MICHELLE von HORROWITZ
in
[VOLUME NINETY EIGHT]
”THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR.”
*****
one.
The crack upon the ceiling of her cabin was no longer a crack at all. It now more closely resembled the opening to a cave, though it still evoked in Dreamer the image of hungry, gaping jaws. Through the conspiring efforts of her fear and the biting winter cold, she had little choice but to be silent, and in this silence she could almost hear a distant breathing from within these beckoning jaws. She pulled her bed clothes around her in a futile attempt to fight off the chill.
Despite her best efforts to remain utterly still, the room was unmistakably spinning, and her body was caught up in the gentle but inevitable movements. She could feel the lurching motions of the river beneath her, incessant and rhythmic and overbearing. Her boat suddenly seemed small and insignificant, and she knew that even the most gentle of Poseidon's barrages would sweep her absolutely to one side.
"Climb down," a voice said. It came from within the jaws, which now seemed to have shifted into a smile. She felt the intention was encouragement, but there existed a sinister undertone to the crack's sudden, unexpected speech. She began to realise that the cabin had rotated such that the jaws now groped and gaped from beneath her. She peered over the edge of her bed, down into the jaws, into the darkness that lay within. There was water down there, too. She heard it swirling and swelling and swilling around, as if she was peering into a great, open basin, and that they were moored atop an ocean when there should only have been a river.
"Climb down," she heard again. This time, the voice felt close. More urgent.
"Come home."
She heard thunder from above. The storm that the hostile sky threatened for days was finally here. The captain had promised her that they were safe. They were docked in the city, and he'd survived worse storms out in the open sea. But she didn't feel safe, despite his warnings and protestations. She would've felt more comfortable with her feet on dry land. But that didn't feel like an option right now. There was only the thunder from above and the treacherous, shifting motions of the water from beneath, and the calm voice that came from the belly of the ship, yet somehow also from without it entirely.
Finally, with hesitation and trepidation, she gave into the simple command. She unfurled the bed clothes from around her and climbed down, lowering herself into the crack until she found a foothold within. There were steps there, leading down into a dark passage where she could hear nothing but the thin wheezing of her own drawn out breath.
Eventually, at the end of the passageway, she discovered the handle of a door. She pushed it open and emerged onto the deck of a ship, although not the modest vessel that she had hired to conduct her business along the European tour. Instead, she walked out onto the deck of one of the icebreaker ships that were filled with tourists all year round along the Moscow River. She'd been aboard one before, but now was altogether different in that she was alone on the deck, but for the suited and solitary figure with his back to her, overlooking the bow of the ship.
The boat gently powered through the frozen river, the biting cold and the brutalist architecture conspiring to bring about in her a memory of a time now long behind her… of a series of goodbyes that had turned out to be more final than she'd really expected in the moment. These memories brought to her mind the image of Jean-Luc, even before the man himself - or, more accurately, her memory of the man himself - turned around to greet her.
"You've finally come," he said, with a smile that wasn't exactly welcoming but was a modest approximation thereof. His features were gaunt, but that was in keeping with how she remembered him during this time. The time they'd spent together.
"It took you long enough. Didn't think you'd ever climb down."
As he said these two last words, she heard them repeated in the voice that had spoken to her from within the crack. She shuddered at the thought that she was now inside those jaws. At their mercy. The voice was cold and harsh. It was not the same as Jean-Luc's, but it seemed to contain his soft voice within it alongside many others. All of them were known to Michelle. All of them still existed within her to varying extents. That gave her some indication as to where she was.
Climb down, they said.
Come home.
"You are one of the last people I expected to find here," she said, whilst joining Jean-Luc at the bow of the ship. She stared over the edge, at the splintering sheet of ice that covered the surface of the water. She pulled her coat more tightly around her, shielding herself from the fierce winter cold.
"Oh?" Jean-Luc said, with a cocked eyebrow.
"And why's that?"
"I asked you to stay away from me," Michelle replied.
