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rainbowfic2015-07-08 04:31 am
starphotographs) wrote in rainbowfic2015-07-08 04:31 am
Milk Bottle 3, Folly 5
Name: starphotographs
Story: Universe B
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival), Novelty Beads (http://wereallmadinhere.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/tumblr_m78jrrxvhx1rabfvco1_500.gif)
Characters: Barclay (POV), Kelsey
Colors: Milk Bottle 3 (Magic Lantern), Folly 5 (What does this button do?)
Word Count: 1,755
Rating: PG
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: For Kelsey, actions have always spoken louder than words.
Note: Introducing more characters! Commentary of any flavor just dandy.
Talk With Your Hands
It goes something like this:
Kelsey and I are walking home from the bar. It’s in a dark, out of the way part of town, but it’s our favorite. It’s quiet, and neither of us are big on a lot of noise. But, as I said, the neighborhood is dark. And she’s just fine in the dark, but that’s because her eyes have lenses. Mine don’t, so I can get a little confused. I’m not sure what it would look like, because I’ve never really been any other way, but apparently, most people see the world in overlapping layers. I see everything laying flat against everything else, and blurry at the front. Everything starts looking the same in the dark, so it’s pretty easy for me to trip and make an ass out of myself. Kelsey remembers this, even though I don’t think I ever gave her a formal explanation. Without me saying anything, and with a flick of the wrist, she casts down a bright white line for me to walk on. This isn’t a big deal for her. It’s like remembering how a friend takes their coffee. Kelsey remembers how I take my world. If I see the line bend or wiggle, I know to step carefully. And I always do.
Kelsey’s fingertips are always stained blue or green, because she plays with her hair all the time and started dyeing the ends so it could be as interesting to look at as it is to play with. The middle and pointer nails on her right hand look like they’re painted with dark polish (and sometimes, the nails around them really are), but if you look closely, you’ll notice that they’re actually clear, like windows, and those windows, or the machinery behind them, can show you anything. Just give her a dark room and a flat surface, and she’ll invite you into her mind, speaking with a fluency you never thought possible. She’ll show you typed paragraphs, and photographs of yesterday, or last year. She won’t just describe that great movie she saw, she’ll show you her favorite scene. Those weird jokes that only work in text? She tells them.
It’s hard to believe anyone ever thought she couldn’t really communicate.
And that was why she essentially had her body rewired. To communicate. Not that she couldn’t before, but this helped her make it easier. Or so she says, pressing away on the keyboard tattooed on her left arm, hitting enter and letting the wires tweak the muscles in her throat and mouth and larynx. There’s no intonation, but she’s one of the only people who ever pronounces my nickname right; Bar-ry, as in “iron bar,” not how most people would read “Barry.” She made sure of that herself. She doesn’t say anything that she hasn’t made sure of herself. If she can’t figure out how to say it, she’ll show it. If she doesn’t have a way to show it just then, she doesn’t have problems with making you wait. And believe me, the wait is always worth it. Voices only carry so far, but when you talk with Kelsey, she can fill a room.
*****
I knew her for years before the surgery, and for just a little while many years before that. Since I had to stay inside, or around my own yard, most of the time when I was little, I never had many friends. But, for about a year or two, Kelsey was one of them. She lived next door, and she’d come over almost every day. Mostly, we’d just watch cartoons and giggle. One of my dads would wheel the computer chair she liked into the living room so she could roll back and forth and spin around while we laughed. In all that time, I don’t think she said more than three words, with the exception of a few favorite catchphrases she picked up here and there. But I don’t think I ever really thought about it. She was just Kelsey. Her not talking felt like part of the natural order of things. And when we had to move, I was devastated. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.
I guess it didn’t occur to me that Kelsey could move, too.
We both moved a few more times. And when we ran into one another again in our mid-twenties, we recognized each other instantly, against all odds. Neither of us were expecting this, and we‘d both changed. I was tall and healthy and tattooed. Her hair was longer and had grown in a darker red, and she was wearing a long skirt and sandals instead of the nondescript shorts and bright blue socks she wore every day as a kid. (Though, her t-shirt was that same blue.) And she was using words. This floored me, because I’d never associated words and Kelsey in my mind. Well, that, and the voice coming out of her phone sounded British. The next, it was a Deep South drawl. Maybe that was part of how I knew it was really her. Kelsey likes being funny, and was always doing screwy things. Sometimes, when we were little, she’d wear a mask for no reason. As with her wordlessness, I never thought to question that. It was just what she did.
