The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 8

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

Ariadne did not feel like eating but it was against the few rules mutants had to skip meals. She went to the servery and seated herself in her usual place. A meal was placed before her, the gravy spilling a little over the edge of her pannikin. In her mind, she was sculpting a dead tree, every nuance of the carving taking up her imagination. The throbbing inside her head had lessened significantly since she had started the dream. She was suddenly thrust back to reality by the sensation of emotions pulling in beside and across from her.

She looked at the mutant faces of the people she shared her life with. She did not love them or hate them. They were merely people who lived with pain like her.

"I'm going to sculpt a spiral from a dead tree,” she announced to the group at her supper table. "It will be my fountain of tears and with it I will mourn a river."

The group looked at her balefully and sceptically. She felt their questions and their disbelief. "I'm going to." and she began eating as if to end the matter there and then. The others looked at her for a few more moments, and then one by one they bent over their meal and ate in silence too.

Ariadne pulled her imagination forward so that all she could see were its pictures in her mind, reminiscent of, and built upon her dream - that of turning the giant dead wood thing in the imaginary lathe around and around, carving the grooves that would become the spiral of her tears.

As the pannikins emptied and the diners were satisfied, they stopped and in silence sat and bored their eyes into Ari trying to fathom if she had gone mad or if this was yet another mere moan regarding her plight. Ari could feel the rising heat of enquiry poking her in the spot behind her eyes like laser swords.

“What’s wrong with paper and charcoal?” Said the round shaped young woman at the end of the table. It was a pertinent question. The charcoal alone, being black market and extremely valuable a commodity, was enough to warrant jealousy of Ari’s abilities to use it. No one else in their Section could draw like this Ariadne modification could so many denied themselves such extravagances as charcoal by virtue of not being able to do such a commodity justice. Paper on the other hand, was still a common device. Available to everyone in every section of the laboratory, it carried no special merit save that it was made not from wood anymore, but from papyrus.

The civilised world had turned full circle in many ways and the ancient plant, once used by the Egyptians thousands of years ago was now used again, only with much faster and more efficient harvesting and processing techniques. Of course it was genetically modified to endure conditions its ancient predecessor could not. It was whiter, thinner, hardier and far more resilient to moisture and mould. Normal Humans paid a premium price for this paper; it was considered a luxury outside the Perspex cages of the laboratory. Mutants used it as people had historically used – and abused – paper in the century preceding them, with no compunctions about wasting it.

“Nothing is wrong with paper and charcoal, Carol,” Ari replied, looking up at the speaker and feeling the jealousy and envy pour from every cell in Carol’s rotund frame. “I simply want to carve the tears I cannot shed into a spiral on a dead tree.”

“But, Why?” Asked the James Modification, the gills at the sides of his neck flapping as he spoke.

“Because I want to!” Ariadne could feel her anger beginning to rise. She needed to escape these people. They couldn’t - and wouldn’t - listen to her and she could feel their frustration and distrust of her as a firebrand on her mind. Because…I…want…to!” She reiterated the words slowly and deliberately to try and make it clear.

The bell sounded to announce the end of their meal and they each rose from their places, taking their pannikins and cutlery and dumping them with a cacophony of metallic thuds into the dish bins as they exited the mess hall. No one spoke or commented to Ari as they left, but she could feel them. She could feel their questions; their mistrust, their envy and she determined once more, to carve her tears so they’d finally know what it meant to not be able to cry.

... To be continued. (I hope)

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 7

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6

The dream she had that afternoon changed things. She dreamed she was sculpting something from wood. A tree, old, extremely large, but utterly dead was in front of her. She could feel nothing from it and it pleased her. The tree was caught in a giant lathe. Ari was tiny in comparison. She climbed a hover-ladder and began to carve into the trunk of the tree. All she was using was a small woodcarving tool, a laser carver that melted into the wood cleanly and precisely. She looked down the length of the giant dead hulk of wood and smiled. This was her life's work. She would carve into that tree a ring for every tear she ever wanted to shed and couldn't. The tree would become her last remaining spiral before she died.

