Topic: Speaking of the Devil

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-03 10:07 EST

There are so many things to answer, all those mouths that are asking. The world to be touched but I can't sleep and so tried reading a book left behind in this room by some stranger, and became absorbed by it, and now it is finished and tucked under the pillow with favourite passages circled and pages dogeared and my mind spanning with stars. I go to the window now and again to see the street but keep the curtains closed full most of the time, because I am trying to sleep, to hide, to be still. And then sometimes I go to the door to listen to the sounds in the hall and wonder what I am doing, curling my fingers to the wood, resting there feeling so tired.

And I want to see Mish but that is a bad idea. But Stitch is away and I know no one else and I can't see Cilla I can't and I need someone to talk to, to be grounded. I am frightened by what is happening and somehow the idea of familiar faces is comforting even though I avoided everyone for so long, wanting to be alone, with myself, with my music.

I am going to go for a walk. I will see how I feel then.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-03 10:14 EST

There are moments of my life that I have not told a soul. Eclipsing them with better times. I don't think of my aunt. The one who told me the world was not for me, that my mouth should be shut and my eyes down and my hands behind my back. That I shouldn't be seen or heard. That the world did not want to touch me.

And then I was fine when I ran away and later years and years even more than I heard she was gone for good that hatred had consumed her and I decided I would only perish in a flame of passion, in intensity, in being raw and alive and loved and loving. I ran and I ran and I ran.

And now I have stopped to see that some of these memories, some of these sorrows are not mine, and I don't know who they belong to because aunt died years ago and this pain, it sears. And it is not mine. Like a fingerprint, it has it's own design, and it is not from this heart.

I told a man tonight that us singers, of the blues and the ballads and the torch, we carry your pain around inside us so you don't have to, and I think this might be true. That I am holding the pain of every sad face in the crowd in my belly, which mourns for them. Even now.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-03 20:06 EST

The dusk in her voice gave way, land slide to cool air as she watched the sky shadow with clouds.

The song died on her lips, and she put down the guitar, next to her on the quilt. Rain battered the pane and tickled the rooftop. She felt so very alone.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-04 20:37 EST

It was cold and wet and late when she wandered into the club. Neon lights, some broken, shining dull across the sheeny black floor. Workers were on ladders taking care of the repairs, all without shirts and hairless. They didn?t oogle her but waved, with friendly full smiles. She offered a sunny smile in turn, taking herself through the dark for the bar counter where she shared a few words with a tender in a silk vest of red and purple who directed her up a flight of metal stairs that led to what looked like a dj booth overhead. With a word of thanks she turned on her scarlet heel and wended her way through upturned chairs on tables towards the railing of the staircase, her heart racing. She couldn?t believe she was doing this, again. She was better than this. Wasn?t she?

?Old habits?, she murmured as she took the last step and reached out to tap the black door. But it opened wide. She was expected.

?So your Lerida. Glad you could drop by, baby. Come in?

The tall figure stepped aside so she could pass through. The room smelt of cologne overdose and cigarette smoke. She coughed a little and covered her mouth politely, stepping back to seat herself demurely on loveseat, as directed by the man she only knew as King.

?So, you done this sorta thing before you say. Do you run off or are you a stayer, baby? I need to know your loyalty before I know your body?

With her gaze fixed and hard she nodded curtly and crossed her legs.

?That won?t be a problem?

He leant back, shoving fists down in either sharply tailored pant pocket and watched her.

?So, how about we get to the fun part. Underwear, full turn?

Without a drop of nerves on her brow or roses in her cheeks, she stood and peeled her jacket off, already imbuing her motions with the slow groove of a song in her mind.

King stood and walked towards the door, this was a private show. As it closed, the gap revealed Lerida turning her back in a snakehipped, timed spin, shirtless, hands reaching around behind her to pull down the waistline of figure hugging pants.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-04 23:33 EST

By the time she left it was dawn and the streets were beginning to warm. The road was already taking fugitive heat into its surface as she leant back against a brickfront delapidation and slowly let her back down it until she was crouching and eventually sitting flat on the concrete, head in her hands, massaging her temples.

The headache had begun while she was still in that tiny room with King. Her head had started spinning but she had kept the front up, no smiling, no winking, just moving to the song that wasn't playing but that both could hear.

?Any special tricks, pet??

She knew she?d already sold him. Salaciously he had eyed her up, like other pins had. ?Come on, pussycat. I see it in your eyes?

And that?s when she had walked over to the plain shoulder bag she?d brought in with her, unzipped it, and gingerly encouraged into her arms and around her shoulders, Rosie. Her tonne of boa.

