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tezcatl-ipoca.livejournal.comSunday, October 18th
Evening
Tenements
Could tell myself it's just cabin fever, too long set in one place, one town, one set of walls. Can't remember when I was last still so many months: years, decades, more. Much more, maybe. Could tell myself instead it's the looks from the neighbours, the just-audible complaints, the pointed suggestion from the council that Lucien's lodger (and oh, that makes me laugh, thinking of Marbas) finds somewhere else to park his vehicle - or sharing space with Lucien and Lokan both, near-constant and wearing awareness of their presence. And it's all of those, but it's more as well: low-lying fear of what'll happen when Syl and I go at last to face Lilith. Better to be clear, then, of anyone I care for.
Wonder if I'd've thought of that, in the past.
It stands just where the scrubland round town turns into the first straggle of the woods. A thin, grey, mean place, and a thin, grey, mean smell comes from it, needling its way towards me on the wind. Dull stagger of buildings down the rutted track that used to be a road: tall old shabby houses leaning against one another in great blocks of slate and beige, ugly and wet and sullen in the rain. They cut up the sky with jagged roofs and puffs and curls of wet black smoke, heavy and tarry and dirty with soot. Some windows evening-lit, but more blank and broken: a dying place.
A stair runs up into the building I'm looking for, a wooden rickety thing tarred sticky-black against the rain and yet still beginning to rot; and at the top of it the door stands stolidly, faded green and peeling. I stump up them and rap on the door. A thump from inside, and a rattle, and it's pulled open. A dark-faced man with a purple blotch on the side of his face looks out at me: first suspiciously, and then with contempt when he recognises me from the market. "You, then. Fourth floor, like I said."
Someone's made something of an effort in the hallway, worn rugs laid down for dirty shoes. The corridor beyond's was dim and a little smelly, as if it's been lived in a great deal without ever being cleaned, and the floor that the rugs cover's dusty wooden boards and nothing more. Follow him through the dusty corridor, and up wooden stairs without any rugs to cover the dirty boards, and then up more, and more, and more. Doors opening on each floor we pass, faces at them sour and curious and disdainful. My guide grunts at them, and some vanish behind slamming doors but others keep staring plainly. If the smell in the first corridor hinted of many people and little cleaning, the smell here speaks it plainly. Old cooking, sweat, illness. Poverty. My knee's burning, and I'm hauling myself up with a hand on the banister rail. This is going to be a fucker, then.
The fifth floor was the highest, and the brightest, and the dirtiest in the house. No doors open here, and we step round holes in the floorboards. He kicks open a brown door - "Doesn't lock. Fix it yourself, if you care to," - and gestures me in. The room's empty, dusty, lopsided cabinets and no bed, a basin no longer plumbed into the wall. One high square window, and I can just see a scrap of roof and then the heavy sky. Push it open, careful of the cracked glass, and I think or imagine I can smell the burning of the manor still. "There's a pump out behind the house. You'll have to haul your own water." If you can, his look at my leg says plainly.
Shrug one shoulder at him. "It'll do." Can still shower at Lucien's, I guess. And it's a bolt-hole, somewhere away, no one I care about to catch the backlash of Lilith's anger or Iblis' pleasure or anything else that comes my way. Not a home, not nearly. Not like the carnival was, like Lucien's place was becoming. Safer, that way, surely. For them, for me.
Wait for him to leave and shut the door. Human noise from downstairs. Lean my back up against the door, and try to figure out what the hell I'm doing here.
[closed]
Evening
Tenements
Could tell myself it's just cabin fever, too long set in one place, one town, one set of walls. Can't remember when I was last still so many months: years, decades, more. Much more, maybe. Could tell myself instead it's the looks from the neighbours, the just-audible complaints, the pointed suggestion from the council that Lucien's lodger (and oh, that makes me laugh, thinking of Marbas) finds somewhere else to park his vehicle - or sharing space with Lucien and Lokan both, near-constant and wearing awareness of their presence. And it's all of those, but it's more as well: low-lying fear of what'll happen when Syl and I go at last to face Lilith. Better to be clear, then, of anyone I care for.
Wonder if I'd've thought of that, in the past.
It stands just where the scrubland round town turns into the first straggle of the woods. A thin, grey, mean place, and a thin, grey, mean smell comes from it, needling its way towards me on the wind. Dull stagger of buildings down the rutted track that used to be a road: tall old shabby houses leaning against one another in great blocks of slate and beige, ugly and wet and sullen in the rain. They cut up the sky with jagged roofs and puffs and curls of wet black smoke, heavy and tarry and dirty with soot. Some windows evening-lit, but more blank and broken: a dying place.
A stair runs up into the building I'm looking for, a wooden rickety thing tarred sticky-black against the rain and yet still beginning to rot; and at the top of it the door stands stolidly, faded green and peeling. I stump up them and rap on the door. A thump from inside, and a rattle, and it's pulled open. A dark-faced man with a purple blotch on the side of his face looks out at me: first suspiciously, and then with contempt when he recognises me from the market. "You, then. Fourth floor, like I said."
Someone's made something of an effort in the hallway, worn rugs laid down for dirty shoes. The corridor beyond's was dim and a little smelly, as if it's been lived in a great deal without ever being cleaned, and the floor that the rugs cover's dusty wooden boards and nothing more. Follow him through the dusty corridor, and up wooden stairs without any rugs to cover the dirty boards, and then up more, and more, and more. Doors opening on each floor we pass, faces at them sour and curious and disdainful. My guide grunts at them, and some vanish behind slamming doors but others keep staring plainly. If the smell in the first corridor hinted of many people and little cleaning, the smell here speaks it plainly. Old cooking, sweat, illness. Poverty. My knee's burning, and I'm hauling myself up with a hand on the banister rail. This is going to be a fucker, then.
The fifth floor was the highest, and the brightest, and the dirtiest in the house. No doors open here, and we step round holes in the floorboards. He kicks open a brown door - "Doesn't lock. Fix it yourself, if you care to," - and gestures me in. The room's empty, dusty, lopsided cabinets and no bed, a basin no longer plumbed into the wall. One high square window, and I can just see a scrap of roof and then the heavy sky. Push it open, careful of the cracked glass, and I think or imagine I can smell the burning of the manor still. "There's a pump out behind the house. You'll have to haul your own water." If you can, his look at my leg says plainly.
Shrug one shoulder at him. "It'll do." Can still shower at Lucien's, I guess. And it's a bolt-hole, somewhere away, no one I care about to catch the backlash of Lilith's anger or Iblis' pleasure or anything else that comes my way. Not a home, not nearly. Not like the carnival was, like Lucien's place was becoming. Safer, that way, surely. For them, for me.
Wait for him to leave and shut the door. Human noise from downstairs. Lean my back up against the door, and try to figure out what the hell I'm doing here.
[closed]
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