Zoe Background
From Changeling Venue
- DISCLAIMER: This background is intended strictly for your entertainment and the purposes of building background ties (which I'm definitely looking for!). Please do not presume your PC knows anything in this background not listed in the other sections without my consent. If you'd like your PC to know something that's in this background, even if we don't end up having mutual ties, email me! I'm happy to help propogate a World of Darkness. --BKC
Contents |
Prologue:
Ever notice something about the old sayings and cliches that your mom always spouted? I have...they usually apply. I learned the hard way. I was 16, a drama queen, a drab little gothling, too smart for my own good and too self-centered to care. I hated the world and I hoped it hated me right back. I hated my life and my mom, and the last thing I told her was that someday she’d regret it…she’d regret it when one day she wouldn’t have the chance to tell me she was sorry.
I was 16. Where the hell does a 16 year old get a straight razor anyway? My father had always used one, every day up to the day he died. Said it gave him the closest shave, and told me never to touch it. Well. Just one more act of rebellion. I did touch it. After I ran a tub full of hot water and got in it (in my underwear...this was suicide, not a peep show), I touched it to my wrists. It was sharp…it barely hurt. The scalding water hurt more than the razor. Of course, I didn’t do it the right way… I didn’t really want to kill myself after all. I just wanted to scare the living hell out of my mother and show her that I meant business. That’s why I was in my underwear instead of naked. It’s hard to take people seriously when they’re naked.
The water was really hot. It turned my skin pink as a prawn and it took me only a few minutes to realize that the water was a lot redder than I thought it should be. Had I cut too deep? I lifted one arm and blood ran down to my elbow like a river, dripping in big, splashing drops back to the water below. I didn’t think I’d cut too deep…and I’d cut across and not down, because you only cut down if you really mean it. But that was an awful lot of blood.
Maybe you should get out of the hot water, Madeleine. Yes, good idea. I tried. Really, I did. I thought I must have hit my head when my hand slipped in the bloody water. I thought I saw a man when I opened my eyes, sitting on the edge of the tub. He was hard to see through the steam. Or was I seeing through him…? No no, neither. I was just hallucinating. I had to get out of the water.
Would you like a hand, Madeleine? The shadow on the tub reached for me, and I scrambled backwards, slamming my head into the wall. I started to slump down into the water, and had the fleeting thought that if I went under, I really was going to die.
Do you want to die, Madeleine? “No,” I tried to scream, but it came out more like a choppy whisper. It was loud enough for the shadow to hear though. My foot slipped again as I tried to prop myself up out of the water. “No, I don’t want to die..” Tears welled in my eyes, and my vision blurred, then faded.
What will you give me to save your life, Madeleine? I tried to focus. Tried to see. All I could see was the bloody water. I didn’t have anything to give. I was almost naked in a steaming bathroom, and my mom had already cut off all my credit cards. Was I actually dying? Was an angel talking to me? What did I have to give for my life? I think I would have given anything.
You need only give me your hand, Madeleine, and you will live forever.
I reached out.
Be careful what you wish for…
How kind of it to call for my mother. She got there just in time. She called the paramedics. They saved my fetch’s life, and yes, my mother was sorry. The last thing I saw in this world was her mascara-stained, weeping face crying over my still and bloody body, dripping tears of regret for every time she’d ever yelled at me and swearing things would be different now.
How dramatic. How bloody fucking tragic, I thought…just what I always wanted. And then we were gone.
Exposition:
Time passes slowly in Arcadia…or fast, or not at all. It passes however your Keeper wants it to, for you. I called mine The Shadow, because I don’t think I could have pronounced its name even if it wanted me to. I didn’t dare try besides; I was afraid my mouth might melt away with just the very utterance of it.
It never spoke to me. It just bid me follow and I was compelled. Wherever it went, I was bound to go too, never chained or leashed, just…attached. Slowly, ironically, I became my Keeper’s own shadow.
My Keeper was never cruel to me. It didn’t have to be. It was a living nightmare…walking cruelty, and the shaking, feverish, unspeakable terror that it visited upon others was lesson enough for me. It had never lied… I gave it my hand; I would indeed live forever. And I would always, forever and ever, be careful what I wished for. It also taught me another lesson. Do unto others… But that one didn’t come until much later.
