Other A Character Study

[PrinceOfAutumn]

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1. Ocean

Bastian pressed a palm flat to the glass pane in front of him, his eyes setting to the oscillating ocean waves advancing and receding over the shoreline. It was a good view, steadying in its ceaseless rhythm, and one he needed more than enjoyed. He studied the gem toned panorama: all the gold of the sand merging with the beryl colored sea, the sky above a vibrant cerulean – so many pigments he wanted but wouldn’t let in. White against stark, bright white, that was his palette choice for his home. Unfeeling, uncaring, constant and cold.

He liked color, just not where he lived.

It was an easy parallel for him to figure: outside – color, chaos. Inside – a disassembled, diffused control, one carefully and purposefully crafted to suit his preferences. Going further, back inside again, inside himself; his nature restless and agitated, thoughts like a whirlwind of wasps. As outside, so within. The ocean never stilled and hence he was always filled, the currents that ran through him equally disquiet and unable to find calm.

Conflicted. It was the only word he could ever come up with to accurately describe himself. There was an elusive harmony to it, the balance he maintained between the two antithetical points, all his ataxia and ataraxia, tenuous. No matter how much effort he put into it the cultivated stasis was easily upset. Whenever a schism of discord fractured the peace he’d made between the two extremes that regulated him, Bastian became effortlessly, nearly unthinkingly, violent. For all his emphasis on control, Bastian knew that, down in his bones, he was an unfettered Lord of misrule. His blood, like his skin, was thicker than most. It forged his constitution, making him audacious and bold, but also left him constantly craving. Anything life could throw at him – it was never enough.

It wasn’t that he was overwhelmed and drowning because of it, there was just never enough air in the room for him not to be left gasping and wanting for more.

His gaze, green as greed, fixed itself to the horizon.

Nightfall, a cusp or a precipice, depending on your perspective. He was waiting for it. Daylight didn’t suit him and never had. Compared to most, the sun’s rays had an adverse, counter effect upon him. All the energy others seemed able to suck in and reap from its warmth left him lethargic and listless. It took silence and darkened spaces for him to come alive.

Stand by.

Left hanging and halted until the stars rose, Bastian pushed back from the window pane and dropped his attention to the half-filled glass in his hand, his fingers clutched over the top of its rim. He walked away, away from the view, away from the thoughts and correlations it had inspired, letting its resonance hum through him until nothing was left but echoes.


-PoA-

 

[PrinceOfAutumn]

2. Evie, Short For Evelyn

Evie. I had met her by chance.

Undersized but solid, her limbs and neck long but torso short, Evie was a rare physical ideal realized. It wasn’t just her talent as a dancer that drew the crowds, but the near impossible proportions she’d managed to achieve that, in part, kept them coming back. Ballet, perhaps the most torturous of all the genres of her chosen art, was unapologetic in its standards. Everything that could be dictated, was. You had to move precisely, but unfalteringly gracefully – a notion that extended all the way out to the tips of her fingers down to her abused, crooked toes. The standards for size and weight were unbendingly strict and exceedingly difficult to accomplish, regardless if genetics were on your side and you naturally embodied its basic requirements. Even the facial expressions you were allowed to maintain while performing were specific and regulated.

She thrived in this domain of unattainable perfection, where nothing, absolutely nothing, was ever good enough. All her life, since she was a child, she’d steeped herself in its ideals, every day bringing her closer to what she dreamed of most – supremacy. It went beyond, so very far beyond, the belief that hard work would pay off in the end. For Evie, outstretching her thin fingers towards the precise, thoroughly defined, demanding vision of what excellence meant was akin to reaching for the moon or stars. She understood that she could never touch them, but knowing that she could extend the tips of her tiny digits even a fraction of an inch further than her peers was enough.

That’s how greatness measured in her world, by nearly imperceptible fragments, the recognition doled out equally incremental. She both lived for, and survived by, these slivers – paper thin layer after paper thin layer eventually building up enough to given her mass.

To me, before I came to understand all these things about her, she was just another girl in line, waiting on her coffee.

She’d ordered it black, same as me. I took note of it. Women, in general, seemed partial to far more complicated, sweet flavored drinks. It was enough of an odd occurrence for me to comment on it.

And so the conversation began.

