Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement No. V – Tired Tales and Stories of Glories
__________________________________________________________________________________
[The Past – North Palladium Hospital, Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, USA, Autumn 1998]
There are no guards to thump a meaty fist on the rain-streaked window anymore, free hands pressed against the brown leather holsters strapped to their thighs and suspicious eyes staring out from under a visor-slashed peaked cap. Heavy cast-iron gates are permanently chained open, rendered surplus to requirements after weary hinges, long since failed, dropped their rusted snouts down deep into the mud. The single-track access road is open and empty, its asphalt surface dotted with ruts arranged side-by-side like eviscerating claw marks and filled with pools of stagnant, brown water recharged by the occasional storm.
Where potholes cluster together the perimeter of their thin aggregate walls crumble, forming lurching craters and pits that span the entire width of the road, making it almost impassable.
Doctor Markus DeLune reached down, twisted the jangling keys between his bony fingers and fired the engine back to life, making the only noise for miles around. Somewhere over his shoulder the autumn sun gave up in late afternoon, sinking below the horizon in sullen red and moody orange. It made silhouettes of the avenue of bare trees lining the road ahead, except where the years and the neglect had seen some topple over and left to rot. Broken suspension springs groaned and clunked with every divot as the car bounced and jerked forwards, metal grinding on metal with every revolution of its balding tyres.
The hospital itself hid behind lawns now surrendered to the wild – spindly branches left to their own devices to grow out of control and into each other, forming thick knots of gnarled, twisted woodland. A central spire, pockmarked by gaping attachment holes where intricate ironwork reliefs of accusatory angels and stern saints once scolded their patients – now removed to prevent them falling on the latter – wept iron oxide tears as it crept above the chaotic treeline.
DeLune carefully picked a path up cracked stone stairs and through the open double-set doors, sidestepping gouges and rents wide enough to swallow a foot whole. Behind, the cooling engine of his car thumped as worn parts cooled at differential rates, banging against each other in clashing discord with his steps.
The final-year student sat at the Nurse’s Station didn’t so much as look up from her textbook as he passed by, her entire face contorted and compressed hard against a palm as she stared at, or more accurately through, the pages. Her free fingers dredged a fork through the congealing remains of a chicken salad, and DeLune didn’t bother to even pull the delaminated identification card from his pocket.
It’d expired months ago, anyway.
On his way through the wards he occasionally passed a room that suggested a patient might still call it home – a bunch of bound, red tulips yet vibrant enough and bright on a bedside table; the odd pair of shoes carefully set down just inside the doorframe or a cup of tea still steaming gently in the cool afternoon sunset. Those were the exceptions to the rule, however, and that rule was one of deterioration and decay.
Snaking lines drew vast shapes made from cracks in the plaster of the walls and where those discontinuities met they broke free chunks of paint, sending them scattering across faded lime-green floor tiles. Overhead strip lights flashed in staccato pulses, their voltage regulators burnt out, stuck in a perpetual start-up loop which made migraine-inducing transitory shadows that hurt to look at.
Marcus walked all the way unopposed to Critical Care, through unlocked doors propped open with life-expired fire extinguishers turned from emergency red to washed-out pink by crowns of thick dust. The vast armoured door which should have blocked his path into the space-age security airlock-of-sorts welcomed him through, inch-thick safety glass dividing the holding room from the controlling security station beyond dark and smeared by grime.
Barney had been a real stickler for process and procedure behind that glass – but he hadn’t worked here in four years and so DeLune kept all manner of potential weapons: pens, keys and spectacles on his person and kept walking.
Time and dilapidation had delivered just one, singular benefit as far as the Doctor could see. Quite literally; fading the agonising hue of psychedelic pink intended to calm, or blind, the hospital’s most challenging patients to a warm shade of rose that seemed almost welcoming … If he were walking the halls of anywhere but a supposedly secure psychiatric facility.
