Stars and Moon (Chapter 5)

Chapter 5
Legends of the Fall

Fade, to stilletto. (red)
Crawl camera, right - another stilletto. A shift (chiffon) partially draped over red, lacey...

cue sound.
And... action.

They're in bed (hers) being friendly. She makes a happy, albeit slightly muffled noise as his tongue gently probes the simmering depths of her mouth. His fingertips lightly trace a lazy line from the naked hollow of her axilla, along the slight swell of her thorax, past the gentle valley of her flank, down, down further to the bony ridge just beyond the slowly swelling plains of her hips. He feels her shiver against him, her breath from her flared nostrils hot upon his lips, and her fingers dig fiercely into his shoulderblades.

The bed creaks as she pulls abruptly away onto her haunches, tresses of her magnificently long hair spilling across the edges of his visual fields, transforming her into a pair of blazing, dangerous almond eyes at the end of a dark, dark brown tunnel.

Her lips twitch a little, whimsically. And then she crouches, agonizingly slowly, her index finger trailing down his chest, down still further. And further still, her smouldering eyes still fixed upon his.

He smiles back vacantly as she delicately bares her teeth, and then he shudders as she wraps her lips around...

... his big toe. He groans. She growls huskily in response, deep in her throat as she

... bites down, her tiny sharp canines nearly drawing bloo..

ooAAAarrghhh!! His eyes flutter open.
"CHEE!!!" The pomeranian grins at him and licks his chops, backing hurriedly away. Chee laughs silently, in that gleeful way all small, irritating little toydogs always do when they know they've been a Bad Dog but are going to get away with it.

The pillow misses by a hair as Chee dodges nimbly, and then decides to wander off somewhere more interesting, tail waving lightly in the air.

Lessee, where were we...
... opalescent pearls of glittering sweat bead her lower ribs and slide down her taut midriff, streaming in wet rivulets between her thighs as she arches her back, lost in the intensity of the moment. Her fingernails rake his chest as she throws back her head, and her long auburn hair fans out in slow motion, as she screams "

beep beep BEEP BEEP BEEP!!!"

The rollover backhand karate-chop catches his budget bedside alarm clock offguard, hurling it across the room onto the floor where dazed, it lies for a moment in stunned silence catching its breath before manically resuming it's electronic assault on his ears. Bugger. Time to go to work.

*****
At work, the keyboards around his cubicle stutter gradually into silence as his colleagues throw each other sidelong looks and tap their temples meaningfully with subtly concealed index fingers.

Perhaps it's because of the steadily-lengthening paperclip-chain heart that's materialising on his desk. Or perhaps it's simply because he's smiling. There must be a law against smiling at work in Singaland - it just doesn't seem right.

*****
He's standing on the sidewalk near Borders nervously clutching a copy of Terry Pratchett's "Death Trilogy" to his chest.

That's the arrangement. He'll have Death thrice in hand, and she'll be shod in red heels, the better to dance in hell with. It's one of the many little jokes that only work at the instant they're made. In the cold light of day, it all seems rather odd in retrospect. And the damn book is heavy. It's a trilogy for chrissakes.

There's a girl walking towards him.

His heart skips a beat. She looks vaguely familiar, with her slightly oversized head perched on a ludicrously thin body, which looks suspiciously like it's been stretched by some celestial graphic-editing software, and her pink baby-doll top.

Recognition dawns, as she hones in on him.

It's Pink.

And she's wearing red shoes.

Oh no. Pleasepleaseplease. Don't let it - he glances down. as far down as he possibly can - be her - he makes a frenzied study of a crack in the sidewalk beside his left shoe. There's a miniscule line of text in the base of it : Authentic-looking artificial simulated wear-and-tear, made in hong kong.

A pair of red shoes walks into the top of his field of view and stops.

Oh, bugger.

