense body. It had been a dead sleep, but uncomfortable, she had fallen asleep at an odd angle on a bed of leaves, pockets of grass but mostly dirt her bed for the night. Crawling forward she got to her knees and stood, barefoot, eyes wide, slowly turning in a circle, staring about herself, at the still and quiet carnival site.

For a moment there, Wren swore to herself she could hear a calliope, muffled by the thunder that rolled overhead, the pitter patter of new rain, that dampened her white dress and darkened its lace with its water stains, as she ran for the woods, laughing, arms out, sodden and uncaring of the fact; she felt free.

For the first time in her life, she was living.

Oh, how it was to be out of the factory. She no longer held the faint tang of metal on her skin, instead, this wet morning, this dreamy morning, she smelt like mulch, and cotton candy, rinsed of her pensive face, and wearing a true smile.

Wren Juke · Date: 2008-04-11 02:15 EST

There was nothing unusual, or spritely, in Wren's demeanor as she stepped into the office the next morning, striding down the row of desks for her own, to set up. She felt refreshed, and her eyes showed it, brighter than usual, less smudged with that dark around the eyes from her stress of late and lack of sleep. Her hair was pulled back with many pins into a makeshift updo, still just that bit too short to do anything fancy with, and her clothes were lighter; a cream blouse and a khaki brown skirt, beige high heels, and a fitted black jacket. Removing it and her beanie, she shook out her hair a bit, shaping her tousled shag into some order, and sat herself down, preparing her desk and flicking over the notes she had made a couple nights before.

The information she had so far was limited, but still, it was something. Most of the notes upon her work desk pertained to maps and fittings of the various warehouses she had been investigating, and it was then while she looked over them that Faenix popped into her mind. He had mentioned mapping and his own work in a similar field, and so looking across to her notebook, she wrote his name in it to remind herself to ask him for his assistance in the hope he could share what he knew so far.

Biting her lip, she looked across the room to Alain's empty desk and frowned a bit, returning her shaded face to the notes. She hadn't seen him in a bit and wondered how he was. The rest of the office was quiet, only the stirring of the wind beneath the door, and the faint groans that all buildings made. She sat silently for a little while, going over all that she had taken down, but always coming back to the little white card with the calligraphy across it with Joe's details and his residence at Dickies, Dockside.

Later today, she decided, she would make a little trip by coach to the seaside, for lunch, and to do a bit of peekaboo.

Wren Juke · Date: 2008-05-01 02:50 EST

Sleep came easy and heavy to Wren Juke these nights. She did not fit or awaken, but awoke in the position she fell asleep in, and stretch, shower, dress and brush her hair, piecing herself together for the day from the weightlessness of a good sleep, growing heavier and heavier with apprehension and the days duties, laid over her with each article of clothing, each ritual in the morn'. The day light was strikingly bright upon her window, it turned her eye, and before leaving, Wren stepped up to the sill and pulled the latch down, pausing to watch the milling street below. It was a quieter area of the market, but she always spied something that caused a smile; children playing, an errant dog on some mischievious mission, the slant of sunset appearing from between buildings across the way... She always made sure to stop now and again, if not, she was sure she would lose her mind.

Her gaze tipped up, to sky, not only hazy and white, but from it came gusts that blew up thick and woolly, having Wren shiver and wrap her arms up to her shoulders, squeezing to warm the skin beneath. She felt brooding, not dismal, but her thoughts were far fetching and not pertaining to the here and now. She had been to Dickies, visited warehouses with Willen, returned to the one in question of her own accord, and caught up on paperwork so to do her best to appease Alain. And truthfully, it was with him her concern lay. For both of them. She had not seen him still, and working so autonomously was unexpected and however liberating, gave her some disquiet. Did he trust her that much? Whyever was he was distant? She trusted herself enough to get by, day in and day out, and to not worry herself over the man to whom she admired and worked for, but sometimes she felt a tinge of anxiety, especially after her run in with Joe.

The wood hitting the sill, lock pulled to tight, she hurried out of her attic apartment and down the stairs onto the street, the wind catching her, sending her hair into streamers, as she hurried off to inspect the Pawn broker, half in step with her work, and half for some simple leisure, to browse, to be distracted from the myriad thoughts crushing like velvet in her mind, bending and slithering, confusion and question.

But as she walked there was another man that descended over her, a stark, handsome shadow. For a moment, as she walked, her eyes closed and she saw him, a glimpse that caught her breath and slowed her heart, and she forced him away, stranger-lover, Him with the oddly sinister-soft smile and violent longing in black eyes; and with a frown ducked into the nearest store; for Wren Juke too evaded herself, pining a foreign emotion to the girl of smokestack cities and grease-smudged cheeks, hidden in factory for most of her days.