It didn’t sleep, so I didn’t sleep. I didn’t want to. I saw what happened when people slept because I shadowed my Keeper through their dreams. Silently I followed, eyes forced open as I chronicled the Shadow’s work. I never knew why it picked me. I never asked. It never occurred to me that it might be important. All I knew was that it had kept its promise—and forever was going to be a very, very long time. Forever without sleep, forever without food, forever without friends and without the company of a single spoken word. Only the written one… I wrote and wrote and wrote. Thousands of dreams, thousands of stories. Millions of horrors that I had never imagined, and wished fervently I’d never known as I recorded every single dream the Shadow handed out. I drifted along behind him through so many minds—good, evil, child, fiend and saint…the hand that I’d given him carefully and thoroughly documenting them all, never stopping, never resting. I began to realize what a blessing it is that people tend to forget most of their dreams by the time they wake. I was happy for them, and viciously jealous at the same time. Because no matter what, I knew I never would.
Later I would hear tales of whippings and torture, and terrible things being forced on slaves by vicious captors. Bloody escapes from horrific beasts and capricious creatures of awe-inspiring vengeance. Everyone has a story to tell of how special they were and how their Keeper would go to the ends of the world and beyond to hold on to them for their exceptional beauty or talent or power or strength. I smile politely, and rarely return the favor. I don’t think my story would be well-received.
One day, the Shadow just…let me go. It spoke, for the first time since my suicide. The icy sound of it shocked me to the core, and I stood in stunned silence, staring out into the dark empty space next to me where my Keeper had always been. Now there was nothing.
Do you want to go home, Madeleine? The voice came from nowhere, and everywhere, startling me into stillness.
Home? I tried to think, tried to focus. Home was…what? Where? All the home I knew was a terrible memory, chronicled through millions of minds whose dreams of the word were twisted beyond recognition by the Shadow. I didn’t think I wanted to go there.
Suddenly I realized that my hand had stopped moving. I looked down at it, and willed it to move. It did. It belonged to me again.
Do you want to stay with me, Madeleine?
Again, I had no answer. How could I want to stay with the embodiment of horror? I didn’t. And yet…I did. Why? I had a choice! What kind of person would choose a life as the shadow of living terror—even if it meant living forever? I looked down at myself, and for the first time since my suicide I felt the slithering grip of true fear that was actually my own and not someone else’s. What kind of person? What kind indeed… I looked down at my hand, and then my arms. They rippled as they changed. A dozen times in an instant. Instinctively I knew what was happening—I was morphing through the visages of the people my Keeper had tormented. In a moment of panic I nearly promised to stay if it would just make it stop…but I remembered its lesson. Be careful what you wish for.
What would happen if I stayed? Where would I go if I didn’t? I didn’t know, but I didn’t think the offer would come again. I almost asked why it was letting me go, but I stopped just short. I wisely realized that after all I’d seen, I probably didn’t want the answer.
I had my hand back. I could get my life back. Suddenly, I didn’t care if I didn’t live forever—I just wanted to live. In the same breath the decision was made, the darkness that had surrounded me for my eternity lifted, my vision cleared and in the distance I saw something glitter. I started toward it at a slow walk, and then a run. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew it was somehow the key to getting back.
Like most nightmares, the goal was much farther away than it seemed. No matter how fast I ran, it didn’t seem to get any closer. I began to tire, and in the way of dreams, it felt as though I was running through muck. My feet were heavy with sludge and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t slept in…millennia. The harder I ran, the more I tired until eventually I just collapsed. I lay down on the sloppy ground and curled up into myself on my side, shifting my rippling body to keep the glittering key in my sights…until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any more.
Climax:
Of my time in Arcadia, I remember two things with crystal clarity. All of my forever-life with my first Keeper, and only my escape from the second. The rest is hazy at best. I thank god every night for the blessing of the dreamer to forget the dream when he wakes, for I would surely be mad without it.
Sometimes I have flashes of vague recollection in between. A memory here, an object there. I remember being dragged away in the dark from where I had collapsed in the Hedge…no, by the dark. I was dragged away by the dark. Two of them…speaking to each other in some rolling, rippling language I didn’t understand. I remember I was still rippling myself, then blankness again.
I recall the crown of my new Keeper. It gave me something to focus on while he roared at me in his rumbling fury and I prayed for the silence I took for granted in my eternity with the Shadow.
“Stop! Stop..changing!” I don’t know if he yelled it over and over, or if it just echoed in my head. He was a huge beast of a King and his whole world cowered before him when he roared. I cowered too, because the bellowing stopped for a while if I did. I didn’t cower because I feared him, as the others did. How could I, after all that I had seen? No, I feared nothing in this new world; I just wanted it to be quiet.
