The Third Adventure: Action, That's How! (A Caper in Time Part 2)
by Evan Forman and Michael Robertson - One Chapter a Week Starting 27.11.16
23 HOURS, 7 MINUTES, AND 5 SECONDS
"What time is it?” asked Krieda.
“Half eleven? Ish?” Aerin looked back to see if he could see the
top of the church they’d passed. “I think that’s what I saw on
the clock tower.”
“Don’t you have your watch?”
“I’d have remembered it if you weren’t in such a rush to get
out.”
“Well! It’s a Sunday and it’s the last day of the exhibit, when
else will I get the chance to see how I'm misunderstood?”
The sun shone off the wet stone of Dryadora’s pearl district,
casting hard shadows around the backs of the gray columns which
held up the one and two hundred-year-old buildings. On the other
side of the road from Aerin and Krieda, the city gardens had
started to burn orange in the Suffocation. (In the Ring Tale,
the Suffocation is the nightmare of the golden sun falling
asleep: the repressed knowledge that its light cannot last
forever. Which is depressing, Aerin thought, but the colour of
the old forest is still paradoxically beautiful.) Above the
buildings on the other side, Aerin could see the red crown of
the Dryadoran Amphitheatre, which had been lowered to keep the
weather out as the police investigated the scene of the
explosion.
Aerin turned away from the arena and back towards Krieda. “What
time did you say you’d be at your parents’?”
“Half one to two. Are you desperate to get rid of me?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “My life has just been too nice and fun with
you around. I need to get back to my roots.”
“Well you’ll get there when I’m gone.” She gave a pantomime
heave as she took his hand from his coat pocket and held it.
“But you’re mine for now, so there.”
* * *
Trapped and enraptured, the author feels the earth drop below his feet. He has almost forgotten the world he left behind, he has almost forgotten the world. He looks at Her and makes a mental commitment to never forget the patterns of shadow where the sun shines on Her heavenly body, the weird sometimes-green-sometimes-brown-but-always-little-flecks-of-orange-stardust-around-the-centre colour of Her eyes, the spot just below Her lower lip and the bulbous little curves of Her nose. Down below, circling around the sight of Her, he feels his chest and stomach submit to their new orbit.
* * *
From the outside, The Dryadora National Gallery wasn’t so much a
building as it was one or two faces of a creature too big to see
in its entirety. Above the grand old edifice and the arrays of
tall, arched windows, four cranial domes sat on the different
levels of the roof; the first major Dryadoran building of its
style. Krieda led Aerin in by the hand, stringing him along
through the foyer as he stared up at the murals on the concave
roof - pantheons of nature spirits presiding over the works of
the elves - and up the stairs, totally ignoring any sign of
other works in the gallery, and to the Krieda Caishead exhibit
on the second floor.
Most of the windows on the gallery’s upper floors were opaque,
letting in light but not distracting from the works with a view
of the city. Stepping over the threshold, Aerin had to remember
that he was supposed to have seen this all before, so he tried
not to look shocked when he saw the room. Krieda let go of his
hand and adopted a chin-stroking thoughtfulness as she paced
around her own works. Aerin held back laughter in the quiet
gallery as she raised a puritan’s eyebrow at a scratchy nude
drawing.
* * *
I look at these bodies on paper from a distance, but as I’m drawn closer I stop seeing bodies and start seeing desperate, feral black lines of charcoal like you can’t wait to finish her. For a second I’m not sure if you’ve drawn an elf or a human, she could be anyone but you love(d?) her. To the right of that, a red-haired woman painted with so many layers that parts of her emerge out from the canvas. She’s reclining on some cushions, turned away from us, and I am struck by the thought I could reach out and touch every curve of her right now. The physicality here is comparable to the sculpture in the middle of the room.
* * *
In the middle of the room there was a sculpture. A woman made of
featureless white wax draped her arms around the shoulders of a
man made of polished glass. On the other side of a rope divider,
Aerin read the sign:
“‘You’re Just Like Me, We Have So Much in Common’ (2213)
Krieda Caishead
Wax, wrought iron and glass
Caishead’s work deals primarily with eroticism as a
phenomonologistic, intersubjective experientiality with
reference to Raendre’s frameworks of biological
identificationism. Feminist critics might emphasise the
signified genders, reading the male’s reflective, reflexive
identity as a predatory lure. However - in another example of
Caishead’s obsession with the experience of her audience - the
viewer is struck upon closer inspection by the sight of their
own face in the work, they themselves have either been put in
the position of the wax woman or have put their face to the
guilty party.”
