bits of Eva

[wytchcroft]

Extracts from The Deep Stuff a sequel to The Solar Windmill re-edited and posted for a prompt from here
and see also here
………………………….

Memory:

Falling, it’s extreme. Some people make a sport of it.
Dress it up any way you like, spread yourself, use whatever you’ve got, some fancy jet, a ret-board, a parachute, wings, it’s still falling.

“No, it’s not, it’s flight. What, you think you fall... with wings - how butt crazy is that?”  Halley, of course.

“Whatever.” and Eva sulking.

“Whatever yourself grll-fren', you can fall all you want. Me - I’ll be flying.”

"Woah! Halley, cheese much? You practiced that one in the bathroom huh?" and Eva laughing. "Well, ok, ok, you fly – then if I fall you'll catch me.”
 

“With open arms. See, see that? You’re just a cute fluffy mush-pit like the rest of us!”

“Nah, I was just... I mean, er, we should practice. It sounds hard, right? I think it sounds hard. I think we should practice, me fall - you catch.”

A wild clutch of sheets and covers, billowing, wrapping.

Yeah - all sorts of extreme. Smash through stratospheres, bouncing back off them like radio waves, like space is an ocean and we’re pebbles skipping off the crest of every wave.

And actually it really is terrifying. There are moments, deafening, as the silence is not just broken but exploded and ripped away, like your brain just went nova and your body is being kicked and hammered by some invisible army.

That’s collision, that’s the human body and the great God gravity.

Scarier than sky-diving.

…………………………………………



Halley is a video-disc now. Halley is a digital file. Halley is a recording.

And Eva, sat up alone in the Cardenal's darkened cockpit, is watching. 
The blue/black static blur, the old 'zoom in, zoom out' of every amateur film. 

Is that why you all disappeared, Halley -- because you were just amateurs?
Christ - you weren't supposed to be amateurs.

The vanished team don't seem to care, their enthusiastic mumble carries right along. 
“Ok, for those out there in watchy-watchy-land who can’t see behind me, there are men, much men…”

Sounds of rude assent, barks, wolf-whistles, alright!

“…much-o-men.”

Bastards! For seconds, entire seconds, they blot Halley out of the frame with their close squashed faces, grinning to the camera and puckering up - but then she’s back, smiling, flushed and flustered. “As you can see ladies and gentlemen, we run a very… tight, uh, ship.”

It’s wince worthy but Halley looks pleased with the joke, maybe she was relieved to get the last word – except it’s not: “Bubble!” there’s a chorus yell, “Bubble!”

And that hurts. They really called her-

“No,” Halley says, like she knows who’s watching, “no folks, that’s not me. Bubble is upstairs.”
A big grin on that and she adds, “Hey guys – let’s go see Bubble!”

More shouts in the background and the camera nods and with a twisting motion follows Halley's fast moving figure over to the ladder and up, to the transparent compartment, the bubble. Right.

Eva's eyes are getting strained and tired, the more she looked the more she saw, but the more she saw the less it meant. 
The corners of a mouth edging upward became a cobweb of digital lines and spirals breaking apart into pixellated dots.

Wood for the trees.

And as Eva leans back away from the screen, squeezing herself against the firm backed chair, the dim and badly angled ceiling spotlight plays a cruel trick:
Eva can see Halley only vaguely – but she can see herself just fine in the overlaid reflection. That swollen, sullen mouth she hated so much, set in a face so blank and expressionless that it seemed all the life, all the Halley, had been sucked right out of it.
The void of her eyes – Yeah, I got the convict cut and 500 yard stare down cold, she thought.
I’ve got the face that fits all the things they say about it and I pick up heat just breathing near authority, whereas you Halley… 

Halley, it just doesn’t ring, it just makes no fuckin’ sense at all.

 


....................................

Leb had often felt intrusive here in Eva’s cabin, which – 

And when did that happen exactly? When did he start to thinking of it that way; her bunk, her room?
Ok, he had a place he could crash when she threw him out sometimes, often, sure, but that was with the fucking mice, and Mickey and Micro… well, actually they complained less than the crew did but - hello, rodents!

Anyway, he had felt intrusive before, he had felt unwanted even, but that had never mattered, had never felt so personal, he had never been a thief – till now.

God, he wished he could relish this, get some petty satisfaction at least but no, he couldn’t. He didn’t want this. He just couldn’t stop. And that, Leb told himself, was because - 
looking round the bare cabin (bare despite the mess of bed covers and underwear, some of it his) dun gray and impersonal even with the lava-lamp, really brought it home - 
that was because Eva never opened up about the past or herself or… There were no photographs, no holographic keepsakes or filed messages – not on display anyway, but there had to be, somewhere, something, a memento.
Just one would do it. He had to know, had to be able to see, had to make this Halley person real. If the woman was real then, yeah, maybe… because Leb was definitely not letting the Cardenal go off on some crazy trip for just a name. He didn’t have even a blurry fragment of a –

Face. It was there. He’d hardly noticed his hands rifling the drawers, the clothing alcove, the bedside cabinet; he’d still been justifying himself and arguing in his own head and holding on to his anger. Just a small ID card, tacked to the inside of a drawer. There she was. That was Halley.

And he didn't feel angry anymore, he just felt ashamed.

.........................................


………….

The darkness, broken into. 
My heart was an abandoned place till you kicked through the fencing, cut the locks and slid through the venting ducts, cold and shadowed and forgotten.
My heart was an abandoned place until you found it, until you.

…………….