Hub - issue 7
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Hub
Issue 7
May 11th 2007
Editors: Lee Harris and Alasdair Stuart.
Published by The Right Hand.
Sponsored by Orbit.
Issue 7 Contents
Fiction: Wings of Night by Allyson Bird
Reviews: The Witch’s Dungeon and The Killing Floor
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Feedback from last week
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Wings of Night by Allyson Bird
It occurred to Elena that perhaps she wasn’t living the best possible life, in the fact that she was never moved to extremes anymore. She had been afraid to think too deeply and act accordingly. In banal activity and thoughtless repetition she barely existed, treading water, hesitant to join the others who called to her from within. Elena was aware of them all, a small army of malcontents who were trying to build a bridge bound together from the fresh hewn bones and rotting sinews of the dead. Reluctantly Elena stayed away from the darker corners of her mind where the dualitists dwelt and where former selves waited in quiet expectation.
Elena worked as an usher at the Royal Exchange Theatre on Cross Street, in the city centre of Manchester, on a Thursday and Saturday evening. She showed people to their seats, sold programmes and was given a clip-board with a list of directions for opening and closing the doors for the actors.
8.22p.m. Open for entrance of Hamlet, then close door.
8.25p.m. Open for exit of Hamlet, then close door.
8.26p.m. Open for entrance of Ophelia, close door and so forth.
Those were the kind of duties expected from Elena. At the interval she was required to sell ice cream or coffee and use the antiquated till which never worked properly, that made her look a complete fool when it jammed. The queue would build up with frustrated theatre-goers who simply wanted to be served and take a quick pee before the curtain went up for the second half of the performance.
Still there were always the perks. Elena had seen Romeo and Juliet, in fact many of Shakespeare’s plays, also Leo Tolstoy and Arthur Miller amongst others. She had met actors in the Green Room and received free tickets for each performance. There was always Thursday night at the Press Club where the actors and theatre staff would wind down, listen to the singers, laugh at the bawdy, bad jokes of the comedians and occasionally dance. Some actors would get up, sing and tell jokes too. Elena had met a few famous names; Vanessa Redgrave for one, who was an excellent actress, if not a little befuddled sometimes. When Elena said hello to her she couldn’t help but think about that crazy award speech Vanessa had delivered once, that must have gone on for around ten minutes, until the audience slow clapped her off the stage.
Sure, Elena had slept with one or two of them, (the actors, not the playwrights and certainly not Vanessa Redgrave or the audience.) Elena had taken great delight, only last Thursday during a performance of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, in leaving the door opening until the last second for an actor. He had continued to ignore her after a one night stand, being an usher, she was only the hired help after all. It was quite clear to her that to him a blow job didn’t constitute full sex, so he hadn’t really been unfaithful to his girlfriend, who was playing Desdemona, in Othello, in York. The ushers were supposed to open the doors for actors to exit well before they reached the end of the aisle. Elena smiled with pleasure as she watched the beads of sweat roll down the one night stand’s face, when the tip of his golden slipper touched the bottom of the door, as he tried to make his exit. The door was opened the instant his nose touched the small round window in the door. His red satin turban threatened to fall off, he was shaking so much, when Elena didn’t open the door quickly enough. He swore at her under his breath and over his shoulder as he made his way back to the dressing room.
In the Green Room she chatted to fellow ushers sometimes but was content to make paper men, cutting them out, then holding them up and staring intently at the way they held hands and were joined together. The actors just smiled indulgently at her, nothing really odd in her behaviour they thought.
Everything went on okay for awhile in her attempt to connect to people. She’d only got into trouble the once that week when she had signed two drunken boys, ( drunken prawns, drunken boys – same difference,) into the Press Club, one of which had followed her into the ladies – thrown her against the wall and tried to get her to have sex with him there and then. The bouncer had sorted that one out.
One evening she had left the theatre and was making her way down to the Press Club just off Deansgate when she met two boys in leather jackets who persuaded her that she would have a better time in Rock World. So she went, dumping them just inside the entrance, when she felt the first rush of excitement as Nirvana pumped through the building. Elena had the choice of Jilly’s downstairs or the main club above. The glam rockers mixed with the bikers, the students with the heavy metal gang, everyone was cool. No fights, no arguments, just people hanging around, dancing, boozing and having a great time. Elena had to wear black as an usher so she fitted in just fine at Rock World, although she removed her blouse in the heat of the club, to reveal a clinging black body stocking underneath. Many girls were wearing tight black corsets designed to reveal more than conceal, so Elena felt suitably dressed. In the ladies she brushed up half her shoulder length brown hair in the style of Attila the Hun and painted her eyes like Cleopatra. She didn’t care what others thought. Elena liked what she saw in the mirror and no other opinion mattered.
