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Metamorphs 2 Other people regarded it as a distraction, somewhere to go if the noise in your head was getting to you. The idea was to drive it out with the louder noise from the dance floor, and it usually worked. I was different, in that respect; I was there because it was scenery into which I could meld and vanish, like an animal into its native jungle. All I wanted was to be ignored while being able to view other people; it was something I couldn't get from television. There were the occasional predatory boors who'd come over, offer to buy me a drink, try to start conversations simply because I'm female and, I have been objectively informed, attractive (although my clothing was nowhere near as ostentatious as was the standard; it was deliberately nondescript, and I wore no makeup). I tried not to make eye contact, remained silent until they got bored and sought easier prey. That worked with most of them; one or two had fooled themselves into believing that they really had my best interests at heart, and would persist. I'd get up from the table in the middle of their prepared speeches, wander over to the rail, stare out over the dance floor at the posturing figures below, listen to the music, to Siouxie, singing, asking me Do you hunger for this?; I'd smile, shake my head and think in reply, "No." Once, a young man tried to put his arm around my waist and sidle closer to me. I froze, gave him a poisonous warning glance; he seemed to get the message. I had moved through that environment long enough to filter out the extraneous information, long enough to recognise familiar faces, a core of regulars who managed to span the social spectrum and make it seem natural, long enough to be able to sort them, identify and pigeonhole each one; the Goth poseurs, the piercers, the bisexuals, the speed freaks, the leather and rubber fetishists, the acid-heads, the alcoholics, the naturally weird. There was one, though, who defied categorisation. I registered her presence, but couldn't pin her down. She, too, was alone. I suppose her camouflage was better than mine, because no-one approached her. As if she wasn't there at all. There were times when I wondered if I was imagining her ... ... until one evening, when she dropped her shields and came over to sit opposite me. I didn't see her approach; it was as if she suddenly appeared in my peripheral vision. I almost started, but caught myself in time. I was watching the video screen, a grainy sepia-toned Warholesque scene that was slowly panning to the left, an autumn street lined with heavy, gnarled trees, the gutters thick with dead leaves, like the streets I'd have to pass through to get home; I was imagining myself running through banks of decaying foliage in the cold night air when she revealed herself. On closer inspection, her camouflage must have been several degrees better than mine, for where I was attractive (I suppose; or so I'd been told; I'd never found myself so and was incapable of being that objective), she was absolutely beautiful; where I was just wearing clothes, she paraded herself around, costumed like an Empress. The glossy velvet black of her dress ended just above her nipples, and continued up to a silver choker around her throat in the form of a mesh panel which was designed to cover but in no way conceal her impressive cleavage. Her black hair spilled down over her shoulders in loose curls; her eyes dark, liquid, glittering; her lips full, painted a deep blood-red. A bright silver ankh hung from one earlobe. Sleeves came down over the backs of her hands, forming fingerless gloves. Long nails lacquered the same colour as her lips rested against the glass table-top. She was looking at me in an off-hand way, as if her mind was directed inwards and she just happened to be facing in my direction. I returned my attention to the video-screen, conscious of her presence like a strong magnetic field, like sitting close to a furnace. Occasionally, I liked to drop the filters I'd established over the time I'd been coming here, see the place as others saw it. It was a shock; there seemed to be fog from the smoke-machines everywhere, reducing visibility to a matter of a few feet, and the sound ... It was perfectly reproduced - the venue had an excellent sound system - but it was so loud! I couldn't understand how the regular patrons could live with it. Conversation was next to impossible unless (I saw several people doing this) you shouted directly into your partner's ear. The presence emanating from across the table vanished abruptly, and when I turned to look, she was gone. I wondered, briefly, what she wanted, then I got up, went to the bar and ordered a drink; vodka and coke. I carried back to my table, sipping a quarter of the drink and then topping it up with the last of the raw alcohol that I'd distilled myself, from a worn silver hip-flask. It was a good drink; the only jarring note being