Fallen Angel

by Melody John

  ‘The mesmer.’ I’d meant it to sound firm and commanding, but it came out as almost a whisper.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘You’ve got one, haven’t you. You’ve all got one.’

  ‘Well, yeah. It comes with the package.’

  I knew I needed to stand tall, look him in the eye and speak my piece. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I couldn’t do that. But David. For David’s sake. I took a deep breath, and fixed my gaze on the end of Dmitri’s nose. ‘The mesmer doesn’t work on me as well as it does on regular humans. So if I find out that you’ve been using your mesmer on anyone here, anyone in class or anyone back at the dorms, I’ll—’ Goddammit, I’d what? What could I possibly do to stop him? ‘I’ll use my power, and I’ll stop you.’

  ‘Your power?’ He frowned. ‘What do you mean? How do you have a power? What is it?’

  I tried to force confidence into my voice. ‘It’ll be enough to stop you. I’ve met your kind before, and I know what you’re capable of, so you’d better believe me when I say I know how to stop you, and what your weaknesses are.’

  There was a pause. I felt him studying me, felt him staring at me. I didn’t make eye contact, but transferred my gaze to a spot just above his left shoulder. I could see the rest of the group at the other end of the room, and the tutor waving his arms and bouncing from student to student. His voice floated back towards us: ‘…And if you look here, you can see the letter—the mark of her shame!—and think also about the context of that, what the letter would symbolise, not just as a letter, but also as a technological advance! 1840, Rowland Hill, the penny black, it’s all here!’

  Then Dmitri gave half a smile. ‘Of course I’m not going to use my mesmer on anyone. It’s forbidden. It’s one of the oldest laws.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean that you’re not going to break it.’

  ‘True. Very well, then, I promise, hand on heart, that I’m not going to use my mesmer on anyone at all.’ He shrugged a little. ‘It’s not like I need to, either. I’m enjoying it here. I’m making friends. I like it.’

  I wanted to press it, wanted to insist And you’ll leave David alone? But that would be going too far. He’d want to know why I was so fussed about David’s welfare, and then it would get awkward, and I didn’t feel I could even answer that adequately. So I said, ‘Okay. But don’t sneak up on me.’

  He grinned. ‘I won’t. I didn’t actually mean to. You were just really, really into that painting.’

  I looked at it again. It was so peaceful, but at the same time it felt like it was brimming full of energy. The colours, the lights, the textures. It was unreal. Static and in perpetual motion. Rich, bright and vibrant, but still caught in stasis. ‘It’s lovely,’ I said.

  ‘Eh,’ Dmitri said. ‘It’s a bit too soppy for my tastes.’ He grinned at me again, and then went past me to the other side of the room. I saw him out of the corner of my eye, standing in front of a painting showing a blindfolded girl playing a harp on a rock.

  I turned back to my painting. I wished I could rest my head against the canvas and close my eyes and just let the colours wrap themselves around me. I didn’t do that. Obviously.

  But at the end of the trip, I bought a print of that painting in the gift shop, and when I got back to the dorms, I pinned it to my bedroom wall. The colours made the whole tiny cubicle feel bright and exciting, and a little more like my own.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Things seemed to go smoothly after that. I still watched Dmitri, and I still watched David, but Dmitri seemed to be keeping his word. He was friendly towards David, maybe a little more friendly than he was towards me—but after all, I had kind of threatened him and acted like I hated him, so that was understandable.

  After that night at the club, David, Laura, Dmitri, and I had kind of formed into a group. I’d never been part of a group of friends like that before, and it was nice, though saying it out loud did make me feel like I was part of the cast of a sitcom.

  We went back to the Fish Tank quite a few times, but I preferred the evenings that we spent in the common room. David had an impressive collection of DVD boxsets, and as Dmitri didn’t seem to have watched any movies older than a few months, it became a bit of a tradition to make what Laura referred to as ‘a shi-hoo-gar-load of popcorn’ and work our way through the classics. Dmitri was fascinated by Star Wars, but liked the prequels; agreed with me about Alien and Aliens; bemused Laura by saying he preferred The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings.

  ‘I feel very maternal towards you sometimes,’ she said once, patting Dmitri on the head. ‘It’s like David, Lizzie, and me are your parents, and we’re training you up in the geeky ways in which you should go.’

  David threw back his head and laughed. I laughed as well, but I was watching Dmitri’s face, and I saw how he was looking at David, and I wasn’t sure I liked it.

  That was the thing, though. David and Dmitri were friends, and I didn’t know if the possibility of them becoming more than friends was genuine concern about the mesmer, or… well, jealousy. Because I did like David—maybe I didn’t like like him properly, but I felt like I was balancing on the edge. I didn’t want to plunge headlong over the side because I didn’t know what would be waiting at the bottom, and the last time that had happened it had felt like one of the worst things to happen to me in my entire life.

