[closed log]
Who; Aiai and Xiao-mei~
What; Crazies being crazies
When; Ah erm ah...yesterday.
Where; One of the boys' bathrooms >]
Xiao-mei; She wasn't entirely sure that it was a good idea to be exploring in a place like this, but good ideas had never really manifested in Xiao-mei's mind quite as easily as the bad ones. She had done a cursory walkthrough of the school; it had been cold and damp, and though she was certain the place should have frightened her, there was only one place that did that. It was worlds away, though--China was so far now.
Her constant companion, the Japanese doll that she still had not named nor further inspected (hoping that perhaps all its secrets would infuse into her cells and transfer to her brain) sat quietly in her arms as Xiao-mei walked down an empty, silent hallway. The soft creak of the floor emitted not from her own shoes, but from the thick, heavy soled ones that Yu had always worn. Silly girl couldn't walk about the house in bare feet without causing a creak, Xiao-mei thought to herself. It made her sad to think that maybe that was the reason Yu was dead. Because she simply couldn't hide very well.
There was a scritch scritching coming from behind a door to Xiao-mei's right. It wasn't the same scritch scritching of fingernails on floorboards, but rather something softer. Not heeding the sign that clearly stated "BOYS," Xiao-mei pushed open the door and found herself in the presence of someone familiar.
"Hello, Aiai."
Aiai; The school wasn't as silent as it seemed, and cried out for guidance. Aiai wasn't wish, but she knew a thing or two...sometimes. Marker in hand, she had stomped into the nearest bathroom to take a leak. Her eyes had scanned the plain white tiles walls and the grey plastic stalls, and realized the easiest way to communicate with the building. It was crying, cooing, screaming for something. Aiai wasn't sure what, but maybe every bit counted?
The marker was the smelly kind, and Aiai felt it in her temples almost immediately. Still, she scrawled word after word, humming as she wrote, and occasionaly singing a line or two of the song. "Maybe you're crazy in the head...Hey, kids, where are you? Nobody tells you what to do, baby..."
She heard footsteps outside the door, but this wasn't the first time. No one had come in to bother her yet, and she assumed that this person would also pass this door by. Then she heard the door's squeaks and her name muttered in the same breath, and rather than turning her head to peek at the intruder, she leaned her neck back, back until it hurt, but she could make out some hair and a face.
"ZOO~!" she cried out, and jumped up and bounded towards her friend, leaving Thing Two and Thing One to watch and make sure her marker wouldn't run away. Her arms came around the other girl, and she pulled her close. She smelled of history books.
Xiao-mei; There was something oddly unsurprising about finding Aiai in the boys' bathroom, drawing on the walls. Xiao-mei had hardly gotten a chance to observe what the other girl was doing before she was accosted, something that surprised her heart into motion and sent it all haywire in her chest. As Aiai squeezed, she felt it about to pop. To relieve some of the pressure (light, she told herself, it's not what you think...) Xiao-mei also embraced the girl, understanding the gesture. Yu had done this often. When Aiai released her, Xiao-mei smiled softly.
"What are you doing, Aiai?" She asked, allowing her eyes to travel over the writings and then to the rest of the bathroom. It was chilly and slightly eerie, but the glow from the lights chased all the monsters in Xiao-mei's mind away. The place was full of something, she was sure, but whether it be monsters or ghosts or angels, Xiao-mei couldn't tell. That boy she had met, the one with the soft smile and blood--she'd felt inclined to believe it was demons or angels around him. Near Aiai, she just felt something.
It seemed a bit noisier, around the other girl. It was good. Xiao-mei couldn't hear Yu, that way.
Putting a hand out to carefully brush her fingers against the bare tiled wall, Xiao-mei wished for the very first time that she understood the place where they were. Aiai obviously felt comfortable enough that she could draw on the walls--or maybe there was a deeper meaning to that, Xiao-mei wasn't sure. She was sure Aiai would tell her, though--they were friends. It had been a long time since she'd had a friend, but Xiao-mei was sure she still remembered how to do it.
Aiai; Through the portico of my elegant house you stalk, it read in the smooth script of someone who had practiced it too often. The marker was red and it stood out like fake blood against the pale stalls. Then Aiai had gotten tired of that poem, and had opted out, faded it into something new and uglier.
And it's too cold in here for even painted flowers.
"I'm writing a letter to the school," she stated casually, and walked back to Thing One and Thing Two, picking up the marker once more and balancing it between her fingers. "I hope it writes back. Maybe when I leave we can be penpals."
She pressed the marker against the plastic, but paused for a few seconds before actually writing anything. Meet Zoo, she's like 'friend' but different. She close to the bottom, now, and was kneeling on the floor when she finished, her knees pressed against the cold floor.
