Peripheral [NSW, A14]

[Tiana Calthye]

Dear Jedi.net:

 

This story was contrived in approximately a week during November. It is 50,000 words long, from start to finish. It had absolutely no preplanning and there has been no editing.

 

CONTENT ALERT: Do not read if you are morally offended by swearing, sex, or otherwise not so pleasant content. I won't be responsible for you being offended; I'm warning you NOW that it's a good hard A14 at the least. There are f-bombs a plenty but I'll let Jedi.net's censors do their job. Basically, my narrator is an anti-hero; she makes sexual jokes and swears a lot. Some references to smoking, drinking, sex, prostitution, sex toys, homosexuality, graphic violence. The ending comes so far out of left field it isn't even funny; one of my beta readers (I haven't edited it yet but I have sent it to some) described it as being like a dream in a dream in a dream. Chapter one is probably going to be cut, but I left it in for the sake of things. The rest of the story is not in that voice.

 

I really don't know where it came from. I just wrote. This is what happened. And here it is, in all its unedited glory.

 

[Critique desired but ONLY on the following things: the plot, the characters, the characterization, the writing voice. I am not interested in grammar minutiae or spelling as I will be writing the second draft probably from scratch.]

 

Genre: Urban fantasy.

 

 

/01 TRANSCRIPT

/Play

 

I suppose you’re wondering why Gabriel Lhae is dead. Go on. Ask. I know that’s why you have me here. There’s no point in evading the point for an hour or five while you try soften me up. It’s going to be a waste of time, anyway. I’m not going to soften up. I know what question you want answered, and any other bullshit is just a load of, well, you know. Go ahead. Ask me.

 

4: Why is Lhae dead, Raiyn?

 

You see, I knew you were going to ask me that. I must be a telepath, what do you know!

 

4: You told me to ask.

 

Oh, I know. I’m just joshing with you, Arjun--am I allowed to call you that on this tape? I know they like the archives to remain anonymous. Make me into some faceless horrible criminal, and all of that. Just some number to blame the oh so horrible murder of Gabriel Lhae on, huh? And then maybe in twenty years when you’re too old to matter and you’re teaching people how to make transcripts you’ll bring this one up and show people what happens to agents who betray their fellows.

 

But see, the first thing you gotta understand is that Gabe wasn’t the victim of this horrid crime.

 

He was the perpetrator. And it’s a damn long story so if you’re just gonna kill me regardless you might as well get it over with. I’m not sitting here in this stupid little room for the next five hours of my life just to be told I’m getting a quick trip to dance the hemp fandango with some poor agent who’s just totally gonna be traumatized by the whole incident, snap and go crazy, and murder everyone in twenty years. Gotta promise you’ll kill me yourself.

 

4: I promise.

 

Gods below, I hate you sometimes, Arjun.

 

4: Well, what do you expect, Raiyn? You killed--

 

No! I didn’t kill Gabbers. Gabe was, well, kind of unfortunate but it had to happen, gods, you would’ve done the same in my place and it’s a stupidly long story... I’m not telling you anything.

 

4: Raiyn...

 

It’s a long story anyway, no point in relating it to unsympathetic ears. You already said you were going to kill me.

 

4: Raiyn, you told me to say that.

 

Heh. You’re such a girl, Arjun. Well, don’t look at me like that. I’ve got better things I could be doing than telling you some story you’re totally not going to listen to, and I know you won’t, because you’ve got better things to do.

 

4: I’ll buy you a beer.

 

Oh, well, fine. In that case, you’ve got a deal. Stop hitting your forehead! You’re going to get brain damage if you keep doing shit like that! Look, if I weren’t handcuffed to this godsdamned chair I’d come over there right now and give you a piece of my mind, or a piece of fist or sommat!

 

4: Raiyn, you’d give me a piece of ass if I asked, and it guaranteed you a trip out of here. That’s not the point. Oh, shit, I think that’s going to bruise... I’ve got to stop smacking my forehead.

 

Not my problem.

 

4: But, Raiyn, all I know is that you’re here, I’m here, and Gabriel isn’t here--because he’s dead. I don’t care how long this story is going to be, I just want to know why one of my best agents is pushing up daisies.

 

All right, all right, stop giving me those puppy dog eyes. I already told you to stop being such a girl. The first thing you gotta understand is that I’m innocent.

 

4: Who doesn’t say that?

 

Oh, c’mon, Arjun! You know if I were guilty I’d own up! I’m a bad girl through and through! So you just go and shut up and let your tape recorder do all the work.

 

My name is Raiyn Serak and I murdered Gabriel Lhae. In the ballroom, with the candlestick, of course in the most uncomfortable way possible, and the bastard deserved every ounce of it... I don’t suppose this is helping my case at all, though. Well, justified homicide. It was. Honest to Al. I’m allowed to swear on Al’s name, right? You guys still worship the Almighty Al, right?

 

4: I think I’ll just cut all that out of the transcript once it goes to file.

 

Does sleeping with a god negate your permission to swear on his name?

 

4: And that.

 

Look, I ain’t gonna say that Gabe’s death had nothing to do with me. But the Order’s got its own set of rules anyway. You can’t afford to lose me just because I may have stabbed Gabriel.

 

...Repeatedly. In the nuts. With a rusty knife.

 

4: Raiyn, we already know that he was shot. Nowhere near his genitalia. Wishful thinking won’t change that.

 

Pity.

 

4: Anyway, now you’re the one being circumlocutory. Are you just trying to waste my time? I already know you’re a grandiose liar, and the inconsistencies in your story are not helping your case. Chances are, you’re not helping your case much either. You should just turn this over to a lawyer.

 

We don’t get lawyers if the Order wants us dead.

