Chapter 5
Legends of the Fall
Fade, to stilletto. (red)
Crawl camera, right - another stilletto. A shift (chiffon) partially draped over red, lacey...
cue sound.
And... action.
They're in bed (hers) being friendly. She makes a happy, albeit slightly muffled noise as his tongue gently probes the simmering depths of her mouth. His fingertips lightly trace a lazy line from the naked hollow of her axilla, along the slight swell of her thorax, past the gentle valley of her flank, down, down further to the bony ridge just beyond the slowly swelling plains of her hips. He feels her shiver against him, her breath from her flared nostrils hot upon his lips, and her fingers dig fiercely into his shoulderblades.
The bed creaks as she pulls abruptly away onto her haunches, tresses of her magnificently long hair spilling across the edges of his visual fields, transforming her into a pair of blazing, dangerous almond eyes at the end of a dark, dark brown tunnel.
Her lips twitch a little, whimsically. And then she crouches, agonizingly slowly, her index finger trailing down his chest, down still further. And further still, her smouldering eyes still fixed upon his.
He smiles back vacantly as she delicately bares her teeth, and then he shudders as she wraps her lips around...
... his big toe. He groans. She growls huskily in response, deep in her throat as she
... bites down, her tiny sharp canines nearly drawing bloo..
ooAAAarrghhh!! His eyes flutter open.
"CHEE!!!" The pomeranian grins at him and licks his chops, backing hurriedly away. Chee laughs silently, in that gleeful way all small, irritating little toydogs always do when they know they've been a Bad Dog but are going to get away with it.
The pillow misses by a hair as Chee dodges nimbly, and then decides to wander off somewhere more interesting, tail waving lightly in the air.
Lessee, where were we...
... opalescent pearls of glittering sweat bead her lower ribs and slide down her taut midriff, streaming in wet rivulets between her thighs as she arches her back, lost in the intensity of the moment. Her fingernails rake his chest as she throws back her head, and her long auburn hair fans out in slow motion, as she screams "
beep beep BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!"
The rollover backhand karate-chop catches his budget bedside alarm clock offguard, hurling it across the room onto the floor where dazed, it lies for a moment in stunned silence catching its breath before manically resuming it's electronic assault on his ears. Bugger. Time to go to work.
*****
At work, the keyboards around his cubicle stutter gradually into silence as his colleagues throw each other sidelong looks and tap their temples meaningfully with subtly concealed index fingers.
Perhaps it's because of the steadily-lengthening paperclip-chain heart that's materialising on his desk. Or perhaps it's simply because he's smiling. There must be a law against smiling at work in Singaland - it just doesn't seem right.
*****
He's standing on the sidewalk near Borders nervously clutching a copy of Terry Pratchett's "Death Trilogy" to his chest.
That's the arrangement. He'll have Death thrice in hand, and she'll be shod in red heels, the better to dance in hell with. It's one of the many little jokes that only work at the instant they're made. In the cold light of day, it all seems rather odd in retrospect. And the damn book is heavy. It's a trilogy for chrissakes.
There's a girl walking towards him.
His heart skips a beat. She looks vaguely familiar, with her slightly oversized head perched on a ludicrously thin body, which looks suspiciously like it's been stretched by some celestial graphic-editing software, and her pink baby-doll top.
Recognition dawns, as she hones in on him.
It's Pink.
And she's wearing red shoes.
Oh no. Pleasepleaseplease. Don't let it - he glances down. as far down as he possibly can - be her - he makes a frenzied study of a crack in the sidewalk beside his left shoe. There's a miniscule line of text in the base of it : Authentic-looking artificial simulated wear-and-tear, made in hong kong.
A pair of red shoes walks into the top of his field of view and stops.
Oh, bugger.
He looks up. At the immaculate legs, which stretch on forever.
And up. At that delicate waist, tapering gracefully, then, ah, rather less subtly outwards as his gaze travels upwards (with scarcely a linger! Or even two!).
And up. Past the flawless strong lines of those naked shoulders. Past her neck - his throat goes dry. Past her lips. Along her nose and into her eyes. Into her eyes.
It's not Pink.
It's so, so not Pink. This girl is beautiful. This girl is... to die for.