When the supper bell rang later that evening, Ari was sitting on the side of her bed. She wanted to make the dream come true. She wanted to sculpt her tears and leave them behind her as a lasting reminder to the world. She went to the communications console on the wall panel.

"Ariadne Modification Sector 12 request please?” She pronounced into the speaker. The blue communications 'On' light lit up.

"Yes?" came a stifled male voice through Perspex and metal.

"I want to sculpt a spiral in wood. May I be provided with a dead tree, a large lathe and wood carving tools please?" She asked with the complete knowledge that it - or something close to it - would be provided to her no matter how strange her request.

"Yes Ariadne Sector 12. Tomorrow we will send in a Counsellor to obtain further details about your request. Do you need more paper in the meantime? Charcoal perhaps?"

"Yes" she replied simply.

"It will be in your room when you return from your meal. Enjoy your evening Ariadne Modification Sector 12." The disembodied voice trailed off and the communications "On" light faded out.

…to be continued. (I hope)

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 6

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5


"Tell me why do you draw spirals again, Ari?" His look made her close her eyes as the throbbing sensation behind them threatened ever louder.

"Because it’s the only way I can cry, Dwayne" she said simply, her eyes shut tightly, willing back the violent surge of emotional intensity behind them. Dwayne stared at them for a moment, trying to understand, then he moved forward again and crouched down to carefully poke the finished drawing in amongst the other papers inside the portfolio. Once it was inside, Ari let the flap fall and she pushed it back under her cot quickly. Dwayne continued to crouch in front of her on the bed. Ari could feel how it was making his knees and ankles, back and neck hurt. He looked at her with his brown, round eyes and excessively aquiline nose. Dwayne said nothing, but Ari could hear his emotions like the shrieking of gulls roaring in her mind. “So? Why do you need to cry, Ari?”

The shooting pain inside Ari's head began to spin like one of her spirals. It was a pinwheel of light boring into her mind, the fiery tendrils spilling outwards to burn and frazzle the edges of her thoughts. "Don't!" she breathed. Dwayne put his fingers against her forehead in the hopeful attempt to cool her mind. The cool of his hands momentarily thwarted the spinning but then it came back again, stronger and more unavoidable. She lay down on the bed. "Kill me!" she whispered.

"No." Dwayne said as quietly.

"I want to cry Dwayne. I can't. My body refuses. I feel everything inside my mind but my body can't react or respond to it. I might as well be dead."

"Bit melodramatic Ari. Even for you."

"You sound like Margot! I'm being a 'baby' now am I?"

"You are in pain. We all of us are sweetie."

"You don't know the pain I feel every moment of my life!" she retaliated raising her voice now a little.

"True, but you only get a reflection of mine, you don't feel how my knees burn that clearly, especially at night when I am trying to sleep."

"Just go D. I'll be fine." she sighed, the spinning maelstrom of pain jettisoning electrical surges of intense heat throughout her head. Dwayne left the room. She could feel the depths of his sadness for her and she ached to weep once more.

She deliberately spiralled herself inside that pinwheel in her head, immersing her sense of herself within its core, at its hub. There she imagined herself to be the spiral's nexus, the place where it began, tiny and untarnished inside the maelstrom of spinning light and heat. The pain diminished a little and she gradually drifted into her usual, fitful pattern of sleep.

To be continued… (I hope)

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 5

Everything about Dwayne was long. His legs were long and very thin, his torso similarly long and wiry thin. His neck and even his face were long and thin. His ears looked as if the lobes had been stretched downwards, his nose was ungracefully long and very thin, the tip pointed and sharpened as a result. Only his eyes remained round enough for him to be considered reasonably human. He was a research modification in the genetics of dwarfism. By tweaking the gene responsible for shortness, The Dwayne Modification elongated out of all natural proportions to something just slightly less than a human spaghetti noodle. To watch Dwayne walk was like watching an over-long reed move through space.

When sitting on the bed beside Ari, Dwayne looked twice as long as she in his body - and thinner, if that were possible. When he stood beside her, he was a skyscraper in comparison. The pain in Dwayne's joints and muscles from the sheer force of will in keeping his length upright in space was obvious in the dark blue circles under his eyes. He lived in constant physical pain and only Ariadne could hear his silent weeping at night, in his room, in the other wing. She never mentioned it.

