The Clockwork Ballerina

She jumps regularly.  There are many who have seen her, the clockwork ballerina.  She walks through the halls of this old castle, up to the ramparts, and pauses for a while, contemplating the view.  Then she climbs up, with an expression of terrible peace, and lets herself fall.  She fades in mid-air.

She has never been caught on camera, but anyone who wishes can see her.  It’s not timed by the calendar or the clock.  It’s not at the same time of day, or the same time of year, not every month, but most of them.  Every so often, she will begin her journey again, as if for the first time.  Sometimes, sun shines through her, or rain, or snow.

Many have seen her jump.  Only I have seen her dance, as far as I know.

The castle came into my family via an uncle, or a distant cousin or some such, long ago.  It had fallen into disrepair then.  My family had kept it, but it wasn’t one of the properties we used.  Who would want to live here, knowing that she will walk frequently, and jump over and over again? 

Well, me.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t believe.  There are no pictures, no recordings, she cannot be caught on film.  There is only word of mouth, and, forgive me, I thought they were crazy, or stupid, or gullible.

I wasn’t scared of her, the first time.  It was August.  I was out in the grounds, near the lake, and I saw her from a distance.  I was surprised, of course, but not frightened.  It’s hard to be frightened in August, in the sunshine.

When it came to return to the castle, to the few rooms which are still habitable, I began to feel nervous.  I barely slept that first night.  I know her journey is always the same, and that she doesn’t enter my room  - as far as anyone has ever witnessed, a thought which was not comforting – and that thought eventually allowed me to sleep.

I didn’t see her for three months after that, though I looked.  I read up on her.  There were books here, in the few habitable rooms, including histories and diaries.  Veronica, I learned, though no one knew much else.  The diaries and letters reporting her went back dozens over years, perhaps a hundred.  Perhaps the story had been hushed up by an uncle or a cousin, someone far removed.  None of my close family knew; like me, they’d dismissed her as village gossip, the imagination of those who never stray beyond their own back garden.

It was November when I next saw her.  The snow had begun to fall.  I was on the ramparts, a blanket wrapped around me, watching the sunset.  I turned to see her, walking behind me, her gaze fixed on her part of the wall, on the sky beyond it.  Goosebumps came up on my neck.  I followed her, terrified that she would turn around, a ghostly Orpheus to my Eurydice.

She never did.

She stood contemplating the sky for so long that I was able to grip my courage and move in front of her, to gaze upon her face.  It was calm.  She smiled.

She turned and climbed up, in quick neat movements.  She looked up at the sky as she let herself fall.  I darted forward to catch her, forgetting, for a moment, how late I was.  How late she was.  I could see the trees and the lake through her, as she fell, as she faded.

I had been sent to the castle to convalesce, to return only when I would no longer embarrass the family with my hysterics, my upset, my inability to cope.   Mother paid someone to bring food from the village once a week, and all bills were taken care of.  I had no worries, or cares, beyond those I created, which were quite enough to keep me occupied.  I had my piano, my music, and time to devote to it.  It seemed to help.  I hadn’t sought out a blade, though I wouldn’t have found one if I had.  No food arrived which required anything sharper than a butter knife, and I travelled down to the village every so often to be shaved by the barber.  Mother cared, in her own way.  Father liked to pretend I had succeeded.

I started writing music for her.  I tried to capture her peace, her ethereality, her ungraspability, both in concept and reality.  She could never be touched.  I would never solve her mystery.

When June came around again, I had seen her on three more occasions.  I had seen her fall from five different viewpoints now, and was still no closer to understanding why she looked so peaceful, so sure, when she was doing something so terrible.  My death would not have been a tragedy; hers must have been.

I had moved the piano to one of the rooms which was no longer habitable, one in which a wall was missing, opening it to the elements.  The wilderness had begun to encroach and daisies grew through the gaps in the floor.  I liked it, in summer, in the sunshine.

I was playing her song when I saw her.  She was not on her walk; this was a side of her I’d never seen.  Her hair was plaited instead of loose, her face open and bright.  I stopped playing and watched her in silence, a movie I’d never seen before.

She gripped something invisible at the wall – a barre?  - and began to perform movements I recognised from my sister’s childhood.  She was warming up.  When she stepped away from the barre, I regained my senses and began to play.