It was maybe an hour past dawn when we sat down together, the shop we both frequented still, but readying itself for the Monday morning workforce push that was to come. I had been awake all night, she was just rising. I had asked her about herself, and she told me. It was a politeness that she didn’t return.

I didn’t mind.

She was needy, as demanding and exhausting as her job. The more she spoke about herself the more I realized that there was no other profession on the planet that would suit her. Whether her personality had been purely shaped by her chosen environment or if its taxing lilt was simply inherent to her I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. Evie, short for Evelyn, as self-centered as the sun. She had no interest in me or who I was, but she liked the way I looked and spoke, the attention I gave her.

There were no complaints within me. My needs of her were equally superficial.

Evie was easy to look at, the symmetry of her face nearly eerie. And she would look good standing next to me, another requirement. People, their personalities and day to day lives, don’t matter to me much. I am, and always have been, content within my own skin – a thing unto myself. I’ve never gone searching for my other half, as that would require viewing myself as something malformed or broken. A whole, me; already complete and devoid of the common desire to be influenced by, or attach myself to, the world beyond my skin.

We were villainous creatures then, squinting through the glaring sunrise that was gradually filling the cozy coffee shop, ones that were outlining an unspoken accord with each other. Don’t ask. That was my requirement of her. I no more wanted or needed her to dig out any details about who I was really, or how I kept myself occupied at night, than she wanted to know or inquire after them. The information was already out there if she cared to look, the headlines I’d made quickly telling of the company I kept. I wasn’t a good person, not by any stretch of the imagination. Though our occupations were radically different, underneath it all, neither was she.

Inversely, Evie’s prerequisites were just as easily met as my own. Money, status, be physically appealing, show her off, buy her things. If all of that was up to her standards, nothing else mattered. She would suffer whatever she had to willingly, just as long as I unfailingly catered to her shallow desires.

It’s an incredible thing, only having your worst traits in common with someone else.

For seven months I endured her neurosis. I learned that she’d adored going out to see and be seen, and delighted in ordering expensive dinners that invariably went to waste. She liked gifts that came with designer labels. She felt that she deserved them. I learned that she was fragile, easy to set off, and that she truly enjoyed showing it. Tears, to Evie, were things of power. She gained control through them, their appearance motivated by manipulative intents rather than a true show of her emotions.

Evie learned that I didn’t care, at all, and that her attempts to mold me or my reactions never worked. She hated me for it. But it never stopped her from trying.

It was a cycle I could understand, her breakdowns and periods of unhinged hysteria, the lulls that followed where I licked at her self-inflicted wounds. Even at her worst, Evie was always beautiful. Screaming, throwing things, all her obsessively applied makeup smearing down her face while she sobbed – she still managed to be captivating physically. Evie wore tragedy well, better than anyone else I’ve ever met.

I neither loved or hated her. She was simply there, a disjointed being driven by hungry malice and bottomless, self-serving weaknesses, her nails scraping against me again and again as she sought a way to dig herself into me. Above all else, Evie wanted me to need her as she needed me. I didn’t. She was hollow, as see-through as glass, and just as easily shattered. It bored me.

She fully expected me to marry her, the overall disgust I felt for her not once factoring into her plans for me, for us. When I told her that I was through with her she paled, wilting as she drew her knees up to her flat chest. She knew that I was serious, her small frame tremoring as she looked up to me.

“I’ll die.” Evie; white skinned, her dark blue eyes wide and chocolate colored hair pulled back into a tight, pin straight ponytail – still beautiful.

“Then do so.”

I left, not once looking back.

Twenty-six days later she was dead, too, all the pills she’d swallowed ensuring it. I read her obituary guiltlessly. It had no impact on me, though out of some lingering sense of duty or obligation, maybe just a general acknowledgement of time spent together, I did send flowers. It didn’t occur to me to show up at her funeral. I suspected that she would have wanted me to come, perhaps even planned on it. Maybe it was a final message to me, her death, a literal last ditch effort to make herself important to me in a way I couldn’t ignore. She had wanted to be essential, as needed as air, to me – the fact that it was an impossible goal unable to deter her. Everything in her life was centered around impossible goals. It’s all she was or knew or understood.

Evie, short for Evelyn. Her manipulations had never succeeded with me, not once, but it had never stopped her from trying.


-PoA-