I thought I might go deaf from the crescendo of his rage over my insolence in refusing to obey him and stop changing. I stopped trying to convince him that I couldn’t and just retreated into my memories, preferring the clear recall of perfect terror to all the noise and bluster of the world around me. He never hit me, never whipped me or cut me, but he didn’t have to. The never-ending din was more than adequate punishment. I remember thinking how powerful his voice must be, for with the sole exception of my body, the rest of the world did change as he willed it to…however he said. He spoke, and it happened. He shaped reality around him with the ease of sculptor, using his voice as his chisel. A tiny part of me felt the smallest empathy for his frustration over my apparent refusal to listen; it stirred some memory of a life long ago where I, too, went unheard no matter how loudly I screamed.
More blankness, and then I remember that I finally did stop changing. I don’t know how long it took…time blurred and I spent most of it as far inside my own mind as I could get without betraying my private plans for escape. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong and then I realized: the noise had stopped. I don’t recall the events surrounding; I just remember a huge mirror, and the reflection of the gigantic King standing victoriously behind me, smiling proudly over me. I didn’t recognize my own reflection, but it moved when I did and smiled when I smiled. He put one massive hand on my shoulder and delicately placed a tiny crown of my own on my head. I was draped in beautiful bold colors and liquid metallics, and I was absolutely, stunningly beautiful. The gathered throng of the King’s court stood beaming at us, and I realized with a start that my graceful dress was a wedding gown.
“You have pleased me, Little One. You have truly been the Muse for my greatest work, and I have at long last made you into the Princess you were meant to be. Now you shall be my Queen.”
How odd, I thought, that I didn't look like me. Worse, I realized suddenly...I didn't even remember what I had looked like. I had been young, I remembered, but...what else? I had never seen anything so beautiful as I was now. I stared at this new reflection, this striking creature who was so fair of face she could have been a sculptor's model, and then it struck me. I hadn't been the model at all. I'd been the stone.
And the self-styled artist was standing by my side. Bitter resentment welled up in me like poison and almost spilled over into tears. Then came the hate. Hate for him, hate for what he'd taken from me, and hate for the creature I'd become...and for myself, too, for being too weak to resist. Then came the panic, and suddenly I couldn't breathe.
I didn’t want to be his Little One, or his Princess, or his Queen. I didn’t want his crown and I didn’t want him touching me. I knew instinctively that if I didn’t do something right now, I’d never, ever leave this awful place. And then I saw it… Shining, gleaming in the mirror, in the reflection of the shrubbery behind us. My eyes widened with a sudden jolt of hope that my King took to be blushing happiness at his joyous announcement. I gathered my skirts as I started to turn but then my anticipation fell like a rock. I’d never get through the crowd. No, I’d never even make it past the King’s enormous reach.
My spark of hope began to fade. I would be stuck here, forever, married to a brute of a man-thing who fancied himself an artist, who used people as putty and sculpted a kingdom out of rock because he could have one no other way. Who’d made himself a Queen out of a child because, in the end, no true Queen would have him. Yes, I’d be stuck forever if I married the Pretender King. I had learned my lesson about making agreements with these creatures. How I rued those fateful words…give me your hand and you will live forever. How ironic, I thought that this one wants my hand too…
But no, I told myself feverishly, I will not give this thing my hand! Hope was suddenly fanned by the breath of an idea. I remembered what I had learned in my eternity with the Shadow. I remembered all the dreams I’d walked through, and how nothing is ever exactly as it seems.
And even if it was, I had nothing to lose. I took a deep breath and smiled at my own reflection…and then I leaped toward my gleaming salvation—through the mirror.
I heard the Pretender King suck in his breath in surprise behind me and then I ran as fast as my newly lithe legs would carry me. There was no sludge this time, no sucking mire as I ran, fleet as the wind, toward the shining glimmer in the Hedge. I heard the roar at the same time I felt the flying glass of the shattered mirror hurtle past me, slicing my hands and arms and face like shrapnel. I could never go back now, but I didn’t want to. I plunged straight ahead, shredding my beautiful dress in the briars of the Hedge as I dropped to my knees and scrambled toward my key.
There was no darkness this time, no collapse and no hesitation. Finally my hand closed around the shining object that was my beacon, and I laughed like mad when I realized what it was…what it had been all along. I tucked it into the folds of my tattered bodice and looked wildly behind me before I stumbled to my feet. No one was coming, but night was falling and I heard sounds that evoked memories of creatures I’d chronicled from the Shadow’s dreamwork.
