When Yuri limped back home in the evening, her parents didn't seem the least bit surprised. "Had a good day today, Yuri?" Yuri paused, looked up, tried to speak and failed miserably. She wished she could put into the customary words what she had gone through today. She wanted to smile, giggle, whine and simper like any ordinary girl. She wanted to complain about her chemistry test, worry aloud about her absent friends, shiver at the thought of more fencing matches and cheer on the start of the weekend. But... she simply couldn't today. Somewhere between the continued disappearance of her best friends coupled with the problem of their last... meetings, the slight niggling strangeness of Amy's over enthusiasm, the dour, strangely lackluster attempts at assassination by Yasuko and Craig, her happy-go-wai-wai attitude had completely deserted her. Somehow, even the oasis of her home didn't help any. Looking at her parents, her sweet mother with that lovely soap bubble of yellow hair and her gentle father with his gaping socket of darkness, she simply couldn't say how she truly felt. Yuri didn't want to worry them over such an uneventful day. After all she had put them through with death duels and battles beyond the grave, she felt she owed them one day of peace in an otherwise too-eventful week. Certainly she would not go on her knees like a child clamoring for a kiss, or gnash her teeth on the newfound cruelty of life. She didn't think her parents would appreciate her cursing anyway. So she simply cast her eyes down to avoid their welcoming faces. "Sure, mom," she whispered. "You could say that." ~ ~ ~ Dark Heart High Netherworlds Educational Institution For The Universal Propagation of Evil Created by the Neatest and Sweetest Mads The Magnificent Bastard Who Is Still Too Good for Me This Travesty Molded by: Dolitt Chapter 21: Insinuations! ~ ~ ~ For the first time in her entire life, Amy Angeleye was in love. It was a rampant emotion that was remarkable not so much for its intensity or its subject as it was for the strangeness of its heir. Those few on heaven and earth and otherwise with the third eye are cursed to a bitter sliver of life. Poets may boast of an artistic sensibility, but that was nothing compared to the sensitivity forced upon a tricylops. For as long as she could remember, Amy, with her simple, noble-winged seraphim sight, had seen a world of simple marionettes twirling through a decaying stage. Simple creatures preprogrammed to play their little games and punch their little heads. Incapable of doing anything more, they twirled through life in a daze, pretending somehow that each and every one of their number was somehow vital, important. This was how her life was to have gone forever, simply shifting through the muddy silts of humanity and non-humanity, buffeted by a wave of twirling nymphets whose sole goal in life was to blast the bad guys out of existence and bed avatars with disturbing pedophilic tendencies. But then she had met Yuri and a madness that had shaken all the sense from her body formed, from a first meeting as guided by presentiments as the tides. All it had taken was one look at the willowy miracle, just one mental tally that had set the bright slant of brilliant eyes against the feline slenderness of a cheerful face. One bare glance at a beautiful nose shadowing a bright mouth half-hidden in the obscuring daylight had caused a copse of oranges to spontaneously bud in the barren field beneath her left breast. Any little sense she had ever claimed had frozen from the moment she had looked into those chlorophyll corneas colored by that delicate, deceptive light. Haunted by the elusive, shifty, soul-shattering, insidious grace that caused Yuri to sparkle and shimmer in ways society would never acknowledge, she had vowed to search the world over for her. The world had turned out to be a smaller place than previously expected. Barely a day had gone by before she had found her toiling away in that great phallic symbol of nether worldly evil, Dark Heart High. Normally she would have balked and ran tail between legs from such an immense collection of dark forces, but her desire knew no bounds and she ran towards love's dangers... ... and into a series of unpleasant events she would give a great deal not to repeat or even think of anymore. But the more important issue at hand was that Yuri had saved her. That Yuri had cared. That Yuri had rushed down to be with her fallen form, allowing Amy to see the marks on her face and the crimson in her hair. That she had knelt, gasped at Amy's wounds despite the severity of her own, laid one cool, fragrant, fae-queen finger on Amy's burned cheek and promised her all would be well. Then Amy had looked at her, really looked as though it was the first and last moment of her life, and knew as clearly as she knew that she was to die that she loved Yuri more than anything even her eyes had ever seen or imagined on earth, or hoped for anywhere else. That was why she loitered now, a vulnerable