i witness.

This is her home. If anything she felt a slight arrogance in such a situation. A human? It made no sense. She had done her work to make sure the freaks of the world would be safe away from it. Her face turns to stone while the only thing that moves is the sparkles on her frame. Raising a brow and continuing to walk down the stairs, shooting a look around the hotel, this couldn’t be known - to any monster. 

“Have a walk with me?” Her hand, coated in jewels, bright pink pointed nails on fingers that rest upon the others shoulder. How would she explain this? The mother, the host and suddenly she is an amateur in this situation. The garden of the Inn was filled with dangling vines, dark flowers and small noises from rare birds. 

“How exactly… Did you get here? I thought Mr Vonzt was guarding the door.” She says, irritated, but not with the young woman. “Well, that doesn’t matter anymore.” Lana rests her hands against her form before looking down, neat ( glamorous ) waves move with her. “I suppose this place is something more than you thought… obviously.” 

maybe it's not real. but it has to be, right? she's here, and she's looking at it all. and there is so much to look at, from the architecture to the figure of svetlana in front of her. florence can't focus on one thing for too long, trying to take all of it in at once. but the movement of the woman down the stairs is enough to make her finally still. there's something of a frightened animal reaction in it. everything is wrong and all she can do is stand there and wait for something to happen.

"uh, sure?" florence's tone implies that she doesn't seem to think she has much of a choice. if she keeps standing there then she's going to keep losing it. "we can do whatever. i -" she tries to shake it off. "well, i just... i like weird old places. i was going to just see what it was like. i thought it'd be some tiny shitty motel like the ones i've stayed in - sorry, is that rude? i don't really.... know."

“That’s so cute! You know, like film people doing film things, love that!” “The drive-in is going to be amazing for summer though, but if it gets to hot I’ll just come here so honestly, either way, I’m going to have a great time.”  The thoughts as they were firing in her brain slipped past her lips, at the very least they were still accompanied by the same warm smile. 

Elyse wanted something elegant to say back to the woman’s adorable smile. No, elegance was too much to ask for and she knew it. She figured that the witty people in her life had rollardexs of lines to say in their minds and just lazily flicked through them at their leisure. Elyse’s mind was an old and dreadfully unorganized filing cabinet filled with all the fun things she’d ever heard other people say. No original content to be found. “Rope sounds dope.” It was certainly more fun to find rhyming words in her head and a huge colossal part of her wished she’d been conscious enough to filter it out of her spoken words. But as with any and all embarrassing moments, she shook her head at herself and continued onward.

 “I’m just really excited! Thanks for picking, I’m really bad at deciding.” It was impossible, with no self-belief, all she’d be left with was the aching feeling that she’d made the wrong choice. 

“I’m okay for popcorn, but thank you so much! I have a muffin! Actually, I bought three, just in case—” Elyse bought three of everything in case her sisters decided to appear. Hungry or not she would always have something to offer them. She slipped her backpack off produced a paper bag with Kaffiene’s logo printed on the front. Sharing was part of her everyday existence and though she’d grown up as an only child she’d never been the selfish type. Her time in the orphanage was always centered around giving whatever she had away. Whether it was to her sisters or to another one of the orphans who’d never seen the good fortune she had before she lost her parents. Without even asking she offered up the bag to her company with a bright grin. “I think there’s an apple one, a chocolate one and… What else did I get, might be blueberry? You get first pick!”

"ha, yeah - film people doing film things. i honestly don't think we'd get along much if not for that, but i guess you take what you can get in hill city." there's not much around to do, and unlikely people tend to flock together more. a single binding interest can be enough to form a friendship around here. "hope business picks up more for them. i'm always worried they might close down. hell, i'm worried _we_ might close down sometimes." there are good and bad days, as in any job, but the bad days at vertex can get truly fucking dire.