Talking with her took some getting used to, but it was fun. She told me about her job; doing sound effects for a radio show, and even demonstrated a few of them. I remembered the fantastic impressions she did of our cats and dog, and was glad someone was finally paying her for a talent like that. And I think she had fun talking with me, too, but she sometimes got frustrated. With having to keep dragging her phone out of her bag, and with losing her words entirely at awkward times. I always told her I didn’t mind. Just like how she never seemed to mind when I got frustrated with the sun, which sometimes filled my brain with blinding pale blue light, or with curbs, which sometimes weren’t clearly marked and sent me tumbling into the street.
I remember when she told me she was getting the procedure.
I also remember visiting her while she was recovering at home, and the first thing she said to me in her new voice, projected on her bedroom wall, in foot-high neon green letters:
FUCK OFF, BARRY.
*****
It sometimes makes me angry, the years wasted getting her to mimic the way most people talk as well as she could mimic cats or jet engines. I wish all those people who tried to pound it into her could have seen that speech would only chain her down. At most, it’s a rough translation for the benefit of others, or a compromise with people who can’t be bothered to learn more than one way to listen. Words can’t hold all of what Kelsey is. And Kelsey is a lot of things. Sound effects genius. Natural comedian. Self-taught photographer. Keen observer. Lover of obscure knowledge. Advanced-level fingerpainter. One-woman art installation. Soft-hearted cynic. Midnight yarnbomber. Spinning skirts and moving hands. Friend to cats, friend to rats, friend to me.
And, if she feels like it, master prankster.
When night starts to fall, just dark enough for her lights to be brighter than the sun, the party begins. Once, when we were having a late dinner at an outdoor café, she fiddled with her controls a little, raised her hand, and projected an enormous moving image of a tarantula onto the side of a nearby building. Some people jumped, others yelped, one looked like they were about to faint. A little kid asked his dad if it was real about twenty times. Eventually, everyone realized it was a projection, but nobody could find the projector. One particularly angry man blamed it on someone in the apartments above the café, and started talking about going up there and giving them the what-for. Kelsey was laughing hysterically and wringing her hands, which made her look like some kind of villain, even though it was a normal thing she did when she got excited. Okay, and I guess she was the villain of this particular situation, but it was just a coincidence.
“Kelsey, that was… Vicious.”
She tapped her arm a few times.
“I… Am vicious.”
She did her best impression of an evil grin, the kind you see in cartoons, then burst out laughing again. I shook my head.
“…Yeah, when you want to be.”
*****
And I guess she can be. You don’t spend the first two thirds of your life getting jammed into places you don’t fit without growing some thorns. After putting up with it for so long, she adopted an attitude that said “this is who I am, and I will defend myself to the death.” She never actually said that to me, but she didn’t have to. Kelsey tells you who she is by being who she is, and that’s all she really needs. I’ve known that since she was a quiet little kid twirling in a desk chair while I waited out a fever on the couch. And I only need to listen to who she is to know she’s more than thorns.
One night, when we were walking home, we had to pass under a bridge. She took the line off the sidewalk and started fiddling with the keyboard on her skin, and that interesting watch that plugs straight into her wrist. I thought something had gone wrong with the image, but when she finally stopped, we were standing in an aquarium. The underside of the bridge was lit up and moving with blue water and sharks. Kelsey and I both always liked sharks, and she was staring up and beaming, hands clutching at her skirt, bouncing in place a little. Looking up at all of that, I felt like bouncing, too, but it was awkward for me and had to stop. I’ve always been a serious person, at least on the outside. I hardly even smile, no matter how happy I am. Kelsey doesn’t always smile, either, but you can always see the joy in her whole body, wriggling in her limbs, making her want to run around. And it’s the same for anything she feels, unless she decides to keep it private, but even that comes through clear as a bell.
In everything she does, Kelsey is aggressively herself.
What I wouldn’t give for a voice like that.
starphotographsStory: Universe B
Supplies and Styles: Graffiti (Milk Bottle, Summer Carnival), Novelty Beads (http://wereallmadinhere.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/tumblr_m78jrrxvhx1rabfvco1_500.gif)
Characters: Barclay (POV), Kelsey
Colors: Milk Bottle 3 (Magic Lantern), Folly 5 (What does this button do?)