The heavy door to room Echo-Seven – it hadn’t been a cell in a long, long time – stood open, thick rings of corrosion circling each of the deadbolts retracted deep into the flaking metal interior. DeLune stood on its threshold for a moment, rocking forward and back on his shoes as he listened to the unmistakable tinkle of a piano, interspersed by low-bitrate rasping strings and harking, sampled trumpet.
“Yes, just follow my feet with yours,” Sister Superior Esmarelda nodded, holding her left palm out for the girl to take, right hand resting on the small of the back. “Let’s try it again.”
They moved awkwardly together, grace and the graceless, smaller feet trying to keep up in three steps what their opposites could manage in a single fluid one, all to the tinny backing of the portable stereo and its crackling speaker.
The girl stopped abruptly. “I cannot dance,” She said, pulling free.
“Not yet,” Esmarelda smiled, wiping her hands on the folds of her dress. “But if you keep practising …”
Turning towards the sound of scuffed shoe leather on threadbare carpet, the Sister Superior’s smile widened. “Abigayle, please go and get ready for this afternoon’s session.”
The girl wavered for a moment, forehead creasing, lips parting to resist. They hung open for a few moments, wordless, before she thought better of it and turned on her heels, stopping only to collect the red book sat on top of the nearby desk.
Esmarelda’s smile instantly dissipated. “You’re late.”
“You’re dancing,” DeLune replied, raising an eyebrow. “With practiced ease, I might add. A hobby?”
Rolling her eyes, Esmarelda stepped closer, her voice dropping. “A past vocation,” She said in a tantalising half-story that would never be fully told. “Did you get what you needed from Baton Rouge?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Esmarelda blinked, eyes narrowing. “ … No?”
Marcus tipped his chin up to look over the bank of three defunct monitors suspended overhead, the fourth lying on its shattered side where ceiling clamps had given way years earlier and sent it plummeting down against the carpeted concrete. “There was a positive, though – I just about came away with my licence to practice medicine intact. Appropriating huge numbers of controlled antipsychotic drugs on the flimsiest of pretences isn’t as easy as it used to be.”
“How are you going to maintain the stability of her brain chemistry with that alone?” She asked with a gesture over her shoulder to the former containment room left open to come and go. “We can’t go back to how things used to be.”
The Doctor just nodded, and his eyes flickered down for a moment to watch the other woman subconsciously rub at the thick, impressed line of scar tissue circling her left wrist and climbing up to disappear underneath the sleeves of her gown. A relatively fresh gift from Abigayle, six or so months ago, before the latest medications had finally, blessedly, shown some sort of effect. “No … We can’t go back and throw away so much progress and research–”
“And the health of a damaged young girl,” Esmarelda interrupted, her low voice cutting him off completely.
He nodded again, his eyes once again glued to screens incapable of conveying any useful information. “No, of course. Did you have any success with your petition to the State?”
Irritation drained out of the Sister Superior’s face and she brought the hilt of her scarred palm up to press against tired eyes. “If anything, I think I made it worse. Brought scrutiny when before we just had disinterest and ignorance. They’re going to carry out a full review.”
“Oh?” He mumbled, mind mostly occupied someplace else. “Sounds promising?”
Esmarelda shook her head. “Not a funding review – a requirement review. As in a need to have the facility open … At all.”
DeLune frowned, clicked his tongue, and finally made eye contact with her again. “Yes, I think you’re right. That’s much worse.”
Between them, distorted strains of the tinny piano tinkled and weaved a counter-melody against crackling horns, providing a soundtrack to the building tension. Folding her arms across her chest, the Sister Superior cocked her head to the side. “You know how this works. First come the budget cuts, then the miraculous recoveries as every patient spontaneously improves until someone - anyone with a pulse and your precious medical licence – signs them as fit for discharge and they disappear into the community to …”
Esmarelda grimaced. “She can’t just walk out of here, Marcus. It’ll be the start of a bloody road that takes a detour to Baton Rouge and then ends in the Electric Chair up at Angola.”
