Tomb It May Concern

Southern Gothic: Act I: Blood - Scene II

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:09:13 GMT

Title: Southern Gothic
Act I: Blood - Scene II
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Carmine LaCroix
Summary: A love story.
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Rogue/Remy
Warnings: AU, History!fic, gore
Notes: Yes, well. Suffice to say I ought to make mention that this is an (ahem) “no powers but powers” elseworld setting. Just so we’re clear. (Clear as the Mississippi River herself.) Carry on, then.

--
Southern Gothic
I. Blood – Scene II
New Orleans, Louisiana, 1822
--

“Life was created in the valleys. It blew up into the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.”
(William Faulkner. As I Lay Dying)

With the mid-dinner hush fallen over Rue Royal, the wrought iron lattice spilling it’s mottled shades over the wide gallery overlooking the narrow strip of earth below, she slips undetected to peer across the road between the slats in the shutters of the wide French doors, closed to the mezzanine. Already, Anna finds a wooden ladder propped against the lamp post at the cross-street, and a man is descending with the torch used to light it. Some passersby stop and marvel for a moment, admiring the new invention. Other hurry on, their lanterns in hand – conspicuous only as much as they allow themselves to appear. Life trickles through the streets with the wash water; part of Mayor Roffignac’s newest sanitation effort, it turns the gutters to mud where stray dogs scavenge through the refuse and the human waste with the cockroaches and the rats.

Not so strange that she imagines what the rough earth would feel like beneath her bare feet, Anna savours it a moment: longing to know if the sour scent of sweat from the unwashed traders and the heat and the garbage is all as raw and vibrant as she imagines it to be. It must be frightening. It must be wonderful.

“Miss?”

She gestures that he should stay quiet, pressing a gloved finger to her mouth.

If she strains, if she stays perfectly quiet, she can almost hear the dancers at Place du Cirque, their feet hitting the ground in time with the drums. It’s the sound of clattering bones. It’s the sound of life pulsing from the depths of the earth, concentrated just beyond the palisade walls.

Instead of explaining this to him, she fixes Cody with a baleful look.

“She can hear you,” she mouths, reminding Cody of the thinness of the walls. The Mam’zelle is home this evening, which makes Anna’s covetous glances outdoors all the more furtive. Narrowing her eyes at the street below, she searches for a face that only emerges just before the day settles; when night hungers the most for the last slivers of bruised and bloodied sky. He’s come often since the first twilight – the evening in the garden that had ended abruptly with a clatter from the upper levels of Mama’s townhouse that brought Mathilde into the street, shouting for the gens d’armes and for water to douse the blaze from a fallen candle on the Mam’zelle’s altar to St. Expedite.

Perhaps its fanciful that Anna’s come to think of the strange young man who appears and vanishes so suddenly as a spectre. Somehow, she believes she’ll recognize him when he materializes again, even though she’s never seen his face, and the one thing he graciously left her with was more ephemeral than a name or a promise that he’d visit again: a kiss.

Yet, Anna is certain of his return, as certain as she is that the same strange young man is the one responsible for scaling the porte-cochère gates and setting the fire. Surely, the thief was aware of his own cleverness: he’d set an ample distraction, disappearing with the Mam’zelle’s silver and allowing himself to be seen by the one person who was least likely to give him away.

What else would send the Mam’zelle into such a rage? What else would set the Mam’zelle to perfuming the entire house with the smell of pungent roots and rusting iron nails, the noxious vinegars and loamy graveyard dirt that promised a thousandfold retribution once the work was done and the prayers were said?

Over her shoulder, she flashes Cody a rogue grin – mischief pulling her features near skeletal in the dim light. She catches her reflection in the mirror beyond his shoulder: Ivory pale, her eyes heavily ringed from sleeplessness, she seems a part of the shadows, but as long as the Mam’zelle keeps to her kitchen, obsessed with revenge, Anna lives in clandestine bursts.

“Come on, now, Miss Anna,” Cody whispers, debating whether or not he should edge closer into the front room, now that its clear she’s alone. He looks like he wants to cross himself. Not that such a gesture would help. Mama’s told her that they’re all connected, somehow – the whites and the blacks and the shades in between, their religions mixed in for good measure. It’s a nice idea that doesn’t seem to matter in practice: they’ve opened Girod Street Cemetery just this year to keep the Protestants away from the Catholic burials.

“It ain’t right for no lady to go skulking around like that,” Cody insists. “You’ll put a fright into the servants.”

“Ah’m not a lady,” she mutters below her breath in a tone that would get her slapped if Mama were to hear. “And no one’s here. It’s Sunday. They’ll be at the Commons.” She purses her lips. “Can’t you hear the drums?”

Cody doesn’t, that much is obvious by the way the tension unwinds from his shoulders. Still, he doesn’t fully step into the darkened parlour. Cody Robbins isn’t a complete fool. He knows his place. Maybe he even senses something strange about her – something more than the thin excuse of her “illness” that keeps everyone else at a distance – not that he’ll admit it.

Even the very best appearances are often unable to conceal the ugly things masked over by fashionable presentation:

The salle, for example, is fit for entertaining, certainly – heart pine and trimmed in cotton and lace; a mix of creams and rich red-browns that surely have red brick and Mam’zelle’s urine mixed in and embedded between the floorboards with the wash water for protection from their enemies.

Anna herself smells faintly of anise and vetiver, perfumed herbs still clinging to her skirts from the sachets kept in the armoire – a trick to mask the distinctive, cold perfume of her flesh.

Though he is unbothered by these things, Cody, however, is unique for the very simple fact that he is the only person to offer Anna his shy smile. It lingers around his mouth and his blue eyes; hesitant little quivers of invitation that draws her attention to the faint laugh lines etched into his tawny skin.

