Author's Notes: This was waaaay too delayed. I'm been quite busy recently and my muse sorta...died. There's no real plot in this chapter yet; it's an attempt to introduce the main players in this story - except for Erik. No, wait, don't click on the Back button! Noooo, come back!
Anyway, here it is. Hope it's not too bad.
Chapter Two: Life As She Knew It
Everybody favours a different time of day. Morning, for the fresh scents, the sense of beginning. Afternoon for quiet, undisturbed relaxation. Night for its mysterious allure.
When I was a little girl, morning was the time of day I was happiest. I had the same bounce and zest for life most children have at that age. Day to day living was an impossibly happy whirl of loving and laughing; the happy memories all bundled into one.
After the diagnoses, I sat outside to watch the sunset every evening.
It is so much more than a blend of colours. Every night, when the sky is dyed blood red and the earth is just a stretch of blackness, magic happens. Light meets darkness, warmth merges with cold, life mixes with death.
I was the horizon. Calm and indifferent and screaming inside, cold to the touch and filled with heat, tainted with knowledge and innocent. The girl I was and the woman I became.
But Little Lotte was no more than a faint, fading imprint of what she had been, a mere spectre, laughing at me as she swam in and out of my dreams.
I sometimes dreamt that I was standing on a bridge, leaning against the sturdy railing, looking down at the water that rushes past. Downstream, always downstream. The river rushed forwards and away from me, soft glimmers of light catching the surface and winking up at me. I watched the river until I remembered and loved every ripple, every shape on the swirling pattern of what could have passed for molten glass. Burning and icy. Sane madness.
I never jumped. Neither did I move away from the bridge, into the dark streets beyond.
I sit and watch the sun rise, and I can remember.
"Christine."
"Christine. Wake up."
The two voices were preceded be a soft mewing that told me exactly what to expect. With a moan, I buried my face in the soft, satisfyingly warm material of the pillow. So downy and fragile like the feathers it was filled with, yet absolutely real.
Of course, anything could be unreal, but I doubted I'd sink so low as to have a dream pillow.
Something very warm and covered in fur brushed my cheek insistently and meowed loudly, so loudly that I could almost feel the sound vibrate through the air. The silvery-grey cat stuck out a rough pink tongue and licked the tip of my nose. Almost involuntarily, I shuddered and flinched away.
Wrong move.
The two women standing in the doorway had very different reactions to my apparently inexplicable motion. Poor Mama Valerius gave an almost inaudible sniffle; I could almost feel her bottom lip beginning to tremble in early panic. The cool and collected looking woman just behind Mama leant forward to study me as if I were an extremely interesting bug.
"Dr Krause." I could already feel my muscles stiffening – my natural reaction to her presence, which was almost always unwelcome. "I wasn't expecting you this early…I would've dressed." When she said nothing, watching me closely with those little beady eyes of hers, I shrank into a smaller ball under the covers. It was extremely difficult to maintain eye contact with the washed, brushed and suited figure of Vera Krause when dressed only in an old pair of pyjamas.
"Chri-istine," I could already hear the anxious tremor in Mama's voice as she scuttled into the room, Dr. Krause's sophisticated heels clicking after her, "Christine…I booked an appointment with Dr. Krause when I heard you talking last night. Not that I was listening on purpose, but I was afraid that something had gone wrong with the pills."
Poor Mama, it was just like her to stammer like that. She'd never want me to think that she was intruding on my privacy; she'd tried to make things completely normal for me. She was afraid for me, and no one can have any idea how relieved I was to know that.
After Father died, I was quite certain that that was it, for all I cared. He had been my world. He was my friend, mother, brother, sister; at his funeral they buried much more than a father. Everyone on earth knows the feeling of loss, but how many people know what it feels like to lose everything?
I was certain, quite certain, that my dad had been the only person in the world to care for me at all.
But Mama did too. I supposed that was the reason she watched me take my pills, the reason for Dr. Krause and long therapy sessions and frequent hospital visits, and everything else I secretly considered torture. But at least I loved my torturer.
Anyway, where was I?
Ah, yes.
Dr. Krause was always wary approaching me, as if schizophrenia was highly contagious. She had a peculiar way of walking across my bedroom, slow deliberate steps, sinking first her toe, then her pointy heel gingerly into the carpet.
"So, Christine," she said in her most plastic-sounding cheery voice, "How have you been feeling? Have you been taking your medication? I trust that Mrs. Valerius has been looking after you." She stood two feet away from my bed, smiling brightly down at my pillows.