"When you first came back to work for your father. You've taken this request seriously. Even here, in what I can only assume is some sort of manifestation of my subconscious, I'm surprised to see you conversing with me so freely."
"Your subconscious is full of surprises, I guess," he suggested, playfully.
"And I'm only here to guide you now, just as you looked to me for guidance in Moscow. I'm leading you back through the past, Michelle. Not to a place. Not even to a time."
"Where are you leading me?" Dreamer asked. Her sincerity made her sound lost, and endeared her to the guide.
"You'll know, when we get there," he said.
She noticed that they were clear of the city. In place of tall, ugly buildings, a wild countryside now rolled out either side of them. The river was wider now, too. The ship still churned through the ice, but it was suddenly thicker, and a gathering blizzard made their progress even slower. Soon enough they'd be halted completely, she knew.
"They're waiting to take you the rest of the way," Jean-Luc said. He nodded towards a set of steps that led to the lifeboats.
"Climb down."
*****
two.
Two women waited for her at the base of the steps, sitting in a rowing boat but with no real intention of attempting to negotiate the frozen ocean and oncoming blizzard with the strength of their arms alone.
"We'll go on by foot," declared the older of the two, who Michelle immediately recognised but didn't think quite belonged here. Gabrielle stood up and climbed out of the boat, before leading the way onto the frozen surface of the ocean. The younger, masked woman offered Dreamer a shrug, before following after her. Michelle didn't feel as though she had much of a choice in the matter and dutifully tagged along. She was relieved to find the ice sturdy underfoot, though this didn't make her any less daunted about the frozen ocean that lay between their party and a distant island upon the horizon.
They could barely see this land mass through the blizzard that steadily strengthened as they trudged. The detail of it was lost to the poor conditions, but they could just make out the outline of what appeared to be a moderately large tropical jungle. There was also a mountain, but it was hidden beneath the dense patchwork of forestry that straddled its visible face. The luscious greenery looked out of place within the winter wasteland that the three women made their arduous trek across, and as such Dreamer felt sure that it was where they were heading.
"Whose island is that?" she asked. She had half a mind to assume that it was Rupert's, but she'd never been to the Granary, and could list the conversations she'd had with old R.W. on one hand. That didn't feel right. She felt a more personal connection to the place they were venturing towards than the professional one she had with Watkins.
"It's your island," Gabrielle said. Her tone was terse and cutting, suggesting that she perhaps didn't want to be here. Michelle wasn't offended by this. She didn't really want the Goddess to be here, either. It wasn't as though Montgomery had built up stature in Dreamer's head like so many others had. Her bond with Gabrielle wasn't all-encompassing and all-devouring like the ones she shared with Bell and Parr and the kaiju. The Goddess
had been around for the majority of Michelle's time in the big tent, as she liked to call the FWA, and their paths had crossed more than a few times. This was to be expected, considering that their positions within the company were not all that dissimilar. But passing interactions, trivial as they were, didn't explain the Goddess' prominent place within this mental tapestry.
"Is she always like this?" the other girl asked, as she struggled to keep up with Gabrielle. Dreamer, in turn, was finding herself unable to keep pace with the youngest girl. She turned to face the masked woman, whose voice she was now hearing for the first time.
Vampyra, Michelle thought.
Her name is Vampyra. Although her presence within the dreamscape was even more inexplicable than that of the Goddess.
"I don't know," Michelle answered, honestly.
"I don't really know her all that well. I'm not exactly sure what she's doing here, with me. The same is true of you."
The younger woman smiled a knowing smile.
"She represents the past," Vampyra said, as she continued to trudge through the gathering snow.
"And I represent the future."
"My past?" Michelle asked, finding the explanation wanting.
"My future?"
"The past and future of the life you chose," Vampyra clarified.
"Of the art with which you've involved yourself in the shared creation of."
"Oh, so this is specifically about wrestling," Dreamer said. The masked woman nodded in affirmation.