She was a wonderful dancer.  I had noticed her grace, her serenity, in her walk.  Now I saw those, and more besides.  I saw joy.

Watching her dance I knew I could never keep with her.  I was a hundred years behind and losing more ground every day.  I could never dance with her, speak to her, hold her.  I could only be her accompaniment.  It was enough.

She faded as the music reached a crescendo, though I kept playing through to the end.  I hoped she would return.

I kept the piano there as winter rolled around again.  I played for her at midnight, as the wind blew autumn leaves around my feet.  I played for her when my fingers began to numb with the cold, when my mother had long since grown tired of me and threatened to stop keeping me if I didn’t begin doing something, anything.  I didn’t know how to tell her that I was doing something.  I played her into spring, through rain, and sunshine, and snow.  The scars on my wrists stopped hurting.

I saw her jump again, several times.  From that room, I had a view of the ramparts, and of the lake.  Sometimes, I would look up, startled, to see her fading, her long dark hair streaming out above her.  Other times I would watch her as she stood, contemplating the sky.  On more than one occasion I ran towards her, despite knowing that I would be too late, that I would always be too late, that I had always been too late.

I recorded the music.  Veronica’s song.  I began to play the phonograph when she came in.  As she began to dance I stepped into the circle of her arms, following her movements.  I wasn’t quite right; I had watched her enough to be in time, to predict her movements, but still there were times when we were not in sync, when our arms passed through one another.  Her eyes were closed.  She felt of nothing.

There was once last time that I saw her, when summer came around again.  Now they dismiss her like they do all other ghost stories.  They believe that she is the product of fevered minds, of boredom, of some gossip that has had all the detail leached out, like a photograph left in the sun.

I was lying by the lake, as I had been when I first saw her.  I lay on my back, contemplating the sky.

When I looked up she was there, sitting beside me, looking up as I did.  She turned to smile at me; I smiled back, my heart pounding.  Had she sat here with someone else, a hundred years before?  Had that lead to her walk, to her leap?  What else could this be a recording of?

I saw that her eyes were brown.  I had never been close enough to know that before.

She said one word, before she disappeared from my life forever.  She said my name.  “Sebastian,” she said, and I realised she was seeing me, really seeing me, like no one has in a very long time.  Not in the years I’ve spent living here with her, and not in the years before either.  Perhaps that’s what I did for her.

She smiled again and added “goodbye….”

I reached for her like a drowning man and grasped only common air.

Tentacular Love

I like your self-confidence

and the way you smile at me

I like the way you're not afraid

it's like reaching out eight tentacles to you

All eight, to try to make you understand

you reach back and catch me with two hands

you don't understand

There's a gap the size an ocean

There's a gap the size of the sea

There's a gap the size of da-dada dada

between you and me

Goodbye tentacular love

I set you free,

I release

my tentacular love

your lack of oceanity is disappointing to me

but you can't help the way you're made

Hopel

+ Once upon a time there was a beautiful Principality, ruled by a Princess.  Well, maybe it wasn’t that beautiful – it was rainy, and muddy in places – but the citizens liked it.

+ The Princess lived in a tower with her companion and defender Row, also known as Relationships-With-Others.  The Princess and Row normally got along well, although sometimes the Princess would be irritable or snappy, or simply decide to be alone, and Row would disappear for a while.  When the Princess was lonely she was always sorry, and Row recovered, but the Principality was always weaker when Row was away.

+ The tower also held two librarians.  The junior librarian was called Nostalgia, while the head of the library and keeper of Happy Memories was called Hamen.  There was also a Dark Librarian, who stored those things the denizens of the tower would rather not look at too closely or too often; he was called Mescar, and he mostly worked in the shadows.  He also cared for the two ravens who had lived in the palace for longer than anyone could remember.  Their formal names were Re-enacting Childhood Patterns, and Need-To-Be-Loved, though they were generally called Sakid and Needsy.  Sometimes, they would attach themselves to the Princess’s shoulders and whisper terrible things in her ears while Slove tried to shoo them away.  They were allowed to remain in the palace because they were a useful warning system.  Sometimes though, when things were going well, Slove wondered if they were too delicate, too easy to trigger, and too quick to warn of something that wasn’t really a danger.