the rhyme, though, gets a little snicker from florence, who seems half-embarrassed at her own sense of humor. it's not particularly good. it's the weird shit that she finds funny, or something so suddenly stupid. "i know hitchcock's a bastard and everything, but his films are still good. so i still run showings sometimes, even if i don't expect as many people to show up as they used to." you have to be into the genre or a film person, so to speak, to probably choose to watch hitchcock's films at some point. there's anachronisms. "you're welcome. i don't usually get to choose what's being shown - just running through a rotation or whatever the old guy sends me an email about wanting to run, so i guess it's nice to actually have some control over what's on screen."

she sounds kind  of rueful about her own choice, as if she's somehow uncomfortable with it.

he doesn’t realize she’s even talking to him at first.  that’s how people like her tend to be – preferring their silence and their own company, if anything speaking in low tones to their own minds while filtering through everything that metronome has to offer.  but she is speaking to him, gatsby confirms when looking up at her.  wavering a bit in place and hands flexing at her sides, a softness written in the kinetic energy that nervousness and anxiety triggers in the body.  on instinct, gatsby lets his voice grow louder for just a few moments.  

strings it around the chorus of the song with a pride, a power and actual focus behind his tone.  peace – a worthy enough thing to wish on anyone from enemies to lovers alike.  then the chorus fades into more bridges, verses and lines.  so too does gatsby’s voice.  he swallows down spit.  works his gum back into his teeth and gnaws on it before tilting his gaze towards the young woman.

     “it’s my voice.  that’s all i really think about it.”  he says to her softly, a deeper lulling lilt to him without the crescendo and fall that comes from music.  “if you like it, that’s what matters.  singing is for the guests.”  

he doesn’t mention how the music often suits his visitors, a well kept secret despite how terribly obvious gatsby thinks it is.  sometimes he chooses it.  other times they do – a lingering touch on an album, a soft sound when noticing something upon a nearby display.  just now he motions, fingers fluttering towards the vinyl that the woman has touched before leaning on those fingers twisted with his other hand, a bridge that bends ever so slightly beneath the pressure.  nothing in her grip means she’s still looking.  but the conversation has opened – there’s a freedom for his tongue to seek her out.  

     “you don’t have anything on you.”  gatsby murmurs, blinking slowly.  “i have most things here, are you looking particularly or meandering?  do you need my help?”

she wonders if he hears the compliment all the time. he probably does. people will say just about anything to fill silence, and the compliment must come off as something token. it's not. it's a lot for her to even say, but she wouldn't blame him if he reads it as something somehow patronizing. florence knows that she can read things that way a lot of the time. the assumption that people are out to hurt her or that they're being intentionally dishonest, ulterior motives brimming underneath words - it's damaging, yeah, but what isn't?

but then he keeps going, rather than stopping, so maybe she did manage to sound genuine enough. maybe he knows he sounds good. that's cool, too. good for him.

"it's not for you?" she blurts out, on instinct. in florence's humble film student opinion, art should also be fulfilling for you. "sorry, shit. not my problem. i guess i just... i don't know. i think performing for other people all the time and never for yourself can be shitty. i'm probably just reading too much into it. ignore me." like that - a bullet right in the heart of it. just ignore her. it's fine. her eyes flicker back down to the records on instinct, her fingers nudging a few records towards the front of the display in a ploy to look busy.

still, though, she can't help but continue the conversation. it would be rude not to, and that's just as much of a drive as anything else. she doesn't want to talk; she also doesn't want to make things worse for people trying to talk to her. "i, uh, yeah. hospice, by the antlers, on vinyl? it's old by music standards, which is like.... a decade. but you seem to have a lot of stuff, so maybe you have it. the original or the reissue is fine. i'm not picky about that kind of thing."

molten eyes watch with interest as she pulls the headphone.  full attention.  wonderful.  now if she screwed up there was less of a chance of passing it off.  fliting had never truly been one of her strong suits.  her teenagehood had stumped such a skill and her later years had required her to be subtle.  

but since she’d come back to the world she’s made a few attempts.  some worked , others failed spectacularly.  it was a learning curve.  a difficult and frustrating one.

❝   my —    ❞   she stops suddenly.   appearing in her mid thirties , she didn’t look old enough to have a fully grown daughter.  and she’d previously found out that gushing about her children was often a turn - off.   zahra panics for a moment.  