The pain behind her eyes throbbed a little harder. She tried to thwart the onslaught of emotional and physical mental torment this young man was permanently carrying. She could only go inside of it and immerse herself in it and simply feel it. She imagined herself one of her spirals, going down inside the cave of pain she felt emanating from Dwayne. Somehow, this process helped, especially in proximity. She was able to relieve it somewhat if they kept the current emotional levels at this keel - if they changed...she would have to spiral again and it took a lot of energy to do that.

"What's up?" she asked making small talk. Her voice was low and soft.

"Nothing much" lied Dwayne equally quietly. "Margot was a bitch to you at lunch time, again, I hear" He was somewhat overprotective of Ari and she smiled a wan smile. She knew he would have liked to make her his woman but the thought of that kind of emotional pull made Ari sick and she had always refused his more obvious advances.

"Margot is doing what Margot always does," she philosophically replied.

"Yeah. Well, she needs to keep her big blue mouth shut n’ go outside and fry some eggs in the sun on her blue-tinged arse." Dwayne mumbled ungraciously, growling these words in deep throbbing tones. He paused and then he changed the subject quickly on feeling Ariadne tense beside him. "Nice picture by the way."

She wasn't tensing so much for herself as tensing from the assault of his emotional responses toward Margot. It worried Dwayne that everything he felt, this girl could feel too on top of her own emotional state. He tried very hard to keep his emotions and status as neutral as possible even though he found incredibly draining and hard to do. He cared so much for this girl, some nights he would lay in his cot and feel the ache in his heart was stronger than the pain in his joints. He pulled these thoughts in and down to try and protect her from them.

"Stop trying to disguise what you're feeling Dwayne" Ari said softly. He relaxed and she winced "It's okay...I got it," as if his emotions were something he'd dropped and she had picked up.

She held the completed image up for both of them to see. Dwayne looked at it and then took it from her hands and got up off the cot and moved towards the door. "I don't like it D. No sense in showing it to me from a distance," said Ari, knowing his reasoning. He turned and held the top corners of the image and looked at her.

"You realise you are a genius? Don't you Ari?

She sighed and bent down, her head diving between her legs to peer under her cot. She pulled out a large portfolio of previous artworks and leaving it lay on the floor, she opened the mouth of the portfolio, dozens of art pieces encased inside, their edges appearing like the pages of a mottled book, and looked up at Dwayne.

"Just put it away Dwayne. It's over." Her words were ludicrously filled with despondency. It would require a fresh canvas to alleviate the foreboding doom she seemed to be implying under those words.

…To be continued. (I hope)

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 4

The scientists had long since dismissed such notions as fractals. It was considered boring computer science. Ariadne however, had simply begun to draw them. Her art was similar to a fractal from the very first, only a static version on paper and not on computer. Still, like the computerised visual equations, her imagery soared in and out of the perspective, giving the illusion of spirals morphing into another set of spirals. Her work appeared very much like a refined series of artistic fractal equations that could be viewed one way from afar, another way entirely up close.

She gathered up a pencil and sat at the side of the bed. Arranging the paper on the small table beside her she began to fill in a small bit of the white space left on the paper, with her exquisitely attuned artistry. The spiral represented so much for her. It was her theme. For Ari, it was the physical embodiment of tears. Into every spiral she poured the pain that was lodged behind her eyes. The final pieces meant nothing to her and once one was complete; she viewed it, emotionally discounted it and set it aside. The process alone was her release and her fuel. Without it, she felt she probably would wither and die.

The scientists had argued vociferously amongst one another about conducting experiments on this version of The Ariadne Modification. Some wanted to see how she would respond if disallowed to draw her spirals, others said that whilst this particular modification was an exception to other Ariadne's of that same crop, it was still unwarranted to spend extra public monies on such foolishness as the response of a mutant to her art.

