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
32 HOURS, 46 MINUTES, AND 15 SECONDS
Aerin arrived, masochistically,
at chapter eight. Since becoming a writer, other people’s
fiction had long since become impossible to enjoy, for it was
veiled by the necessary wall of words; improper punctuation,
involuntary spasms of alliteration, thinly drawn characters
whose spoke in hushed, functionalist tones about their
conspiracy to move the plot forward; off-kilter. Rhythms,
clockwise metaphors and similes that melted in the mouth like
used rusty drug needles. (“A word on similes:” he quipped in
lectures on composition he held in his head, “don’t.”)
He closed the heavy book with a thud. In The Shadow of The
Valley by Aerin Liette. It was actually slightly better
than Aerin’s other writing, in terms of manicured craftsmanship,
but had none of the personality of his earlier literary
sketches:
"I’m going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to
die I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going
to die I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm
going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die
I'm going to die by my own hand. Eventually. Maybe next week
maybe next month maybe in ten years or 9 but it'll be me.
Because I deserve this. Bad things are what happen to bad
people. I deserve that and everyone in the world deserves
better."
The words had been hammered onto the crumpled paper in the
typewriter some time ago, but Aerin had been compulsively
thinking along these worried lines for the whole day. He sat
there, in the corner of his study, at the bottom of the old
magisterial bookshelf hugging his knees, surrounded by the
spilled contents of the wicker bin, obsessed with tomorrow. But
for now, through a cocktail of sleep deprivation and terrified
insomnia, he was rummaging through a bin in search of his soul.
Aerin sifted through the scraps to find another immune-system
rejection from the typewriter:
"I am nostalgic for other people's lives.
I am nostalgic for lives I never lived.
I am nostalgic for lives I almost lived.
I am nostalgic for my past selves, for my ignorance and my
wonder.
I am nostalgic for sun and heat.
I am nostalgic for texture and meaning and emotion.
I am nostalgic for sweat and for breathlessness.
When was the last time anyone was ever breathless?
When was the last time I felt something that wasn't bitterness
or fear or anger or regret?
When was the last time the sun touched my skin?
When was the last time I thought everything was going to be
okay?
When was the last time I had a chance to avert this hellish
futurepresent?
When was the last time I thought 'I'm going to miss this moment
because this is a moment worth missing and I am living in the
reminisces of bitter Old Man Me, the saturated celluloid footage
of the mind's eye, I am living in the joyous body of which he
can only dream from his cave of skin and brittle bones, his
consequences are my choices, his mistakes are my ambitions, his
broken dreams are my tomorrow'?
When was the last time I felt happy, truly happy, happy all
through the hairs on my arms and down to my stomach?
I'm not sure I ever did.
I'm not sure anyone ever does."
Aerin hated everything he read.
"I hate everything I write," wrote Aerin. Elsewhere: "I need to
die.
I am no longer of use to existence and existence is no longer of
use to me. Does nobody else see it? The bomb that's ticking away
under my repellent body? At first I was reluctant about Krieda's
polyamory, but now I feel as if I'm actively trying to pair her
off with one of the other girls. They're lovely, all of them.
Krieda is an artist and she sees the beauty in everything, I
want her to be free to chase that beauty. Instead, she is tied
down to me because of the pre-emptive guilt of what she thinks
will happen to me next. I need to convince her I'm okay. I need
to convince her she'll be okay without me, because the girl has
no idea how strong she is. If only she could see in herself what
I see in her, feel the joy I feel knowing that she exists in the
world. That's the plan.
I came home and found her with a knife, the other week. I
convinced her to hand it over, and it's been locked in the desk
drawer beneath my wrists as I type this ever since. I've hidden
the key, and the drawer shan't be opened again until I've played
my part."
“The fuck are you doing?”
Aerin jolted as he looked up from his scraps at Krieda, whose
tall and tired body fell against the doorframe, watching him
from half-shut eyes.
“How long have you been there?” Aerin tried to be subtle as he
hid the paper face-down on the floor in the shadow of the bin.