the bitter flavour of the vodka. So, just coke next time. Something, some combination of images on the screen and of the people around me settled somewhere inside, and it came to me - the design for the ring I'd been considering for the past week. I'd had a few tentative ideas, but they'd only solidified just now - a ram's skull in the middle of something like an eight-armed cross - or, possibly - no, a seven-armed cross, or arrangement of boards, itself resting on a disk like a dartboard. I would have loved to have been able to make it out of silver, or even pewter, but my skills didn't extend that far. I'd settle for carving it out of plastic and painting it some metallic hue. Now that it was here, the image burned in my mind. N was scrabbling in a jacket pocket for a pencil and a piece of paper to make a sketch when Empress appeared again. She held out her hand, opened slim, red-tipped fingers slowly; there was a silver ring sitting in the palm of her hand. Ram's skull sitting on a seven-armed cross. I shrank back slightly, involuntarily, then regarded her with suspicion. Was it possible that she'd been following me around for a week, implanting vague half-images in my mind of a ring which she owned, so she could spring this on me, here and now? I couldn't think of any other even half-way rational explanation. She held her hand a bit closer, fingers outspread further, an encouraging little nod and frown as if to say, 'go ahead. this is for you.' Slowly, my hand moved out, fingers unwillingly unclenching from my nervous fist, touched the ring. It was warm, as if she'd been holding it clenched in her hand all night; when I picked it up, it came away as if it were stuck to her. For a brief second, I saw a raw purple-edged slash where the ring had sat, as if the ring had been extruded from her flesh; a coarse, puckered stigmata that closed over immediately, the palm of her hand sheathed with the same paleness as the rest of her visible skin. I looked at her sharply, and the knowing expression on her face seemed cruelly superior and decadent; as if she was saying, 'Yes, I'm something out of the ordinary, and I don't care if you know it. It doesn't matter if you know it.' I placed the ring on the table between us, taking care to avoid the puddle of beer that someone had spilled, and then I got up and walked away carefully. I turned back once to see if she was following me. She was still sitting at the table, talking to someone dressed in a knee-length black vinyl coat, like a Cenobite from one of Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser' films. I stared at them until they both looked up at me, their eyes glittering evilly, then I left the club, walking quickly, then running up the steps into the cold night. It was usually a bad move to be seen running through the city at this time of the morning, but I was beyond caring. I didn't even have time to play in the leaves of the quiet dead street; I just had to get home, to relative normality, to comfort and safety and my familiar shields against the outside world. Even inside, where it was warm and dark and safe, her image still stained my mind. Nothing I did could banish it, none of my mundane distractions. four hours later, I was desperately trying to wallow, stuffing spoons-full of soy-sauce-soaked boiled rice into my mouth, drunk to the point of not being able to stand (I had to crawl to the toilet twice), watching one of those horribly violent Japanese rape animes that I'd come into possession of - a gift from one of the local Otaku - but none of it touching me, none of it reaching inside to the core of me where she was, where she remained and where I couldn't tear her from. And I didn't even know her name. I crawled back to the toilet, threw up some rice and sour fluid, rinsed my mouth out at the bathroom sink; found some sedatives (a bad idea, I knew, in my current state) and forced myself, eventually, to sleep where I dreamed of Cenobites and meat-skewers and Japanese anime motorcycle gangs and her. It took a monumental effort to force myself back into work mode the next day. I revelled in the muscular pain, the dehydration, the gummed-up eyes; motivated only by a cup of horribly strong coffee, I got dressed and caught the bus to work. Thank the goddess I only had to do this twice a week. The other people in the design office were used to me coming in looking as if I'd been beaten up; they didn't care as long as I did the work, (checking fashion magazine layouts). It was something they couldn't get software to do, otherwise I'd've been out the door long ago; every so often, the owners would run another magazine in parallel, using it to try out their latest scheme for doing without me. These efforts never lasted more than about three months. My closest co-worker at the office was a woman just a year older than me, Josie. To the rest of the world, she was disappointingly mundane-looking; long, mousy brown hair, thick-rimmed glasses over