Fingers quested around twisted, knotted skin, pressing down on the badly-healed wounds. “She’ll kill again–”
“Murder requires intent,” DeLune abruptly cut-in, his voice quiet but angled side-on to present an edge in the words. “Like last time, diminished responsibility, at best, is not a capital crime in the State of Louisiana. Given her extensive medical records, unlikely to even equal time in the Penitentiary–”
It was the Sister Superior’s turn. “Are you seriously suggesting we wait to be shut down, let her out of here, and wait for it all to happen again? Her family are gone – off to DC with new political ambitions. We’re on our own.”
He said nothing for a long while, until eventually stepping over to the tape recorder and shutting it off with a thumb pressed down hard on the plastic button, worn smooth and shiny by years of use. “Of course not. That wouldn’t be ethical.”
Esmarelda laughed, but her eyes didn’t support the gesture and made the sound as hollow as the low bit-rate music, now silenced. “You stopped caring about such things a long time ago. So what are we going to do?”
Reaching into the folds of his jacket, Marcus pulled out a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles, unfolded their bent arms, and pushed them onto the bridge of his nose.
“Without the medication, Abigayle will regress and all our effort will be undone. Even with access to appropriate pharmaceuticals, if this facility closes she will cease to be under our care and will almost certainly regress. So we have to do something while we still have time and resource. Something permanent.”
She began to shake her head, but DeLune took no notice. “Psychosurgery …” He nodded as if reaching a satisfactory conclusion there and then, “ … Still has its place in psychiatry.”
Esmarelda got no further than bringing a pointed finger up in the air when Abigayle slipped silently through the doorway to stand by her side, red book tucked firmly in hand.
Marcus looked over and down. “Are you ready for your session, Abigayle?”
The young girl nodded, and DeLune smiled, pressing his thumb down and bringing the bad magnetic-spun facsimile of a half-orchestra back to life. “Now …” He began, settling into the creaking chair opposite and crossing one leg over the other. “Tell me how you feel when you dance.”
_________________________________________________________________________________
[The Rapture]
Jessica: I have gone to such trouble to make preparations worthy of the veteran status you so eagerly reminded me of, redoubling my efforts after making the mistake of offending in failing to show that proper respect. She is lying. In my eagerness to present you with an opportunity to convince the rest of the company of your unassailable might – to offer myself up as a sacrifice – I did not pause with due deference to the so-called dues you apparently paid, temporally in terms of purely time itself, which elevate you above me in all things based on the distinctive, incredible achievement of simply having been here longer.
It can only be a temporal function of course, because in getting to know you before we come so closely together, before we dance, I cannot find anything meaningful in your achievements and accolades that justify such polished confidence. Arrogance. It shines so bright for someone who has had such a fleeting glimpse of success and the corresponding metaphor of her time in the associated, brilliant sun. Turn away from it before you are blinded.
Have you been standing under the bright fluorescent lights in washed-out arena corridors, pretending they shine the same? Let me read your story and understand where such internalised greatness springs from. It is a trap.
Four distinct if unremarkable reigns as Bombshell Roulette Champion, in which you successfully managed to retain that title once for more than thirty days, generating a return of three-quarters forgettable to one remainder middling; just at the cusp of recollection. Threatening to edge into relevancy before being shuffled out to make way for those with something more than simply time to burn. Success burns so briefly.
An equally forgettable stint as Internet Champion, being consigned to its namesake’s digital archives alongside faded pop-culture references and viral memes. Why do they always involve cats? Securing a few future dollars in royalties when your momentary successes become a handful of frames spliced into a History Of series to bloat the company’s streaming library.
It fascinates me, Jessica, to see that for the many years’ service you have accrued in this company you have achieved so very little, taken so very long to do it, and talked so loudly about it. You first threatened to impress with Championship success in March of 2013, before taking over three years to follow up with a second effort at an impression of competency or, indeed, any significance at all. Thoughts turn to what it was that consumed the prestigious quantities of time you have in place of success at SCW? Real life.