Now this was fine for a while but then as the weeks passed she became more adventurous. Elena became Marion, played by Solveig Dommartin, from the film Wings of Desire, directed by Wim Wenders. High above the sweating bodies of the dancers she could see herself on the trapeze, wearing a white leotard and the faded wings of a broken angel. Then, jolted from her reverie she would dance and wander the rooms on her own until the final half hour when she would choose a boy. No one gave one night stands a second thought but Elena was looking for more, much more, which she never found. Not with the Swede, who looked at her in a funny sort of way and said repeatedly that she was Irish, nor with the chef who was leaving soon to wo
rk his way around the U.S. and certainly not with the Hell’s Angel, Steve, who said he cried when he watched On the Waterfront and claimed that he was an immense Brando fan but ironically disliked The Wild One. Actually, Steve also blubbed when he talked about It’s a Wonderful Life, his huge shoulders shaking when he described the euphoria of James Stewart, when he came running back home through the snow. Steve was way too sentimental for Elena. She drew the line at going home with the kind hunk of a man called Bob who smelt like he cleared decayed remains from old houses. And still she did not find what she was looking for.
The next week she coloured her hair blonde, was Marilyn with bubble hair and she would drink beer through a straw in the bottle so as not to smudge her red lipstick. These little cameo roles went on for weeks. She became Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction and Kate Fuller in From Dusk Till Dawn. And still nothing really pleased her.
The weeks flew by and she continued to take someone home on Thursday and Saturday nights. She never had them in her large double bed upstairs. The downstairs room had a sofa that converted into a floor bed. She would gather blankets for it and one in particular, the woollen, leopard throw. Her mother had given her that and if her mother had known, she would not have been keen on the fact that various bodily fluids would be smeared all over it.
On Fridays Elena was understandably tired and would pick up a baguette, some brie, queen olives and a bottle of Merlot. On Saturday afternoon she would go over to her mother’s flat and they would curl up with a video that Elena had chosen, perhaps a thriller with Ray Milland in it or a Fred Astaire movie. She adored her mother but could only spend a few hours at a time in her company because she had heard her mother’s memories many times before and although she had once enjoyed them, they didn’t hold the same resonance anymore. Elena was hungry for adventure and to spend time alone, to wander around the streets of the city and see what kind of trouble she could get into.
One night she had met someone, got very drunk and had tried to bounce his phone off a car showroom window. The boy, naturally enough, had decided that Elena wasn’t for him but had dropped her off in a gentlemanly manner, on her own doorstep and then pushed her face into the doorstep, causing her all manner of confusion the next day about - had she tripped or was she pushed before she decided, she had been pushed.
She went out with someone for two weeks once. He was a social worker, older than her, about thirty five. He wore a black pony tail and dropped her relatively quickly, over an Italian meal, declaring she was damaged goods. She had simply commented that perhaps he wasn’t cut out to be a social worker, as he was recovering from a nervous breakdown. The list of boys and men seemed endless. Sometimes she would chuck them but mostly they would ditch her. Elena was attractive enough but she always picked the worst of the male species - the ones that were as equally fucked up as her.
Elena continued her pursuit of pleasure and love. She would continue to change her appearance subtly or drastically - do anything, as long a she didn’t have to think about who she was – if she was anyone. Sometimes she lost herself in her old theatrical haunt, The Press Club and went home with Charlie, the singer. He was married but she loved his voice. Charlie, when he saw her enter the club would stop singing and begin a special song for her. What was the song?
“There was a boy . . .
A very strange, enchanted boy.”
Perhaps the boy in the song was who she was looking for, if he was Elena never found him either and somehow she suspected that he didn’t exist except in the lyrics. After a few beers, rather a lot actually, the depth of the Press Club with its blue green light began to look like a vast cavern filled up to the ceiling with water and on more than once occasion she felt herself gasp and try to come up for air. After one late summer night she walked home. As a silent dawn approached, the rage in her head subsided for a time and to her delight she could actually smell pine trees and the various summer flowers in the gardens, before the cars would come along and leave their trails of smog.