 ❝  a friend.  it was a gift.  ❞   she smiles through the awkward words.   ❝  um , i’m zahra.  ❞  a hand is outstreatched and accompanied with the sweetest smile she can manage.

normally she's one of the people who will grumble about horror movie characters being dumb as shit, letting the killer just walk towards them. it occurs to her, though, that she is now one of those people. she is the horror movie character, standing there stock still and stupid, watching the threat walk towards her in a stylish jacket and a pretty smile.

her legs should probably be moving away fast as possible, but it's too late. she's consigned herself to this conversation.

florence kind of wants to laugh, but that's the wrong reaction, so she locks the hysteria somewhere behind her jaw and says, "that's - that's nice!" does the enthusiasm sound too desperate? that's fine as long as it comes off as her maybe not having talked to a lot of people lately. that's kind of true, outside of the job. "it looks really good on you."

she laughs and then reaches forward. is her hand shaking? it is, just a little, and she tries to get a lock on it even as she reaches forward and shakes the woman's hand. zahra. "i'm florence. just flo, if you don't like that many syllables. shit, i know i'm probably getting in your way or something, but you just... looked really good."

so she’s a defender of the people, has a heart for the little ones instead of herself.  that’s a tragedy almost worth tears, erzsébet thinks.  pretty little things like this one aren’t taught to spit in the eye of the world around them, and have no inspiration to go after it themselves.  she’s heard that her life is now used as a cautionary tale against mad women as much as something told to children to insure they go to bed on time.  not a source of inspiration like it should be; who took control of something with blood and fire like she did?  damn the queens and the princesses and the royals – erzsébet did it only for herself.  selfishness is a proper lesson, as is violence.  it shouldn’t leave this young creature before her looking nervous and squirming between her oddly bold sentences.

hitchcock hurt women to brutalize beautiful performances out of them.  that, erzsébet thinks, is absolutely worthy.

still she bats her eyes, pretends to look shocked.  “oh, what a monstrous man.”  she leans her elbow onto the table with chin in palm as she peers hard into the young woman’s eyes.  almost unblinking – just the right edge of too long between the mechanical motion.  “your sin is my interest, what sort of things did he do to the fawns and bambis in his control?  i will confess that in his old photos he looked something of a career eater.  ill fond of anyone, i imagine, except for his favorite and most obedient little ones.”  

lipstick kissed lips curve upwards as she takes in the fading of voice.  how this girl freezes and remains there, rooted, before instinct kicks back in and has her moving through instinctual old motions.  her voice ever so distant.  that heat from her skin lingers on  erzsébet’s fingertips like the tingling of blood loss.  a numbness trying to fix itself and failing as the temperature shift fades.  cool returns to her, and she laughs as sweet and bright as she can fathom force out of her corrupted lungs.  “don’t underestimate yourself, mouse.  even rosemary had a taste for blood in the end – she just fell for madness before it took root in her.  women…”  erzsébet raises a shoulder and lets it fall.  shifting fabric as she chuckles.  “we’re creatures built to bleed.  i imagine that crimson should be easiest for us to cope with than anyone else.”

in this, an odd moment of sincerity.  a truth to her grin.  

“after all, films try to make us monsters based around that very concept.  do you like those films, or find them tedious?  women monsters because they are women and nothing else – well that can divide a room into ten thousand opinions.”  erzsébet pauses.  watches the girl swallow as she gestures with fluttering fingers around the empty theatre.  “but it’s just us, so we should have time for all of them.”

in one of her film classes, there was a whole debate about hitchcock. it's the debate that's still going on. what if a genius is also a bad person? what do you do with the work then? do you throw everything out? do you look the other way? it's a moral and ethical question, something that no one seemed happy to argue. a few people got into it, though. florence took a while to think about it in her dorm afterwards, trying to weigh the two against each other. the answer, to her, is that it wasn't worth all that pain. authenticity in acting doesn't have to require suffering. requiring suffering from someone else at all is a bastard's game. florence doesn't include her own self-induced suffering. it's different because it comes from something internal, things misaligned forever and making her thoughts rattle around like marbles in a wooden box, clattering against each other, difficult to listen to.

