============== Prologue React ============== "There used to be mountains here, all different in peak and dell. Though high as they stood, they were feasted upon by the gluttons called Wind and Rain. "Learn to talk already!", I shouted in vain. Because before they knew it, every last one of them was grinded to dust. Each grain journeying its own quests, only knowing and caring for their own. Pathetic. No one should find satisfaction in leading only one life." Mature enough to know at least that, was Catherine. The people rather who invented communication deserved her most loving of kisses but only the person who can tell her what it is shall be dragged into her, be pampered and in the end crippled so terribly that he would never ever get a chance to escape. She will communicate the violent way if she has to. Catherine Wheel is a living corpse in the process of decomposing. Ripping her fibers apart one at a time, she reduces herself to tiny figments hoping that they would somehow come to carry eachother's burdens. Alas, instead of doing so they all whine their daily lament of: "Catherine oh Catherine, when are we leaving here?" She sleeps underneath a parachute. According to her own religion -the one she herself does not believe in- the walls, floor and ceiling will merge on the apocalypse as pieces of a puzzle. The tyrant glued together from all her limitations -both physical and non- shall evict her from her queendom. That is why she will love him, cherish him, be intimate with him, and eventually want to flee from him. Things will get ugly. Heads will roll, angels will fall. Hence the parachute. It's her guarantee to a more beautiful downfall than she deserves. It has never ended that way. Catherine is trapped inside a blank sheet of paper which no author wishes to write upon. And with good reason too; Catherine is the loneliest person in her universe, and therefore the most dangerous. "Loneliness was never a laughing matter. Even less so is love. Come accompany me, come love me if you dare."
It was beautiful, and just the right length for somebody passing through to be compelled to read. The personification of the wind and the rain and the way they were described as gluttonous really caught my attention. Each paragraph seemed to describe "Catherine" in completely different ways to me. The firework one was especially good, it was violent and "she reduces herself to tiny figments hoping that they would somehow come to carry eachother's burdens" was excellent. I don't have any complaints, this was executed rather finely~
Good, good. I liked it (even though I had to re-read it and read each sentence more than 3 times) I'm pretty slow on the intake, but I managed. I like the way the narrative describes things and how it introduces Catherine, not only that, we also get her own views and thoughts as spoken by her in dialogue. It is very good, but I will CnC. First of all, You switch from third person to first person rather flawlessly, but you used the speech marks wrong; you never closed some. I suggest you simply shift from first to third without the marks, unless you want to really denote speech. Second, I feel like I'm watching a documentary. I can't say for certain if that's really good or bad. Only time will tell. It is also important that you try to convey a definite meaning. I can't go to an author to ask what he/she meant in one paragraph. This is definitely not your everyday Twilight, and as such it is important that you convey a clear meaning. The woman seems like she has some problems, and in a way it seems like she's secluded enough to establish into reality her own universe. She seems more like an idea, than anything. I'd love to read some more. More so, I need to know, what is this apocalypse? I'm guessing this is figurative, does this mean her own fall from grace, to which she responds with a parachute? Why would heads roll when she decides to escape from her limitations? Would it be a mentally straining process? Or physically gruesome? This I'd like answered in the near future.
========================= Session I Texture ========================= "Oh let me have it, let me grab your soul away You know, it's me Cathy" Kate Bush (Wuthering Heights) "Catherine." Where is she? "Catherine?" She'll be difficult to spot amidst this whiteness. "Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaatheriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine." A naked, milky, empty chamber and soft parachute get slid in front of her as if the whole package were tasteless breakfast. She gobbles it up reluctantly, vomits it back out, and wades her feet through her puke. One more rude awakening for Catherine Wheel. All that is Catherine is white. The possession of every colour, yet the dominance of none. Whiteness is a system with an infinite supply of potential, much like herself. Her entire environment suffers from albinism. Everything is white or pale and shines its flashes of pain with every form of enlightenment. For let it be known to all; Catherine detests moments of clarity. It doesn't work. The plate is still as full as it was five minutes ago and as full as it will be in ten more. This is Catherine; emotionally deaf-mute. No intake, no output. The circle is a dot. All these flavours, fragrances, colours and shapes. They may just as well have never been there. She can't eat. It's been too long since she last opened her mouth to speak. One room traversed, another is waiting. One sticks to the functions those rooms are built for, no more and no less, otherwise you are a freak. For now, Catherine doesn't feel like participating in all that, though she'd much less remain where she stands. It doesn't matter much anyway: she lost her set of keys and is imprisoned in the frame between waking up and living her life. She ardently gropes her grey matter, which is merely a diorama of her living space with all the necessary and unnecessary frills. Quirk by quirk she underlines both her doubt and her resolve during her search. Eventually, after a tremendous effort of grasping and damaging both hemispheres (again), she finds that which ought to grant her safe passage. A key which grants access to the ballroom known as the outside world. Catherine freezes at the door that should not even exist. What is she supposed to do there? What does she have to accomplish? She has never known; Catherine is a freak.