A traitorous voice in the deepest recess of her mind reminds her that a smile is not the same as a kiss, and only one person has been so fearless to attempt that. It makes her all the more earnest to be left to her own devices this evening.

“I brought coffee from the market,” he ventures, “and sugar? I could have Tante make some fresh for you.”

He hesitates as if he wants to offer something more. His company, she thinks. If Anna were to ask for it, surely, Cody would willingly sit with her, even if it meant a lashing from the Mam’zelle later on.

Between them, there is the knowledge of the precise way in which a handful of years, once accentuating the very things that create childhood companionship, turn into the increasingly awkward appetites of adolescence.

“You could take it to the court yard?” he persists, the unasked question hanging between them like silken bit of spider web. “I cleaned the fountain just this morning.”

“Is the garden dark, now?” she asks, her attention lingering on the boys roughhousing on the corner; the sunset making them squint when they turn to see if she’s ventured out to the gallery. From beneath her lashes, Anna regards them with a mixture of well-concealed envy and absent interest. “Is that why you’re asking, Cody? Because you know Ah care for coffee about as much as Ah care about enjoyin’ it alone.”

Shamed, Cody ducks his sandy blond head, the hat in his hands twisting with worry. “I’m sorry, Miss Anna, but Mam’zelle said –”

Coolly, she turns from the window, folding her hands before her neatly, her head held high as she regards him. Long necked, slim-wristed, poor, pale, sickly Anna Marie stares him down in a manner that dares him to challenge her. She lifts an eyebrow, and he cracks ever so slightly like a porcelain cup.

Cody wets his lips. “I-I am sorry,” he says again. He doesn’t turn away, however, and there’s an earnestness about him that makes it seem genuine, the sorrow he wears plainly. “It wouldn’t be right t’ keep your company.”

“Because of what they say,” she says, bitterness making her sound older than her seventeen years. She can’t squash the stab of disappointment quickly enough. What “they say” is gutter talk: Whispers passed under the shelter of cloaked corners in secret amongst the bondspeople, telltale untruths exchanged for lingering glances as she passes them in the halls. These things have weight; Anna senses them as surely as she would feel a hand laid between her shoulder blades. (Sorcière. Salope. Revenant. Rougarou. Cursed.)

It’s enough to chalk out markings below the rugs; seals writ out in languages so old that there’s no one left alive to remember what they mean, and always framed in the telltale hexagon that lets her know Mama’s been at work on her behalf. Without them, she’s been told, without Mam’zelle Raven’s protection, she’s as good as picked out her pine box and had it sized to fit the top shelf in the family crypt.

Cody seems surprised. “N-no? Because I’m beneath you.”

So preoccupied in her own moribund imagination, at this confession, Anna recoils as if she’s been slapped.

Cody, at least, has the decency to look embarrassed, but his expression quickly gives way to fear. Perhaps Anna’s perfected her mother’s look of scorn too well. Perhaps she’s used her own breed of sorcery to convince him she can do him harm. (Perhaps the rumours of her dalliances with the devil precede her, she thinks with no shortage of derision.) Instantly, she wishes she hadn’t put on airs. Shame strikes her below the ribcage. On impulse, her fingers flutter to the spot where regret begins to thicken.

“I-I’m sorry, Miss A-Anna. That was u-un-unacceptable,” he hurries to apologize, fumbling the words like he fumbles his cap between his hands. The fabric twists, and while Cody flushes scarlet, Anna takes an unconscious step forward – wanting to comfort him but finding herself mesmerized by the way his cheeks redden with the heat of humiliation. “I should’na – I should’na said nothin’ so outta line. Please –” He flinches, as if expecting a reprimand by way of an open palm to his face. “Please don’t –”

Anna stops her curious progression towards him, seeing that he shrinks away and feeling her stomach plummet in the same breath. Like an indistinct reminder of the days spent fasting for Lent, something tickles the roof of her mouth. Her palette is dry, and in her ears, she imagines she can hear the sound of a heartbeat. It’s Cody’s.

He expects that she’ll hurt him, she realizes – this boy who she’s known as long as she’s been in the company of the Mam’zelle. Her friend through forcible circumstance, but her friend in whatever awkward capacity Cody Robbins could offer the likes of her. Never once has she given him reason to fear her so.

A lump lodges midway down her throat. She turns from him, her vision blurring unexpectedly.

In that moment, a pleasant tingle lights across the dimly-lit periphery of her consciousness. Cody, babbling, fades in increments beneath the sensation of familiarity: the knowledge that she is being watched.

It’s as if a shroud is drawn across the face of the world, and everything dulls to feather-soft dullness except the one, insistent pull of recognition:

He’s here, she realizes. He’s come at last. The thief.

She doesn’t pause to consider how she knows this. Her feet move of without will of their own, cold toes brushing the cotton of her underskirts as she moves over the floor.

Drawn to the gallery, Anna forgets that with the shutters closed to the outside world, it’s impossible for anyone to spy the front rooms so high above the streets. There are certain things that offer no logical explanation; the sudden thrum of her pulse in her ears, the intuitive need to see him again for herself, to see for certain that he wasn’t merely a product of fantasy –

She’s fleeing to the doors and the mezzanine beyond even as Cody rushes after her; reaching; fingers grazing her sleeve and forgetting propriety altogether in the panic that Anna has so easily forgotten –

She sees none of this and hears less. There’s a deafening drone in her ears that wasn’t there a moment ago; it spills into a velvet brush of invitation that rubs across her nerves and sets them ablaze.

“P-please, Anna,” Cody stammers, “don’t tell Mam’zelle Raven.”

It halts her in her tracks, her cotton skirts swinging against the backs of her legs as she reaches the French doors, but its not warning enough to stop Cody’s momentum as she turns halfway to face him. Crashing together, the pair tear through the shutters as they racket outwards into the balmy evening. With the rickety slap of bone-dry cypress hitting the bricked exterior of the townhouse and Cody’s reach catching her about the waist, both stagger into the shadows on the gallery in a crippled waltz, dragged off-center by the tangling fabric of her dress around their legs.