figure standing in a courtyard that even the cicadas had fled out of exquisite self- preservation. It was more than just foolishness that kept her within the Mikagami gates, however. She would not leave Yuri for a moment. There were so many who wanted parts of her. Yuri had rescued and protected her once, and the cavalier spirit that boiled within cried for a protective shell in return. That was why, after fighting through the usual threnody of minor demons (Yuri's father had been surprisingly lenient after the first day-- Amy knew charming the Mrs. would help) she had finally found her way to her Juliet's balcony. The ague of her marrow knew Yuri would come and each drop of blood in her body had eyes that looked upwards in wait. Amy could not know how much time has lapsed. Seconds and hours and years, if it came down to that, were beyond her further knowledge. She was ready to linger forever, an echo of Echo waiting for the wind. But despite her resolve, clock hands moved somewhere within that stone tower, the rain around her buzzed down to a drizzle, the cold snapped her skirt back into her legs and soon a light hit the balcony just so. Framed in white heat between veined marble and knotted sky, Yuri seemed a life size portrait. She had discarded her usual, dimming dress and wore a gown that placed cotton near shuddering nape and a blue bear on her neck. Her skin was cool by starlight, her features sweet and soft, her hair a most becoming autumnal shade. She still looked weary, as though she had been through the same gamut Amy had just run, but that sight caused the truest happiness Amy had ever experienced. She stared into the absence before her, her face fixed in that curious mixture of childish dreaminess and eerie vulgarity that Amy half-hated, half-adored. Her eyes stuttered in their appraisal of the suitor before her and her lips pursed into the parody of a pucker. But only a moment went towards that queer expression of mingled sadness and a deep-set desire for something even seraphim eyes could not tell. In another moment, she was back to the self that Amy particularly wished. "Do you want to come in?" she asked, and her voice was the moan of doves in immemorial elms and murmuring of innumerable bees. Her right hand arched carelessly over the stone to face Amy, the ink-stained fingers open to caresses, the palm bare to a kiss. As she tiptoed up to look over the fashioned rise, her face created a swaying auroral light all its own. Amy watched the blaze set by Yuri grow, spreading beyond the initial drop to encompass the entire garden set before her. And it was as though she was the spark in a globe of glass, the globe of glass as if it were a shining star, lit from a blessed olive tree neither of the East nor of the West, its light nearly luminous even if no human touch pressed it. And her own heart was merely a bead of oil, waiting for that unearthly fire. After all, light was good from whatever lamp it came. "If you don't have any place to sleep," the other began again, hesitant to intrude on Amy's sudden revery, "you're welcome here." Offer given, she turned the comely head of curls away. Frail, honey-hued shoulders heaved as though smitten and downy limbs modestly covered the shadowed chest. She held the infernal red of an under lip between ivory teeth, and Amy's heart was reinvented as snow between crimson skin. She knew then she could throw herself at Yuri's feet, kiss as lovers throughout the ages have always kissed, confess all right now and Yuri would take her adoration as it was meant-- not as friendship or tenderness or mere desire but a declaration of evergreen need. But that was neither here nor there. She murmur red a thank you some where and without a second thought held up that wild bouquet she had picked and offered it as though it were a blood gem. Dandelions, milkweed, thistles, cotton weeds, and Ann's lace nestled around her hands as though a topiary had grown spontaneously from cracked cuticles and filthy skin. "This is for you," she shouted to the girl who stood above her, knowing she would give more than weeds and knowing all she had would be cherished. And it was taken as Amy had meant it to be; Yuri's face opened for her while Yuri's mouth smiled, Yuri's neck bent low while Yuri's eyes fluttered down to meet her gaze and call out heartfelt thanks. After it was over and she had withdrawn, Amy gently lifted herself from her knees and began stumbling on shaky legs towards her. ~ ~ ~ The other one, the one called Balabalalde, is the one who matters. Though I am the one who walks with a fallen child through the uncertain streets, he is the one they see. They know of Balabalalde from the mail and see his name from the school board or in the list of freshman in the yearbook; there is no one way for me. He exists in a fixed, physical way and that is all that matters. I like the feel of rubber under my feet, my retainer's sighs as I rock her to sleep, the undressing of a bandage and the prose of Ellison; he shares these