He liked to yell. He would yell in a way that could bring even the strongest of men to his knees. His lips seemed to be permanently curled into a disapproving frown. He was proud and independent. He had strong opinions and had no issues with letting them be known. But he was a man of the upper class, so his opinions, no matter how outrageous, would rarely ever get him into trouble. However, it did mean he had no close or true friends. No one to confide in when the pressures of life brought him down. No one to gossip with, no one to buy a friendly round of beer for or share an expensive cigar with. All he had were his servants. No wife, no relatives who cared to ever pay him a visit. Just the hired persons who scurried about in his mansion, tending to his daily needs and cares.
But what need of a friend did James Martin III have anyway?
As far as Mr. Martin knew, she didn’t have a name. She never told him anything about herself, though there were a few things he could infer.
~~~~
She was only a few years younger than Mr. Martin’s eight and twenty years, around three and twenty, perhaps. Her hair was brunette, large and curly. Sometimes there would be a band holding it back, but it would still just lay there with very little effort put into it. She was about his height, perhaps a little a few inches difference, and boasted quite the curvaceous figure. Her eyes were a light mix of colors. So far Mr. Martin had picked out blue, green and hazel. Her attire was never the same and she usually wore strange yet comfortable looking pants with numerous zippers, black and white shoes with laces, and a brown jacket over her shirt. Her shirts sometimes had writing on them or strange pictures. Usually Mr. Martin could understand what the writing said but couldn’t understand the meaning and the pictures never made any sort of logical sense. For example, a shirt she seemed to favor that was white and had black script covering the entire fabric had jumbled words all thrown together: “DIET,” “Rely on me,” “Barefoot in Paradise,” “BOMBSHELL” and various other phrases. Very strange, very random.
At first she had been shy, gently berating him or encouraging him, depending on the situation. Slowly, she showed her true side, a hyper and outgoing nature. Most of what he heard from her foreign American accent was jokes or stories. Her loud laugh was one of Mr. Martin’s favorite sounds and he heard it quite often.
After a while, it seemed like she opened up to him a bit more. Every once and a while he would catch her staring off into nothing and suddenly she would notice him and the smile and happy manner would snap on. He sometimes wondered if maybe… maybe the wonderful happiness was just an act. Maybe she was some sort of vaudevillian. That might explain her strange clothing.
However, he knew nothing of her life. Not yet, at least, he would tell himself. To tell the truth, he didn’t even know if she was a piece of fiction or not. Her crude jokes and outlandish clothes made it seem that way. Either that or his vaudevillian theory. And he never saw her out of his mind’s eye. To Mr. Martin’s knowledge, she was simply a figment of his almost non-existent imagination.
This was the beginning of a longer story that never went any further than this. It's a more fantastical outlook on schizophrenia. Eventually, with the many enemies Mr. Martin has made, he's murdered and wakes up in this girl's world: 21st century America. There's a complicated little love story that goes along with it and I believe somehow at some point both Mr. Martin and the girl make it back to 19th century England and ... yeah, I don't remember.
No comments:
Post a Comment