There’s a shout from the street below. The boys on the corner have seen her.

She’s falling, she realizes distantly, the motion slowing as the seconds crawl by. Anna floats, hands reaching far too slowly into the waxy green canopy of scarlet bougainvillea that spills over the wrought iron. Through the lace enshrouding her fingers, she feels cold metal as she clutches at the railing. Blossoms crush between her hands. The leaves slide from beneath her grasp, and without purchase, there is nothing to halt her tumbling face-first descent into the canopy of variegated leaves.

“Miss Anna!” Cody exclaims, and at once, the seconds spin together with a whirl of cool green, a flash of a smirking, upturned face on the street below, and a glimpse of the gallery railing rushing to meet her face.

She stalls, somehow, a ringing “thud” halting her progress before she finds herself blinking away a hot and rapidly prickling wash of numbness blanketing the lower half of her face.

“Miss Anna!” Cody says again from just above her. She blinks, not understanding fully what has just happened. He’s pulling her up by the shoulders, trying to urge her gently into a seated position. She blinks again against hot tears, registering vaguely that something bad has happened – not because she understands that the disjointed lancet of pain preceding the scalding dye spreading down her front in a rich shade of carmine is hers… but because all she can see is the blood.

Fingers to her lower lip, she blinks dazedly at her once cream-coloured lace gloves.

The smear of heat dribbles over her lower lip and down her chin.

Anna’s vision shrinks and expands with her breath, the edges fading to darkness as she looks up to find Cody standing over her, his worried expression turning to horror as each pulse in her ears escalates in time with the oozing warmth.

It drips from her chin to her lap, turning black with the falling night.

It’s sticky and as sweet as praline syrup.

“Cody?” she whispers, a thread of calm expanding with the miasma of rising scent that surrounds her; that makes her shut her eyes sluggishly. It makes her tongue thicken in her mouth.

It smells of scrubbed copper pans and rusting iron gates; it tingles her nose and causes her back teeth to click together involuntarily.

On the verge of fainting, Anna opens her eyes. She is blind to the dark, save for the smell: It guides her, coaxing her tongue from her mouth to take a tentative taste.

“Cody, Ah’m cold,” she says with effort, reaching for him blindly, knowing by instinct that if she could only draw him to her, she could share in his warmth: it pulses like a beacon; so close, so comforting.

“Miss Anna, your chin – you’ve split your chin on the rail!” Cody says, fumbling to wrap his arms around her. He wants to carry her into the house.

“Feast.” The command brushes across her consciousness like the cool caress of a serpent’s skin. Anna shivers, reaching involuntarily. Her eyes flutter open from her swoon to find Cody has been successful in his effort to lift her to his lap. Head lolling against his shoulder, she moans weakly beneath the wings of rushing darkness. Vaguely, Anna realizes it reminds her of folds of silk brocade brushing together: deeply soothing, and below that, even further, is the chugging, steady percussion that calls forth a longing so deep she can barely ask for help to save her from its thrall.

“Tell me what to do, Miss Anna,” Cody says fearfully. “Whatever I can do.”

But Cody’s done enough by just being there, and as Anna’s sight darkens to the deepest night, she rests her head under his chin with a shudder and a sigh, and surrenders to the deepest part of herself that desires nothing more to draw nearer to the sound of the drums.

--
To be continued...
--

Post Script:

Rather than pointing out my effective form of over-the-head cruelty in not including a post script in the previous two instalments of this story that would adequately illustrate the research peppering this bit of fiction, I’ve decided to compensate. As it were, I would assume that were I to ask you directly, “What does ‘the Goat Without Horns’ refer to without resorting to Google?” I’d likely receive a few blank stares. Likely. Not a hundred percent certain that everyone passing through would be unaware that such a thing refers to human sacrifice, but likely. I’ve decided to… make an effort at playing fair, because no one likes it when a nuance is misplaced:

- Gens d’armes: The police and fire brigade. Loosely organized, not wholly effective – most relied upon during Roffignac’s mayorship to “help put out fires, repress tumult, and keep the negro population in a properly submissive state” (Kendall’s History of New Orleans. p 118).

- Gens de couleurs libres: “Free people of colour.”

- Girod Street Cemetery: Ah, one of my favourite Cities of the Dead. I’ve frolicked through Lafayette no. one and St. Louis no. one, Holt Cemetery and Metairie, and now, my fanfiction writing career has led me to Girod. Girod no longer exists in the city today. Girod lies beneath the parking garage of the New Orleans Superdome. Its maintenance was left to families of those there entombed, but within a century it fell to disrepair, eventually being claimed by the steady overgrowth. It was excavated in 1970 with little fanfare, but with many rumours circulating about games of catch being played between workers with certain stray skulls from the crypts, its garnered some notoriety. (“Head’s up for Aunt Martha!”)

- Goat Without Horns: Purported as referencing human sacrifice. I’ve read several tests about Haitian Voudou and New Orleans voodoo as a syncretic practice, and much of it points to hearsay, rather than fact. It should be noted, however, that ritualized sacrifice factors into several religions, including a handful of Western traditions, and to attempt to summarize the meaning and methodology here in such a brief summary would be a disservice to anyone who’s studied theology at any point in time. It’s frequently glamorized, and rarely looked at analytically. (Hence the reason I’m writing fanfiction and not a dissertation. I am entitled to my guilty pleasures. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.)