 

4: I know. I’m sorry, Raiyn.

 

I’m even sorrier! But not that Gabe’s dead. Bloody bastard... should’ve done him worse. I know I’m not helping my case. You shut your trap, Arjun, and let me talk. Maybe listening will do you good for a while.

 

First you’ve gotta understand the nature of dream worlds.

 

I don’t. Arinon tried to explain them to me back before all this shit. I got lost somewhere north of Monday and clockwise through all the ley points and elemental bullshit. I guess you’ve got a better grasp of that than me, though. Something to do with bazillions of little elemental threads that make up each dream world, and dependency, and some rot like that.

 

Anyway, this was a dream world. We called it Cangharas, least, some of us called it Cangharas and the rest of us just called it the city, kinda like on Carmen if you went to Bigar... Bigar was just the city to all the rest of us country bumpkins. Cangharas was just the city, but it was even worse there. It didn’t go all that much further than being just the city. There was this ocean, and if you went too far the horizon just sort of dropped off and you know how they wrote things on the old maps? Here there be dragons? Well, here there be nightmares. It was like that if you drove too far out of the city, too. There be nightmares. Don’t got here. Ughh.

 

So dream worlds. They’re just kind of like these pods in the extraverse. Outerverse. Thing. I don’t know what it’s technically called. All they’d be is an elemental blob or some random amalgamation of imagined up things that puffs away in the morning if it weren’t for the second nature of a dream world.

 

And to understand that you’ve gotta understand the nature of a story. Stories are all about want. Want, need, but mostly just want. Someone wants something and then--and dream worlds are the “but”. Heh heh. But. Someone wants something, but... and well, the but is sort of that it turns out none of it’s really as real as it should be. Arinon used to call dream worlds little stories. They suck you in and play through their story with whoever dreamed it up as the protagonist, usually, and unless someone mucks with it that’s where it ends.

 

Mine was the story of Nolin Ademus, PI. I guess he was probably just some ordinary joe, but there he was smart, witty, and badass. You know, just like me! I’d dropped by before. He was fun to pick on. I make a cute femme fatale, don’t I? Maybe cute’s not the right word. But there was something I found particularly alluring about his dream.

 

Every dream has some sort of soul to it. He was part of that soul. Part of the whole damn heart of the dream. You know, the seed, the thing that started it and kept it going.

 

But the third thing you’ve gotta understand about dreams is that they reshape you to what they want you to be. What they need you to be. It got its claws into me and I guess Gabriel noticed this somewhere along the lines, and my “but” became “but I couldn’t get out.”

 

The fourth thing you have to understand is the nature of Dream. Dream was the personification of all things dreaming and I only know about him from bits and fragments through Gabriel. I guess you probably didn’t know this--can’t think of any reason why Gabe would’ve told you--but they were a couple. You know, the guy who wants to destroy the Order and lay waste to the minds of everyone in the universe? That personification of everything evil? Yeah, was totally sleeping with Gabe. I told you he deserved it.

 

Anyway, Dream’s guardian got toasted, eh, well--you know, you were there. And after that he got all pissed and just went floaty and evil and kill the universe and shit so now all dream worlds are really, really shitty. Okay, well, bet he really likes them but they’re pretty dang crappy for the rest of us. Lotta nightmares, that kinda thing.

 

The guy really likes ravens, so if you’ve been dreaming about ravens a lot, that’s why. It’s the whole spiritual representation of soul as an animal thing. Arinon’s probably a reindeer or something silly like that. I’m probably a cat. Rawr. Or maybe a mockingbird. They’re pretty cool. Gabriel is definitely an ass. You can’t tell me that doesn’t count! The bastard locked me in a dream.

 

Because I guess the fifth thing you’ve got to understand is once a dream no longer has a heart, it also no longer has an exit...

Edited January 10, 2011 by Guest

[Tiana Calthye]

/02 TREPIDATION

/Go

 

Cold winter days are the worst; the sun bright and snow refracting light like a million prisms. For all their pompous, pretentious overtones, dreams tend to have a stark sense of reality when presented with at least one layer of sense. This one was cold: frost built up on the metal embellishments like a lot of urban tinsel, my heels breaking breathless cracks in the ice. Buildings don’t protect you from the wind, they only redirect it.

 

I found myself ever so often struck with the sheer reality of it all: the world had its claws in me and the shape it took didn’t take on my shape in return but simply took hold of me and made me what it wanted me to be. That so happened to be this woman: legs burning from the cold, too-tight shoes worn only for the look of the thing, jacket not really warm enough for the bitter wind.

 

It was probably about minus twenty. With the wind chill it felt worse. At that point I was more aware of the very expendable nature of Cangharas and ducked into a phone booth to get out of the wind, contemplating the idea of burning the phone book for temporary relief.

 

That was the first time I met Nolin Ademus. Can’t really say he was anything more than a forgettable wisp of a man; not really muscular, not really anything more generic than some guy with a perpetually anxious look on his face as he tried to lug around some groceries and unlock his car at the same time. But I was dying for a chance to get out of the cold and morning wasn’t due for another few hours. So I went over, forgetting my plans of arson, and offered him a hand in exchange for a ride somewhere warmer.

 

“It’s like hell’s frozen over,” he agreed with a grumble, passing over a sack of groceries and unlocking his black car. “Not a fan of the cold, I take it?”

 

It’s not the hazy pastel skies I mind, it’s just when you breathe in and your nose hairs stick together until you exhale again in a fog of wasted air. And I told him as much, in less lyrical of words. “I am Groot no,” I said.

 

He gave a little laugh. “No one is. Where do you wanna go?”

 

I thought over it for a little bit. “Forks and Broadway.”