He looks up. At the immaculate legs, which stretch on forever.
And up. At that delicate waist, tapering gracefully, then, ah, rather less subtly outwards as his gaze travels upwards (with scarcely a linger! Or even two!).

And up. Past the flawless strong lines of those naked shoulders. Past her neck - his throat goes dry. Past her lips. Along her nose and into her eyes. Into her eyes.

It's not Pink.
It's so, so not Pink. This girl is beautiful. This girl is... to die for.

This isn't the girl of his dreams.
This girl is far, far more than he could possibly dream of.

Right now, her dark eyes are sparkling with amusement, and her lips are twitching into the beginnings of a smile. She's saying something.

"..ello?"

Kit musters up all the eloquence he's set by in store for just such emergencies as this, and smoothly replies,

"Graaallor."

"You must be Kit. I can't imagine why anyone else would carry a five hundred page book on their person. Is that a mars bar in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

Kit shakes his head in wonderment, and silently extricates the slightly manky mars bar he keeps in stash for emergencies of a more hypo(rather than hyper)glycaemic nature from his trouser pocket.

"Oh."

"Graah. You're Jean?" Damn. Talk about stating the obvious.

She smiles, and does a few steps of a little jig in her red stilettos..

"The better to dance in hell with!"

They laugh.

And they laugh, through coffee at borders.
And they laugh some more, over lunch at Scott's foodcourt. The food's slightly overpriced, and decidedly ordinary, and everyone else is dressed in white long-sleeved shirts, but they don't notice.

They laugh through Shrek 4, the movie. Somewhere along the way, she puts her head on his shoulder, convulsing with laughter.

And then they don't laugh so much all through dinner, staring quietly into the candlelight reflected in each other's eyes.

And then, all too soon, they're standing awkwardly under a streetlamp etched in a misty golden glow.

"Well, I guess this is goodbye." chokes Kit, shuffling his feet.

"I had a good time." She, gently. He wonders if this is womanspeak for goodbye forever. Or worse still, that dreaded "I'll always see you as my friend" stinker.

pause.

"When will I..." They laugh. They've both started together.

"You first." Kit, ever the gentleman. Actually, Kit's never the gentleman. This is quite possibly a first for him, and his inner caveman silently howls something incoherent about John Malkovich.

"Okay, me first. When will I see you again?" She smiles at him with her eyes.

Looking into the infinite twin depths of her soul - Kit feels his reality spinning away. This all feels so surreal. Any minute now, Chee is going to bite my toe and wake me up.

Kit glances down.

It happens so quickly he barely has time to catch it out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't have time to catch her.

There's a squeal - no, more like a shriek - of tires freewheeling, and the smell of burning rubber. There's a dark flash, as a black minivan with black-tinted windows mounts the kerb. (Everyone knows who black minivans with black windows belong to, right?)
There's a dull, wet thump. Sort of like the thump a body makes when it's hit by a solid metal chasis travelling at forty miles an hour.
And then, as his horrified eyes finally catch up with the scene unfolding before him, time slows to a crawl.

It all happens agonisingly slowly now, in bullet-time.
Jean spins counter-clockwise, twice, her hair fanning out into haphazard medusa-snarls, snatching viciously at her face, now suddenly so pale and lifeless. Her eyes are closed, and the magic has faded. She falls sideways as she spins, her flailing arms crumpling uselessly beneath the weight of her body.

There's an ugly crunch as her head strikes the ground.

And then a dark red trickle of something liquid out of her ear. Blood. That must be blood.

Kit kneels down and takes her shoulders in his hands.

"Jean!"

There's an eternity, and then her eyes flicker open. They're glassy - almost gone now, the life that coursed through them earlier.

"JEAN!!"

She coughs. A thin stream of red leaks out the corner of her mouth, and drips a solitary, dainty drop, to the floor below. She's trying to mumble something.

Her eyes clear for an instant.

"Take... deliver... note."

