Writing On The Hands

Stories are supposed to start in a special way. Everyone knows that. Whether it's a statement of fact like Pride and Prejudice, or Anna Karenina, or if it's something setting the scene in all its absurdity, like 1984, stories are supposed to reach out with that line and grab the reader, shake them from the world like cold water to the face. Stories are not supposed to start out coalescing slowly, an awkward conversation between friends, a meandering walk between points. That first piece shouldn't slowly come into focus.

Nevertheless, here it did, the man's reflection sharpening and fading as headlights and streetlamps washed a low glow over the window of the bar. He twisted his head back and forth, searching for something outside, shrugging his shoulders as he failed to find it. He paused for a barely perceptible moment to examine his own reflection, ever so casually smoothing down a stray tuft of dark hair as he turned to his companion. Vanity peeking out, as it ever did.

She sat corner to him, both tucked away in the corner of the bar, safeely far from the noise and hurry. Her head cocked in that way he was learning she had, dark eyes looking a strange mix of sullen, sarcastic and curious. She twirled the unlit cigarette in her fingers, tapping the tip against the low table in front of them. dirty blonde hair falling choppy against her shoulders.

He regards her calmly - a strange feat, he thinks, some corner of his brain spinning away entirely separate from the rest. His heart hammering a rapid pulse inside his ribcage, and yet his breathing so even. No...his heart is slow, now. Now fast. He feels that strange sensation of floating, serenity and fire warring around him, where his pulse is so fast it's almost nonexistently slow. Feels like flying, he thinks.

He reaches forward, delicately for a man of his size, lifts the glass to his lips. Dark words flicker across the back of his hands - Fuckin' A. The vodka burns down his throat, but didn't react, a momentary intake of breath the only response. His lips frame the question and she lifts her head as the words floated across the intervening space. Her unusual speech pattern unfolds the sentence in response, slow to start, like she was picking words one by one, then rushing to completion as the idea rolls off her lips. The alcohol has kicked in, he thought - catching his eyes lingering too long on her lips.

The conversation rolls on, and the jacket rolls off his shoulders as he shrugs, heavy dark leather pooling onto the cushion as he leans forward, hands braced against the edge of the table like he was afraid he would fall into his glass, keep falling, descending through the crystal clear liquid and into the pale wood of the table beneath. He couldn't, of course. Not into his. Fall into hers....he doesn't think about that.

His head tilts in his own idiosyncratic way at her most recent comment. He barked out a short harsh laugh at her quip, lifted his hand to run through his hair. Angry Young Man dances across the back of his hand, rolling and coiling over the skin like a poor man's tattoo. Her eyes flashed back and forth, like she catches the words - but then they veer off, follow a girl stumbling and falling over the cobbles outside. The grey baggy sweater she wears, artistically yet haphazardly shredded and full of holes, drapes over her hands for a second. He wonders for a moment if her own words are written there, hidden beneath the grey wool.

He takes another drink, coughs slightly on this one, some of the harsh alcohol running the wrong way. She looks back at him, met his eyes - and the world shifts just that little bit.

The art style changes. The softened curve of her face, given a slight glow by the light even with the high cheekbones, becomes harsher, grainier, pencil strokes drawn harsh against the page. As she rolls her head back, her hair falls not like silken strands, but together, a rush of colour. Smoke curls from her lips, even as the cigarette lies in her hand, the tip resolutely white and  unchanged. He looks down and watches her legs recross, the clouded pattern on her jeans leaving streaks through the air. His own scuffed combat boots shimmer in grey and black strokes across the out of focus, ill-defined floor.

The man lifts his glass again, eyes out of focus, colours blurring into shadows at the corner of his vision. He tilts the tumbler, throat and tongue already anticipating the burn. No liquid pours down his throat though - and as he lowers the glass he sees the liquid in midair, floating ust in front of him like tiny galaxy, reflections and refractions for stars. The letters across his hand told him - You're Just Not There Yet.

The liquid disappears without a trace, evaporating as the world shivers and twists around itself again. The lighting is confused now - the city outside takes on a darkly beautiful aspect, shadows wrapping around everything, clouds like smoke across the sky, steam rising from any source of heat, even the people. Piercing colours stab through the gloom - an overshot film, time and era blurring together like oils on a slate. Her hair flicks through the stab of light, glare almost blinding him, catching the rising smoke from the cigarette she still can't light.

He raises his gaze and meets her eyes once more. The tension built, and built, each word and gesture, each pose and syllable another brick from the swaying tower. Something is drumming in the corner of his awareness - his heartbeat, maybe, or the rumble of footsteps and engines outside.