Xiao-mei; Though the words were foreign to Xiao-mei, she whispered them aloud to get the sense. When she did, they sounded beautiful in the silence--Xiao-mei had never liked the sound of English words, but she liked these. She knew them. Knew them deep and well, but only because she studied too much and knew too many things. "And it's too cold in here for even painted flowers." She said, not in a whisper though. It was loud and bold, and it brought a smile to her face.
Xiao-mei crouched by Aiai on the floor, an easy way to sit that she'd learned as a child. "What's a pen pal?" She asked, blinking softly as her eyes ran over the words. Something laughed inside her. Silly Xiao-xiao, a voice cackled. Xiao-mei couldn't remember when Yu had become so cruel. Perhaps she was jealous.
"It must be corresponding." She mused aloud, watching Aiai pen the final lines. Her smile became more intense, and it hurt her face. "I think the school will write back." She said, putting her hand near some of the words. "Don't you think it has something to say?" She did. Everyone had something to say, Xiao-mei was convinced. That was why she tried to listen to everything, and everyone. If you didn't, you might miss something important. And important things could kill you.
Like her mother. Her mother was missing happiness. That's why she was dead.
Yu was dead because she hadn't seen that.
Aiai; Aiai glanced over at the girl, dark and somber despite that smile she had glued onto her face. Aiai didn't like looking at her lips, because maybe they would fall off from so much frightening smiles. She looked at her eyes instead, and she saw a mirror and a girl, and it hurt Aiai to think about it.
Everyone carries their own past, and no one should relive it for them. Aiai understood and believed this, and maybe this was the one things that she knew as Truth. The past was a tender, sobbing creature that would only truly stand the touch of its maker. Aiai had gotten bitten by a dog once, and she didn't like petting crying creatures now.
"...Pen pals are when you write a letter to someone who doesn't live where you can see and touch and smell them, and they read it and either hate you or love you, but they take a pen or pencil and they write back and same circle circle on and on until someone goes overboard in to the waters of This Is The End of This Virtual Friendship; I Have Not The Mental Stability For This Kind of Relationship." Aiai spoke the last part in a firm, deep voice, one that fit the role she should have been playing of confident rich girl.
Xiao-mei; Xiao-mei nodded once, deep and understanding. She wondered if penpals would work with dead people--but she didn't see the point in that, really. She already talked to the dead enough...or so she thought she did. That was one thing that they had tried to convince her that she didn't do. The spirits don't live amongst us, Xiao-mei. They'd told her (those in China, and America,) it's only your imagination.
Xiao-mei wondered, was Aiai her imagination, too? She could touch and feel and breathe almost everything she imagined. What if Aiai was just a figment?
No, that wasn't right. It didn't smell of truth, didn't sound like it. Aiai was real; there was no way that Xiao-mei could make her up. "I hope the school will love you." Xiao-mei said seriously; it sounded childish, and though her words often seemed rather childish for how abstract they were, Xiao-mei was anything but. There was logic behind that. If the school didn't love them, if it hated them, then that would be Bad. Xiao-mei knew all about things that were Bad, carried them with her deep in her gut and watched them swim around other people's heads. But she liked Aiai's words, and maybe the school would, too.
"...Aiai..." the most important question of all, "why are you making the school your pen pal?"
Aiai; As if understanding her doubts, Aiai reached out and grabbed Zoo's left hand, turning it palm down. With the red marker she drew a sloppy heart, which she quickly shaded in. She gazed down at it for a bit before shrugging and letting go of Zoo. It was good enough for a souvenir. A memoir. A ribbon around a finger.
The school wouldn't love her, that was a given, but it was the thought and the feelings behind the words that counted, not the truth in it. The school just needed a voice, even if it was an angry one. Maybe especially then.
"Because everyone needs a pen pal. Because when you don't, sometime you wonder if anyone knows you're alive. You're a box and only your owners know you exist, but there's a whole world out there, but none of them know your name."
Xiao-mei; Names. Xiao-mei nodded, looking down at the heart on her hand. "Did you have a pen pal?" She asked quietly, one finger going to trace the outline of the read heart. It made her feel a little better--wasn't that the international symbol for...what? Love? It reminded her of the things she'd used to draw when she'd been a child. Childhood had been good. Looking at Aiai, Xiao-mei wondered if her childhood had been good to her. She'd never heard someone talk so much, and say so much. Normally, people talked a lot and said very little. They were strange, some of the things Aiai said.
Xiao-mei had never had a pen pal. Her father had tried to write her once, when she'd been in the institution. She'd ripped his letter to hundreds of little pieces (ripriprip) and swallowed half of them. The other half, she'd flushed down the toilet. She'd put one piece in a boy named Billy's oatmeal. The letter would never be whole, no matter how many people tried to put it together again. She didn't know what happened to billy. Maybe the letter had poisoned him.
Pushing her fingers through the doll's hair, Xiao-mei thought about boxes and looked down at the doll's porcelain skin, wondering what kind of box it had come in. And then she wondered if it had come in a box at all. If it was made, or born. And that was interesting.
