10:24
Time in The House seemed to be compressed. Or dilated. Or possibly outside the laws of reality. Whatever the reason most likely at the end of this endeavor they’d exit with very little “real time” passed.
Which was great considering they all had lives outside of it and it’s demands on their group. Real life with its own demands. But that didn’t negate the time spent in The House and the energy they depleted during their adventures. So considering the length of time between Rapunzel’s absolute mind fuck of a revelation and now, and what felt like an insane amount of activities that were jammed into that time, was it much of a wonder that Ivan didn’t really notice the transition from the garden to the next space?
One mikro the hedge framed him, close enough to tug at the fabric of his shirt. The next it transformed to a standard wood doorframe, wide enough to accommodate his broad shoulders though he did have to duck a little to clear the lintel. Focused as he was on not clocking himself with the top of the door frame it took another mikro for his eyes and mind to register the change in environment.
What met his gaze had his feet pausing on the threshold. Black and white tiles, worn in the centers and grubby on the edges, unfurled across the wide and long room, the wear speaking of countless other feet traversing it, moving square to square in a game old as time. Maybe even older than time.
Time warped wood planks formed a ten-foot barrier around the tiles, hemming them in. The wood creaked beneath Ivan’s feet as he moved into the space.
Across the broad expanse, on the far wall, banquettes of shiny red pleather stretched. The memory of the squeak bodies made as they shifted on the material played at the back of Ivan’s mind, calling up memories and the subtle thrust of bile. Arrayed on the banquettes were women in varying degrees of air quotes dress.
They varied in their choice of air quotes alluring garments, in their hair colors and styles with some up, some loose around thin shoulders, some cropped off below the ear, some buzzed close to the scalp making him think of lice rather than personal style. Blonde, brunette, redhead, and a few rainbow colors found in nature but not in hair.
Some smoked. Some mechanically moved their hands from popcorn box to mouth, carrying fluffy yellow kernels to mouths smeared in bright colors and tired smiles. Some wore fishnet stockings, cut off at the thigh by short skirts or at the crease between thigh and groin by the tight legs of shiny vinyl shorts.
Flowers arrayed in a florist’s window, the edges of their petals slowly collapsing beneath the decay of being cut off from nutrients when their stems were cut. What they all shared was there in their faces. In their eyes. Even with those working to flash a hint of flirt or come-hither, their eyes all had a blankness right along their edges, like the crumbling of the petals Ivan compared the women to.
Standing there, hovering on the threshold of the dance hall’s entrance, Ivan wasn’t the adult, the politician, the confident man he had worked so damned hard to be. No. He was the eight-year old boy showing up at his mom’s work when she didn’t come home for two days and there was no food in the two rooms they shared in the poorest part of town.
The rooms with the thin walls and the windows that never sealed right, where the single radiator fought to throw off enough heat to combat the cold air that seeped in around the edges of the windows. The rooms that were the best his mom could afford even though she worked so much and came home every single night smelling like a combination of smoke, conflicting scents of men’s cologne emanating from her scant dresses, with nicotine-stained fingertips and a hungry look in her eyes that food would never satisfy. The rooms that he supplemented hustling, selling the small stuff he stole from stores and occasionally compromising his thin morals and selling other stuff. But only when the level of crumpled bills in the jar on the counter was below the point of ‘we can pay the rent’.
He wasn’t even aware he was frozen in place, caught up in the memories, until someone plowed into him from behind. Tightening his gut against the echo of the past, which lead to another burst of bile hitting back teeth locked down around the bolus of memory, he shot a look over his shoulder.
Dempsey lifted his brows, gaze quickly searching Ivan’s face before shifting over Ivan’s shoulder to take in the room.
“Sorry, Man,” Ivan said in a distracted tone, giving in to the magnetic pull of the women on the banquette and the memories they invoked and letting his gaze drift back in that direction. He didn’t give Dempsey another look as the guy said, “All good. Moving around you,” and probably put action to words.
There was a shushing sound behind Ivan but it didn’t even draw a gaze. Instead he focused on the remainder of the room. The light was low, long tube lights set close to the ceiling with ledges beneath them that directed the light upwards.
Smoke from the women’s cigarettes intermingled with clouds projected from several smoke machines lined up along the floor on either side of the space. The smoke drifted close to the ground, spreading out a miasma across the floor for several feet from the walls. The unweaving smoke dissipated as it moved further until it disappeared entirely a few feet from the center of the space.
