Chapter 3: Ascent/Descent
by CollinsKid
"My name is Victoria Winters. There is a raging storm at the center of
the universe, a typhoon with F5 winds that rip across the solar fields
and send stars spilling every which way, like flower petals rent from a
floral apex in a tornado. This storm roars and shakes and spins like an
emancipated Pandora, whose epilepsy rages across the galaxy and sends
blowbursts of fate keening and screaming through the eaves of space
and time to their appointed, heat-seeking destination. Their target is
painted in neon and radiation, lit up in blacklights and infrared; nothing
can dissuade them from their suicide course. These witch-fates
scream and gnash their fangs and clench and unclench their
razor-sharp nails as they soar towards the stop-point of their fury, the
one spot in all eternity where their payload of doom will ignite and
trigger a devastating chain of events which will ripple and deform the
past, present, and future, and make all the tomorrows and tomorrow's
tomorrows of the unluckies in their path impossible to forget.
This spot is Collinwood."
call me 'evil' call me 'tide is on your side' i'm anything that you
wantanybody knows you can conjure anything by the dark of the
moon.
- tori amos, 'suede'
i take the planet, spin it sideways
i fall
without you i'm nothing.
- placebo featuring david bowie, 'without you i'm nothing.'
with the lights out, it's less dangerous...
- tori amos/kurt cobain, 'smells like teen spirit'
--
willie (cycle-thru)
The rotted old-wood doors to the Old House on the Collins family
estate were swung open to the biting night winds now, admitting the
banshee cold of twilight for the first time in centuries. The hinges,
rotted and disintegrating even now, hung like awkward silences,
drooping and bending and warping, ready to snap and break loose.
The sea roar-whips of air/wind snarled and beat at the old walls like
angry gods, shaking the trees and the bushes and quaking the
foundation of the dusty old ruin -- screaming in protest against the
intruder who had ripped these doors open once more, raping a virgin
seal.
Willie Loomis, born and bred in the Red Hook District of an urban
sprawl forgotten now, squirmed and shook in a dark corner full of
torn spider-webs, shivering not from the bitter Maine cold but from
the icy fingers of mortal terror. His straw-yellow, dirty hair hung in his
face and clumps and his wide, beady eyes stared in sheer horror at the sight before him -- the sight of a dead man raging.
Barnabas Collins' animal howls of fury rose over the shriek of the
wind, challenging them, daring them as he rampaged around the
decrepit sitting room of the old, old ancestral home, flinging furniture
left and right -- an old settee here, a chair here. Father's chair,
Mother's decanter, even his old soldier, all flung about and shattered to bits in a cataclysma epiphanythe likes of which could only emanate from one who had been
wronged and wronged and wronged and damned for centuries of pain
and grief. Not human, not that nobleman anymore -- werething,
creeper of the night, and more and more and more but NEVER of
man and woman born any more, not now. And the more he felt
his inhumanity and his dead heart and his ice-cold heart, drained of all
its heart's blood, the more he screamed and howled and tore the
room apart, a storm on two legs.
"JUDASES!" he shrieked as he shattered another chair to bits on the
ground, lisping through huge curved fangs. "Every last of that covetous
lot, leaving me to rot like some dead man in a coffin -- and yet I am
not merely dead!"
He turned his shaggy beast's head to Willie. "You," he hiss-lisped.
"William -- Willie -- H. Loomis...what DOES that ubitquous 'H' stand
for, anyhow...?"
"Huh-huh-Hollin's'ead," Willie peeped. "I always hated it."
"Hollingshead," Barnabas repeated. "Indeed...how uncouth in this
oh-so-modern age of yours. You string-bean bandit!" And then, he
threw back his head and laughed like a jackal. Willie cowered more,
cringing away from that awful sound.
The laughter stopped, and the red eyes refocused, burning like twin
firespots into Willie. "Very well, Loomis," Barnabas hissed. "You've
been marked, you'll do as I say. WON'T you?"
