I met her through a slip of paper, buried in my mass of bills and catalogues. I pried the stack out of my minuscule letterbox in the lobby and trudged up to my apartment, each step laborious. I could imagine parties in this place, back in the day. Opulent rooms full of beautiful people making empty promises, all while a record churns out soft jazz. But now it wasn’t even old in the charming way. The rent’s dirt cheap. If I returned from work one day to find a heap of rubble, I doubt I’d even care.
As I climbed the winding grand stairs, I tried to find my rusty house key. I kept fishing out my new key from work instead. It reminds me of the rectangular ones at hotels. This mass-produced plastic with the company’s logo stamped on the front. It feels more like a collar than a key, relegating me to that sterile office.
I kept seeing my boss’ face in the back of my mind. One of those charmless men that somehow has it all. An ill-fitting suit, a semi-impressive job, a soulless wife and the knowledge that no one will ever have the balls to question him. This afternoon, Madeline’s elbows leaned on his desk during lunch break, his hand over her mouth to muffle the screams. Sweat blotted by button-up shirts and suit pants. The new walls are glass. I saw her staring into the bathroom mirror at the end of the day, red-faced and silent. I said nothing. I knew that words wouldn’t mean anything to her. They can’t change the past. Protect yourself from hungry eyes, it’s that simple. It’s all a stupid game.
I dropped all the mail on the floor; I’d lost the energy to care. The force made the bleached envelopes explode outwards, leaving a tea-stained scrap at the impact’s center. I snatched it up. It felt brittle, delicate. Not a uniform colour, but many layers of tea stains. So many herbs had all been dried together into a singular earthy smell.
On the back were a jumble of numbers, a time and a name in immaculate cursive. Tonight, Sunset. 37.8136° S, 144.9631° E. Kora Leland.
With one foot still in the corridor, I looked outside and grabbed my coat.
Latitude and longitude
not a ship
but smooth carpark concrete
overlooked.
Above,
A peach-tinted sunset
revives a greyscale colossus
A chill in the air
False summer.
Too bright, too open
A call from voiceless veins
Dig deeper, dig deeper.
Far from their world of
Sunken eyes and
Store-bought miracles.
I wander down
A cautious ghost
Bathed in fluorescents of the stairwell
My last life did not follow me.
A dozen women cloaked
Cocooned
In corporation’s bowels
No lights from the ceiling
To mock the sun.
Fire
Destruction contained at a circular core
Creating distorted shadows
Interlocked, flickering, grinning.
Facing me.
She, the night
Dark, dangerous, shimmering.
Kora Leland
An incantation
Bathed in velvet-smooth darkness
Orange flickers.
Upon ochre arms
A silver snake
Imitation scales
Etched in white ink
My eyes follow
Slithering from finger-tip
Down curved elbow
To a metallic noose.
‘Eve, villainess from the beginning
Punished for desire
Colluding with the snake
To find truth’
Her voice, fragment of a misplaced memory.
‘P...pardon?’
My infantile squeak.
A beat of silence.
‘We never wrote rules
We destroy them
With our flesh we are not permitted to control
Brew rebellion from beneath them’
Shriek
Singular note
Rounding to a chant
I join the masked
The note unknown
Encased in a memory
Of fury.
Now, her hand outstretched
Brown paper flecks
I offered mine
Her other hand
Plants united by twine
Together thrown into the flame.
Her body
Smooth endlessness
Towering in flickering light
Only a pendant catching gold and green
Winding curves
A mighty serpent
Curling around perfection.
In her eyes, eternity lies dormant
Speckles of planets in tresses
Her lips, infinity
Cinnamon spice
Small burning brands
In contact
Mind flying
Chaos and whirlwind
Body no longer divorced from self
All concentrated to one
Nerves, once lonesome starts
Connect to constellation.
To be consumed by her
Until sweetened nothingness
Plastic buttons and zips
Redundant remnants
Smoothed away
Lie on dusky concrete.
New yet ancient bloomed
From a place deeper than names
Nerves singing
Chanting
Honey flows with blood
Beauty unseen
Wonderous flowing creatures
And I among them
As I arrive at the rapture
Their temples will burn
Until
Darkness, all darkness.
The fluorescent lights crackled and hummed above me. I couldn’t even remember how I arrived. Memory had slipped away from my grasp. The phone pierced through the haze, fumbling to get to the receiver in time. They gave us a script to say on the first day, but it’s lost under the mental sludge. ‘Hello! I’m calling from reception downstairs.’ The voice on the other end was too chipper for the morning. But nothing could change the cadence at its core. Kora.
‘Charlotte.’ Her voice was smoother now, an antidote to the world. ‘I’m so glad that we found you. There will be two invitations in your letterbox. Use them wisely.’ Then she hung up suddenly, leaving me in a sea of crackling white noise. My limp hand cradled the receiver. Nothingness filled my head again.
My eyes gleaned over to the photocopier, the water cooler. The swathes of grey. Until I settled on Madeline’s empty desk. My second invitation.
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