 

“Got it. I live just past Forks anyway.”

 

I talked to him on the road. I mean, Nolin wasn’t a hard guy to talk to—and I couldn’t ever say I’m a hard person to open up to, and that’s not my fault. People just tell me things. I’m like a cheap version of beer. Cheaper. I’ve heard that one before, though, so there’s no point in repeating it… it won’t bother me. It’s just words. And at any rate, he was fun to talk to; reminded me of you. He was all full of hopes, ambitions, and dreams at that point. Not really hardboiled, like you would’ve expected from the guy who made this entire universe tick. Somehow in the middle of it all was just Joe Average with his conspiracy theories about the world at large and definitely the government, and most certainly the cops, all full of ideas about how he was going to stick it to the man.

 

My kind of man.

 

I took to him pretty easy and by the time we got to Broadway and Forks he was more than willing to buy me a cup of coffee, so you see I may have had some ulterior motives at that point in time. It never hurt to be an encouraging soul, however, and I absolutely stressed upon him the lack of real talent required to be a private investigator. Besides, he seemed to be the nerdy type. Good at math and all that; there were worse people to encourage to start their own businesses. The universe would probably be a very different place at large if more people like Nolin Ademus started to become free thinkers. Of course, some of them would end up like me, but that ain’t the point. People ought to have the option to chose whether they just become corporate downtrodden slaves or starving artists, after all.

 

So we shared ideals over a cup of coffee or five, indulging in caffeine and carnal sins as the night closed in over our heads. It was well past nine once we got out of that dinky coffee shop on Forks and the streetlights cast their interfering beams cross and crossways over the foggy street. If it was cold before, now it was cold enough to leave frostbite on even the devil’s arse; Nolin had a bit of a time restarting his vehicle and I stood on the street hanging onto the cardboard cup of coffee I’d snuck off with just before closing.

 

Nolin was, at that point in time, the kind of man I could appreciate as more than just a potential boyfriend. Sure, he was cute in a cute sort of way, but he also had a level of intelligence I didn’t encounter all too often in Carmenian men. For one thing, not only was his head screwed on the right end, but his heart was in the right place all at the same time. Plus he hated the government, the cops, and all those other things that just insisted on getting in the way of the free rein of anarchy! Bonus!

 

I suppose some would’ve called him delusional, but I enjoyed his righteous temperament in the midst of this chaotic world. It served as a good centerpoint, something for everything to all hinge upon—and I suppose that’s why he ended up as the whole heart of the world. Everything ticked around him. Nolin was the fulcrum.

 

I watched the city go by in my peripheral vision.

 

“You walked in at just the right time,” he said jovially. “Interesting coincidence certainly can help with big life decisions.”

 

“You’re gonna buy a motorcycle?”

 

“What would I do with it in this weather?” Nolin gave a little laugh. “No point. No, I think I will look into opening my own business. I suppose there’s worse moves.”

 

“Depends. Are you going to hunt me down if it absolutely fails?”

 

He shook his head. “That’d be my own fault, now wouldn’t it?”

 

“Smart man.” I gave him a warm smile, made only the more cool by the snowflakes drifting down to melt upon the windshield as the world went around us.

 

I had no idea what our meeting would end up doing to him at that point, or I would’ve hopped out of the car then and there to vanish off into the tempest and never be seen again. But much to my dismay, the dream already had me in the part I needed to play and the story was set off into its downward spiraling motion.

 

We parted on good terms: a phone number exchanged, maybe a few other things exchanged… well, that’s none of your business, anyway. I visited off and on and watched him get his business set up and go from being that shy guy who did office work to someone a lot stronger who wrote conspiracy websites and did dubious research, and even tracked down a few criminals. And wrote. A ton. A dream can be whatever you make it. He made his so much more interesting.

 

That was, oh, three, four years ago. A lot of things can happen in four years. You can get a degree, have a kid, save the world, bake a hundred cakes…

 

I—well, I suppose you could call it lucid dreaming—dreamed two years away. Then it was, heh, well. I was on Carmen working tables while daydreaming and all that’s left is the imagined memory of a place where the weather’s always bad and the reminder that somewhere deep inside your mind is a maze of bars, nightclubs, garages and smoke shaded poker games in lounges underground and it becomes a sort of escapism.

 

I slept a lot; it was my indulgence. If you could dream your way to more interesting worlds, wouldn’t you? My fortune was all in my mind.

 

On October fifth, Gabriel dropped by. I’d been working days for almost a week straight and my shift ended mid-afternoon. “Hey, Raiyn,” he said. “Get me a hamburger, fries, and—you guys do tea? Something snobby.”

 

I laughed over that and chalked him up for an Earl Grey, because ol’ Green’s burger bar was the furthest from snobby you could get. They served a few variants of beer: crap, crappy, and crappiest, a couple of other alcoholic things, but mostly people just dropped by for the amazing fries. Green made great fries. The lunch rush was over; the coffee rush just beginning, if you could call it a rush. It was just a handful of middle aged guys who’d take up the four tables by the window and abuse the free coffee refills over the latest paper. At any rate, I wasn’t on for the coffee shift, and sat down on the counter to peer down at Gabriel, who paged through the paper, spent a couple of minutes checking out sports scores and laughing over the lame political cartoon before looking back up. It wasn’t until I’d gotten him his tea and food that he folded up the paper.

 

“So this is what you do now?”

 

“Eh.” I gave a vague gesture at the entire place: half a dozen guys in the corner jeering at the latest football loss, the other waitress just starting her shift, a family in one of the middle tables eating a belated lunch. “It keeps me off the streets.”

 

“Not a fan, I take it?”

 

“Of what, the Biddies?”

 

“The Biddies?”

