A Trip To Other Amsterdam pt. 2 – “00:00:30”
[Liz]
Hey guys! Welcome to part two of A Trip To Other Amsterdam. Read pt. 1 HERE.
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Pt. 2 “00:00:30”
She held me in her arms and when I inhaled her scent, her hair smelt like stifled screams.
How had I gotten here? The bouncer would not let me in. I pleaded, argued, but to no avail. I tried to look around the building, but no matter how far I walked, there seemed no end to the street I was on. Each window I passed held the same terrifying scene of men and women flinging themselves against the glass trying to escape, however, perhaps more terrifying I stopped caring. When you see such horror and fear in quick succession, it starts to wear on you and becomes commonplace.
Weary of my search and lost at what to do, I sat down next to the canal. I placed my head in my hands and I thought about the package I needed to deliver. Failure was not an option, failure has never been an option, not for me. What was I going to do?
I felt a hand on my shoulder, shocked from my personal misery I turned to see what had so rudely awoken me to my present reality. A small woman stood behind me. She teetered on platforms that seemed the same length as her legs and wore a tiny denim skirt.
“Looking for a date?”
“You must be joking?” The girl furrowed her brow and brushed back a clump of damp grey hair from her forehead.
“No.” She wrapped her hands around her bare arms and shuddered against the rain.
I rolled my eyes, I didn’t have time for this girl, this figment. Though she seemed utterly real to me, corporeal, present – I had heard of the tricks of the Otherworld. I had no doubt in my mind that she was some sort of ploy to lure me into one of the horrid windows I had seen. Like so many hapless souls, I was not going to be tricked to spend my years soundlessly tortured behind glass windows.
“Well, I do not want anything from you, nor am I looking for anything, so please leave me alone.”
“You’re looking for entrance into de Verloren Man. Do you have a light?” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from a small glitter-covered bag and tapped it against her wrist.
“Yes, I need to get into the club. How did you know that?”
“I have friends.”
“Friends? There is no one here, except for that bouncer who, I am sure like you, is just a figment of my imagination and all those poor people trapped behind the windows.”
“How do you know that they are ‘poor’?”
I stood up wiping off the back of my pants, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“And you didn’t answer mine.”
“Which one?”
She smiled, “Do you have a light?”
I looked at her, who or what was this woman, what did she want? “No, I don’t.”
“That’s a shame.” She said simply, putting her package of cigarettes back into her bag, “Well, bye then.” She began to walk off, her foot slipping for a moment on the cobblestones, before she righted herself and kept walking.
“Hey!” I began to walk after her. “Are you really here?” The falter in her step made me question.
“What do you mean? Of course I am here. Hey, if you want the pleasure of my company, you gotta pay up.”
“I am not paying you anything. That’s just want you want. Is that the way you trap people here?”
She stopped before turning a corner and looked towards me, narrowing her eyes, “I don’t trap people anywhere.”
A corner, a blessed corner, I had finally reached the end of the cursed street and I followed after the woman. Ahead of her, I could see a large square filled with tables and chairs. I could imagine it on a sunny day, in the normal world, it would be packed with people drinking in the light and sipping on coffee. Now all the square was, was grey and drenched in rain, even the street lights cast only shadow.
I hurried towards the girl. “Hey, what happened to you hair?” She paused brushing the back the grey locks sticking to her neck. “You look pretty young, to be greying already.”
“Do you always ask this many questions?”
“Only when I am trapped in a city, where I need to get somewhere, and the only person who can help me is ignoring me.”
“The only person who can help you? Help yourself. You place far too much importance in a girl who is just walking the streets looking for some fun.”
“You aren’t just some girl, and even if I were fool enough to believe you it would not last long, you aren’t playing a very convincing one.”
She stopped in the middle of the square and turned towards me. A bright fleck of colour painted against a world of grey, “I’m not convincing? I cannot be anyone but who I am.” She looked hurt, but I would not let what I assumed to be false gestures dissuade me.