Aiai; Aiai was busy drawing an elephant, or maybe it was a whale. She had no way to be sure, and whatever it would end up being, it didn't matter, because the building didn't know about big animals, anyway. It wouldn't recognize an Indian elephant or a deep-ocean whale.
No. Aiai was still in her box. She could feel the walls if she stretched far enough. She could smell the stale air all the time. No one had ever written Aiai a letter, except the doctor, and those letters were full of coded numbers, which her parents deciphered and then replied to with green green paper. There were people on the paper, unimportant, blank faces that meant little to Aiai. No, never a penpal.
"No one knows my name," Aiai replied slowly, and began scribbling over her elephantwhale. It suddenly felt like a waste. She was still in a box.
Xiao-mei; She watched the red fill up the space that Aiai had been drawing on. It filled it up like a pool of blood and out of the corner of her eye, Xiao-mei could see that blood washing over the tiles of the bathroom floor. It stopped near them, hovered somewhere by Aiai's left foot. It didn't come any closer. No one knows my name. Xiao-mei knew that sentence meant more than what came from it, but she didn't know how to decipher it, exactly. They were talking about names and boxes and penpals, and if no one knew Aiai's name, then what did that mean?
Why did Aiai call Xiao-mei, Zoo, again? Had that become her name?
"Don't they." She replied, voice soft and distant as she turned to focus her eyes on the other girl's. She wanted to know why they didn't know it, or if they should. But Xiao-mei just sat and looked at the crossed out animal on the stall. It looked sad, and lost and empty. Why had Aiai brought it into life only to abandon it? That was a question Xiao-mei asked herself a lot. But many, many people did it.
She supposed that maybe, they couldn't help it.
Aiai; "I think it's better than if it hadn't existed at all. Because then it would be empty space. Now it's in pain, and it's ugly, but it's something." Aiai replaced the cap on the marker, and placed Thing One and Thing Two carefully on her lap.
Aiai had already moved on from names and pen pals and stale air, and was thinking different, if not necessarily, happier thoughts. She quickly uncapped the marker once more, and began writing on Thing Two.
I want something that's better than this.
"And I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I'm sure that we can build it..." Aiai stopped writing and looked back up at Zoo. "Do you think that we should be trying harder to leave?"
Xiao-mei; She was always watching the other girl's movements very carefully, but Xiao-mei didn't mind that her eyes did that. She'd done it in that place, too. There was always something to learn about the way people moved and what they did. She was so intent upon the movements that she thought maybe she'd missed some of what Aiai was saying. Certainly she couldn't have caught it all. What were they supposed to be building?
Xiao-mei's vision darkened and she ended up sighing and rubbing at the scar on her chest before she finally realized that that last question begged an answer.
She thought about leaving, and looked at the doors. Then she looked at the windows and thought, what was trying? What was even the point in trying? Xiao-mei already knew that they couldn't leave, and she hadn't even put her hands on one of the outside doors yet. Everything was already such a waste when you already knew the answers, and Xiao-mei found herself looking at the crossed out drawing again.
"I think..." She pressed her lips together, thoughts as far away as a thousand ships at sea. When her thoughts came back to her, they were only half-formed, and she didn't remember what she had been going to say. "I think," she said anyway, "that it doesn't want us to leave. So even if we tried harder, it wouldn't matter." There was truth in that. There was no way they were leaving. Not any of htem. They would have to die to get out, of that, Xiao-mei was oddly certain.
"Do you think we should want to try harder to leave?" That was the more important question.
Aiai; Aiai looked up at Zoo, and all the movements stopped. She just looked and looked and blinked, studying and attempting to comprehend. Answer a question with a queston. Two could play at that game. In fact, everyone did. No one knew any real answers, they only knew more questions.
Maybe the building took their lack of determination to mean that they wanted to stay there. They had showed no desire to leave, to stray from this new box, so perhaps the building assumed that they were enjoyng their stay at the School of Ghosts, please come again. But there were worse scenerios than that one, and Aiai believed them all.
"That's not the real question, Zoo," she answered, leaning forward, her voice getting lower and lower, as if this were all a secret. Don't let your mother know what you're thinking... "The real question is, why are we sitting here, talking to wood and plaster and metal rather than talking to each other? Are we so estranged that we can't tell the difference?"
Aiai smiled, like a young girl getting Christmas presents. Her smile didn't match her words, but then again, it never did.
Xiao-mei; She didn't shrink back from the presence, but the sudden shift did make Xiao-mei's heart beat painfully against her rib cage. Too much memory of too-close bodies and leering faces and gestures meant to confine and hurt had made Xiao-mei slightly paranoid. But that was what she was, wasn't it? Didn't the doctors say so? She had a disease. Xiao-mei was pretty sure that they were all diseased, though, and Aiai's question only showed that more and more with every word.