+ The Princesses three academic tutors were Fari, who taught crafting, Rea, who taught creating, and Lems, who taught problem-solving.  The Princess normally found her lessons absorbing, and when she studied frequently the Principality was a better place.

+ The tower was also hope to Physe, who taught dance, swimming, and walking, amongst other forms of physical activity.  Again, the Principality was happier, more reasonable place when Physe was in residence, although sometimes he would abandon the Principality for weeks on end.  Slove – who we will describe momentarily – was never sure if the Fog of Despondency, which coincided with Physe’s absences, came about because Physe left or whether the Fog was what drove him away.

+ Slove had a number of titles.  Love of self.  Ability to amuse self.  Ability to be happy in one’s own company.  Lack of neediness.  Lack of unreasonable reliance on inappropriate sources of affection.

+ He was, technically, the Principality’s general and chief protector.  He also organised the Princess’s schedule, ran bubble baths, fetched books, and generally buttled his way about the place.

+ Slove was a weedy little guy.  He wanted to be powerful, strong, and noble.  He wanted to protect the Princess, to keep her safe and to stop her from being kidnapped all the time.

+ He was lazy, that was his weakness.  When everything was going well he’d start slacking off.  He’d let the Princess stay home, respond to conversation only when spoken to, and stop keeping up with her interests.  Then when things got bad – when the Principality faced money troubles, or was lonely or just bored – another disaster would pop up.

+ Normally it was Hope-of-New-Love-Interest – Hopel -, who would kidnap the Princess, locking her in a whirlwind of confusion.  Her hopes would constantly rise and be dashed, an addictive rollercoaster that was hard to escape from.   It was even harder when Row was away or otherwise weakened.  Fari, Rea, Physe and Lems tried to help Slove with his rescue attempts, but they were struggled to awaken the Princess from her daze.  Nostalgia and Hamen were no help at all in the matter. 

+ The very worst thing of all, and the reason that Nostalgia and Hamen were unhelpful, was that Hopel was not always bad.  If Slove and the others kept the Princess in check, and kept the ravens away, and Hopel was *good* then sometimes Hopel would mutate into Eros, Ludus, Pragma, or a combination of the three.  Row still wore many of the capes and accoutrements that Hopel had brought in the form of Pragma, while Nostalgia and Hamen had many volumes written by Eros or Ludus.  Whenever Hopel had appeared they would refer to these volumes, contributing the Princess’s heavy daze.

+ Hopel was a creature of fire; the Princess was a creature of water.  She could not get too close without being changed.  Hopel could add a gentle warmth and simmer to her life – or he could boil her away to nothing.

+ As well as confusion and distraction, Hopel had the power to show himself in many different guises, in multiple places at once.  He was much weaker in this guise; when he appeared as multiple suitors, the Princess would divide her focus between them, weakening the distracting/confusing effect of each one, and allowing Fari, Rea, Lems, and Row to distract her, and pull her from the fog.  Slove would then step in, at the last minute, to deal the final blow to Hopel.

+ Sometimes, Needsy and Sakid would attach themselves to the Princesses shoulders, weakening her defences against Hopel and allowing him to mutate into Unhappy-Relationship, or, worse, Abusive-Relationship.  The few times that had happened, Slove and the other denizens had successfully rescued the Princess, but it had taken months to recover.  Slove still had scars from those encounters.  Mescar had been very helpful in rescuing the Princess and his Dark Library had gained more volumes for his trouble.

+ Word had recently come to the palace that Hopel had been seen crossing the border, heading to the palace to try to win his Princess once again.  Slove began to train.  This time, he swore, it would all go right.  The Princess would not slip into a daze.  He would not let her neglect Row, and she would continue to attend lessons with the tutors.  He would carefully monitor Nostalgia and Hamen, to ensure they never appeared without Mescar, and vica versa; all three librarians must be kept in careful balance.  And he would strangle those bloody ravens.