A quiet knock at her open door barely aroused her from her process. Smiling, the young male looked at the pretty woman sitting, slightly awkwardly and twisted, on her bed intent on her craft. She felt his aura first before realising he was actually in the room. Ari felt the shot of compassion for her emanating from the very tall, very thin young male. "Oh shush Dwayne! I'm fine!" she retaliated, even though he'd not spoken.

‘The Dwayne Modification’ snickered softly, loped slowly into the room, reaching out his incredibly elongated fingers to touch the crown on her head. His gesture was his way of showing her he was trying to understand the mysteries of her intuitive mind. Sometimes it soothed Ari to have such a person attempt to reach her, other times, it was such a thunderclap of emotional intensity thrust upon her soul that it made her head pound and her whole being ache to cry. She flinched instinctively and he quickly withdrew his hand knowing the meaning of it and feeling sadder he hadn’t been able to sooth her.

Dwayne looked down and perused her artwork quietly, still not speaking. He noted the complicated effect of her spirals and yet the simplistic device she used to construct such complexity. It was amazing. Staring it for longer than he should have, he felt dizzy as if the work was drugging him in some way. He flopped down beside Ariadne on her bed and breathed out heavily.

… To be continued. (I hope)

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 3

Unable to grieve biologically, Ari had developed other means of dissipating the pain. For Ari, the only way she could find solace was in her art. She had a theme, which she assiduously studied and built upon to the point where her designs and ideas contained the seeds of genius. This caused some consternation among the scientists on the other side of the Perspex screens. Ariadne’s work was genuinely inspirational and ethically it would be wrong not to have the world see it and marvel at it - but because she was, technically, a mutant, it wasn't considered proper to parade these Human mutant GM crops to the rest of the world. It was best if the rest of humanity didn't really know too much about the Human GM project. What to do with Ariadne's art became a serious cause for dissention and argument among the project scientists.

Ariadne returned to her room after lunch and stood at the side of her simple cot and beside table. It was littered in papers, pencils and pieces of black charcoal - a very rare commodity since burning things had been long been outlawed, damaging as it was to the thin layers of oxygenated air surrounding the planet. Fire still existed and was feared but it was usually contained in the large global parks where humans were not allowed to venture anymore. The charcoal, so coveted by the world’s artists, was from one of these parks. There was a thriving black market - a term that made people smile at the obvious irony - in the sale of stolen charcoal from the global parks. That Ariadne had been given such an illicit tool to extend her artistic theme was testament to how others, outside of her Perspex cage, viewed her work. It was also an unspoken rule that mutants, treated as they were like prized lab rats, were to be granted anything, even that which ordinary people would have struggled years to obtain.

The mutants knew their lifespan was short. They were research subjects and as much as they were feted upon and had almost every need attended to, they realised early in their growth cycle that when the research needs for their crop genes had been exhausted, their bodies were no longer required. “Re-integration” was a euphemistic term for their bodies being returned to the cellular dust from which they’d been harvested. A number of vials of blood and tissue were retained in a repository for engineering new crops of their particular kind, and then all but the healthiest mutants were euthanised, their bodies mulched and composted for adding to the soils in the plant breeding centres.

Only one avenue was available to those genetic strains of humans who did not require daily medications, or suffered undue pain or discomfort in their body. These human crops were offered the chance to crew a Light Ship that would seek new worlds to colonise in deep space. It was an enormous gamble on the chance to live a full life on another planet; to breed as normal human beings do; raise a family, develop a culture, a race, a home to call one’s own. If no such place was found in time, they simply remained in deep space until the ships energy supply dissipated and they died. Margot was a strong candidate for such a journey. She was terrified. Ariadne could feel Margot’s deeply embedded terror emanating from every fibre of her being - every night and every day. It was probably the reason Margot was so acerbic. Ariadne would never be granted the Light Ship option. She could not cry and as such required far too much medical assistance to be considered a viable option for the re-colonisation lottery. Ari was, almost, comforted by this thought.

She stood there and stared blankly at a recent artwork. It was hypnotic. Ari had drawn a series of interconnecting spirals, that when you looked closer contained even more interconnecting spirals within spirals. Even within the very lines of spirals, tiny and fine as they were, were more, impossibly tiny, spirals co-joined and entwined. The web-like finesse and detail of her art was astonishing - even to other mutants.