preferences but in a frigid way that turns true love into satire. We do not have a hostile relationship though I despise him; I live, am allowed to peer out through threads, so that what little sentience Balabalalde has exists, and the smallest of his significant actions justifies me. He has achieved power and respect in his narrow sphere, but even his simplistic glories cannot help me, for all their petty worth. Mere bitterness has nothing to do with it; I will perish soon and the only remnants that will remain will exist within him. Little by little, I am giving over everything to him, so that sometime he can by his own power walk and move and blink. I am quite aware of his perverse custom of freezing out the outside world and letting nothing else in. Nabokov knew all things long to keep all in their status; the lover wants the beloved the same and the exile the homeland forever in past present. I still remain in Balabalalde, not myself (if it is true that I am someone entirely else), but I see less myself in his actions than the girl-child or his enticing beloved. Little of me remains; he is killing me. Before, I tried to free myself from him and went from that poisonous swamp of bandages to the times with Yuri and her lips, but those moments belong to Balabalalde now and I shall have to caress other abstracts. My life is in free falling abandon and I lose every attribute and every feeling belongs to restriction, or to him. I do not know which of us will tell her of this. ~ ~ ~ Ki had always been a great believer of fate but the hands it had dealt him of late had been most disturbing. All his life had been dictated by his fated plan. Every action he had done ever since his training had been instigated to create allies, denigrate enemies, gain enough clout to start on his goals. But everything now askew, tilted at angles Ki had never anticipated. Yasuko was a tentative ally, yielding only to carnal of actions. Craig was a bumbling idiot who, on the rare occasions he acted, only inconvenienced him. Principal Amakusa was more formidable than he had planned. Balabalalde was a nuisance and a rival even mercenaries could not eradicate. Leilei was an unsuitable wild card. And Yuri-- Yuri. Her name was a murmur of two consonants trip-trapping over another, yet the simple pronunciation of her title brought forth memories both touching and troubling. There was a faye Yuri wielding a sword of purity; a graceful Yuri twirling to the breeze in borrowed green; there was a Yuri in a shining row of armor, crimson on her face and neck and a whispered plea beading on her lip; and there was a most beloved Yuri of all, in the glory of dark raiment and eloquent eyes, smiling at him from every landscape and dream light. Which Yuri was the real Yuri? Did the one he want even exist? He had seen her only a half dozen times before she began to figure into his plans and from there his sightings encompassed a dozen more abstract glances at her form and somewhere along the way of her cheerful hello's and goodbye's he had suddenly plunged madly, clumsily, shamefully, agonizingly into emotions he thought had been exorcized forever. Would he ever be allowed to be free of this? She had infected him so there was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do, that would be free of the weight of her phantom eyes. So much of his ambitions concerning the eventual take-over of Dark Heart High had to do with her. She was to be bait, she was to be a soldier, she was to be a pawn and nothing more. Since when had Yuri been so elevated? What had she done to distinguish her from the deluge that overflowed from the gutters of Dark Heart High? What sort of power did she truly yield? He feared for what damage she could inflict on his plans. But even more than that, he feared for what she could do to him. "You're thinking about her again." Startled in the midst of his thoughts, he quickly turned his head, then relaxed as he realized the cause. The foreign falsetto next to him was sterile through familiarity and her breath, though acid as it snaked through his hair, was nothing to fear. Her very mudanity rendered her safe in a way Yuri could never be. Unfortunately, he sighed, this also had the side effect of rendering his companion rather boring. His attraction to her flesh had not waned but he was less than titillated by her paranoid, ranting speech. Especially not about the topic he so desperately wanted to escape. Wishing her silence, Ki didn't open his eyes, not to acknowledge her words or the sudden burning pain on his bare back where a moment before the temptress had let dangerous fingers lie. Nor did he move when her lustrously bruising mouth came up to rest against his, to hold his dry lips in a kiss that was the height of voluptuous anticipation and empty sensibility. He wanted to writhe against the flattering molding of forward flesh and force the thoughts away; he wanted her to leave him and his fantasies of a connection deeper than the symbiotic be. He wanted simply to drift into a silent oblivion and be dead to all else. Finally, he buried his head into a smothering pillow and tried not to scream. 