she rubs at the back of her neck. "so the birds is the big one. using live birds instead of mechanical ones. they tied the birds to tippi hedren and let them peck at her. like she was... carrion. plus the allegations of sexual assault. and everything else. he was just an asshole. but i guess the one thing is that he died slow. arthritis. got a pacemaker. and then his kidneys failed on him. and i'm not... he deserved it. just treated people in general like shit a lot. if it had just been a heart attack or something then it would've been too fast for him." she says all of it mechanically, like it's fact and not her condemning a man to a slow death.

and now they're just talking about blood and death like it's a normal topic. jesus. how did she let this happen? the conversation keeps spiraling away from her, bigger and worse. so she shrugs and slides the ticket and joanna's card back across the counter. "i guess it could happen to anyone. not what happened to rosemary, but there's plenty of women who lose it. ophelia's the classic for that kind of thing. blood's a lot less common." she isn't a victim of that kind of madness, though, no scattering flowers as she wanders, broken, into the scene. her instability is a lot less pretty.

better hidden, though, so she can give herself that much credit.

Elyse pressed her lips together, appreciating the morning time really was a mix for most. Some flourished and rose with the dawn and others didn’t care to be poked, prodded or talked to in any capacity. The woman’s short response was no deterrent for Elyse however, her zest for life would bow to nothing. Akin to a childish giddiness, once hyper she was impossible to bring back down if she didn’t have her sisters at her side to wrangle her. Bluntness, rudeness and overt cruelty did nothing to dismay her; her smile was still bright and she was still ready to make a new friend. 

“I love the drive-in! Haven’t been in so long. They just told me all I need to do is find someone with a car and then I’m all good to go—Wait, when no one else is there? Spooky!” Any kind of congregation at the drive-in would most probably be a thoroughly spook-filled affair. Wytches, wolves, gods, and monsters all hidden behind human faces. A shared passion for film or perhaps an immortal’s want to burn unburnable time. Elyse looked to the sign again as directed and nodded, no harm in reiteration. “Oh totally, is it just you running this whole place?” Always curious and never afraid to make that known. With her gaze lowered she all but skipped through the door, offering the woman a small thank you through curled lips as she went. 

“I could like horror.” Elyse could like anything. Most especially when advised by pretty girls who seemed to know better than she did. “I’ll watch whatever you’re in the mood for today. I’m sure it’ll be great!” She surely enjoyed being a the whims of others considering how readily she let go of decision making. Even if there was something she adored she was so easily led away from it. Amara knew that all too well, a marionettist who enjoyed dancing Elyse into circles. 

And Elyse would happily spin until faint, allowing anyone, even strangers their turn to make her dizzy. 

florence really does try her best to not be an asshole to customers. it's part of her job and everything, but in the end, it just kind of ends up leaking through. she's not really good with people. she doesn't really want to be good with people, and she doesn't trust people. she barely trusts her own manager to pay her on time, so random customers usually get what florence could call her customer service self. it isn't a good self. it's just the one that gets her through the day, that pushes all of the worst and most paranoid thoughts down until she gets home and they all well up again.

this girl doesn't seem bad, though. she's cute, and bubbly, and absolutely a weird person to be around for florence, who regularly jokes that she hasn't had an excited day since approximately 2005.

"yeah, i know the guy who owns it. we both - you know. film people, or whatever. so i know when the good times to go out there if you want to be alone are, and sometimes we just hang out and watch whatever weird film no one else wanted to see." she glances around. "uh, kind of. there's the manager but he's an old guy, so he doesn't show up too often. it's mostly me, which is why we've got one showing at a time. got to have someone in the projection booth." she lets the door swing shut behind her as she goes, the keys disappearing back into her pocket.

for a moment, florence stills, as if surprised by the decision. then she smiles just a little. "if you don't care either way, let's watch rope, then. i haven't gotten to screen it in a while." to her the joy is in putting it all together.

