Another excerpt from the novel in progress, tentavely titled "The Jack".
"...so what you're trying to tell me is that they're not really stories for children?"
She is sprawled across the bed, head hanging loosely, lollingly over its edge like the discarded handiwork of a satisfied hangman. Fronds of hair dangle and entangle in streaks and stripes of red and white and black. Briefly, something in his over bright eyes flashes as if in recognition, or perhaps precognition. There than gone. His slickly sly grin spreads over his face like ink diffusing in water.
"Not initially, no. They started out as entertainment and education. Something to kill time during long, dark winter nights, and maybe even impart a lesson or two." His hands pale and waxy move endlessly, turning over and over the dirty cloth bound volume caught between them. Nervous motion stemming from nervous energy. If she did not know better she would be forced to assume he was using. His hands are never still, fingers testing and tapping, probing against the unchanging solidity of the book, seeming almost to be trying to physically pry the knowledge caught trapped by ink and page between cloth wrapped boards.
"Don't get the wrong idea. Children would have been present at those early tellings, but the stories would not have been especially aimed at them. Probably not at all. Like when you were little and your parents let you stay up late, even though all you got to see was some ridiculous sitcom filled with ideas and situations well outside of your experience, but still letting the occasional joke slip through to you."
She smiles privately, mind wandering back to moments in her own past where such things were true. Episodes of M*A*S*H and Cheers that seemed so dull, so pointless, so unchanging. The same few sets in dark earthy colours that were endlessly returned to. The same tiny group of people caught up in their tiny little lives. No bright, flickery colours. No madcap action. No single sound bite lines or juvenilely clever jokes. No, she knew, as her parents seemed not to, that cartoons were far better, far funnier, far more entertaining.
She smiles more widely, openly, eyes gaining focus as they cease peering into times past and glance once more into the present. He smiles back, a quick smirk that she knows to be more true, more full of real emotion, than any of his sardonic and ever present grins. His real smiles always seem tinged by rueful awareness and a hint of embarrassment, like a child caught in a lie, knowing it is too late to take it back.
"So, either you're trying to tell me that our ancestors were as easily entertained as children, or that complex social narratives were well beyond their abilities. In either case, they tend to look pretty dumb."
"Ahh, but you forget," the book is tossed from right to left, left to right and back again, flipping, slipping, firmly slapping against a cupped palm or sliding against fingertips with a whispery velcro tear, "like all things the faerie tale has changed considerably over the years. The violence and the sexuality have been stripped out of them, replaced with a bland and inoffensive pap that even the most sheltered child grows bored of before long."
"'Pap'? 'Pap'! Who the fuck uses a word like 'pap'?" The incredulity in her voice is only moderately feigned. Sometimes even she can't believe the crap that comes out of his mouth.
"I do," he states simply, a look of cultivated innocence widening his eyes and jutting his lower lip, "and you love me madly for it."
She laughs out loud, swinging the over sized stuffed frog up off her chest to sag limply from extended arms. It hangs suspended above her, long gangling limbs swaying loosely, unpleasantly unnatural, like a squid or octopus held aloft in the open air; like a thing out of its element and unable to adjust. She crushes it to her breasts, limbs ricocheting off her body to flail away from her with that same innate unnaturalness, an affront to the eye that demands the presence of bone or chitin to justify movement. The strange motion of its limbs is another part of the reason why this is her favorite stuffed animal. There is a disturbing awkwardness to its oddly stuffed limbs, something indescribably creepy, like the hurky-jerky way that things moved in stop motion films that made them, no matter how cute or seasonal the context, vaguely unsettling. An innate and immediate recognition that nothing in nature should move this way.
She loves it dearly for this, and a part of her recognizes that it is this same perceived awkwardness that so attracts her to him. Alone in her room, she half clothed and sprawled seductively, sensuously, sexually across the rumpled range of her bed sheets, implying through body language obvious and common to all mammals that she is waiting for him, anticipating him. And yet he stands, nervous and distracted, not by the act which she wishes to engage with him in - she knows first hand that he is not nervous about that - but by an idea both abstract and unattainable. A concern that his beloved obsession will not be understood, cannot be understood, by those outside the confines of his own skull. He desperately needs for someone to share his world, and that awkward desperation makes him all the more attractive to her.
