Symphony of the Iron Underbelly, Movement XXV – Fairytale of Bedford, New York
[The Present – Bedford Hills Prison, New York, USA]
Twisted spirals of orange-topped razor wire shift on the wind, bobbing between rusting fence posts and breaking up the silhouette of red brick walls. High above the short-shorn grass strips that leave nowhere to hide between buildings and the sharp perimeter, a boxy, wax-grey belfry threatens to merge with the storm-tossed sky above and behind. Figures clutching rifles step onto and off of gantries spanning the hundreds of feet between much newer towers. Their squat, concrete forms incongruous and brutal against the pioneer-esque, parochial architecture behind fluttering razor wire.
Fat beams of light sweep across from one tower towards the next, picking out recesses where clumps of broken masonry and above-ground pipework might give someone desperate the illusion of a safe place to hide – but there is no escape. Not from a place like this.
Control is baked into the very essence of Bedford Hills. Compliance, willing or otherwise encoded into each facet and component. It has a purpose so very close to my heart, such as it struggles these days, and its reason to be resonates as surely as if it shared my thoughts, too.
Education. Or … More specifically, re-education. Here is a place conceived from its very notion to design, construction and relentless endurance, to teach. To provide lessons. To enable learning. That the lessons it teaches are so painful is unfortunate but then, of course, it is home to a student body of such difficult pupils.
The rear wing of the car sinks down almost imperceptibly under my slight weight as I sag against the bodywork. A chain link fence surrounding the visitors’ car park which adds a further layer of protection between the single-track, asphalt road leading back towards the main highway and the larger prison complex shakes and clangs in the breeze. That same wind whirls underneath the raised bumper, making the thick lip of distended rubber from a flat tyre flap a few inches above pebble-strewn ground. The deliberate, serrated tear lies behind the rim and hidden from view.
And so here I sit, with the fabric of my seasonally-inappropriate summer dress billowing a thin, almost-gossamer layer of bright red across contrasting patches of dark, dried oil and tufts of brown grass. The cold evening turns frigid as the feeble, orange sun sinks below a backdrop of gently rolling hills. From somewhere behind me, the screech of a motor climbs high before the rattle of the internal gate it drives open drowns it out.
Headlights flicker on, making the metal of the exterior gate ahead turn dirty white and off-silver. The car draws level and the window of the front passenger side drops only the barest of an inch to let the voice inside carry through.
“Is there a problem, Ma’am?”
I leap down to land on my high-heeled feet and the force makes the whole car sway on a single, feeble jack holding its enormous weight up and clear. Nudging the wheel with the point of my mud-smeared shoe, I nod. “Flat tyre.”
His eyes move down my body, but there is no hint of lewdness. His face is relatively impassive and instead, he assesses me; evaluates a potential threat. “Visiting an inmate?”
Cocking my head to the side, I frown and look towards the red brickwork buildings behind another wire-topped fence line. “I was, but she was released before I could …”
“Wrong date,” I clarify, and that seems to assuage him ever so slightly in the way his muscled shoulders relax. From out of my sightline, his right hand returns to the steering wheel to join the other. From behind my back, I let the stump of what is left of my forearm swing into view. The titanium post cemented into shattered bone catches the setting sun.
“Can put a call into the guardhouse,” He offers. “Get a tow-truck out to help.”
I nod, and he reaches down to put his car into reverse. “Who’d you say you were here to see, anyway?” He asks, craning his head to look back over a shoulder.
“Avalon Blackthorn.”
His head whips around, steely eyes narrowed. For a few moments he just looks at me, jaw set and fingers tight around the wheel. He reaches down, pushing the gearstick forward and into drive. For a few moments it looks as if he will simply pull away – acting on his time-served and experience-honed instincts to step over a bear trap rather than linger with a foot hovering between the iron halves … But he does not. He cannot; not after hearing her name.
The window drops down all the way and he takes a harder look my way. “Get in.”
And I do.
It is ten miles of cold, early evening interspersed with truck stops and roadkill before he breaks the silence. “It’s been years.”
I nod, and he continues. “ … Haven’t seen her since she walked out of Bedford Hills determined not to end up coming back. Suppose that’s a good sign, but then … It’s a big State. Bigger country. Plenty of other correctional facilities to end up in.”
He glances over, but there is no real sign of fear. Trepidation, perhaps – but that is hardly surprising. He is unsure, but he is not afraid. At least, not yet.
“You were waiting for me,” He says. Not a question but a declarative statement and again, I nod. “Assume you know I’m not in the business of aiding, abetting or surrendering sensitive information. They paid their debt to society as far as I’m concerned. Not going to help you chase them down for something they did before that debt was paid.”
“I already know almost everything about Miss Blackthorn that I need to know, Mister Waterson.”