Some Songs I've Been Working On

I made a deal with the devil
to keep this pain away
I've made a deal with the devil
just to make you stay

It's my name on the contract
My name on the line

---

I can see it in your eyes
You're wondering
What I see in her
I can't explain

If you could see
the way she is
when we're alone

if you could only see
the way she was
When we were alone

I can only see
the way she is
I think I'd better be alone

---

I was only sixteen
it took you five weeks
to break me, inch by savage inch

It took you five days,
When I was twenty-eight
to break me, inch by savage inch

---

You said that you loved me
said you adored me
said you'd do anything for me
but now...
but now...

I hear you're chasing after someone else's tale
Making yourself the hero
of someone else's life
they'll say that yours is the greatest
tragedy ever told
but what am I?
Where do I fit in?

(Bridge)
Now you're gone
and I wonder
am I just the girl you
cast aside
at the end of act one?

You said that you loved me
said you adored me
said you'd do anything for me
You swore by the moon
You swore by the stars
You swore you'd be true
but now...
but now...

teach me how to forget to think
of you
Teach me how not to sink
under the burden of you
Teach me how not to drown
in the unkept promises
which are all you left me with

You said that you loved me
said you adored me
said you'd do anything for me

---

the sky does not turn for your decision
worlds do not depend on you
Only I, and I alone,
and I change the stars for no one

you don't see me
you won't see me
any more

Let Me Defy Gravity

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight
Not a footprint to be seen
A kingdom of isolation,
And it looks like I'm the queen.
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep
It's time to trust my instincts
Close my eyes and leap!

Let it go, let it go,
can't hold it back any more
It's time to try
Defying gravity
I'll let it go, I'm defying gravity
and you won't bring me down

I'm through accepting limits
'cause someone says they're so
Some things I cannot change
But till I try, I'll never know!
It's time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me I'm free!

Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
I think I'll try
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I'm defying gravity
And you can't bring me down:

So if you care to find me
Look to the western sky!
As someone told me lately:
"Everyone deserves the chance to fly!"
And if I'm flying solo
You'll never see me cry
I'm never going back,
The past is in the past!

Let it go, let it go,
and I'll rise like the break of dawn
I'm flying high
Defying gravity
Here I stand
In the light of day
And nobody...
Is ever gonna bring me down!

...the cold never bothered me anyway.

$20k Summary

A girl wakes up in a youth hostel in Glasgow.  She has only a vague recollection of who she is, and her throat hurts.  She has a bag with a wallet full of credit cards, passports and drivers licenses in different names, books, and a photograph of a man that she loves.  She decides to call herself Louise, which is one of the names on the credit cards.

She walks through Glasgow, and gets occasional snatches of memory from things that she sees – she remembers an evening at a certain restaurant, with the man in the photo, or holding his hand while walking down a specific street.  She stops at a café, and while looking through the wallet she finds a train ticket to Birmingham.  She remembers that Birmingham is home.  Written on the ticket is “miss you, see you soon, M.”.

The train is for today, so she rushes to catch it.  She sleeps through the journey (it’s about six hours) and has weird dreams, about a little girl that looks like her and shadowy people trying to catch her.  She remembers sitting on a train like this with the man in the photograph.  She remembers him stroking her hair and telling her it will be okay.  She remembers feeling trepidatious.

In Birmingham, she walks through the city centre, unsure of what to do next.  She remembers more things; winning bets in a pub, going up to the top floor of the blue Radisson to pick up fake IDs, and so on.  She wonders if any of the names on the credit cards are hers.

She remembers having an argument on New Street at midnight, not caring who could hear or what they thought.  She remembers accusing the man in the photograph of something, she doesn’t quite remember what it was.  She knows that it was something which proved that he never cared for her.  A part of her desperately wants him to prove her wrong, to say exactly the right thing to prove that he does care about her.  Another part of her wants him to get it wrong, so she can leave him; being with someone who cares about her scares her.  She doesn’t think it can possibly last.  She’s always waiting for him to prove that his feelings aren’t enough, and trying to make him prove it so she doesn’t have to deal with the stress of waiting any more.

It starts to rain so she shelters under the council buildings in Victoria Square, with a group of other people.  After a while, she realises that the man behind her isn’t ignoring her, like you do in a crowd.  He’s staring at her, glaring at her with hatred.  She’s not normally a coward, but once she sees that expression in his eyes she turns and runs.  She keeps running, in a blind panic that comes from inside.  It’s the same sort of fear you get from a monster in your dreams.  You don’t know why, but you know you have to get away.