( @keykoded ♡ ) the hotel was filled with all and more. each room could wander into other universes, tell a story of it’s temporary owner and all the more. she had poured her heart into understanding what the home of many wanted. the walls spoke to her in many ways, the ghosts that lingered would help solve the many riddles. 

however, it would still keep Svetlana on her toes when it unveiled new prospects. the mid-day was the only time of silence for the Inn. many monsters laid to sleep after a long night of work, hunting and god-knows-what-else. Lounging around in a overbearing gown, filled with feathers and jewels, weighing against her frame. 

she pauses mid way on the lounge stairs while seeing a familiar face. a human? it couldn’t be. no human could see the lavenza for it’s true beauty. liquid from her glass splashes against the marble, she must of stopped eruptly, a smile plastered on her face when making eye contact with the other. 

“ Florence? i wasn’t expecting to see you around here.” She laughs, nervously. 

florence likes odd places. always has. one of her distinct childhood memories is staying with her family in this shitty old motel. everyone hated it except for her. she watched the peeling wallpaper and the mismatched colors and attached to it, for some reason, in her memory. usually it's full of holes, but not for that. so she was just going to wander into the inn and maybe ask about some history or something.

the door closes behind her, though, and her shoes squeak against marble floors. she goes stock-still on animal instinct, trying to compute. the dimensions don't match the outside. nothing matches the outside. the ceilings are grand and the floor is marble and everything is lush and lovely and absolutely not what she should be. she's finally snapped. it's taken years, but it really fucking happened this time.

her jaw works. trying to force out syllables and failing. then a little bit of glittering movement makes her eyes snap over, and she stares. now her mind is struggling for the name - svetlana, the woman who shows up to the theater sometimes.

the local seemingly permanent gothic cosplayer (joanna, start calling her by her name, you idiot) actually caught her on her way home. the word “caught” has certain connotations, of course, but it feels right. the syllables make something slot together in the back of florence’s brain, in the way that oddly right words always do. she was locking up vertex, stepping back to observe the doors, and the slight flicker of movement made her feel trapped, somehow. animal instinct, maybe. any kind of movement in the dark must be a bad one, must make you into a prey animal, and so the brain goes.

or that’s what she told herself, anyway, when she turned around and blurted out oh it’s you as inelegantly as possible.

somehow, after all that, joanna still offered to take her out for a drink. the two of them ended up at the bar two blocks over from vertex, which florence considers to be her bar. it’s her bar to the point that when she sidled up to the counter, the bartender glanced between them and immediately asked if there was something going on. as if there’s ever anything going on with her. as if anything is ever happening at all. she denied it and asked for the usual - a basilico, which, as the bartender tells her, is a drink that only she has ordered over the past five years.

she didn’t even ask what joanna got. probably the most expensive thing in this kind of grimy bar, something that florence wouldn’t even look at. at least she’s smart enough to not get their most expensive wine, which is probably only hafl as good as the kinds of wines that she’s used to. so this is good. she got a drink, and she’s got company for once. and it’s bad, because she’s drunk and joanna keeps looking at her. if she drinks the basilico too fast then it goes away and she has nothing to distract herself; if she drinks it too slowly then she has to talk.

or maybe it doesn’t matter, because she chokes a bit on citron vodka and three different fruit liqueurs when joanna says that. she says it so lovingly, the syllables so sweet that they sound rotten in her mouth, especially around ruin. as if she’s thought quite a lot about anyone’s hipbones, much less florence’s, and quite a lot more about ruin. florence stammers out a few nonsense syllables, putting down the drink so she doesn’t just drop it and piss off the only bartender in the world who’s ever liked her.