- Le Grand Zombi: This is tricky. To really understand the reference, I’d recommend brushing up on Marie Laveau (the first) and some of the rumours revolving around her participation at Congo Square in the early 1800’s. Several accounts reference her entry to the Commons with a large snake draped around her neck – I would humbly propose that the snake was either a representation (or manifestation) of the Lwa (the deities), Aida Wedo or Damballah Wedo. Snakes feature predominantly in Voudou practice, so I wouldn’t be surprised. I make mention of this, and in particular, the appellation, because if you’ve heard anything about Haitian Voudou, you’ve likely come across mentions of zombification. It’s unlikely that the making of the “zombi” and the “Grand Zombi” are deserving of the same classification, but I’d be open to discuss it. On that same tack, I made mention of a “fish soup” in the previous chapter, which was intended as a reference to puffer fish – a paralytic fed to victims intended to become “zombified” after a prolonged period of asphyxiation. (Can these poor souls be considered “real” zombies? Well, they likely won’t eat your brains, but being poisoned and suffocated causing irreparable brain damage won’t make you any smarter. I was corrected once, a long time ago – and firmly at that – that zombification is an unsanctioned ritual practice that you likely won’t encounter because its has more founding in myth, paranoia and stereotype than anything else. If it can be found anywhere, it’s origins are likely to originate from Haiti. During the setting of this story, Haiti is called Saint Domingue, or Santo Domingo.)

- Place du Cirque: Also known as Circus Place, the Commons, or Congo Square. It’s official name on all maps was Place du Cirque, but for the purposes of this story, you ought to know a couple of things: it’s the place where slaves were permitted to congregate on Sundays (since assembly at all other times was forbidden), and the one place on the limits of what is now known as the French Quarter where dances were held.

- Porte-cochère: The “carriage door” or carriage gate, into which a horse (or mule, in this case, as mules tend to be of stouter stuff when it comes to the heat and humidity of New Orleans) can pass. The model for which the Rue Royal house is based on a floorplan of a Creole townhouse, an architectural style which populated the city after its second Great Fire, post 1794.

- The Pomegranate Tree: (Note the capitalized letters.) ishandahalf very firmly pointed out that massive, orange-blossomed overhanging metaphor. Yes. Yes! YES! Both Lucia and I and particularly interested in descent motifs – and in particular, dealing with initiation themes: the pre-liminal, liminal and post-liminal (or reintegration) of an individual as they undertake a journey. (“The Ante” follows this cycle as well, in case you were curious.) The pomegranate tree was a deliberate choice that also fits the climate and the par terre garden’s structure (courtyards were, at the time of this story, used for an outdoor kitchen and the privy as well). If you’re at all aware of your Greek mythology, its Persephone who is tricked into eating the seed of the fruit after being abducted by Hades, ensuring her return to the underworld each winter season (much to her mother’s dismay.)

- Once again, I extend my humblest thanks to those that reviewed last chapter. Your verbal donations make it a pleasure to continue toiling away: vikingprincess, penyn_1600, baruchan, vivienn, KateSilver, cajunspice, Pretty Shimmie, Zimo, Candyglue, knoxvilleloversc, l'etoile du tricherie, Wiccamage, ishandahalf, GothikStrawberry, gambitfan85, lonelyeyedgrrl, Jutwfiniei, allyg1990, Terez, enchantedlight, vega-de-la-lyre, and Elirrina. Much affection to you, from dear old Carmine.

- At last, the first slice of folklore comes to the fore. I’ve left one very brazen indicator of what dear little Anna Marie Darkholme’s “illness” is. Did you spot it?

Southern Gothic: Act I: Blood - Scene I

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:02:06 GMT

Title: Southern Gothic
Act I: Blood - Scene I
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Carmine LaCroix
Summary: A love story.
Rating: Teen
Pairing: Rogue/Remy
Warnings: AU
Notes: Rather than squander my time and your valuable attentions with a florid preface, I would much prefer that you savour this as you would a Sazerac warming in a glass against the palm of your hand. The content here has been tailored to suit a more mature palette, and may not read in such a straightforward and easy manner. Rather, it has been crafted in such a way to follow a very fluid, serpentine pattern of one of the strongest references I’ve found to summarize 1822 New Orleans. (I’ll give you a hint, it’s the italicised opening line of internal monologue from our protagonist.) Sip at it, please. Gulping is unseemly and an insult to the author when you blurt out an insipid and premature, “But I don’t understand!” You ought not, at this point, understand more than I’ve offered you. (And if you do, please send me the location where I can bake and mail you cookies, and the instructions as to how you may divine my own personal fortunes... I would be most interested in how you came about your psychic proficiencies. The exceptions being anyone already familiar with my particular… predilections, in which case… carry on. My apologies for being predictable. Or some such.)

--
Southern Gothic
I. Blood – Act I
New Orleans, Louisiana, Present Day
--

“The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.”
(Truman Capote. Other Voices, Other Rooms)

Danse, Calinda, danse.

You can shut your eyes against it, fist your hands against your heart to try to still its march, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the gumbo ya-ya comes at you in a clatter, with every voice tryin’ ta outdo the next.

It’s so easy ta get swept away in the pace that hearsay sets; easier, after a time, ta follow the jangle of sound to the places we’d like ta forget if we could. Rarer still than try, we sometimes do… until we come back, that is. Well. Easier for others; some of us have never left.

Boudoum. Boudoum.

One thing I can tell ya, surer than anything I’ve ever set myself to before, is that everyone takes their mind and their opinion ‘round here as fact while the words in all their embellishments still hold to their skulls. Only a few of us have memories that reach that far back, so watch yourself, sugah; when the sickness is catchin’ it’ll have you like yellow fever if you let it – all that talkin’ without sayin’ anything about the seed of truth buried at the heart of the matter.

Danse, Calinda, danse.

Tell you one thing, before some old woman tries ta do my reputation in – not that there’s much left ta be done to it – I wouldn’t trade my ghosts for nothin’. Only one story really matters to those who know it enough to call it their own, and it begins with a simple declaration:

I have danced to the drums of Congo Square.

Boudoum. Boudoum.