"Maybe we don't know what to say to each other." Xiao-mei said softly, eyes drifting down to the metal blades in Aiai's lap. "Maybe we're too scared to remember to do things on purpose, and have to wait until accidents happen." Was this an accident? This place? Xiao-mei glanced up at the ceiling. Everything seemed so far away here, and she liked the word estranged for it. No matter how many rooms there were in this building, shouldn't they all be huddling together?
Wasn't that what humans were supposed to do? Maybe there was something wrong with them. Something wrong with each of them, something so wrong that the school had known and dragged them all here, put them in one room only to watch them scatter like enemies of each other. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each...
"What do you think it means, when we all run away at the sight of each other, but turn corners in this place like we're looking for something?"
Aiai; And accidents did happen. Too often. Sometimes people were accidents, sometimes they had accidents, and usually accidents were negative things. But people did wait for them anyway, didn't they? They preferred the negative things to actions and the possiblity of failure by their own hands. Aiai didn't care about people, not usually. Their fear was not her fear.
And she was here with Zoo, wasn't she?
"I think it means we're no smarter than lab rats. Maybe we're getting conditioned. I'm waiting for the zip of electricity." Aiai took Thing One and Thing Two into either hand and stood up slowly, careful not to brush the blades against the ground or Zoo. She blinked down at Zoo slowly.
Who was Zoo? She knew the hints and clues, but she didn't know solid answers anymore than she knew what she was doing here, anymore than she knew why the condom had broken. "Don't forget to wait before you swim."
Xiao-mei; One slow nod as Xiao-mei watched Aiai stand, feeling that their destined meeting was over. She thought about rats and the connotations with that, and realized that if they were lab rats, then they were all in a whole lot of trouble. But that was something Xiao-mei had dealt with all her life. Even if it was true that they were no better than rats, it didn't make any difference. The rats that stayed together still got experimented on, and easier. Maybe they were smarter for wanting to be alone.
Maybe, though, they were all just too stupid to realize that they weren't alone at all. Xiao-mei's eyes drifted to the doll in her hands. The bleak, yet somehow intelligent blackness stared back at her. With Aiai standing there, she reached in and pulled out the piece of paper that the doll had been holding. The one that she hadn't opened yet. And the message forced the turn of her eyes up and calling a smile that wasn't wry enough to give across her true, frigid meaning.
Something knew them.
"Feet first, first time." She finally responded to the statement. She would be careful. Had to be. She knew Aiai had to be, too. Even if they were walking around corners, blind as rats in a maze. If they weren't watching, who said they didn't deserve what they got? Xiao-mei pressed her lips to the doll's head with a final look to Aiai. The cold tile was beginning to seep through her pants.
"Goodnight, sister."
Aiai; Zoo read the paper in the doll's hand, but Aiai's eyes were locked on the doll itself. It was cold, and it smiled with those red lips of impossibility. All mirrormirror and no strength in those toys. Thing One and Thing Two were better, far more practical. When an accident came, they would save her. All the doll could offer was comfort.
Some would argue that comfort is all there is. After all, so many revolve themselves around religion, and what is a god or a goddess but comfort? But Aiai had no use for empty words. Black and white: dolls were silly, pointless and Zoo looked amused.
"Don't run. You'll bump your head and won't get up in the morning." Aiai pressed Thing One against Zoo's lips for a brief second, a better sort of chaste kiss. "There are a lot of bathrooms left. If you need me, you'll find me." An uncertain pause. "You will, right? You won't leave me wandering?"
Xiao-mei; The metal was frigid against her mouth, but it didn't drain Xiao-mei of all her warmth. Her fingers wound themselves in the doll's hair, and she offered Aiai a smile. Though it was reassuring only by imitation (the way she had seen those doctors do it, so many times. It's okay, Mei, they'd whisper,) it was Xiao-mei's effort, she thought, that gave the smile its meaning. "I won't let you get lost in this place." She said. Because with these many walls, with this much darkness...it was almost a certainty that one could get lost in some way.
Xiao-mei suddenly noticed that Yu was oddly silent. She tightened her grip on the doll, but it oddly gave little comfort. It was something to be careful with; she didn't think it was there to provide anything more than calm.
But she knew it would be easy to find Aiai--after all, she'd done so without looking for her, hadn't she? Just stumbled upon the other girl, heard her scritch scratching in that alive way. And it would only be a little while before Xiao-mei started finding more letters on the walls, like breadcrumbs in that strange American tale that her Uncle had tried to recite to her first week in the states. The brother and the sister had gotten away, couldn't it be the same for them?
Xiao-mei smiled once again, just a curve of the lips. A gift of parting because she had no special metal to give kisses, no way to express promises other than her words. The breadcrumbs would help her, but she held no hope for escaping from the witch's oven.