She’s on the Bristol Road before she realises he isn’t following her, that no one is.  It’s still raining.  Using one of her cards – this one with the name ‘Lauren’ – she books a night at the hotel.  She dreams again; she dreams about being a child, hiding in a cupboard and hoping that someone won’t find her and hurt her again.  She dreams that her mother finds her and asks what she’s hiding from.  Her mother says she’s silly.  Lauren knows that her mother knows what she’s afraid of.  Lauren doesn’t understand why her mother pretends she doesn’t know.  She notices that her mother  She wakes up when the thing she’s afraid of comes into the room.

She wakes up in the night and spends some time feeling lonely, and missing the man in the photo.  She remembers spending nights wrapped around him, and remembers waking from dreams with him wiping away her tears.  She remembers him bringing her tea in bed in the morning, and she wonders where he could possibly be.

She dreams about her mother.  She dreams that she and her mother live in a little cottage together and keep chickens, and live an idyllic life.  She dreams that she lives with her mother for years and years until one day she slits her wrists.

When she wakes up her wrists are fine, but her throat hurts again.  She sings in the shower to try to cheer herself up, and she remembers how happy singing makes her.  She sings a song that makes her wonder about the man in the photo.  She wonders what his name is.  She thinks of all the ‘M’ names she can, and none of them sound right.

She thinks she sees something waving at her in the bathroom mirror, but when she wipes the steam away there’s only her own face there.

When she leaves, the door of the room next to hers is open.  She walks inside and sees a photo of herself, with a plane ticket under it.  The plane ticket is for Oregon, later that evening, and is in the same name as another one of her credit cards, Lisa.  The picture is of her, on a swing, with the man from the photo behind her.  It’s sunny and they look happy.  The bed smells like him, and there are cigarettes in the ashtray by the window.  She realises he was here in the night while she was missing him, and starts to cry.  She wonders if he’s running away from her, if he’s rejecting her, like everyone else.  She tells herself that can’t be true, because if he were he wouldn’t be leaving tickets for her.  She wonders if it’s really meant for her, because she knows Lisa isn’t her name.

The plane ticket is for that evening.  She leaves the hotel and walks to a nearby primary school, which she attended as a child.  It’s a Catholic school and there’s a church attached.  Lisa remembers being frustrated by a specific discussion in class.  Her teacher had asked why there was a hell, if god was all forgiving.  Lisa remembered knowing the answer; because god only forgives those as much as they forgive others, as that same teacher had told them.  She remembered being annoyed when he wouldn’t listen to her answer and kept trying to get them to debate the question.

She walks up to the alter, looks at the statue of Jesus on the cross and is overwhelmed with grief.  She doesn’t know why she’s crying, but she can’t stop.

She reflects on her own beliefs.  She doesn’t think of herself as a Catholic; she’s an atheist.  However, Catholicism is the first religion to come to mind whenever she thinks about the subject, and she knows the specific god she has rejected is the Catholic god.  In the night, when she’s frightened and thinks of praying, it’s Catholic prayers she thinks of. 

Lisa leaves to get some fast-food for breakfast.  This triggers another memory of her childhood, one where she is punished for not finishing her food.  She starts to panic, and calms herself down by reminding herself that she escaped, that she ran away to Glasgow as soon as she was able.  She remembers that she was seventeen and she’d gotten a job in a fast food place just like this – maybe this exact one – and had saved up every penny she earned until she was able to leave.  She realises that she had come back to Birmingham at some point in the past few years, but can’t remember when, or why, or when or why she returned to Glasgow.

Outside of the fast food place is a bus stop, and, on a whim, she gets on the bus.  It’s one she remembers she used to catch to get home.  However, when she gets off she’s not at the house she grew up in but at another building, a plain, stern-looking place that she knows to be a nursing home.

Breathe In/Out

So this was it.  I was finally desperate enough to respond to the advert, the to-good-to-be-true advert.  I knew what the catch was, I wasn’t stupid.  I was just desperate.

My heart was hammering as I picked up the phone.

Don’t do it I kept thinking, there must be another way.