'I don't care what you do to me,' he thought. 'Just let me hold my peace.' Such an indecisive show of indifference was never a barrier to true lust. Ki had been foolish to think otherwise. She did not give up then, merely anchored his slender body closer to the dazzling arcs of her flesh. He could feel the glancing points of their bodies warm to each other, and all at once the cells buried in his skin were alive again with need. But still his eyes avoided her needy gaze. He had no desire to ever again peer into a face without those feline cheekbones and that secret smile. Likewise, Ki also wanted to forget the burnished skin and bronzed hair and long-lashed eyes. Everything he wanted was a contradiction, and he could sort nothing out. He shuddered softly, giving the night's entertainment limp limbs to mold as needed. He allowed her to do as she wished, wanting only to erase the picture of that singular beloved from his mind. All he wanted was a distraction, and this one in silence was adequate indeed. From this angle, all he could see was the slick globe of a shadowed head and a cross section of glimmering skin that spanned from a pale shoulder to a sharp wrist. Lying here, with his arms around a simple tool to avoid tabulating every individual curl that ringed another's head, was fine, just fine. As long as her replacement would keep him sated and insensible to the possibilities afforded by frail flesh and verdant eyes, all would be right. But of course, Yasuko had to break the silence. "Every since you got to high school, you've been hung over that tramp." His senses were too sharp from years of training but he tried to lock the sound of her voice away and go back holding her easier form. To that dream kingdom where eyes he dared not meet in dreams would never hope to linger. "Every since I got to Dark Heart High, it's been all about that hussy's life. Does everybody's life have to revolve around the girl?" That was her magic, her genius. To make everything go her way. To make everyone crave her finger in their pie. He envied her in that, sometimes. "Miserable bastard. Dirt bag. Pompous prick. Ass. What, have you suddenly lost the ability to talk? Mother of Satan, you knew enough sweet words earlier. Answer me." He wished she would be still, be silent, and let him luxuriate in that heavy orchid like rest without conscious voice. Already, the languorous contentment of the evening was fleeing with furious wings. "Nothing's been working for you so far, though, has it? For all your scheming, you still haven't gotten her in the sack, huh? In fact, I heard Balabalalde's been a bit busier with her. Never thought he'd ever get any action. But with you as choice B, I guess she was right." Oh yes, Bala. A thorn in his side that was all the more aggravating because it was so improbable. Who knew Mummy-boy would make such ardent opposition? And such a tenacious one as well... he had thought the mercenaries money well spent at the time but apparently not. Ah well, if they didn't take care of boy, his cousin's ambush surely could not fail. "I don't even know why I care so much." A shift, a sigh. "I don't know why *you* care so much." Perhaps that was her hands groping at his hair. "I don't know when it is we started falling into these gadawful patterns." Perhaps those were her wet eyes at his throat. "I don't even know why I'm here." Her arms bent awkwardly around him. Had he known her less, he might have thought her upset. "I don't know much, do I, Ki?" She laughed loud and hard into the smoke. An enchanted smile warmed his face, though it was a deception no greater than what he normally practiced. In his bitter way, he was pleased to see that Yasuko was less than pleased at the sudden shift. "What the hell are you smiling at?!" Ki refused to wince or shift from his comfortable slouch as her voice hit the plateau of sound usually reserved for dog whistles and beauty contestants. His patience, however, thinning at an alarming rate. "Quiet. No wonder the only one that wants in on you is a stiff." The sudden absence of her high pitched voice was proof enough of the hurt implicit there. But he was too weary now even to keep up the pretense of comradery he had indulged her with earlier. There was a pause, then her panting breath withdrew from the arched muscles of his neck. Her palm, previously occupied in idle stroking, quit the tender motion. Ki found himself missing the intimacy. Even if it was false, it had been tangible, something he could grasp, savor, even break. "You know, I'm starting to feel sorry for little Yuri. Between your affection and Bala's attention, she'll die faster than even I can hope for." He stilled suddenly. So close to him, she could not mistake the noise of veins popping, the sudden lack of breath. Eyes still locked on the absence of image within his eyelids, he finally spoke, allowing Yasuko the uneasy