Call it a weakness, she giggles inwardly. Another strange piece of the puzzle that is the relationship they have built; one which no one, not even themselves, seems capable of understanding.
"Give it up. Innocence is neither becoming nor believable when coming from you."
"Innocence isn't very becoming or believable in and of itself. I mean, really, innocence is just an inability to process consequence. It's living without thought to the effect your actions might have. Little kids are innocent because they can kill their favorite pet and not quite understand why it doesn't get up and play a moment later. A need to protect the idea of innocence is what destroyed the original beauty of the faerie tale."
She laughs again, rolling onto her stomach, trapping her toy beneath her, its gangly, lengthy limbs splayed out from under her. She notices, if but briefly, unconsciously, that the odd flailing of her frog's appendages almost mirrors the clipped, nervous action of his constantly moving hands.
"Oh, neatly done," she says as she leans out over her elbows on the edge of the bed, "only you could bring that conversation so smoothly back to your original rant."
His smile is pure malice, "Your sarcasm is duly noted. Obviously, you realize there will come a reckoning."
She balances herself precariously, grabbing at his shirt with both hands, pulling him close to her as her own unevenly distributed weight tries to force her off the side of the bed. They kiss. It is slow, soft, exploring. A caress that only the young and freshly in love are ever allowed. A kiss that never lasts long enough, or gets repeated exactly right.
He steps back, straightening. She slides further onto her haunches, bare thighs pressed seductively into the heels of her black and orange socks. His hands have stopped. The book is held tight between fingers going pale and bloodless from pressure.
"Fortunate for you that I'm just a sweet innocent girl, isn't it?"
The frog falls to the floor, shiny black plastic eyes witness and reflection to an act neither innocent or corrupt.
(C) Divers Hands 2006
"...so what you're trying to tell me is that they're not really stories for children?"
She is sprawled across the bed, head hanging loosely, lollingly over its edge like the discarded handiwork of a satisfied hangman. Fronds of hair dangle and entangle in streaks and stripes of red and white and black. Briefly, something in his over bright eyes flashes as if in recognition, or perhaps precognition. There than gone. His slickly sly grin spreads over his face like ink diffusing in water.
"Not initially, no. They started out as entertainment and education. Something to kill time during long, dark winter nights, and maybe even impart a lesson or two." His hands pale and waxy move endlessly, turning over and over the dirty cloth bound volume caught between them. Nervous motion stemming from nervous energy. If she did not know better she would be forced to assume he was using. His hands are never still, fingers testing and tapping, probing against the unchanging solidity of the book, seeming almost to be trying to physically pry the knowledge caught trapped by ink and page between cloth wrapped boards.
"Don't get the wrong idea. Children would have been present at those early tellings, but the stories would not have been especially aimed at them. Probably not at all. Like when you were little and your parents let you stay up late, even though all you got to see was some ridiculous sitcom filled with ideas and situations well outside of your experience, but still letting the occasional joke slip through to you."
She smiles privately, mind wandering back to moments in her own past where such things were true. Episodes of M*A*S*H and Cheers that seemed so dull, so pointless, so unchanging. The same few sets in dark earthy colours that were endlessly returned to. The same tiny group of people caught up in their tiny little lives. No bright, flickery colours. No madcap action. No single sound bite lines or juvenilely clever jokes. No, she knew, as her parents seemed not to, that cartoons were far better, far funnier, far more entertaining.
She smiles more widely, openly, eyes gaining focus as they cease peering into times past and glance once more into the present. He smiles back, a quick smirk that she knows to be more true, more full of real emotion, than any of his sardonic and ever present grins. His real smiles always seem tinged by rueful awareness and a hint of embarrassment, like a child caught in a lie, knowing it is too late to take it back.
"So, either you're trying to tell me that our ancestors were as easily entertained as children, or that complex social narratives were well beyond their abilities. In either case, they tend to look pretty dumb."