Somehow, she finds the strength to guide her fingers into her jeans pocket (I did mention that she was wearing jeans, didn't I? Black jeans.) and withdraw a tan envelope.

He grabs the note and, ever the thinker, groans,

"Jean!"

"kit..." weakly.

"yes...?"

"RUN!"

And then hearing expands outside the little bubble encompassing the two of them to the Rest of the World.

Tires squeal again as the black minivan describes a lethal arc. It's turning back.

Any second now, there'll be that gut-turning smell of burning rubber. He feels Jean slump in his arms, and her eyes roll back in their sockets.
A single sob of fear escapes him as he lays her to the ground. The Jean-ness is gone now. All that remains is a broken rag doll.

He starts to run.    # Re-minisce denies liability.7/10/2004 04:47:00 am

Stars and Moon (chapter 4)

Chapter 4
Dying to meet you

Kit has his eyes closed. His cheek tingles with the body electric as fingers draw delicately across it. His ricebowl-fringe is lifted suddenly by a hot breath - a breath of air; fingers of wind. Wind, from open air. Open air, bounded by concrete pillars, and metalwork.
He's been standing on the train platform staring morosely at the tracks for ten minutes now.

My life is so boring.
I need to lose weight.
I need to go to the gym.
I want a woman to love me.
Why doesn't anybody love me?
I think it's because,
My life is so boring...

He takes a step towards the edge.

...Why doesn't anybody love me?

Another step.

...What if...

There's a dull thump.
Whoompf! Subsonically displaced air hurled aside by the train gliding in to dock makes Kit recoil imperceptibly.

... everything was different?

The doors slide open with a sibilant hiss.
"Beepbeepbeep" they intone at Kit, indifferently. Get on, or not, we don't care.
He opens his eyes and steps through the doors.

*****
Nothing much happens to Kit on the MRT (the Multibilliondollar Relativelyrapid Trainthingie, which is just like the London Underground and New York Metro, only cleaner) en route from work to home. No mysterious stranger slips him a cryptic note; no alluring females smile enticingly at him; no pretty, jiggly blondes flash their tic-tacs at him.

Life is never like the movies, is it?

Like almost everyone else on the train, Kit silently engages in a careful scrutiny of his footwear. Variations on the theme include making detailed studies of laps, hands clasped in laps, other people's shoes, and for those neither fortunate nor nimble enough to secure themselves seats or be wearing shoes, nothing much in particular.
Kit's shoes are black work-shoes, such as the type an engineer might purchase - sensible, practical and altogether rather less than interesting.
There's only so much a person can write about engineer's shoes, so Kit looks up at the passengers around him.

(It's a form of narrative convention. Lead characters always look at everyone around themselves. This prevents endless descriptive paragraphs about the individual scuff marks on the surface of their shoes, which research sponsored by Batu - maker of affordable and aesthetic shoes across the nation - has shown that audiences do not always, for some unfathomable reason, appreciate.)

There's :

1) a malodorous NS boy immediately adjacent to him, emitting the heady scent of eau de sweatandfearandpushups. Have you noticed how there's always an NS boy on the train when you get on? It's almost as if it's cosmic convention. All trains in Singapore bear smelly NS boys in uniform, regardless of the hour of day. Any train without it's allocated quota of odiferous NSFs threatens to rip a breach in the fabric of reality and hurtle off into another dimension. That they always seat themselves next to you is either pure coincidence or sheer malice on their part.
The Republic of Singaland's Leadership does not take kindly to other dimensions. Citizens might migrate out of Singaland and acquire evil and decadent non-asian customs, then where would we be?