“i’m sorry,” she says, “i’m sorry, i’m getting pretty drunk, there’s a bunch of vodka and like, liqueurs in there, and i’m - did you just flirt with me? are you flirting with me? but in a victorian way or something?” this is something that she wasn’t expecting. she must be bright red, and the drink’s only making that worse. she rubs at the back of her neck and tries to ignore how close their hands are, one of florence’s laying flat on the tabletop and joanna’s, decorated with rings, slender and lovely, mere inches away.

something about it seems wrong, too. she tries to push through the haze of the liquor. fails. just resigns herself to it, pulling the drink closer and clutching it like it’s somehow going to make her feel more safe. is it safe? is anything safe? has anything ever been safe?

the thing is that sometimes, joanna looks at her like she wants to eat her. it’s very soft and delicate and then it curdles and rots. florence doesn’t think joanna knows that she’s noticed. but of course she has. all she does is watch. all she does is look. so maybe nothing’s safe at all, and maybe that’s just how things are. 

WHERE: metronome, dell rapids WHEN: early morning WHO: @keykoded SONG: ministry, karen o & danger mouse

not many people come in at this particular hour – fewer still with the scuttling nerves of the young woman who arrived all but the moment that gatsby unlocked the door.  she barely batted an eye at his cleaning supplies.  didn’t do anything but shift, a little pink and sometimes jumping when he came near her to rearrange an out of order display or clean the wood containing each and every product.  they move together like this from the first minute so often abandoned.  an odd dance of customer and manager, rearranging around one another as she seemingly perused every inch of metronome that she could.  

with her quiet, gatsby made no attempt to apologize or excuse himself.  simply finished the day’s morning tasks and settled behind his counter, notebook and pen to the side.  gum pack in his hand as he opens a piece and slips it between his teeth and begins to chew.  he turns the speakers on from his phone after scrolling through his endless songs.  

as he chooses one, the customer settles.  her dark hair hiding her face entirely from him as she lurks besides a display nearly in the center of metronome, hidden well enough from the glass wall and yet squirming whenever she notices it.  gatsby’s eyebrows furrow.  slowly he leans on his palm, lips pressed together as he gnaws at the softness of his gum and, both with and between each chewing twist of his jaw, begins to sing along with the song.  

the instinct to speak with her is small.  there’s something better about watching her, curious and far away as his counter is as her fingers explore a display of next to unknown artists.  all customers are interesting – all of them worthy.  but the ones with unique styles, odd requests have always been gatsby’s favorite.  and she is very much the former.

she spent yesterday cleaning out her record player. there are little part of florence's routine that repeat themselves, eating up her time in particular units. if she can make everything part of a process, then she can accomplish it all. it was while dusting everything off and testing all the motion that she remembered she'd been meaning to check out that new music store. there had been a few flyers scattered around hill city, one pinned to the bulletin board near the door of her apartment building. so she had noticed. of course she had.

she kept a lookout for anything new - for shifts, for changes, the compulsive aura of someone who has to know exactly what's going on so she can protect herself.

florence does make an effort to be out of the way. there's cleaning supplies set up, and the last thing she wants to be is in the way. so she tries to creep around the edges of the store, looking at everything. she likes the rotating shelves. it's nice. the whole place is like a puzzle box. the music helps her settle to actually look, records blurring into blocks of color rather than anything distinct and only now becoming detailed to her.

the song that the guy at the counter chose is nice. he's got a nice voice too. she still startles at it at first, peering at him over the top of the display. then it's soothing, though, and she can let some of the tension drain out of her shoulders. it feels like the attention is off of her even though she's the only customer in the store. she flicks through a few records. she wants hospice. by the antlers. being in a bad relationship, unable to escape, trapped like taking care of someone on hospice.

alec’s house is a lot nicer than her tiny apartment. he keeps inviting her back here. that’s good, because she would panic if he had to see her apartment. it’s made for her and no one else -  the boxes of film, the bottles of chemicals to develop film in her approximation of the c-41 development procedure, the plastic tubs and the scattered plants that keep dying on her and the mugs from when she can’t bring herself to clean but can bring herself to make tea and the empty plastic water bottles from when she can’t even bring herself to do that much. and it isn’t that alec’s film is less messy or cluttered.

it’s just that there’s a difference between a sort of homey clutter, which is what surrounds her now, and the kind of desperate inability to function that pours through in everything she does. florence hasn’t done anything how people should since she was young. over time that strangeness has gotten stronger and stronger but she’s also gotten better at hiding it. now she can project certain things to the outside world. she’s just anxious, not terrified. she just likes films. she doesn’t obsess over it, of the idea of framing everything she can.

