I was nine years old, white pillowcase pulled over my head despite my aunt's scolding, only this time without the accompanying lightheadedness that comes with too much recycled air. Just as then, colors and shapes crept unintelligible about me, but it wasn't fear of what was out there that bothered me. The pillowcase only got scary when there was that brief moment of terror when you felt unable to take it off, stuck, trapped.
I didn't know how long it had been. Seconds. Just seconds probably. What was happening to me? It was the girl. The girl somehow did this. She took my eyes. No, impossible. That didn't make any sense. A trick. Were my eyes open or closed? Open. Definitely open.
I slammed my lids shut, hoping for the tranquil black behind the lids, but it was gone. The blinding white raged on. I tried to picture something, anything. I couldn't think of anything. I tried to recreate my room back in Chicago and couldn't. Still just white.
Come on, think of something, fucking anything. Again, nothing. I thought in moments like these it would have been easy to pick the really important memories, the places I'd seen, the people I loved, but none of it came to me. My fear of being unable to craft the images was gradually transforming into this new panic where I couldn't remember the things I thought I treasured most.
Then without meaning to, my mind found Jet. I slowly and arduously found myself able to recreate his features, but it was like I was teaching my brain all over how to do this, how to see. The other memories followed. Winter mornings at my family's old house on the Hudson, racing my uncle around the gravel track at the park down the road, the giant goldfish in our neighbor's pond. The stupidity of remembering those damn goldfish somehow left me much more relaxed.
My heart which had been racing a thousand beats per minute calmed after I could begin recreating sights behind my lids. I was steadily able to recreate even more images, drawn out of my memories. Feeling less hysteric, I tried opening my eyes again. Just white still, but I felt less panicked. Shouldn't my other sense me picking up about now? I steadied my breathing, and over my still pounding heart, I listened.
The Chopin continued, somewhat less elegantly than before, and I was briefly amazed the musicians could continue their performance without the ability to see. It wasn't strange at all to me to know that the blindness affecting me was pandemic to everybody in the room. I don't know how, but just as I knew I needed air to breathe, I knew that the girl on stage was Mania, and I knew that she somehow did this.
Then, after my heart had just calmed, there were new sounds.
Tearing, gasping, ripping, screaming, splashing.
And the pillowcase, no matter how I struggled, would not come off.
I don't know if it was the sounds or the smell that had me sick again. Off balance and unable to see, I was sure I'd vomited on my hair, but at least momentarily, fear trumped embarassment.
The sounds continued and intensified. It was too much to process. Cries for help, shredding, whimpering, begging, and a faint humming, no, laughing, all blended into a twisted cacophony and yet the Chopin continued. A faint metallic smell. And as I understood what was happening, free of that sort of denial that should protect the mind from such atrocities, my vision returned.
And no sooner that it had, I slammed my eyes shut. I tried to get up, to run out into the hall and take my chances with the man by the stairwell, but I couldn't will my body to move. It shook and shivered but wouldn't respond to my very basic commands. Run. Stand. Run. I felt the need to be sick, to vomit again, but unable to manage even that motion, I swallowed hard, sickened further by the acidic flavor, and inhaled true horror through my eyes.
The walls glistened cardinal red. The stage curtains, once golden, were stained crimson. Puddles of red paint slick at their base. The orchestra lay distorted and folded over their instruments, many with their heads cleanly removed, limbs scattered. Their blood puddled and ran through the cracks in the wooden floorboards down off the sides of the stage. And yet none of this was even the slightest preparation for what remained of the crowd on the main floor. I flickered my eyes open once more and again slammed them shut.
Dead. All of them dead. Some disfigured as if they had exploded. And as I opened my eyes a third time, I found myself unable to shut them again. They took in every detail of every atrocity. Families dead, parents covered in the blood of their children, children drowned once again in the blood of their mothers. Necks slashed so completely that the heads remained attached with only the slightest sinew. The floors and walls slick and running, alive, with human blood. And yet somehow, it wasn't the sight that broke me. The smell. The idea that this smell was the blood of all these people and that little molecules of all their blood were being sampled and analyzed through my nose and with my brain and how each and every person in this room was somehow inside me infecting me with their death--
And as I sat paralyzed, awestruck and terrified, she spoke, "Do~novan, so silly."