pale grey eyes, shapeless cardigans and long skirts which only just hid a slight, attractive figure. Over the past two months, I'd noticed her moods going slowly downhill to the point where she could only just cover her depression. I must confess; my only motivation in helping her was an attempt to put the Empress out of my mind. I took her out to lunch and practically forced a confession from her. Companion troubles; she'd had to move out because her fiance had run off with someone else six weeks back; she was finding life increasingly bleak and wanted to make a complete break from her current life-style. I thought it would be entertaining to introduce her to the Goth scene, so I invited her over to my place that evening for a complete make-over. It had been a long time since I'd bothered to costume myself. Physically, she was close to my size - fractionally smaller in most proportions - so she could wear some of my clothes. I had hundreds of dresses, tops, shirts and such - I seemed to inherit them from past flat-mates and never got around to throwing anything out. That evening we were like a couple of children, giggling, tossing underwear back and forth, painting each other's faces. I was relieved when i noticed the kind of glances, the lingering touches when I handed her a pair of thigh-length black boots, the general air of someone who had decided that she was going to seduce me. I didn't know if i had the confidence for a protracted chase; I was almost tempted to ask her if she wanted to forego the night-club and go to bed now, but I knew better than most people the importance of Ritual. So we went. The place was sparsely populated; this night-club must've been in decline. So it goes. We spent most of the evening huddled in a corner behind a chair, swilling champagne like it was going out of style and giggling. We actually held hands. It felt like falling in love, although I knew it was just the alcohol. I didn't care. This was as close as I'd been to that state for a long time. Realising this brought back a brief pang of exasperation; I'd come so close to convincing myself that being alone was the natural, appropriate state to exist in, and here I was again, giving in to the need for companionship. I knew what Josie wanted from this relationship, and I knew it couldn't last, so I'd be alone again eventually. I got a shock on the way out; the Empress was standing in a corner of the stairwell. I recoiled slightly before realising that it was just a cardboard cut-out. I moved closer, warily examining it and was just about to take Josie and move on when the eyes of the cutout moved and it smiled at me. It was her. It was alive. I wanted to grab it and tear it up but I was too scared to touch it, in case it felt like human flesh. Instead I grabbed Josie's hand and dragged her up the stairs and into the night. We kissed in the moonlight (and if I ever found out who'd smashed the street-lights, I planned to thank them), on the quiet dead street, standing in a drift of autumn leaves. I resisted briefly and then gave in to her. It proved to be a mistake. The Empress had seen us together; Josie and me didn't fit in with her plans for me. She didn't do anything as tactless as have her killed; instead, mere days after we'd come together, she arranged a safe (ie hetero) relationship for her, a place to stay, a new position in the organisation - well away from me. She settled in with a mixture of regret and relief, vowing to me that 'we'd still be friends'. Well, I thought to myself, it went as you thought it would ... just a little faster. I determined then to discover what the Empress wanted from me and then I'd do my utmost to ensure that, if possible, she wouldn't get it. My resolve in this frightened me; I actually felt willing to commit suicide rather than give in to her. I went back to the nightclub the next week, but she didn't turn up. The week after that, the place was closed. I stood at the door, fingers painfully entwined in the mesh of the security barrier, wondering if I'd have the restraint to keep myself from attacking her physically next time we'd meet. The callous bitch. Even that decision was taken from me. I never saw her again, although she did send me a cardboard cutout of her; I carefully tore it up into postage-stamp-sized pieces and burned them all except for one eye. Not long after this, the relationship which she'd arranged for Josie fell apart and she came back to me. I wondered if this was part of the Empress' design; if she'd thought that Josie needed more impetus to be driven into my arms. Considering this degree of Machiavellian intrigue, the arrogance of someone who played with lives like a four-year-old child plays with dolls, did convince me of one thing; if I ever met the bitch again, I'd do my level best to claw her eyes out. Thinking about the trick she did with the ring, though, she'd probably just grow new ones.

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