Firestarter

You left a fire down inside of me, wild and unattended, to burn hot and alone until the embers die and the smokes fade, along with any hope of a love like ours again. Once warm but now toxic, you’re all that this smoldering heart knew. The firestarter. The burning desire. The reason I will never love again.

The Concert Pianist.

Backstage there is a nervousness that cascades like sweat, his eyebrows - they’re soaked with the adoration of the many, but the knowing of the few. Who will he allow to slip into the undertow of his beautiful mind? There are music notes in constant collision, they sooth his aching bones, so brittle from years of stage diving, and would-be heart-strung erosion. Who is he calling out to? 

Her fingers, they dance, and prance along the meadows of his piano keys. - Light/Dark. Light/Dark. - Opposite’s attract, and in this case her fingers are have no intention of coming back, the piano strings - they roar with furious anger, and the vengeance of a hundred red-headed step children, so mercilessly locked under the stairs. There is music suffocating the air, and if you don’t stop - if you don’t look, and listen, well let me tell you my dear…you will be lost in the constant hustle, and bustle of this monotone shuffle.

Youth, well it brought tender emotions, a swing band, and pretty girl hanging by the arm of his hand, hair so slicked back and his shoes, she loved to use them as little mirrors to smear her ruby red lipstick about her pretty pastel face. There is applause in the air tonight, and they have no way of knowing that this is his final fight. The title is up for grabs, and he’s fully intent to bow out, and live by the land. - Light/Dark. Light/Dark…Light…Dark. - His fingers project something new, and he casts his gaze into the darkness, but who…who is he calling out to?

Just to the right of center stage, there she stands, with the light shinning just past her aged, wrinkled hands. The pretty pastel girl he once knew, her lips, well they aren’t ruby red anymore, it’s no matter, whatever color she wears - it’s the best. She waits for him, until his time is through, as he finishes his swan song, he takes his bow, and walks off to a thunderous haze. He takes her hand, hearts linked together by their gold dust wedding bands. Their age has finally met the stage, as the clouds burst, they know they can finally rest their weary heads, they no longer need to expect the worst.

Kinkade

A hum filled the Langham’s grand ballroom, as its vaulted chambers filled with a sea of influential figures, who hailed from all variety of fields. They had flocked here for a charity benefit held by Beatrice Steele, an esteemed socialite whose humanitarian agenda was even less genuine than the altruism every guest boasted of.

Schubert felt like a vegan locked in a slaughterhouse. The crowd grunted and cawed, heaving in self-important chatter as they carved their clumsy knives. For the evening was rife with backstabbing deceit, and so clear was this to Schubert that they may as well have all been forming queues to disembowel one another, right there on the ballroom floor. He heard his name and, wilting inside, turned to face his harasser. It happened to be the voraciously enterprising Felicity Mire. She had recently inherited her father’s wealth, a fact that was yet to sink in, as evident by the smile stretched painfully across her cheeks.

“Mr. Fearfield, how are you? So wonderful to meet with you in happier climes!” The words fell from her mouth in a mix of respect and embarrassment, for Schubert detected the wavering masque that covered her still-tender grievance. The funeral had been a farcical affair. One final embarrassment for Malcolm, one final degrading that followed the months of familial warfare preceding his end. This greedy wench probably ushered poor Malcolm off even quicker, he thought. A rogue journalist had infiltrated the reception, sparking Felicity’s urge to wield her newly-ordained power. Her raucous act had failed, and she had been unaware of the scandalous atom bomb that graced the writer’s memory stick. Seconds later, pictures of her bodily ambition had begun flashing across the wall, overlapping portraits of her grinning father.

“The pleasure is mine, Felicity! If only Malcolm could see you now, his little girl, at the helm of his ship! A veritable Mire, for certain!” He beamed at her, with feeble hope that just one sliver of his impeccable conduct might contribute to her immature acumen.
“He always spoke highly of you, Mr. Fearfield. Right to the end.”
“Please, please! Call me Schubert.” She continued to talk, spurred on by new familiarity, but Schubert’s concentration was diverted by a most unmistakeable leer, a look of pure lechery owned by the vapid Kinkade, who had just loped into proximity.

“Found time to grace us rodents, then?” Kinkade quipped. Schubert recognised him as a cheap imitation, one that had fallen from the storeroom shelf a few too many times. Schubert was used to the sensation of being copied; it had been a double-edged affliction of his for longer than he cared to remember. But he was less than flattered by Kinkade’s impersonation.