Something that might have been a laugh, dried out by the long-set sun is my first reply. “How’d you know who I am?”
A blood-spattered boulder flashes past and disappears into the rear-view mirror. “Public records.”
He shakes his head. “Nothing public about that.”
The road widens until it leaves rugged grassland and rural America behind and arrives at something more suburban. Clusters of brightly-coloured houses branch off in neatly-maintained estates lined with cast-iron streetlights and green, grassy verges. Each home is virtually indistinguishable from its neighbour, except for the make and model of the cars parked in front of wide, doubleset garages. Instantly forgettable.
We stop in front of a dark house between two others that blaze with light and life. Its windows are opaque, only the barest outline of furniture visible beyond. Nothing stirs. “I did not expect you to come home.”
“Guessing whatever you want to know is best kept quiet,” Waterson shrugs as he pushes the car door open. “Family’s due back in an hour – I want you gone by then.”
And I will.
[The Rapture]
It is so very good to see you again, Miss Wolfe, although I must confess I did not think it would be quite so soon. Indeed, it seems insufficient to have allowed your bruises to fade to sickly purple-green and the ache in your jaw when you bite down to become a lingering stiffness. Do you remember all those discrete, wonderful lessons I took such careful time to teach you? The choice agonies and miseries that we exchanged only a few short weeks ago? Those are yours to take with you now, and forever.
But, of course, we cannot look back to the past because we are not going that way. Instead, this Sunday, you will once again look up at me underneath those bright spotlights and this time, you will not labour under the misapprehension that I am anything cloaked in shadow or smoke. Despite the tired cliches and wearisome hyperbole, you will know precisely what waits for you at Climax Control.
Unfortunately this does somewhat rob you of the opportunity for ignorance and with it, a charmed bliss. Such a privilege was yours only once, weeks ago, and now you must repeat all of this, again, under no uncertain terms as to the price to be paid for experiencing it.
My time is so short that perhaps I would not have wished to spend what little of it is left to spare on the pleasure of your company, and that of your partner Miss Angelos. That is not because I do not think you are worth such a detour – did I not give you my full attention previously? Was the prize of the World Bombshells’ Championship insufficiently alluring and enticing? No. Our previous engagement took my rapt focus, and in that exchange I risked everything.
It cannot be said, even through the twisted words on the forked tongues of my detractors, that I looked beyond you. To something bigger and perceived as a greater existential threat.
To My Resplendent Hurricane. To Amber Ryan.
You must be so tired; so filled with a weariness that saps the strength from your muscles and makes each step heavy. To be set up with the expectation to climb mountains and defeat them in contests of stamina and willpower every week – to fight superheroes, distorted angels and faceless monsters. Lesser women might capitulate, or desperately find some reason to be anywhere else but the assigned location and time of their doom.
And yet, you do not. You endure. It is a worthy quality.
Equally unfortunately, this is not your time. Coincidence, corporate greed or that most satisfying of human desires, revenge, have placed you and Miss Angelos in a position that cannot serve to offer either of you anything except pain. Through that, there will always be growth but beyond that, I can reluctantly offer you nothing because those high stakes have become all the more pressing.
I will not look past you, again, but I will look through you. There is no alternative given the impossible, ever-switching dynamic that constantly gives and takes of my purpose and reason to be. Am I the Huntress; Champion; Predator? Or is it Miss Ryan who stalks me in the dark and the night? To be truthful, I am beginning to forget who plays which role …
So perhaps it is no surprise that in this building pressure, that threatens to grind teeth together and rupture ears, I have turned to someone who cannot be preoccupied with what came before. Someone unwilling to spend the second half of their life looking back at the first and despairing. The impetuousness of youth and newness and a refusal to embrace the status quo is a wonderful tonic to the ailments of bitterness and cynicism.
I have found a natural antidote to the destructive effects of a hurricane. A new way to still its ill wind.
Miss Blackthorn does not care who you are, because she is unmoved by stories of what you have done that do not involve her. Your greatest victories and achievements were not at her expense, so why should she deign to acknowledge them? They are nothing more than books to be read in moments of boredom, when life is not quite ready to be lived – in the wee small hours and the inch-thick rubberised mattresses of poured concrete prison cells. When the world stops turning for long enough to look at what you have become and wonder why and how this could ever have come to be.
I will give you a little more attention, Krystal … But Avalon will give you none. Her lessons are not designed to improve, but to punish. In many ways, she is a far harsher teacher than me but then again, what is youth if not lacking in the desire to do, review and then apply. I think you will enjoy a very different relationship with her.
Quickly now, there is not much more time for us, together. Frost will soon blanket the ground and freeze the bare trees in their winter silhouettes. Strange things in dark forests stalk, whispering and howling at a bright moon which illuminates nothing. I would dearly love to show you the way home but I cannot go back. There is not enough time left for me to change direction, or walk a new path. I am committed to this. I cannot wait any longer.