Tied up in his own memories and feelings, Ivan didn’t even hear the music playing until his gaze was drawn by several couples shuffling slowly closer to the wall than the center, swirling the smoke around their legs. He wrinkled his nose as the sound of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On registered on his ears. The sound brought up more memories. These places either went for overplayed romantic songs like the one playing or for ones that gave excuse for the dancers to grind together.
Often the night started with one and ended with the other. Whatever created the fantasy that this was more than a transactional experience. Whatever made it okay for touch-starved people seeking out the comfort of paid company to drift away for a few meros or horas depending on the depth of their pockets.
At the corners of the dance floor, several feet out from the walls, full-sized fake palm trees sat in large pots, forming a small screen behind which couples could find a measure of privacy, shielded from the gimlet stares of the guards standing to either side of the door Ivan and his group had come through and also held down the far ends of each to the banquettes, their arms crossed so muscles tested the confines of cheap suit jackets.
Ivan knew they were there, an implied deterrent to air quotes inappropriate behavior. He also knew that there was a whole lot of inappropriate behavior going on in those shadowed corners with privacy as fake as the palms that provided it. Inappropriate behavior that filled a jar on a counter with crumpled bills, colors blurred by sweaty palms and the press of bodies.
Ivan gulped down the next gush of bile then pressed his eyes closed hard. Then harder until bright colors danced in the dark theater behind his lids. He took a deep breath, curved his mouth into something that felt like a smile, and turned to look left and right to determine where his peoples were.
Patti, Dan, Abe, and Ben were to his left, a short distance from where a cluster of small round tables held a collection of patrons of the dance hall. The men, it was largely men though Ivan saw there was at least one woman looking dapper in a suit at a table partially shaded by the fake palms at the far end of the floor, were the usual mix of the type that frequented this type of establishment.
Which was to say a busted flush of older men in a equal mix of spiffed up finery and worn work clothes including several in the uniforms of service jobs, younger guys in polo shirts and khakis stained at the cuffs; men with groomed hair, others with hair that showed the path of nervous hands; guys with cruelty in the set of their mouths and the narrowed gazes they ran over the women on the banquettes making comments to their guys while adjusting their dicks with no attempt to hide the movements, the gestures their own form of aggression. Then there were the guys who had that look of a young guy standing against the wall at their first school dance, desperation and hope transforming their faces into caricatures of need.
Ivan wanted to tell them they didn’t need to fear. Places like this existed as a ‘yes’. No need to fear rejection. A crumpled bill and the guts to ask a woman to dance was all it took. And even then they didn’t really need guts. It was the job, if not the joy, of those ladies to engage them all in the name of those sweaty, crumpled bills.
Patti lifted her chin to Ivan, drawing his gaze. Ivan nodded back. Then his gaze shifted to Ben. His friend had his hands dug tight into his jacket pockets and he rocked back on his heels, his gaze locked on the women on the banquettes and a muscle clearly popping in his jaw. Almost as if he felt Ivan’s gaze, he shifted his eyes to look at Ivan. There was a wealth of shared memories in Ben’s dark gaze. Ivan found himself nodding hard, trying his damnedest to convey reassurance with his expression. Ben’s chest rose on a hard inhale then he nodded.
Movement to Ivan’s right drew his attention to Siobhan, Kim, and Prairie sliding along the wall. Siobhan’s gaze drifted over the space, resting longer on the women on the banquette. Kim flicked her middle finger up and down, a flame appearing momentarily on the tip before being smothered against her thumb. Flick, flick, flick. Prairie, closest to Ivan, shifted so she came up close to him then looked up at him. He found the corner of his lip quirking in a genuine smile as she kept her gaze steady on him and warmed him with a gentle curve of her lips.
“Are you okay?”
Ivan had to strain to hear Prairie over the sweeping crescendo of My Heart Will Go On. He leaned in, craning his neck.
“What?”
“Are you okay?” Prairie repeated, tone as soft and sweet the second time.
Ivan forced his jaw to relax and pushed for a more genuine smile. “Yes.”
Prairie cocked her head. The look she swept his face with spoke of assessment and the softening of her expression made it clear she’d come to the conclusion that he was, in fact, not okay. Or maybe he was reading into it, like he knew that his facade was slipping and she, with her sharp eyes and mind, was seeing beneath to the realness that he wasn’t quite sure he wanted her to see and yet he kind of did because it would be nice to open himself to someone. Especially with his feelings pushing hard against his barricades, threatening to spill out.