A lazy and spiritless jeweller, Kinkade had harboured resentment ever since Schubert’s public mockery of his proposition for partnership. He shifted substandard stones for a quick margin, and was fuelled by ambition alone. He held no regard for refined jewelling, a fact that Schubert had conveyed openly, and with zest, for the thought of association with Kinkade made him shudder. How sad it is, thought Schubert, that the level of grease that leaked from a man’s face did not equate to greatness - for then he would bow to Kinkade - but his glistening visage was anything but. Kinkade was laughing, though Schubert was unsure as to what exactly could be so funny about basking in one’s inadequacy. His babble, as usual, was near incoherent, or maybe Schubert simply did not care. Some fractured ramble about inferior stones, no doubt. Schubert’s eyes darted to find a distraction.

He was saved by the gracious Lady Florentine who, in all her forced flamboyance, had twirled across the mezzanine to greet him. But the sight of her bulbous approach had instilled a sheer repugnance in Schubert’sstomach, for her figure within the dress was rather reminiscent of squeezing raw chicken breast within his fist.

“My Schubert, my Schubert, how are you my dear?” She lapped her lips, surveying him with hungered eyes. She held out a hand, which bulged beneath an ambitious glove, and Schubert stooped. Even in the wake of her protruding presence, Lady Florentine garnered his respect. She, like he, was quite aware of the aristocracy’s underlying design. She flitted between the layers of orchestrated benevolence, meeting him on many of those levels, for she was one of the few to rise above the dirge of upper-class lies. She was a bounty, certainly, a treasure amidst these fools who flounced in golden shambles. He tightened his stomach regardless, to hold back bile as he planted his lips on her trotter.

“Have you any new fancies for me to pore over? I acquired a new piece actually, recently, yes, an amulet from Mr. Kinkade, cast in obsidian, it is!” She flashed Schubert her trinkets, but upon mention of Kinkade her gabble was deflected by uncaring ear, as Schubert’s focus averted instead to the incredible crossbeam allocation of the Langham’s Edwardian rafters.

For Schubert’sbrain declined to operate within accepted norms, and instead of paying amities to his ballooning host, his mind was charting all variables of social venation, mapping the behavioural data gleaned from the hollow whimsicalities around him. The estranged dance of discourse between unwilling strangers, the cunning glances and hungered gaze of secret sweethearts, the squealing swarms of fat tycoons who beat their chests in fiscal showmanship. There may as well have been a secondary lens imposed upon Schubert’s perspective, an ever-shifting palimpsest, which annotated this cordial swarm.

He moved through endless circles, increasing in speed, as consideration of leaving grew more attractive with each second. Guests hurled him words from every direction, in hopes to ensnare his attention.

“It’s the great Schubert Fearfield!”
“Master of the diamond-forge, he is!”
“The Adonis of business, that’s what they say!” Schubert shook his head, amazed by the unfounded hilarities that graced his ear each day. He preferred to maintain distance from the excess of false pretence that this society gorged upon, for tempting as it may have been to immerse oneself in praise, such allure paved a one-way path to the soiree of self-worship. And even so, Schubert needed no recognition to assure himself of superior worth. His reputation had been sublimely crafted, an intricate network that now flourished following decades of kissing the correct posteriors, while shunning those whose name had been blackened.

His thoughts were hampered by the intrusive discourse of Ernest Kind, a particularly rotund critic whose eyes had surveyed a million artworks, but never himself in a mirror. He was stood before a magnificent portrait of the Langham’s proprietor, the venerable Duchess Smallhand, and was surrounded by guests who fought in their ranks to catch his every word. Schubert slipped his ear into reach, in hope that a little unintentional irony would lighten his volatile mood.

“… haphazard strokes, an overly muted palette, she is an abomination to my sculpted eye!” His raucous fans exploded in concurrence, casting their own opinions to the dirt. “My friends, I hope you remember this lesson - it is impossible to make a masterpiece of muck!” His disciples clucked in subservient glee, and Schubert was dismayed. How could one remodel their true disposition with each asinine utterance?

Ernest had thrown an acknowledging nod his way, but Schubert declined to return it. Ernest was excited by his presence, as was clearly audible in the exasperated fluctuations of his voice, and Schubert considered whether Ernest was aware that he was a living contradiction.

“And now you know, my friends! If you possess an obscure countenance, you should never commission a hyperrealist!” Schubert’s question had answered itself. The blind appraisal Ernest received spoke tomes of these people’s insanity. There was more deranged laughter, which bought about the unexpected benefit of drowning Ernest’s voice, and Schubert’s mind settled on departure.