The sound broke my paralysis. I had to shift my viewing angle to locate her. It required tremendous effort even for this tiniest movement. She was face to face with the standing boy I saw earlier, her two knives pressed threateningly against his throat. His arm hung limp, severely injured, from his side, gun in hand. He must have fired the shots. There had been five ushers surrounding the boy before my vision left me. Three lay dead on the floor, the other two clearly wounded, although still standing. Mania was so entirely stained with blood that her skin and dress were stained scarlet, and it was impossible to tell if she was somehow wounded. She seemed unscathed.
The boy, I guess, Donovan, did not waver in his fury and, through clenched teeth, growled, "You fucking disgrace this family, freak."
She leaned in to the boy and spoke too quietly for me to hear. His expression remained unphased. As she spoke, she gestured around the room, "-- all of this?" She pointed and danced about, clearly proud of her massacre. I was too terrified, too sure that these were my last moments alive, to care much about what she was saying. Thoughts of finding my moment had all left me. I sat and shivered and shuddered and waited for my life to end.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
Allie's Tale (Chapter V) Part I
The January cold bit and stung at me as I waited, careful to take shallow breaths, protecting my lungs, if nothing else, from the cold, my body and face turned as best they could from the wind. The inside of the symphony hall only fifteen feet away glowed and pulsed with heat invitingly, but I liked the idea of waiting for him in the cold and going inside together. I could bear the cold. I also didn't want to potentially be the lone girl standing by herself in the spotlight while everybody pitied me for being stood up. I knew that it was stupid to be so self conscious, but knowing it and feeling it just aren't the same. He's not coming. It's been over twenty minutes and he's not coming.
It looked as if all the color and emotion of the outside world had drained away, replaced by shades of melancholic gray, sapped of their life by the Chicago cold. The night sky was black, but the reflected city lights off the blanket of snow and dark cloudy sky in conjunction with the gray pavement merged everything into a murky haze. I fumbled with the two tickets in my bare hands, glowing a Rudolph red from the cold, my fingers clumsy and uncoordinated at maneuvering the slabs of paper. The warmth of inside continued to beckon and seduce me. No. I shook my head abruptly and forcefully, trying to force the image of me standing in the warm indoors from my mind. Fragments of my conversation with Jet and Alex replaced my discomfort and anxiety over the cold with longing for Jet and curiosity concerning our last conversation.
At lunch, Jet had said that just one girl had been responsible for the October killings and that he had not only ran into her earlier that same night, but fought with her, nearly dying. The little moon shaped scars on his hands were proof enough for my stomach and as much as I empathized with Jet over the injury, the visual of a knife skewering his hands like a kabob made my stomach turn. Mania was the name. Jet had laughed as if the killings, his injuries, this Mania girl were all no big deal, but that look Alex had given him. Venomous.
Trying to deny my feelings at this point for Jet was impossible, but love him or not, Alex was Jet's caution, his reason. And Alex never lost his cool like that. Ever. I liked him too. I hadn't at all at first, but I felt now that I understood Alex better. He needed to be so serious, so contained, so calm because with someone like Jet never taking anything in life too seriously, he needs someone to ground him. Would I end up like that? Would years of being in love with Jet always protecting him from his own recklessness leave me sarcastic, practical, and cold? I wondered again how someone like Jet could even really feel the same way about me. Everything about him was extraordinary, while everything with me, was just, extra ordinary.
Before my mind could continue replaying and picking apart the conversation further, a gust of wind reminded me that the demands of the physical world were more pressing than those of my mind. Where the hell is he? I couldn't fathom why he'd want to go to a symphony. Worse still to be late. Even somehow more worse to not answer your phone when you're running this late. I gripped the tickets tightly and surrendered to the allure of escaping the cold. We really don't get to pick who we love.
The warmth was soothing but less so than I expected. My pale skin continued to glow pink, okay red, to my frustration. After about a minute of thawing, I looked for a place to check my coat, and found the coat closet, but no coat checker. I put the jacket back on and figured I'd suffer in the heat to balance out the waiting in the cold. It's okay body -- on average, we're fine.