But there wasn’t another way.  I’d spend weeks going over and over my meagre income and my substantial debts, and there was no way the two would ever work out.  Not unless I sold my body, the most lucrative thing I owned.

Someone picked up.  I was so distracted I barely heard her greeting.  Somehow, I pulled myself together when it was my turn to speak.

“I’m calling regarding your advert,” I said, only a slight hesitation in my voice. 

The advert was circled in the newspaper I clutched to myself.  Breathe in/out, it said.  £500/£250 per breath.  Easy money.

I got the job, not that there was ever any question about it.  The interview would have been less of a joke if they’d just held a mirror up to my face and waited to see if it fogged up or not. 

There were ten of us starting together that day.  Most of us seemed to be about the same age, my age, mid-twenties.  A few were older.  One girl looked to be about sixteen.  The road that lead her here was built from the tracks on her arms.

Half an hour of training.  The guy was manically cheerful, grinning his head off, telling us all how lucky we were to be here.  How fortunate we were to have this chance.  How we were going to make ‘a wad’. 

That afternoon we were lined up outside in our safety gear, waiting for our chance to hop on and join in.  I fidgeted as I waited, taking in the amazing sight.  The breeze – it was always blowy here – rustled my hair.

I’d heard of it, of course – who hadn’t?  Even seen pictures.  But to see it up close like this was something else entirely.  The sheer size of it; the way its body stretched over the horizon.  I’d have been awestruck if I wasn’t also paying attention to how shattered my new co-workers looked as they walked past us, heading home after a brutal shift.

Shifts were twelve hours long.  Twelve hours of hard, back-breaking work.  If you fell off, you didn’t get paid, not a penny for the entire shift.  Not even if it was the eleventh hour when you slipped.   Four shifts per week, twelve on, twelve off.

I came to the front of the line, watching the little teenager hop on ahead of me.  That was the official terminology, “hopping on”.  What she actually did was more like an undignified shuffle, climbing across people until she reached her space.

Then it was my turn.  I climbed up into the space recently vacated by another worked, the weak link in the chain.  I hooked my limbs around the people around me, holding myself in place.  Then I braced myself.  My core muscles were aching within the first ten minutes, but I had no choice but to hold on, now I’d committed myself.

Just think of the money, I thought to myself, trying desperately to distract myself.  The money.  £500 to breathe in.  £250 to breathe out.

I had plenty of time to think over those twelve hours.  What I thought about most was it.  The giant thing I was performing CPR on.

I wondered what the aliens had been playing at.  It was five years ago now, when they’d first arrived, dragging it behind their spaceships like one of those giant balloons you used to see at parades.  It’s as big as a mountain range.

The transcript of the conversation is available online.  I tried to remember it, line for line, as I braced myself there in a mesh of other people.

Our ruler is dying they had said, in their strange language, full of beeps and boops.

If you do not save our glorious leader they added we will raze your planet and revive benevolent with the blood of your species.

Then they had left, leaving their ruler behind them.  But not without first destroying Australia, just to prove they could.

And that brings you to me, and to all my co-workers hanging beside me.  They were right when they said their ruler was dying.  The world’s best doctors – within those first, frantic, 24 hours – realised that he needed CPR.  And that was exactly what we were doing.  Over and over.  Breathe in, breathe out.

Each of the giant alien’s breaths took 5-8 hours and you’re paid based on how many of those happen in each of your shifts.  A lucrative shift might get three – one right at the beginning, one halfway through, and one right at the end - while the next rota would only manage one.  It was a lottery. 

A few times, over the years, we’d tried building a machine to replicate the task we were performing by hand, but none of them had worked.  After the last disaster had culminated with the Glorious Ruler almost dying it had been decreed that the wages would be doubled.  It was hard, tiring, back-breaking work.  There was no respect and no joy.  But the money was good.

Every time the breaths slow down beyond one every ten years, every world leader is lit up by a red spotlight.  The same red spotlight which heralded the destruction of Australia.

Sometimes, they try a different approach.  Sometimes, when the breaths slow down, they light up a billion or so people instead of the world leaders.  One in every seven or eight.  It’s never been me, but once it was my mother.  It’s a lot scarier when the person destroyed might be you or your family than when it’s happening to a stranger halfway around the word.

So we breathe.  Or we die.  Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference.