Author Games Compilation [Cycle 2]

Task 2 - The Body [SWAN]

AUTHOR GAMES: EMPTY NIGHT - TASK 2 - GENE SWAN - THE BODY

Dear Miss Swan,

Where's your understanding gone?

Sincerely, The Mirror

She walks a hall of gold and green, of bright wallpaper and plush carpeting, and luminol in the hands of stubby fae, ready to be used upon her exit. For this reason she walks at the slow pace she's comfortable with - mustn't exert herself, right? - and perhaps a little slower, simply to know she's the one dictating the schedules of others.

Plus, Gene wants to follow the path of the murderer herself. With a bit of magic, the other members of the team've already marked the route from entrance to exit. Back door. Closet door. Stairwell. Corridor, corridor, corridor, corridor. Bedroom. Three stories down - now, for any mortal, they'd be out scouring the city for someone with two broken legs, but in the world of the Others, it could be anyone.

Which is why Gene walks the route. She wants to know what it's like to be a murderer. Or, at the very least, what it's like to be this murderer. Does his dry skin stick to the walls? Were his fingers mucky and gross, sticking to every corner before detaching with the barely audible unplucking of ridges and valleys from plaster?

Or is he smart, like her?

She guesses the latter, and as she comes upon a shelf in a wider hall, she plucks a pretty little old-fashioned pipe from where it sits. It's not like anyone'll document it missing. Flicking her brows up in brief congratulations to herself, she reaches into the pocket of her shorts beneath her dress and yanks out a lighter. There's still crap in the pipe and she doesn't know what it is but nonetheless she lights it up and breathes it in. Holds it. Holds it until she comes to a fork in the hall and turns left.

The second she does this, she feels a presence behind her and rolls her grey eyes to the ceiling, jutting her lip out to watch the smoke curl over her vision. "What d'you want now, you bloody miscreant?"

"Miscreant? My origin, why would you call me that? I'm simply here to keep you company. I sensed a loneliness in you."

"Well, I called you a miscreant because you're not the best influence." Gene curls her painted lips about the pipe and sucks in again, letting the silence inflate her. It's hot inside. Like anger. When she's ready, she exhales through her nostrils. Her head lolls lazily to the ashen figure hovering over her shoulder. "And I'm not lonely. I'm bored and wish for people as distractions, that's all."

"I can be your distraction, my origin."

Gene pats the shadow but feels nothing beneath her fingers. "I said people, darling. You're a devil."

"Spawned from the likes of you, though, my origin, so you must be a devil too."

At the faint amusement in the shadow's tone, Gene laughs, even throws her head back and lets the curlicues of a fire flick towards the ceiling to stain it yellow. "I wish."

"Be careful what you wish for, my origin."

Gene arrives at the bedroom where the body lay, a body she's already seen. The presence disappears and she steps past the threshold alone only to set her sights upon a familiar face. Her chest flutters with excitement, finally! A feeling to cling to. A person to cling to.

Well, "person" is also a very loose term.

She's got that youthful glow about her, though, a big "fuck you" (as the children - and her son - say) to the laws of age and time. Her hair is long, silvery with blackened roots, and her eyelids are probably caked, if Gene knows her demons correctly. There are clunky brown sunglasses covering them up, so she can't say for certain, but, please, they've been business partners for years, Gene and Brandy, so Miss Swan becomes Miss Swan and puts on one of those winning, bright smiles of hers and splays her arms wide.