The next Saturday she was out on the pull again. The outfit she chose that evening was a backless sea green dress that clung indeed like seaweed on a rock to mid thigh over coal black leggings. She was ready again. After the theatre she would change out of the all black usher clothes and change into her dancing rig. As she flew down the stage door steps she knew she could do anything.
The first time she killed a man it had been quite accidental. It was the tall Swede. She had thought it a shame as she had quite liked him. They had been down by the canal bank and been fooling around. She hadn’t meant to push him away so hard – she had been trying to be coy. He hadn’t got a condom, she neither. He had insisted on going ahead, she had refused. He had stumbled backward and into the canal. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t moving. He just seemed to be spread out over the water as if he was floating. Too stiff – too rigid. Then, peering into the night and as a cloud shifted from the full moon, she saw the metal protruding out from his chest and a darker stain upon the oily water. At that point she started to run.
In the taxi home the orange glow of the street lights hurt her eyes and she was surprised at her lack of feeling for the Swede who had come to such an unfortunate end. She felt flush with excitement as she realized that although an accident, she had contributed to his death and that gave her a thrill. The morning paper had the story way in the middle, away from the front page news of an Uzi submachine gun murder of five in Moss Side under the heading,
FOREIGN STUDENT FOUND DEAD - IMPAILED IN CANAL
Elena felt a little pissed off. For some strange reason she wanted it to be front page news. She wanted to be front page news. It had been something she had been involved in. Men – boys always let her down. As a young teenager she had read all about romance and she still kept on looking for love but always through sex and she had always failed. You would have thought that she would have learnt something from her past experiences but she was a dog or rather bitch chasing her own tail and hadn’t learnt a thing. Here she was now, week after week; different identities and still she couldn’t find what she was looking for and then along came Maurice.
It was the voices that had already told her about him. They whispered into her ear in the darkest part of the night and then they rose to the surface, survivors from some underwater wreck, bloated corpses, whose skin had burst, revealing an infestation of blind white worms that slid back into the vacant eye sockets of the hosts. The corpses pinned her by her bleeding wrists to the bed until she promised that she would return with them to the corners of her mind where they would continue to corrupt and tell her what to do next.
Maurice appeared at Rock World. He was six foot tall, slender, shoulder length brown hair and grey eyes. He wore a blue waist length military style jacket and looked pretty good to Elena. She would go home with him. Maurice lived on the north side of the city and shared a house with two other students. Naturally they had formed their own band and shared this hobby, the rent and Elena. He told her that if she really loved him she would do anything for him. After Elena had drunk too much alcohol, but not enough so she didn’t know what she was doing, she let each one of them penetrate her, to her that was all it was - penetration. Elena, through alcohol, had numbed herself down so that she didn’t feel much at all. All three boys laughed and joked but were slightly nervous about the whole thing. They told her to sit across them and do something but she simply shrugged her shoulders and closed her eyes. It was as if she could let them do this to her but not participate in it. It was enough for them as they silently slipped in and out of her in turn, like the slugs they were.
Later she drank more wine with them and pretended that she had meant it all to happen, which she hadn’t. Elena even warmed to one of them when he strummed his guitar and sang of the lost girl with the grey eyes. Lost in time and space – that was her. One even took her home in a taxi but when she had refused to give head had pulled out a knife and now she had a cross stitch of knife wounds on her shoulders, as he
had jerked his body against her face. Elena was learning to hate. What she had done before was of her own volition. This was different.
And learn to hate she did. The other ushers noticed a change in her. She looked even more distracted than usual and now rarely spoke at all, just was polite to the theatre goers, did the door openings and closings quietly with no sense of fun and never went to the Press Club anymore. She preferred rock music and the dark corners of the club which were like the black corpse ridden places in her mind. In those organic folds and creases lay the creatures she had avoided for most of her life and now? Elena spent most of her waking and sleeping time there. Where - the terrors of her mind were forming themselves into crimes against mankind. It wasn’t all smoke and mirrors.
IT WAS REAL TO HER.
It wasn’t hard to get hold of the rohypnol. Getting hold of it? She knew someone who knew someone who knew someone – simple. She had the money to pay for it too. It had been colourless and tasteless but drug companies had now added a blue dye – still, street stuff didn’t have the dye in. The boys would be needing to get into her so she would have to work quickly. She didn’t know whether to just drop a tablet in a drink or what? Elena had never used the drug before. She decided that she would grind all the tablets up into a powder with her oversized quartz ring, which she would wash carefully later, not because of any fear of being caught but because she hated drugs, except of course for alcohol.