Word Count: 1,755
Rating: PG
Warnings: Choose not to warn.
Summary: For Kelsey, actions have always spoken louder than words.
Note: Introducing more characters! Commentary of any flavor just dandy.
It goes something like this:
Kelsey and I are walking home from the bar. It’s in a dark, out of the way part of town, but it’s our favorite. It’s quiet, and neither of us are big on a lot of noise. But, as I said, the neighborhood is dark. And she’s just fine in the dark, but that’s because her eyes have lenses. Mine don’t, so I can get a little confused. I’m not sure what it would look like, because I’ve never really been any other way, but apparently, most people see the world in overlapping layers. I see everything laying flat against everything else, and blurry at the front. Everything starts looking the same in the dark, so it’s pretty easy for me to trip and make an ass out of myself. Kelsey remembers this, even though I don’t think I ever gave her a formal explanation. Without me saying anything, and with a flick of the wrist, she casts down a bright white line for me to walk on. This isn’t a big deal for her. It’s like remembering how a friend takes their coffee. Kelsey remembers how I take my world. If I see the line bend or wiggle, I know to step carefully. And I always do.
Kelsey’s fingertips are always stained blue or green, because she plays with her hair all the time and started dyeing the ends so it could be as interesting to look at as it is to play with. The middle and pointer nails on her right hand look like they’re painted with dark polish (and sometimes, the nails around them really are), but if you look closely, you’ll notice that they’re actually clear, like windows, and those windows, or the machinery behind them, can show you anything. Just give her a dark room and a flat surface, and she’ll invite you into her mind, speaking with a fluency you never thought possible. She’ll show you typed paragraphs, and photographs of yesterday, or last year. She won’t just describe that great movie she saw, she’ll show you her favorite scene. Those weird jokes that only work in text? She tells them.
It’s hard to believe anyone ever thought she couldn’t really communicate.
And that was why she essentially had her body rewired. To communicate. Not that she couldn’t before, but this helped her make it easier. Or so she says, pressing away on the keyboard tattooed on her left arm, hitting enter and letting the wires tweak the muscles in her throat and mouth and larynx. There’s no intonation, but she’s one of the only people who ever pronounces my nickname right; Bar-ry, as in “iron bar,” not how most people would read “Barry.” She made sure of that herself. She doesn’t say anything that she hasn’t made sure of herself. If she can’t figure out how to say it, she’ll show it. If she doesn’t have a way to show it just then, she doesn’t have problems with making you wait. And believe me, the wait is always worth it. Voices only carry so far, but when you talk with Kelsey, she can fill a room.
I knew her for years before the surgery, and for just a little while many years before that. Since I had to stay inside, or around my own yard, most of the time when I was little, I never had many friends. But, for about a year or two, Kelsey was one of them. She lived next door, and she’d come over almost every day. Mostly, we’d just watch cartoons and giggle. One of my dads would wheel the computer chair she liked into the living room so she could roll back and forth and spin around while we laughed. In all that time, I don’t think she said more than three words, with the exception of a few favorite catchphrases she picked up here and there. But I don’t think I ever really thought about it. She was just Kelsey. Her not talking felt like part of the natural order of things. And when we had to move, I was devastated. I didn’t think I’d ever see her again.
I guess it didn’t occur to me that Kelsey could move, too.
We both moved a few more times. And when we ran into one another again in our mid-twenties, we recognized each other instantly, against all odds. Neither of us were expecting this, and we‘d both changed. I was tall and healthy and tattooed. Her hair was longer and had grown in a darker red, and she was wearing a long skirt and sandals instead of the nondescript shorts and bright blue socks she wore every day as a kid. (Though, her t-shirt was that same blue.) And she was using words. This floored me, because I’d never associated words and Kelsey in my mind. Well, that, and the voice coming out of her phone sounded British. The next, it was a Deep South drawl. Maybe that was part of how I knew it was really her. Kelsey likes being funny, and was always doing screwy things. Sometimes, when we were little, she’d wear a mask for no reason. As with her wordlessness, I never thought to question that. It was just what she did.