This wasn't an American story.
What; Crazies being crazies
When; Ah erm ah...yesterday.
Where; One of the boys' bathrooms >]
Xiao-mei; She wasn't entirely sure that it was a good idea to be exploring in a place like this, but good ideas had never really manifested in Xiao-mei's mind quite as easily as the bad ones. She had done a cursory walkthrough of the school; it had been cold and damp, and though she was certain the place should have frightened her, there was only one place that did that. It was worlds away, though--China was so far now.
Her constant companion, the Japanese doll that she still had not named nor further inspected (hoping that perhaps all its secrets would infuse into her cells and transfer to her brain) sat quietly in her arms as Xiao-mei walked down an empty, silent hallway. The soft creak of the floor emitted not from her own shoes, but from the thick, heavy soled ones that Yu had always worn. Silly girl couldn't walk about the house in bare feet without causing a creak, Xiao-mei thought to herself. It made her sad to think that maybe that was the reason Yu was dead. Because she simply couldn't hide very well.
There was a scritch scritching coming from behind a door to Xiao-mei's right. It wasn't the same scritch scritching of fingernails on floorboards, but rather something softer. Not heeding the sign that clearly stated "BOYS," Xiao-mei pushed open the door and found herself in the presence of someone familiar.
"Hello, Aiai."
Aiai; The school wasn't as silent as it seemed, and cried out for guidance. Aiai wasn't wish, but she knew a thing or two...sometimes. Marker in hand, she had stomped into the nearest bathroom to take a leak. Her eyes had scanned the plain white tiles walls and the grey plastic stalls, and realized the easiest way to communicate with the building. It was crying, cooing, screaming for something. Aiai wasn't sure what, but maybe every bit counted?
The marker was the smelly kind, and Aiai felt it in her temples almost immediately. Still, she scrawled word after word, humming as she wrote, and occasionaly singing a line or two of the song. "Maybe you're crazy in the head...Hey, kids, where are you? Nobody tells you what to do, baby..."
She heard footsteps outside the door, but this wasn't the first time. No one had come in to bother her yet, and she assumed that this person would also pass this door by. Then she heard the door's squeaks and her name muttered in the same breath, and rather than turning her head to peek at the intruder, she leaned her neck back, back until it hurt, but she could make out some hair and a face.
"ZOO~!" she cried out, and jumped up and bounded towards her friend, leaving Thing Two and Thing One to watch and make sure her marker wouldn't run away. Her arms came around the other girl, and she pulled her close. She smelled of history books.
Xiao-mei; There was something oddly unsurprising about finding Aiai in the boys' bathroom, drawing on the walls. Xiao-mei had hardly gotten a chance to observe what the other girl was doing before she was accosted, something that surprised her heart into motion and sent it all haywire in her chest. As Aiai squeezed, she felt it about to pop. To relieve some of the pressure (light, she told herself, it's not what you think...) Xiao-mei also embraced the girl, understanding the gesture. Yu had done this often. When Aiai released her, Xiao-mei smiled softly.
"What are you doing, Aiai?" She asked, allowing her eyes to travel over the writings and then to the rest of the bathroom. It was chilly and slightly eerie, but the glow from the lights chased all the monsters in Xiao-mei's mind away. The place was full of something, she was sure, but whether it be monsters or ghosts or angels, Xiao-mei couldn't tell. That boy she had met, the one with the soft smile and blood--she'd felt inclined to believe it was demons or angels around him. Near Aiai, she just felt something.
It seemed a bit noisier, around the other girl. It was good. Xiao-mei couldn't hear Yu, that way.
Putting a hand out to carefully brush her fingers against the bare tiled wall, Xiao-mei wished for the very first time that she understood the place where they were. Aiai obviously felt comfortable enough that she could draw on the walls--or maybe there was a deeper meaning to that, Xiao-mei wasn't sure. She was sure Aiai would tell her, though--they were friends. It had been a long time since she'd had a friend, but Xiao-mei was sure she still remembered how to do it.
Aiai; Through the portico of my elegant house you stalk, it read in the smooth script of someone who had practiced it too often. The marker was red and it stood out like fake blood against the pale stalls. Then Aiai had gotten tired of that poem, and had opted out, faded it into something new and uglier.
And it's too cold in here for even painted flowers.
"I'm writing a letter to the school," she stated casually, and walked back to Thing One and Thing Two, picking up the marker once more and balancing it between her fingers. "I hope it writes back. Maybe when I leave we can be penpals."
She pressed the marker against the plastic, but paused for a few seconds before actually writing anything. Meet Zoo, she's like 'friend' but different. She close to the bottom, now, and was kneeling on the floor when she finished, her knees pressed against the cold floor.