2) a disagreeable-looking teenaged girl in a garish pink top scowling fiercely at the book in her lap. Her lips move with the effort of translating the written word into a form comprehensible to herself. She isn't so much diminutive of stature as abjectly vertically-challenged, and if looks could kill, she would probably have expired in-utero. As it stands, her obstetric surgeon's repeated attempts to nonchalently let her newborn-self slip through his fingers head-first onto the floor some nineteen years ago failed to produce any lasting effects aside from a slightly stumpier adult appearance than her DNA would otherwise have accounted for.
Currently, she's studiously ignoring:

3) a sweet, doddering old cow woman standing before her, with an uncanny resemblance to Margaret Chan. The hag auntie teeters precariously amidst her mini-empire of shopping bags with every jerk of the train (which, of course, simply does not happen on the MRT in real life, proving once and for all that this entire ridiculous narrative is but a work of insane fiction) muttering viciously under her breath.

"Young people nowadays... no respect...elders... selfish... crush her like... cockroach..."

Sssssssssss.
The doors slide open, and an exhausted expectant mother crawls aboard with sobbing toddler in tow.

Margaret Chan shoots the hapless pair a vicious glance and redoubles her solliloquay.

"children... seen... heard... bubble... toil and.... cauldren..."

4) Mrs Preggy sways pathetically in front of Pink, barely managing to hold herself upright. Somewhere in the background, someone starts playing a violin.

Pink redoubles her efforts at the admirable task of gleaning knowledge from the repository of knowledge she bears in her lap. It's apparently a book for advanced animal enthusiasts, entitled "My Dog Spot".

The world fades to dark as Kit slides into a stuperous slumber.

*****
Fade to light.

Kit's in his shoebox, sitting by his windowless window watching Windows startup on his computer. There's a slight breeze, followed by a faint tinkle and a truncated scream from somewhere far below.
Windows XP loads up absent-mindedly to the desktop before hurriedly remembering to pop up a blue screen of death and force Kit to reboot.

Reboot.
Pause.

Kit's in his shoebox, sitting by his windowless window watching Windows startup on his computer. There's a slight breeze, and the far-off sound of sirens, which fades abruptly to a gleeful chorus of tinkles.

Kit performs his daily ritual of checking his email - you have NO new mails! - then logs onto galaxynet on IRC (Internet Relay Chat), the virtual realm where geeks can fulfil their secret destinies and become cyber-geeks and even occasionally, women. Women just tend to become bitchier.

Let's see. Where do we want to go today? Which portal holds the promise of romance and maybe even the thrill of sex? Which exotic channel will Kit choose in his bid for a life-altering experience??

Kit, fired subliminally by the author's enthusiasm, goes out on a limb and types:

/j 20somethings
#20somethings[+tn]: Welcome ur stay at the Age Of Life
*** Now talking in #20somethings
*** Topic is 'Welcome ur stay at the Age Of Life'
*** Retrieving #20somethings info

(Silence)

(More silence)

< Kit > Hello?

(Yet more silence)
(Kit considers twiddling his thumbs, except that he's only ever seen it done on movies. It's amazing how he continues to consider this, after several thousand visits to this channel, or for that matter, any other channel.)

Suddenly, against all predictions and expectations, there's a slight shimmer in reality, and that heart-lifting sound all denizens of the IRC realms secretly yearn to hear : dingdingding. A window pops open.

< Neo > Hello. I am Neo. I am The One. Who is this?

< Kit > Hi, I'm Kit, twentysomething/m. I make powerpoint slides for a living. a/s/l?

(pause)

< Neo > Oh. Sorry, wrong number...

shimmer. The window closes rather hurriedly.

(Silence.)

Another thumb-twiddling extravagan.... dingdingding!

< LadyGray > Hello, stranger.

Wow. It's not just some spambot advertising a porn site. And it might even be a girl. Tonight's Kit's lucky night!

< Kit > hi
< LadyGray > How's it going? :)

Wow! No A/S/L (age/sex/location) line. Almost definitely a girl! Must buy 4D tomorrow.

< Kit > I'm ok. A little bored.
< LadyGray > Join the club. There's a fee.

No request to meet up and have sex!! Woohoo!! Absolutely certainly, positively without the shadow of a doubt a girl! Kit's on a rollll!