I think it is going to snow, Krystal. Do not get caught outside, alone, after dark.
[The Present – Bedford Hills Prison, New York, USA]
I am not sure for how long I lay on the floor, but the snow had grown to make a blanket around the window ledge outside by the time Miss Blackthorn kneels down beside me. She extends a hand out but it hovers in midair – unsure what to do beyond the gesture. From where I have watched the flurry I turn my head and she finds my gaze.
She does not flinch at the movement. She does not move at all.
“Green plastic bottle,” I say. “Second bedroom on the first floor. Turn left at the grandfather clock.”
She opens her mouth to say something, likely relating to the clock or the number of bathrooms but stays silent and settles on a furrowed brow. She rocks backwards and stands and I go back to watching the snowfall.
When she returns it is to slump against the wall and slide down to sit to my right. Twisting the cap off, she taps a half-dozen small blue pills onto my proffered palm and follows my view out to the new winter night. In her other hand, she holds my prosthetic and setting the pill bottle down on the carpet, begins to tap her fingertips against the plastic phalanges in her grip.
“Thought it’d be heavier,” She shrugs, listening to the unpowered servo motors whine with each movement.
Swallowing the tablets, I let my eyes roll closed. “Mass is only one consideration. The other is the acceleration applied to that mass.”
She nods at that. “Hit hard – I get it.”
I can remember just how hard she hits, and she does. I dip my head. “Guess I shouldn’t bother asking where you were?”
“Why not?”
Her frown returns and cuts the skin of her forehead deeper. “Why not what?”
I sit up, pressing the only fingers left to me up against the exposed skin of my cheek, forehead and jaw. The skin is flushed red and hot to the touch. “Why should you not ask? I have nothing to hide.”
Avalon thinks on this for a few moments, slapping her palm against its composite counterpart. “… Where were you?”
“I met with your former prison guard, Christopher Waterson.”
Something that is difficult to identify with absolute certainty flashes across her features. At first it seems a rudimentary mixture of anger and shame, but there is something else intermixed which makes those feelings less divisible. She focuses on the snow. “Why?”
That is so very simple to answer. “I wanted to see if he was a good person.”
Methodically, MIss Blackthorn closes each of the plastic fingers on my prosthetic until it makes a fist. She turns it upside down and thumps it against the soft carpet below. After a few moments, she rests her chin against its upturned knuckles and glances at me.
“ … Why?”
“I wanted to see if you have become the person you are, now, because of or in spite of those who did what they could to help.”
Her lips part, but she hesitates and instead focuses her attention back on the window. A rhythmic thump, thump, thump continues until eventually, she sighs. “I don’t get it. You could have asked me.”
The all-consuming pain that had left me to watch the snow fall has waned a little, and with significant effort I draw my legs in underneath and manage to climb up to my knees. Avalon does not look around. “I told you how I ended up there.”
“You did,” I agree. Because she did. “However, I wanted to satisfy myself practically that what you said matched with who you are.”
She turns and climbs up to her feet. “Getting sick of hearing half-stories and parables and fables and lies–”
My interruption is sharp and cuts through her stream-of-consciousness. “I have never lied to you,” and the truth of my statement makes her pause. “You told me why you went to prison. You told me that you were punished not for starting trouble, but ending it and that your real error of judgement was confusing usefulness for love. Convenience for belonging. That you have been used as a tool more often than you have been appreciated as a person. Such a past is an infected wound that poisons the future from the ills of the past.”
I pull myself up to standing. “That is like someone else we are both intimately familiar with.”
“I’m nothing like her!” She barks, gesticulating with my own hand in a way that would seem utterly absurd if it were not for the cold-pressed fury radiating from her narrowed eyes.
I nod, and in a singular moment, the anger drains away from her features. “No – you are not. Because you have not turned your back on others who see the real you, even after you have been hurt so deeply by those who pretended. You are nothing like Miss Ryan.”
Sucking in a deep lungful of air, Avalon closes the distance and sets my prosthetic down next to the mask still lying on the tabletop. “So … What about Krystal and Ariana?”
Strength returns and my stomach untwists. Picking up the plastic hand, I set it down on the stump of my forearm and twist it into position. The fingers curl in serpentine sympathy. “We will give them an opportunity to experience something truly unique.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“A Rapture by Fire,” I nod and she laughs something short and sharp and grunted. I pick up the mask, turn it over and bring it up towards my bare face before pausing midway. Hesitating. I can feel Avalon watching me from the periphery of my vision. Setting it back down instead on the tabletop, I am only a few metres away when she calls out after:
“How is he?”
“Mister Waterson?” I ask, and she nods. “He is well, and he gives you his best.”
