It is London, 1885. I play my cello on the balcony, accompanied by sunshine and the clamoring of people in the streets. Shadows converse behind me. Papa instructing the nanny on how I am to be cared for. Silly old man. Papa does not know that I am actually Aphrodite, serenading my garden with my song so that it will prove suitable for romantic promenades.
Now it is Rotterdam, 1841. A young man crouches over a headstone, shakily dragging his fingers over the engraving. He says the name aloud in a panicked whisper. The name is his, as is the body lying six feet beneath him.
Papa is in the study. He does not know when he will return. I am to obey the nanny, though he knows I do not like her. He says I must put my faith in her, that he trusts her to care for me in ways he cannot. He will not explain what he means by this. From the corner of my eye I see the shadow behind me, smiling.
Cairo, 973. The natives approach a strangely dressed foreigner on the street. They marvel at his blue cotton pants and greasy slicked hair. He babbles incoherently for a few minutes before offering the others his bottle of brown elixir. The crowd are both intrigued and mystified by the stranger's “Coca Cola”, and they drag him off to be changed into proper clothes before meeting the caliph.
Papa has left for India without saying goodbye. He has never done this and I am upset. The nanny hands me a toy to alleviate my disappointment. I hold it up to the light. It is a miniature elephant, made of springs and gears, something between a beast and a clock. I think I feel it moving in my hands and nearly drop it. She says that even clocks need love before briefly torturing me with that cold, sardonic laugh of hers and walking away.
Oslo, 2015. News anchors inform an incredulous audience that a dinosaur-like creature has been spotted by the fjord. People flock to the shores armed with cameras and non-perishable foodstuffs. Some bring rifles, “just in case”.
I am in the garden with Delilah. Holding hands, we bathe in the moonlight, our eyes pulled towards each other as if we had magnets in our heads. The others call out our names teasingly in the dark. She touches my face and I shiver. I grab her hand, hoping she will kiss me, but the sound of a gunshot startles us.
Marrakesh, 1072. A family watches as their house deteriorates before them, every second bringing with it hundreds of years of age and decay. What was once a home is now rubble on a street corner. A passerby laughs before disintegrating to dust. Nobody seems to notice.
The others are running towards us. Mary's face is dotted with blood. They scream. No words are formed. More noise. Eleanor collapses into the orchids.
Vienna, 1905. A mother watches her son painting a landscape. An older gentleman approaches him. He has an irregular mustache and a strange symbol on his arm. The man observes the painting and nods with approval. He hands the boy a book, pats him on the shoulder and walks away.
Before I can make it to the house I feel Delilah let go of me. No gasp or cry is heard as she falls to the ground.
Sao Paulo, 1955. Another dead prostitute, the fifth this week alone. Her throat has been slashed, and an autopsy will reveal that her kidneys had been removed. The police report receives a letter addressed “From Hell”.
Before I can turn back for her I am hit. A tiny screaming metal fist hits me in my chest. All of the air is pushed out of my lungs and the world is frozen. I, like the grass beneath me, stand paralyzed as the gunman dashes towards me. He moves without sound. I am enveloped in white as my mouth vainly attempts to scream.
Kyoto, 1635. Kiyomizu-dera has erupted in flames. Smoke carpets the sky, suffocating the monks futilely throwing water on the burning temple. Amidst the chaos and destruction, a woman's body is dragged from the inferno. The monks claim she “fell from the sky in a metal dragon”. She repeatedly whimpers the name “Fred” before succumbing to her wounds. Believing her to be a fallen god, the monks bury her.
For a moment there is nothing. Only the white. In my blindness, I feel for the wound in my chest but find nothing, only handfuls of fabric soaked in the sweat and blood of lovers. A sharp pain in head forces me to my knees. The whiteness begins to subside, and I know immediately that I'm not where I was moments ago. I am surrounded by large, towering trees. Beneath me is a bed of dying leaves. I am in the ancestor of my tame and romantic garden. Behind me is a shadow. Her darkness has followed me even here. I remember to cry.
Rome, 44 BC. A mob of senators stab a tyrant twenty three times, killing him. While marching through the street to celebrate their victory, they are greeted by the seemingly unharmed tyrant and his armed guard.
Gone is the hunched over governess in plain peasant's clothing. She stands over me in a jacket and skirt adorned with buckles and snaps. A miniature top hat adorns her tightly wound hair. Her face is as dark and foreboding as I remembered it, though now it is painted to look less menacing. She twirls a parasol with one hand as she holds out a clockwork raven. It caws at me, but I am too paralyzed with fear and sorrow to wince. I feel a vibration underneath my clothes. I shake my skirt violently, trying to out the intruder. At my feet lies the tiny elephant.