< Kit > So, wat's a nice girl like you doing in a dump like this?
< LadyGray > Oh, mostly getting hit on by horny guys desperate for doggy sex. You?

...the night flies by in a happy blur. (cue screen image of a seed germinating into sapling unfurling into blood-red rose in full-bloom)
This girl is unlike any other. She's funny, flirty, sassy, silly, intelligent, and above all, interested. She writes with the effortless grace of Salaman Rushdie on speed, only more dangerously.

She understands me.

She's too good to be true. (She probably looks like a dog.)

She's perfect.

Kit slumps back in his chair, stunned.
*****

Jean slumps back in her chair, stunned.

He's too good to be true.

He's stoic, stolid, dependable, guileless, loyal, rather predictable and very boyish. He's a Nice Guy. There're no other words for it.

He's perfect.
*****

< LadyGray > So what do you get up to most nights?
< Kit > I mostly eat dinner at home. You know, after work, tired lah.

Pause. That sounded really sad.
Kit casts his mind around for something imaginary to spice up his life.

< Kit > Sometimes I go out with my frens. You know, drinking.

Yeah. That sounds nice and manly. Ohmygod. I hope she doesn't ask me what I drink...
He holds his breath... :

< LadyGray > Man with a busy schedule then. What are you doing tomorrow night?
< Kit > Oh. Not much. Watching TV. There's Nip/Tuck tomorrow.
< LadyGray > Oh. Wouldn't you prefer to save a poor damsel in distress from the distressing grasp of ennui?

Pause...

*****

< Kit > I don't knoe ne1 liddat. Who is Ennui? Nip/Tuck is very good btw.

She breathes out loudly and drums her fingers on the table in exasperation, batting down four other excited paramours popping up in their little windows with irritated clicks of her mouse.
How much less subtle does she have to be?

/me isn't doing anything tomorrow evening... will be bored to tears.

*****

Kit watches the words appear on his screen.

LadyGray isn't doing anything tomorrow evening... will be bored to tears.
< Kit > Oh. Why don't u watch...

wait. His Y chromosome kicks him hard in the seat of his skull. Girl. Free. Tomorrow night.

backspacebackspacebackspace

< Kit > Oh. Would u like to err, meet up for dinner?

long pause. Shite, maybe I was too direct?

< LadyGray > Dying to. =)    # Re-minisce denies liability.7/07/2004 03:35:00 am

Stars and Moon (chapter 3)

Chapter 3
Dead Sexy

This is Jean.
Right now, she's looking turning her head this way and that, critically appraising herself in a mirror.

Jean's the sort of girl who turns heads and diverts traffic (into lamp posts, and pedestrians) whenever she walks down the street. She's a shampoo advertisement on long, well-honed legs. Men don't so much swipe their eyes over her like a credit card, as pan over her slowly with infinite care, drinking in every precious detail like a horizon shot in a national geographic documentary. She's not so much eye candy as optical dinner, complete with fine dessert wine and complimentary cheese, caviar and a roast pig to boot.

Jean's got the full complement of exotic good looks that FHM usually takes 100 pages to describe. Men generally falter around page three and mysteriously excuse themselves to the lavatory for some strange reason.

Long luscious hair, immaculate eyebrows, coolly-amused but unexpectedly (ie when she wants them to be) soulfully expressive almond-shaped eyes, a delicately regal nose, and exquisitely perfect lips sit upon a neck made for sin. Her shoulders are just broad enough to suggest strength of character, without falling off the deep end into the testosterone-laden waters of club-wielding masculinity.

Let's gloss over the rest of her, including that waist to hip ratio guaranteed to turn other women sickly green with envy, and those long, lean legs that ooze sex appeal to men, women, and puppies alike.

And let's just say that those aren't the sum total of her (cough) assets.