A small smile ghosts across Avalon’s features, but it does not survive my follow-up statement. “He remains available for anything you might need in the future, and implores you in the strongest possible terms to have nothing more to do with me.”
[The Rapture]
Miss Angelos …
… Do not be afraid of what is waiting. I do not want you to think of what is going to happen to you on Sunday, at Climax Control, in such purely personal terms as that. The miseries and agonies we will enjoy exchanging with each other are to be celebrated, not feared or shied away from. The things I have promised to take the time to do to you are not driven by some selfish desire to hurt wildly, without thought or feeling. Instead, it is better to think of them as the output of a system. A phenomena of interactions. Incapable of spite or malice.
Just like the hurricane you experienced only a short while ago.
It is perhaps difficult to see now, but you will be in such a privileged position come the beginning of next week. What other members of this company can say that they have faced down an Irresistible Object and an Immovable Force and survived to tell their exciting stories around catering? Presumably, you will survive me as you did Amber and can then lay claim to having endured a Hurricane and a Rapture and lived to tell.
But what will you tell them?
That you simply survived and took the wounds I promise to give you to remember me by and continued on – blindly, without growth. Without learning so much as a single one of the lessons both myself and Miss Blackthorn intend for you?
Or will you seize such a special opportunity to reinvent yourself? After all, you will emerge from a crucible of agony that will reforge and remake you anew. Consider the strength required to face one of the greatest World Bombshells’ Champions of all time, and then consecutively the current incumbent? To have done so and to do so, speaks volumes so much louder and more impressive than any mere gossip and speculation could achieve.
Oh, the heights you could yet hit if you accept the depths that you are about to strike.
It will make, of course, no immediate difference. You are an unexpected, transient happening in a chain of events written by grand design, fate, happenstance or some vengeful, cruel trick of an equally capricious god. There is no way you can make a meaningful impact here, now, and that is not your purpose or reason to be.
To be remade and reforged, you must be broken and that is the sacred duty I will undertake on Sunday. Miss Wolfe has already had her opportunity to take from me the Heart of a Hurricane and make it her own; to become the World Champion … But what of you?
What will you tell them?
Perhaps it is your time for boldness, for new beginnings. There is no reward for simply existing, and the First Law of Thermodynamics offers no boon for conservation of energy; it simply is. Instead of fearing the suffering you are about to experience as I have no doubt you are, instead turn it into an opportunity for new growth and new, wondrous things.
We have so much to show you.
There is one more thing I would like you to do for me – something only you can achieve on my behalf. In only a few days I will have held this heart of hers, reigned as Bombshells’ Champion, for a hundred days. In that time, only four people have taken up an opportunity to take it from me while so many others have talked exceedingly good games and delivered impressively poor performances. After Climax Control, you can act as independent verification; as proof that I prefer to show rather than tell.
Please, remember all of the lessons I teach you and the choice wounds I gift that you will carry for such a long time. Take them with you. Forge an ever-closer relationship with Krystal, made in the heat of group suffering at my thorn-painted hand and Miss Blackthorn’s conventional, if effective, fist. Be my evidence of my grand design, and go forth to show others of the beautiful things I have done to them and to you.
There is so little time left. I am sorry that you will not be given the opportunity to enjoy my personal attention, as Miss Wolfe did.
Perhaps it is best if you remain focused on the present, Ariana, for the here and now is all that remains relatively untarnished. Your past belongs to a Painted Hurricane and her cruel winds have bitten deep into your cold skin and turned it dark hues of blue. Your future is mine, co-opted and shared out with Avalon so that we might remake it into something that better serves our purpose. Your potential energy is repurposed; added to our own so that we might move even faster and with greater vigour to realise that grand design.
At Climax Control, I wish for you and Krystal to take careful heed of each of our lessons. Listen intently, show us your investment and passion and in exchange we will treat you to our most intimate miseries. Be with us and together, we will give you a new platform to rebuild whatever is left thereafter into something stronger, and greater. Think of all that you could be, if all that it takes is to be utterly destroyed first.
Would it not be wonderful to be liberated from such petty concerns? To be given the gift of strength of will and character? I have so little time left, and you and Krystal were a most unexpected event and still … I find myself minded to pause a moment. To find, somehow, some few moments to give you the focus you deserve. To step in front of something crashing and energetic and mighty, and bid it to stop a while so you can bathe in its coruscating power is so very brave of both of you.
Naive, perhaps. Foolish? Almost certainly and you will pay a heavy price in the injuries of the body, mind and soul you both carry henceforth for doing so but these are all in themselves gifts, to be carefully employed when your renaissance comes again. When you rise, blinking, into a warm morning sun and shake off the frost and chill of a long, cold Rapture.
Please, do not think of this as your end, Miss Angelos …
… Do not be afraid.
Welcome to the Rapture.
