Date: Sat, 2 Dec 1995 10:41:36 -0700 Reply-To: WOLFEM@CGS.EDU Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Michelle Wolfe Subject: my so-called immortality 5a/? From: CGSVAX::WOLFEM 2-DEC-1995 10:20:45.09 To: WOLFEM CC: Subj: my so-called immortality 5a/? My So-Called Immortality (or: never trust anyone over 300...) a Highlander excursion (or maybe incursion...) This is probably PG-13. And might be upsetting to some people. Just a warning. by M. Wolfe Part V-a: Gimme Shelter? (or: mirror in the bathroom...) That Afternoon A strangely familiar barge on the Seine... "...She was accumulating a supply of treacheries, so that when the shock came, she would be prepared: 'I was not taken unaware, the trap was not sprung on my naivete, on my foolish trustingness. I had already betrayed. To be always ahead, a little ahead of the expected betrayals by life. To be there first and therefore prepared...' ...awaiting her hour of punishment after living like a spy... for avoiding exposure, for defeating the sentinels watching for definite boundaries, for passing without passports and permits... ...And her neutral zone, the moment when she belonged to none, when she gathered her dispersed self together again..." --Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love Emma started the shower. She stood by the toilet, fully clothed, just watching the hot water rain down into the stall. She glanced around the tiny room, a small cube of brown tile and varnished dark wood. It was simple and spare. A bar of soap and an old-fashioned straight razor by the sink. A towel hanging on the door-hook and a single toothbrush hanging in a slot by the mirror. No pictures or knick-knacks, no seashell-shaped soaps and embroidered hand- towels, no treasure-boxes stuffed with earings and chains, no colorful array of bottles and pots filled with lotions, perfumes, and all the other magic substances women smear on their bodies and faces. The room belonged to a man. A man who lived alone. A man she didn't know-- even if Richie Ryan did. A man who was immortal. A man who was quite possibly dangerous. God, what was she doing? Why did she let them bring her here? She didn't know. (..."Not knowing isn't good enough, Emma...") She picked up the straight razor, her fingertips tracing the patterns engraved on its jade handle. She stared in the mirror, watching her reflection slowly cloud over with shower-steam. And who was this man? Richie's friend? His teacher? Why hadn't she caught his name in the church? How old was he? And what if he knew... (..."I'm a dangerous enemy, Emma. Don't make me yours...") ...Connor? She tossed her head, trying to shake his voice away. She had to think. She had to plan. Figure out her next move. There was, she thought, a radical difference between playing a game and being played in a game. The problem with 'The Game' was that it was never clear which was happening. But she knew what t felt like. It felt like she couldn't see the board or the pieces because she was _on_ the board and she _was_ a piece. And all she could see through her pawn's-eyes was the shadowed border of the square on which she stood. And she strained and strained to see past it, to the next square, the nearest piece, her next move. The shower was still running. Brilliant. As if she'd forgotten what she was doing, standing in here. She passed her hand under the stream of water. Scalding hot. Close enough to perfect. She grabbed her sweatshirt by the hem and jerked it up, over her head, suddenly seeing... (...a drop of blood fall on blue piant, marring the reflection of moonlight and streetlamps...) No. Not now. She didn't remember. She wouldn't. She pulled the shirt all the way off and tossed it in the corner. Suddenly clumsy, fumbling with her bra, she felt against her neck, her head... (...his coarse, unshaven skin; his breath, sickly and warm...) No, no, no. Her hands dropped to her jeans, trying the zipper. But she couldn't shake the whispering in her ear, the voice-- deep, slavic and sinister-- whispering... (..."Perhaps I'll let you live..." he's whispering, his breath hot against her neck, smothering. One of his hands is crushing hers against the roof of the old VW, her head hanging in a void of broken glass, dangling into the broken passenger window through which he'd smashed her head a moment before. With his other hand he's stroking her-- but not with his fingers, not with his flesh: he's brushing her body with the dull edge of his sword. Her sword is yards, miles, light-years away-- she imagines it spinning through black space, still following the trajectory it took when it flew from