I feel as if I'm in the mind of the delusional when I'm reading this now. One things for sure- it's most certainly pushing my brain capacity since I'm having to read things over usually more than twice. xD Contradiction of ? On a side note, I'm liking the names of the chapters.
Ehm, every human has grey matter, Cariad. It's in the nervous system. Whereas the statement of her being white can be mostly figurative and explained in the narrative. I can't even summon a mental picture of her condition, nor create a mental image. It's like we are still in struggling with her mind and have not seen the real world. On a side note, who is calling her? I'd like to see how she interacts with the rest of the world, or will she simply struggle with herself the whole time?
That's very critical of you. But, I'm thinking the grey matter part pertains to her mind, in which case meaning she is human. Styx couldn't have used "white matter", in order not to contradict himself, but that's something else in the nervous system. Lol, Imagine if Catherine is a white alien.
I can't really imagine Catherine as a physical being at the moment. To me she seems more like a physical idea, a force, something so insane it's difficult to describe. She is many things and yet nothing too. Then again, maybe she's just a human with a mind of delusion.
I was thinking something along those lines. But if she's really going to the outside world now, then who knows? I feel like I'm spamming xD.
Production and consumption, creation and destruction are two essential processes who strangely antagonize eachother. They are lovers who are driven apart by both the House of Logic as well as the House of Intuition. But lovers they are. Their forbidden passion gropes for the back door and employs scouting blown kisses so that they can fondle eachother furtively, mischievously even. They will never however attempt even a single taste. They know all too well that they mustn't. One could strive for net profit. Emptiness crumbling beneath the bell glass of life. Eros who slays his deformed equivalent Thanatos, as if they were a game of chess with only two pawns, and this over and over again. But even a bucket that is replenished droplet by droplet can overflow. Therefore it is commendable to introduce into society those who take more than they give. This idea is as irrefutable as it is dangerous. This idea gives everyone a wildcard to transgress. This idea is to be realized by Judas Chair, a completely abnormal youth who you wouldn't want to run into in your own mental darkness, let alone in his. Judas Chair too, traverses chambers and opens all the necessary locks in order to do so. His set of keys rattles like the shackles of a sinner who is chained before he even committed his crime. Each step is a new door, a new room, a higher level of inertia. With each second that passes there are so much fewer possibilities to retrace your steps. It is a danger that roams Judas' daydreams and nests in his nightly blankets too. Despite his loud tinkling entries, Judas is only seldom heard coming because he virtually whirls through chambers, through lives. He forges and breaks ties at a speed that is invisible to the naked eye. No encounter with Judas is ever the same. It's exactly because of this that nobody seems to realise that, on a different scale, Judas is simply standing still. In all relevant versions of reality, Judas is not a storm on himself but rather a prisoner in its eye. He detained himself to it as part of an irreversible decision. A barrier of howling, whistling, twirling insecurity. Day after day, step after step it slaps him across the ears: "I have written the lexicon that I will carry for the rest of my life. Like everyone else I have defined compassion and cruelty in ways that only I can understand. I have seen everyone's reflection in my head if not in fact. Okay...Now what?" Creation and destruction. Judas has held their hands throughout their journey across several altars, some true, others false. Little do they know however that they are closer to eachother, closer to death by togetherness than ever before.
