stop making the eyes at me and i'll stop making the eyes at you

but the thing that surprises me is i don't really want you to. it's a day of 'i bet you look good on the dancefloor' on repeat because it's the ambivalence and terror and sass and flicker of excitement eating through your veins. the god-i-miss-you feeling that crushes you like a freak wave but leaves you untouched and shaken five minutes later. the sheer recklessness of to-hell-with-it that usually wears off like perfume, but what does it mean when it clings to you for days, no longer on your skin but melding into it. and secretly you like it, the way it holds your hand and lets you walk the tightrope edge, with that dangerous smile saying you'll have to find out if your parachute works all on your own, princess. and then in the moment, the only one that matters, you become icarus or peter pan, or you become atlas always wondering what if.

A Night With Hesiod, Euripides, and Sophocles

My increasingly incoherent and snarky thoughts:

- Yes, Oedipus. She is your mom, he was your dad, you're a hot-tempered idiot, but really, blinding yourself with your wife/mother's broach pins? Overkill much?

- From 'Hymn to Demeter': "Yet, goddess, cease your loud lament...Aidoneus [Hades], the Ruler of

Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your child, being your own brother..."

Me: That seems like a pretty good reason to lament right there.

- Oooooh, another prophecy! Let me guess - it applies directly to the main character! 

- And then Zeus fathered Persephone by...I did not need to know that, Hesiod, thankyouverymuch.

- Mental bleach, anyone?

- Apollo is a jerk.

- "and tell Metaneira, our deep-bosomed mother, all this matter fully..." Um...anyone else finding the particular adjective used disturbing?

- yeahhhh, the gorgeous godlike woman out in the fields just happens to know exactly who you are. Anchises, you have a brain, please use it.

- "take me now, stainless and unproved in love..." Yeah, Aphrodite. That's a hysterical line from you.

- I don't even want to know what my subconscious is going to do with all this mythology once I finally sleep.

- Goodnight world!

wishes

i am the hard rock underground electronic back-in-black girl, the one tearing up the field and tackling homework, but when the books pile up and scraps of paper fly, a barricade and tornado around me, all i want, really, is a hot bath. a wide six-foot-long tub with claw feet, with bubbles and jasmine salts and steam swirling from the surface. low lights and silence save for the lapping of the water. i can sink into it and let it steam away the stress, relax the sprain in my ankle, calm the goosebumps on my arms. lay there up to my shoulders, listening to wachet auf and lullaby for my favorite insomniac or aurora borealis, and not thinking. then have a heater on in the room and step out and into an oversized cream towel, new and thick and soft, feet sinking into a rug. bundling myself into blue pajamas with christmas trees and turquoise-striped fuzzy socks, sitting up against my wall with a mug of earl grey and a guilty pleasure book for half an hour until i take off my glasses and sleep.

Fall

oh god. kelly?

just forget you saw me here, martin.

what the hell are you-

what the crap are you doing out here? it's freezing.

yeah, no effing duh-

leave it, martin. just go.

damn, just get down from there, don't do this, kell, you've got so much to live for-

like what? like going home to a masoleum? or trudging through a degree i hate because my father wants me to be a lawyer like him? or putting up with the hell i'm going through?

there's your sister-

she's a backstabbing fiend.

sharon-

thinks i'll be her golden ticket to wealth.

there's rick-

rick? you don't know the first thing about rick.

kells. kelly, what'd he do?

nothing i didn't ask for, apparently.

don't say that! i don't know what the hell's going on there but don't even try to defend him.

what are you even doing out here, martin? you barely know me.

doesn't mean i don't care.

yeah, i've heard that one before.

you have no idea.

what?

i know your favorite color is really green, even though you don't say so because people make fun of you and your name.

kelly green.

yeah. i know you liked the aeneid better than the odyssey because odysseus was a douche, you have a silver pair of high heels you never wear because sharon said they looked slutty, which is a shame, they're perfect, and you like canadian bacon and pineapple on your pizza. you've got ridiculous ways with math i can only dream of, you make awesome puns no one ever catches, and you think the whole oh-my-god-i-ate-a-carb-i-must-puke diet stuff is bull.

what the crap have you been doing, stalking me?

i have a photographic memory, remember? it's why i remember what you were wearing at that sorority dance a few weeks back.

it was a hot pink gown, kind of hard not to remember, genius.

no, not that. i mean, don't get me wrong, you were gorgeous. but i remember afterward. i think you and monica must have been going to get coffee and study. you had your hair down and you were wearing painted-splattered jeans and a white t-shirt, and you were barefoot...i don't know. it was dark and one of the lights framed you and you looked free. and i've give about anything to see you like that again.

i didn't - wait, martin, what are you doing?

this is a pretty nice spot. i mean, it is a long way down, but i never thought this parking garage had such a good skyline view. not a very comfortable seat, though. they should install cushioning.