 

“The football team you were reading about all of five minutes ago.”

 

Gabriel looked a bit distracted. “Oh. That. Right. No, I meant the place. The city.”

 

“Hyrang.”

 

“Hm?”

 

“Hyrang. This is Hyrang. Bigar is the city.” I snatched one of his fries, twiddling it between my fingertips. “Gabbers, you sound more strung out than me. Of course I don’t like it here. It’s better than Bigar, but I’ve never found a place that I really like calling home. Not yet.”

 

“Didn’t think so,” he said, bemused. “Or you’d spend less time sleeping.”

 

I gave him a dubious look.

 

“Aw, c’mon, Raiyn. I know you do it too. All of us do. Me, Arinon, Shiedoven, Horic, Loci… if we’re not happy where we are, we find somewhere to be happy when we’re sleeping.”

 

I sighed. “Gonna eat your burger, or are you gonna just give me your wanderlust musing?”

 

He picked up his burger obediently, biting into the ketchup oozing patty.

 

“’Sides,” I continued. “Where would I go? Carmen’s a big planet. Azudar’s a big country. I don’t look right up north, too freakin’ cold… this city’s in the right climate for me. I like cities, so I’d be limited to all of Fort V, or it’s getting too cold; Export has too weird of weather, Crescent’s I am Grooted up, Potatomashire is getting too close to home…”

 

“You still call it home?”

 

“I’m never going back to Mudville,” I snapped.

 

“You could move to Crazy.”

 

“It’s Madness.”

 

“Whatever.”

 

I picked up the newspaper; rolled it up and swatted him. He spat out a fry with a bit of a gasp. “Why’d you come here, Gabe?”

 

“Fries,” he rasped, taking a sip of his tea.

 

“Like hell you did. There’s a hundred places on Carmen that make good fries; fifty-six on Metruis—”

 

“You counted?”

 

“Nah, I only care about the beer. Anyway, I’m off shift now.” I hopped off of the counter, peeling my apron off and rolling it up, tips and all. “Lookit that, you came just as I was ending my shift. What a coincidence. I’d swear this was all neatly and tidily planned out. Maybe by the Order?”

 

Gabriel waved the other waitress over and asked for a takeout box. I nodded knowingly and headed to the break room to get my jacket. By the time I’d buttoned up my lazy brown leather jacket and shoved the frilly white apron into a pack, he’d paid and stood by the door with his Styrofoam container, waiting patiently. I walked through the horizontal lines of dusty light falling through the slats to where he dallied in the entranceway, warm autumn sun lighting up his mop of red hair like a halo. I ran my fingers through his ragdoll hair as I passed him by; he ducked a little, grabbing at his head and following me through the door into the crisp October.

 

“Hey,” he complained, “I spent like an hour with gel to make my hair look naturally rumpled.”

 

I swatted him. “Now it is naturally rumpled and I didn’t even charge you. Suck it up.”

 

All the less real than the dreams I dabbled in, the chill air toyed with my hair and Gabriel’s already disheveled mop he called a hairstyle and I called a wreck. His car was parked a block away. It was a generic vehicle, standard Order fare. Bland, ordinary, and non-descript. This car was exactly like twenty percent of the other cars on the road at the time; no one would give it a second thought if it drove by. Exactly like the Order. They didn’t need to be noticed, they just needed their effects to be felt. I gave him a little nod. “So this is Order business?”

 

He ducked through the sun to open the car with his key. The fire in his hair was only contrasted by the fire in his eyes. “No.”

 

I got in. In retrospect, not questioning him was one of the more stupid things I could have done, but Gabriel I’d known since I was seventeen and I found it hard to imagine anything contemptuous and cruel coming from this short guy with his too-long trench coat and hair that always looked like he’d just crawled out of bed. In retrospect, that was probably sort of foreboding of the sort of person he was—no, not a slut.

 

Someone just like me.

 

An escapist.

 

See, everyone always associates people who dream with a kind of idealism. Gabriel wasn’t an idealist, so I never looked at him and thought of someone who lounged around and daydreamed. My own blindness at that point was enough to hold me back: I was no idealist; I was a damn cynic with never a bright view to tarnish my disgruntled view of humanity. I should have been able to make the association with his comments—everyone did it, I wasn’t the only one who spent my afternoons and nights dreaming my life away in a dazzle of falsified happiness.

 

I didn’t.

 

We passed through and deeper into Hyrang, soft rock playing through his subpar speakers, red fuzzy dice moving with the beat of the car. I lounged back in the seat, seatbelt undone, enjoying the ride. I used my car as rarely as possible. Gas was expensive and I lived near enough to Green’s to just walk to work.

 

The sound of distant sirens accompanied the soft rock.

 

“So what, then?”

 

“Hm?” He glanced over me with heavy lidded eyes.

 

I remembered him having green eyes once. “Did you get contacts?”

 

He glanced into the rearview mirror. “No.”

 

Maybe I’d remembered wrong, I thought, and brushed off the weird tint to his eyes. It was easier to just glaze over the things my mind told me were only possible in dreams. “Where are we going?”

 

“I don’t know,” he said, taking a right on the tail end of a red light. I grimaced. I didn’t remember Gabriel being an adrenaline seeker, in particular, but there was something about the set to his jaw that set me off. I’d seen that look before. It often preceded a statement such as here, hold my beer and watch this.

 

Or maybe I’m your worst nightmare, some further part of my mind suggested as Hyrang blurred around me. Around us; I let Gabriel drive and relaxed into the soft seats, watched the dance of the sunlight on Byzantine buildings: rounded arches, spires stretching up into the clear blue sky, everything more imposing than it really needed to be. Gaps between buildings revealed slivers of a shimmering ocean.