Were you pursuing other opportunities in the multiple years between your fleeting title reigns? Is it reasonable to assume you were as completely average at those as you were and are in this company today, explaining your repeat return(s) to the wings, craning your neck at centre stage reserved for those deserving? It is so hard to watch others win. Oh, how things must have changed between the rare stipend checks marked a little larger for your momentary accolades and successes. I do hope you saved for a rainy day, given how little time you seem to have spent in said sun.
How the world has changed so much since the last affirmation of your worth on a cool October night, in 2020, for a brief few weeks until Miss Krieger took the Roulette Championship back into relevancy from whatever limbo you kept it in for a while.
I wonder how those solitary moments as a Champion made you feel. Did they make your feet float, light and airy? Did you beat the alarm clock to rise every morning, Imposter Syndrome cured by dint of the golden pill taken three-times daily from the bed stand table? Like an addiction. Angled up to catch your name in its shining reflection with the pre-dawn shine of the motel lamp?
Did you feel like a someone? Validated. Affirmed. Maybe loved, for a little while. Appreciated. It must have hurt to be returned so soon to what you really are. Down in the mud and the shit with your cackling harem, swapping backstage stories in almost, could-have-been and nearly-there.
Tell me, do you think your girlfriends pity you? What do they say when they are not whooping and bickering around catering tables, backstage and you are nowhere to be found?
In one tiny increment of the time you have rattled around these arenas and cherished any actual achievement of note, getting older and slower while your tired tales and stories of glories get longer and longer, I have made a more significant impression and meaningful contribution. Hurt more people. In less than three months I have eclipsed with action the sum worth of your seven years’ plus talking. You wax lyrical about a so-called career as if it is anything worthy of footnoting, let alone highlighting.
You talk like a Resplendent Hurricane, mighty and unassailable for almost a year as World Champion, and yet your name does not appear anywhere on the list of those who paved the way for her terrible storm. You are better for missing that misery.
You could never have been World Champion because you are not even a contender. The works of the mighty are built on the backs of the meek, and it is obvious that you do not even form the aggregate mixture upon which the foundations of that greatness rest and sit and crush under the weight of expectation. Such a heavy burden to carry. There is only one thing – one solitary aspect – I consider you sufficiently qualified to pass an absolute opinion on.
You are an expert in failure, Jessica. A story long on exposition and short on meaningful plot; butter scraped over too much bread or flesh pulled tight against bowed bone. The metaphors come as liberally as the years between your solitary moments of success. Tell me again why I should respect you?
Because you have been here for longer? Do you hear the things you say? You must, as a deafening, reinforcing wall of hyping noise, because it is obvious to me that you exist inside an echo chamber outside of which the reality of the world and its ways cannot penetrate in, and the delusions projected out find immediate reflectivity back. Trapped in a box of mirrors. Is it because you have watched while others did? Because you eked out a thimble’s volume of relevance as an utterly transitional Champion on a handful of occasions? A single hand, while the sands of time you so proudly proclaim to have spent so much of, to no effect, slip through wide fingers?
Speaking of time as if it is an investment in and of itself, rather than a vehicle to achieve great things, speaks far greater and damning volumes on your behalf than those momentary flickers of realisation of potential, guttering out in the hand-me-down winds of a Hurricane way up high on a summit you cannot see, even if you tip your chin all the way up to scratch the sky. You would not like what you saw if you could.
Bragging about having spent more life than me in objective waste is a zero-sum game you have won week-in, week-out. It is perhaps the only thing you can truthfully claim to be unassailable in.
A Bombshell Failure Champion on a reign of such length and strength that nobody can touch you. Why would they, when you wear that accolade down there with a mint ice-cream smile, covered in shit. Waist deep in the mud.
Perhaps it is no surprise that your past is littered with evidence of your inadequacy when you plan for the future so equally poorly. Tell me – of what value is it to consult with My Rose, Adrienne, on preparing for how best to slay me when she was recently welcomed into my Rapture so comprehensively, so utterly as to have virtually wished it to be?