--
New Orleans, Louisiana, 1822
--

There is a pomegranate tree in the courtyard that spills over the small, ornamental fountain visible from the porte-cochère and Rue Royal beyond. Under its orange blooms, she sits on a bricked bench, breathing deeply through her nose, and exhaling out her mouth. If she were to incline her head, looking past the trunk of the fig tree, and the enormous cluster of ferns and banana plants choking the flags, and if she were to lean an indecent two inches two her left, and arch her back just so – she would catch the eye of one of the young men dallying on the corner of St. Louis opposite.

The scandal would surely alert Mama before the boys took to climbing the gateway bars, she thinks…

Like they did last time.

With the fountain burbling black and silver water, its lion’s head spout spitting an uninterrupted stream that tastes vaguely of copper, she remains motionless, watching the last of the sinking purple twilight above the gables that wall her in with the sweetly scented honeysuckle. The bricks are still warm beneath her palms, though she can not yet safely take off her gloves – not before she can smell the jessamine as it blooms.

It’s a measure of her condition; albeit, one of the more pleasant ones – the condition that seems more like a curse: she should remained covered at all times, and shielded from the harsh light of the sun due to an incurable “weakness” of the skin, according to Mama’s physician. For fear of contagion, she’s been garrisoned indoors and out of harm’s way. It’s been over a twenty years since the city’s last smallpox outbreak, and though her ailment has no relation to the disease that sent nearly six hundred to the hereafter, Mama takes no chances.

Subsequently, Anna Marie Darkholme has not seen past the rooftops of the surrounding buildings in six years.

The good doctor is hardly a doctor at all to have prescribed her such a torment, she tells herself glumly, though she won’t readily declare that the company Mama keeps isn’t proper. She’d likely find herself fixed for the trouble; her footsteps peppered with goofer dust or a bottle of war water smashed against the banquette before the front door. Anna plucks irritably at her gloves – fine things, they are – French instruments of entrapment meant as signs of her resistance. Everything in the house these days is French, she thinks with some resentment. It’s Mama’s show of solidarity; a spit into the face of the Americans who look at the Creoles and the Acadians and the Houma Indians and the slaves from Santo Domingo and say the same ugly things about them all. Nevermind that Mama is quadroon; it is the meaning behind the insult that fosters retaliation, she’d say.

But to what purpose must a young lady cover herself from chin to toe in the finest imported fashions when the temperatures in the shade reach that of a bread oven?

Surely, it does more harm than good to keep her secluded like this. There are such interesting things beyond the bars of her prison, too…

Anna shifts over an inch, her skirts brushing the ginger plant. The boys in the street holler to each other, spying a glimpse of her through the foliage. They make it a game, calling enticements to draw a little nearer; to catch a little more of her pallor through the waxen leaves. Guardedly, Anna casts a glance to the windows of the second floor where the lamps have been lit for Mama’s arrival from her daily calls around the city.

She gives a start, jerking backwards in surprise.

A stern face looks down on her; lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed in a cocoa-coloured face. Forearms the size of ham hocks are pressed to bursting on the sill. “Whacha doin’ down there, Miss Anna?” Mathilde calls, her voice ringing against the walls.

She glowers, forcing a smile for the servant’s benefit.

“Takin’ some air?” she ventures, commanding herself to not look to the street. Flapping at her skirts and resettling them about her legs distracts her; it keeps her from pointing out the misstep with her gaze. The hollering has tapered off some, but a curious sensation has taken up residence at the periphery of her awareness. It’s unsettling, like one of the boys on the Rue Royal has drawn close enough to spy on her through the par terre garden’s greenery.

“You know Mam’zelle don’t appreciate you lurkin’ about ‘fore full dark, Miss. If you don’t mind my sayin’.”

“Thank you for your concern, Mathilde,” she says drily.

“An’ if the missus comes home and catches y’ there, so close to indignity like y’ are? Then what?” she presses, and Anna feels her patience fraying.

“It’s a street, Mattie,” she says hotly. “There’s nothin’ indecent about lookin’, is there?”

“Not unless them boys are lookin’ back at you.”

The nerve! Glaring, Anna tears off her gloves, flinging them into the waxy green canopy behind her with a defiant flourish.

The skin of her hands tingles faintly – partly from the rush of defiant power in such a small gesture, and partly from feeling the cooling air, fresh between her fingers.

“And what would be so wrong with that?” she hisses. “They’re here. They’re always here. I hear them call ta me, day and night, and I can’t even say hello?”

Mathilde shakes her head sadly. “Chile.” It’s not her place to offer comfort, just as its not her place to reprimand, but that one word carries the agreement that the old woman thinks her circumstances are just as unfair as Anna imagines. It’s far too dangerous to draw too near to anyone, lest her affliction befall them, she knows, but that knowledge doesn’t smother the loneliness.

“Go back t’ work. Leave me be.”

“Sweet chile,” she implores, her soulful voice a hymn to the night. The harmony in her deep-bellied rasp splintered with the knowledge of similar hardships. “There ain’t no use in dwelling on dreams that aren’t t’ be.”

Seated where she is, when Mama arrives, Anna will be just missed from the side entrance. No self-respecting Creole of any standing would be seen using the front door, not unless they were trying to hawk something on the American side of town.

“No use in tryin’ Mam’zelle’s goodwill neither.” The implied threat is marked in her tone. Mama won’t be pleased with her, trying to stir the boys up. They’ll scatter, of course, if they were to see her coming, but Anna herself has no means of escape.

Mathilde has disappeared into the house in preparation, no doubt, for the arrival of the mistress from her daily social calls around the city. Anna, alone in the garden, her fingers twisted together in her lap, can only imagine the things waiting for her out there. She swallows a bitter sigh, and imagines instead her escape into the Quarter where she could easily be lost; where she could easily savour a few moments freedom before suffering an early, disgraced death as punishment for transgressions against her mother’s wishes.