 

He parked near the dock, getting out and locking the vehicle. I stretched out, catlike, and looked out at the peaceful expanse of the seascape. It was almost as abyssal as the dreamscape.

 

The smell of brine hung heavily in the air, almost hiding the oily smell of industrialism. This wasn’t the nice side of the coast; down about a mile south the beaches got nice but this was where all the fishermen kept their boats and the white sand was hidden by wood docks, discarded nets and traps, the lapping ocean sounds obscured by the roar of motors. Even still, it had a certain measure of peacefulness. I sprawled out on one of the benches, watching the ocean beyond me.

 

Gabriel sat down at my side, quietly watching it as well. He picked at the fries, now cold, that he’d brought along. I snatched a few; just because they were cold didn’t mean they tasted all that bad.

 

“C’mon, Gabe. You didn’t just drop by to take me out to watch a few boats,” I prompted. “You had some kind of purpose going on. What was it? Why’d you bring me here?”

 

He looked over to me. His liquid eyes were almost entirely obscured by the bush he called eyebrows—where his eyebrows weren’t mating, his erratic red hair hid the rest of his brow. He ran his fingers through his hair, which almost stuck out until a gust of wind caught it and flattened it again. At least, as flat as his hair could get. I giggled a little and played with my nose stud absently as he finished chewing and swallowed the bite of cold fries. I couldn’t even smell the garlic for the salt in the air.

 

I inhaled. It was refreshing. Maybe I did need a change of pace.

 

“This isn’t Order business,” he told me, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “None of this can get back to the Order. Promise.”

 

“Well, all right. If you insist. And bribe me.”

 

“Gods, Raiyn.”

 

“I’m kidding. Shoot. I’m dying of curiosity here anyway.”

 

“Talnaver’s working for Paradigm.”

 

Everything around us seemed to wind to a halt, whether that was due to Gabriel’s natural influence on the waves of time or simply due to the gears in my mind grinding to an uncoordinated halt. I drew in a sharp breath. Paradigm was a sort of counteraction to the Order, not in the sense that chaos is opposite to order but in the sense that crows are not ravens. The Order likes to maintain the natural order of things, dreams included—whether for good or for ill, no one strongly affiliated with the Order could be considered good as such, but rather a supporter of the variable yet somehow ever so constant directive. Which really didn’t make any sense whatsoever, but as far as I understood it when Arinon and Arjun had tried to explain it to me, the Order wanted to maintain the precarious balance between every element that made up the world as apparently dictated thousands of years before by some fantastical creatures now extinct, or at least, oblivious to the workings of humanity. Humanity, however, tends to not be so sensitive to the precarious balance of elements, and the Order works to keep it balanced regardless of what humans do. I don’t suppose you could call them a police force, because they’ll let injustice occur as long as it maintains the balance.

 

Instead, the Order simply is. It’s a part of our galaxy by now; they keep all the people with weird powers (like me and Gabe) from becoming big problems and they make sure people get the school they need, and some of them are humanitarians and others are vegetarians and others besides are psychopathic fundamentalists and there’s a whole bunch of other whatever-itarians that do other something-itarian things that I don’t give a damn about because I’m a beeritarian just to make sure the precarious balance of alcohol consumption equals n. It’s all very scientific.

 

The Order keeps humans human. That means a fair share of nightmares, deaths, failed classes, and other sins of humanity to make sure we learn, but not so many that things simply degrade into chaos.

 

Six elements make up how humans function. Time, which makes people die and makes new things pop up. Time changes all things. Memory, which makes people learn from their mistakes and keeps things functioning from the past. Memory is a bitch. Time and Memory make things keep going… Memory is kind of like the bottom of the totem pole and Time keeps adding new pieces and taking away the old ones.

 

Mind, which is basic human thought processes—just what makes us tick… kind of a personality deal. Dream… which is all that idealistic hopeful outlook bullshit, but also all of those horrible nightmares and twisted things that help forge your personality. Mind and Dream are both the personality aspects… Mind is like the basic template for sentiency and Dream makes everyone individual.

 

Then there’s Chaos and Order. Chaos chucks stuff at people and is every little fragment of every little possibility… and then Order makes sure none of it gets out of control. Theoretically. The Order is really just a lot of I am Groots who think they know how it should work.

 

Every once in a while someone shows up who thinks they know better than the Order. Paradigm is one of those such groups. Paradigm basically means the pattern. Order tries to maintain the balance, but Paradigm sees the pattern in how things are happening and tries to keep it going, based on that pattern. If there was an elemental of evolution, Paradigm would be their strongest advocate. However, Paradigm shuns the human elements that the Order unconsciously idealizes. They support the ancient elemental structural pattern—which there has to be some measure of truth to, because I’ve met people who can light things on fire with the power of their mind, change the direction of the wind, breathe underwater… Talnaver Arinon can move the entire world around herself.

 

So what he said made sense to me. Talnaver had demonstrated elemental powers before and though I’d trusted her quite intimately it seemed ever so plausible that she could very well have joined another side.

 

Plus, I already knew she treated dreams like little stories. That was another thing—Paradigm meant fable, at one time, and if every dream could be a fable, indicative of the natural pattern of things, then they had successfully achieved their goal.

 

All of this ran through my mind and I was quiet, the world even quieter around me.

 

“Tell me more,” I said.

 

It hadn’t even occurred to me that Gabriel could have been tricking me, misleading me into the paradigm of a story.

[DarthBrendo]

I really want to read this, your work is usually quite solid, but for some reason, I can't quite put a finger on why, but the '4:' just bugs the hell out of me, and I can't get past the first few exchanges.

 

Can you explain the reasoning / place / use of the 4 for me? Might help.

