NaNoWriMo & Tarot: A Colorless Existence
The Story
The woman stumbled from the door of the bar and leaned heavily into her partner, a man in a suit and tie; suit jacket slung over one shoulder and tie now precariously at half mast. The woman wore a full length sleek green dress done in a shade of green so that it appeared almost black in the sparse light case by buzzing streetlamps. New fangled, these fluorescent lights painted the night in shades of yellow, sometimes nearly orange, tones of color. It was a sharp contrast to the blue shadows of darkness that flooded side alley streets such as this where seedy buildings housed indiscriminate and secretive people looking to find a drink.
The couple giggled together as they crashed into one another gaily, arms encircling one another. The woman murmured something as the man’s hand crushed her careful locks in a passionate kiss, no doubt fueled by the strong and illegal liquor they had consumed over the course of the night. But what a night it had been! Music, laughter, and each other. They danced until their feet hurt and now as they toppled headlong toward home they were completely unaware, lost as they were in their cloud of inebriated joy, that someone, something, followed them in the shadows.
Carefully, it picked its way forward from the shadows, skirting the edges of each yellow-orange pool of light with a lithe ease that betrayed some inhuman grace. The couple turned down another street and the being paused, craning a slender neck to see how busy the next street was. The strange thing, this semi-solid sentient shadow was seemingly unconcerned with falling behind because as the couple made it further away the shadow was never far behind. Snow began to fall lightly and the couple gasped, the woman giving a squeal of delight and a shriek as she teasingly caught some of the frozen flakes upon her tongue.
The man, seemingly only to act as escort steered them down a wider street where a few people, heads bowed in an effort against human interaction, trudged wearily from one destination to another.
The being shifted from one foot to another from where it watched in the shadows, not impatient exactly, as it never grew tired, but of a need driving it ever onward. Finally, after what seemed like an eon, the man deposited the young woman at the front steps of her apartment building; kissing her tenderly before departing for his own tenement across town.
“He seems like a nice Joe.” said the thing in the shadows. The woman startled and then softened when she saw the feminine shape just beyond the lamplight of a nearby streetlamp. The voice, when it had spoken, was high pitched and nasal. Not unpleasant, exactly, but striking and it sent a thrill down the woman’s spine despite the warm glow of alcohol filling her.
“Oh, he is.” She agreed, a smile breaking across her face. The figure in the shadows made a small humming sound of pleasure.
“Aw,” It said, drawing the sound out in a baby voice, “That’s sweet. You thinking you gonna middle aisle it?” The figure exuded a genuine sweetness that made the woman come closer, though she was still having a hard time seeing the stranger in the dark.
“Well, I don’t know.” She mused, “He hasn’t asked me yet.” To this news the figure in the shadows made a derisive noise.
“Tch. Typical. Takes you out for some plonk and a gasser with no ring in sight.” The phantom in the shadows made a small movement. “Say, you got a smoke?” The woman did. She nodded and produced a small brass case and handed it off to the being. The hand that came into view nearly made the case fall from her hands.
When the hand came into the light it was bone white. A white so bright that it was empty of any other color. No pink hues suffused the skin and the nails, manicured and stylish as they were, sat black and empty of color as the deepest dark of the ocean. And the hand when it came forward bypassed the proffered case entirely. Instead, it wrapped itself with a delicate grace around the woman’s wrist. The woman that emerged from the shadows into the streetlamp light was every bit as black and white as her hand. Skin and eyes holding no color. She was like an animated character from one of those talkies people loved so much. The woman inhaled as if to scream but the strange colorless woman was on her, pulling her into an embrace and the moment her eyes meet those colorless pits she could think of nothing but surrender.
When the next passersby entered the street they found a woman’s body laying near the steps of an apartment building. At first she seemed unreal, but as they approached and the full horror of what lay before them became clear, the newcomers raised the alarm.
Hiya, Toots…
“Help! Murder!” and indeed it was. Where once was a woman with soft brown curls and a jewel green dress now lay, quietly as if sleeping, a still body as black and white as a dream.
“Help!” the alarm rose up and from across the street emerged another pedestrian. Her hair in a short rebellious curl around her ears and the glittering of her red dress cutting through the night like a knife, she brought a cigarette to her lips and as she did so the last wave of color washed down her hand, coloring her like a warm blanket in flesh tones. As her reddening lips formed a delicate ‘O’ around the end of the cigarette she surveyed the scene unfolding before her.
“Poor bird,” She cooed, to no one in particular, as she headed back the way she had come. And the woman was gone from her thoughts just as quickly as she had left the mortal coil. “but them’s the brakes. Time to find me a hot band.”
Tarot Break Down
Sometimes a simple 3 card is all you need
For this this chapterette I did a three card spread. Who is in the scene let me know that it was going to be the true main character (bet you thought it was Helen, huh?) and then we have how to start the scene card. Seeing this card, it was important to me that I capture some of the essence of a happy time for the opening scene. Before I took it away. The third card was the whole point of the event in this scene. What did I hope to communicate? The 3 of Pentacles was a card that gave me the impression we had to see early on what this…being…was capable of. How do they need to survive? Something to do with life force, vaguely vampiric (but not a vampire), and something to do with color. Hmm…
