deep_red_bells | Entries tagged with comm: muse shuffle

Lean on me, lean on me >> Give it a try, it won't hurt --You Am I – ‘Doug Sahm’

She’s been hiding. Not meaning to, per se, but shut up in the room that is not the room that she shares with the man downstairs but a guest bedroom, which is precisely what she feels like, a guest, a stranger passing through. She ducked into that bedroom, briefly, to look around, to rifle curiously through a few drawers. That was where she found the pictures.

Shoeboxes and albums full of them, all of perfect strangers, the strangest of all being the very face that looks back at her from the mirror, staring up at her through the gloss of photographs, smiling, happy. She scooped them up and rushed back to the guest room with them, curled up in the corner of the sparsely furnished room and gazed at each one almost greedily. Some of them are landmarks and places, but she tosses them back into the boxes impatiently, uncaring of some monument or casino or fountain. It's the faces and the smiles that she can't look away from, pieces of warmth that she clings to almost too tightly as though hoping she can absorb just the slightest bit. They’re split second snapshots of everything that she’s lost, but they’re tangible, they're something. They’re people that she knows. Friends. Acquaintances. Family, maybe. Some have names and dates or locations written on the back in a looping hand that she traces with her fingertips and wonders if it’s hers. Claire and Sylar, Christmas ‘08. Adam, Peter, Mohinder and Julian, Rockefeller Center. Rico & Me. Val and Hank outside of Caesar’s. Tucker and Church @ GAMESTOP posing w/ Master Chief.

It takes her a moment to identify the pangs in her chest as more than an aching sadness and confusion and longing. There’s hope there as well.

The sun’s setting by the time she creeps downstairs with the boxes and albums in her arms. She shouldn’t feel so guilty for sneaking around a house that’s supposed to be hers, but there’s still a bit of sheepishness in her expression, in the way she bites her lip and hesitates to even approach the man she’s told she’s to marry. She believes it now, though. That she loves him, even if she can’t find the emotion in her. She’s seen the way she smiles at him in those frozen snapshots of time, and the way he looks back at her.

“I found these,” she admits, which sounds better than ‘I went snooping,’ and she sets the boxes and albums down on the coffee table and withdraws the top stack, the ones that had jumped out at her the most, the brightest smiles, what seemed the happiest times. “Tell me about them,“ she requests, almost pleads as she hands him the stack, and for the first time since the lights went out in her mind, there’s something there besides a vacant confusion in her eyes.

There’s hope. Wild and uncertain, but hope, nonetheless.

Current Mood: nervous

My hope is on the horizon.
Every face, it's your eyes I can see.
I plead, I pray through each night and day,
Our embrace is only a dream.
[‘This Lullaby’ – Queens of the Stone Age]

Two inches across between the slats of books, from hairline to upper lip, an eye, the arch of his eyebrow, the barest hint of the curve of his cheek and the side of his nose. It's all that she's truly seen of his face, not counting the brief flashes in between and after and moments when she glance over her shoulder and could have sworn she saw him dance back into the shadows. He's never there when she tries to follow.

Already he is leading her into shadow, just to catch a glimpse of his face. They've never touched, she barely knows his name, but she can feel his obsession churning through her blood and poisoning her thoughts, turning into an obsession of her own.

Already she can see that it will lead nowhere good, or healthy, or happy for either of them. There is no possible way that it can. She is a Slayer, he's a vampire. Of what species, she isn't certain, but it shouldn't--it doesn't matter. Their very essence should sing to each other of destruction, her blood to him, his death to her. Her best option is to put a stop to it, now. Stop looking over her shoulder. Stop replying to his irritatingly anonymous remarks. Stop replaying his words in her mind to seal in the sound of his voice. She tries, she does try, she doesn't let the thoughts of him distract her when her hands are busy with work, with slaying, with mundane house chores.

Yet in the still moments, she cannot fully shut her mind down, cannot seem to keep it from attempting to piece together his features from the shreds of visual data. She doesn't dream of him...or if she does, she doesn't remember it, for every dream is lost beneath the torrential dreams of her legacy as a Slayer...but she thinks of him before she sleeps, and the thoughts that wash over her in the muddle, in-between state of waking and slumber feel like a dream.

She knows that if she could dream of him, of his voice and of his eye burning intently into hers through the slats of musty books and dust, she would.

To her peril, and possibly his as well.

Current Mood: frustrated

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Current Mood: predatory

In the morning I wake up >> And in the night I sleep >> Since the day that I was born >> Repeat, repeat, repeat

=================================

[E-mail sent to everyone on Baileigh's mailing list]

It's cloudy today. It's supposed to rain tomorrow. It's funny how you can enjoy rain when you're not thinking to yourself "Oh, crap, I gotta go out and slay in this mess." Cause right now the only thing I'm worried about is "Crap, Ru, you're gonna go outside and get filthy, aren't you?" I have never been quite so grateful for Slayer strength as I was the first time I had to wrestle that dog into the bathtub.

I would really like for people to stop saying they'd back Sarah Palin to run for president in 2012. I just...do you listen to the woman? Really. I'm all about girl power but have you heard a word the woman's said? She does not need to be president. She does not need to be anywhere near the White House. She does not even need to look at it too long, her stupid might be catching and the current president can't afford to be made any stupider for the brief amount of time he's got left in office.

I would also really like for the commercials for mouse traps to go away. They don't need to be advertised. Why would they need to be advertised? People will always need mousetraps. They wig me out.