"That will be nice. These things are rarely ever about wrestling. It's a source of great consternation to some of the old-timers. Your friend up there, she's one of those who worries my dreams have too little to do with the art which we've involved ourselves in the shared creation of."
"So this is for her benefit?" Vampyra asked, curiously. They were a few paces behind the Goddess, and the younger but slower pair felt sure that she couldn't hear them.
"Maybe you should stop worrying about what people like her think. The old-timers. Because you know those that come after you won't be recreating your steps. We'll find out own path, just like you did."
"You think that's why you're here?" Dreamer asked. Each step was difficult and hard-won, the snow climbing well beyond her calves and sometimes over her knees.
"To tell me how flippantly and quickly the youth intend to do away with my legacy? That there's no point building something that will be disregarded so readily as soon as my back is turned?"
"I imagine I'm here because I'm your next opponent," she said, with another shrug.
"And she is here because she was one of your last. There's probably nothing more to it than that."
They noticed that Gabrielle had come to a stop a few paces ahead of them, and that the once-distant island was now large enough to dominate the horizon. They had made more progress than she'd thought, it seemed. She hadn't noticed the incremental approach when they'd been forcing a path through the deep snow, but now it reared up before them, casting a shadow to almost where they stood. From afar the island has appeared alive and luscious, but now she noticed that the gnarled branches were bereft of leaves. All the greenery had fallen from the trees, and the dead leaves were being blown from the island by the cruel winter wind.
They arrived at the point where Gabrielle had stopped, and found her making a fire in the snow. Dreamer considered it a fool's errand, and was surprised when the woman's deft hands managed to kindle a flame. Shortly afterwards, they sat around the fire, holding their palms out towards it to warm thems. Michelle didn't know how long the rest would last, but hoped it would be a little while longer.
"Vampyra tells me you're here to represent the past," Michelle said, eventually. The older woman winced at this summary, but didn't match either of the others' gaze or make a correction. Regardless, the Goddess seemed acutely aware that four eyes were trained upon her.
"No offence."
"I'm sure you can feel it, too," Gabrielle mumbled.
"All I can feel is the cold," Dreamer replied. The blizzard was slowing down, she felt sure, but her bones still ached with the frost. The fire did little to prevent numbness spreading through her fingers.
"What else am I meant to feel?"
"When I first arrived," the Goddess began, whilst keeping her eyes focussed on the dancing flames she'd brought to life.
"I could do no wrong. My star was rising, and my novelty was fresh. Everything that I created was new... new and beautiful. But now?"
The Goddess spat into the snow. The expulsion froze up into a brittle mass as soon as it made contact with the ice.
"Now, that time is gone. To me, the things that I create and place in the world are just as fresh and real and tangible as they were a decade ago… as important as thoughts and commentary as the memories of earlier success… but to everyone else? I'm just a relic. And the same will happen to you, Michelle. It's already happening. I'm sure you can feel it, too."
Michelle said nothing, but the expression on her face must have given her away. Gabrielle let out a short, shrill, triumphant laugh.
"I guess you feel it," the Goddess cackled.
"Don't worry, Dreamer. You had a good run. But time sweeps us all aside eventually. The flavour of the month passes its expiry date."
She let out another harsh laugh, and Michelle feared she might be smothered by it. She met Vampyra's eyes instead, and felt that they were kinder than the old woman's. Less jaded and cynical.
"Don't listen to her," the masked woman said.
"I don't think she's right at all. Just because the next generation - your generation - disregarded her and her achievements, it doesn't mean the same thing is going to happen to you. I can only talk for myself but… I have nothing but respect for you, Michelle von Horrowitz. Respect for what you've already accomplished, and for what you still have left in you."
"How sweet," the Goddess scoffed.
"That's what they all say, Dreamer. That's what you said to me, remember? Interviews in Caramel... what a joke! The truth of it, Michelle, is that the next batch of FWA hopefuls will only want you for one thing. They want to be the one that finishes you. The one that brings about your end. That's all."
