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Lucid Waking

The arts of BNielsen

Archive for June 30th, 2009

Pointless

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June 30th, 2009 Posted 3:15 pm

        The sky outside the window was ashen as was the rest of the world underneath it. Only the track for a few meters ahead of the engine was visible and the faint outline of a roof and pillars to mark the station outside the train doors. He watched her as she waited for the doors to open and then glide up the steps into a compartment to sit on a red velvet seat just like everyone else. Her mahogany hair was pulled back into a tight swirled bun so that the contrast between her hair and the sharp line of her mask was even more apparent. She wore an overly ornate Venetian mask that he had seen photos of amidst other marks of tourist fascination with Mardi Gras’s madness. A dark smear of blue acted as a thick eyebrow arching over her left eye and then down her nose bridge where it landed in a neat circle of purple. The eye underneath the blue smear was a golden brown whereas the other one, beneath an exaggerated array of black lashes on her mask, was blue. She wore a summery, strapless dress with a black bodice and empire waist raining down a skirt with every color imaginable—even some without names.
        He reached to adjust his own mask, painted black with white and red swirls like vines or drips dancing around the face. She glanced at him before sitting down a couple seats away from his. He moved over so as to be closer to her, but she refused to acknowledge him and kept her bicolored eyes on something outside her window. But what he saw was nothing but a wet, shimmery gray.
        The conductor yelled out into the open space before shutting the doors with the slam of hollow metal. The train whistle screamed into the mist before the steady chug of the engine kicked in and sped the cars into the fog.
        “You seem nervous,” he said. She turned sharply to face him and he extended his hand. “Max Blackbourne.”
        She glanced at his outstretched hand for a second before taking it and giving it a hearty shake. “Forgive me,” she said in a lavender voice, “I don’t remember my name.”
        Max shrugged. “I didn’t either, I just made that one up during the ride.”
        “Oh?” she said in a more relaxed voice. “Then I’m Ivette Campo. Pleasure to meet you.”
        “That’s a pretty name.”
        She shrugged. “I heard it somewhere. Probably the opera. Do you like music?”
        “Not that kind of music.”
        “Then you probably haven’t been introduced to it properly. I don’t suppose they have a phonograph around here?”
        Max shook his head. “If they do, there aren’t any records.”
        Ivette sighed. “Of course, that would be the way of things, wouldn’t it?” She shifted in her seat so that it was more natural to speak with him, but she faced the opposite side of the car and put her hands in her lap. “Where are we going, anyway?”
        Max shrugged. “I don’t know.” (more…)

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction Prose