"Y-y-yes," Willie stammered. "Yuh know that -- "
"Indeed I do," Barnabas interrupted, smashing another chair for good
measure. "In-DEED. But I know very little else, of this time, this
place. I am an alien in this century of sloth and immaturity, William
Hollingshead Loomis, and I need your help. YOU are going to make
me into a monster for the twentieth century," Barnabas hissed, "and I
am going to be civilized."
Barnabas stalked towards the corner. "Open your mind, Loomis,"
Barnabas hissed, and Willie felt his neural circuitry, his synapses,
though he knew not the names, burning like sparkplugs. "I have some
light reading to do..."
--
kitten (and she swirls and swirls and swirls)
Sabrina Stuart's party, Carolyn sniffed to herself amidst the smoke
and the pot-haze, letting the rainbow lighting bathe her. It is a Stuart
shindig and just about everyone knows it. But now it will be mine.
Not that she didn't LIKE Sabrina, at least on some level.
EVERYBODY liked Sabrina, because Sabrina was impossible to
completely dislike. She was friendly to everyone, putting on that little
smile and flashing those million-dollar only-the-finest-optician-in-Bangor-eyes, and she was a Beta girl up at college in Rockport. She had a million charities, as
most of the Stuarts did, and she did her part on off-weekends with
the orphans in downtown Rockport and the animal retreat on Little
Windward. But beneath the everybody's-girl veneer, beneath the
smile and the light conversation, beneath the fun-loving character,
there was...absolutely nothing. Sabrina Stuart was as sugar-bomb
sweet as can be, and that was really about it. As a result, no one
could stand her for more than a few hours at a time. Oh, sure, they
liked being in her company and being invited, and they made nice and
laughed with her, and more than once it was really quite a genuine
laugh, but once the butterflies and little furry woodland creatures
followed Sabrina off on her merry way, none of her guests --
absolutely none -- could help but grimace at the sheer diabetic shock
of it all. 'Cept the Omega boys, but everybody knew how Omega
boys worked -- wasn't much in THEIR heads, either, at least not the
ones on top.
Quite a little faux-retro pah-TEE she's put on, Carolyn thought as she
spun around idly with her latest dance partner ( no Dr. Tony tonight,
tsk tsk, no Saturday night for HIM) . The lava lamps and bean bags
were quite nice, and the sapphire lamps, and the rainbow glitterballs.
It was downright groovy, sure, but not much more than plastic to
Carolyn. Sabrina got this off of The Mod Squad set, Carolyn knew.
She'd seen bigger and better parties, with better music, better people, better drugs, even (though she'd sworn off last month -- really!) . She'd felt/tasted/touched throbbing hearts and pulsing hips and sweat and booze and oregano and this cute little
sock hop, though it was quite glittery, could not compare.
Still, it was a party, and Carolyn was the Party Girl. Her presence
was required, said the Duke.
God, but this lug is stupid, Carolyn said, smiling her dazzling smile up
at the curly-haired Kappa boy from Bangor, who simply grinned
dumbly back through a mouthful of wine. Sweat stains from here to
Australia, swear to God...and is that FOAM in his back pocket?
Who does he think I am, Donna Friedlander? My GOD... Instead of
grimacing, she simply glided into his arms and danced harder, letting
the music pick her up higher.
