Katherine "Kissin' Kate" Barlow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ikissdhimbck) wrote2010-12-04 05:26 pm
ikissdhimbck) wrote2010-12-04 05:26 pm
Entry tags:
OOM sorta: Room #100
White.
White.
White.
A clock ticks. Lights flicker. The cat stretches out against clean linen.
Sounds, muffled and loud, echoing and silent.
The last of the sun declines beneath the horizon. Shadows stretch, staining the white in jaundiced yellows and oranges, giving false definition, depth, and character.
She imagines snow outside the stables, whole and unsullied. She imagines clouds -- perfect, white clouds -- stretching across a limitless sky. She imagines a blank canvas, the potential ripe.
Anything to distract from the steady accumulation of seconds, the tick-tick-tick-ing of minutes, the motionless hours spent staring at the colorless ceiling from the flat of her back.
White.
She's been testing the limits of her liver. It doesn't take much to get her drunk, but she's been drinking much just in case. There isn't a night in recent memory she hasn't aided along with a bottle of whiskey, and this one is no different.
Only, tonight she can't turn her thoughts off long enough to slip into slumber.
The other cat stretches out and yawns, sharpening his claws on the seat of her armchair.
A wind moves against the windows, making the joints creak.
Blue shades the white, swallows the light, and casts shadows of the fixture on the ceiling that stretch and moan like the black maw of a nightmare creature.
She rolls off the bed and tests the ground, scuffing her boots against the hardwood. She's glad for little things like the electric lamp on nights like tonight when she's too drunk to strike a match. And in the low light, she audits the room.
The chest at the foot of her bed is open, its insides spilling across the floor.
Both the table in the corner and the desk to her right are covered in maps and books, journals and papers. She hasn't touched a thing since she moved out of Room #25.
His handwriting still fills the pages of every open journal, the scraps of paper tucked into the spines of her books and atlases -- even the margins of her maps. They mingle still, young and old, in the ink-smudged scrawl of an old fountain pen and lead etchings beleaguered by an eager eraser. Ghost's instructions, plans she's looked at so many times she doesn't even see them anymore. Blueprints, layouts, and floor plans. Schedules, lists...
She left France so she could go home. Her door is a paralytic, a weak poison that numbs all her resolve. The unattainable plans and maps are a lead weight to the small of her back; the intermingling longhand the last remains of dissolved partnerships. It's suicide out that door, if she goes out on her own.
At least, that's what she's always been told.
She leans against her desk and takes a wobbly step, knocking her journal to the floor by mistake.
Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
Weyland's music box sits in the far corner, next to a collection of steel green paper cranes. She reaches for it, sliding the rose-tooled lid open. The bronze grasshopper within hops and flutters, and begins playing the Kreutzer Sonata on its intricate wings.
Turning, she leans back against the desk and looks upon the chest for the umpteenth time tonight. It's filled with photographs, books, letters; dried flowers and special linens. It's also filled with rope, and bullets, leather polish and rags, dried meat, a flask, a canteen, and guns. Not the piece Weyland crafted for her, and not the small Smith & Wesson given to her by Ben Wade. They're at her fingertips, nestled in the leather belt draped across her desk chair. One is her daddy's Winchester rifle. The other is a Colt SAA 1st Gen, with a 5 1/2 inch barrel and rounded wood and nickel grips; unloaded, as it has been since the day it was given to her nearly two years ago. Untouched, as if it's sacred.
Or cursed.
She's thought about giving it back at least a dozen times in the last few weeks. She never wanted it to begin with -- which was just as strange to her then as it is now. Ten years ago she would have been soaring if someone gave her the famous outlaw's own gun.
The stories lost their shine a bit, after seeing the grit and blood with her own eyes.
But he'd insisted. Even smiled. And she thinks one day, maybe, she'll muster the courage to actually use it.
She tips her attention to the map in her hands. It's Texas -- her Texas -- with notes on a five-man team.
Need t'take care of things. Obligations. A job you gotta do.
She presses her palms flat against the desk, steadies herself, and finds the flat grey eraser in the mess. She anchors the map down, and erases them. One by one. Until all that's left is Texas, and one solitary name.
She slides the music box shut and folds the map into a small square, tucking it inside her vest. She'll be up with the sun -- she always is -- and so she fumbles for the bed again and toes off her boots.
The light casts shadows on the ceiling, a nightmare creature's gaping maw.