Xiao-mei; Though the words were foreign to Xiao-mei, she whispered them aloud to get the sense. When she did, they sounded beautiful in the silence--Xiao-mei had never liked the sound of English words, but she liked these. She knew them. Knew them deep and well, but only because she studied too much and knew too many things. "And it's too cold in here for even painted flowers." She said, not in a whisper though. It was loud and bold, and it brought a smile to her face.
Xiao-mei crouched by Aiai on the floor, an easy way to sit that she'd learned as a child. "What's a pen pal?" She asked, blinking softly as her eyes ran over the words. Something laughed inside her. Silly Xiao-xiao, a voice cackled. Xiao-mei couldn't remember when Yu had become so cruel. Perhaps she was jealous.
"It must be corresponding." She mused aloud, watching Aiai pen the final lines. Her smile became more intense, and it hurt her face. "I think the school will write back." She said, putting her hand near some of the words. "Don't you think it has something to say?" She did. Everyone had something to say, Xiao-mei was convinced. That was why she tried to listen to everything, and everyone. If you didn't, you might miss something important. And important things could kill you.
Like her mother. Her mother was missing happiness. That's why she was dead.
Yu was dead because she hadn't seen that.
Aiai; Aiai glanced over at the girl, dark and somber despite that smile she had glued onto her face. Aiai didn't like looking at her lips, because maybe they would fall off from so much frightening smiles. She looked at her eyes instead, and she saw a mirror and a girl, and it hurt Aiai to think about it.
Everyone carries their own past, and no one should relive it for them. Aiai understood and believed this, and maybe this was the one things that she knew as Truth. The past was a tender, sobbing creature that would only truly stand the touch of its maker. Aiai had gotten bitten by a dog once, and she didn't like petting crying creatures now.
"...Pen pals are when you write a letter to someone who doesn't live where you can see and touch and smell them, and they read it and either hate you or love you, but they take a pen or pencil and they write back and same circle circle on and on until someone goes overboard in to the waters of This Is The End of This Virtual Friendship; I Have Not The Mental Stability For This Kind of Relationship." Aiai spoke the last part in a firm, deep voice, one that fit the role she should have been playing of confident rich girl.
Xiao-mei; Xiao-mei nodded once, deep and understanding. She wondered if penpals would work with dead people--but she didn't see the point in that, really. She already talked to the dead enough...or so she thought she did. That was one thing that they had tried to convince her that she didn't do. The spirits don't live amongst us, Xiao-mei. They'd told her (those in China, and America,) it's only your imagination.
Xiao-mei wondered, was Aiai her imagination, too? She could touch and feel and breathe almost everything she imagined. What if Aiai was just a figment?
No, that wasn't right. It didn't smell of truth, didn't sound like it. Aiai was real; there was no way that Xiao-mei could make her up. "I hope the school will love you." Xiao-mei said seriously; it sounded childish, and though her words often seemed rather childish for how abstract they were, Xiao-mei was anything but. There was logic behind that. If the school didn't love them, if it hated them, then that would be Bad. Xiao-mei knew all about things that were Bad, carried them with her deep in her gut and watched them swim around other people's heads. But she liked Aiai's words, and maybe the school would, too.
"...Aiai..." the most important question of all, "why are you making the school your pen pal?"
Aiai; As if understanding her doubts, Aiai reached out and grabbed Zoo's left hand, turning it palm down. With the red marker she drew a sloppy heart, which she quickly shaded in. She gazed down at it for a bit before shrugging and letting go of Zoo. It was good enough for a souvenir. A memoir. A ribbon around a finger.
The school wouldn't love her, that was a given, but it was the thought and the feelings behind the words that counted, not the truth in it. The school just needed a voice, even if it was an angry one. Maybe especially then.
"Because everyone needs a pen pal. Because when you don't, sometime you wonder if anyone knows you're alive. You're a box and only your owners know you exist, but there's a whole world out there, but none of them know your name."
Xiao-mei; Names. Xiao-mei nodded, looking down at the heart on her hand. "Did you have a pen pal?" She asked quietly, one finger going to trace the outline of the read heart. It made her feel a little better--wasn't that the international symbol for...what? Love? It reminded her of the things she'd used to draw when she'd been a child. Childhood had been good. Looking at Aiai, Xiao-mei wondered if her childhood had been good to her. She'd never heard someone talk so much, and say so much. Normally, people talked a lot and said very little. They were strange, some of the things Aiai said.
Xiao-mei had never had a pen pal. Her father had tried to write her once, when she'd been in the institution. She'd ripped his letter to hundreds of little pieces (ripriprip) and swallowed half of them. The other half, she'd flushed down the toilet. She'd put one piece in a boy named Billy's oatmeal. The letter would never be whole, no matter how many people tried to put it together again. She didn't know what happened to billy. Maybe the letter had poisoned him.
Pushing her fingers through the doll's hair, Xiao-mei thought about boxes and looked down at the doll's porcelain skin, wondering what kind of box it had come in. And then she wondered if it had come in a box at all. If it was made, or born. And that was interesting.