“Well I woke up a few minutes ago and noticed that I actually
had a blanket, meaning you’re either be down in the kitchen for
some water or you’re up here doing something silly.”
“Why would I be doing something…silly?” He asked.
“Because I read your writing and your diary about once a week
and I know the bruise on your right thigh wasn’t from bashing
your leg on the kitchen table.” She sat down on the floor next
to him.
“What bru-…” He glanced down at the faded patch of brown that
stained his flesh below the hem of his shorts. He’d forgotten
about that. For a second there he thought that - seeing as, in
physical terms, he was not literally THE Aerin Liette whose
unique aura in space and time Krieda Caishead had fallen in love
with for some unfathomable reason - the bruise she was talking
about wouldn’t be there. But Aerin had forgotten about that. He
forgot that he and his doppelgänger both grew from the same
gnarled psychic root. He forgot how their friend from a decade
ago got found out by her scars and never got free of the
madhouse. He forgot the night they found out there’s less
preparation and less risk of infection if you just find a good
spot of yourself to wallop until your whole body burns brighter
than whatever started the horror show. He forgot about the
identical bruises on their right thighs.
Aerin swallowed. “That’s an egregious invasion of privacy.”
“Yeah,” she nodded.
“How would you feel if I went through your diary?”
"That's fair."
"Exactly!"
She got up and left the room. Thudthudthud down the stairs. From
up here Aerin could hear the conservatory doors being slid open
below him. Thudthudthud up the stairs. She entered the room and
sat down beside him, handing over a black leather notebook.
"What's this?" He asked sleepily.
"My diary. You show me yours and I'll show you mine." She smiled
through her trepidation. Aerin pulled on the black band that
held the book shut, and opened it at its first page.
“6/8/12
I measure time in people. Numbers, months, years and dates don’t
mean very much to me. The numbers that make up my life before
The Year of Saedra Who Sat at The Table Next to Me in S4
Technical seem to blur together, distilled into a seconds-long
infodump like the “previously on…” bits at the starts of TV
shows. And then Leola rolls around like summer and time slows
down as if to savour itself. I vividly remember the first time I
saw her: I was sat in the art department and she walked past me
and we didn’t speak because obviously we knew nothing of
eachother. I vaguely remember the final time: we stood on
opposite ends of a bus stop and we didn’t speak because we both
knew too much.
The next three years were The Reign of Mhoir. Too much, too
soon, my love.
The length of time that followed is indefinable. It’s such a
dark smudgy haze, my brain was too numb to take in a thing.
There were no years, maybe isolated couples of months, or a
flickering night, but mostly solitary silence. Silence I barely
remember, silence I can only fathom in awful scrawls in a diary
I'll never, ever read. One day, out of nowhere, time started
ticking for A Few Hours of Aerin Liette. There was this book we
both liked, and there was the author doing a reading, and there
was a seat between us he was too visibly nervous to fill, and
the place was getting crowded, so I filled it. I think I heard
him screaming on the inside. I was stood behind him in the
signing line, and I watched him try to seem like he was casually
looking around the library, and then he abruptly turned to me
and said “Ilikeyourbadge”.
The point of contention in our tellings of this story is whether
or not I openly laughed at him right there. But I was bored, and
he was cute, so we ended up in the café next door, and I derived
far too much glee at the redness of his cheeks, so that’s how it
started. Hours of Aerin Liette ticked over into days as every
red thing was the colour of him, and to my astonishment he
actually worked up the nerve to phone me with the number I
scrawled on his hand before we went our separate ways. (I
noticed the tail of a neat scar poke out of his coat sleeve,
which I was careful to avoid. Most people would assume he had a
cat or something.) His first words were “I hate phone calls* so
can we please just get this over with and arrange to meet in
person as soon as possible?”
“That’s a little presumptuous of you,” I said.
“Do you like art galleries?”
“Aerin, I am an artist.”
“Because the AeLan’s just been renovated and-”
“I am aware.”
“Tomorrow? Like, 2?”
“Like 2.”
I measure time in people. I’m not sure how long an Aerin is
going to be, but this is the first page of a new book. We will
measure time in pages.”