She felt her tenous train of thought derail back to the home, and the
little monster -- David, tucked away. God that's a downer girl just
pick up off that and go back to Tony why don't you there's no need
to worry about Little Mr. Scratch NOW is there?...but there was, and she felt it, and she bit her lip in exasperation as she felt that alien creeping concern fill her
joints. David was all alone up in that house with the new victim -- oh,
sorry, *governess* -- and he really did have no one. Nevermind
London, or Mother, or whatever -- whether or not he was
devilspawn he WAS just a little boy, and her baby cousin, and she felt
quite bad she hadn't done more but laugh in his little scowling face --
And then her head exploded, and she sank into Foam Guy's arms,
and she shook and shook and her eyes flamed up with shards of
incandescent light blinding Sabrina's cheap disco balls, lights only she
could see but OH how brilliant they were -- and in them she saw
showgirl stages, marquees, feather boas, rowdy limeys -- she saw
coffins, long hot island nights, she saw good men turned dead animals
-- she saw dead children and maniacal missionaries -- she had seen
this before and she'd see it again and as she writhed in her
damnably-stupid pal's arms and waited for the episode to be over she
heard that same stupid song...
i wanna dance for you....
"SHIT!" Oliver William Howell III, Sabrina's good friend from prep
school, the boy with the curly hair exclaimed as Carolyn sank to the
floor, writhing uncontrollably. And as her eyes rolled back white and
her thoughts left her, Carolyn sighed softly. At least she hadn't tripped out in Tony's car again...
---
martinique
i believe in peace, bitch!
- tori amos, 'waitress'
un petit monsieur tripped through his rems. eyes spinning under lids,
her dream implanted securely. he tripped into it, and repeated. and
repeated. and repeated.
she sailed the ether roads along the death-plane, listening to the
whisper-hiss of his child-thing thoughts, like flies rubbing wings
together. she felt her fantasy fill his mind, imprinting her instructions.
she was in control now, again, and for the foreseeable future -- of
course.
oh how good this felt. flying, that is. she flew through the
surface-world, her omni-gaze giving her instant/forever watch on all
she needed see. chess pieces in place, moving like little cogs. dance
marionette dance. lovely. she smirked, and her lips tasted of french vanilla.
thought-flash:
the day her heart stopped. she'd given him cause perhaps, allowed
him to plunge his cold earthen steel into her flesh, gore her bag of
skin, spill her ichor. she'd let him make her an unperson. their
arguments always ended in a bleeding pulmonary unit, why not then? why not then indeed. blackguard bastard.
hypocrite. braggart. slime. putrid foul thing. he'd never compared to
the man she'd lain with in the indies, not the repentant boy she'd found
upon her arrival in this disease-ridden native-son land. take your
passion, your sex, your life in your hands, barnabas, and your life is
yours, not monsieur du pres', not your incontinent father's, not "my
mistress'," and never, *ever* milady's. yours. yours...and mine. but it
had not been so.
and he had paid for trying to destroy her; her life, her heart. he had
paid, and he would continue paying -- he and his kin's kin's kin.
ultimate denouement yet to come, at the midpoint of this penultimate
century.
yes, barnabas. i will see you bleed.
she dropped down again, and as the ghost-nets caught her she slid
through the ether, smelling jasmine and sea and sand and
remembering all those long pink indies nightssssss....
---
terror-prince (cycle-in)
Sarah Johnson hated these damnable summer blows. Wind and rain
and thunder and havoc everywhere, and power shorting out great
guns. She didn't need all this; she still had dinner on the stove for
Carolyn and Mrs. Stoddard had already gone on up. Now to the
laundry. Sarah sighed, feeling herself going gray even as she shoddled
to the baskets. She treasured the family, truly, but sometimes...the
tribulations were many and great. Mrs. Stoddard was so very lonely
since Mr. Malloy had gone on his extended trip, and Carolyn was
always out at all hours being a wild young thing, and Mr. Roger and
that boy Davey...well, London had taken a toll on that broken home, was all
needed be said. And she wouldn't get started on Quentin...
And, as it had done throughout millions of timebands and, someday,
many centuries, so came that knock at the door.
Sarah's ears perked up, and with a sigh she trudged over to the door
and opened it.
Then, her face froze in a rictus of shock and disbelief.
"Mercy!"
The civillized man tipped his hat.
"Is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in?" Barnabas Collins purred...
TO BE CONTINUED ...
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