Anne. When I finally come round the first thing I notice is that I hadn't turned off the light. Outside, the light is either early morning or early evening. I kind of hope it's early evening because I'd like to hope I was out for more than a couple of hours. Although, it could be early morning the next day. Or even the day after that. I've just realised that I have no way of knowing how long I was unconscious for. Interesting, I suppose. Knowing something like that would only be depressing, and pointless. It's not as if I'm going to do anything that two days of my silence would make a difference to.
-Impressive setup you've got here, but I tend to lock the door before knocking myself out.
I hear the voice a long time before I can see its source. I imagine it's just some kind of aftermath hallucination, maybe I'm not actually awake yet. I try speaking.
-Is anyone there?
I'm still lying down, my eyes at a level about a foot off the floor. I see a pair of legs walking towards me, and disappear onto the armchair opposite.
This is most definitely not good. I hear moving glass on glass.
-Codeine. Not my personal favourite, but quite a decent strength you've created there. Are you trained in Chemistry at all?
Oh god, I think, oh god. I wonder if the appropriate reaction right now is to scream, or to try and run for the door, or maybe to just run for a weapon. I do none of these things, and remain lying down. This is a form of acceptance, and my resolute refusal to care about my own life could possibly be the thing to save it.
-Why so nihilistic, Anne?
-There's nothing to care about. If there was, I'd ask who you were.
There's a sigh in my voice, it comes out low, a contrast to this vistor's upbeat, sarcastic manner. I vaguely recognise it, and I look up to analyse the intruder.
Surely, surely this is a hallucination.
-Christopher Stone, not really at your service, I'll be honest. Call me Christie, please.
The last thing I thought about. The last thing to make the slightest bit of difference to my life. The guy dressed in white, with a sardonic smile and clearly a distinct lack of knowledge when it comes to social convention. That, I say, because it's not really normal to break into someone's house.
-I think this is breaking and entering.
-Is it? I'm a little hazy on the laws of England. Clearly I didn't pay enough attention. Is this illegal?
-Absolutely, would you like to leave now?
-Why, are you about to spring into action and call the police?
I exhale with great effort.
-Yes, I am.
-No, you're not. Get up.
-I really, really do not want to do that.
-We have things to do.
I can't stop myself laughing at this. What absurdity is this? This creation, clearly of my intoxicated imagination, sits folded on my armchair, telling me that 'we' have things to do.
-Why are you laughing?
He sounds irritated. He gets up, and starts taking things off my coffee table. I don't want people touching that stuff, and he obviously knows this. I slide myself up to try and take control of the situation. As I do, a surreal blackness rushes to my head, as though all the pressure in the room has decided to gather itself behind my eyes. It feels like I'm being compressed into a space too impossibly small for me to fit into. I stay sat down, resting my aching head in my hands, amazingly able to support themselves.
Christie re-enters the room -I don't know when he left- with a cup, which he hands to me. I can only see vaguely, through gaps in my fingers.
-I'm confused, Anne. The way you made that solution was that of an expert, yet here you are, undoubtedly thinking you're going to die from the pain of it all. A slight misjudgement, or just your cripplingly stormy outlook on life?
I am silent.
-I'll go for both.
He has the glass I had drunk out of in his long fingers, and holds it up to the light, a look of interested scrutiny on his face.
-Half a glass of codeine though...I wouldn't have coped much better.
I can't quite manage words, and I do wish he'd stop talking.
-I'd like to say I'm impressed...
I open one eye, looking through the gap in my fingers that allows a shattering beam of light though them.
-But actually I'm just bored. Get up.
I can't get over this guy's audacity. He's broken into my house and now he is ordering me around. I'd refuse, but this is the most eventful thing that's possibly ever happened to me.
I take control of my spinning head, just about, and draw myself up to his height. This feels bizarre, and makes the situation infinitely more awkward. I've only just come to terms with the fact that he's a person, in my house. This is completely not right.
-Get up, get dressed. Make yourself look good. I'm going to wait here.
I leave without a word, but thinking, look good?! Did he actually just say 'make yourself look good'? Firstly, that's not going to happen, and secondly, why?