"Ahh, but you forget," the book is tossed from right to left, left to right and back again, flipping, slipping, firmly slapping against a cupped palm or sliding against fingertips with a whispery velcro tear, "like all things the faerie tale has changed considerably over the years. The violence and the sexuality have been stripped out of them, replaced with a bland and inoffensive pap that even the most sheltered child grows bored of before long."
"'Pap'? 'Pap'! Who the fuck uses a word like 'pap'?" The incredulity in her voice is only moderately feigned. Sometimes even she can't believe the crap that comes out of his mouth.
"I do," he states simply, a look of cultivated innocence widening his eyes and jutting his lower lip, "and you love me madly for it."
She laughs out loud, swinging the over sized stuffed frog up off her chest to sag limply from extended arms. It hangs suspended above her, long gangling limbs swaying loosely, unpleasantly unnatural, like a squid or octopus held aloft in the open air; like a thing out of its element and unable to adjust. She crushes it to her breasts, limbs ricocheting off her body to flail away from her with that same innate unnaturalness, an affront to the eye that demands the presence of bone or chitin to justify movement. The strange motion of its limbs is another part of the reason why this is her favorite stuffed animal. There is a disturbing awkwardness to its oddly stuffed limbs, something indescribably creepy, like the hurky-jerky way that things moved in stop motion films that made them, no matter how cute or seasonal the context, vaguely unsettling. An innate and immediate recognition that nothing in nature should move this way.
She loves it dearly for this, and a part of her recognizes that it is this same perceived awkwardness that so attracts her to him. Alone in her room, she half clothed and sprawled seductively, sensuously, sexually across the rumpled range of her bed sheets, implying through body language obvious and common to all mammals that she is waiting for him, anticipating him. And yet he stands, nervous and distracted, not by the act which she wishes to engage with him in - she knows first hand that he is not nervous about that - but by an idea both abstract and unattainable. A concern that his beloved obsession will not be understood, cannot be understood, by those outside the confines of his own skull. He desperately needs for someone to share his world, and that awkward desperation makes him all the more attractive to her.
Call it a weakness, she giggles inwardly. Another strange piece of the puzzle that is the relationship they have built; one which no one, not even themselves, seems capable of understanding.
"Give it up. Innocence is neither becoming nor believable when coming from you."
"Innocence isn't very becoming or believable in and of itself. I mean, really, innocence is just an inability to process consequence. It's living without thought to the effect your actions might have. Little kids are innocent because they can kill their favorite pet and not quite understand why it doesn't get up and play a moment later. A need to protect the idea of innocence is what destroyed the original beauty of the faerie tale."
She laughs again, rolling onto her stomach, trapping her toy beneath her, its gangly, lengthy limbs splayed out from under her. She notices, if but briefly, unconsciously, that the odd flailing of her frog's appendages almost mirrors the clipped, nervous action of his constantly moving hands.
"Oh, neatly done," she says as she leans out over her elbows on the edge of the bed, "only you could bring that conversation so smoothly back to your original rant."
His smile is pure malice, "Your sarcasm is duly noted. Obviously, you realize there will come a reckoning."
She balances herself precariously, grabbing at his shirt with both hands, pulling him close to her as her own unevenly distributed weight tries to force her off the side of the bed. They kiss. It is slow, soft, exploring. A caress that only the young and freshly in love are ever allowed. A kiss that never lasts long enough, or gets repeated exactly right.
He steps back, straightening. She slides further onto her haunches, bare thighs pressed seductively into the heels of her black and orange socks. His hands have stopped. The book is held tight between fingers going pale and bloodless from pressure.
"Fortunate for you that I'm just a sweet innocent girl, isn't it?"
The frog falls to the floor, shiny black plastic eyes witness and reflection to an act neither innocent or corrupt.
(C) Divers Hands 2006
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
kid_hideous:
hey, can you point me towards Baudrillard's work on speculative fiction?
kid_hideous:
thank you so much Alistair. It's nice to know that someone of Baudrillard's status was in support of sci-fi. I posted another story in the Filthy Dirty Smutty Bedtime Story group - its erotic sci-fi. I'd love to hear any thoughts you have on it.