Making my way back towards the main hall and concession area, I found one thing, disturbingly missing, people. Food was generally prohibited inside the actual hall, but from my few memories of being dragged to this place as a child, there were typically people schmoozing about having drinks, here for the atmosphere instead of the music. I was equally desperate to get away from the music as a kid and it was one of the rare occasions where my aunt and uncle would indulge any candy or soda request I might have, so these booths were about all I could remember of my trips here.
Not ten minutes ago I saw dozens of people walking about in here while I stood outside freezing. The concern that I was going crazy briefly crossed my mind, but I let my sanity off the hook when I recognized the sound of Chopin in the distance. Maybe they don't let people out during performances now. I decided to find my seat and if Jet comes, he comes, if not, I'm here and I might as well make the best of it.
I approached the closed center doors to the main floor seating without giving any consideration to where my seats were supposed to be, figuring I'd take an empty seat near the rear and leave if I got too terribly bored. I wondered if normal girls would do this, or if they would just give up and go home. I've always been clueless with the little rules like that on how to live.
My hand touched the handle of the door before I noticed the chains. The large wooden doors were chained and locked from the outside. Strange. I get not letting people out if it disturbs the musicians, but chaining the doors can't be safe. Some sort of fire hazard at least. I paused and tried to ease the growing anxiety building up within me. Maybe it was just this one door.
The adjacent doors were also chained. Something was wrong here. Really wrong.
I pressed my ear up against the door. Chopin. A few coughs and whispers. It sounded like a symphony. Still my heart raced and that anxiety I'd been fighting was turning into something much more like hysteria.
There are no people out here -- no ushers, no coat checker, no servers, nothing. I felt the panic in my stomach and throat.
Without my mind really processing what could possibly be going on, I found myself dialing.
The voice was reassuring, motherly, "Chicago 911, do you have an emergency?"
I stuttered, "Yes, I think so, I'm -- "
I had never felt a gun pressed up against my head before, but I didn't need to turn to know what it was. The voice was male but higher pitched and more nervous than the movie cliches had prepared me for, "Stop."
Without hesitation, I whimpered, "I'm fine actually. Sorry false alarm."
The emergency responder said something. I wasn't listening. She told me it was okay to hang up, and the call disconnected, but I held the phone up to my ear pretending to listen for as long as I could. I didn't get long. A sweaty hand grabbed mine and ripped the phone out of it before grabbing my arm and spinning me around fast enough for me to lose balance. I buckled on my heels but the man was bigger than I had thought and he easily held me up, if painfully, by my arm. He flung the phone into the wall hard enough for me to expect it to explode into a thousand pieces, but instead it hit with just a large thud, and bounced and skidded across the floor.
It's strange now, but at that moment, I made up my mind that I wasn't going to die there that night to a man unable to even break a cell phone. I thought about Jet as the man dragged me off, me stumbling and tripping the whole way. I wished he were here to help me, but this guy had a gun and while I wouldn't ever bet against Jet in a fight, still, a gun was a gun, right? Thinking that he might get hurt again, might get shot, made me instantly glad he didn't come here tonight. And I wasn't going to die here. There will be a moment I knew. I'll have my moment and I'll escape. The doors to the outside weren't chained. We had gone up a few flights of stairs and he was dragging me to a room at the end of a long hallway at the top -- I could run from here to the door in thirty seconds. I replayed the run again and again trying to avoid thinking about the present, but my escape plans were dashed when I saw a second man take up a post guarding the main hallway to the exit.
I felt the gun pressed into my forehead. My mind snapped to the present. I saw my attacker clearly for the first time. He was dressed as an usher but was too big and too tattooed to be plausible. His face wore a nervous grin as if he were enjoying himself but afraid to indulge his desires. I had always thought that the guy holding the gun would have a lot more confidence. I wanted to cry and panic and beg, but I kept my mind on the cell phone skidding across the floor. Throw me around and I won't break either.
He drilled the gun into my forehead so hard I felt he was trying to bore it into my skull. "I said fucking strip." He threw me to the wall as I shook my head furiously and he again pressed the gun to me, sandwiching my head between the barrel and the wall with enough force for me to feel my head was going to pop like a grape.