I go to the shower and brace myself for the uncontrollabe cascade of water that will go from scalding to freezing and back to scalding with no inbetween states, after which I wrap myself in towels and head to my bedroom.
He is sitting on my bed.
-What the--
-Sorry, you took too long. I thought it would be better if I came in and told you what to wear.
He hands me a pile of clothes he's evidently upturned my entire wardrobe for. A hideous outfit that Eloise made me buy, and forced me to wear, once.
-Right. Thanks. Do you want to...uh...go, now?
He looks irked and slightly untrusting as I snatch the clothes from him.
-Fine, but if you don't put on those clothes exactly, I'm coming back.
He leaves. I was right to think him a psychopath. I am most definitely in trouble. In fact, he's probably got an axe with him right now. His behaviour with my chemistry equipment earlier leads me to believe he's already acquainted himself with my kitchen, so I briefly worry about the wherabouts of my largest knife.
I suppose there's nothing I can do about it though. It was obviously my fault for not locking the door when I-
I definitely locked the door. I always lock the door. Good god.
I'm ready in a flash, not bothering to look in the mirror, I run out to where he's reading a very out of date newspaper and sitting cross-legged on my coffee table.
-My door was locked.
-Was it? Oh, well, I suppose I was speaking in metaphors again. It might as well have been unlocked, considering the ease with which I overcame that particular barrier. You should fit a new lock. Although, I am exceptional-I doubt any burglers or similar would look twice at attempting a door like yours. I suppose I just see things differently.
At some point this evening, I'm going to have to get used to this way of talking. It does nothing for me, meeting each of his ridiculous statements with open eyes and/or mouth.
I watch the guy, sorry, Christie dash around my flat collecting seemingly random objects and putting them into his pockets. I've given up on expecting anything from my voice or spoken sanity tonight, so I just stand there, feeling like the eye of a hurricane.
-I hope you don't think I'm stealing from you, Anne. Just collecting useful things.
Right. I want to know how he knows my name. He goes into the kitchen and comes back with a small glass bottle that he's screwing the lid onto. I think I deserve to know, it being my kitchen and all, so I ask.
-What's that?
-More codeine. I used your stuff while you were asleep. You're an inspiration, Anne. Hope you don't mind me helping myself. What do you think of the concentration, here?
He's now right in front of me, waving the bottle in my face.
-You are, after all, the expert...
-It's...fine? I think?
-Fine? You think? Oh well, that's all we have time for, I suppose. Do you keep cleaning products in your bathroom?
-Cupboard under the sink, yes.
He rushes off again. He doesn't look where he's going, he appears to have already created a mental floor plan of my flat. When he returns, he's stuffing more small bottles and two flannels into his seemingly endless pockets.
-I took the ones with the scariest warning signs on, what do you think?
I see his grin magnified behind a vial of something that's a toxic shade of blue.
-I think it depends what we're doing. What makes you think I'm coming with you, anyway?
For the first time, he stands still. He looks at me, furrowing one eyebrow as if he's trying to work something out. He takes steps closer, his smile increasing each time the unfashionably high heel of his booted foot hits the carpet.
-My darling Anne. Perhaps it's the way you're doing everything I say so far, clearly against your better judgement. Perhaps it's the way your -allow me to say it- disabled mentality forces you into situations you know you'll hate. Perhaps it's the way you're slightly interested in the fact that something might happen that you won't end up hating. Personally, though, I believe it's the fact that no one ever seems to want to say no to me.
As he comes to the end of his speech, his voice grows quieter according to how close he is to me. The last beat of the sentence is whispered in my ear, as he hooks an arm round my shoulder and leads me to the door.
I'm wearing shoes I could run in.
Yves. I'm in my own flat now, sipping tea, staring into space, only just hearing the ringing in my ears that should have happened earlier but didn't- I have to admit, I was somewhat distracted. I think back on how the last twenty-four hours progressed.
My last self-conscious thought was when Gabriel kissed me. I'll allow myself to dwell on this memory for a while; it was, after all, something quite different.