She's also got a brain. A rapier-keen wit combined with a depth of perception that often leaves armchair philosophers in her wake sitting bemused on the floor wondering where their armchair's been spirited away to, simmer behind those coolly appraising eyes, waiting for that instant to leap out and devour her opponents alive.

And then spit them out, completely bewildered in mushy, well-masticated bite-sized chunks.

If she'd wanted to, she could easily have been a doctor, or a lawyer. Or a nuclear scientist, although, seriously speaking, nobody outside of characters from badly written novels or poorly scripted screenplays wants to be nuclear scientists nowadays.
Instead, she's a Political Dissident.

*****
He's staring balefully at the pills gently resting in the curve of his palm.
They're pretty pink pills. They stare back silently and eyelessly at him, and he can almost hear them imploring him to "eatttt meee!".

Kit's going through his second-ever start-life crisis. (The first one was at twenty, when he grew out of teenagehood and graduated from Boy to Boring.)

He's just been taking stock of his life...

At the grand old age of twentysomething, he's practically an old-man in fresh-faced, ephemerally beautiful teeny-bopper Singaland. Or so the media would have him believe. As if it isn't bad enough that he doesn't have a steady girlfriend, and hasn't had one since, well, since forever, everyone around him including mum, dad, Chee the family dog (and even Simon Notsos Lim on the radio) appears to be pointing jeering fingers directly at him and laughing. To add insult to, well, insult, several of his well-meaning friends have been subtly suggesting he take up a lifetime membership with SDU, the Singalanders Desperate-people's Union.

"You can get cheap holidays, and free food and electrical applicances from them! Really! All you have to do is marry some ugly person who you have zero chemistry with, for life! Is that a bargain or what?"

It doesn't help that his friends are all married to hot nymphomaniac chicks intent on reproducing like energiser bunnies, or maybe just going through the motions. Or so they tell him.

Kit hasn't had any in a while. Make that ever.
He's probably the world's oldest virgin, and it isn't even as if he's trying to save himself for anyone. His cup overfloweth, generally into the toilet bowl. Even Singalander slappers (who are women with loose morals, sorta like Jordan the UK starlet, sans the classy boob implants) give him a wide berth, and pretty much an entire ocean liner whenever he goes clubbing, which is really a Singalander euphemism for "on the pull".

Somewhere in the background, the radio is droning on and on (and on) about the wonders of marital bliss, cooking, and children (although not necessarily in that order). Simon Notsos Lim interviews some depressed twenty-five year old bloke who's whinging that he's old, and single, and how everyone looks at him funny when he's out on the street, and how incredibly lonely he feels. Sob, sniff, wail.
Simon sympathetically hears him out, then gently tells him in his calm, gentle and very gay voice that it's not about love, but marriage :
"Don't marry the woman you love, love the woman you marry!
Although, ahaha, for you it's probably too late now. You're on the shelf, buddy, you know, the top shelf where the woman can't, and don't really want to reach!"

Professionally, at least, Kit's somewhere on the map, he tells himself. His subconscious interjects : But it's in the bottom right-hand corner under that big compass thingie next to the Made in Hong Kong mark... Kit ignores it.

He has a steady job with a fancy Three-Lettered Abbreviation title (which is really short for a really, really long title which, in turn means very, very little) which involves crafting quality powerpoint slides for his boss to impress other bosses with. His years of studying _____ (insert choice of word here, they're really all the same thing) engineering are, of course being appropriately employed to the extreme. After all, it does take fine precision and a mathematical mind to make the text fit neatly into boxes, doesn't it?

He's never felt so unfulfilled in his entire life. His life doesn't just not have meaning. It doesn't even have life.
He knows ER doctors with more of a life than him, and that's
saying a lot.

This existential crisis is giving him a pounding headache.
He sighs and slams the pills home, with the help of a swig from his Naive mineral water, bottled from the cleanest and finest springs in JB, or so the advertising label claims. It's been that kind of day.    # Re-minisce denies liability.7/03/2004 08:37:00 am