And I saw the menace and intent on his face replace the previous nervousness and I wanted to cry. I wanted to collapse and cry and for it to all be over, but I knew if I did that, I'd still die. Whoever this guy was and whoever the other people here were, they were doing something big, and it didn't end with me. I thought of Jet and my family and my friends and if I could trade anything for a chance to be with them again, I would've with no hesitation. I never thought I would feel this way. I had thought I would've rather died.
I removed my jacket and the pressure on my forehead eased.
A knock on the door.
A new man, also dressed as an usher, also unconvincingly. "We found him, he's here. We need to get in there now. "
He was clearly in charge, or at least, in charge of my assailant. My attacker took one last longing glance at me and spun around on his heels, slamming the door behind me.
I waited thirty seconds and then tried the door -- it wasn't locked. I peeked into the corridor. A man I hadn't seen before stood with his back to me at the end of the long hallway. Before I could move, he turned, still facing away from me, and walked down towards the stairway I needed for my escape. Shit.
There were a few other doorways in the corridor. I figured it was better to hide in one of the other rooms than wait for my death where I currently was. One of the rooms clearly led to a balcony overlooking the performance. I thought maybe I could warn the audience and escape in the confusion. I ditched my heels and slid down the hallway silently, shutting the door behind me, and slipped into the room that overlooked the stage. The seats were amazing despite being unused. They must have been exorbitantly expensive, probably for some special VIP -- I spotted my attacker moving about the main floor below me. Silently, I dropped to the floor and peered through a hole in the carved wooden railing. He didn't see me. From where I lay, I could see the stage and the main floor perfectly without being very visible. I watched.
As the second movement of the piece drew to a close, a young woman, a girl my age, although dressed much more marvelously, walked out onto the stage. The musicians continued their playing, but the audience and conductor's reactions were telling me this was something unexpected.
The way the girl moved -- it was just, wrong. She tilted and leaned precariously with cartoonish exaggeration with each step. She stopped face to face with the conductor, seemed to have a few words with him, and then spun around to the musicians, motioning with her hands that they should continue to play. She leaned over a young violinist and whispered for a good twenty or thirty seconds; I could hear none of it, but the reaction on the violinist's face was clear. Terror.
The audience remained seated and relatively motionless despite the subtle confusion on stage but the silent symphony of their whispers began to drawn out the Chopin. The girl spun around and, putting a finger to her lips, shushed the crowd with a gentle smile. The whispers stopped.
One man stood up, something about his movement, lazy and powerful, the same way Jet moved, and immediately the ushers grouped up around the lone standing audience member. From where I lay, I couldn't get a good look at the standing man. He looked young though. Not older than his early twenties. I couldn't see much of his face at the distance, but he looked furious.
The young man spoke, and even without shouting, the sound carried well enough throughout the hall, "A little much, don't you think?"
The girl seemed to have removed the lapel microphone from the conductor because her voice boomed throughout the hall. It was a child's voice, sugary sweet. "I want my recording."
The Chopin continued but a few audience members began to get out of their seats and crept towards the exits as she spoke. The conductor, red as beet, seemed to be cursing at the girl on stage.
And time slowed down. The girl turned to face the conductor, tilted her head to the side as if terribly confused by what she saw, and in a motion terrifying fast, somehow now with a knife in each hand, cut out the throat of the man, erupting a spray of red onto the orchestra. The girl's white dress was splattered red, her face and hair, drowned in the man's blood.
I felt my stomach press up against my lungs and spine and found myself vomiting before the man's body even had time to crumple to the floor. For the tiniest fraction of a second, the girl on stage's gaze found me, hearing my reaction, but then her eyes were on the crowd, erupting out of their chairs, and then on the orchestra.
The chains held and, despite the crowd's pushing and shoving, nobody was getting out.
The young man remained standing, inert, staring at the stage. He spoke again, "I don't have it."
The childish tone was gone in her response, she growled, "I don't believe you."
The next few seconds were a blur. The ushers pulled their weapons on the boy, five gunshots were followed by screams and cries from the crowd, and then the voice of the girl, "Belmont chair playing violin."
Everything went white.