(*Aerin hated phone calls, he’d discovered earlier that evening.
The hateful little bell inside was the worst noise he’d ever
heard, and the lifeless tone which hummed like a black insect in
his ear, and the voice of Dhubagèl Shaen which intoned “This is
a secure line, if anyone looks at the records this will come up
as being from a call centre. The plot,” (This is what the
planned operation to air footage of John Boss the 34th
destroying the Siran X-01 was referred to as. ‘The Plot’.) “is
being set in motion. Be at Dutah Square by 12:30PM, have the
signal jammer ready in the DTV van by 1:15. That’s when we’ll go
live.” The hiss of white noise continued. “You have to put the
phone down, Aerin.”
Aerin whispered “Oh, right, sorry I was just waiting for-”
“Say it’s a call centre. Put the phone down now.”
Aerin shoved the receiver back on its infernal perch. Krieda
shouted through the house “Who was it?”
“Call centre. I hate these things.”
“They’re basically an oppressed minority at this point. There
should be hate crimes against call centre workers.”
“No I mean the phones, they’re awful! Who invented these
atrocities? Who do I have to go back in time and kill?” He said,
not even remotely joking. “Back in the 2000s the house retained
its god-given purpose as the place you go to hide from friends
and loved ones. Now these machines come along and suddenly any
fucker can barge their way into your attention span as they see
fit! It’s offensive! It’s outright dystopian! Walls were
invented for a reason!”)
The two of them were now sitting together silently, reading each
other. Aerin was always watching what she read from the corner
of his eye. The words slipped out of him: “This is beautiful.”
“What is?”
“Your writing, and your handwriting. It’s all loopy and
ridiculous.”
“They say a person’s handwriting tells you a lot about their
personality.”
“Oh so that’s why mine is so awf-” She kissed his mouth shut.
“Shush. No. I won’t let you.”
“I was joking.”
“No, you weren’t.” She said, looking at him seriously. “I know
you. Your jokes are just disguises for darker things.”
Aerin thought for a moment, glancing away from her gaze. “Yeah.
I suppose it is an old habit.”
“And it’s one I'm breaking. Because you’re lovely. You’re lovely
and no you don’t deserve this life,” she said, waving the piece
of paper she was holding. “You deserve better.”
“You don't deserve this life,” said a voice in the
blackness of Aerin’s head. It was a familiar chant.
“You deserve better,” said the memory of Krieda’s. The
old death-song had been given a second verse.
Aerin’s eyes widened.
Krieda looked worried. “What?”
“Not for the first time I am just fucking stunned that you
exist.” He bluntly declared, deriving far too much glee from the
redness of her cheeks. “You realise what you’ve just done there,
right? You have taken one of the foundational rhetorical tricks
of Most Awful Awfulness and you have inverted it and you have
made it beautiful, and good and kind and helpful and the only
thing I can think about is how much I love you for it.”
Krieda was slightly taken aback. “I didn’t-” He kissed her mouth
shut.
“Don’t finish that sentence. I don’t want you putting yourself
down. Not anymore. You deserve better, and you’ll get better.”
“I’ll get better.” She didn’t think about saying those words in
the same way one doesn’t think about breathing.
“Good.”
Aerin and Krieda had dropped their pieces of paper and were now
wrapped around each other, leaking slightly, like two
identically warped flowers whose stalks had entwined in the
tranquillity after a sudden shower of rain. Or snails fucking.
“We should do something tomorrow,” said Aerin, his voice buried
in her shoulder. “Emerald District? Find somewhere new for
lunch.”
“Won’t there be loads of crowds there? They’ll all be there for
that speech about the arena.”
“We can avoid the crowds, surely.”
“Maybe.” She wiped a residual tear from her eye. “Tomorrow’s the
last day of my exhibition at the gallery. Maybe we could pop in,
see how people manage to fuck up everything I was trying to do.”
“That sounds good,” he smiled against the fabric of her jumper.
“Well, I say ‘tomorrow’. It *is* 2am.”