[Tiana Calthye]

Good, that's just one more reason why I plan to cut chapter one. If you can't get past it, it's okay--you can absolutely skip it, you just miss a bit of valuable information. You can safely skip reading chapter one and the rest of the story is not in that tone.

 

4 is the code name of the person she's talking to. It's half written in script. That's all it is. However, if it bugs you, just skim past the point where you see 4: and start reading from "First you've gotta understand the nature of dream worlds." and you really won't miss a thing and you'll never see that voice again.

[DarthBrendo]

Ok. I'm not sure why it bugs me...it just does *shrugs*. Sorry.

 

I'll read tomorrow when there's not football on

[Tiana Calthye]

Bwhahaha. FOOTBALL. I watched a bit while I was at work. >_>

 

Like I said in my notes, I'm probably going to cut chapter one in the next draft anyway, so skipping it is no big deal. It's mostly just some history dumping and was a way for me to get a feel of the tone of the story. Draft two will probably either begin in the middle of chapter two (tragic because I DO love the first part of that chapter) or at the beginning of chapter three.

 

Edit: I snuck in a cover! >.>

[Jidai Geki]

Initial impressions are... hard to follow. I have trouble keeping track of the names at the minute, probably because so few have actually been introduced, and I'm not really sure what to make of the whole dream-world angle and whether we're in the dream world or not in the dream world at any given time. Of course, maybe that's intentional...

 

I preferred the second post much more. It had a beat and I could dance to it, you could say. The character interaction was nice, Raiyn is witty and likable in a devil-may-care, roguish way, and I loved the explanation of the makeup of a person.

 

Oh, and I'm totally stealing "hemp fandango".

[DarthBrendo]

I've just read the first post Tiana. I even read the '4' section. Didn't bug me at all once I got into it. *shrug* who knows.

 

I quite enjoyed it. I like Raiyns character. She's fun. Cheeky. I like that.

[Tiana Calthye]

Brendo: Yeah, Raiyn's cheeky. She's very easy for me to write, even though she's not at all like me. I think the first section will be getting the axe when I rewrite.

 

Geki: I've heard that about the second post (it's far better) so many times that believe me, on the rewrite, part one is getting the axe. I personally don't like it much now that I've let it sit and I much prefer the tone it becomes. Especially as part one is NEVER really a major part of the story (it was just a way to get me writing) I think it needs to go.

 

The confusing thing is apparently a writing trait of mine. I can't see this through another reader's eyes, because these characters and places make sense to me. Names are probably tricky to keep up with because people have multiple names going on (something I fell in love with from LotR but totally do wrong). On rewrite I will try tidy up the names. At any rate, that's why I'm seeking out crit. I want to rewrite this one. I think I get the character interaction and I pump character into my characters, but where I fall short is the plot. I'm glad to hear Raiyn is likable. Especially since she's an anti-hero it's very important that she be a likable narrator.

 

I've been looking for an excuse to use hemp fandango for YEARS now! XD

 

Thank you both for reading.

 

 

Author's note: on the crit I've received of this story, I was told this is really where it should've began. In a way, I think I agree. I liked Gabriel's introduction but most of what I posted before this point, it's just fluff. This is where the action began.

 

/03 ALLEGATION

 

It was night, moonless and crisp, by the time I made it back to my apartment. I lived in a rundown apartment not too far away from the ocean: far enough away that it didn’t have a nice ocean view, close enough that I got bombarded with the sounds of industrialism night and day. Exactly the right spot to be a cheap little apartment in the middle of the city; Hyrang’s version of the wrong side of the tracks. This apartment block was really more of a sort of trailer park; the owner had picked up a few long trailers, stuck them in a few parallel rows over the uneven ground, stuck a few stilts on them, built some balconies that didn’t match the beaten metal exteriors, and painted pretty stencils on the doors to try brighten the place up. It didn’t work, mostly because the exciting view of the gravel parking lot was one of the most depressing things, short of dead kittens, that I’d ever seen in my life. Someone had placed a few wilted potted plants around the lot. One was kicked in, two had crude phallic graffiti spray painted on, and the other two contained the most dismal looking petunias I’d ever encountered.

 

Some people try to describe moonless nights as dark and deep. This one wasn’t. Moonless nights were the only nights I could make out stars and the constant glow from streetlights and ever-waking shops made Hyrang a neon dabble on the satellite view. Certainly never dark—I supposed with the right cloud cover it could be seen for miles.

 

Gabriel had promised to meet me once I fell asleep.

 

I kicked off my shoes, stretching out my toes and giving an exhausted yawn. Normally I was home by now, not necessarily asleep but at least doing something that didn’t involve much walking. Preferably it involved at least one can of beer. If I couldn’t sleep my life away, at least I could drink it away. Incredibly, the universe seemed quite adept at providing a myriad of methods for escapism. I’d tried them all.

 

In the washroom, I soaped up and washed my makeup off. For all the Order blather about how humanity was made up of various elements, I knew better—it was ink enough to make a woman: not dreams, not memories, but just how good you were at covering yourself up. Underneath all of the eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, maybe just a bit more eyeliner… there was just another dark human face staring back at me. Without the makeup I was just another escapee from Mudville.

 

I’d made myself into the streetwise city girl I professed to be. It was all in the makeup. Black enough to make it noir.

 

I hadn’t noticed the pattern yet; the pattern drifting from the dream to even me here. I was becoming part of the story.