This isn't the girl of his dreams.
This girl is far, far more than he could possibly dream of.
Right now, her dark eyes are sparkling with amusement, and her lips are twitching into the beginnings of a smile. She's saying something.
"..ello?"
Kit musters up all the eloquence he's set by in store for just such emergencies as this, and smoothly replies,
"Graaallor."
"You must be Kit. I can't imagine why anyone else would carry a five hundred page book on their person. Is that a mars bar in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"
Kit shakes his head in wonderment, and silently extricates the slightly manky mars bar he keeps in stash for emergencies of a more hypo(rather than hyper)glycaemic nature from his trouser pocket.
"Oh."
"Graah. You're Jean?" Damn. Talk about stating the obvious.
She smiles, and does a few steps of a little jig in her red stilettos..
"The better to dance in hell with!"
They laugh.
And they laugh, through coffee at borders.
And they laugh some more, over lunch at Scott's foodcourt. The food's slightly overpriced, and decidedly ordinary, and everyone else is dressed in white long-sleeved shirts, but they don't notice.
They laugh through Shrek 4, the movie. Somewhere along the way, she puts her head on his shoulder, convulsing with laughter.
And then they don't laugh so much all through dinner, staring quietly into the candlelight reflected in each other's eyes.
And then, all too soon, they're standing awkwardly under a streetlamp etched in a misty golden glow.
"Well, I guess this is goodbye." chokes Kit, shuffling his feet.
"I had a good time." She, gently. He wonders if this is womanspeak for goodbye forever. Or worse still, that dreaded "I'll always see you as my friend" stinker.
pause.
"When will I..." They laugh. They've both started together.
"You first." Kit, ever the gentleman. Actually, Kit's never the gentleman. This is quite possibly a first for him, and his inner caveman silently howls something incoherent about John Malkovich.
"Okay, me first. When will I see you again?" She smiles at him with her eyes.
Looking into the infinite twin depths of her soul - Kit feels his reality spinning away. This all feels so surreal. Any minute now, Chee is going to bite my toe and wake me up.
Kit glances down.
It happens so quickly he barely has time to catch it out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't have time to catch her.
There's a squeal - no, more like a shriek - of tires freewheeling, and the smell of burning rubber. There's a dark flash, as a black minivan with black-tinted windows mounts the kerb. (Everyone knows who black minivans with black windows belong to, right?)
There's a dull, wet thump. Sort of like the thump a body makes when it's hit by a solid metal chasis travelling at forty miles an hour.
And then, as his horrified eyes finally catch up with the scene unfolding before him, time slows to a crawl.
It all happens agonisingly slowly now, in bullet-time.
Jean spins counter-clockwise, twice, her hair fanning out into haphazard medusa-snarls, snatching viciously at her face, now suddenly so pale and lifeless. Her eyes are closed, and the magic has faded. She falls sideways as she spins, her flailing arms crumpling uselessly beneath the weight of her body.
There's an ugly crunch as her head strikes the ground.
And then a dark red trickle of something liquid out of her ear. Blood. That must be blood.
Kit kneels down and takes her shoulders in his hands.
"Jean!"
There's an eternity, and then her eyes flicker open. They're glassy - almost gone now, the life that coursed through them earlier.
"JEAN!!"
She coughs. A thin stream of red leaks out the corner of her mouth, and drips a solitary, dainty drop, to the floor below. She's trying to mumble something.
Her eyes clear for an instant.
"Take... deliver... note."
Somehow, she finds the strength to guide her fingers into her jeans pocket (I did mention that she was wearing jeans, didn't I? Black jeans.) and withdraw a tan envelope.
He grabs the note and, ever the thinker, groans,
"Jean!"
"kit..." weakly.
"yes...?"
"RUN!"
And then hearing expands outside the little bubble encompassing the two of them to the Rest of the World.
Tires squeal again as the black minivan describes a lethal arc. It's turning back.
Any second now, there'll be that gut-turning smell of burning rubber. He feels Jean slump in his arms, and her eyes roll back in their sockets.
A single sob of fear escapes him as he lays her to the ground. The Jean-ness is gone now. All that remains is a broken rag doll.
He starts to run.