That one word. That's what shifted it. That was the second that everything fell over the edge.

I leaned in, and the world did as it usually does. The story told over and over, that lean by two.

The wave, the thread, the line, the story. There's a thousand different names for it, none of them right. It's that phenomenon that spikes down the back of his neck when he needs to duck, the dull pressure that tells him the storm is coming, or the shiver that tells him something has just gone very, very wrong. He's used to it by now. This though..

Shift upon shift upon shift. Colour and curve and line flare and die a thousand times a second. Lights flash and dim, and the images begin to coalesce. Things yet to come, that's what the wave shows you. Follow that thread, you know what's around the next bend.  He knows that - that same aloof part of my brain that registered my heartbeat tells him that.

He sees her, hears her voice, anger and pleasure and insult layered over, a hundred conversations with a thousand endings. He felt wood splinter under his knuckles, the ghost of a punch yet to be thrown, and hears laughter bubbling over the rest like shattering glass. Images flicker and move - friends washing out in faded colours, pastel and wan. Bitterness and anger, held onto for the sake of feeling, he feels that stinging comfort surround him then turn harshly cold and biting.

He sees the fear inside her, clear on one of the faces superimposed above her own. Sees the arrogance and pride, watches that mask crack and splinter as it whips into him, thrown like a missile. Sees the loneliness, washing to and fro, touching him and sending a sick kind of thrill across his skin, a revolting happiness, like sitting on a mountain in a flood, watching towns below submerged. He sees the faded images of himself, displaying horns and a halo in equal measure, riding around on a horse with lance in hand, shining like the sun, but with only hollow space beneath the helm.

He watched the ashes of his future with my nostalgic eyes.

She turned away for a second, half an hour later. The tower is falling, the tension too much - the bar is closing, and it's time for the next part of the story. He looks into the window again. I look back out at myself, and my head shakes back and forth.

He watches my reflection, shifting and blurring as the headlights pass. A common sight. The headlights pass, though, and his reflection keeps moving. Figures appear and fade away, a time lapse shot with a camera nobody holds. The eyes stay the same - eyes never change, really - they just become more so. My outline blurs - a knight again, but no shining armour - just scuffed and scarred steel plate, an axe slung from his back instead of a sword. A man in a suit, hair trimmed and neat, smirking as hi lights his cigarette with his finger. The outline of a great bear, paws braced against the earth like it's fighitng an earthquake. A tiger, roaring defiance at the world, then chasing its tail, an overgrown housecat. A wolf, stirring softly from a cuddled pile of warmth, baring fangs at the window - a reminder to stay away.

Other figures surround me in that reflection. One with wings, flaring from her back, another with sparks dancing around her fngertips, some arcane symbol hanging in the air. One with small pointed ears, standing with a hand on her hip, looking frustrated but amused. One, most of all, shifting a blurring just like his reflection. A cat, a roaring animal, a holy figure in stained glass, a woman in a black fabric jacket, copper around her wrist, a pretzel in her hand.

They shift and swirl, those reflections of that man, until finally all that was left is my own image - scuffed leather jacket, a ragged tshirt, torn and ripped jeans falling to scarred combat boots. Looking at that, faced with that image of what is, was, is to come , the same image from a thousand points in time - he does exactly what he always has. the girl is moving towards the exit, fishing for a light, and he will go with her. As he does, though..

He lifts his hands to my warning reflection, the right proudly displaying one finger while the left shows the dark words, stark against pale skin. UP YOURS. A fitting exit line, the Hellblazer himself knows that.

The two of them left together, and the wave drifted on, just as it always was going to.

The reflections linger for a brief, immeasurably long moment of time - the moment between heartbeats - and they coalesce, grow sharper. The art settles back down until reality is reasserted. For the split second, the eon, before it fades away, the reflection shows one last thing.

The man is standing on a strange, out of focus piece of land, sunlight dappling around him. Bright,beautiful light from somewhere high above. He is the same, and yet not - gone are the faded, ragged jeans, replaced by dark, well-fitting denim. Combat boots no more on show, but dark, well-kept suede boots encase his feet. The dark button-down disappears into the jeans, ironed and neat - his ragged mane of hair is tamed and trimmed. The eyes are unchanged, and yet more - deeper, more real than before - and yet for all of the change, the man still wears a long, dark wool coat despite the brilliant sun, that whips around him in some unknown, half-real wind - just as the scuffed leather has done in real gales, so many times before.

As the lights in the bar dim, and the reflection slides out of the world, I grin darkly, and raise my left hand, the words standing out bold and dark.

STAND FREE.