and sometimes she thinks alec sees through it. the persona of who florence devall is, something that is both authentic but watered down because it was that or die. in the privacy of her own apartment she can think all the things she sometimes toys with during the day. okay, her brain supplies. it feels like a weight in the back of her skull. okay but what if and hear me out, i promise this isn’t as bad as it sounds, but what if you don’t think you deserve it? like there’s choosing but what if you just –

florence stares down at her mug of tea, catching bits and pieces of what might be a reflection in the dark surface. “you know, back when i was still going to college in boston,” she finally says, and maybe that says enough, still going and boston lifting the statement up, holding implications in their meager syllables, “i had a really bad time. things were bad. i was pretty bad. like i’m not great or anything now but things were worse. i was in a dorm and i couldn’t… like, leave? i know, i know, depression or whatever, but it wasn’t just that. i was keyed up in all the wrong places. or something. it’s hard to describe.”

she could describe it maybe as an image, as a color (the greyish-brown that everything seemed to be, beige and inoffensive but also nothing) or a sound (air conditioning running forever with the same quality, somehow, as static) but not as a word or a sentence or even a book. her sense of self sometimes fails her, here more than anywhere.

she picks at her nails. nervous. “sorry. i don’t know why i needed to tell you all that. the, uh, point is, right, that i guess that’s really brave. to choose that. because i was not choosing that for a while and it was easy to just like, lay there and not choose that? but also not choose anything else. it’s like you’re the caregiver for someone who isn’t there any more except the someone is your life and you’re just watching their chest move up and down but the person isn’t there any more. and i can say from experience that it’s really hard to bring yourself back from that. so you’re a good person. i guess, or good at being a person.”

“me too,” florence says immediately. 

it’s an instinct more than anything. it’s not a great response, to just go oh yeah, haha, i too would immediately fuck up a wish, no holds barred, but it’s probably honest. she wouldn’t even know what to wish for, or what would be best for herself. she wouldn’t know whether to wish for something big and cliche like world peace or the end of climate change, or if she should try to make her life, however long or short it’s going to be, a modicum better for herself. that’s really a good question to ask yourself, probably. just in case you ever happen to run into a wish-related situation.

she laughs a little to herself, rubbing at the back of her head. when she was a kid, her and her sister used to play a game to practice wishes. some kids wish because they want to get out of bad situations, because all they’ve got is wishes. her life wasn’t that bad when she was a kid. but they both liked to practice at things to get better. her sister was the sports kid, and florence was the one who sat there looking at photos and moving pictures and thought that she could do that. so they’d tell each other wishes, more and more extraordinary and overblown, until one of them broke and started laughing.

things were simple then. the act of wishing was simple and harmless and didn’t feel like it was invoking something bad to happen, or like it was somehow a mistake. it feels like that now. like anyone in their twenties, florence spends a lot of her spare time on her couch thinking about how things could be rather than how they are. and maybe that’s a kind of wishing too. a hypothetical built up so big that it consumes the brain.

“most people would fuck up one wish, though,” she says. maybe that’s true. maybe it’s her just trying to reassure herself. it must be normal, to make that kind of mistake, because if it’s abnormal then she really is a failure in that too. “like, come on? one wish? to try to fix everything wrong in your life or in the world? that’s crazy. no one could pull that off, not even the smartest people on earth.”

it’s reassuring. to think that everyone is wallowing around in the same way. that no one really knows what they’re doing. that no one has purpose, and everyone who does, like silicon valley guys or famous artists or even the guy who works at the gas station and fully believes that his destiny, are just pretending because it’s easier that way. and maybe that’s it. maybe things are that similar.

