Ommatidia » Cosette

The Girl in the House

Brendan — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:00:31 +0000

She holds Millicent’s body and passes her hand over the kitten’s eyes, closing them on blackness, opening them again.

She reaches up to her own eyes, then: feels them hard and dry, cold as glass, faceted. Ommatidia. So many pictures of the same thing.

She runs her hand over Millicent’s flank and feels how thin the kitten is, how flat, how her fur really feels like vellum. She listens for the endless chuckle. She begins to count back, from ten thousand, the number of steps she’s taken from the door of the train platform. She sniffs the air.

There’s water here.

Cosette

Brendan — Mon, 22 May 2006 11:12:50 +0000

Cosette reaches down into the void. She feels a crack and, inside, two small objects; she hides them in her hand.

“Wealth death dearth hearth heat teeth,” she whispers.

She opens her hand. They’re pills with names on them. One is TRUTH, and translucent. The other, orange, says HEALTH.

Cosette watches Millicent blindly try to wash herself. She sits down and picks her up, opens the kitten’s mouth and drops in HEALTH, strokes her throat and believes, believes that it will heal her eyes. She swallows TRUTH to make it so.

Millicent lies down in Cosette’s lap and doesn’t move anymore.

Cosette

Brendan — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 11:15:39 +0000

The birds are gone, and instead of screaming there’s a chuckle in the air.

There’s no more floor, no shadow. Cosette stops walking when Millicent begins to stumble and looks back into the gulf of dawn: it’s utter whiteness, but it’s a whiteness of void, not light. It doesn’t hurt her eyes.

This is what she sings to the sunless morning.

“Ambergris and berry dreams
India and rhyme
Carry claret honeybees
Paradromic sighs–

Close your eyes and swallow sleep
Night is on its way
Your ears are sharp, your tongue is keen;
Your dreams a bitter stain.”

The air keeps chuckling.

Cosette

Brendan — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 11:05:22 +0000

Cosette counts stars until they go away. There’s a vastness opening somewhere behind her, throwing light in the sky and shadows on the ground. This is good, because the leaves are gone. When she looks up the trees are white and gold.

They’re not dead people anymore. They’re stands for cages, and in the cages are birds. The birds are screaming pretty screams. Cosette doesn’t like them (and suddenly, by contrast, likes other things instead: darkness, names, the tangy smell of the man bleeding).

She sets Millicent down. The screaming stops. They walk together, Cosette following her shadow, Millicent following her.

Cosette

Brendan — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 11:24:08 +0000

But she doesn’t understand it very well.

“Chime tine keen veal well rill dial chime,” she replies, and her words are a piping octave, her voice a hand on uneven floorboards: what might, elsewhere, be called a marimba.

The man has stopped bleeding. “You can count, then,” he says. “Good.”

Millicent traces a lemniscate around Cosette’s ankles. Cosette picks the kitten up and watches the man’s hand, which is holding a short and brutal tailed whip.

“Don’t ever forget how to count,” he grunts.

“Marrow callow hollow minnow?”

“Count the stars if you have to. Just make sure you don’t finish.”