None of the women said anything for a time. Vampyra narrowed her eyes in the direction of the cynical one, who was still chuckling to herself.
"Well, am I wrong?" Gabrielle asked. Vampyra didn't reply, and Dreamer came to the realisation that the Goddess probably wasn't wrong.
When the flames were extinguished by the remnants of the blizzard and the lingering cold, the masked woman began to prepare herself to leave. Dreamer followed suit. Something within her told her that she would walk within the shade of the naked branches before she returned to
the real world. Gabrielle, however, remained seated, and watched the other women prepare to leave with a perplexed, nonplussed look on her face.
"Where are you going?" she asked, in the general direction of the youngest woman. Vampyra made no response, nor did she return the older guide's gaze. She only continued to make ready for the remainder of the journey.
"You know that you can't go with her. The island is for her alone."
"I can take her to the shore," the masked woman said, defiantly. And with that, she turned away from Gabrielle and Michelle, and began to trudge through the snow again in the direction of the dead forest. The bitter, old woman simply stared down into the dying embers of her fire, and said no more.
When they got closer to the island, they found themselves wading not only through the frozen snow but also through a sea of displaced leaves from the barren branches. The snow had stopped completely now, and by the time the two women stood in the shade of the trees they could feel the bright sun at their backs.
"I can't go any further," Vampyra said.
"You have to go on alone."
"Why are you helping me?" Dreamer asked.
"Are you trying to prove her wrong?"
"I'm helping you because I know that she is right," the masked woman answered.
"I'll wait for you. I can't go with you, but I'll be here when you're finished."
*****
three.
One Hundred Million Years Ago a Hero Crossed the Land.
Soon enough, the soundtrack of a whistling blizzard was replaced by the creaking of a forest. Without her guides, Michelle had no choice but to follow her own nose, which was a practice that had landed her in a considerable amount of trouble throughout her torrid life. There was no more snow underfoot, with it now replaced by dead leaves that crunched beneath her weight. She didn't think there was any need for quiet, considering there didn't seem to be another living soul for kilometres. She couldn't even be sure that she qualified as a
living soul herself. She didn't know enough about this place to say anything about it for sure.
This particular myth, the myth of solitude, was dispelled rather quickly. After a brief tussle with the undergrowth, Dreamer emerged onto a dirt track and into the path of a swift motorbike. She managed to dive out of its way, aided in part by the quick reactions of its rider, who swerved out of her path at the last moment. The shifting of her weight, though, threw her out of the saddle, and she thumped hard against the dirt track as her bike skidded towards the nearby cliff edge.
"Shit, fuck, bastard, fuck, fuck, no," the biker said, as she tried in vain to collect the massive frame of her bike as it disappeared over the edge. Her voice sounded familiar. She placed her hands on the lip of the cliff and stared down after the vehicle, but her deep sigh suggested that it was beyond her reach.
The biker stood up straight and turned to face Dreamer, and only then did she realise that it was a projection of herself. A replica. The
other was dressed for long travel, and had a baby strapped to her chest in a translucent, amber chamber. Scattered around her were a series of packages that had come loose in the near-miss, which the woman promptly began to collect and attach to her elaborate backpack. As she did, a strong memory of an adventure spent in this woman's boots filled Michelle's mind. They didn't quite feel like her memories, but she had lived through them none-the-less.
"You should watch where you're going," the traveller said, as she picked up the last of her packages. She approached Dreamer and sized her up, and something about the look in her eyes suggested she found her lacking.
"Am I going the right way?" Michelle asked. She was acutely aware of her need for a guide: on the ship, across the frozen ocean, and now upon the island. Even though it was
hers, allegedly, she still felt as though she were lost, and that her heavy footsteps belonged to another.
"You're going the right way, and it's not far, now," the traveller said.
"Do you remember me?"