 

In retrospect—everything’s in retrospect, I guess that’s the Memory part of things—I should’ve noticed. I even joked about being that girl—you know, the girl with liquid black eyes, captivating fire beneath the shadows of her hat, backlit by moody streetlights, cigarette streaming smoke, always there to lead the hero into danger. Just a story archetype, but archetypes are there because they have a ring of truth to them. People know them. People trust them. And then they become the pattern. But in my mind the discussion with Gabriel rolled around, repeating itself and molding itself into something more than it was. Something more insistent. It was like listening to a song. But instead of lyrics and snippets of tunes getting stuck, it was words.

 

Talnaver’s joined Paradigm.

 

They’re shaping dreams into story patterns. If they succeed, dreams won’t function like they ought to anymore, and that’ll destroy one element of humanity. I know you’ve spent a lot of time in the Cangharas dream—

 

In retrospect, I ought to have asked how he knew, but instead I laid down and let the night drift over me, dreamy darkness closing in over my mind, taking away those threads of rational thought, and replacing them with escape. I fled the burdens of the day, the worries about my financial situation, the niggling concern that maybe I was drinking a bit too much…

 

Here it was okay. Here, nothing had consequences. Here, nothing really mattered.

 

In Hyrang it’s always sunny, except for when the fog rolls in thick over the endless sea.

 

In Cangharas it’s always night and it always rains.

 

I used to read mystery novels. The best ones were gritty, harshly realistic yet oneiric; the best films full of layers of dreamlike imagery set on a cruel landscape. This was just cutting out the middleman, in my opinion: Cangharas was ambivalently cruel, erotic, surreal, hypnotic. By this time I had been well lured in by the entrancing strata of the world. It was twisted: a serpentine labyrinth of everything I found tempting.

 

I couldn’t not come back.

 

I couldn’t not step up to defend it. I wasn’t going to see Cangharas just become another happily ever after in the never-ending ocean of dreams.

 

I lit up a cigarette, hanging underneath the ledge of a building to stay out of the rain, and watched the dream go by. Dreams didn’t necessarily follow the same logical pattern of time as the world outside; they were little imaginings and twinklings. Some went faster, some went slower. Nolin had grown up quite a bit from the nerdy man I’d first met. I felt almost like the dream had changed me too: I was harder, more shadowed, more seductive.

 

It was late November. Freezing rain poured down from the ever dark sky and streetlights, headlights, and neon signs reflected in the shiny black asphalt road. It was less a torrent and more a tease. PANCAKES: 24 HOURS A DAY one flashing neon sign declared, distorted by the cracks in the road. I’d almost succumbed to the temptation of eternal breakfast in the city of eternal night when Gabriel appeared, striding confidently down the sidewalk with a sort of swagger that reminded me—he was not just that scruffy teenager but a time-hardened man. Here, with his ragged trench coat and thick leather belt, hair dripping into his eyes that didn’t hide the smoldering stare… I couldn’t help but smile a wicked little smile. Just like me, here he was home. No one spared him a glance. No one spared me a glance.

 

I pushed away from the crumbling brick wall, extinguishing the cigarette on the wall in a puff of ash and smoke. The rain was going to absolutely ruin my makeup. “Gabriel!” I called. Streetlights caught him off and on: first he was lit up, then he was enrobed in shadows—light, dark, light, dark, just like the red and blue flash of sirens. “Let’s get out of the rain.”

 

He pulled out an umbrella instead, opening it and holding it over my head. “Let’s walk.”

 

“They have pancakes,” I said mournfully.

 

“Dream food is no food at all.”

 

“Yeah, exactly. No calories.”

 

“I didn’t know you were the type.”

 

“To indulge when it won’t hurt me?” I laughed, a bit sardonically. “Gods below, Gabriel. You know me better than that.”

 

“I don’t know.” He ran a weather eye over my outfit; it certainly wasn’t a weatherproof outfit and I knew it. “It looks like I hardly knew you at all.”

 

“Hey, you look different here too,” I protested. “Have you seen yourself in a mirror?”

 

“Yeah,” he said thinly.

 

“You look hardboiled.”

 

“You look cold.”

 

“Yes, well.”

 

He ducked into the overhang of a building, closing his umbrella and shaking the droplets off before entering. I followed him into the warm, perfumed air of a rich restaurant and whistled low under my breath. The floor was carpeted in some swanky pattern, silk hangings obscuring the weather with seductive reds, candles giving the entire place a flickering orange light. People gathered in small groups around the tables; some drinking wine from crystal glasses, some eating meals served on plates far too large for the amount of food. Others smoked cigars over poker, the game overshadowed by the indoor trees. A waiter came quickly to Gabriel’s attention, ushering us to a table in the middle of the room—yet somehow completely private with the arrangement of the potted trees and benches. Though I could hear hushed conversation blossoming about us, it felt oddly secure… though reminded me in a funny sense of Green’s back home.

 

These people were no different: still just a lot of middle aged men discussing the news and taking advantage of what they had.

 

I doubted they sold fries here.

 

“You can afford a place like this?” I asked dubiously.

 

“It’s a dream,” Gabriel laughed. “All it takes is a little creative manipulation. I had a good teacher. But I don’t have to afford it. I own it.”

 

“Why?” I asked.

 

“Why not?” he answered. I hated when people answered questions with more questions. It always meant some kind of evasiveness. He caught the miffed look on my face and gave a smile—a Gabriel kind of smile, slightly wicked but ever so warm. Above his ratty green scarf, his even rattier trench coat, he didn’t look like he should have been here. But he wore it like a second skin.

 

He leaned forward. “Call your friend.”

 

“What?” I asked, startled.

 

“Your friend. The guy. He’s the one this whole place revolves around, really. I’m just leeching to have a bit of fun… kind of like you, you know—yes, I’ll have the usual, and get Raiyn here something in the way of beer.”

 

“Lots of beer,” I said firmly, extracting another cigarette from my jacket and lighting up.

 

“Not too much beer,” Gabriel called after the waiter.