  I didn’t like like David—yet. So I kept on hauling myself back from the edge of giving into my feelings, and hoping that either they would go away, or I would receive—I didn’t know, a sign or something that would tell me how to proceed.

  I knew it wasn’t good to wait in limbo like this. If you want something, go and get it, right? And it wasn’t fair of me to hang around and wait for the guy to make the first move, because seriously, what was this, 1950?

  But still I couldn’t move past that weight of suspicion that kept pulling me back. Liam had hurt me. I was terrified of going through that again. Just to be friends with David should be enough for me. I didn’t have to think about anything else just yet.

  *

  As it grew closer to the end of our first term, my coursework, which had for so long seemed far away and distant, like the threat of shark attack or volcanic explosion, suddenly burst into the present like a wild highwayman, demanding my time, concentration, and every waking moment. Netflix marathons suddenly became a thing of the past as I juggled primary sources, quotations, and notes on how to format a bibliography.

  ‘Seriously,’ I said to Laura as we sat in the common room, tapping away on our laptops, ‘why did they have to make bibliographies so complicated? I mean, does it matter if each comma has its own formatting?’

  ‘But of course it does,’ Laura said, tapping her pen against her nose. ‘If even one comma is italicised when it shouldn’t be, then the entire essay is rendered null and void. I heard one kid italicised his commas when he shouldn’t, and that same night he was eaten by a hoard of raptors.’

  ‘I heard it was a black hole that sucked him screaming into its fetid depths, along with his Macbook, half-eaten slice of pizza, and a spare pair of shoelaces.’

  ‘And there was nothing left but the remnants of his essay notes, fluttering in the breeze of his passing, and a faint whisper on the wind breathing, “Always remember, children, the Harvard system of indexing”.’

  We giggled. ‘I can see why you’re doing creative writing,’ I said.

  Laura grinned. ‘I don’t think my tutors appreciate my special brand of storytelling, though. They keep on telling me to dig deep into my pain and trauma and use that emotion to fuel hard-hitting stories of love, life, and death.’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘I told them I didn’t have much pain, but they just said, “Now that’s not true, everyone has dimensions”.’

  I hooted with laughter, and Laura ran her hands down over her waist and hips, and raised an eyebrow suggestively.

  ‘Dimensions like Jessica Rabbit,’ I said, grinning.

  ‘Exactly
so.’

  We were quiet for a little while, then Laura sighed and stopped typing and said, ‘Lizzie, what would you write about, if you had to dig deep into your pain?’

  Liam.

  The name flew to my tongue instantly, and I bit it back. Some of my emotions must have shown on my face, because Laura added quickly, ‘Sorry, was that too personal? You don’t have to tell me.’

  I looked at the table, and ran my fingernail along my space bar. The idea of unburdening myself to Laura, or to anyone for that matter, felt alien to me; this was my load, my bottled up hurt that only I could look at. But maybe that was why I needed to do it.

  ‘When I was at college,’ I said slowly, hesitantly, picking each word very carefully. ‘I met a guy. He was… I don’t know how to explain it. He was—different, I guess? He was certainly different. And I thought… He was very persuasive. Manipulative. And—he wasn’t who I thought he was. He didn’t feel the way about me that I thought he did. He didn’t—he wasn’t—he tricked me into doing a lot of things that ordinarily I wouldn’t have gone along with. It was—I wasn’t with him for very long. Not long at all, really. Barely any time at all. But it was very intense, and… And then I found out that he’d been manipulating me all along, and…’ Oh god, I could feel the tears starting to well up. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t you dare fudging cry. I stared hard at my keyboard.

  After a little silence, Laura said softly, ‘I’m sorry. I think… I’m sorry if this seems rude, but is that why you’re… nervous around David and Dmitri?’

  I glanced up quickly, then looked back down again. ‘Oh. Does it—does it notice very much?’

  ‘Maybe not very much. But because I’ve got to know you, and I see you practically every day now, it’s more obvious. You’ve got better, I think, but I can still tell—you act differently around David, and very differently around Dmitri. With David, it’s like—you like him, and you want to be friendly and to talk to him, but it’s like, I don’t know, kind of like you don’t know how, or like something’s holding you back. And with Dmitri—again, you’ve got better, but it used to be that you’d jump every time he spoke to you. And you’d never be left alone with him. And whenever we’d be in a group, you’d always make sure you never stood next to him. You still do do that.’

  I took a deep breath and rubbed my forehead. ‘I didn’t know I was so obvious. I must seem really rude.’

  ‘I don’t think David’s noticed,’ Laura said. ‘But I think David can be a bit oblivious about things like that.’

  ‘But Dmitri’s noticed.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  I stared at my laptop screen, still not brave enough to look up.

  ‘Lizzie.’ Laura’s voice was gentle. ‘You know that not every guy is going to be like that one.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Another pause. ‘What was his name?’