Aiai; Aiai was busy drawing an elephant, or maybe it was a whale. She had no way to be sure, and whatever it would end up being, it didn't matter, because the building didn't know about big animals, anyway. It wouldn't recognize an Indian elephant or a deep-ocean whale.
No. Aiai was still in her box. She could feel the walls if she stretched far enough. She could smell the stale air all the time. No one had ever written Aiai a letter, except the doctor, and those letters were full of coded numbers, which her parents deciphered and then replied to with green green paper. There were people on the paper, unimportant, blank faces that meant little to Aiai. No, never a penpal.
"No one knows my name," Aiai replied slowly, and began scribbling over her elephantwhale. It suddenly felt like a waste. She was still in a box.
Xiao-mei; She watched the red fill up the space that Aiai had been drawing on. It filled it up like a pool of blood and out of the corner of her eye, Xiao-mei could see that blood washing over the tiles of the bathroom floor. It stopped near them, hovered somewhere by Aiai's left foot. It didn't come any closer. No one knows my name. Xiao-mei knew that sentence meant more than what came from it, but she didn't know how to decipher it, exactly. They were talking about names and boxes and penpals, and if no one knew Aiai's name, then what did that mean?
Why did Aiai call Xiao-mei, Zoo, again? Had that become her name?
"Don't they." She replied, voice soft and distant as she turned to focus her eyes on the other girl's. She wanted to know why they didn't know it, or if they should. But Xiao-mei just sat and looked at the crossed out animal on the stall. It looked sad, and lost and empty. Why had Aiai brought it into life only to abandon it? That was a question Xiao-mei asked herself a lot. But many, many people did it.
She supposed that maybe, they couldn't help it.
Aiai; "I think it's better than if it hadn't existed at all. Because then it would be empty space. Now it's in pain, and it's ugly, but it's something." Aiai replaced the cap on the marker, and placed Thing One and Thing Two carefully on her lap.
Aiai had already moved on from names and pen pals and stale air, and was thinking different, if not necessarily, happier thoughts. She quickly uncapped the marker once more, and began writing on Thing Two.
I want something that's better than this.
"And I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I'm sure that we can build it..." Aiai stopped writing and looked back up at Zoo. "Do you think that we should be trying harder to leave?"
Xiao-mei; She was always watching the other girl's movements very carefully, but Xiao-mei didn't mind that her eyes did that. She'd done it in that place, too. There was always something to learn about the way people moved and what they did. She was so intent upon the movements that she thought maybe she'd missed some of what Aiai was saying. Certainly she couldn't have caught it all. What were they supposed to be building?
Xiao-mei's vision darkened and she ended up sighing and rubbing at the scar on her chest before she finally realized that that last question begged an answer.
She thought about leaving, and looked at the doors. Then she looked at the windows and thought, what was trying? What was even the point in trying? Xiao-mei already knew that they couldn't leave, and she hadn't even put her hands on one of the outside doors yet. Everything was already such a waste when you already knew the answers, and Xiao-mei found herself looking at the crossed out drawing again.
"I think..." She pressed her lips together, thoughts as far away as a thousand ships at sea. When her thoughts came back to her, they were only half-formed, and she didn't remember what she had been going to say. "I think," she said anyway, "that it doesn't want us to leave. So even if we tried harder, it wouldn't matter." There was truth in that. There was no way they were leaving. Not any of htem. They would have to die to get out, of that, Xiao-mei was oddly certain.
"Do you think we should want to try harder to leave?" That was the more important question.
Aiai; Aiai looked up at Zoo, and all the movements stopped. She just looked and looked and blinked, studying and attempting to comprehend. Answer a question with a queston. Two could play at that game. In fact, everyone did. No one knew any real answers, they only knew more questions.
Maybe the building took their lack of determination to mean that they wanted to stay there. They had showed no desire to leave, to stray from this new box, so perhaps the building assumed that they were enjoyng their stay at the School of Ghosts, please come again. But there were worse scenerios than that one, and Aiai believed them all.
"That's not the real question, Zoo," she answered, leaning forward, her voice getting lower and lower, as if this were all a secret. Don't let your mother know what you're thinking... "The real question is, why are we sitting here, talking to wood and plaster and metal rather than talking to each other? Are we so estranged that we can't tell the difference?"
Aiai smiled, like a young girl getting Christmas presents. Her smile didn't match her words, but then again, it never did.
Xiao-mei; She didn't shrink back from the presence, but the sudden shift did make Xiao-mei's heart beat painfully against her rib cage. Too much memory of too-close bodies and leering faces and gestures meant to confine and hurt had made Xiao-mei slightly paranoid. But that was what she was, wasn't it? Didn't the doctors say so? She had a disease. Xiao-mei was pretty sure that they were all diseased, though, and Aiai's question only showed that more and more with every word.
