pre·cip·i·tate

noun

A substance precipitated from a solution.

"And if I should ask you what the most complicated emotion in the human experience might be, how would you answer?" Professor Lordstron addressed the class. He fiddled with the lapels on his beige tweed suit and replaced a wispy bit of thinning white-blonde hair behind his ear where it belonged. "Is there an answer?" he prompted again and looked out over the amalgam of faces that dotted the sea of chairs in front of him. Nobody seemed forthcoming. He stepped out from behind the podium. An intuition gripped him, one that came too infrequently in every professor's career: that is, there are questions that, if posed in a classroom, are always sure to be rhetorical. This was undoubtedly one of them.

And yet, instinct suggested that there could be an answer lurking out there, somewhere. He would give it a moment, then retreat to the lecture.

Gripped with eager anticipation he paced along the platform edge until a young woman put her hand up in the far left corner. "Yes," he strode over to face her.

"Perversity," she answered.

"Perversity," Professor Lordstron echoed, a small smile drawn hesitatingly across his face. "Could you explain, Miss . . .?" The girl looked at him but did not provide him with a name.

"I mean the sort of perversity that Edgar Allen Poe wrote about," she clarified in a slow, deliberate voice, "the human phenomenon to take hedonistic, ah, sadistic pleasure in causing pain and suffering to those who love them unconditionally." She spoke carefully and over pronounced each consonant with just the slightest accent, he noticed.

"And how is that more complicated than, say, anger? Or nostalgia?" She took a moment to reply, her eyes trained on her open notebook. Then:

"I assert it is complicated because it is fundamentally," she paused and made a little frustrated movement with her hand, "dissonant. I think that is what fascinated Poe - the, ah, potential to hate what you love, and how it can grow." For a moment it seemed she had just one more thing to add, but then she looked away, clearly not inclined to elaborate further. He nodded, satisfied that his intuition had been correct.

XXXXX

Apparently bolstered by the occasion, her professor carried on with the lecture in an especially spirited tone.

Even so, Noodle tuned out the rest of the hour to dwell on her own thoughts. Normally she was very engaged, but now she couldn't focus on what he was saying; it was like he was speaking English before she remembered how to hold on to the words.

The more they love you, she whispered in her head. How it can grow the more that they love you, the more you love them.

Like when light catches just right on fishing line she saw it strung between them, could even reach out and touch it sometimes.

According to 2D they were mates before Paula. Not perfect, but mates. And he'd told her once, in Beijing, that Murdoc used to be different; less . . . chronically lunatic.

At the end of the lecture Noodle made a quick exit into the crisp fall air. Fewer and fewer leaves remained on the trees, and the sky was a stark white above the hulking grey and brick buildings of University College. There along the northern edge of campus she waited perched atop a stone wall, tried to block out the chill cut of wind as she checked her watch. It would be about five minutes more before Russ arrived to pick her up, so the otherwise straightedge guitarist pulled out a rare and secret cigarette from a pack concealed in the lining of her purse.

She'd tried to ask her band mates about Murdoc once, tried to find out the right words in English. The question had been quite simple, really, posed after an incident in the studios involving an overly-medicated 2D and a precariously balanced bottle of rum.

"Russel-san, Murdoc is?" Accustomed to this frequent request, (bugger is? omelet is?), Russel chuckled knowingly while he stirred a bubbling concoction on the stove.

"He's a word I'd rather you not learn, Noodle-girl." Just as well. What could Russel know about it? Better to ask 2D anyway.

"2D-san, Murdoc is?" she repeated the request for more information down in his basement bedroom.

"'e's m'best mate, lil luv," he answered absently as he plunked at his keyboards with a cigarette between his fingers. Curious, Noodle put her palm up against the dark colored bruise over his cheekbone.

"No, Toochi. Murdoc is . . . how do you say?"