Talking with her took some getting used to, but it was fun. She told me about her job; doing sound effects for a radio show, and even demonstrated a few of them. I remembered the fantastic impressions she did of our cats and dog, and was glad someone was finally paying her for a talent like that. And I think she had fun talking with me, too, but she sometimes got frustrated. With having to keep dragging her phone out of her bag, and with losing her words entirely at awkward times. I always told her I didn’t mind. Just like how she never seemed to mind when I got frustrated with the sun, which sometimes filled my brain with blinding pale blue light, or with curbs, which sometimes weren’t clearly marked and sent me tumbling into the street.
I remember when she told me she was getting the procedure.
I also remember visiting her while she was recovering at home, and the first thing she said to me in her new voice, projected on her bedroom wall, in foot-high neon green letters:
FUCK OFF, BARRY.
It sometimes makes me angry, the years wasted getting her to mimic the way most people talk as well as she could mimic cats or jet engines. I wish all those people who tried to pound it into her could have seen that speech would only chain her down. At most, it’s a rough translation for the benefit of others, or a compromise with people who can’t be bothered to learn more than one way to listen. Words can’t hold all of what Kelsey is. And Kelsey is a lot of things. Sound effects genius. Natural comedian. Self-taught photographer. Keen observer. Lover of obscure knowledge. Advanced-level fingerpainter. One-woman art installation. Soft-hearted cynic. Midnight yarnbomber. Spinning skirts and moving hands. Friend to cats, friend to rats, friend to me.
And, if she feels like it, master prankster.
When night starts to fall, just dark enough for her lights to be brighter than the sun, the party begins. Once, when we were having a late dinner at an outdoor café, she fiddled with her controls a little, raised her hand, and projected an enormous moving image of a tarantula onto the side of a nearby building. Some people jumped, others yelped, one looked like they were about to faint. A little kid asked his dad if it was real about twenty times. Eventually, everyone realized it was a projection, but nobody could find the projector. One particularly angry man blamed it on someone in the apartments above the café, and started talking about going up there and giving them the what-for. Kelsey was laughing hysterically and wringing her hands, which made her look like some kind of villain, even though it was a normal thing she did when she got excited. Okay, and I guess she was the villain of this particular situation, but it was just a coincidence.
“Kelsey, that was… Vicious.”
She tapped her arm a few times.
“I… Am vicious.”
She did her best impression of an evil grin, the kind you see in cartoons, then burst out laughing again. I shook my head.
“…Yeah, when you want to be.”
And I guess she can be. You don’t spend the first two thirds of your life getting jammed into places you don’t fit without growing some thorns. After putting up with it for so long, she adopted an attitude that said “this is who I am, and I will defend myself to the death.” She never actually said that to me, but she didn’t have to. Kelsey tells you who she is by being who she is, and that’s all she really needs. I’ve known that since she was a quiet little kid twirling in a desk chair while I waited out a fever on the couch. And I only need to listen to who she is to know she’s more than thorns.
One night, when we were walking home, we had to pass under a bridge. She took the line off the sidewalk and started fiddling with the keyboard on her skin, and that interesting watch that plugs straight into her wrist. I thought something had gone wrong with the image, but when she finally stopped, we were standing in an aquarium. The underside of the bridge was lit up and moving with blue water and sharks. Kelsey and I both always liked sharks, and she was staring up and beaming, hands clutching at her skirt, bouncing in place a little. Looking up at all of that, I felt like bouncing, too, but it was awkward for me and had to stop. I’ve always been a serious person, at least on the outside. I hardly even smile, no matter how happy I am. Kelsey doesn’t always smile, either, but you can always see the joy in her whole body, wriggling in her limbs, making her want to run around. And it’s the same for anything she feels, unless she decides to keep it private, but even that comes through clear as a bell.
In everything she does, Kelsey is aggressively herself.
What I wouldn’t give for a voice like that.
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I love-love-love this line: It’s like remembering how a friend takes their coffee. Kelsey remembers how I take my world.
And how you pulled everything together at the end. EEE!
(There's kind of a lot of "remembers" in the first paragraph, but it's not problematic, just kind of a lot if you want to poke it.)
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AND I AM GLAD YOU LIKED THEM SO MUCH! I had fun writing this, so that makes me happy. <3
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Thanks for reading!
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