"Maybe we don't know what to say to each other." Xiao-mei said softly, eyes drifting down to the metal blades in Aiai's lap. "Maybe we're too scared to remember to do things on purpose, and have to wait until accidents happen." Was this an accident? This place? Xiao-mei glanced up at the ceiling. Everything seemed so far away here, and she liked the word estranged for it. No matter how many rooms there were in this building, shouldn't they all be huddling together?
Wasn't that what humans were supposed to do? Maybe there was something wrong with them. Something wrong with each of them, something so wrong that the school had known and dragged them all here, put them in one room only to watch them scatter like enemies of each other. I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each...
"What do you think it means, when we all run away at the sight of each other, but turn corners in this place like we're looking for something?"
Aiai; And accidents did happen. Too often. Sometimes people were accidents, sometimes they had accidents, and usually accidents were negative things. But people did wait for them anyway, didn't they? They preferred the negative things to actions and the possiblity of failure by their own hands. Aiai didn't care about people, not usually. Their fear was not her fear.
And she was here with Zoo, wasn't she?
"I think it means we're no smarter than lab rats. Maybe we're getting conditioned. I'm waiting for the zip of electricity." Aiai took Thing One and Thing Two into either hand and stood up slowly, careful not to brush the blades against the ground or Zoo. She blinked down at Zoo slowly.
Who was Zoo? She knew the hints and clues, but she didn't know solid answers anymore than she knew what she was doing here, anymore than she knew why the condom had broken. "Don't forget to wait before you swim."
Xiao-mei; One slow nod as Xiao-mei watched Aiai stand, feeling that their destined meeting was over. She thought about rats and the connotations with that, and realized that if they were lab rats, then they were all in a whole lot of trouble. But that was something Xiao-mei had dealt with all her life. Even if it was true that they were no better than rats, it didn't make any difference. The rats that stayed together still got experimented on, and easier. Maybe they were smarter for wanting to be alone.
Maybe, though, they were all just too stupid to realize that they weren't alone at all. Xiao-mei's eyes drifted to the doll in her hands. The bleak, yet somehow intelligent blackness stared back at her. With Aiai standing there, she reached in and pulled out the piece of paper that the doll had been holding. The one that she hadn't opened yet. And the message forced the turn of her eyes up and calling a smile that wasn't wry enough to give across her true, frigid meaning.
Something knew them.
"Feet first, first time." She finally responded to the statement. She would be careful. Had to be. She knew Aiai had to be, too. Even if they were walking around corners, blind as rats in a maze. If they weren't watching, who said they didn't deserve what they got? Xiao-mei pressed her lips to the doll's head with a final look to Aiai. The cold tile was beginning to seep through her pants.
"Goodnight, sister."
Aiai; Zoo read the paper in the doll's hand, but Aiai's eyes were locked on the doll itself. It was cold, and it smiled with those red lips of impossibility. All mirrormirror and no strength in those toys. Thing One and Thing Two were better, far more practical. When an accident came, they would save her. All the doll could offer was comfort.
Some would argue that comfort is all there is. After all, so many revolve themselves around religion, and what is a god or a goddess but comfort? But Aiai had no use for empty words. Black and white: dolls were silly, pointless and Zoo looked amused.
"Don't run. You'll bump your head and won't get up in the morning." Aiai pressed Thing One against Zoo's lips for a brief second, a better sort of chaste kiss. "There are a lot of bathrooms left. If you need me, you'll find me." An uncertain pause. "You will, right? You won't leave me wandering?"
Xiao-mei; The metal was frigid against her mouth, but it didn't drain Xiao-mei of all her warmth. Her fingers wound themselves in the doll's hair, and she offered Aiai a smile. Though it was reassuring only by imitation (the way she had seen those doctors do it, so many times. It's okay, Mei, they'd whisper,) it was Xiao-mei's effort, she thought, that gave the smile its meaning. "I won't let you get lost in this place." She said. Because with these many walls, with this much darkness...it was almost a certainty that one could get lost in some way.
Xiao-mei suddenly noticed that Yu was oddly silent. She tightened her grip on the doll, but it oddly gave little comfort. It was something to be careful with; she didn't think it was there to provide anything more than calm.
But she knew it would be easy to find Aiai--after all, she'd done so without looking for her, hadn't she? Just stumbled upon the other girl, heard her scritch scratching in that alive way. And it would only be a little while before Xiao-mei started finding more letters on the walls, like breadcrumbs in that strange American tale that her Uncle had tried to recite to her first week in the states. The brother and the sister had gotten away, couldn't it be the same for them?
Xiao-mei smiled once again, just a curve of the lips. A gift of parting because she had no special metal to give kisses, no way to express promises other than her words. The breadcrumbs would help her, but she held no hope for escaping from the witch's oven.
This wasn't an American story.