…To be continued. (I hope)

Footnotes to the Girl story

hahaha

Am getting a bit of feedback of sorts re the first two "chapter" posts for a story I've been writing called "The Girl who couldn't Cry".

You can find chapter 1 here and chapter 2 here.

The story is entirely a work in progress. I do have a few chapters written up but they may be tweaked or changed and even I don't know where this story is going to end up. I'm just glad I have more than one or two chapters in the current pipeline. I can lose interest in projects like this very quickly as I am completely and utterly results focused more than being able to engage with a process over a long period of time. This story however, seems to have a full universe of potential within and I am more than a little excited about seeing if it can and how it might develop.

Originally, I just started writing "The Girl who couldn't cry" into this blogger screen on a whim, but when I got to over 3000 words, I balked a little at posting it in its entirety. I have written long stories in here before, but because I tend to write on the fly and because I need space between writing and editing to see the flow/grammar/spelling issues...I decided to split the Girl story into sections...chapters if you will... so that I can try and polish the text a little more than I usually do when blogging.

I have to say that this particular story has gripped my imagination like no other before it. Ariadne is fast becoming a very important person to me and I want to get to know her better. I can feel other characters itching to burst forth too. It's a bit surreal for me as I tend to rely so heavily on pure accidental creative energy for writing. I can rarely force it forth, it has always just flowed from under my fingers with the merest hint of a "hook" before I even knew the ideas were there.

As with "The Girl who couldn't cry", I start pretty much all my writing with a title. From there I just let the energy flow - if it will. I had no idea that when I wrote that title into the heading of this blog earlier this week, I'd be telling a story of a world I know nothing of, in a place that is alien and strange to me, about a woman who is very different to myself! My propensity for tears borders on the ludicrous after all! *blush*

The dear story 'fan' who is sending me editorial advice via email will prove useful in helping me to polish ideas, I think. Therefore, I extend an invitation for everyone who may be reading the story to also email me feedback. You can use the link from my profile here in blogger. Alternatively, you can just comment below each chapter with any suggestions or possibilities, ideas, spelling corrections (being mindful I tend to write in Australian English which spells differently sometimes, to American English), etc.

The medium of blogging is a wonderful way of collaborative story-telling. As an aspirational author, I have a lot of creative pride in my work but the times are a-changing and collaborative "instant" fiction may be a trend of the future. Authors with 'fans'- or followers - who can also write, think and contribute lovely gems to the final fabric of a "Jolly Good Yarn". It may be a bit of a pipe-dream perhaps, but it would be nice to feel that kind of encouraging support as one writes; writing is such a solitary hobby for the most part.

I do hope you will enjoy this process for as long as the creative fire, for it, burns.

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 2

The intuiting thing was a double curse for Ariadne. Her gift in knowing the feelings and mind of others could often cause her such grief that, at times, the pain behind her eyes threatened to explode her head. The need to weep in release of the guilt, pain and horror of what she saw and felt inside others, was denied her. He brain knew it as a response that was humanly natural but her genetically modified body did not. It could not produce the evidence to prove its existence. It was like there were two warring factions inside of her trying to make the other understand a concept the other could not conceive or imagine. She poured a few more drops of tears from the bottle into her eyes so that they streamed down her face, giving the illusion of crying.

As to why the Ariadne Modification was a tearless one, none of the mutants actually knew for sure. Ariadne’s, and particularly this Ariadne were regularly visited by the psych-docs, more so than other more obvious Human Genome Modification Projects. The fact that Ari’s body wanted to cry, and the fact that is was physically and biologically impossible for her to do so was a little bit mysterious. Most assumed that it was do with eye diseases and left it at that. Ariadne herself, intuited from the ongoing stream of psych-docs it was to do with eye diseases but she also felt it was something more too. Something to do with “Happiness” perhaps, although none of the psych-docs ever mentioned anything about that. They seemed rather more interested in her intuitive capabilities and her propensity for absorbing the emotions of others like a sponge. Not one of the doctors ever asked her if she were ‘Happy’. Most of them seemed as sad inside as any mutant to her anyway, so maybe on the subject of herself, she was simply a little off-target with her impressions. She learned to deal.