He said he?d pay her more if she used that ?thing? up there a few nights a week. He clapped briskly, raised his brows, and while the snake clearly terrified him he knew it was marketable. A good lookin' gal with a snake was a hard act to beat.

Looking over to that bag now, as she sat in that alley with Rosie, she shrugged and looked down to her pale, soft hands. Yes, she was too good for this, but she needed the money.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-05 10:48 EST

It all happens at once, doesn't it.

I haven't had a lot of time with Stitch lately, and last night we went back to his and had a blast together. I really do love the man, and all his irregularities. I asked if he wanted to go out and see a band with me one night, just us, none of our troubles, no tag alongs, just music and him and I and he liked the idea so I was and am looking forward to it.

I left his near dawn to come to mine only to hear word that Val is back in town.

I don't even know how I feel past excited. I do, I am happy about it, just I have spent so many nights, hoping and wishing that that lanky troubador would come strolling in like another day, like he'd never been gone for days on end, for months and what became years that a dull and faithless trip comes upon me and I can't believe it. And thinking of what he might be like, what he's done, how I still feel about him, whom I have called the love of my life, and I ignore it and pretend it isn't happening because it didn't for so long and I felt that all my hopes had been dashed with a mid evening wind. The same one that brought him back, I bet, that brought word of his arrival.

I've got this job now, and that's what I'm going to focus on. That and finding some concerts for Jack and I to go to.

And at some point, I'll venture to that green door numner thirteen out on the west side of the west end, and I'll greet that flame and I'll be fine and it won't be weird at all.

I tell you, I'm excited. There's trepidation about everything, about this gig, about Stitch, even though for the first time in months it is feeling solid, and about this man who landed and took a place of my heart and always a piece of it no matter where he goes, or I.

I gotta sleep.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-06 02:19 EST

In socks, jeans and a loose blouse the shade of Forget-Me-Nots she lay across the sunchair out back, amongst the ferns which stood as sentinels and shademakers both. Her eyes roamed the night sky for secrets and answers and beauty, as she smoked a cigarette and luxuriated, vice tucked into her lips held in a purse as lyrics struck and she wrote them in concentration with pencil to notebook page by the dwindling light, wrote until the words ran from the pages and wrapped themselves at her fingers, safe and sound for the guitar.

The itching sounds of cicadas out in Marban brought her to write quickly. Dreaming of that sunny space of hers, long ago. And with a mellow smile she extinguished the smoke and sat up, closing the book and walking inside to eat a piece of chocolate cake made in the orange and pink afternoon urge, and then onto bed, to sleep off wandering thoughts of a lost love. Definitely a sorrow her own, which was not buried deep inside to the bellows but that floated as black petals of a closed flower, spilling with tear stained serenade as she strummed the strings.

And now how should that rose bloom? That her love had returned?

The sadness was now within the strange colour of perspective that she had moved on and loved another.

It proved too much to ponder, and so she willed a deep sleep, until dawn, and she got it.

Still, it ached.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-07 19:33 EST

The artist, mad and free, with his leather jacket and paint splattered hands, talons that traced designs unheard of into her skin. He was sex. He was home. He was hers.

He made her feel beautiful. Worthy of a canvas.

And if he asked her of anything, she would do it. Asked her not to, and the same would apply.

Arching her back with a pleasured smile, she dipped pale fingers between her thighs and gave in to blissed memory. A mewl came from her throat like sunset, ripened with the lucid play in her mind of after hours discourses taken in alleyway and backseat, and she sunk back and squirmed on the sheets.

He had taken her leg in his hands and bathed her, that night long ago, taken her from the roadside covered in guilt and fear, he had taken her in and washed the guard's blood away.

And for all the times He had come to her when she returned from her forays into the big wide world. Given her all. Despite wanting to ask he didn't.

A sultry smile contoured her mouth and she gasped. Raunchy rememberances driving her wild, alone, in that bedroom, wanton for him, she breathed his name and sighed, placing the back of a hand to a cheek pearled in the gleam of her perspirations. Wrist slid back up into mahogany twists of her hair, dampened with her need, and she laughed to herself.

She was done for.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-07 23:21 EST

It had been months since Limbo and still she had not spoken a word to a soul about what happened. The closest she had come to understanding, to dealing with, was a sit down with Skid that had not gone so well and nothing had been resolved, but then, he didn't understand her neglect of his as his sanity could not allow it and so she had left it behind her, a burning wreck, and her smile had been sullen and her eyes lost and wandering.

And then, she decided she would grieve.

But words unspoken returned, and came in the grey under eyes, in the sorry smile she offered in quiet, no matter how much she cried. A confession to her lover had been easing, but left him feeling inadequate.