"I remember you," came Dreamer's reply, as she began to follow the traveller up the dirt track.
"You're me, aren't you?"
"Sort of," the traveller said. She was distracted by a dancing shadow in the distance.
"There's someone up ahead."
"If you're not me, then who are you?" Michelle asked, demanding answers in the face of the other's elusiveness.
"I'm you, in that I'm your creation, and that you gave me the indomitable, independent spirit that you crave for yourself," the traveller answered, whilst leading the way.
"In the moment that I was born, you were acutely aware of the looming solitude. There was no other option but to embrace it, and to pretend as if your lonesomeness was a badge of honour. You wished to believe you could thrive in your isolation, so you created me. An image of this success. The lonely walker, who may chance upon Bell or Nova or Kennedy, but who overcomes each of them through her will to deprive herself of this contact."
"So," Michelle began carefully, after a long, thoughtful pause.
"Are you a fantasy?"
"Not entirely," the traveller replied.
"Do you hear footsteps?"
They both halted, and the sound of footsteps was unmistakable. They weren't human, though, and after a brief, tense silence an old, grey horse came around a bend in the path at a slow canter. On its back was another replica of Dreamer, the reins firmly held in her hands as she guided the mare towards the walkers. A gold star was pinned proudly to her chest, catching the sunlight as she made her approach. She glanced first at our Michelle, though didn't feel it necessary to utter any speech in her direction, before she turned to the traveller.
"Why are you on foot?" she asked, in a slow, southern drawl. The traveller offered a sidewards nod towards Dreamer before addressing the sheriff.
"Lost my bike," she answered matter-of-factly. The sheriff allowed a knowing smile to creep onto her visage.
"Seems likely," the sheriff said. She pulled gently on the reins to turn the horse around, and continued at a pace the pair on foot could replicate.
"So, she's arrived at last."
"She has," Michelle interjected, tiring of being spoken about as if she wasn't there.
"Although she finds this journey increasingly wearisome. Amongst my many guides today, you are perhaps the worst. Some indication of where we are going would be appreciated.".
The barbed words only served to amuse the slighted hosts, who exchanged glances to express this privately. The path led onto a high, wide bridge, a river flowing through a low canyon beneath them.
"Such a sense of justice," the sheriff replied, eventually.
"That was one of the things you gave me, so I should be able to recognise it. That and your complicated ideas surrounding loyalty. Our porter friend here has never even heard of Gerald, but he is central to my own identity. Perhaps you wish for your own judgement, your reckoning against the scales of justice, to be considered in unison with your tired, troubled relationship with my deputy. Or was he my horse? Even that was muddied over time, and through repetition."
"There are others here who would know Gerald," Michelle reasoned. They were most of the way across the bridge, and only now did Dreamer notice the bundles of dynamite attached to its ballasts. If it was a trap, she hadn't much choice but to walk into it.
"You're not alone in that."
"Maybe not," the sheriff said, with a shrug. They were approaching what seemed to be the peak of the hill they'd been climbing. Michelle sensed a nameless dread. A foreboding closure.
"But your projection of him through your projection of me is not a kind one. A doting secondary, who serves only to further the ends of our deeply flawed protagonist. This is how you see him, no?"
Michelle said nothing, and the sheriff smiled triumphantly. If there was more to say, it remained unsaid, as they broached the brow of the hill and emerged onto a stone plateau that overlooked the island and the surrounding ocean. The snows had stopped, and the sun was doing its best to cut through the remaining ice. Michelle could’ve spent a reasonable amount of time revelling in the beauty of her surroundings, but activity in the foreground monopolised her attention. More replications of her being waited for her at the hill’s summit, and their eyes fixed upon her as the sheriff and the traveller joined the group. She was left alone, the subject of their attention but far from a part of their strange fellowship.
“Better late than never,” the perfumer said. She was dressed in the garments of an eighteenth century French merchant, but the mediocrities of her clothing were made up for by the exquisite subtleties of her scent.