He had almost reached the foyer when a hand encroached upon his coat-tail. He spun about, half-expecting some puckering d?utante, or perhaps even a flustered widow whose proposition would be worth mulling. He was, instead, confronted by Kinkade’s off-putting features once more.

“Enjoy the quartz, Fearfield! Enjoy the quartz!”
Schubert shook in disbelief. Always with the inferior gems! He was unable to comprehend the stupidity before him.
“You are a moron Kinkade, and I am no petty crystal bandit!” It was hardly commendable to beat a dead horse, but an evening full of repressed retorts had left Schubert fuming, and he didn’t hold back. “Be gone, Kinkade! Do you not have rings to make for children’s dolls? I am sure their Monopoly money will trump your biggest sale! Perhaps we could have partnered, ha!” Schubert allowed a temporary break in his stony disposition, and expelled a curdled chuckle. “Perhaps we could, if you were a respectable man, but thankfully integrity is one thing that you must be born with.” He left Kinkade in mid-speech and finally reached the exit, ever aware of the stare affixed to his back. Schubert hoped that Kinkade’s admiration did not extend to his retreating rear.

Outside, the street lamps added to the crepuscular light, hurling a bloody glow upon the street. Vibrant oranges permeated Schubert’s sight, and it was all that he could see in the confusion that preceded his realisation. His ears were ravaged by indecipherable sounds, which lashed at his dazed state. His cheek was cold, uncomfortably so, and the pressure exerted upon his skull was most unsettling.

The onlookers had quickly gathered, and now almost every guest stood outside the Langham, watching and whispering, as Schubert Fearfield was held face-down against a police car bonnet. Still disoriented, Schubert gazed out at the crowds. They stared back at him with a strange expression. It a look of disapproval, a look he had all but forgotten. Schubert had worked hard to maintain their pleasantry, whether genuine or not, and had shelved his misanthropic thoughts for many years in cultivating his rapport. But now they mocked him, with pitied eyes.

One face shone brightly amidst the bustling mass. Schubert’s ears had ceased their ringing and as he was ushered into the back seat, he could make sense of the putrid proclamations.

“Behold, your honourable Fearfield! The self-proclaimed king of diamonds! Now you see, my friends, he is the true fraud! A trickster and a criminal, profiting from diamonds that were carved by the bloody hands of tortured children!”

The crowd consumed his every word, for Kinkade seemed to have developed a new air of confidence, a sudden wave of relevance. Something any mortal must enjoy when usurping the gods themselves, Schubert mused. He sat back, shifting his gait to account for his tightly cuffed wrists. The sentence did not bother him, no, his army of legal hounds would bare their teeth at any punishment. But Kinkade’s words cycled through his mind.

Enjoy the quartz, Fearfield! Schubert scoffed. The courts! Such self-indulgent humour was typical of Kinkade’s cretinous being. He peered out from the car one last time, but all he could see was Kinkade’s sneer as new admirers flocked to his side. How fickle, is the turning tide of reputation! The police car struggled to pull away, photographers bouncing against the vehicle as it edged through the crowd, and Schubert squirmed in his seat, clammy in the foreign chill of embarrassment.

From my Creative Writing university module portfolio.

We’ll start with the house, which was large. Three staircases deep and so long all of us who worked there had ox strong legs and I had strong arms too, I could walk on my hands and sometimes, when no one was around, I would, I’d tickle the carpet with my fingers because it felt like we were in the belly of a whale and I wondered if he’d sneeze us out.

So the house was big and it was old and it was dry like old things are, like a leaf that’s kept together by the bones and has to be handled carefully because it’s so old, so old and dry and precious. We spent more of the day tending to the house than the people, who were only pieces of proud, high furniture, with ancestral rights to a place there. In need of constant reassurance that the house belonged to them when the truth was the opposite.

I lived in the belly of the whale for eight years, longer than Jonah and Gepetto and I liked it, for the most part. I liked the entrance hall in the mornings, when the light filled it like water fills a pot. I liked the routine, I liked having a job I could learn like lines, learn by heart. I liked the kitchens, I liked the drama, I liked a large group of people trapped in one huge house and acting out their lives like the house was a stage, like the world was listening, like their lives were a story to tell and to scream and to sing. I felt safe there - there were two worlds and the world of the house, it was just as real and exciting but it was safer than the other world, which couldn’t get in, couldn’t get at us. I stayed there as long as I could, I was sad to leave, but I never had love there. It was all arms and no heart; being handled but not held. Love came after the house.