Mutter mutter....

Well, I am up, and I wish I wasn't, I was rather looking forward to a decent nights sleep, but what with someone starting a game of Risk at about ten last night I didn't roll into bed until three, the sad casualty of to superpowers steamrollering my happy little continent. Apparently I am too passive, and comfortable with what I have- so the guy who was teaching me to play told me, after he'd beaten me to a pulp and taken the whole of Australasia in one turn, and was starting up against Europe the next. Alas for my small, peaceful empire.

Regardless, me in my ignorance did not realise it would take until after two to finish, and I thought 'no problem, I don't have to be up till ten or so anyway, it'll be fine'. All would have been too, if not for the fact that someone outside started making repetitive thudding noises in an out of sync way that made my brain focus on waiting for them and their next bloody bounce so I woke up. *hiss hiss* So now I am faced with an afternoon of spotting on the trampoline, clambering about on soft play, helping out with the art projects, and tripping over bikes and trikes on about five hours sleep. Add in that our usual coaches are absent and off gallivanting in Egypt, and Spooky is at work today so can't join us, and I fear by the end of all this, I may well explode.

Everyone seems to be starting new blogs at the moment. They are popping up all over the place, this one, theres the dreaded Mr. T's new one, Dans one...I'm not sure what has started this minor glut of people writing about their days and wondering why they are so dreary (I wonder why I'm so dreary. I doubt that others do the same...if they did, why would they write blogs?). I was wondering whether to write up some of my dreaded writing, I have to admit, as I am not up for just writing about my life, and thought maybe adding in some of one of my many characters lives might help the poor people who are going to try reading this survive. I'll start with...Annabelle, I think, though Annabelle is little more than a literary tool, she got me a few marks in my A Level...so you can see what you think of her.

Annabelle Simpson loved the Ilhariah Gallery from the moment she saw it. She had been walking, head down, eyes on the pavement, when she had been jostled, and knocked unceremoniously to the ground. The figure had not stopped to check on the roughed up young woman, like the rest of society far to taken up with getting to where he/she was going to carewhat was between A and B, especially if it was some skinny young thing like her. But unusually, a man had picked her up, a little, stout, strong-armed white haired man, and had guided her inside to dab gently at the blood on her barked knees. Her suspicion had faded at his genuine smile and she had cast surreptitious glances around her. Having seen the wood encompassed boxes on the walls she had asked about how the place had come about. It had been erected in the Spring of 2003, in a quieter corner of Chicago’s bustling city limits, he had told her proudly, and given her a brief tour, explaining the layout and point out some of his favourite pictures. Ever since, it had been a popular stop of hers on her frequent, restless wanderings. Open what seemed like twenty-four hours a day (she had never yet seen it closed) and seven days a week, the little doorway stood ajar, and you could just slip right through it, should you know it was there, and into the depths of the oddly constructed, twisting passages, the warm red on the walls inviting you to fall into one of the comfortable chairs and just gaze at the pictures dotting them.

And what pictures…such stories, lying there, locked in their own canvas worlds, just waiting for their stories to continue. Kings and knights of old staring down, aloof and pitying, waiting for a damsel to save and carry off into a sun drenched meadow, or furious gales, battering the cliffs of some part of the English coast, so intricately detailed they could be used as maps if the violent waves had not already forced the rock to succumb to their will and shaped them as they pleased. A man so sultry, peering from behind his burnt black locks, his soul etched on his eyes, and a woman so elegant, and so poised that she looked like a sudden movement could shatter her skin. On the floor, here and there, lurking in corners and peeking out were sculptures, some all flowing lines and pristine images, some weird, abstract shapes, showing hints of insight that few knew themselves or the world they were created within well enough to truly understand. This was Anna’s most recently discovered delight and she was now so often found staring at the displays, she was part of the furniture. So the security guards said to her, jokingly as she wandered in on her daily visits.

The staff were another wonder…so polite, so very friendly, always ready to offer a cup of tea, or a can of Coke. Never judging why she had so much time on her hands questioning her appearance, they simply seemed to enjoy her presence there, her appreciation of the wonders they protected. Sometimes she wondered how it had the money to continue running, before falling into some delightful scene or other. There was no admission to the place, and the clear plastic contribution box that stood to one side of the reception desk was always empty. Usually the gallery was too, when she entered it. That was how she liked it. Sometimes it was full of people, jostling and doing this odd but hugely infuriating shuffling walk as they peered at the pictures and the neat little plaques naming and explaining each one, muttering to their partners or yelling at their bored children, and if you sat in the chairs you couldn’t see the pictures to fall into them. She usually left, if it was all bustling like that, and returned much later, after the evenings fights and tears, to relax.