Prairie started to say something but was interrupted as Gwen came stomping into the room. She waited until Gwen stepped behind her and took up a spot between Kim and Siobhan, looping an arm over Siobhan’s shoulders and resting her cheek on the closer one. Then she turned her gaze back up to Ivan.
“No.” Prairie shook her head. “You aren’t.”
Ivan drew a long breath through his nostrils, letting his gaze drift from Prairie to the banquette before focusing back on her. “No. I’m not.”
Prairie’s blue eyes lit as her soft cheeks lifted on a smile and a soft dimple formed in her right cheek. “Thank you.”
Ivan started and his head kicked sideways. “Why?”
“For trusting me enough to be honest with me.”
Whoa. The feeling was too big to leave inside so Ivan said it out loud too, “Whoa.”
Prairie’s smile transformed into a grin. Then she shifted so she was looking out at the floor instead of at Ivan. Siobhan shuffled over enough that her voice could carry over the sound of the song. “What do you think?”
Why ask him? Ivan did a quick internal inventory, checking for cracks in the facade he was projecting. He ran a visual over his posture. Shoulders squared, not slumped. Checked the position of his feet. Spread, feet solid on the black and white tiles. Nothing weak there. Looking down he checked his hands, lying loose against his legs. Everything felt solid. Strong. So, why ask him…
“If Abe was correct about this being the senses,” Dan said from Ivan’s left. He turned his head, seeing that the others had moved over to join the cluster of Siobhan, Kim, Prairie, and Ivan and instantly he felt kinda stupid for doing the check on himself because obviously Siobhan had been asking the group in general, rather than him pointedly, for ideas.
Guess when you were a live wire of exposed nerve any brush felt like it was against you. Ivan twitched a fast shrug then pushed himself to focus on what Dan was offering.
“…pretty sure we’ve had sound…”
“Oh, we’ve had sound,” Patti added with a frown. “Definitely had sound.”
Abe lifted a hand. “The gallery was probably sight.”
Dan nodded. “Agreed.”
“Taste?” Ivan turned to look at Kim. She lifted her brows. “The food was probably taste.”
“What was the garden?”
“The options are smell and touch,” Dempsey said. “I’d say smell?”
Siobhan knocked her head against Gwen’s on her shoulder, then swept her gaze along the length of their spread-out group. “Are we trying to force the senses idea?”
“Does it matter if we are?” Dan asked.
Siobhan went quiet a mikro then said, “I’m not sure?”
Dan tapped his pencil on a book that had magically, if not Magickally, appeared in his hand. “I’m not either but I don’t think it will detract from our assessment.”
“So,” Dempsey said, “sound, sight, taste…”
“Touch.” The word came out of the depths of Ivan, unbidden but feeling right.
“Touch? Why do you think the garden was that?” Siobhan asked.
“Not the garden. This,” Ivan swept his gaze over the room with its pathetic tables and chairs and banquette and worn floor and its pretense at intimacy, “This is touch.”
“Okay.” Dan swept his gaze over the dim room. “So, the challenge is to determine what we are supposed to touch and in what way.”
“Isn’t it obvious,” Ben gritted out. “We have to—”
Whatever Ben was going to say was swept away on a wave of agony that flowed across the dance floor. Well, it flowed over Ivan, so he had to lock his knees or fall down. And by the way his friends suddenly showed distress with Dempsey actually falling back against the wall behind them with a crash of shield and body and Patti staggering sideways and smashing into one of the chairs pulled out from the closest round table to her left suggested they were equally affected.
The despair or whatever it was had an intensity to it that muffled sound. Or maybe it was just Ivan’s brain throwing up walls to block it out. Whatever the actual reason for it, all he knew was while he could still sort of hear My Heart Will Go On, which seemed to be on loop because one playing of it wasn’t horrible enough, he also could sort of not hear a damned thing.
Ben yanked his hands out of his pockets and held them up in front of him like he was physically holding off the wall of emotion crashing into him. Prairie cried out in distress and Ivan instinctively threw out a hand to grab her shoulder as she wobbled next to him.
As he did so he looked over her shoulder to see Kim drop to the floor, curling up in a ball with her arms wrapped over her head. Siobhan cried out, the sound loud despite the music that continued to play and the deafening wall of despair, and flung her arms around Gwen as the other woman let out something like a shriek and something like the sound of glass breaking and slumped towards the ground.