When he drew back from me he kept his eyes on mine. I was sold in every way possible to the moment that had just passed, and the rush of cooler air to my face awoke me to the fact that I'd probably have to think about what just happened.
-Sorry.
I momentarily lost the ability to put the most basic twos and twos together. I couldn't for the life of me see what this person had to apologise for.
-Why?
-Because you don't know me, because I didn't ask if you'd mind, because you probably wouldn't have done that, because, oh my god, you definitely aren't into that...
The first time I've seen Gabriel mildly shaken is when he says this last section. He claps his hand to his mouth as he considers the fact that I might not actually have wanted to be kissed by a man.
I'll be honest, I was pretty sure until that moment that I didn't want that at all. In fact, as he's saying this, after I've spent what was probably not very long just staring at his face in awe and interest, I'm thinking that what just happened wasn't good or normal or how I'd wanted the evening to end in any way, shape, or form.
So no one is more surprised than I when I respond,
-Please don't be sorry.
When my head finally catches up with what my mouth appears to be saying, I reassess myself in horror. Clearly it's the drink. Clearly it's the headiness of a night in this magical city. Clearly it's not really me.
I blush violently and have to look away. As I do so, I hear my companion sigh in mixed disappointment and resignation, and picture him putting his head in his hands as clearly as I would were I watching him.
For some reason this sound, and this image, is a million times more painful than the revelation that I've just quite happily defied any idea of a sexuality I had before ten minutes ago. This causes another instinctual reaction, I'm full of them tonight, I thought, and I reached out to touch his hand.
-No, Yves, I should be sorry. I should have far better control over myself than to just harrass the lovliest thing I see the moment I can. That's how everything gets ruined. The impatience and lack of self-discipline of man. I deplore those traits in myself a myriad more than I do in others.
I'm still blushing at this point, but now more so from the way in which he just referred to me. The desolation in his voice is matched by his eyes and I just want to cover it all up with something better, that would make his eyes turn back to the sparkling ice I first took them for. At this moment in time, there only appeared to be one possible course of action to bring back the strangely strong figure I'd attatched myself to by now. I closed the space between us, blocking him in between the arm of the sofa and me, and kissed him again.
-I mean it. Don't be sorry.
He smiles with refreshingly wicked eyes. I'm glad I've actually managed to convey something accurately, for perhaps the first time, in his presence.
Once this particular vague trauma ended, I realised how very tired I was. Telling me he wanted to 'act the gentleman', Gabriel walked me down to my own flat where he gave me my key that I'd apparently left on his coffee table, kissed me, and told me he'd see me tomorrow. I then slept for as long as my alarm would allow me.
Now it is tomorrow, and this morning I ran to check the post. Now it is evening, and I sit here inspecting the piece of white card that holds the message:
'See you at six, look pretty. O x'
Again with the halo. It seems a lot more fitting now.
Today has been eventful. My first day at work as a runner in a TV studio. A fairly reasonable job, actually, I only have to work for six hours a day. Ten til four. The time of day when TV people want coffee.
I love just being in that big shiny building I hadn't really ever properly imagined the existence of- who imagines television studios? They usually remain quite an abstract concept- one building where television is made. I don't know, I just never really thought about it. Now I work in one. The corridors are endless, and the people are slightly mad. I still don't know whose toes to definitely not tread on, and today I accidentally ran into about twenty vaguely famous people while trying to get coffee to twenty other vaguely famous people. It's chaotic and I love it.
I keep worrying, as I sit here thinking about how much I like my new job, in a flat that I love, with a piece of card telling me I'm going to do something I'm going to love with people I definitely love, given to me by someone who I think I might just accidentally end up loving in the near future...I keep worrying that it's all too perfect. That after a while, bad things are going to happen.
That's probably just me being paranoid.
It's five fifty-eight. I look as close to perfect as I can manage through my excitement, and I'm mindlessly drumming my fingers on the kitchen table as I aimlessly inspect the piece of paper I've been playing with. When the doorbell finally rings, I nearly jump out of my skin.
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