It looked as if all the color and emotion of the outside world had drained away, replaced by shades of melancholic gray, sapped of their life by the Chicago cold. The night sky was black, but the reflected city lights off the blanket of snow and dark cloudy sky in conjunction with the gray pavement merged everything into a murky haze. I fumbled with the two tickets in my bare hands, glowing a Rudolph red from the cold, my fingers clumsy and uncoordinated at maneuvering the slabs of paper. The warmth of inside continued to beckon and seduce me. No. I shook my head abruptly and forcefully, trying to force the image of me standing in the warm indoors from my mind. Fragments of my conversation with Jet and Alex replaced my discomfort and anxiety over the cold with longing for Jet and curiosity concerning our last conversation.
At lunch, Jet had said that just one girl had been responsible for the October killings and that he had not only ran into her earlier that same night, but fought with her, nearly dying. The little moon shaped scars on his hands were proof enough for my stomach and as much as I empathized with Jet over the injury, the visual of a knife skewering his hands like a kabob made my stomach turn. Mania was the name. Jet had laughed as if the killings, his injuries, this Mania girl were all no big deal, but that look Alex had given him. Venomous.
Trying to deny my feelings at this point for Jet was impossible, but love him or not, Alex was Jet's caution, his reason. And Alex never lost his cool like that. Ever. I liked him too. I hadn't at all at first, but I felt now that I understood Alex better. He needed to be so serious, so contained, so calm because with someone like Jet never taking anything in life too seriously, he needs someone to ground him. Would I end up like that? Would years of being in love with Jet always protecting him from his own recklessness leave me sarcastic, practical, and cold? I wondered again how someone like Jet could even really feel the same way about me. Everything about him was extraordinary, while everything with me, was just, extra ordinary.
Before my mind could continue replaying and picking apart the conversation further, a gust of wind reminded me that the demands of the physical world were more pressing than those of my mind. Where the hell is he? I couldn't fathom why he'd want to go to a symphony. Worse still to be late. Even somehow more worse to not answer your phone when you're running this late. I gripped the tickets tightly and surrendered to the allure of escaping the cold. We really don't get to pick who we love.
The warmth was soothing but less so than I expected. My pale skin continued to glow pink, okay red, to my frustration. After about a minute of thawing, I looked for a place to check my coat, and found the coat closet, but no coat checker. I put the jacket back on and figured I'd suffer in the heat to balance out the waiting in the cold. It's okay body -- on average, we're fine.
Making my way back towards the main hall and concession area, I found one thing, disturbingly missing, people. Food was generally prohibited inside the actual hall, but from my few memories of being dragged to this place as a child, there were typically people schmoozing about having drinks, here for the atmosphere instead of the music. I was equally desperate to get away from the music as a kid and it was one of the rare occasions where my aunt and uncle would indulge any candy or soda request I might have, so these booths were about all I could remember of my trips here.
Not ten minutes ago I saw dozens of people walking about in here while I stood outside freezing. The concern that I was going crazy briefly crossed my mind, but I let my sanity off the hook when I recognized the sound of Chopin in the distance. Maybe they don't let people out during performances now. I decided to find my seat and if Jet comes, he comes, if not, I'm here and I might as well make the best of it.
I approached the closed center doors to the main floor seating without giving any consideration to where my seats were supposed to be, figuring I'd take an empty seat near the rear and leave if I got too terribly bored. I wondered if normal girls would do this, or if they would just give up and go home. I've always been clueless with the little rules like that on how to live.
My hand touched the handle of the door before I noticed the chains. The large wooden doors were chained and locked from the outside. Strange. I get not letting people out if it disturbs the musicians, but chaining the doors can't be safe. Some sort of fire hazard at least. I paused and tried to ease the growing anxiety building up within me. Maybe it was just this one door.
The adjacent doors were also chained. Something was wrong here. Really wrong.
I pressed my ear up against the door. Chopin. A few coughs and whispers. It sounded like a symphony. Still my heart raced and that anxiety I'd been fighting was turning into something much more like hysteria.
There are no people out here -- no ushers, no coat checker, no servers, nothing. I felt the panic in my stomach and throat.
Without my mind really processing what could possibly be going on, I found myself dialing.
The voice was reassuring, motherly, "Chicago 911, do you have an emergency?"