St. Petersburg, 1916. A holy man whispers a prayer to himself as Heidi presses a pistol to his temple. I drink some wine to keep myself warm. My soul is like the river beneath us; black and filled with secrets beneath the innocent, tranquil surface.
“Who are you?”
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I'm Heidi, Mistress of Time Travelers and for all intents and purposes, ruler of the world.”
“I don't believe you.”
“I fail to see how that's my fault. I gave you fair warning.”
Bastille Saint-Antoine, 1699. I am watching the door, counting the seconds in my head before I know the explosives are to combust. Behind me are two shadows. One wears a mask of humanity, the other of iron. She hands him a weapon, one that will not be invented for another 200 years. She smiles as she pretends to cover her eyes. He hands her a slip of paper. She curtseys and we run.
“The clocks, they are tuned to each other. Their tick tock grows louder whey they're near one another. Remember what I told you about clocks needing love?”
“If you rule the world, why did you disguise yourself as my nanny? What kind of queen does laundry?”
“When you look like a queen people want to dethrone you, and that usually requires being killed.”
“Is that why there was a gunman at the house? Was he 'dethroning' you?”
“No, my dear, he was dethroning you. For you see, you, like me, are destined to rule the world.”
London, 1887. I place a single violet on Delilah's grave.
“What if I don't want to rule the world?”
“Then do it for revenge. Come with me, and I promise to bring you the person who did this to you. In fact, I'll do you one better, and I'll bring you the killer, and the man who created him. In fact, I'll let you do the deed yourself. But you have to let me watch. Or else it's no deal.”
Chicago, 1929. I am up to my heels in blood. Heidi lights a cigarette. A German Shepherd howls from under a beer truck. One of the robbers stuffs the rabbit in his jacket. The show must go on. We point our batons at them and escort them out onto the street to parade to the unsuspecting crowd. Cop. Criminal. Today there is no difference.
“You let that monster come after me.”
“I had to. Only when faced with true peril could you unleash your power. Trust me, my 'awakening' was no less pleasant.”
“Did you lose someone you loved?”
“Every kingdom is built on the backs of dead friends. Why should ours be any different?”
London, 1885. There is a shadow outside my bedroom.
“Not now. I wish to be alone.”
“Why are you so harsh and unkind to me? All I want to do is love and care for you.”
“I don't want your love. You're not my kin. You're just the nanny.”
“Yes, but do know how easy it would be for me to become your kin? Imagine if something were to happen to your father. Who do you think would be charged to look after you?”
“Surely I must have aunts and uncles.”
“You don't read much fiction, do you? Girls like you never have aunts and uncles.”
“Well don't think you're taking their place.”
“What if I let you do something fun tonight? Will you grow to like me then? What if we have a sleepover party? And invite all of your girl friends? Would you like that?”
“You see, after he made himself a menagerie of clockwork beasts, The Clockmaker began making clock people. But you see, over time, these people started to come to life. You know why? Because when special people, like us, die, our souls travel down the timestream to the end of time, where we become trapped in his toys and become his un-living puppets. That's why he hunts us. Because even the man with all the time in the world loses his patience now and again.”
Jerusalem, 36. A heretic hangs from a tree. Heidi coos at a copper dove. I hand a bag of silver to an apostle.
“The first thing we need to do is get you dressed. You're not going to rule the world looking like that.”
“You sound like my nanny again.”
“My precious, what I am about to tell you is the most important piece of advice I can ever offer you. When you rule the world, fashion is the only sensible moral compass. Also, people lie. Especially men.”
Berlin, 2009. My back is against the wall. I can hear the clock-man's tick tock from the other side. He searches frantically for a sign of life, the single beat of a biorhythm. I can't even open my eyes to watch him stalk me. The slightest flicker of being allows them to see you.
“The Clockmaker hoped that by putting the clocks in the care of important people, that I'd be too afraid of disrupting the timeline to seek them out. Fool. What do I care about the chronology of common swine? What is the suffering of mere peasant to a queen?”
“What do we do once we locate all of the clock-beasts?”
“If you put them all in a circle, they show you where the mother clock is.”
“What is the mother clock?”
“It's a clock buried deep beneath the earth. It tells the clock-men where to find us. And when each of us dies, swine and time traveler alike, we all get sucked up inside of it, and if you're like us, it sends your soul to the end of time, where it gets put into one of those machines and used to hunt your own kind. And when we're all dead, he'll dust us off, put us all up on a shelf, and lock us up for all eternity.”