  I drew down a wobbly breath. ‘Liam.’

  ‘David’s a good guy. So’s Dmitri. They’re not going to, you know. Love you and leave you.’ I looked up quickly, and she winced. ‘Sorry. That wasn’t the best way to word it. I mean—you don’t have to be scared around them. I mean, be careful, obviously, but you know them both by now, don’t you? You know if you trust them, and you know what kind of people they are. I’m not saying, you know, fling yourself in headfirst and don’t take any precautions and don’t be careful at all… I’m just saying… I don’t know. Trust them. And trust yourself to be careful with them.’

  ‘Trust myself?’

  ‘Yeah. Sometimes you just act like you don’t trust yourself. Like you worry you’re going to do something, and so you don’t let yourself get closer to anyone. I don’t know.’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’m saying this right.’

  ‘You’re meant to be the writer here,’ I said, managing to smile.

  ‘Yeah, and evidently I’m doing really well at it.’

  ‘It’s all the whiskey you don’t drink and all the cigars that you don’t smoke.’

  ‘Right, so if I down a couple of shots, I’ll instantly know how to give real advice?’

  ‘Yeah, totally, that’s exactly how it works.’

  Laura grinned, but then grew serious. ‘Do you get what I’m saying, though? I don’t mean go crazy and whatever, but…’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I get what you mean. It’s just—it’s just really hard—and don’t say that’s what she said, I’m being serious here.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say it!’

  ‘Yes you were, I know you.’

  ‘I was only going to think it.’

  I sighed. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, you know. You just wanted to complain about essays, and then it got all dramatic and everything.’

  ‘Hey, no, this is great writing material.’ Laura reached across the table and gently poked me in the shoulder. ‘Keep blathering. Make everything dramatic. Drama feeds my starving muse.’

  ‘Get your own drama,’ I said, rolling my eyes. Then, I said a bit hesitantly, ‘I guess you haven’t… you don’t have a Liam.’

  Laura looked down at her hands. ‘No. I don’t—I’ve never really had anyone. It’s meant to be the thing, isn’t it, you get rid of it during fresher’s week and then… But…’ She chewed on her lower lip. ‘It’s weird. But I… I really don’t want to.’

  ‘Well, you do have to wait for the right person,’ I said. ‘You know, so you don’t end up with a Liam of your own.’

  ‘Yeah, no, that’s not really it. It’s…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I just don’t want to have sex at all. I’ve never wanted to, and I don’t think I ever will.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said in surprise. ‘Not with anyone? Like, guys or girls?’

  ‘No.’ She shrugged impatiently. ‘It’s not that I’m secretly super repressed or anything—I just don’t. I can’t imagine wanting it. It’s like, I look around at everyone and they’re all so… hungry for something that I don’t find appetising. And I don’t feel that hunger at all.’

  I couldn’t imagine that. I’d thought everyone had some kind of hunger—desire—in them. Even me, messed up and weird after Liam, I still knew that I kind of desired David, and that was what was freaking me out so much.

  I paused for a moment. I examined that last thought.

  I desired David.

  I liked David.

  I liked David and I desired him, and I wanted to get to know him even better so I could see if I should act on those feelings.

  God. It felt so weird to finally admit that to myself. For a moment, Liam’s face flashed through my mind, but I pushed the image away. I didn’t want to think of Liam. I didn’t want to think of David in the same way that I thought of Liam, didn’t want to muddle and smudge those two feelings. They were separate and different.

  I liked David.

  I realised belatedly that while I’d been having my own personal breakthrough, Laura had been sitting in silence.

  ‘I can’t really empathise with that,’ I said honestly. ‘But didn’t David say something about people in the LGBT society who felt like that as well? The cake people, or something like that?’

  ‘Asexuals.’

  ‘Yeah. So why don’t you go to some of the meetings with David and Dmitri?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’d feel weird going.’

  ‘Weird why? How?’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘How?’

  ‘Yeah. Just—you know, no offence, but you’re like one of the least weird people I know. You’re so fashionable, and your eyeliner’s always so damned perfect.’

  ‘Damn me and my perfect eyeliner,’ she said agreeably.

  ‘No, but I mean you shouldn’t be worried. You’ll be fine. David says they’re all very nice there.’

  ‘Yeah…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I don’t suppose… do you ever get that where it feels like you’re intruding on something that isn’t yours?’

  ‘Like what?’

  Laura
sighed. She started to say something, then fell quiet again, and after a few moments of chewing on her lip and staring at the tabletop, she said, ‘I’d feel like a fraud. Like I’m pretending.’

  ‘But you’re not,’ I said, feeling a bit confused. ‘You said you felt…’

  ‘Yeah, I know how I feel, and if it was just me by myself then yeah, I might start to think about calling myself asexual. But it’s telling it to other people. And they’re going to ask questions, and they’ll be curious, and it won’t matter about my eyeliner or anything like that.’