Aerin stepped back, lowered his head slightly towards her and
whispered, “Krieda, honestly, how many intersubjective
experientialities did you use to make this?”
“So many. So much phenomenonol…phenomom, monomo…nom-”
“Doo-DOO, doodoodoo.”
She clasped her hand over her mouth, her shoulders heaving as
she tried not to burst the near-silence of the gallery. “I hate
these things.”
“The signs?”
“Yeah, I mean fine, tell them the title and the name of the
person what went and made it, but I can’t stand just…telling
people what it’s supposed to mean.”
“It’s like spoilers.”
“Yes! Don’t give away the twist.”
“What’s the twist? That you see yourself in that guy’s face?”
“Kind of. The ‘obsession with the experience of the audience’
thing is pretty spot-on, but other than that…”
“I do like that you’re not making art in a vacuum,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s like…so there’s a general consensus that art is
supposed to communicate The Truth,” she said, lowering her voice
and folding in her neck at those two words. “But art does this
almost exclusively through lying about the world, or creating
parodic facsimiles of other ones.” She paused.
“To whatever degree that language itself isn’t a parodic
facsimile.” Aerin interjected.
“I was more meaning in very…material terms. A landscape painting
is supposed to be a representation of reality, but to some alien
who’d never seen trees or people or countryside before it can
only ever be a representation of itself. Basically I think
there’s some untraveled roads that start with step one: none of
this is actually real. Or at least, this is only real in that
it’s an object of ink or paint or pixels or thought which is
held back by claims to reality.”
Aerin thought for a moment. “A lot of that’s more applicable to
fiction than fine art.”
“Yeah.”
“People shouldn’t have to suspend their disbelief, is what
you’re saying.”
“Eh, that’s a stupid way of thinking about art. Fiction,
especially.”
They wandered into the next room. “How do you think of it?”
asked Aerin.
“Aristotelian imitation,” said the elf, sitting down on a bench
in front of a lush forest landscape (painting). “Don’t you know
about that?”
“The term rings a bell, but… ”
“First described in Poetics, written by Bob Aristotle in
350-odd, it basically says that people don’t become invested in
fiction because of the coherence of some kind of ‘secondary
world’, but because people are naturally imitative: every baby
learns by copying the people they see around them. ‘Suspension
of disbelief’ suggests a kind of temporary psychopathy where the
audience can’t tell between fiction and reality. It’s not so
much about the realism with which the lore holds together but
the unity of all the plot elements. If zombies and tentacle
monsters suddenly appeared in a realistic political thriller
with little to no buildup everyone would be pulled out of the
story and nobody would believe it, but if the zombies and
tentacle monsters had been set up beforehand,” she demonstrated,
drawing arcs over points on an imaginary timeline, “then people
would still be on board. Not because they believe it’s real, but
because it makes structural sense.”
“Yeah that makes sense,” said Aerin, sitting down next to her.
“So it’s not so much that the reader believes that what’s
happening is literally real but that…” he rested his head on his
hand and his shoulder on his knee as he tried to find the words.
“The way in which the events play out in the story is similar to
how events play out in real life, and the characters have
enough… imitatability, to have an effect on the reader… ”
“Regardless of the fact the reader knows none of them are real,”
she nodded. It was not so much that Krieda was more intelligent
than Aerin rather than that she was more intelligent than Aerin
with obvious zeal. He found this novel and exciting. The prick.
“Ummm, did they not say that in that screenwriting programme you
watched a while ago?”
“What?”
“That every character you write should be made up of two or
three people you know in real life,” explained Krieda, before
she was visibly struck by a thought. “Who am I?” she grinned.
“You look alarmed, honey.”
‘What do you mean?” asked Aerin, who looked alarmed.
“In your stories!” she nudged him. “Who did you make with me? I
hope I’m not any of the villains, and I think you’d know better
than to just make me a love interest on the side,” she placed
her hands behind her on the wide bench and leaned backwards,
still smiling at him, almost kicking her legs in mischievous
excitement. “I’d better be brilliant. I want a library with a
ladder and a throne of bones.”
“I’m sure there’s some sort of rule you’re breaking just now,”
Aerin deflected.