I stuttered, "Yes, I think so, I'm -- "
I had never felt a gun pressed up against my head before, but I didn't need to turn to know what it was. The voice was male but higher pitched and more nervous than the movie cliches had prepared me for, "Stop."
Without hesitation, I whimpered, "I'm fine actually. Sorry false alarm."
The emergency responder said something. I wasn't listening. She told me it was okay to hang up, and the call disconnected, but I held the phone up to my ear pretending to listen for as long as I could. I didn't get long. A sweaty hand grabbed mine and ripped the phone out of it before grabbing my arm and spinning me around fast enough for me to lose balance. I buckled on my heels but the man was bigger than I had thought and he easily held me up, if painfully, by my arm. He flung the phone into the wall hard enough for me to expect it to explode into a thousand pieces, but instead it hit with just a large thud, and bounced and skidded across the floor.
It's strange now, but at that moment, I made up my mind that I wasn't going to die there that night to a man unable to even break a cell phone. I thought about Jet as the man dragged me off, me stumbling and tripping the whole way. I wished he were here to help me, but this guy had a gun and while I wouldn't ever bet against Jet in a fight, still, a gun was a gun, right? Thinking that he might get hurt again, might get shot, made me instantly glad he didn't come here tonight. And I wasn't going to die here. There will be a moment I knew. I'll have my moment and I'll escape. The doors to the outside weren't chained. We had gone up a few flights of stairs and he was dragging me to a room at the end of a long hallway at the top -- I could run from here to the door in thirty seconds. I replayed the run again and again trying to avoid thinking about the present, but my escape plans were dashed when I saw a second man take up a post guarding the main hallway to the exit.
I felt the gun pressed into my forehead. My mind snapped to the present. I saw my attacker clearly for the first time. He was dressed as an usher but was too big and too tattooed to be plausible. His face wore a nervous grin as if he were enjoying himself but afraid to indulge his desires. I had always thought that the guy holding the gun would have a lot more confidence. I wanted to cry and panic and beg, but I kept my mind on the cell phone skidding across the floor. Throw me around and I won't break either.
He drilled the gun into my forehead so hard I felt he was trying to bore it into my skull. "I said fucking strip." He threw me to the wall as I shook my head furiously and he again pressed the gun to me, sandwiching my head between the barrel and the wall with enough force for me to feel my head was going to pop like a grape.
And I saw the menace and intent on his face replace the previous nervousness and I wanted to cry. I wanted to collapse and cry and for it to all be over, but I knew if I did that, I'd still die. Whoever this guy was and whoever the other people here were, they were doing something big, and it didn't end with me. I thought of Jet and my family and my friends and if I could trade anything for a chance to be with them again, I would've with no hesitation. I never thought I would feel this way. I had thought I would've rather died.
I removed my jacket and the pressure on my forehead eased.
A knock on the door.
A new man, also dressed as an usher, also unconvincingly. "We found him, he's here. We need to get in there now. "
He was clearly in charge, or at least, in charge of my assailant. My attacker took one last longing glance at me and spun around on his heels, slamming the door behind me.
I waited thirty seconds and then tried the door -- it wasn't locked. I peeked into the corridor. A man I hadn't seen before stood with his back to me at the end of the long hallway. Before I could move, he turned, still facing away from me, and walked down towards the stairway I needed for my escape. Shit.
There were a few other doorways in the corridor. I figured it was better to hide in one of the other rooms than wait for my death where I currently was. One of the rooms clearly led to a balcony overlooking the performance. I thought maybe I could warn the audience and escape in the confusion. I ditched my heels and slid down the hallway silently, shutting the door behind me, and slipped into the room that overlooked the stage. The seats were amazing despite being unused. They must have been exorbitantly expensive, probably for some special VIP -- I spotted my attacker moving about the main floor below me. Silently, I dropped to the floor and peered through a hole in the carved wooden railing. He didn't see me. From where I lay, I could see the stage and the main floor perfectly without being very visible. I watched.
As the second movement of the piece drew to a close, a young woman, a girl my age, although dressed much more marvelously, walked out onto the stage. The musicians continued their playing, but the audience and conductor's reactions were telling me this was something unexpected.