I ran. I ran in the only direction that made sense, away from the Pretender King’s castle. It didn’t take long for me to run straight into a raiding party, and they laughed heartily at my fierce and wild-eyed stance, waving my straight-razor in front of me like a battle sword. I heard chitters of “pretty thing” and “ransom.” I screamed at them in my fury that I’d die before I’d go back. I think I would have, too, if the cavalry hadn’t arrived just then. My instructions were simple: run. I obeyed, and ran while my saviors held off the slavering goblin gang who had nearly been the end of me. My cuts stung like mad and my feet were bruised and blistered and my breath felt like sand in my throat, but I ran, the hand which was never still before clutching tightly around a broken crown.
Conclusion:
I don’t know who my rescuers were, but I hope I find them some day. I never saw my Shadow again, nor the Pretender King, but I bear the marks of both even now, physically and mentally. I couldn’t go home again, even if I’d wanted to. My fetch had taken my place quite effectively and was living the life I always wanted…and she’d only aged three years. I, on the other hand, had aged somewhere between 15 and 20 years by the look of me, and I felt as old as Lazarus. How do you explain that to a mother who’s barely that old herself and thinks her little gothling is over all that nonsense and dreaming sweetly in her bedroom?
No, the Madeleine I used to be is barely a distant memory now. No one calls me that anymore. The last person to call me Madeleine is also a distant memory. And I have work to do…
It’s been seven years and three months since I returned, and I’ve become something of a cult phenomenon in the modern world. The market for fear is thriving, and I feel obliged to remind impressionable readers that they only think they’re afraid of the dark. What they’re really afraid of is something else entirely…
Zoe Edwards is my non de plume in the human world. Zoe Edwards is a writer of novels and short stories, read the world over, respected for her mastery of the craft of fear and highly sought after for interviews and appearances…probably only because she rarely gives them.
But when I do, they always ask me. The same ridiculous question. I keep hoping for the good ones, but the same tired one always seems to crop up instead. "Ms. Edwards, when you write your novels and stories...do you ever find that you scare yourself?" How absurd. But every time, I smile politely, showing just a little teeth, and answer very simply. "Yes." But I never elaborate. Really, it's best that they don't know. And usually they're just grateful to have gotten the interview at all—by phone. I'm elusive, you see...reclusive, one might even say. One might say that I have something to hide. It's a good thing then, I suppose, that writers--the good ones, anyway--are allowed a certain amount of eccentricity by popular culture. It adds to my reputation, my publicist says...good for sales. Less is the new more. I don't even have my picture on the jacket covers of my books. I have a P.O. Box for fan mail and my phone numbers, home and email addresses are unlisted. I am a fabulously mysterious success, which I owe entirely to my own paranoia, and a darkened sense of self-preservation.
"If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad," as Lord Byron said.
I never want for material; I have more stories than Scheherezod, purloined from the private night terrors of unwitting readers long before they’d ever even heard my name. Sometimes I want for companionship. There was someone beautiful once…tragically, painfully beautiful. One brilliant blue eye haunts me, the other mirrored by my own emerald green. I think I was in love. I don’t know. I may never know, but I suppose that’s alright. I have plenty to occupy my attention these days. Weddings can be such a chore to plan...
Oh, the irony.
When I made the acquaintance of my new fiancé, I felt myself pale just a tiny bit. He is also a beastly King with a dreadful roar. I wonder if my benefactor knew that when he arranged the betrothal. Or if he realized it mattered… Although I don’t suppose it does, really. Not now at least, if it ever did. I quickly learned that my fiance' is a very different sort of beast from the Pretender King--a Lion, and no cowardly one at that. A true King of Beasts. But more importantly, the Spring King of my new Freehold. Which I suppose will, in fact, make me a Queen after all.
You see the irony?
I suppose they sent me because the only real match for the King of Beasts is a Queen who has stood in the face of one already, and beaten him.
I’ve learned so much about dreams that for the most part, I can keep a tight reign on my own. But sometimes…once in a while, I still wake up in a cold sweat. I don’t scream; no, an eternity of silence instills certain habits, after all, which are more than difficult to break. But sometimes I swear he’s been there. I wonder if he recognizes me. I don’t look the same at all…but I don’t suppose that matters in the landscape of dreams. He’d know me in an instant if he caught the right glimpse of my shadow.
I guess what bothers me most is that I never know which he it is that I’m dreaming of. The Shadow? The Pretender? My love? My King? The blessing of dreamers to forget most of the dream when they wake--I take it with a grateful smile and I don’t complain, no matter the bother, for I know the cost of its absence.
And I don’t keep mirrors around anymore.