“Okay,” she retracted, magnanimously, and placed her head on his
shoulder. “I won’t ask you to break the magician’s code. My
point is: we shouldn’t have to pretend behind a veil, as artists
or people or people in books or portraits. We’re gonna smash
that shit. Meet them halfway. Reach out into the world and
stroke their pretty faces.”
Aerin chuckled. “You’re a very ‘people’ person, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Art should be sensuous. Straight representation can
do that, in the hands of a master, but I want to do things
differently. Impressionist painters would just squeeze tubes of
paint onto the canvas and leave it like that, the look and feel
of paint on a canvas… that’s just as valid a thing to… you can
consider the colours alone as beautiful as whatever it’s trying
to communicate. The paint is as pretty as the world behind it,
you know?”
* * *
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!
Oh, sorry.
I think your brain is very beautiful.
Is all.
My thoughts are nowhere near as composed as i’d love for you to
think, this is very much an unfiltered stream of frantic
remembrance which will get sorted out at a later stage.
But, still, saliently:
Aaahh!
* * *
Aerin and Krieda strolled along the stone path which coiled
through the park, cutting through expanses of grass which
glistened with dew. His breath tumbled out in fog as he spoke.
“It’s just…weird. Unimaginable. It’s weird that it’s weird,” he
paused, adjusting his hands in his coat pockets. “Most people
have whole lives planned out for them, roughly, but then ask me
what I'll be doing when I’m fucking forty and I have no idea.”
He glanced over at her, she was looking at some kids in a
playground in the other direction, looking at any other thing in
the world as if she innocently had no idea how beautiful she
was. “I had no intentions of making it that far until recently.”
Krieda took on the mannerisms of a journalist. “Mr. Liette, just
what *will* you be doing when you’re forty?”
“You,” he stated bluntly. She tried not to spit out the steaming
coffee she held in one mitted hand.
“No you won’t,” she said, wiping the corner of her mouth.
“Forty’s old, Liette. Your hips will sound like a creaky rocking
horse. Like a donkey. Cackling. At you. You’ll have…” she took
the end of her scarf and shook it in the air, “flaps of skin
wobbling below you like a fucking chicken. I will be flattened
beneath your pendulous udders. It will take fire crews and jaws
of life to prise me out of there.”
“I thought you were so sweet when I first met you.” (He said,
smiling-muscles starting to hurt and chest hollow as if exposed
to the elements and whole body burning and bright in ways I can
only ever fail to express.)
“It’s too late now,” she smiled, shaking her head. “You’ve
fallen into the trap.”
“Good. It’s nice here.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment, Krieda’s smile drew
out like fire receding into embers and Aerin looked out at the
sun glinting off the lake. A neat parade of ducks scrambled and
swarmed towards a little girl overarm-throwing bread into the
water.
“What *did* you think?” Krieda asked. “When you first met me, I
mean.”
The question unsettled Aerin. He felt unmoored from the world,
lost to the not uncommon thought that he should have died some
time ago and that he did not belong here anymore. He decided he
could be nothing but honest.
“I thought you were demented but you were very pretty-”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“What?”
“”Very pretty’? You’re underselling this, surely.”
“Terrifyingly pretty. Spectacularly, overpoweringly pretty.”
She shrugged. “You’re getting warmer.”
“The first time I looked at you I knew I had seen the pure and
indivisible beauty of the world that every artist in poetry or
print or paint has tried to capture and failed.”
She stood up straight and nodded, satisfied. “That’ll do.”
“That, and I could actually smell the Clever on you.”
“What does Clever smell like?”
“Sort of like…” he looked up in the air and stroked his chin for
inspiration. “Have you ever tried to make soup with
slightly-too-old vegetables and it has that sort of vinegar-y
fragrance?”
With her finger, Krieda traced the path of a single tear down
the side of her nose and off the corner of her mouth. Aerin put
his arm around her shoulder and kissed her cheek. “It’s fine,
though. I don’t mind, honestly.”
“Oh, god.”
“What?”
“That was nearly two years ago. It’ll be our second anniversary
in…less than a month. It can’t be that long. Time is lying. It
feels like two months.”
Aerin bowed his head and allowed himself a quiet sad smile. “It
feels like two days.”
* * *
Aesthesis: an archaic word that simply means 'sensation',
the perception of the world through the external senses. Also
used to refer to the fiction-writing mode by which you try to
bring the reader into a story by describing the physical
sensations of the characters.