I mumbled something about being perfectly fine, thanks very much.
"Speak up, Christine. I can't hear" – she motioned to her ear – "you." With her other hand, she pointed at the bed.
"I'm fine, thanks," I said quietly, looking anywhere but her face, "Yes, I've been taking my medication, and Ma- Mrs. Valerius looks after me very well."
The infrequent visits from Dr. Krause were not short, comfortable affairs beginning with 'how are you feeling today, Christine?' and ending thirty minutes later. The 'sessions' were long and tedious affairs in which the kindly doctor dissected every minute portion of my life, from my first thought in the morning to my last love affair. My personal life was taken out like a book and studied far more closely than I would've liked.
The clearest childhood memory I have, even now, is not of an event, a time, or a place, but of an object – the large black chair in Mama's study. Even now, years after it was thrown out, I could tell you in detail the exact position of every crack in the worn leather, the soft padding that moulded itself to the body of whoever occupied the chair, the strange, the exact flavour of the strange, sharp smell that only leather possesses.
Just as clearly, I can recall the long hours I spent sitting in the chair opposite the steely-eyed Dr. Krause, discussing whether or not I was steadily deteriorating. My opinions on this had been firmly to the contrary, but she very obviously had other views. She particularly relished dragging out her words in long 'ums' and 'ers', while poor Mama quivered in fright and pent up tension in the seat beside her, lest the therapist should say the condemning words.
I was allowed outside, free to ramble about at my leisure, but I rarely did. It was probably a lack of confidence that prevented me, rather than any distaste of human beings. Being schizophrenic makes you different you see, and although it wasn't clearly written all over my face, I couldn't ignore that fact. It was, Dr Krause instructed me, a small mercy that my condition did not make itself obvious to other people. I was to take advantage of this at every possible opportunity, as it was my only chance at a life in normal society.
Normal society. The world beyond. I loved it so much that I sat beside my window from dawn till dusk, watching it go by. A whirl of colour. A scattering of stars. An explosion of fireworks. Laughing voices, shouting voices, crying voices, tuning in, tuning out, like a faulty radio. How can I describe my feelings as I sat and watched life speed past me, rough and rude and rowdy, and unutterably dear? I sat and I traced patterns in the mist my breath made on my bedroom window, and I stared, like a child starved of sweets and toys.
Although in the physical world the front door was wide open to me and I might come and go as I pleased, the door of my mind was firmly barred and locked against what lay outside the confines of Mama Valerius' loving care, the key was long lost, thrown away somewhere. Whereever I was, the thin, misted pane of glass was always between myself and my surroundings. Papa had locked me in for my own safety, had gone out without coming back, taking the secrets of escape away with him. In vain I called for him to let me out.
Everyone in my world made vast and hopeless attempts to understand me. I realised, for the first time, how frustrating good intentions could be. Dr. Krause with her pompous airs, Mama Valerius with her good-natured flutterings and motherly anxiety – all of them just trying to comfort me, but with the wrong words.
Everyone, that is, except for Meg Giry.
Marguerite Giry was the daughter of Antoinette Giry, an old friend of Mama's, and my 'appointed companion'. The idea was Dr. Krause's, and I imagine that I am still in debt to her for providing the best friend I have ever had. Meg would arrive every Saturday morning, bright and blonde and bubbly, almost-but-not-quite ditzy, and provide me with a day of her friendly, never-ceasing chatter and companionship. It was the last trait that I liked most about her, surprisingly enough. She was like a breath of fresh air for someone accustomed to wary faces and tense attitudes. At first I assumed that she was unaware of my illness, but as the months passed I realised that she'd have to be deaf and blind or incredibly slow, not to have guessed – if she hadn't been told in the first place.
And the fact that I knew that she really knew about me was what cemented our relationship. We became adopted sisters, as she put it, though I fear we were a mismatched pair. She would dazzle me with her rapid conversation, her topics jumping quickly from what had happened at her school prom to the latest fashions on the catwalk to her struggles to produce a suitable topic for a recently set essay, while I sat and listened for the sake of listening.
Author's Notes: Eeeeep. I made Meg seem like a ditz. Oh dear. I promise that she'll given more depth as the story goes on. I only realised my mistake after I wrote the chapter and it's really late, so I'll correct it in later writing. I wanted to do a Christine/Meg friendship scence, anyway.
Like it?
Hate it?
Really hate it?
Tell me in a review!