Unless, Jessica, you are simply developing the most efficient means by which you can move beyond the painful lesson you will learn at Blaze of Glory and be so similarly welcomed by my thorn-painted hand? Do not ask her for mercy.
The way will not be so easily cleared for you, as it was for Miss Beaufort. A multitude of agonies. She is newly sprung from the rich earth, turning her face to the sun and unfurling those soft, colourful petals in the warm light. You are well-established, with roots that run deep and you have had many seasons to blossom. Where are your flowers, Jessica?
Still, my celestial machinery now standing in burnished brass and polished quicksilver at the core of this company, slowly but surely connecting to everyone and everything, will take you and make you something new. Something awful and twisted. While its great shaft turns ten thousand times a moment in support of a Hurricane at its summit, there is a little energy to spare and while I orchestrate and guide and shape, I have a little attention for you, too. A little gift.
Do you remember stepping on your Husband’s toes, graceless and clumsy on the night of your wedding?
I will do something for you and Shane. I will teach you to dance.
Welcome to the Rapture.
__________________________________________________________________________________
[The Now]
She is squeezing the folder so tightly it depresses under her fingertips, making concentric circles that dimple the plastic. Her hand trembles slightly and yet, there is no obvious sign of discomfort across her face or posture. She looks every bit the professional. It is surface deep.
Still, Cassieopia does not put it down on the desktop. That alone is equally telling.
Her attention wanders, down to the red book perched at the very edge of the table. Her lips flex – she reads the cover silently, making silent words as she goes. Something children do, that she evidently still does. It could be considered endearing.
Or naive.
“Dictation for Ladies,” She says out aloud, eventually. “It looks old … Quite an unusual subject.”
It is old. A stupid observation. “First edition, originally published in 1905.”
When I do not add anything more, she walks around the desk to stand where I am sitting, bent over the partially dismantled prosthetic resting in multiple subassemblies under a bright spotlight. The plastic phalanges of every finger lay in three distinct pieces each on the utilitarian workbench, their silver endoskeletal members pulled out from restraining clamps inside. A small pile of plenary gears, picked out in other rare earth metal alloys, slowly depletes where each is carefully reinserted into place after cleaning. A beautiful machine.
Bundles of coloured electrical cabling run in wide spirals, circling a grey plastic box. Green printed circuit board, trimmed and scribed with silver-spot solder peek out through a missing lid. It is all ordered in groups arranged around the workbench. Everything with purpose and place.
Still, Cassieopia’s eyes are on the book. Take them off it.
Picking up the tip of a plastic forefinger and carefully fitting it back onto its assigned digit, I give her what she is so desperate for – permission. “You may look at it.”
Eagerly, she scoops it up in both hands reverently, as if some ancient treatise or scripture that might turn to dust if she breathes on its hallowed pages too loudly. There is nothing incredible or particularly worthy about its contents, per se. No, its value is in who possessed it, not what is written inside.
Cassieopia does not even get beyond the brief, handwritten inscription on the first blank page before asking questions. “Who’s Kataryn?”
Silence her. I fit the completed forefinger back into the empty socket underneath a waiting plastic knuckle. “My Mother.”
“Annabelle?”
I pause, because that name does disrupt my concentration. Enough. “My sister.”
Curiosity radiates from her like some palpable heat at my back; flushing her skin scarlett with the burning need to ask. And she does. “Do you keep in touch?”
“She is dead.”
For just a moment Cassiopeia takes a step forward and without looking I know she has reached out to offer me a comforting touch. Break her. Thankfully, for her bodily integrity and my concentration, she reconsiders and her questing fingertips retreat back. Still, the sorrow in her voice is as genuine and real as any physical contact. “I’m sorry to hear that. Was it sudden?”
With a twist, I refit the last finger and turn the prosthetic over to reattach its palm plate. The rubberised grip is soft in my natural grasp. “Heart failure.”
It takes a few moments, but the other woman works through the obvious implications. “You have–”
Do not answer that. “Yes,” I say simply, and she does not press it again. “Did you bring the file?”