The way the girl moved -- it was just, wrong. She tilted and leaned precariously with cartoonish exaggeration with each step. She stopped face to face with the conductor, seemed to have a few words with him, and then spun around to the musicians, motioning with her hands that they should continue to play. She leaned over a young violinist and whispered for a good twenty or thirty seconds; I could hear none of it, but the reaction on the violinist's face was clear. Terror.
The audience remained seated and relatively motionless despite the subtle confusion on stage but the silent symphony of their whispers began to drawn out the Chopin. The girl spun around and, putting a finger to her lips, shushed the crowd with a gentle smile. The whispers stopped.
One man stood up, something about his movement, lazy and powerful, the same way Jet moved, and immediately the ushers grouped up around the lone standing audience member. From where I lay, I couldn't get a good look at the standing man. He looked young though. Not older than his early twenties. I couldn't see much of his face at the distance, but he looked furious.
The young man spoke, and even without shouting, the sound carried well enough throughout the hall, "A little much, don't you think?"
The girl seemed to have removed the lapel microphone from the conductor because her voice boomed throughout the hall. It was a child's voice, sugary sweet. "I want my recording."
The Chopin continued but a few audience members began to get out of their seats and crept towards the exits as she spoke. The conductor, red as beet, seemed to be cursing at the girl on stage.
And time slowed down. The girl turned to face the conductor, tilted her head to the side as if terribly confused by what she saw, and in a motion terrifying fast, somehow now with a knife in each hand, cut out the throat of the man, erupting a spray of red onto the orchestra. The girl's white dress was splattered red, her face and hair, drowned in the man's blood.
I felt my stomach press up against my lungs and spine and found myself vomiting before the man's body even had time to crumple to the floor. For the tiniest fraction of a second, the girl on stage's gaze found me, hearing my reaction, but then her eyes were on the crowd, erupting out of their chairs, and then on the orchestra.
The chains held and, despite the crowd's pushing and shoving, nobody was getting out.
The young man remained standing, inert, staring at the stage. He spoke again, "I don't have it."
The childish tone was gone in her response, she growled, "I don't believe you."
The next few seconds were a blur. The ushers pulled their weapons on the boy, five gunshots were followed by screams and cries from the crowd, and then the voice of the girl, "Belmont chair playing violin."
Everything went white.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Let's Do the Fork in the Garbage Disposal
Ding, ding, ding da ding ding da ding ding-ding.
It's been one week since I hit 80. Two since I purchased WotLK. (I was gone most of the second week)
I've ground 110k honor, leveled engi and enchanting basically from scratch, finished Kirin Tor rep, and am slowly grinding through Hodir rep. My gear is still pretty mediocre, but weirdly when the new Honor gear arrives, my gear will probably improve to the point where I can PvE well enough. At which point, I'll be able to use my fierce PvE skills to improve my PvP situation. PvP to PvE to PvP?
I pretty much know who I want to PvP with come season start and basically have my teams loosely set. I'll be in Tokyo for the majority of the first two weeks of the season, so hopefully we'll run bigger rosters or squeeze games in when I'm around as it is technically possible with how things line up. (Although not optimal lol) I'm not in a terrible rush either way. I'm psyched for the season start and to learn new matrices and strategies, but I'm hoping for a repeat of season one where I was psyched to play EVERY week, not just the first few.
I'm not going to talk about my teammates till we're into the season because things can fall through and I don't want to snake anyone, but if things work out, I'm very psyched, i.e. THEY WILL CARRY ME LOLOL.
Most the discussions I've heard on the interwebs are basically nonstop crying about PvE vs PvP issues with little talk at all about actual strats, tricks, ideas, etc. To counter that, I'll list ten random things off the top of my head:
It's been one week since I hit 80. Two since I purchased WotLK. (I was gone most of the second week)
I've ground 110k honor, leveled engi and enchanting basically from scratch, finished Kirin Tor rep, and am slowly grinding through Hodir rep. My gear is still pretty mediocre, but weirdly when the new Honor gear arrives, my gear will probably improve to the point where I can PvE well enough. At which point, I'll be able to use my fierce PvE skills to improve my PvP situation. PvP to PvE to PvP?