victory of his rage. "Don't say her name," he murmured, and his voice held none of the gentle inflection he usually willed into it. "Don't you dare breath that word again." Violet eyes met empty black across a cramped woolen spread and she trembled as she realized just how close those hands that had inspired so much pleasure were to her vulnerable neck. Then he whispered, "Get up and get dressed and get out of here." In the pale aureola of light that rose from the window, her snowy neck shifted and her face was a white hollow without form, chrome, individual beauty. There was nothing there to distinguish her from all the other forms he had indulged in. Had his nature been gentler or kinder or wiser still, he might have pitied her, knowing all there was to Yasuko was a charm that quickly faded. But his heart had been ripped out years before and what little emotion was left had already been given. She spent the next few minutes occupied and for a while a gulf of unrippled silence froze the intimate quarters. He lounged in bed for a while, wondering why Yasuko's body could no longer give him even transient pleasure and wishing for a cigarette. At the end point, the half-dressed husk stood in the doorway and held out a slender wrist, as if in prayer. Weary of her theatrics, Ki waited for a last, soul-sucking embrace. But Yasuko's parting gift probed harder than that. "Sure, lover. No use keeping Romeo from his damn Juliet." And then the little bitch laughed. His eyes snapped wide open and Ki instinctively raised one dextrous hand to seize a pale shoulder. A single, fragile, honey-hued shoulder weighted down by soft brown hair. But neither she nor Yasuko lingered there. ~ ~ ~ A Note of Explanation: We begin, then, with the strange case of. A fanatic for the written arts, she burst a short time back into the view of the "ImproFanfic" community. A reader with a history of cowering in the darkness, she finally made the point of coming into the light. Unfortunately, what would otherwise be a laudable motion become an occasion of horror as she entered a notoriously awful selection for a "dark" yet humorous series-- Dark Heart High. With the (perhaps fatal) encouragement of the infinitely patient Lawrence Chu and the gallant help of the two known as Mads and Brian Stricklin, she again took fingers to keyboard in an effort to redeem herself in the eyes of strangers she had well known in peace. The result sits before you, but while it lacks the insidious undertones of the original, it blazes with a low key perversity that still subverts the tone, mood and depth of the original Dark Heart High. Our only consolation in the community is that the penner of this travesty is dead. The author herself is not the problem: you may feel safe to never worry about her again. The bitter and unphotogenic gal expired (computer, lightning) in a freak accident. She is erased and you will never hear of or from her again. But she has not left without final victims. Even the courageous proofreaders (Mads, our great Father, and gentle, noble- hearted Brian Stricklin) may no longer be fully there. The human mind cannot, after all, be subjected to this for such arduous points in time without a fissure in the cranium, somewhere. But no more on that meaningless, personal tangent. It is the noxious work that lingers with us still that will adversely affect us all. Dolitt's world is a dark world, one of overt evil, especially of the *sexual* and *romantic* variation. She shows us a universe of petty cruelties that goes beyond the humor of nonsense names copulated with absurd, amusing actions. She shows us such debased versions of Ki, Balabalalde, Amy, Yuri and Yasuko it is a wonder we have not staked her again. Amy Angeleye has the distinction to have been written in as the most cruelly betrayed creatures in this collection. Noble-eyed and simple- minded, she seeks the forbidden love that surely future authors would never give. She has come, in short, too late and of the wrong gender to compete in the three pointed star held between Yuri, Bala, and Ki. Her Juliet will never drop a kiss upon that pallid brow, despite the hopes raised. Ki has been most cruelly used in this chapter. He becomes less an assassin and more a manipulating leech. He despairs of ever achieving his plans and actually uses another in a callous fashion (Yasuko, in a pathetic and diminished role) we may actually despise as permanent. Previous to this point, plans in Dark Heart High were rather more humorous, unrealistic hijinks. Even the successful plan to kill Yuri, orchestrated by Yasuko and Craig, was eventually reversed by Amakusa (and let us give thanks HE has not been slandered again.) But Ki's abuse of Yasuko's pathetic willingness in order to forget Yuri plumbs depravity never before seen in this forum. People have been killed before in Dark Heart High; no one bats an eyelid. Amakusa talks of seducing and using a minor; it raises warning signals every where. It cues forth that old question: Is sexual violence