Judas is going to visit a friend today, although it can be debated upon whether he really exists. "Friend" just sounds too...permanent. Said person is much rather an intermediate to a product whose true shape is still clad in fog. And that which constantly changes cannot prove that it exists... "Stop...I can't take any more...Go away! Just go away!" All that running around and behaving normally. That getting up, going to work, coming home and going to sleep. "Nooooooo! Stoooooooop!" That wearing shirts and blouses. That marrying and having children. "STOP! I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE! GO AWAY!" Catherine wiggles around wildly. She tries to flail the hinges of her limbs around a fraction of that unreachable state. But her desire is too deep, too intense and too just. Anything she tries to embrace is only squeezed to death. He judgement days grow ever shorter. Her Ragnarok arrives ever earlier. Completely exhausted, she gives in to the cold floor. Her legs stretched and held together, her arms spread sideways. Creased shirts and the bodies of married couples, children and people who came home from work. People who behaved normally, ran around, and were being hated by the worst in her. "Listen to this..." "Shoot.", Mancuerda said. "Something that changes constantly cannot prove it exists, because before it gets the opportunity to do so, it transfigures into something else.", Judas explained. The both of them follow a much too conventional template, which demands they take a break and let the icebreaker sink in. They abide. Mancuerda accurately times the conversation's progress and eventually introduces his own view on the matter. "Suppose I carry a rucksack on my back, and its contents change every second, every nanosecond if you will. I still feel it on my back with everything in and on it. Whatever the nature or magnitude of its contents, I will feel it weighing on my shoulders.", Mancuerda argues. He ends one paragraph with a full stop and quickly starts another. "Like I weigh on yours.", he mentions, knowing that he has been the subject all along. The life of these two gentlemen leaves no room for right and wrong, only for Q&A. What to do though, if neither are very appealed by the answer? The continuously shifting, the eternally dynamic. According to Mancuerda, It has the ability to make Its presence known. It lives and evolves in an almost insectoid manner. During a certain stage in Its life It will derail, It will grow wings and escape every form of domestication. You become an object in a territory. Judas and Mancuerda ogle eachother anxiously. As if they murdered someone just now and promised eachother a foolproof omerta they take a few steps backwards. Then the final turn is turned and the two men go separate ways for now. No greetings, no expressing wishes to see eachother again soon. This is once again a failed attempt at normal conversation. Where others walk on pavements, she shuffles over little tombstones. Where others lead lives, she timidly follows the stature of her own. Where others fail succeed, she doesn't know the difference. "I'm not sick. I'm only sick of whatever is making me sick." All that is Catherine Wheel is black. The absence of any colour. The wardrobe of the unknown. Catherine allows it to protect her. Like a kid wiping cookie crumbs under the carpet, Catherine always uses the darkness in her soul to hide the rampages she leaves behind. But her black is an inviting one still, much like a door ajar. Everyone gets their chance. They only have to find the light switch, and dare behold what they find there. A door ajar. No lock; it was obviously forced. There she is sitting. Laid to bed but since a long time now awoken from a restless sleep. Praying to herself due to lack of another creature she knows of. She's the one: the continuously shifting, the eternally dynamic. And yet there is no question that she's free from every form of correlation. She hasn't escaped from anything yet. She hasn't derailed yet. She is someone who still matters. Judas turns the light on...
"What are you doing?", the boy is asking the girl on the rails. It'll be here in an hour. In an hour. Who's that? It'll be here in an hour. "I'm waiting for the Train Of Normal People.", the young woman replies. "It won't be here for another hour.", knows Judas. "I hope it'll overrun me slowly. I want everything to crack. I want to become sludge. Goo. Something that knows no guilt or self-esteem." "I can't go on it, so I have to go underneath it. Either way I want to be with it. If this is the only way for me then so be it. Sludge. Goo. I want to be a hindrance to them just once more; then I'll go and rot like I deserve. Finally." It'll be here in half an hour. Half an hour. What is he doing? It'll be here in half an hour. What is doing? Just what? He's approaching. "I'm not happy with being allowed on board. Just how abnormal do you think I am?", he asks of her. He treads all the way past his taxonomic classification, all the way until he's standing next to her. From now on Judas is the monster under the bed, and no longer the mortal who is expected to be afraid of it. "Why?", she wonders. The barricade had doubled herself but so have her insecurities. "Return already." "A mirror image. An equal. A fellow human. I haven't decided whether I want to have one, but I do know that I want to be one. That's why." It doesn't fit. Her not being lonely; such is so unnatural. Furthermore there's this mist surrounding him that voraciously swallows the light of trust, and Catherine is never reached. Exactly that is what makes her grab his arm tightly, searching for an avenue that leads to his intentions. Emotions are pulled together once more. Strained. They reach a point of coherence that they never reahced before. As if they should