Sunday, January 8, 2012

Fly Me To The Moon (Bell Book & Candle Pt. IV)


https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisbT916MJSig3MhY6ZDpMFEJAeu4i8Ny4WKC9a3CeSrnoTxaSZckhY987mGBCoBAOKeBvfVae092e9s4zE4RjtkzTB8fEgHXxohBVZZqgiUz8iPAN0iAcyuE65-2u16gT2XHUsk_yiy3Jj/s400/kim_novak_01.jpg


Serena was sitting at her favorite table at the boulangerie and watched  disinterestedly as the fidgety young woman was nervously rummaging through her enormous Marc Jacobs' bag. Funny, Serena thought, how fashions do seem to imperiously dictate what was merely acceptable and what was so very chic.

Take this young woman she had been observing. Mid-twenties, rail thin, flip-flop clad well-manicured feet, hair carefully tousled to give that "I just fucked my brains out & need a a ciggy" look who now after digging through a suitcase-sized purse was wielding her Marlboro Light cigarette like Darth Vader engaging in battle with Luke Skywalker in some Star Wars flick with one hand & loudly & crudely screeching, "Alright, alright, already... to make a long story short, here's what the fuck he said...." into her Blackberry with another.

All while the young woman's table companions engaged in similar modes of behavior. Chomping on their gum, slurping their overpriced five adjective coffees, blowing their noses, making maddening sounds as they tore into their pastries like lions tucking into antelopes. Gorging themselves on everything at once, appreciating none of it as they did!

Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!



A choler rose within her.

Such cretins offended Serena's well developed aesthetic sensibilities.
The desire to crush the offensive sight was strong, not unlike that of a dutiful housewife who has just spied a roach climbing on the dinner table.

It was a combination of revulsion & rage, how dare something so vile show itself so brazenly!

Serena came so very close to demonstrating her disgust, it was just a matter of unthinking her, a small but distinct chasm would form between the right & left hemispheres of the girl's brain, slowly but surely creating an avalanche of neural synaptic dysfunction all at once, like watching a stunned insect frying on a light bulb, but the creature was simply not worth the energy expenditure.

When Serena plucked the gowans fine with some of the creme de la creme of La Belle Epoque society no more than 100 years ago, this young woman wouldn't even have been thought to have sufficient charm to use as a scarecrow for a field of corn.  Though Serena likely would have hung her out in a lonely field back then.
Crows needed food, too, poor things. 
Ah, those days of the 19th century neo-renaissance.

Now women like that were considered the height of desirability.
Astonishing.
What an era....

No wonder, Serena had been so depressed as of late without any desire whatsoever to practice her unique type of social intercourse. She could find no one worthy of assimilating during her daily prowls around the city these days.
The UnBecomings had been just that these days....
Unbecoming.

Ugly, mentally flaccid, completely unsatisfying...
An intellectual abortion, a lonely ghost ride in a barren, inhospitable desert.


Serena was ravenous.
Starved for the kind of mind & souls that could fill the vacuous void that threatened to annihilate her...
It was an endless hunger, an aching need that became excruciatingly painful during long droughts like this. She could feel the tsunami of tears rising within her, inundating her...

NOOOOOOO!!!!!!

All these years amongst these beings had left a truly unwelcome emotional imprint upon her, she must refocus.

Being what some would crudely call a mental vampire, an intellectual succubus was just not the same existence as those creatures of the night that flopped around as the occasional bat & drew the plasma out of their victims. They could feast on rats, vermin, and other undesirables easily. This would sustain them, but not never an Eskaran like her.

Unlike the Nosferatus of this planet, Serena could not survive for long without a particular kind of mind... she couldn't conjoin with just anyone or anything. It would not fill the hollowness within her. Such things would would be too ephemeral like air through a flute, making music for the length of the player's breath, yes, but no more than that.

She was so weary... of it all.
The false charm, the luring, the constant search for the perfect prey...

To what end all of this?