Here comes Anna’ now, her poor haggard face set and grim as she hurries through the grey, drizzling night, crying softly as the harsh orange of the streetlamps etch grooves under her bloodshot eyes and cast a garish highlight on her unwashed hair and painfully recent bruises. So slender you could lose her if she turned sideways, she uses the skill well, unnoticed and stealthy, skipping past the gangs of abrasive drunks like some sort of elfin creature. She is graceful, if stiff, in her movements, it seems she has something wrong with her right leg, maybe it is a twisted ankle. Whatever it is, it is hampering her usual gliding walk, turning it into more of a lopsided, limping scurry, as she heads through the all too familiar thick black door left slightly ajar, as if just for her. Her eyes glance to the left and to the right, the welcoming portraits calming her defensive hunch to a much more casual stance, her jumpy twitching at every noise stilling itself with a small slump of the shoulders. Her steps slow as she enters the quiet rooms, her uneven tapping footsteps echoing through the spaces as if to reassure her of her solitude. Even the security staff seem to see her need for peace and quiet and nothing but the light hum of the heating systems are audible. She can’t see herself, but if she could she would see her frown lifting and her features unclenching, like a recently pacified child. Even her rough, unkempt hair seems to settle under the gentle lighting and familiar atmosphere, with that all pervading aroma of drying paint and dust that had never really faded from when the pictures were first moved in. Such a homely smell, it reminds her dimly of her old classroom when she was a young child…maybe that is why she sighs quietly into the deserted room, no one but the people on the pictures looking down on her. So comfortable is this room, so welcome is the warmth, the sound of the door snicking shut doesn’t make any impact on her battered senses…she just wants so desperately to sit down safe for a while.

She collapses into a chair, more like a sofa really, and leaning awkwardly bends to unzip her right boot, as you would in a friends living room, wincing as she feels the swelling through the damp leather and letting out a tiny, breathy whimper. It felt spongy, and every touch made her stomach convulse violently and attempt to force its way up into her throat. She has had to walk some distance on the sprain and she fears for her ability to move to find somewhere dry to sleep later, as home is not an option. But the concern is even now fading from her mind as she gazes at a picture, a soothing and genteel landscape, and lets her eyes unfocus in such a way that removes the brushmarks, and makes the painting become, to her eyes, real.

But though she is alone in her thoughts, and she can see no one nearby, she is still not without company, and a tall, long-haired woman watches her from another chair a few feet behind, disturbed from her own in depth perusal by Anna’s swift entrance and now apparently interested in her newest neighbour in the tranquil surroundings. Unnaturally still now her focus has shifted, she could be a waxwork, or a doll of some kind, staring across the room. Her shrewd midnight eyes could easily have been glass, unblinking and fixed on the young woman’s injured form, and lined with slightly smudging smoky kohl, and a charcoal eye shadow, stand out from her other alternately stark white, varying grey and scorched black features, giving her the odd feel of a picture drained of all colour but one, a photo-shop portrait, making her airbrushed way through these historic masterpieces. Anyone watching this fascinating sculpture would have been startled when silently, or so, so quietly, she moves. Rising, strong limbed and smooth from her chair it appears she has made up her mind to speak to the small, slightly ragged individual, and the click of her booted feet on the polished floors is the first physical indication on her presence there. It doesn’t rouse Anna’ right away, so in depth was the girls concentration on the dreamlike state the picture she was looking at birthed in her, but the image does not seem to be at all concerned…perhaps such paintings did not rush. She falls to stillness once more, her perfectly proportioned hand resting delicately on the arm of Anna’s chosen seat, the nails on it a slick black. After a few minutes of patient waiting and a polite clearance of a trained throat, Annabelles eyes, which were still leaking the occasional crystalline tears, looks up into a smiling face of a walking painting…. And the game begins.

Jennavais had been watching the girl for a long time before she had risen tonight to approach her. Far longer than she knew, in fact, for it was Jenna’ who had sent the grizzled old guard to pick up the fallen girl and introduce her to the gallery. It was a game of hers, a risk, a chance. Sometimes it paid off and they returned over and over, becoming enraptured with the stories so carefully placed on her warm walls, and the promises of a refuge that the carefully maintained aroma promised. Jennavais never questioned the instinct to do this. She had always had the ways and the means to do exactly what her mind told her to, and she very rarely hesitated. No point in denying yourself the true pleasures in life, whatever you thought they were.

She was, she liked to think, like a cat, taken with the movement of some small bird and stalking it, not because it needs to, but because it wants to. A poised, dark, elegant thing, ready to create itself toys and amusements. Anna’ she watched now in that manner people who owned such pets were accustomed to, that intense, calculating stare, her senses picking up the girls distress, homing in on the wheeze of pain in her jagged breathing even after she had sat and rested her exhausted body, the hesitant way she tried to asses her own injuries, ensuring that she can’t run. Watching the tears running down her cheeks, another promise of weakness, another little advantage that she didn’t need, she didn’t have to wait for, but she had done anyway, with all the patience of an immortal biding its time. It was another chance, some would trust her and fall into her waiting embrace, and some would see her for what she was, some cold, uncaring predator, and scrabble mindlessly, until they escaped or she got bored of watching them, and ended the torments she so charitably bestowed. Only now had she moved to approach Annabelle, only now did she feel, with the poor lame thing trying to feel safe and protected in her gallery, that she wanted to begin her game.

In actuality, her fancies aside, Jenna’ was more like a spider, spinning her alluring webs and drawing poor, lost flies deep inside where she could keep them for her own. There was a beauty about the complexifications she created and the mazes she put her little experiments in, but this was no game to anyone but her. This was life. And she, toying with it, choosing, judging, sparing or taking, was God.