really worse than ordinary violence-- even murder? In the thought of our society, the answer is a yes. Balabalalde, strong and silent love interest of Yuri's eventual destiny (and we know for all their *passion* and what have you, the more complex Amy and Ki could never win) is given the mismatched thoughts and sensibilities of a scholar emeritus. Though we have always known a special something lurks beneath that swamp of white gauze, it should never have been this intellectual. Ideally, it should be some sort of hidden, *physical* power-- something to maim and bruise and beat and later exploit in a comic way. God only knows how future authors will resume the status quo. And Yuri herself has been misused. From the stand point of the basic "canon," she is an idealized innocent in the "giggling school girl" vein in the world of a rather ineffectual, stylized evil. But she is less than completely ignorant about the current circumstances. She invites Amy in despite the niggling hints of her infatuation, she realizes that something has been brewing about Craig and Yasuko is motivated by more than past "insults." But more than that, Yuri is finally given the concrete love of several people in this chapter and rejects it. As traditional, she should be planning wedding bells after her kiss with Bala. Having slight reservations and thoughts for other paramours is untraditional. Indeed, this theme of love as incompleteness is prevalent throughout, and Dolitt makes the mistake of believing we will read platitudes on this theme rather than an actual story line. Nothing much happens throughout: Yuri goes home, Amy goes to Yuri's home, Bala gropes his way back home, Ki takes Yasuko home. The author tries to substitute the normal slapstick comedy for deep, psychological thought and fails. Love here is another form of heartlessness and this plays out enough in life; we do not need it in our escapist fiction. Dolitt is a moral monster then, a poisoned apple amidst an orchard of the pure or merely rotted ones that are the usual ImproFanfic suspects. What other label is there for one relishes psychological pain and feels we must condone her deviant tastes? Yet, what tenderness has shaped all this! With such careful language and cracked bits of poetry has she chosen to give us the nighttime tides of Yuri's hair, or the delicate symmetry of a succubus' hiss. Though the perversity is never far, a tragic sense of love for the story lingers. Dolitt wanted this canonical acceptance so deeply, with such heart-felt fervor, it is almost a shame she fumbled with it so artlessly, and with such little wit. Introducing high literature and tragic dimensions into such a sweet, humorous world is always a mistake. Perhaps that is the real tragedy of the ImproFanfic writer: the characters you writ in are only your darlings for so long, and even then they carry the tradition of a jagged and proportions inheritance. You can make them dance to your tune, sing your lyrics, carry your song for a short amount of time, but then they go back into the collective. And sometimes, due to your own ineptitude or the prevailing attitudes, you are not allowed that. That author of that piece failed to grasp the beauty and simplicity of that concept. This is a place, then, that is darker than any our series has entered before. It is only populated by the nonexistent, the perished and the very nearly so (Mads and Stricklin are dead in spirit, even if their bodies remains.) It is, finally, a world that is darker than even the shadowy glimpses of evil demonstrated by the faculty, alumna and inhabitants of Dark Heart High. And that is why we fear it and wish it destroyed. There is only two options left for this then: leave it out or include it. No more rewrites. No more postponement dates. The girl is dead and this work is over. Will you accept this darker view or remain the traditionalist? I await your answer, post-haste. Titian Adoltanz A note on pilfering: Yuri's tonal voice is courtesy of Lord Tennyson. Yuri's phantom shoulders, Yuri's soul-shattering charm, Amy's cherubic eyes and declaration of everlasting love, and the breakdown of Yuri's name have all been inspired by various degrees of Vladimir Nabokov. The globe-light simile was adapted from the Islamic holy book, the Koran. Bala's monologue gains its structure from "Borges and I" from that serpentine favorite, Borges. Carl Jung came up with the original version of the last few, mythic lines. And broad, obvious allusions to Shakespeare and Nabokov abound, again and again and again, Amen. ~ ~ ~ Somewhere there was a Beast, a Queen, a King, a Weeping Myrtle, a Prison and a Palace that was one and the same, and three children searching for the same beloved in a cruel and fragrant darkness. But though it concerned her deeply, the girl in question knew nothing of this, nor did she very much care. Yuri Mikagami merely lay in the twilight, wide-eyed on a sacrosanct bed, watching the minutes of her clock stumble towards the dawn of another dark day.