?Wha? ?appened Leri??

And so she had told him about a day in a forest on the coldest grass she had ever known, surrounded by tombs of trees, and how Skid had wanted her his, bird in the cage, and that her phantom-ressurection was not enough, and how she could not give him more than that. And she ran off, lost in delirium only to return in days, demanding he give her her death, or if he chose, her life. And life he had given her, freeing her as his shade, his songbird.

?I feel ?elpless?, Stitch had responded, and the look in his eyes killed her.

It was not going to be an easy road to be together, to live with all that had transpired, to make it work, but in each other they saw gold, and Lerida was damned if she was going to let him go, if she was going to walk away. She was right where she wanted to be, and however surreal it was, she knew it was true. The artist who stole her heart was the one she wanted to love and give everything to. It was satisfying and scary. But she wanted it, she wanted him, she wanted nothing more and nothing less than Stitch Hyde as her lover. For them to find happiness and to help one another through.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-10 20:34 EST

Staring up at the buildings and the sky she felt a sigh come, and go, and a strange swell in her chest. There was so much she couldn't explain to herself, let alone anyone else. There was so much she was In that words couldn't cover it.

So she cowered by a wall in the heart of West End and cried, cried like she had at sixteen at a gas station on the outskirts of nowhere, clutching her satchel tight. What had changed?

Did a runaway ever stop running?

A while later, composed, she got to her feet and reapplied her make up with a hand held mirror. Her eyes shone wetly and her lips were smudged with the redness of having chewed them anxiously as she waited and waited agonisingly for 4pm to come around and her shift to begin.

At five to four she wandered back through the swinging red steel doors of Electric Ladyland and put on a smile, which faded, as hands took what wasn't theirs. A grope here and there and because they were Ketelty's ring she had to weather it, her face passive, her eyes lowered.

When she passed into the dark, perfume-rife corridor that led to the Girl's rooms and the practice studio she gave a shudder and grabbed a string of pearls from one of the dress racks along the wall. She pulled at it until it snapped, sending beads flying. Marsha, one of her contemporaries, a leggy girl with long black hair and hazel eyes, came close and whispered, "Suck it up. Give it time", and smiled. As she walked off, Lerida was set in a daze, covered in the sickly sweet smell of Marsha's spray on suicide, and the terrible knowledge that she would become desensitised again, be able to do this without the worries. She hated it.

And in that moment, with girls running back and forth by her, she hung her head and drifted into her own room, zombie like, feeling the worse she had in years.

Lerida · Date: 2009-05-13 01:51 EST

Ushering herself out of the plantation shuttered doors, she strode along the quaint balcony, dipping her lashes until pale eyes were slits, and exhaled a bloom of smoke. Skin was warm and tingling from her bath, smelling of rose salts and tracing the air around her with a floral steam. Hair hung damp and mussed down her throat, curls heavy with the vapors, a hand playing through the ends idly as she watched the slight crowds mill below, passing unawares.

As she had once used to do on another balcony in another part of town, she sung, for strangers and known alike, crooning a lullabye's worth across the cobblestones, an echo that shuddered and trembled from the ferns and ivy that wrought that space of heat above the market.

And when she was content, relaxed, she wandered into the bathroom, clove in hand, and looked upon herself. Her skin was paler than she remembered, her eyes wide and vulnerable but curving up ever so little at their edges in that cattish way.

She smiled a small smile and reached for the scissors by the sink, and by the light of a few fragrant candles, she cut off the lengths until she was left with a gamine crop; a spill of tendrils along her forehead sweeping down to her ears, otherwise boyshort, and accentuating the heart shape of her face, the lovely apples of her cheeks, the elegant slope of her chin and arch of throat.

A tousle with a hand, to shape that cherryrose mane, and she turned and wandered into her bedroom. She needed a change, and sometimes little ones made you the happiest. Satisfied, she curled up under pale pink sheets, and slept the rest of the night away.

Lerida · Date: 2009-07-31 02:15 EST

Laughing. Lunacy wrapped up like a precious gem in her voice.

"They threw me to the groun' and poured buckets of water all over me. No one believe's me when I tell them the sky was cryin'. No one. But it did, now my dress is wrecked and my hair is a mess. I was only out for a walk."

The guard shook his head at her, sitting in the jail cell, her skin lavender in the dim, white sheer sleeve nearly fallen off her shoulder, her face striped with the shadows of the bars.

"You're a crazy woman. Bursting the water main and dancing in it. We have to remand you and charge you."

"But I was so hot, constable. I was near to faintin' "

He shook his head again and walked off.

"Don't leave me. Please. It gets a terrible kinda lonely in here..."