be protected from being splintered away by a long and stormy journey at any cost. The train is crawling into sight. Judas is lying in the filthiest way possible as he launches Catherine, with a painful thud lands on a platform somewhere between standing still and being on your way. She's raging. Fantasies which she herself considers gruesome -but no less applicable-, finish too late to be awarded a reality. Judas is shattered indefinitely by everything that's in motion and is therefore unavailable to cool her anger upon. She's scouting for an appropriate victim but only finds the monster that once got to ruin her. The same monster that vamoosed across her without shooting a single glance her way. Apparently not everything hates her, or at least not all the time or at least not most of all. Come to think of it; she'd have never realised that if it wasn't for... Catherine is shed again but this time she is the lizard itself and not its accursed skin. Betrayal has become surprisingly nutritious just this one time, and Catherine hopes that she finally gets to show her summer coat after this ecdysis. She ought to be grateful to the stranger. Where is he anyway? His smile had been rammed to smithereens but kindles her memories of the time that she still wore one herself. The Train Of Normal People will pursue progress, but it shall find Catherine and Judas on her way. She is partially exempted from her duties. Such lightness! Her insecurities double; her scar sollection gets the chance to halve itself. So be it. ... It's ironic really. Life begins with one cell. Maybe his life begins in hers. One cell. With an undelved crystal vein mind it begins to divide itself to form a paved route of skin on skin. Judas bows humbly with each trespass. Right eye. Left eye. Everything breaks. The cells that nested themselves underneath his re-arrangements, like the ground beneath his feet, shiver of fear and burst open, releasing their cytoplasm. Everything flows. Catherine's tears carry the unsuspecting traveler far far away, to a turbulent estuary somewhere between love and hatred. Her first warning is a friendly one still: do not touch, do not come near, do talk, do be sweet. Left eye. Right eye. Judas takes a sip from the water sourced in a land that copes with droughts and storms respectively. A rebuking acidity prickles his tongue, her shawl fortunately accessorised with forgiveness, hope and even gratitude. Nothing has been lost yet. "I'm here now, and I know that I'm not enough, and I know I want to be more. But for now I'm just here and I'm feeling good. Now for you." Judas is drowning. There's no why. There's no wherein. He's just...drowning. "Now for me...", Catherine repeats. "I'm not into anything, including you. I'm hurt everywhere, also in places that you can't see let alone heal. No one cares for me, and neither do you." Judas beckons his iron shadow. Hend-shaped bars close off all his exits. He is obviously eager to drown some more before breathing. "That's not why I'm doing it." He pauses for a moment, but because he deems the girl too unpredictable to ask him "Why then?", he provides the answer himself. "I'm just true to my modus operandi." Catherine would look down if only something lower than her even existed. She doesn't want to look away, for she'd find naught but walls. If she would dare to raise her hand she'd see the stranger, who seems keen on wasting his time with her. Oh well, then she'll just have to shut them. So simple. If only she could do that with the rest of her body... She writes him letters but all of them are harassed by blood, tears and mud of the earth they stand on. None of them are legible. Her sentences are written noise, their meanings ambiguous. She'd like to apologise for her lack of communication skills, and why not for her entire being while she's at it? But even that would not be understood, she knows. Her taciturnity is becoming unbearably heavy, until the hand of sound suddenly rips said yoke right off her. The stranger wants her to talk. Maybe he really does see the humanity behind the ghoul. Maybe. Judas is still there, and Catherine is too. Awoken and partly stripped from haze. Catherine encodes. Judas decodes. Functionality for two. There is no higher goal in the vast realm of physics. Judas, as its loyal servant, receives proper compensation. Their utmost limits bow before their confidant. The girl is catapulted back into the here and now. A batch of purification. She too, appreciates that the walls and ceiling lie kneeling at her feet. "What's...this?" "Evolution. At a pace only we control. If you choose so of course." Their former prison crawls back up. There are no more transgressers, and without them even a cell has a right to freedom. The wide sky is to become a hunting ground for fluttering rock. Everything seems free now. The world is naked. Catherine resurfaces from a dive into the ethereal. The world is naked; is that even okay? "Call them back!", she orders. The colossi who beat their wings to the rhythm of borderless thinking; they frighten her. Judas fakes the breakdown of his newly created dimension and camouflages everything into looking exactly the way it did. Judas will cast the unchained mass into floatation once more, perhaps as soon as her back is turned. That's a promise he makes himself. The pounding of the heart of the cosmos has fell to its usual cadence, but aside from that nothing can be called the same as before. Judas Chair. Catherine Wheel. The sum of their bpm's form a plain of pulsing, erupt-worthy superlatives. Tingling as well as burning make for an intenser experience as of now. "Afraid of the dark?", the girl teases with a pretty smile. She switches the light off again and leaves Judas in a feathery slaughterhouse where everything is born, murdered, and reincarnated.