I have officially painted every room in the house except for the kitchen and the bathrooms, which have wallpaper. I am so not messing with that crap, it's too much of a pain.

The house smells like fresh paint. Am breaking out the frilly candles to try and get rid of it. It's not the worst scent in the world or anything, but it smells really artificial, not nice and homey.

I have a sneaky suspicion I'm not Ruhun's favorite anymore. He keeps giving me looks like "Why, why did you take me away from the house full of people that slipped me treats? Why did you take me away from the hot babe I was so gonna do? Why, you evil woman, why?!" Giving him treats seems to be helping. He likes the dehydrated liver treats. I hate liver. It smells awful.

I've slept more in the past 2 weeks than I have in the past 2 years.

I miss you guys.

I don't think this is helping.

--B

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: PJ Harvey, "Is That All There Is?"

But lately I'm beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel.

******************************

To whom it may concern (which, I'm hoping, is pretty much everyone I know personally):

I've wracked my brain trying to think of the right way to say this. To put it some way that doesn't make it sound like I need to get the hell away from all of you, but when it comes right down to it, that's exactly what I'm doing.

I haven't been in a good place since that whole thing with Dana. There's a lot I haven't dealt with, a lot of issues I need to address. It needs to be done, and I need to do it alone.

I need to figure out if I can do this anymore. And by 'this' I mean everything. Slaying in particular, but...everything. Just everything.

If I keep going like this, I'm gonna get myself and probably a few other people killed. I can't let it get to that point. I'm afraid I'm destroying myself, and I have to stop that before it can happen. I can't have people depending on me when I feel like a time bomb without a visible countdown clock.

Please know that this is nothing to do with any of you, and everything to do with me.

I'm going back to Corpus and I'm asking to be left alone. I'm asking for time to think, time to get myself together, without being pushed at constantly. This isn't to say I don't want to talk to anyone, but let me come to you. I know that seems unfair of me to ask, but please. I hate playing this card, but please, if you care, do this for me.

I can't make any promises right now. I can't tell you I'll be back, because I don't know. I hope so.

I love you all.

Bee.

Current Mood: numb

I know the truth is in between
the 1st and the 40th drink
Tori Amos – ‘Concertina’

She usually finds comfort and focus in running, pushing herself hard, wearing herself down until she's exhausted and can collapse and doesn't have to think anymore. Or in going a round with the punching bag, losing herself in the fast pace, focusing on the sound of her gloved hands colliding with the bag, relishing the ache that starts to build in her arms and shoulders.

( But the typical solutions aren't helping, so she turns instead to tequila. )

Current Mood: out

If I kill him there are complications
I did not ask for this
“Oh but Love yes you did”
Tori Amos, "Smokey Joe"

========================================

It's the eyes. The instincts that have been swirling through her veins for months scream at her to rip them out. They're too dark, too deep, they see too much. They see her and in her and through her, all the things she's been fighting like hell to hide.

He's sitting at the counter in the mostly empty diner, devouring the slice of strawberry pie she just brought him and drinking coffee, casually as you please, as every word out of his mouth deconstructs her life. He isn't human. She doesn't know how she knows it, but she does. He's something...else. He's...

"You think I'm a what?"

He waves his fork at her. "It's not a matter of think, sweetheart. It's a 'know.' You got any idea how hard it is to find you girls? Nope...we don't make mistakes."

( You're crazy. )

word count: 630

Current Mood: predatory

Some say you're trouble, boy
Just because you like to destroy
All the things that bring the idiots joy
Well, what's wrong with a little destruction?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When he tells her where they're going, she never asks him why. She never asks for details on what he'll be doing when he isn't with her. It's just more words to stack in the growing file of all the things that go unsaid between them. She used to think she might not like the answer. She might not want to know.

Lately she's decided she simply doesn't care.

She should care. It should bother her. Even without the details, she knows what he does. His job--when it comes right down to it--is to destroy little pieces of the world, even as she goes out at night to keep the otherworldly at bay. To save the world, a little piece at a time.

He takes lives where she fights to save lives. She shouldn't see him any differently than the vampires she slays. That it's a job to him should make it worse; that he chooses it, that he enjoys it, worse still.

Sometimes she watches him from across the room, during those occasional moments when his attention is on something other than her. When he's typing on his laptop, lower lip tucked between his teeth as he pours over yet another thing she never asks about because she isn't sure she wants to take the chance that it's something business related and not an interesting news article. She studies him and wonders why he wants her here, how they can stand on opposite sides of society's black and white line and still think that they can stand together, and how much longer 'til it all falls apart. She doesn't even fully understand her own reasons, and sometimes she'd kill to know what he's thinking.

He leaves for a while, and she doesn't ask questions when he comes back. They run through her mind, but get no further than an intake of breath to give them voice before she thinks better of asking. Not because she might not like the answer. Not because she might not want to know.

She just doesn't care.

For now, maybe some things are better left unsaid.

word count: 350

Current Mood: predatory

My name is Baileigh, and I'm pretty much an unapologetic music whore. No, really. I don't even really discriminate that much. Good music, bad music, really bad music...I mean, my God. I listen to the Spice Girls. Proudly.

Favorites include Prince, Jill Tracy, Ella, BRMC, The Spice Girls as was mentioned above, Vienna Teng, Coldplay, My Chemical Romance, Tori Amos...oh, and Disney songs. I'm a nerd, but I'm okay with that.

Hi!