"Like, wot is 'e? Like, wot sorta bloke?" She nodded enthusiastically. "Well, erm, I dunno, don' tell 'im I said this, but, erm, 'e's sor' of a . . . well, 'e's sor' of a git."

Well, Noodle hadn't a clue what a git was, so finally she approached the man himself.

"Murdoc-san, what sort-a-bloke . . ." she watched his eyes narrow as she tried to mimic 2D's words from earlier, "you are?"

"What?"

"Or, ah, are you?" He trained his two-toned eyes on her until she felt a little nervous. "Or, you are, ah, different, yes? From me?" she tried again. A second passed, then another. Then his eyes narrowed, and widened suddenly as he straightened up out of his slouched position on the couch.

"Oh, bloody hell, Russ!" he yelled out at the top of his lungs. "Oi! Lards!" he continued to yell as he strode purposefully through the corridors in search of the big man. Noodle followed him, confused. "Fatty!" he exclaimed as he burst into the kitchen, "Russ, mate, she's all yours. Cheers," he said in a rush and tried to slip right back out the door.

"Whoa, whoa, why're you trippin' right now, just chill out man," Russ stepped in his path.

"Now listen here, I may be qualified, yeah? But I refuse to have that conversation with her."

"You're not going anywhere until you tell me what's up," Russ growled in his take-no-prisoners voice and backed Murdoc up into a chair.

"OK, OK, relax lards she just, erm," he swiveled the one red eye to cast a furtive glance in her direction before he looked away again hastily. "Sweet Satan," he grimaced, "she just fuckin' asked me about the birds and the bees, yeah?"

Dead silence.

"She what?" Noodle didn't know what Murdoc meant by birds and bees, but she definitely knew what murder looked like reflected in Russ's white eyes.

"Birds and bees, Russel-san, I do not understand." Her words of reason just made everything worse.

"WHAT DOESN'T SHE UNDERSTAND, NICCALS? WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOIN' WITH HER IN THE ROOM?" the volume was enough to drain the color from Murdoc's face.

"Russel-san," she squeaked, "only TV." A vein in the black man's temple throbbed.

"You sick son of a bitch." The bassist didn't have a chance to clarify before Russel's fist connected with his jaw. "YOU WANNA WATCH THAT SHIT, YOU DO IT BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, NOT WHERE BABY GIRL CAN SEE IT," the drummer raged and went to punch Murdoc again.

"Are you fucking kidding me? I wasn't watching porn you moron," Murdoc managed as he reached up to cradle his jaw with one hand. For a second Russ seemed to draw back a bit. Noodle rushed over and put her little hands over his big fist.

By then all the noise had drawn 2D out of the woodwork and up to the kitchen where he poked his head in through the cracked door.

"Fam-ily mee'ing?"

Noodle had to smile at the memory.

Once it was all worked out Murdoc wasn't the least bit embarrassed, of course. His mind was always way down deep in the filthiest of gutters where shame was obsolete.

"What am I? I'm a powerful source of spiritual essence made flesh, Noodle-girl," he'd answered matter-of-factly.

Weren't they all.

She wasn't too disappointed. Besides, just a year later she had enough language skills to find out what she really wanted to know on her own, anyway. By then things had reached a frightening cataclysm, and that's when she'd come across a collection of Poe's short stories on one of her covert missions into Murdoc's Winnebago.

Smoke streamed seamless grey into the darkening sky. Although cigarettes were . . . distasteful to her, there were certain occasions which begged relief. Now seemed one of them - for reasons too many and too complex to enumerate - and as Pazuzu's protection waned she knew it would only get worse.

Right on time she caught the roar of the Geep as it accelerated at a distant stoplight. Heart heavy with foreboding, Noodle hopped down to chuck her butt in the bin at the corner.

As evening closed its jaws around the dreary city Noodle clenched her teeth and collected herself in verse.

Night advances,
the moon glows and falls into the ocean.
The black dragon jewel you have been searching for
is everywhere.