 

“Oh, come on. I’m not going to get drunk off of dream beer. Not unless I want to.”

 

Gabriel gave a pleasant little laugh. “Fine. Have all the beer you want. I won’t stop you. But don’t blame me if you can’t walk straight tonight.”

 

“Promise I won’t,” I said. “Also I want a chicken sandwich.”

 

“Gotcha.” He smiled. Gabriel was a very disarming man. He just oozed confidence, charisma, compassion… I’d never expected anything from him. Talnaver, now. Talnaver was hard, not always very nice, and focused on doing things for the greater good, sometimes at the cost of the personal good. It was so much easier to think that here, in this world, she was instigating the negative influence. I mean, I’d always known her as lawful good, but that didn’t necessarily equate nice.

 

In retrospect, Gabriel was a I am Grooting bastard. I fell for him that easily. And I’m not that easily bought in.

 

I drank the beer. I lost inhibition. I giggled like a schoolgirl and let him lead me around like I was on a leash. By the time the night had passed, I was willing to call up Nolin… hell, I would’ve done anything for Gabriel by that point, he was just such a nice, friendly guy.

 

Seriously, though. Gabriel’s a dick.

 

In some jurisdictions, taking advantage of someone drunk is a crime. In other jurisdictions, you shouldn't even be able to get drunk, so quite frankly even now I'm not quite sure what the hell he did to me, but by the end of it I was happy, giddy, and cooperative in a way that makes me want to gag myself with a spoon even now just to be sure it never happens again.

 

Being drunk like this wasn’t at all like being raped, but even still, it did things to my mind that it shouldn’t have. It was not unlike stripping away all semblance of control--my thoughts were inhibited by the drugs and my actions so easily pressed in any one direction by Gabriel, satisfactorily holding the keys. I’ve been drunk before... I’m well acquainted with that. Like I said, this was different.

 

I’m not even sure it had anything to do with the alcohol, in retrospect.

 

A lot of things come down to what you see in hindsight. In hindsight, I think I would’ve done it differently but then, you always feel that way. You could’ve done it differently, could’ve done it better, could’ve done it right. I probably would’ve done the same damn thing. I couldn’t say no to a free drink, even an imaginary one, and Gabriel was a good friend. I don’t think he ever really earned the trust I’d given him; he showed up at a point where I needed someone and had the bonus side effect of being completely immune to my unfortunate charming abilities. I hated men, he hated everything and didn’t want to sleep with me--we were friends at first disgruntled, cynical exchange.

 

I never expected him to abuse that. Even addled by the influence of something, I rested calm in the thought that Gabriel had everything under control.

 

And he did.

 

He had me.

 

It was a dark night; moonless because of the perpetual cloud cover and dark because where Gabriel and I walked to, there weren’t as many street lamps. Thick trees obscured the lights there were, little fragments of light making their way through the canopy of maple leaves and branches. “I don’t know why you need to meet Nolin,” I said, giggly. “I’m pretty sure he’s straight.”

 

Gabriel did laugh over that. He had a pleasant laugh, even now. “It’s all right, I’m taken.”

 

“I dunno if Nolin is taken,” I mused through the fog. “I know he’s mentioned a chick before. I’ve never met her, though. Saw her picture once. She was a kinda cute blond girl. Reminded me of someone…”

 

“Hm?”

 

“But then, I guess anyone could look a bit familiar.” I looked up at the overcast sky, highlights from the dark city below spattered in amidst the rolling clouds. “If you try hard enough. Maybe I’m just trying too hard. I think he’s taken.”

 

“Yes, you said.” Gabriel smiled and adjusted his scarf a bit. “It’s all right, I just wanted to meet him.”

 

“He’s a nice guy,” I protested.

 

“I know.”

 

“Well, hey, if you know, then you don’t have to meet him!”

 

“I’ve never met him,” Gabriel said quietly. “A pity. You’ll have to amend that.”

 

“I am. It’s not far,” I said amicably. “He lives down on Forks. There’s an apartment complex near the end of the, heh, the fork in the road. Hey, you think that’s maybe why they named it?”

 

“I wouldn’t know,” Gabriel said gravely.

 

By the time we got there, something was tickling the back of my mind. It was the leaves. It was the sort of thing I’ve heard described as refrigerator logic, which is where you go to get a snack a few hours after watching a movie or playing a game and then you think wait a second...

 

But by the time I’d had that little inkling of a revelation, we were already at the apartment door and I was raising my fist to knock.

 

“Wait a second,” I said, lowering my fist. “It was November...” And there were still leaves on the trees?

 

Gabriel knocked on the door. A few moments later, it opened. “Noira...?” I heard. “What are you doing here...”

 

Then things went fuzzy. I can’t really describe what happened at that point because I don’t know. The static in my head took over and I was overwhelmed with the need to puke. I remember stumbling--shadows over me going through motions faster than I could calculate--

 

--Remember the filthy red carpet scraping at my knees, remember my head hitting crumbling plaster, shadows as time lagged around me, remember the static getting louder and louder and thinking ringing--

[DarthBrendo]

Sorry I missed this update T. I really like this world. It's confusing and muddled and messed up, yet makes perfect sense at the same time.

 

You have very descriptive writing I have always liked...the more detail the better.

 

The only critique I have is actually the first sentence...it doesn't feel right, as if it's written in the wrong order. I'm not fluent in the technical jargon, that's Lee's job, but it doesn't flow properly.

 

Also, yes, this section would make a better starting point to the story; if you want to start the story of dark. The second part you posted isn't as intensely dark as this I don't think, so if you wanted to start it off a bit lighter and then move into the darkness, I'd keep it in the order it's in. If that makes sense.