martin, you might fall-

i already did. wasn't really planning on ever telling you, but life's a bitch, and here we are.

i'm pregnant. didn't know that, did you?

no.

and that doesn't change your mind at all?

my mother had me her senior year of college. her boyfriend at the time didn't understand the concept of 'no' being an acceptable answer either.

my dad's going to kill me.

if he had any sense of decency, he'd kill rick.

oh, no, it'll be my fault. everything is. i'm never quite good enough for daddy dearest.

well screw what he thinks.

it's pretty cold up here.

yeah. damn october for being cold. want my jacket?

yeah. thanks.

man. i could go for some hot chocolate right about now.

me too.

dark chocolate with hardcore marshmallows you can sink your teeth into. not that milk-chocolate-with-little-white-pellets swiss miss garbage.

best kind.

let me give you a hand down.

thanks, martin.

anything for you, kells.

My handler stepped into her office, gaze touching on me, sitting in her office chair, and landing almost audibly on the Glock laid sideways on her desk. The iron goddess herself drew a small breath before speaking, visible testament to just how unsettled she was. "Aries, I understand it has been a trying week, but you have worked through worse than this. It can be settled in a diplomatic manner-"

"I have to kill you to get out," I said.

Lita stilled. As few rules governed our work, she knew this was no test. Her superiors, few as they may be, did not use her agents against her. For the most part, her superiors tried to avoid her agents altogether. "Who told you this?"

I savored it for a moment, her not quite able to keep her gaze from slipping to the gun, barrel gleaming in the lamplight. "It's over, Lita. Even the godless are having trouble ignoring the evidence."

"There is no evidence. You know that as well as I."

"There wasn't until I gave it to them."

The cords of her neck pulsed, and I saw it in her eyes. She knew I wasn't lying. Her lips moved soundlessly for a moment. "How could you do this? Do you not realize how many lives we have saved and conspiracies we have stopped?"

"Yes, Lita." I stood, setting both hands on the desk. "I do. But they don't haunt me like every person we've killed or lives we've destroyed."

"Sometimes there is an acceptable margin of loss-"

"No," I said. "That's where you went wrong."

Lita narrowed her eyes, and her voice lowered to a hiss. "By utilizing this philosophy, I have personally saved the lives of two presidents and four other heads of state, and you dare to call me wrong?"

"You went wrong when you believed yourself capable of defining that margin of loss."

Lita looked pointedly at the gun, and back at me. "Now you would do the same?"

I picked up the gun in my left hand, and pulled a silencer from my right pocket, never taking my eyes off her. "You took away my life and taught me to kill. You tell me."

Light glinted on the sweat tracing her hairline. "Aries-"

"Aries," I said, screwing the silencer onto the barrel, "is not my name." The cylinder clicked into place.

"Wait - surely -"

I tilted my head. "Surely what?"

"Jessica, listen to me-"

The edges of my mouth turned up, and I laughed, silently. "You think my birth name is a failsafe? It's unfortunate, really. You did your job too well. I'm not Jessica anymore either."

She sagged into the wall. "That is it, then. You're just going to kill me and leave."

I aimed and pulled the trigger three times. The movies are inaccurate. Silencers suppress the sound, true, but bullets fired at such velocities still make sound. Enough that I'd have to run.

Lita opened her eyes, slowly, and turned to the wall. She touched one of the holes torn in the wallpaper with shaking fingers.

"I'm finishing the game on my terms, not yours." I shot out the light and threw the window open as the bulbs tinkled against the desk.

Five minutes later, I stepped into the black Mercedes at the front of the building, and closed the door as the driver accelerated. "I'm done."

Chandler looked at me, head tilted. "You left her alive, didn't you?"

I handed him the gun, peeling off my gloves. "You don't sound surprised."

"I should be, but I'm not."

I blinked at the tears burning the back of my eyes. He tipped my chin up. "Why tears?"

"I can't remember the last time someone believed in me because of who I am instead of what I can do."

He pulled me across the back seat and into his arms. "You can start now. You can start over now."

The first tear broke over my eyelid. "I don't even know my name anymore."

"But you know who you are."

I drew a shaky breath. "Yes. Yes, I do."

Gee whillikers.

I don't even know where to start with real life, because it has turned into a series of bizarre events. I won't even say 'unfortunate', although there have been several of those, including a rather nastily sprained ankle (the brace totally looks like a corset. I have started referring to the process of getting into it as 'lacing up my ankle's corset.). Blogging about this would simply be a rehash of the oddness, so I shan't. I have no idea what I'll be saying this fall, so I think mainly I shall try to do a bit of freewriting on here. Maybe just a paragraph or two. They might not even make sense, but I finally wrote a (longish) short a couple days ago, and being creative just feels so good. So bear with me, and hopefully I'll free-write some interesting things over the next few weeks.