her hand. ...and now he's running the edge of the sword along her neck, against the back of her head. She can barely breathe: her nose, mouth are clotted with blood. But his breath is everywhere: covering her face like a film, a seeping veil of bodily scent and slimy heat. ...now she feels the steel against her cheek, the metal freezing and burning: "After all-- your head is such a little thing. But perhaps I should leave you something to remember me by-- you see, it's quite strange, my dear..." he's saying, his weight crushing her body, swallowing it up, "...but a bullet, a blow, even fire to the face, and in a few hours your features would be as whole and pretty as they are right now. But there is something about the cut of the blade-- the edge of the knife-- that our flesh distinguishes from all else-- recognizing it, calling to it. Whenever the blade meets the neck, the head-- the flesh remembers. It scars-- waiting for the time when it will be cut again. Forever..." ...she feels a stream of her own urine- hot and humiliating- - running down her leg. ...he slides the flat of the blade across her forehead, but she can't feel it, she's sinking away, sinking into the blackness. "Yes, I think I will do some...re-decorating. Something to show when you go crawling back to that impotent Scotsman, so he can look at your mutilated face and remember all the women of his whom I've defiled. Oh MacLeod," he chuckles,"you just can't protect them, can you?" ..time is disappearing, moments stretching and shrinking. All she knows is now her jeans are falling...Oh God...His-- that thing-- thick and stone-hard, stabbing into her, ripping her open, as if she were an empty bag, hanging open, dry and torn, there is nothing left inside of her. No inside... ...from far-away, from someplace else, she's watching. Floating somewhere outside time, she sees the inside of the car, sees the big shard of glass. Dagger sized. ...she does it in less than a second, but it takes hours. Hooking her foot around his ankle, slamming her weight backwards, pushing, pushing, down, away, twisting, she pins his arms against the asphalt, knocking his sword away, crashing his fists into the gravel. Scooping the shard in her other hand as they fall, she bears her body down as hard as she can against his-- She is gravity-- pressing, pinning... ...as she twists she slams the shard against his neck. It goes part-way through. ...just barely over the beating of her heart she hears him screaming with half a vocal cord. ...she pounds and pounds, like a woman crushing corn into meal, like a woman pounding wet clothes against the rocks. She pounds and pounds the shard against his neck, hacking through tendons, through vessels, through bone and nerve, again and again, his body writhing, his mouth still moving, the edge of the glass slicing her palm, his blood mixing with hers. ...she keeps pounding the wet empty air as his head finally rolls away...) No. She wasn't going to remember... The water was almost burning, but she didn't remember stepping into the shower, leaning against the tile stall, still half-clothed. Anymore than she remembered that quickening-- her first. She bowed her head underneath the hot stream of water, drenching her hair, the water falling into her eyes, blinding... What she did remember was sometime-- moments or hours later, rocking back and forth, his body yards away. A huddled ball of muscle and tears, muttering to herself words she didn't understand. Clutching her legs, trying to stop them from shaking, soaked in urine, her thighs caked with semen and blood, bare and freezing in the cold Czech air. What she did remember was Connor telling her that the quickening brought only power and strength-- no permanent memories, no lasting emotions, no conscious knowledge. What she did remember was looking up, into the streetlight, and suddenly remembering through his eyes: seeing her bloodied body, feeling it flatten against the car, tasting her shame and disgust, smelling her fear. What she still remembered (despite every effort to block it out, despite the wall she built and re-built everyday-- with taller and thicker bricks each time-- between herself and her feelings, her memories...) was her rape. From her rapist's point of view, sometimes... She peeled off her remaining clothes, already wet from the shower. Hung them over the door. For half and hour she scrubbed and scrubbed, rubbing soap over every inch of her body. As if it were her body. As if she would ever be clean. ________________________ continued in part B... =========================================================================