My head's now officially a mess. Your chapters are addicting, and for some reason, I'm finding it easier to understand them; maybe I'm getting sharper at this. So far, my imagery creation has been messed with too much, and that was only at the beginning. I cannot fathom to think what comes next.
================================ Session II Immorality ================================ "I don't care what you think Unless it is about me It is now my duty to completely drain you" Nirvana (Drain You) At the moment, Catherine is to be found in the esophagus of her existence. She's undertaking a descent that she has experienced as being exceedingly unpleasant time and time again. This time however, she doesn't hope be cut loose and break her neck at all. And thus she lands into the deep dungeon where all of her cargo is digested, sometimes without her even realizing it. Here is where she's hanging. Infinitely high, exactly where Catherine wants her to be. She can't see the woman's face, and is very grateful for that. Her friend, due to lack of a better description of the term. Their ties are strictly machinal; they communicate exclusively through seering electricity. Catherine leads; her partner follows. Today's a fine day to be called to dance. After all, the machine must keep on running at all times. Doubt is dwelling through her fingertips again. This gatekeeper does not easily allow a re-arrangement of his nation's borders. This is a rare moment indeed; a moment where she can defeat him. She approaches the lever with nubile curiosity, as opposed to the usual enthusiasm or reluctance. She flips it. A tsunami of lightning package is released, with a heterogenous package of feelings surfing on top. It rams the tragedienne who looks down on her with unknown intentions full on the front. Catherine is feeling it too. It tingles, caresses, dances, writes its lyrics all over her body. It is pure calligraphy. The mysterious prisoner is crying, shrieking and squirming for dear life, twitching with all the freedom of movement she has left. She screams a pessimism that Catherine abhors. Who is she anyway? She's known her for a very long time, yet she hasn't got the slightest clue on what she's doing here of whether she'll be staying forever. Maybe she'll learn if the woman would finally be gone. Let's give it a try... More? Okay. That feeling again, that delicious, sensational feeling. Her fellow-sizzler should be feeling the exact same thing, but her receptors only detect pain and suffering. She's sick, she's despicable. More? Even more? Maybe she'd better not. Her victim has already started to evaporate. When she'd be gone, the question of why it was necessary for her to die would surely arise and Catherine can't answer that...just yet. That'll be all for today. The sense of touch in Catherine's fingers is slowly returning. The dusty lightning is getting beaten out of her clothes. Only this time, it didn't hurt her for a second. Could it have something to do with him?
I am struggling to keep up with this plot, if it even is one. Your creativity is astonishing and yet a passer-by could be mistaken into thinking this was random, intelligent rambling. It'll take an extremely wise mind to fully understand this story. xD I was reminded of fireworks during the last update- I'm not exactly sure why, or if it even links, but there seemed to be various clues pointing towards it. And yet at other times, not at all.
You mean to say that there's no apparent continuity? That there is no ambient or location? Why most certainly, if that's the case, you are correct. This story intentionally fails to give us a setting or time, place. It doesn't give us anything . Normally that would lead us to believe this story flawed, and apparently inconsistent(which it is; note the word apparently) We'll have to wait some more to finally decide if this experiment was a failure, or if it's unconventional method actually proves efficient.
Each chapter is more like a diary extract, except with no set time or knowledge that the entries are chronological. In some ways its not a story at all. xD
Finally managed to tumble, trip, and otherwise stagger my way through this. I've got no clue what this is about and I still feel compelled to read. It feels like a free verse poem: incomprehensible prose. The words and phrases mean something by themselves obviously, but without a broader context I feel like it might as well be just random ramblings. I also prefer something this long to tell me a story rather than a mental experience or perception door or whatever else is incredibly trippy, but I'm still reading so I must see something in this somewhere that I like. It would be easier if I could watch this with author commentary telling me what's going on for sure though.