There is stone path beneath my feet. A soft, cool wind bites
pleasantly at my cheeks and earlobes and I can feel the cold in
the back of my throat. I crack the knuckles of my fore and
middle fingers underneath my thumb and there is a satisfying
pop. I feel like my toes require cracking but I can't bend them
fully in these shoes. There is a slight nip on my right heel
when I put my weight on that foot. I don't have the top button
of my coat done and there is a slight cold infiltrating the
space between the collar of my shirt and the skin of my neck.
You're shorter than me so I notice that when walking through
crowds I lean slightly towards you to hear you speak. There is
an unruly strand of hair at the top of my head and I think I can
feel it blowing in the wind but I think I might be being
paranoid. There is birdsong, and the low ribbit of a helicopter.
I catch a whiff of the hand-rolled cigarette being smoked by the
young man walking past us with short black hair and glasses. A
crow belts out the same note - almost a bark - four times. A
middle-aged man with silver hair walks past in a shirt even
though he has a blue jacket slung over one arm. I can see a
strand of hair in front of me so I push it up with my hand and I
have this phantom stickiness on my three longest fingers. The
top of my left palm where it connects to those fingers is
particularly sensitive to the cold, so I put it back in my
pocket. Even in this isolated green I can hear the thunder of
the construction site nearby. The sun comes out more directly
now and I can feel the change on my legs first. I narrow my eyes
to see. Coffee is a wondrous invention but it is still heavy in
my stomach over an hour after drinking it. A bulldog headbutts
the back of my lower left leg and there's this after-sensation
of greasy hair. (I am in almost all other cases a dog person.)
My nose is starting to run in the cold. We pass a busy café with
large glass windows and I feel, physically, watched. The sound
of an accordion's 3/4 tune travelling on the wind. BeepBEEP in
the distance. Mostly the sound of my own thoughts, partly the
sound of your voice. The warmth of my coat hums around my torso
and the lining touches my arms inside, the right of which hangs
over your shoulder. Inside my chest, there is a heaviness.
Sensation is all we have, so you are in love with the sensation
of me and I am in love with the sensation of you, but sensation
only goes so far. I have felt “you” for two days, and you feel
better than anything ever. There’s a voice in my head and it
tells me this is wrong, that I’m lying. But the voice has said
that about everyone who didn’t rightfully hate me.
In quiet moments I wonder why I was put here, two days ago, and
I’d like to think I know the answer. Regardless of why I was put
here, I know why I am here: I have decided I will be here for as
long as you’d like. For better or for worse, the person I saw
die in that forest was me. Not a doppelgänger, not a decoy.
Three days ago and today, the thoughts behind your sensation of
“me” are the same.
Basically I love you a lot and I’m not sure I actually care what
the universe has to say about that.
* * *
Up the wonky old stone steps, up onto the streets again.
Aerin and Krieda walked together for a bit, and then it was
time. “Do you have any thoughts or feelings about dinner?” asked
Krieda as they crossed the cobbled road.
“Ummm…” Aerin thought for a second. “I don’t know, I'll just go
to the shops and see what happens.”
“Are you just walking home?”
“Yeah, it’s nice out, so.”
“Right then.” She spun around on her heel on the street corner.
“I should be back home around…four? But my aunt and uncle are
there too, so make that half four. I’m trying to sort of
time-budget for an extra line of questioning from them.”
“Must you go?” Aerin feigned despair. “Can’t you suddenly get
the plague? For an afternoon? For me?”
She chuckled and hugged him. “It’s only once or twice a year.
I’m sure I'll make it.”
* * *
We kissed, too briefly, and your index finger was the
last thing to detach from me as you smiled and started to walk
away. I stood there for a few more seconds and just watched you
MOVE, trying to record every single thing in my memory.
I wish, for all the world, that this was the last time I saw
you.
* * *
Aerin glanced to his left as he tried to work out the
geography. A crowd was gathered at the Dryadoran amphitheatre,
which he could see at the bottom of the road, and he heard a
well-spoken man’s voice echoing up the street from a sound
system. He took a deep breath, and started walking.
As Aerin headed back down the steps into the park, towards a
grocery shop he’d remembered seeing on the other side of the
park, an old man with a flat cap stopped him.
“‘Scuse me mate, you got the time on you?”
Aerin pulled up the sleeve of his coat and looked at his watch.
1:42pm.