Perhaps it was time for her to be assimilated...
The truth is she longed to love & be loved as these humans did.

To look upon the face of the moon and see not merely some satellite to an unimportant planet in some obscure galaxy, but instead to see the ivory-laced visage of what Italo Calvino explained to her on the starry night that he un-Became so willingly in her arms:


My return was sweet,




my home refound,
but my thoughts were filled only with grief at having lost her,
and my eyes gazed at the Moon,
forever beyond my reach,
as I sought her.
And I saw her.
She was there where I had left her,
lying on a beach directly over our heads,
and she said nothing.
She was the color of the Moon;
she held the harp at her side
and moved one hand
now and then
in slow arpeggios.
I could distinguish the shape of her bosom,
her arms,
her thighs,
just as I remember them now,
just as now,
when the Moon has become that flat,
remote circle,
I still look for her as soon as the first silver appears in the
sky,
and the more it waxes,
the more clearly I imagine I can see her,
her
or something of her,
but only her,
in a hundred,
a thousand different vistas,
she who makes the Moon
the Moon
and,
whenever she is full,
sets the dogs to howling all night long,
and me with them.


http://www.hoax-slayer.com/images/north-pole-moon2.jpg

Blogophilia 50.2 Topic: "To Make a Long Story Short"
Bonus points
(hard, 2 pts): mention a scary movie (i.e., the movie title)
(easy, 1 pt): mention a brand of cigarettes (i.e., brand name of cigarettes)

Click HERE to learn how to join this wonderful group for writers

10 comments:

  1. Hi Lori, I keep try to 'follow' this blog but it doesn't seem to compute on my page? any ideas

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Simon! Yikes... That's a great question. I switched to this template because it's so clean & pretty looking for prose & fiction, but I don't see a "Follow" button, either & I can't add any HTML to this template to place one here. :(
    I see a subscribe by email link, but that's all. I'll look into it a bit more. Thanks so much for bringing it to my attention. xox

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ok, Simon, I reverted back to the old template.
    When you "Follow" me, I'll change it back to the new one.
    How silly of the designers not to include a follow button!

    ReplyDelete
  4. and as if by magic? ......... this now appears on my updates page, so we'll give that a yipEEEEE and see if the ether overlords can keep the pieces together?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmm... you don't show on my followers gadget thingy. Have you hit the "follow" button on the page?

      Delete
  5. All generations preserve something of the mindset that they grew within and judge accordingly? Serena’s unfolding time span reflections via these people watching episodes laced heavily with a distaste of the ways of the modern word.

    And yet do not we all as time goes by look and think “things ain’t what they used to be” … the good old days are the values of the formative years?

    And what formative Eskaban years might produce such a ‘sugar rush’ of needs?

    What love can Serena seek and what is the cost of that love?

    Good stuff

    A ripping yarn dear writer

    We need the back story?

    and whoops 'y' whoops you've gone from my update page since the last look ... there be gremlins a foot in these woods :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmm... Yes, I suppose the poor dear is pining for the good old days. She met all the most fascinating people in history & I'm afraid, she had a great deal to do with their demise as she "assimilated" them. :)

      Nostalgia has its appeal, always, because we cannot go back. If we could, we wouldn't find it as romantic, I imagine. Humanity is a bit perverse in that sense. When we are barred from a thing it seems all the more appealing.

      Serena kills everything she loves or she outlives it...
      It is her curse...

      Perhaps I will write of her early days, too... :)
      And bummer about disappearing from your updates. Ugh. These gremlins need to be exorcised! :)

      Delete
  6. Woof, woof & thrice woof as you so nicely & frequently say. I just re-read the last bit. I assimilated to soon. I feel a prequel here. Well, I for one would like to read it. I feel there is a mile or two to Serena's formative character as yet unwritten?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Haha ((((Simon)))) Perhaps I will write one. I'll do the George Lucas thang. Start the story in the middle, then write the prequel, then the sequel. :) xoxo

      Delete