she watched black swan once while sort of wine drunk, a few years after its release. it was maybe 2014, or even 2015. in some ways it was probably good florence had been fifteen years old or so during its release and hadn’t seen it right away. it would’ve been worse then. people make jokes online, you know, about how your therapist goes so-and-so isn’t real they can’t hurt you or so the template goes and then they show a picture of so-and-so doing the hurt. the joke is, of course, that it’s something weird but mostly harmless, maybe a little unnerving, and the harm isn’t real, real, and mostly that the therapist was wrong after all. very funny.

and black swan was like that for her except the harm was kind of real. 

the main character dances with glass in her stomach and swan dives off of the cliff at the end, like how the ballet always goes, and she falls onto a mattress and everyone loves her for a second, before they realize. she’s perfect. she’s bleeding everywhere, and she’s perfect. that’s what it took. everyone’s horrified but they can’t take the perfect victory and art away from her, because it’s too late for that now. and sure, there’s lots of other stuff going on in that movie, but it comes back to that concept.

though it’s not a perfect analogy, ironically enough.

after all, film isn’t about the body of the director. it may be about the body of the actor, to a degree, but it’s not quite the same. the body is the work in ballet, no delineation between the two, and thus the harm is physical and real. perfection kills artists in the pursuit of it, and she definitely isn’t that bad. it’s just that when combined with the idea of having time to pursue it - well, that gets bad too. most people don’t have enough time. florence, on the other hand, would say that she has too much time. what if you have enough time to wallow around with the concept? to get really close, but not close enough, because there is no such thing as getting close enough?

she rubs at the back of her neck and laughs a little at nothing.  automatic deflection. “i think lots of people think they do. or they, uh, make time. that’s art, right? nothing’s ever good enough. lots of tortured artists writing blog posts about that right now, i bet.” it’s good to defuse something too honest with a joke. if florence is able to laugh about it, then it almost certainly isn’t about her, after all, in any way, shape, or form.

she leans back against the wall of vertex. it’s ugly, the same green that the owner seems stupidly fond of. the color makes it stick out like a sore fucking thumb, so ugly that she loves it unabashedly. maybe that can be perfect too. maybe you don’t have to spend forever and all that extra time trying to make something perfect, trying to capture something real and watching as everything slips further away. or maybe it’s too late for her to do that now. maybe she’s already wasted enough years. it’s hard to say. 

there’s a couple thoughts that run through her head. don’t be an ominous bastard is one of them, the instinct to push things down. another is challenging: yeah, like what? and the third, the worst of all and thus the most tempting, is just accusatory. how do you know that? got something to say? you know rumor and hearsay is a stupid fucking idea, right? so how do you know? or any similar configuration of the words. it’s more about the tone, and the main  question behind it, which is really just why. florence knows that that’s the paranoia talking. but at the same time, if there’s darkness, then she wants to know where it’s coming from.

and she has an idea, maybe. after what she saw. considering what she knows, and holds deep inside of her. the impulse and the feeling rattle around sometimes, bashing up against her ribs like it’s trying to get out of her. it’s the thing that causes her to freeze up whenever she sees that woman on the film; it’s the thing that keeps her up at night, staring up at her ceiling, listening to the sounds from the apartments around her. before she used to build normal stories about what happened to people. arguments. things going wrong. 

there’s nothing to be worried about; there is everything to be worried about. or both at once.

now the stories she makes up are different. darker, maybe, or at least less simple. danger comes in impossible forms. she kept studying, kept looking for an easy explanation, but there wasn’t one. her google search history reflected it for weeks, even if she’s begun to exorcise that recently in favor of more normal searches. now it’s things like “shadow of a doubt release year” rather than “what does it feel like to burn alive”. it’s an important shift. it isn’t that she thinks she’s going to be arrested or anything. it’s just that feeling of culpability. that silence means assent, maybe, or that she’s somehow to blame even though all she did was watch.

then again, watch is still a verb. so when he says something ominous, like that there’s darkness on the edge of town, florence’s impulse beyond the question is to calculate how close she is to the edge of hill city. not that close. certainly not close enough to qualify. besides, she isn’t anything so overwhelmingly gothic and edgy enough to be called dark. she’s not a good person either, probably, but she isn’t that bad. she’s doing enough to resoundingly be okay, which is really all that anyone can ask for.