She's got a job to do.
White.
White.
White.
.
White.
White.
A clock ticks. Lights flicker. The cat stretches out against clean linen.
Sounds, muffled and loud, echoing and silent.
The last of the sun declines beneath the horizon. Shadows stretch, staining the white in jaundiced yellows and oranges, giving false definition, depth, and character.
She imagines snow outside the stables, whole and unsullied. She imagines clouds -- perfect, white clouds -- stretching across a limitless sky. She imagines a blank canvas, the potential ripe.
Anything to distract from the steady accumulation of seconds, the tick-tick-tick-ing of minutes, the motionless hours spent staring at the colorless ceiling from the flat of her back.
White.
She's been testing the limits of her liver. It doesn't take much to get her drunk, but she's been drinking much just in case. There isn't a night in recent memory she hasn't aided along with a bottle of whiskey, and this one is no different.
Only, tonight she can't turn her thoughts off long enough to slip into slumber.
The other cat stretches out and yawns, sharpening his claws on the seat of her armchair.
A wind moves against the windows, making the joints creak.
Blue shades the white, swallows the light, and casts shadows of the fixture on the ceiling that stretch and moan like the black maw of a nightmare creature.
She rolls off the bed and tests the ground, scuffing her boots against the hardwood. She's glad for little things like the electric lamp on nights like tonight when she's too drunk to strike a match. And in the low light, she audits the room.
The chest at the foot of her bed is open, its insides spilling across the floor.
Both the table in the corner and the desk to her right are covered in maps and books, journals and papers. She hasn't touched a thing since she moved out of Room #25.
His handwriting still fills the pages of every open journal, the scraps of paper tucked into the spines of her books and atlases -- even the margins of her maps. They mingle still, young and old, in the ink-smudged scrawl of an old fountain pen and lead etchings beleaguered by an eager eraser. Ghost's instructions, plans she's looked at so many times she doesn't even see them anymore. Blueprints, layouts, and floor plans. Schedules, lists...
She left France so she could go home. Her door is a paralytic, a weak poison that numbs all her resolve. The unattainable plans and maps are a lead weight to the small of her back; the intermingling longhand the last remains of dissolved partnerships. It's suicide out that door, if she goes out on her own.
At least, that's what she's always been told.
She leans against her desk and takes a wobbly step, knocking her journal to the floor by mistake.
Weyland's music box sits in the far corner, next to a collection of steel green paper cranes. She reaches for it, sliding the rose-tooled lid open. The bronze grasshopper within hops and flutters, and begins playing the Kreutzer Sonata on its intricate wings.
'Ride, boldly ride,'
The shade replied --
'If you seek for El Dorado.'
Turning, she leans back against the desk and looks upon the chest for the umpteenth time tonight. It's filled with photographs, books, letters; dried flowers and special linens. It's also filled with rope, and bullets, leather polish and rags, dried meat, a flask, a canteen, and guns. Not the piece Weyland crafted for her, and not the small Smith & Wesson given to her by Ben Wade. They're at her fingertips, nestled in the leather belt draped across her desk chair. One is her daddy's Winchester rifle. The other is a Colt SAA 1st Gen, with a 5 1/2 inch barrel and rounded wood and nickel grips; unloaded, as it has been since the day it was given to her nearly two years ago. Untouched, as if it's sacred.
Or cursed.
She's thought about giving it back at least a dozen times in the last few weeks. She never wanted it to begin with -- which was just as strange to her then as it is now. Ten years ago she would have been soaring if someone gave her the famous outlaw's own gun.
The stories lost their shine a bit, after seeing the grit and blood with her own eyes.
But he'd insisted. Even smiled. And she thinks one day, maybe, she'll muster the courage to actually use it.
She tips her attention to the map in her hands. It's Texas -- her Texas -- with notes on a five-man team.
Need t'take care of things. Obligations. A job you gotta do.
Us outlaws stick together.
She presses her palms flat against the desk, steadies herself, and finds the flat grey eraser in the mess. She anchors the map down, and erases them. One by one. Until all that's left is Texas, and one solitary name.
- Kate
She slides the music box shut and folds the map into a small square, tucking it inside her vest. She'll be up with the sun -- she always is -- and so she fumbles for the bed again and toes off her boots.
The light casts shadows on the ceiling, a nightmare creature's gaping maw.
She's got a job to do.
White.
White.
White.
.