onions
November 15th, 2005, 06:00 AM
I'd love to hear your opinions and criticism on this.
It's meant to be read out loud and deals with a common curse known as:
Writers' Block
Juliet cradles the body of her lover. She weeps over the seeping purple hue that marrs his face and body, and tries to keep the stiffening limbs from leaving her, but to her wild distress she fails, as she has failed so often before. So Juliet swings around. Her eyes flash, and her hair flames. Her skin is stretched paper thin over the bones of her face as she speaks: Already it is breaking out in telltale discolouration of its own,
"You bastard!" she says.
"You bastard,", she curses God himself, it seems.
"God?" , she hoots. "You flatter yourself, godlet. I see you and I know you well. You could have done anything with me. You could have made me rich and full of health and power. Or, you could have placed me in your time and made me, what I see your time has plenty of: a scientist, a freedom fighter, a politician. Instead, you’ve stuck me in a world where people never wash because they believe that misery makes them pure? Where an infestation of rats with fleas kills off half the population? Where bones rot in their bodies because they don’t get enough vitamins and sunlight? And then, and then you take from me this man whom you have made me love. And all in the name of, what have you called it: "historical fantasy".
...
"Yes, you’ve written that correctly. Don’t hide behind your pens and sheets. Don’t try and cross that out either, because I haven’t finished yet."
Juliet is a figure in a fairy tale. She is Lilith, she is the white witch of my dreams, she is an archetype, good God. How can she be talking the way she is?
"Go figure."
Juliet, what are you saying? My God, I’m writing nonsense here. I’ll have to go over this first thing tomorrow and write this draft again. Shows you what too much coffee’ll do to you, eh?
"Go on praying", says Juliet and there‘s menace in her paper thin smile. Juliet is beautiiful, because I made her so, in all the ways that I will never be. She is intelligent and bold as I could make her and she knows all I know, speaks, too, like I speak, and she walks – she steps – up to the copper mirror on the wall. She looks into it, straight at me. And she never blinks.
"So, you have made me a witch, godlet. I’ll make you feel the curse of a witch. Listen here, you behind the mirror, you, begetter: May your eyes be forever dead before the wonders of the world, as I am soon dead. May your ears never hear again the secrets of the heart. May our hand tremble and fail before the empty pages of your mind. Let this be your curse."
And I stumble away from the page and the mirror and Juliet with her flaming red hair, and my fingers stiffen and I these are the last words that I will ever –
It's meant to be read out loud and deals with a common curse known as:
Writers' Block
Juliet cradles the body of her lover. She weeps over the seeping purple hue that marrs his face and body, and tries to keep the stiffening limbs from leaving her, but to her wild distress she fails, as she has failed so often before. So Juliet swings around. Her eyes flash, and her hair flames. Her skin is stretched paper thin over the bones of her face as she speaks: Already it is breaking out in telltale discolouration of its own,
"You bastard!" she says.
"You bastard,", she curses God himself, it seems.
"God?" , she hoots. "You flatter yourself, godlet. I see you and I know you well. You could have done anything with me. You could have made me rich and full of health and power. Or, you could have placed me in your time and made me, what I see your time has plenty of: a scientist, a freedom fighter, a politician. Instead, you’ve stuck me in a world where people never wash because they believe that misery makes them pure? Where an infestation of rats with fleas kills off half the population? Where bones rot in their bodies because they don’t get enough vitamins and sunlight? And then, and then you take from me this man whom you have made me love. And all in the name of, what have you called it: "historical fantasy".
...
"Yes, you’ve written that correctly. Don’t hide behind your pens and sheets. Don’t try and cross that out either, because I haven’t finished yet."
Juliet is a figure in a fairy tale. She is Lilith, she is the white witch of my dreams, she is an archetype, good God. How can she be talking the way she is?
"Go figure."
Juliet, what are you saying? My God, I’m writing nonsense here. I’ll have to go over this first thing tomorrow and write this draft again. Shows you what too much coffee’ll do to you, eh?
"Go on praying", says Juliet and there‘s menace in her paper thin smile. Juliet is beautiiful, because I made her so, in all the ways that I will never be. She is intelligent and bold as I could make her and she knows all I know, speaks, too, like I speak, and she walks – she steps – up to the copper mirror on the wall. She looks into it, straight at me. And she never blinks.
"So, you have made me a witch, godlet. I’ll make you feel the curse of a witch. Listen here, you behind the mirror, you, begetter: May your eyes be forever dead before the wonders of the world, as I am soon dead. May your ears never hear again the secrets of the heart. May our hand tremble and fail before the empty pages of your mind. Let this be your curse."
And I stumble away from the page and the mirror and Juliet with her flaming red hair, and my fingers stiffen and I these are the last words that I will ever –