I pretty much know who I want to PvP with come season start and basically have my teams loosely set. I'll be in Tokyo for the majority of the first two weeks of the season, so hopefully we'll run bigger rosters or squeeze games in when I'm around as it is technically possible with how things line up. (Although not optimal lol) I'm not in a terrible rush either way. I'm psyched for the season start and to learn new matrices and strategies, but I'm hoping for a repeat of season one where I was psyched to play EVERY week, not just the first few.
I'm not going to talk about my teammates till we're into the season because things can fall through and I don't want to snake anyone, but if things work out, I'm very psyched, i.e. THEY WILL CARRY ME LOLOL.
Most the discussions I've heard on the interwebs are basically nonstop crying about PvE vs PvP issues with little talk at all about actual strats, tricks, ideas, etc. To counter that, I'll list ten random things off the top of my head:
- Polymorph Glyph - This causes shadow word death to fail to break sheep and is, imo, a must.
- Mirror Image - This should be macro'd with a /stopcasting before it. It has some major problems in PvP, but does function as a decent way of interrupting an enemy's cast on you (say avoiding a Hex or Poly), or baiting a CS. (Start a Poly, cancel into MI to burn their CS). I've yet to test how the target dropping performs with Focus Frames, but it does seem to drop you from Default UI's focus at least. This is overall a pretty terrible ability, but it is a strange mechanic and thus has a lot of potential in skilled players' hands if we can figure out clever uses.
- Improved Wards - Not so much a trick, but recognize that these are extremely potent. Imp Fire Ward reflects cannon fire in WG and Strand. In general, these are very very strong in mage versus mage encounters, to the point where the mage without is not very likely to prevail.
- Resilience - The cap is 1230. Realistic setups with full Deadly have closer to 800. I've been killed by rogues in two globals many times at zero resilience. (premed ambush evisc -> 9.5k + 7k) I've also tasted 10k Rune Strikes. While reducing these crits by 25% or so might help some, I think it might be a while till we're back at the point where cloth can tank melee for extended periods. Until it is possible to survive the burst, stamina is going to be a much better stat than resilience. (Resilience is more of a healing efficiency stat than anything else)
- Spell Reflecting Living Bomb - Yup, you can reflect the asplosion. LOL.
- Dealing with DKs - Personally I find DKs to be the most annoying class in BGs to run into. They waste a lot of your CDs to defeat and it takes a pretty long time. If you're Arcane, you need to get Slow up before they Strangle->CoI you, or you're going to need to burn IB or EA immediately. I find EA very clumsy against CoI -- the delay seems extremely long. I don't want to say too much here because the class is about to receive susbtantial nerfs, but DKs currently give me severe nerdrage in AB.
- Honor Grinding - Everyone is saying WG is amazing honor. I can't really agree with this. Doing whatever the weekend BG is seems like by far the best honor still. Most games of AB are won or lost in about 15 minutes and yield 600-1200 honor + marks and Strand last weekend was significantly better. I agree doing one WG per day is wise to get the easy dailies done, but beyond that I think is pointless.
- Eight Percent - This is roughly the amount of Haste you need to get 4 lances on a DF with IV popped. It's also the amount to base double shatter your DFs. (Four lances are a better option when you can) I'm thinking that the frostbolt->pet nova->df->ilx4 will be the cliche stupid burst.
- Cone of Cold - Okay, this is really basic, but I never see people do this. When you pop AP as an Arcane mage, if your target isn't slowed, your first cast on them should be CoC NOT AB or PoM-Ffb. I see people blowing AP burst into non snared target or wasting a global putting up Slow again. BAD. Also, people don't know that you don't have Shatter specced (or you might it even have it), which means that if you bite that CoC, they pretty much have to burn an out to break it or they eat a 10k crit. And for you bad fire mages, CoC and DB aren't linked anymore. You can rebind that shit. It's good.
- Sundial of the Exiled/Dying Curse - These seem to be very very good to me. My thought is that even if you want to make sure it's up, say for immediate pressure off the start, just make sure you spam Slow Fall before the gate opens, try to get it to proc at roughly the 30-15 window, and by the time you engage, the internal should be back up. They're double the effect of the clicky trinkets and really do change the burst potential into totally bonkers terriroty.
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