Icon of Coil: spare some change? [aisling]

September 27, 2002

spare some change? [aisling]

[atlantic city boardwalk]

(asher)
it seems a sudden reciprocal dream (recurring nightmare) the lean Dancer slung across the boardwalk bench (the deadly python laying wait in jungle tree), mismatched eyes hidden beneath half-closed lids listening to the waves crashing far below (the music of the spears driving themselves against the land)

how they reshape the distant beach
a rebirth from the destruction

he wonders ifwhathow she will reborn again (just how will the Father bless you this time around) something of a smile moving (slashing) across poet's lips

(aisling)
It's so easy to overlook her.

That's the point, really. Worn jeans and a longsleeved t-shirt, straight hair curling at the end in the humidity, strands slinging flyaway across her face, which - like everything else about her - is distinctly ordinary. She's not wearing any makeup, since it's hard enough to keep clean sometimes, and that's just too much like... before for her taste.

Thin form weighed down by a heavy backpack, its leather scuffed and worn, the young woman ambles down the Boardwalk without any real destination except - out. Her sheer aimlessness distinguishes her, as she pauses by the railing and studies the thinning crowd, and so too her alertness, the eyes half-hidden by the brim of her baseball cap are ever-moving.

Boardwalk was the best place she'd found for panhandling - the vacationing families tended to toss a quarter or two her way, out of guilt if nothing else - but in the three months since her encounter with the crazed Neverah, she hasn't dared try.

(asher)
blond bangs play across his forhead in the ocean's breeze (tickling tease) which carries the tips of open shirt to hide behind the curve of hip's denim against the benchseat, long legs crossed at the ankle, tank boots waging war against the railing itself

a willing crucifixion
Mary, whatever happened to your savior son?

arms stretched over the back of the bench - sole audience to the destructive symphony beneath the pier's supports (what other creatures will sing their swan song to his ears), those eyes (light and dark, day and night, the holy sinner confined in his skull) slowly opening to gaze upon the black waters

idling the creatures that lurk beneath the surface
legions ready for nightmare's war

but hunger strikes him (craving the indulgence, consumption temptation's draw) curling to unfold and stand, hands sliding (stroking) into the pockets of baggy jeans in search of (rattling, jangling) change

(aisling)
Flicker.

The girl turns sharply at the jangling sound of change, eyes shifting rapidly and focusing briefly on his pocket. Pick-pocketing is not a skill she's managed to pick up, despite a certain deftness at sleight-of-hand. It's not that she's not quick enough: it's just that she always manages to look so guilty.

"Spare some change sir?" quickly spoken, so quick that the individual words lose definition and the phrase is little more than a loose stream of vowels and consonants, though familiar enough. That's the way they all say it.

Shifting the weight of her heavy backpack from shoulder to hip, the girl looks up at Asher slanting and sideways, focusing somewhere on his face, though not quite (never quite) on his eyes.

(asher)
a sound, a phrase, a remnant flicker of tongue against his ears that draws the uneven (unnatural) gaze towards the girl it must come from, and his attention (obviously) creeps across her form with molestation's hand

while she may not see his eyes, the scar that runs from cheek to left temple peeks from beneath flickering hair (ragged, it must have hurt) before it disappears into his hairline

a (lecherous) smile drawing across his lips, muted steps on planks drawing lean body closer

"Maybe...... what do I get out of it?"

crooned as warm velvet across his (tainted) tongue, the jangle of change in his fist, his gaze too intimate (invading) for a stranger, it does not belong with the soft (boyish) grin, or the tones that send chills up an Angel's spine to come from a creature so damned

(aisling)
The girl's mouth thins, and the corners of her lips twist upwards in a faintly bitter smirk. Her gaze flits from the edge of his face to the curled, tempting fist.

"Gee," she snits back at him, arms curled defensively about her painfully thin torso. The long sleeves of her t-shirt ride halfway up her forearms with the gesture, but she pushes them stubborn, reflexively back down. "...never heard that before."

Her eyes roll beneath the shadowing brim of her baseball cap and she shies away a half-step or two. Well - she? the longish hair, the voice betray her, but little else. If she kept her mouth shut and tucked up that hair, she could be a twelve-year-old boy if she wanted.

