Novella

Sunday, April 06, 2008

Novella

Chapter One

            Lyla looked away from Tod Browning’s Dracula flickering from her plasma and at a white wall, now blue from the TV’s glow. The room’s mood was low tonight, each shadow in each corner magnified the old movie being exploited by the intrusive nature of the high-def TV. The movie never looked so bad, she thought. She also found it unimpressive that there was no music in the entire movie, so when the scared victims look into Dracula’s face all Rembrant-lit, nothing happened but an awkward silence. This guy isn’t scary, he’s just awkward. It was scarier when she watched it with some babysitter seventeen years ago, whose name is too elusive for her to bother with.

            Her roommate came into the room and avoided a greeting as usual. She glided across room and into her bedroom with the presence of a ghost, her energy not affecting the personality encapsulated in this living room. Maybe it was one of Dracula’s concubines. She walked over to the balcony overlooking a black sky and a blurry, perverse urban setting below. ‘As above, so below’ she thought. Down on the street there was a guy wearing a gaudy leather jacket with heart-with-wings patches and skulls talking to a white Rasta guy. A noisy wide truck roared by but otherwise it was a quiet night with down-and-outs ducking in and out of the erotic video stores and dance clubs.

            “Julien!” Lyla shouted “Ya got any pot?!”

            Julien, the Rasta guy, got really defensive and stressed out- looking left and right and left again before he widened his eyes at her. She laughed at him and walked back inside.

            The room’s mood was fading into something else; the movie’s setting had changed into an exterior day scene of some kind. She turned off the expensive TV and sat in the darkness for awhile. She started thinking about a rant she went on the other day to a friend of hers about how being bored is a self-inflicted wound.

            “LYLA!” Julien shouted from below. She went over to her balcony and closed the door but could still hear a muffled ‘LYLA!’. The white walls reflected the street lamps from below onto her face. She avoided thinking about her previous days’ words and left the apartment.

            It was chilly outside. The sky looked like a black roof tonight, she thought, and even though she was out in the street she still felt inside. She walked toward Julien and the leather jacket guy. His friend had spiky green hair and a dark, gray complexion. He looked kind of like a cactus dressed up for Halloween. Julien looked like Julien: awkwardly handsome, bird-like, angry about something.

            “You two look like a couple of vampires.” She said. The leather jacket guy started telling her about some audition he had in Pheonix for an amateur vampire movie but she didn’t really pay any attention to him. She just stood there, waiting. Paul, one of the neighborhood’s homeless guys started inching his way toward them like a stray cat.

            “Talk about vampires.” Julien said nodding toward Paul.

            Paul looked really strung out and on a mission. Every time Lyla looked over at him he looked like he was waiting to say something but couldn’t come out with it. She thoughtlessly looked right past him.