Anchoring his gaze on the snack area to the right of the banquettes, the source of the popcorn the women mechanically shoved into their mouths, Ivan fought the magnetic pull of the women’s eyes. Their emotions battered him but it was slightly easier when he wasn’t meeting their frozen stares.
Glass box of popcorn machine. Glass-fronted display case, candy on shelves partially obscured by the glare of the overhead lights bouncing off the glass. The round belly of a coffee pot on a heating unit that looked like it was from several decades back one day away from a fire hazard. Soda bottles in a cluster against the red-flocked wallpaper covered wall. A stack of plastic glasses beside them with paper cups for the coffee in another stack next to them.
With each item he cataloged Ivan was able to snatch a small measure of calm or at least what passed for it. Item by item, measure by measure of calm. Until he was able to focus his thoughts enough to do a survey of his friends’ positions.
Abe’s hands were out with a flood of black pouring from their palms and wrapping around them like a cloak or a blanket. The black flowed around their body, obscuring it behind the wall of black, and then it flowed up to cover them from the ears down, slashing across their face to obscure their nose, mouth, and chin.
Their skin contrasted with the dark ink, appearing the color of parchment, and their dark eyes stood out stark against the paleness. Dan was rocking back and forth. He slapped his book against the side of his head, covering an ear, then pulled it back and slammed it into his chest like instinctively he knew the attack was centered there.
As Ivan shifted his attention, fighting to bring it back to Prairie huddled against this right side, his gaze swept the long stretch of banquette across the room. Every single woman on the banquettes stared across the floor with locked gazes. Pain bled from those eyes and instinctively Ivan knew that they were the source of the disorienting pain gripping them.
Instinctively he shifted to look to Gwen. She sat on the wood floor, her eyes closed, taking visible breaths through her nose. As Ivan watched she pressed shaking hands to the floor, leaning into the support of her arms. Then she opened her eyes with a snap that startled, her gaze riveted on the women across the room. Her jaw tensed and her lips went white along the edges and her arms visibly shook with the pressure she was placing on her hands. She leaned forward, her gaze becoming more intense.
Her lips parted as she drew in a deep breath. And some, not all but some, of the weight of despair shoving at Ivan lessened, like she was pulling the miasma of emotion from the room and drawing it into her core. Her arms shook and her shoulders curved forward, but she didn’t close her mouth and she didn’t stop pulling the pain. Ivan imagined it like taffy, elastic, growing white as it stretched across the space between the women and Gwen.
Instinct drove him to take a step towards her, the need to protect strong, but before he could take more than a step his hold on Prairie pulled him to a halt. For a moment he shifted his attention between Gwen and Prairie, torn by who to take care of. His decision was made a little easier as Siobhan dropped to her knees behind Gwen and clamped her hands down on her friend’s shoulders. Gwen leaned back into Siobhan’s grip, her indrawn breath transforming into a deep sigh.
Dempsey pushed away from the wall and walked across the wood verge that hemmed in the tile floor like a frame to a picture. The invisible resistance of the lingering emotion Gwen hadn’t pulled from the air slowed his steps but he pushed on and took a step onto the dance floor.
Ivan considered Dempsey then looked down at Prairie. She lifted a hand and pushed at his back, lifting her chin towards the chasm between them and the women on the banquettes.
With her silent directive driving him, Ivan took a short step out onto the checkerboard floor. He only got one step in when the floor melted under his foot. His heart dropped, then his foot did. The foot sank about an inch, the tile sinking beneath his weight causing him to stagger and drop his weight back to stop his fall, then the surface of the tile rippled and flowed over the toe of his boot, locking his foot down to the floor.
He jerked a gaze to Dempsey’s feet to see the large man was suffering a similar dilemma. Prairie stepped up to Ivan’s right and instantly became adhered to the floor. She looked at Ivan, lips pursed, then down at her feet, then back at Ivan. Patti walked up, stopping where the wood and tile met, then planted her hands on her hips and gave a whistle.
Something about the sound cleared the last of the cotton from Ivan’s ears and he was once more assailed by the sound of My Heart Will Go On making it necessary to strain to hear her say, “That’s not good.”
Dempsey turned his head to look down at her. He lifted his voice to be heard over the sound of the incessant soundtrack. “You think?”
“I do.”
Enter The Woods 