“It’s never some girl or some boy. There is always something. People are deeper, darker, more complex than they appear or they act. You’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you are empty. Nothing, a watery mirage against a grey land trying to lure weary travelers.” My cheeks flushed with blood, what had I said? The words came easily from my mouth, but if she truly was something to trap me here, this would anger her.
“That is a cruel thing to say.”
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, you weren’t. Wait. Do you hear that?”
I looked around, I listened, but all I could hear was my quickened breath and the sound of rain falling to the ground.
“It’s music!” She exclaimed.
“It’s what?”
“It’s music, I hear music.”
“I am beginning to change my mind about you, you’re too odd to be a figment of the Otherworld. How long have you been trapped here? How have you avoided the windows? Please, will you tell me how to get into the club?”
“You have too many questions.” She gave me a wry smile, swaying to the music only she could hear,
“Will you dance with me?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell you how to get into the club if you do, the song’s almost over, please. It’s been so long since I have danced with anyone.” She held her hand out to me.
“Fine, one song and then you must tell me how to get into the club. Promise.”
“I promise.”
I took her hand and she drew me near. If a dance to silent music with a crazy girl in the rain is what it took so that my task could finally be completed, so be it. She wrapped her arm around my neck and put her other hand on my shoulder, nestled in my own.
I felt the awkward moment of unfamiliarity. When your body bumps against another it is not accustomed to. How foreign she felt, like a body that was made never to be against mine or anyone else’s. I keenly felt the absurdity of my situation and was about to draw away from her when I heard it, I heard music.
It was beautiful and light. It was music from the corporeal plane whispering its way into the Otherworld. Out of all the things I had seen and felt that night, this was truly magic. I laughed drawing closer to the woman and she rested her head on my shoulder.
“I know why you are here.” I moved to look down at her, but her hand on my neck begged me to stay in place. “I know why you are here and I want you to know it is okay.”
“I don’t even know why I am here.”
“You have something to deliver, something for me, don’t you?” Suddenly, I realized who she was.
“I do.”
“Do you know what is in the box?” Her question, reminded me of my purpose here, what I was carrying with me in the bag at my side.
“No, I don’t.”
“Buy you can guess can’t you?”
“My boss doesn’t pay me to guess.”
“Your boss doesn’t pay you at all.” She smiled looking up at me, reaching into the bag, and producing the package. “You’ve done your job, I’ve had my dance, you may leave.”
This Arawan was nothing like I had expected, nothing like the others I have heard of, fearful leaders ruling over parts of the Otherworld. Suddenly, I wished I had not come. I wished she did not have the package in her hands.
“Don’t, you don’t have to take that.”
“But I do, that was your task wasn’t it? The task you promised your boss to perform? You cannot back out of a contract, we both know that.”
“I don’t want you to have that anymore.”
She laughed at me, dismissing my regret as if it was something easily cast aside. “I am going to open this now, I wouldn’t stay if I were you. There are things worse than my windows, you know that more than most.”
“I do.” But my legs did not want to move, I stared at the package in her hands as she began to unfold the brown paper wrapping.
Before I knew it the wrapping was on the floor and in her hands she held a shoebox sized brick of C4. Atop the brick there were wires, none of which I had the hopes of understanding, and a timer.
00:00:30
She smiled hugging the brick to her chest and swaying to the music that was playing once more. “An end.”
“No.”
“A beginning? I guess I have you to thank for this. You’d better run.”
“No.”
00:00:15
She stopped. “Run, Devil, run now.”
“No.” I grabbed her, I pulled her close, we swayed to the music. She held me in her arms and when I inhaled her scent, her hair smelt like stifled screams.
Darkness.
So, my protégée, my Fated, my Pagan. I write to the person you are to become. I write to the person who will never meet the Arawan of Other Amsterdam, because there is no longer an Arawan of Other Amsterdam. I am starting you off easy.
You want more power, you hunger for it? Please deliver this package to de Verloren Man in the Red
Light district.
Good luck.
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I hope you enjoyed it! xx Liz