Sniff. Aisling wipes her nose on her sleeve and dares a glance up to Asher's eyes, then away again, quick as a firefly. "But here's what I'll do, I won't bug you again, Mister. Just need bus fare to get back to school."

(asher)
a grown woman or a twelve year old boy - it would matter not to him, but a deep breath could tell the difference
liar

"Just like I've never been panhandled for change before....."

snide (scythe) across his tongue, pink tongue drawing across lips to pull them into further smile (beauty, beast, predator, prey, which is which) the soft laughter rolling across her like the sea's dense fog (tempting and terrifying)

".... even if I don't give you the change, you'll leave me alone, go pester someone else for whatever they'll find in their hearts to give you. But tell me, entertain me, indulge your humor in thinking up something original and you'll earn your change.

Back to school."

snorted, clipped in the cage of white, even teeth, mockery filling his gaze
change clinked like muted castanets in this strange (unwilling) dance suddenly begun

"You can do better than that."

(aisling)
She's heard laughter like that before, has Aisling, or at least laughter like enough to it as to make little difference. Drawing herself not up, but in, closer upon herself, a not-too-happy moth hoping to remake its coccoon, the girl shakes her head once to free it from the strange sense of deja vu.

Something like a shiver crawls too slowly up and down her thin spine, and she casts a quick glance or two over her shoulders before looking back at him, narrow-eyed. Uncrossing her arms, the girl buries her hands in the pockets of her ragged jeans. The faint working of her jaw is visible beneath the thin, pale skin of her cheek, set and stubborn.

"Ran away from the convent when they kicked me out for doin' a priest," she offers, scuffing her sneakered foot on the warped wooden planks of the Boardwalk. "Tryin' to get together enough cash so I can catch a boat to India and go study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. That good enough?"

(asher)
those eyes never leave her (will they ever?) watching as if to pluck the make-shift story from her lips before the warmed words even cross them (just what would he do with her lips......) a short consideration narrowing his time

before his arm unfolds, palm up, small mountain of change settled in his hand
easily out of her immediate reach

"Needs work, but I doubt you can do better."

come and get it
want some candy, little girl?

(aisling)
"Gee, thanks." Snorted, the words, raw but stung at the same damn time. "Tell it to my damn agent."

Shifting the weight of the pack from hip to shoulder with a casual shove of her left elbow, the girl takes a few quick steps forward and reaches for the change. She's about to snatch it out of his hands, but thinks better of it and instead offers her own hand, cupped, palm upward as she holds her body a stiff-arm's length away.

(asher)
"Who's your agent?"

head tilted in curiosity's grip, hand still outstretched like a guilty offering of the Fallen church's samaritry

"Or better you...... who are you?"

something (impossibly) darkening in the young man's demeanor (the calm before the storm) and edging (molesting, violating) his smile in those soft, silken words

(aisling)
"No one." The sudden smile of a smile, quick as lightening and sharper than any blade, flashes across her thin lips as she tips her head upward. Her eyes are some murky shade of haze, but hard and half-narrowed, and her voice is bitter with self-mockery. "Would think that'd be obvious to a genius like you."

(asher)
"Too bad."

half pouted (half sneered) fingers curling to crush the tiny mountain of change, crumbled dust deposited back into the pocket of baggy jeans

"I'd hoped to give the money to..... somebody."

his back turned to give himself to the search of something to fill his own belly

(aisling)
"Gotta have a dream," the girl mutters under her breath, skittering back and away. She's breathing, too, and harder now. Sloped shoulders drawing in on her frame, heavy with the weight of the pack -

- and his casual scorn, too, which was infinitely worse than the her usual level of invisibility, which generally figured above the cracks in the sidewalk, but below the gulls squawking raucous at the end of every pier. Half-tempted to go back and give him her damn name, out of some irrational sense of spite, is Aisling. But she's survived this long, and she knows better. Instead she shoves off back into the crowds of vacationers, melting into them as easily as twilight does the night, muttering under her breath. "...too bad that's yours."
Posted by asher at September 27, 2002 12:00 AM

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