There is a chain and a heavy padlock binding the bars of the porte-cochère, but her entrapment stretches beyond the physical world and into the fading light. In truth, it’s more than simple smithwork that holds her back; no one holds the title of Mam’zelle among the voudous without warrant, without winning it from their precursor.

Such victories can be dear, indeed.

It’s not prudent to be overzealous when attempting truancy, least of all when it’s said in hushed tones and under whispered breath in darkened corners amongst the servants that Mam’zelle Raven holds her title through making sacrifice of the Goat Without Horns.

It makes her skin prickle. It’s too gruesome to conceive of, so the mind distends the reality around it; making it easier for Anna to think of it as a detestable pastime among the slaves to take delight in retelling such horrors to amuse themselves at Mama’s expense. They speak in cautious, foreboding tones of the times when Mam’zelle sets herself to preparing her gumbo – a fish stew that she feeds only to her enemies that leaves them taken over with a deathlike slumber. There is talk of the altars around the Rue Royal house, set with candles prayed upon to Saints masking the heathen gods of Santo Domingo, and there are cautious words exchanged when the servants are unmindful of their hair and nail clippings. They say the Mam’zelle keeps an enormous serpent in her rooms, but this Anna knows to be untrue – Mam’zelle Raven only keeps her.

Mama neither confirms nor denies these rumours: allowing the myth to precede her. Such things give a person power, when enough people believe.

It’s a flawless strategy, and even Anna has never dared to defy her to find out how much of it is mortared by fact.

Doubtless, much of the same is said about her, and perhaps its that same morbid curiosity that draws the boys to the street below her rooms each evening. She tries not to think on it too long. This cheapens the mystique of the world beyond the walls, knowing that they fear the illusions cast be her mother as much as they are tempted to see for themselves if any of the whispers about Mam’zelle Raven’s girl are true. Anna is no fool, but it hurts less pretending that they are merely inquisitive. All she could ever desire is to know she would be met by their friendship, were she ever to leave this place.

Wetting her lips, she looks longingly to the street beyond the carriage gates – expecting either the nearing clop of mule hooves and the clatter of Mam’zelle Raven’s carriage, or to drop dead of ennui. Whichever comes first.

What she discovers instead is something she can’t be certain of; it’s a shadow, certainly, or a trick of the twilight mingling with the dappled shade:

A boy is leaning against the padlocked gate, a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes.

He is inside the carriageway.

She turns away, her head snapping back just as quickly and finding there is nothing there but the trunk of an old, hacked-down, dying wisteria propped against the outdoor stairs.

Startled, Anna stands, her instincts telling her to run though the outdoor kitchen and back into the house, to scream for Mattie. Without the lamps lit, its easy to imagine shapes out of the darkness, and easier still to cloak oneself with their concealing shade. Furtively, she looks to the second floor: oblong slats of light falling through the opened doors of the upper gallery.

There is no one but her outside, and gradually, her breathing slows when she realizes she has startled herself.

No one would be foolish enough to breach these walls. Who would risk themselves?

As if in response, a whisper of the night breeze rolls through the courtyard, brushing the leaves back and forth and raising the down on the back of her neck. A fine, dewy sheen of perspiration blooms where it touches the small patch of bare skin between her collar and tignon, like the moist breath of a lover.

Slowly, Anna sinks into her seat, her pulse thrumming.

She is alone, she assures herself, but for a moment, she could swear that she has felt the light press of a mouth against her throat.

--
To be continued…
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Post Script:
I would like, at this point, to extend my sincerest gratitude to the following individuals who reviewed the prelude: vikingprincess, jutwfiniei, baruchan, Anna-x11, enchantedlight, GothikStrawberry, Wiked Witch, Verre, Glyth, Zimo, allyg1990, Wiccamage, Elirrina, gambitfan85, Rae Rihanna, LithiumAddict, ishandahalf, and l'etoile du tricherie. In most cases, I’ve attempted to respond directly, but in the case that I’ve failed in that, please know that it is much appreciated that you’ve taken the time to leave a few encouraging words in your wake. It’s at this point that I entreat you to do so again, thereby encouraging the writer in question to not fling herself from the nearest rooftop in a fit of despair. Ahem. Now, if you’ll all excuse me, Loo Loo needs tending to. The last time I saw her, she was making a concentrated attempt to kill Etienne Marceaux and developing a guilt complex in the process. It’s rather amusing. Really.

Southern Gothic: A Prelude by Mam'zelle Mattie Baptiste

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 01:00:38 GMT

Title: Southern Gothic
A Prelude by Mam’zelle Mattie Baptiste
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Carmine LaCroix
Summary: A love story.
Rating: Teen/Mature
Pairing: Rogue/Remy
Warnings: AU, History!fic
Author’s Notes: Hello. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Pull up a chair. Stay for a spell, why don’t you?

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Southern Gothic
A Prelude by Mam’zelle Mattie Baptiste
New Orleans, Louisiana, Present Day

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“Truth! Everybody keeps hollerin' about the truth. Well, the truth is as dirty as lies.”
(Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)

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Mama told her girl a story once – when her girl was only part-ways grown and the boys started calling at the old townhouse in the French Quarter – boys who were fool enough to stand in the street and holler up to the balconies; boys who’d try to climb the crepe myrtle if it would gain them favour enough to catch the eye of that strange creature Mama Raven kept cloistered in her Rue Royal apartments. The story was meant t’ keep her in line, t' keep her rememberin’ that not all wounds heal in the way they’re supposed to. Sometimes, there just ain’t no justice t’ speak of that can be shared between th’ people who deserve it. I think that maybe Mama mighta left that part out. So I ain’t gonna tell you that story, ‘cause this ain’t no cautionary tale. I’m gonna tell you how it really happened…

Heard tell that the girl wasn’t really her daughter, no. They only called her that for simplicity’s sake. And when the girl went rogue? Well, that’s how she was called forever after.