"What's the matter now Ari?" said the slightly blue skinned female opposite. Ariadne immediately felt the rush of annoyance emanating from the speaker. Critical judgment overlayed with concession for the humanitarian purpose of behaving "nicely" to others when really, you just wanted to punch their faces in so they'd wake up and get a grip and see things the way you saw them. Ari felt the pain behind her eyes get stronger. She looked at Margot, her sloe eyes streaming with the evidence of bottled tears.

"Shut up, Margot! I know what you're thinking,” she said simply.

"What am I thinking?" Margot veiled the question in a tone of, very nearly, pure sarcasm.

"That you think I'm an idiot to get so emo about the shit in other peoples heads. And, that I should just get a grip and get over it and stop being such a baby” Ariadne said the words as if they were clinical facts. In any other person, human or mutant, this statement, delivered so matter of fact, would have been a mere assumption. From Ariadne, it was always the truth. She had very few friends for this reason - because she could know someone’s mind - and heart - long before they knew it themselves. It's discomforting to be known before one can know oneself. Ariadne knew this too and it grieved her yet again that she was not able to turn off her abilities in this matter.

Margot snorted briefly and re-focused on the bread she'd been running around the edge of her pannikin, scraping up the remains of the gravy left behind from her meal. The blue tinge of Margot's skin told the world she was a genetic experiment in light refraction for the purposes of withstanding Ultra Violet light at extreme levels. One hundred years ago, humans had been dying in the thousands because they loved the sun too much. Now most humans couldn't be in the sun for more than a few minutes, and that was filtered sunlight too. Most normal human beings were so pale now; no sunscreen could protect them from the damaging effects of sunlight. Margot was the proposed answer to this conundrum. She could sit in the sun for hours and never burn. They were keeping her healthy and alive for as long as possible to watch for any evidence of cancerous lesions on her skin. Her skin was regularly removed in patches so that her genetic strengths could be analysed and replicated in future Margot experiments. She currently bore the evidence for a recent skin patch removal operation, in the form of a large dark bandage on her upper right arm. Margot regularly cried, privately as she could, to release her pain. Ariadne - along with their ever-present observers outside of their Perspex cage - always knew when Margot cried but never said anything. She felt Margot's pain as keenly as Margot herself.

…to be continued. (I hope)

The girl who couldn't cry: Chapter 1

Pain seared the spot between her eyes where no one could see. It was as hot and as sharp as if a poker had stoked her brain instead of fire. She longed to be able to weep for in the weeping, it might be cooled. She could not.

Ariadne reached into her bag and scrimmaged about for the small bottle of tears she kept with her at all times. In the autopilot of long habit, she twisted off the cap, holding it between thumb and palm while tipping back her head and dropping two small drops of liquid into each eye. The cold shocked her dry eyeballs, bringing the familiar sting as the salty solution cleansed and moistened them. To cry would be a much better option and this was as good as it was ever going to get for the girl.

She looked across the table where she and a small band of other mutants sat in silence considering each mouthful of the meal they'd been given. Ariadne looked almost normal in comparison to the array of slightly misaligned human test cases. She considered them more human than most. For all their mutantcy they had the familiar idiosyncratic tendencies of most human beings - the desire for unconditional love, connection, happiness, prosperity and power. None of them was any less normal in that regard than those who considered themselves more human.

They had no parents, these kids. They'd been grown in petri dishes and test tubes. They were a new kind of genetic modification organism, bred to specifically help normal humans - who obviously weren't mutants - live forever. Ariadne had been bred in such a way that her gene for the ability to cry had been turned off. She could not shed tears in enough quantity to weep. The barest amount of fluid escaped what tear ducts she possessed and because she was pretty and apparently physically normal in all other respects, and because she was quite good at intuiting what other people were thinking, they'd given her the eye drops to keep her eyes moistened instead of "re-integrating" her cells into yet another crop of Ariadne's who couldn't cry.


…to be continued. (I hope)