“What happens to everyone else's souls?”
“The lucky ones go to hell.”
Antarctica, 1892. No amount of fur or fire will quell the cold I feel in my heart. It's here. I know it. I know the moment I see it I will regret ever coming to this icebound island.
“I find no sense of retribution in your mindless carnage. All this killing and tormenting hasn't brought me any closer to finding Delilah's killer."
"Every degenerate keeping their secrets from us is aiding the abomination that almost took you. Revenge is wasted on you Victorian tarts."
"Why did you seek me out?"
"I didn't want to rule the world alone."
"You didn't want to die alone."
I can feel it rumbling beneath me, calling to the clocks, calling to me. Within those frosted caverns it tick tocks, beckoning us to witness it. The men will not join us. They say we must go on without them.
“And what would you have done if I hadn't found you?”
“Loved. Been loved. ”
“I love you.”
“You love nothing. I doubt you even love yourself.”
“I love myself enough to stay alive. That's all I need.”
The City of Clocks, The End of Time. I watch a team of clock-men drag Heidi onto a metal table. She offers no resistance as they clamp her ankles and wrists. The frail old man watches from afar, directing his machines about the workshop. Somewhere between a puppeteer and a god.. They disperse the implements amongst themselves. Blades so sharp they cut simply by gazing upon them.
“Who will look after your clocks when you die?”
“She will.”
“I don't understand.”
“Bring her to me and I will show you.”
“Then we have a deal.”
“I can repair the mother, but I cannot undo the damage to the time stream.”
“Leave that to me.”
“Such a task will consume the rest of our life."
"Consider it my penance."
"I don't believe in such dogma."
"You should. You're God, after all."
Antarctica. The icy labyrinth echoes with the mother's thundering heartbeat. It is warm to the touch, as if the souls trapped within its cogs keep it warm.
"Hand me the dynamite."
"Will you destroy the clock-beasts once you've found the mother?"
"I couldn't bring myself to do it. They're my only friends in the whole world."
The City of Clocks. The vivisection begins without caution or ceremony. Blades meticulously carving into her flesh. Bone and organ plucked from the living tissue with inhuman precision and speed. Of all the people I have had to watch die, she screamed the loudest.
London, 1890. Her grave is gone.
Antarctica. A cacophonous rumbling within the mother. A mechanical cry, muffled by her own icy encasement. Beams of twisted light in every direction. Strange, moving images painted on the walls around us. Trumpeteers atop castle ramparts. Primordial creatures emerging from the sea. Revolutionaries marching through liberated streets. Peering into the light I see the past, the future, the present; what will be and what will never be. Cracks and tears in the tapestry of spacetime. I see an arm emerge through the flashing abyss, reaching out to me.
"What have you done?"
"I've set us free. You're welcome."
"You've broken the time stream."
"No I haven't. But the paradoxes will. Soon all of this will collapse on itself, and all will be free of time's oppression."
"You killed the entire world to save yourself."
"What part of 'queen' did you not understand?"
I found her on the shores of Africa, at the end of the world. She watched the sun set and drank wine straight from the bottle. Her clothes were in tatters, her hair matted with sweat and sand. She refused to look at the shadow behind her.
"You're late."
Sahara Desert, 1200 BC. The sand is littered with hundreds of burnt, broken bodies. The healthier ones are only vomiting. In few a days, hundreds more will appear in Athens, Bombay and Sydney. Manhattan's casualties will make an infirmary of all the world.
Antarctica. Heidi is entranced by the light. She turns to me, her once charming madness now a pale morosity.
"I always knew it would be you."
Shanghai, 1892. All the animals are laid about in a circle. Mementos of a crime spree so horrid history will never speak of it again. The bear grumbles. The snake hisses. The horse bucks. Heidi watches a marble idly roll in the middle. Where it stops, we must go.
"I envy the swine. They will never have to see how they will end. I've spent the last two years trying to prepare myself for this moment. Two years without killing, without stealing, without joy. Two years watching the same god damned sun set over and over, hoping that when it rose again I'd feel a little bit braver, a little more ready for the suffering that awaited me. Knowing how I would go has kept me from living. I am irony's wretched whore. Promise me it will hurt. I want my final moments to be smothered in agony and life."
I covered her face with cloth and waited for the chemical to subdue her. She flailed and writhed briefly before collapsing in my arms. I held her unconscious body for a moment. A silent goodbye before I let the clock-men carry her away.
And that's how I became ruler of the world.
![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