Yessir, you heard me right. That’s how she’s known ‘round these parts: the Rogue. ‘Parently even ol’ Jelly Roll Morton wrote a song about her, back before Storyville closed. But for a time, as I heard it, Jelly Roll had the devil speakin’ over his shoulder, behavin’ like his muse. Not that anyone’d admit to it – but there sure are enough folk ‘round these parts claimin’ to have seen him for themselves. They all agreed on one thing: said he had eyes black as pitch, with a fire set to burn deep inn’em. N’awlins is the devil’s town, don’t you know? Hotbed of vice and depravity, one critic said.

And in these parts? If the devil’s knockin’ at your door, honey, you best not answer it. Lawd save your everlovin’ soul, if ya do…

Leastways, that’s the way th’ gumbo ya-ya goes.

Now, where was I? Tante’s grey matter ain’t like it was, you know…

Right, right sug. There was the matter of Mama’s girl and her suitors.

Them boys – brave boys, strong boys, young men of all creed and colour and position – hung ‘round these parts; down in the dusty street where the carriages were likely to clip them or trample them or they’d make fools of themselves ‘fore Mama Raven would come down with her big ol’ broom and make ‘em shoo. Mama Raven? Don’t know the name, child? Don’t you fuss. Let me tell you, that’s not a name you want to be remembering. Best to spit it clean out of your mouth and hope you forget it come morning. For now, let’s just say there was somethin’ a little… peculiar about that family. The girl bein’ what people say she was the least of the strange dealings that went ‘round in those parts in the summer of 1822.

You spend any amount of time in N’awlins, and you learn two things right quick: the first being that the humidity creeps straight to your bones (so pass me that shawl, wouldn’t ya, child?), and that not everything is as plain as it is elsewhere. You stay here longer n’ a few weeks, and you start… sensing things. ‘Round where I’m from, down on Basin near St. Louis One? They call it getting’ ‘tipsy.’ Comes from spending so much time near th’ water, you see. There’ve been enough lives drowned away beneath th’ Mississippi to keep a pall hanging over this town. Seeps into the soil, it does – all that death. Folks round here, we grew up with it – planted in our bones and swallowed down with each spoonful of red beans and rice. That’s how it comes upon ya – it’s a belly-deep sorta chill from the bottom up. You feel under your skin when somethin’ unnatural’s a-comin’.

Barely notice it after a while, but there are some things that you can’t help but pay attention to; can’t help but stop and stare a little longer than is polite.

Mama Raven and her girl, them’s one of those things you couldn’t not take note of.

Sometime ‘round th’ first days when Mam’zelle Marie LaVeau took her claim t’ the title of Queen of the Voodoos, that girl done run off. Seems that there’d been a servant boy ‘round the Rue Royal house who’d been taken over with a fit. Name o’ Cody Robbins, I do believe. Child could no longer see or speak or hear, and though some people said he was crossed – that he’d fallen victim to a curse for visitin’ in secret with the girl without Mama Raven knowing – others know better. Others say it was the girl herself than done ‘im. Poor thing.

That boy never woke up again, and by the time they realized he was done for? They couldn’t find the girl anywhere to set things right.

She was a strange thing, that Rogue. Some say she was feeble, not right in the head, you know? Talkin’ to herself, hearin’ voices that no one else could… But it was the mark on her that got people talkin’, those that glimpsed her up on the widow’s walk in the evenings, that is; or cloaked under the shadows of that old wrought iron balcony up on the third floor when twilight fell… Pale as anything, with lips stained blue as death. Oh, the girl was white, alright – but Mama Raven insisted on keeping her covered from head t’ toe, not at all in the fashion of the day, and with a tignon wrapped about her head, just like th’ free women of colour who owned property ‘round the city. Just like Mama Raven herself.

Ain’tno one left living ‘sides myself who ever saw the girl out in broad daylight. Ma’ Raven kept her locked up tight, even for mass, though we saw that woman in her family’s pew each and every Sunday morning whisperin’ her desperate prayers ‘neath her breath, lookin’ around herself all cautious-like, as if she were just waitin’ for someone to hoodoo her on th’ spot... Like anyone save the Queenherself would risk doin’ something so foolish in the middle of ol’ St. Louis while Père Antoine was preachin’ about hellfire. Pah!

For what people say she done to the girl to drive her off like that? I’d be willin’ t’ wager that Ma’ Raven woulda deserved it.

Oh,she was two-headed, alright: there’s no doubt that the woman had power. You wouldn’t have gotten me t’ cross her, that’s for sure. Folks that did were likely t’ wind up floating in assorted pieces across Bayou St. John. Some can live without a finger or a toe or a tongue, but y’ can’t do much without your faculties, and that was Ma’ Raven’s specialty when it came t’ the boys who came a little too close to her girl’s window. That’s right: poison. Mama Raven was in the old profession of makin’ the grand zombi.

No one talks about that, though. Easier t’ pretend there ain’t nothin’ wrong with a few missin’ slaves than get on a Voodoo’s bad side.

Fact is, Mama Raven musta gone to the lengths she did for a good reason; if you’ve got somethin’ valuable locked up on the third floor of your house; somethin’ living and breathin’ that you don’t want nobody t’ even glimpse at; that you’d kill for? Well. What’s a few nickels spent t’ restock the slave quarters?

You ask me, I think the girl was touched – like a brand, it was somethin’ bad enough that Ma Raven thought she oughta keep it hidden. In these parts: you can’t go nowhere in N’awlins and not feel it when it steals across your path. Gives me th’ frissons just thinkin’ about it…

Child, you know that feeling? Th’ one where y’ think someone’s stepped over your grave? That’s what it was like t’ look on that poor creature; like she could know every dark corner of your heart as easily as she’d give you a kiss hello on the cheek. Unnatural.