Now it is time for Cassieopia to lose her focus. The plastic wrinkles and creases sharply between her fingers. Satisfied, I climb up to my feet and turn back to face her. She does not step back, another sign of continued progress. Another sign of defiance.
“Yes, but …”
“You are worried about what I will do with Miss Ryan’s privileged medical records that you have taken without authorisation from your employer.”
She frowns, tries to speak, frowns again then simply nods.
“ … But you still took them.”
She nods.
“ … And brought them to me?”
Another nod.
“Why?”
Cassieopia looks away now, courage exhausted and unable to hold eye contact. Weakness. “You said you needed them, to help Amber …”
“I do, and I will. Now put them down here. Now.”
It is too late now for her to resist – not effectively, not truly. She is already sworn to me, given to me. Cassieopia has entered into this and cannot get out. She knows this, understands but her virtue, her greatest asset and the reason she is of any use at all in my grand design, proves stubborn in its refusal to go to its work and destruction quietly. Eventually, she acquiesces and places the folder down on the workbench.
Perhaps looking for something to distract, she continues to flick through the pages of my red book while I refit the prosthetic. Servo motors and actuators buzz and whine with the effort of cycling each finger. Test them around her neck.
“You talk like this book teaches,” She says. Not a question, a declarative statement. A fact. “Why?”
“It belonged to my sister.”
Nascent understanding, she begins to nod. “She talked like that?”
I shake my head and that embryonic comprehension dies in-utero. Another frown, she thinks about pushing further – a significant sign of progress in her development but it is still too early and she shrinks back within herself. Tame; disappointing.
Holding out my hand expectantly, she hands me the red book and I return it to the bookcase opposite which takes up the entire length of the wall. As I pass I run a plastic forefinger against the spines of an entire shelf of jewel cases – dozens and dozens of audio CDs interrupted by a multimedia player nestled between two banks of large, felt-wrapped speakers. This one. Stopping at random, I pull free the disc, load the tray and twist the volume upwards.
“Will you help me?” I ask, and she nods before she has even stopped to fully appreciate the question. Because knowing is not a fundamental prerequisite for compliance. Obedience.
Holding out my prosthetic, I motion for her to take it. “I need to practice my dancing for Miss Salco.”
Some day, when I’m awfully low, when the world is cold …
Our bodies move together, fingers entwined and as I lay my hand against the small of her back, she presses into me. Her cheeks flush, heart rate quickens. Cassieopia swallows, spending a difficult few moments trying to decide where to put her gaze, but like most things she is subsumed into my will and her eyes stay fixed on mine. Her perfume fills my lungs with a delicate hint of summer sweetness. I like this particular scent, though she rarely disappoints with other choices.
I will feel a glow just thinking of you, and the way you look tonight …
Our movements lack fluidity initially; her muscles tensing at the wrong moment in opposition to mine as she reacts to me instead of anticipating. Quickly, she feels my underwriting rhythm and makes a connection in spirit that moves us both in perfect, beautiful unity.
Yes you’re lovely, with your smile so warm, and your cheeks so soft …
Unexpectedly, I feel her head drop onto my shoulder. It threatens to tip me off-balance, impact my turn, upset my centre of gravity but in that moment she relaxes so completely our connection intensifies, and her body takes commands from mine. We move, we dance, as one.
It is almost a regret that before my grand design is complete, this young woman will be left with nothing, and a subsequent desire to be nothing more. She will beg you to stop, and you will not. Still, there is no other way and so we dance a little while longer, and I give her a little more peacefulness. A little more ignorance of what is yet but certain to come.
There is nothing for me but to love you, and the way you look tonight …
_________________________________________________________________________________
[The Rapture]
It is almost time … I think I have butterflies in my stomach. Do you?
Jessica, I have worked tirelessly to create a new world for us to share in California next week, a place tethered in reality to Los Angeles – a gateway through which we will experience something wonderful together. A path to hell. A new plane of existence, where all your inadequacies and failures can be left behind, stripped away with the neuroses and the character flaws and dropped down into the shit from whence you came to leave the best possible version of yourself free.
