Cantshutup's Backstory round entry: Jaroslawa 'Slawa' Novak

Antida in Games, The Secret World 0 comments 26 APR 2015

So, yes, #IAMTSW.

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You think they’ll tell you about me. You will hear the buzzing in an alley somewhere, follow the golden light, and then you will know my darkest secrets. I understand. I love gathering the world’s little atrocities too; must be the artist in me.

But there’s nothing this time. No dark secret, no tortured past, no hidden depth you need to get to.

You don’t believe me. You think I’m hiding things from you.

All right. How does it go?

TRANSMIT – initiate the melodrama signal – RECEIVE – initiate the parental disapproval frequency – HOW WILL YOU MAKE A LIVING DOING THAT – ingest the youthful rebellion syntax – WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US – initiate the independence proclamation – WITNESS – no one cares about you, darling.

There’s a woman in a room in Ulan Bator, cradling a camera lens in her hand. A soft cloth moves in small concentric circles, slow and careful. The lens is the most expensive thing the woman owns, and handling it makes her dream. She doesn’t get a name. She’s not important. Don’t mind her.

The door opens and the woman looks up, smiling. Maigul enters. Maigul gets a name; it means “the flower of May”. She is wearing high heels and a polka dot dress. It’s July already, and getting more out of season with every breath. The woman puts the lens away and mimes taking a picture with her fingers. Initiate the happiness cadence. Fade to black.

“You know,” Maigul says later, playing with the woman’s fingers, “This guy I know is starting a side business. It’s not Vogue, but…”

It is really not Vogue, but you have to start somewhere, right?

Is that a dark secret? Photographing naked women in a grimy basement of an electronics store? If there’s no blood sacrifice it doesn’t rank that high for me anymore.

There is no blood sacrifice in this story. Yet.

The basement reeks, and the plastic fan in the corner does nothing but create waves of nausea that travel randomly through the room. Tendrils of some brown plant climb the walls. It pays well. That’s good, right? Can’t be too picky when you’re just starting out.

The smell ripens as the summer goes on. Endless photographs of flesh seeping sweat onto the damp sheets, the damp floor. The plant claims more and more of the walls. The cracks in the plaster widen. It doesn’t feel like living your dream; it feels like dying in someone else’s. But it pays well.

Maigul come to visit in the last week of August, wrinkles her nose, makes a joke about not being jealous anymore. The woman chokes, coughs so hard her eyes water.

“You were jealous before?”

“Idiot,” Maigul steps closer to her, puts an arm around her neck. “Come on. I want to go home.”

Something moves on the wall behind them. The brown tendril of the climbing plant, now looking more like desiccated sinew, curls around Maigul, burrows under her skin. Her body opens, spills jeweled viscera on the floor, crumples.

Is that tragedy? I’m not sure. You learn to let go of things.

The woman’s camera falls to the floor and shatters. The cracks in the concrete widen to reveal a mass of pale, slime-covered flesh. Seventeen eyes open, look up with sleepy lust. The mass shudders and gives as it drags Maigul’s body closer…

DO NOT OPERATE YOUR DEVICE IN EXTREME TEMPERATURES. Transmission failed.

WITNESS – everything on fire. In the middle of it the woman screams, curled around a pile of charred bone, nothing but bone. The building comes down around her.

She lives. Of course she lives. Have you been paying attention?

Enter the Dragon. It doesn’t matter why them, or how it happened. It doesn’t matter what pitch she heard after they shipped her soot-covered body to Seoul. It happens, but that doesn’t matter either. Roll credits.

Is that what you wanted to know?

You think I lied to you. You think I tried to hide the truth. Wake up! This is nothing. How many eviscerated bodies are there in grimy basements all over the world?

The world is ending. Cosmic monstrosities are waking up and preparing to swallow us whole, but we know the only truth that matters. There’s no cosmic horror that you can’t punch in the face if you set your mind to it.

Accept the oblivion cure. Ingest the higher purpose.

First you find the face. Then you punch the face.

That’s the plan. There’s nothing deeper than that.


Source: The Secret World Cantshutup’s Backstory round entry: Jaroslawa ‘Slawa’ Novak

Antida
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