A trip to Other Amsterdam

[Liz]

Happy New Year!!!!

May you always roll crits and a devil never come to take your soul.

So I wanted to share some WITCH fiction with you so you can get a taste of what the system is like and also give you a taste of the fluff pieces you will get in the book. This will be a 2-3 part story that will continue in future blog posts I will make.

So sit back, relax, and join me in a trip to Other Amsterdam…

~

Pt. 1 The Introduction

I am writing you this letter, this small confession, not for the person you are today, but for the person you are to become. I could coddle you through the loss of your soul, but that perilous journey is one to take alone. The Fating is a battleground where you must somehow, at the end of it all, find yourself worthy. Whether it is due to denial or some fantastic sense of self acceptance that too few have found, no one can help you in this. And therefore, I write to the person you will be. The breathless, hungering spark of light that seeks only the next horizon and the promise of humbling and delicious things to come.

So, future you, welcome to this city. I could speak to you of the reality of Amsterdam, but the reality is so boring and something any dotcom website can tell you. I want to tell you of darkness and mystery, I want to tell you the story that leaves to needing to wash the sweat from your brow by the end of it. To hell with reality, that isn’t what you are signing up for any way. So here we go, down the rabbit hole…

There is a subtle seduction that occurs when entering a new city. It is the dance you perform with the city streets and your flight between the purity of day and the promise of night. This seduction is what leaves you wanting more at the end of your trip, breathless and begging- or leaves your ruined, empty and ready anything with the promise of familiarity.For me, Amsterdam has always been both. The moment I enter the city I am always ready to leave it, but there is always something that beckons me to recklessly get lost among the winding streets.

When I first entered the city I wanted nothing to do with it. I had never travelled before and for me, the trip was all business – see the Arawan, deliver the package, go home. So, stepping off the train and exiting through the turnstiles of Amsterdam Central Station I quickly found a dark alleyway and proceeded to step into the Otherworld.

It was raining on the night I arrived, as it consistently and constantly does in Other Netherlands, and as I stepped through into the world which is not ours I saw my reflection in a puddle. My form was not as it should have been. I looked wholly myself, yet the sight of my visage terrified me. Who was this monster standing before me? What was that shade that hid behind my gaze that now seemed fully foreign and hollow staring back at me? What light could cast such an unfriendly darkness on me that I could not recognize myself? This had never happened to me before, but this was the realm of the dead, a place living are not meant to tread, and therefore I ignored the grotesqueness of my face and plodded onward.

On the train my instructions had confused me, I was meant to arrive at de Verloren Man nightclub in the red light district in the Otherworld. This address seemed totally normal to me and therefore had no place in my belief of what the realm of spirits should be, but viewing Amsterdam in the Otherworld I understood why. Other Amsterdam looks much like it’s mortal plane counterpart. The buildings are slightly darker and the colours are dampened, but aside from that it is a perfect replica.

So through the empty streets of the Otherworld I walked. No guards came to escort me or spirits to harass me. It was then that I began to fall in love with the journey rather than the goal. With each step  I took, the goal of my excursion was less important and I was simply alone in my own dark world. Other Amsterdam did not have the draw that the world of the living had. It did not pulse with life and the promise of contact. It did not paint my vision with picturesque landscapes and vibrant flower fields as far as my eye could see. Other Amsterdam was dark.

It’s wet streets muffled my footsteps to a hushed whisper. In each alleyway I walked shadows followed me, tugged at the back of my jacket, brushing against the hairs of my neck. How could I be falling in love with the fear that was building in my chest? Reveling in the guttural sense that something was not right? Surprise, that is the answer. This other city surprised and delighted me. It utterly terrified me and yet the seduction of the unknown drew me further onward.

It was only at the entrance of the red light district that I realised I had known where I was going from the very start. How did I know this? I was following a song. The music was imperceptible to my ears and if you asked me today I could not tell you the notes, but I know I heard it all the same. With each drop of rain that fell upon my head a new note beckoned me forward and illuminated the path that I had to follow.

Bolstered in my confidence I entered the red light district and observed that the light was not red, but blue. Huge windows overlooking the canal each wreathed in a beautiful blue light seemed to stretch nearly to the heavens. What a place.

Ignoring my goal I walked towards a window to admire the haunting blue glow. Next to the window a short staircase lead down to a black door and above the window two stone angels stared down at me. Their gaze seemed not inanimate, but entirely human. As they gazed at me and I back, it felt as we had known each other for years. They knew my pains, they knew what was in my heart, and they wished for me to know that all was well. Next to the pair of angels a white marble cat played with a ball, this figure more real than the last two and it took all my strength to pull my eyes away from the beautiful window dressing.

I turned to the canal and then back to the window. As I did, I gave only a passing glance back to my friends the angels who seemed to wink towards me as I looked into the window glass.

It was then that a man flung himself against the windowpane.

I stepped back, shocked at what I had just seen, I peered into the darkness behind the glass. Again, an almost lifeless body flung itself against the window from the inky blackness behind the pane, but this time the man’s body remained against the glass.

His body was bruised, bloodied, and naked. His face was twisted in pain and I could see the steam from his quick, panicked breaths against the glass. The flaccid fat of his elderly, obese body smudged against window leaving grease stains where they made contact and his body shuddered in angst. I leaned my face closer to his and his eyes met mine. They grew wider with the recognition of life, he twitched his head towards me, put his bloodied hand against the window and began to scream. His scream, so loud it wrenched his head back with howling, fell on deaf ears as the glass obscured all sounds to me that came from the man’s lips.

And then he was gone. Wrenched away from the glass and back into darkness. The window pane was clean and it was as if all traces of him were wiped from existence.

I stumbled backwards, the fear that was once so enticing to me now did was it was meant to and elicited the need for me to run. I began to run down what seemed like a endless streets of these horrid windows and within each that I looked naked tortured figures flung themselves against the glass and cried out soundlessly for my help. It seemed with each figure I passed the next was more horrid than before – flesh torn from their bodies, their sex cut off, bald and braying.

I ran for my life I ran for terror and when I finally stopped to catch my breath I saw that I had arrived where I was meant to be all along, de Verloren Man.
The woman standing at the door looked me up and down, “You don’t have an appointment.”

~

To be continued in my next blog post – pt. 2 The Seduction