Free to be comprehensively dismantled and rebuilt in an image that pleases me. A testament to unearned hubris and unjustifiable arrogance. A warning to fools and other degenerates that rush where ironwork angels once feared to tread, before they were torn down and turned to scrap. Retired.
The preparations are all but complete. A fine hall has been rented in the form of the Galen Centre, where over ten thousand people will come to watch us dance together. I have tuned all the weapons of war; written a symphony which blends their arts and terrible agonies together, to be conducted by my thorn-painted hand and in that a great band – an orchestra made in bruises and concussions and fractures in place of piano and strings and trumpets – is prepared to play. To sing your end. There is only one thing left uncertain, one single element still unknown.
Can you be taught to dance?
Will you lay your head on my shoulder and drift off in submissive silence? Unconsciousness brings a wonderfully refreshing compliance all of its own, after all … But no. That is insufficient. There is more to be taught here than a mere two-step, or soft shoe shuffle. A lesson in suffering. No waltz or tango, regardless of complexity, will give me enough satisfaction to limit our time together to the business of winning a bout and moving on.
It is not simply enough for me to inflict the requisite physical suffering required to ensure you do not answer a mere Referee’s concern for your health, or ability to compete. Winning is not enough for her. These are wounds you can recover from, eventually, and then continue your merry, ignorant way retelling the same tired tales and stories of glories. It would be irresponsible of me to put you down in such a way that you will eventually get up again, none the wiser.
If nothing else, it will earn me the thanks of a future Bombshell Roulette Champion when I by action now, prevent the possibility of you interrupting their future title reign six years’ hence with a fifteen-day blip and associated pyjama party with your girlfriends. There is comfort in friendship.
Despite your expertise in failure, there is one thing you have achieved that Miss Rainbow and Miss Beaufort did not – you have piqued a personal interest. A specific and powerful motivation on my behalf to derive a permanent solution to the challenge set: how do you solve a problem like Jessica Salco? I enraptured a Strange Beast and a Rose because my grand design demanded it, but you are different. You annoy me. A first not to be welcomed.
Still, I am very much looking forward to dancing with you, despite your admitted clumsiness and the resultant frustration you cause.
They say that hard work can, to some extent, bring success when talent is having a bad day. Perhaps you are the ultimate lampooning; a cliche spun out on a tenuous thread to make a parody of itself. Living proof that if you exist long enough, eventually, you will be accidentally successful. It is better to be lucky than good. Truly a remarkable tenure fully deserving of your much-vaunted veteran status.
Have I been sufficiently clear? Is my verbiage transparent, understood?
I am sorry you have found my words too mercurial, too mysterious – too cryptic – to easily comprehend. They are poison pen. Like Old Blue Eyes himself and his easy listening, allow me to be Frank: At Blaze Of Glory, you are going to suffer so very much for every year of your tenure here and every moment you showed such absurd pride in existing without achieving in it …
… And I have more than enough misery to go around. You will not be allowed to meet your end peacefully, like your friend Adrienne. I will make an example of you and in the sweetest irony made a bitter tang on your tongue, finally deliver unto you the relevancy and historical importance that has eluded you across multiple meaningless title pseudo-reigns and years of showing up and expecting talk to equal action.
Consider me the living incarnation of your long service award, received in recognition of your unrivalled ability to do so little with so much time, and somehow – some way – find this an affirmation of your ability and significance and not a fundamental undermining. Like any good acknowledgement of a long career, it is always immediately followed by the end. Thank you for your contribution.
I am your termination for services no longer required. I promise they will all remember what I do to you in Los Angeles, even if you do not.
The venue is rented, the band assembled, tuned and ready. I am waiting for my partner, thorn-painted hand outstretched with a single spotlight shining down upon us. There are motes of dust floating in its bright beam. Do you see them shimmer and reflect like a constellation made to shine as we move together? Now it is time to see if you can dance.
Welcome to the Rapture.