Somethin’ wasn’t right with her dress, not that I thought much on the subject… and not that I pried. Tante just tells you what she heard ‘bout the girl. No harm meant. No wrong done…

But there ain’t no white woman who woulda willingly worn th’ tignon in those days ‘less she had something to hide.

What was that, now? What was she hidin’? Well…

Come closer, now.

There, that’s better. Sometimes, when you whisper, the spirits won’t carry it back to those who ought not hear:

I’d have doubted it myself hadn’t I seen that sorrowful-lookin’ thing one evenin’ that spring, right before she up and disappeared. ‘Neath that tignon was somethin’ she couldn’t have hidden unless she blacked her hair with chimney soot, and I only saw ‘cause the girl lingered a little too long on that rooftop. She was a red head, you know? Pretty little thing – with two strips of curls fallin’ round her face, whiter than th’ powdered sugar you get on your beignets…

It was his mark, y’ ask me. That’s how I knew he’d claimed her.

Maybe that’s why Ma Raven kept her holed up by herself for so long.

Maybe he was th’ one who told her to climb up to the roof in the first place… What kinda crazy does a precious little thing like her hafta be t’ go and do that, I ask ya?

Pah.Pah. Oh, but it still makes Tante’s chest ache t’ think on…

Shoot. And I promised m’self I wouldn’t cry.

I remember it like it was yesterday, back nearly two hundred years, when you could still smell the fish oil from the lamps lining the avenues, ‘fore they started using petroleum and callin’ it “gaslight”.

Funny, really, how these things seem so clear so many years after they’ve come t’ pass.

Didn’t surprise me none t’ hear that he was th’ sweet song to pull that girl out from under her mother’s careful watch. That be some bad juju, that was. Folks downtown ‘round that time were just as superstitious as them others living in the swamps.

Was Jelly Roll’s “muse” who carried her away, they say. The one voice that cut through the many that hung ‘round Rue Royal, hopin’ t’ catch her favour. Was the Devil who coaxed her out with his handsome grin and the promise of things no proper lady would know of, much less entertain. Me? I think it was the Devil himself that worked his charm on that poor Cody Robbins boy; that got the girl to steal his soul with her kiss.

What happened, y’ ask? Why, aren’t you eager! Seems like all it takes these days is a little hope t’ tug at the heartstrings when it seems like all is lost. Well, I stitched this one together, didn’t I? Might as well tell it, while I still have the breath…

Hear me well, then, child.

In N’awlins, there are some things more endurin’ than even the stories we tell to keep our spirits alive…

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To Be Continued…

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Post Script:

It’s ordinarily at this point that I’d stretch my arms above my head and croon in seductive tones, “My, what a wonderful lover…” But I won’t. Under this appellation – Carmine, that is – and doubtless some of you are familiar with my better half (she goes by Lucia, or, if she’s chummy with you, “Luce”) this is not what I’ve promised you previously. My apologies and sincerest condolences if you were expecting the upcoming “Bats in the Belfry” and discovered this in your inbox instead. Regarding that particular piece, I’ve grown firm in the promise that I’d like to see it at least half-completed prior to posting the first chapter, and as dear old Loo can inform you, she’s rather inundated at the moment with her (quote, unquote) magnum opus (scoff) and is unable to offer me the proper moral support that “Bats” requires. (Is this all too complicated for you to follow? No matter. Don’t trouble yourselves with the politics between Ms. Medici and myself. We love you both equally for reading this particular attempt at the gothic genre… within which the story situates itself, as you will come to see over the next three chapters.)

This is, by and large, a story coaxed into existence by that monstrous creature I like to call “bunnicula.” A rather rabid plot bunny that insisted on withholding certain elements of the thematic that situates this as a “triptych” of sorts over several eras. It will not be narrated by Tante Mattie, that much I can assure you. It will be a frolicking romp through the darker side of New Orleans.

Having said that, let me conclude by requesting humbly that you follow the slightly batty wisdom of one Blanche DuBois, in that this author depends heavily on your glowing reviews to feel some sort of validation:

“Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”

Please, give generously: leave a review.

Bats in the Belfry: Access Request

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:11:08 GMT

The gist: "Bats in the Belfry" is an X-Men: Evolution Alternate Universe horror/gothic romance set in New Orleans, Louisiana. Written for a mature audience, the premise involves certain supernatural aspects drawn from folklore specific to the setting (vampires, werewolves, zombi, and a handful of ghosts). It is being heavily researched, and those on this filter are asked to participate in the developmental process of the story by offering feedback and constructive criticism.

(It should also go without saying that this is primarily a Rogue/Gambit story, with a hearty dose of secondary pairings.)

Where possible, I'm offering first, second, and third revisions of the draft as the story is written, but it should be noted that the "flavour" is different from what some may expect. I can't stress enough that this is story is directed at a mature audience. Certain elements, including scenes of a sexual nature and graphic violence are depicted and are in no way recommended for readers under the age of eighteen.

Researched elements are assembled once a week, and written snippets are included in part or in whole (for the most part, I'm only offering chunks and not whole chapters.) Those reading are aware that I may change things drastically prior to the first "official" posting.

You may request access to the filter, after having added me as a friend on livejournal, and leaving a comment at this post. There is a topic index <a href="http://luciademedici.livejournal.com/352933.html">here</a> for those already on the filter, should you come to this a little late in the game, and want to catch up. (This is as much for me, as it is for those reading.)

"Bats" won't be posted publicly until it's at least 90% complete, and seeing as how this story is looking to be upwards of 250,000 words, in all likelihood, that may not be for another year or so.

This post was appended on August 1, 2007. The original filter request is below the cut. All other posts pertaining to "Bats in the Belfry" will be henceforth locked to the public.

Say thank ya.

-C.