“To keep us waiting here atop this hill, surrounded by a blizzard… it is typically artless.”
“And what are you?” our Michelle asked, stepping forward to meet the perfumer, warding off her own passivity along with the challenge of these shadows.
“Who are you to me, but a figment of my own mind? What gripe do you bring to your creator?”
“My gripes are my own,” the perfumer said, with an admiring smile.
“But your shortcomings are all of our business. I don’t doubt that you remember me. It was with me that you captured the elusive scent… the essence of Sans Soleil, remember? You birthed me out of a ruthless ambition, and blessed me with talents of inspired artistic creation. Though I am, as you say, only a figment of the author. An author who falls well short of matching these lofty ambitions in her waking life.”
“An author who wastes her hours,” another said, from the group. She wore the hot pink tracksuit associated with the Nephews, with a katana at her side and a shotgun slung over her back.
“Who dreams of curiosity, and of adventure, and of bravery… but lives the tepid existence of a hermit, afraid of the world and those within it. An author paralysed by her own self-doubt, and left limp by the idea of her failure."
“An author who cannot accept that the end is coming,” an old woman said. She had the pallid air of the undead about her, and her countenance was the closest thing to kindness to be found upon the summit.
“Even when it is right in front of them. Even when it is all they write about.”
Michelle’s eyes drifted to the last of the replicas, who was dressed for guerrilla warfare and watched proceedings with an aloof air. She had refrained from speaking up until now, but as each of the other pairs of eyes glanced towards her it became clear that it was her time to do so.
“We represent the myths you have created around yourself. The myths you’ve created about yourself. The lonely traveller. The servant, indebted to their partner. The martyr. The revolutionary. These are all images of you that just don’t exist, except for when they are brought to life as dancing puppets… the exaggerated inventions of a troubled subconsciousness.”
Michelle had no reply. The leader placed her hand on the handle of her sword.
“In me, you placed the myth of loyalty. The myth of self-sacrifice. Something central in most of what you’ve produced. It is no accident that almost all of us died, when you were finished with us. When we’d made the point that was the whole reason for our existence. But it is an accident that we are all born of your lies. Your lies about yourself, and who you are beneath it all.”
The leader withdrew her sword. Michelle didn’t move.
“Because in reality? You are weak. You are nothing. You are not the self-sacrificing hero… you are not the lonely wanderer… nor the intrepid adventurer. You are simply lost. Scared. Alone.”
With a decisive lunge, the leader drove the blade of her sword through Michelle’s shoulder. Dreamer collapsed to a knee. The others were on her in an instant, swarming like scavengers around wounded prey. She felt their hatred. They only existed because of her exaggerated opinions of herself, and they hated her for it.
They tore and they bit and they kicked, until she closed her eyes and waited for it to stop.
For it all to end.
*****
four.
A short time later, Michelle sat upon a beach with the masked woman, the sea gently and steadily encroaching towards their position. She had been unconscious for some time, she felt, and was now struggling to regulate her breathing. The cold was gone and so was the ice. There'd be no walking back, and it was too far to swim.
She remembered fragments of being carried down the same dirt path that she'd climbed earlier in the day. Mostly she remembered the circling darkness, and the shards of sunlight fighting in futility to break through the oppressive roof of gnarled branches. She was slung over someone's shoulder, and after a while she realised that the masked woman had made good on her promise to come for her.
She didn't know why the replicas had halted their assault. Perhaps they already felt they'd done enough. Made their point. Maybe there was still work for her to do.
Now, she sat upon the beach, staring out at an ocean that she knew she would soon have to cross.
"You were right," Michelle said, when the air had finally returned to her lungs and she felt able to speak again.
"When you said that you were here because you're my next opponent. But… that's more significant than I once thought it was. This match is more significant."
Vampyra didn't reply, but her facial expression suggested understanding. Dreamer had the sense that she'd considered all this before. That her words were not new to either of the conversation's participants.
"This tournament is important even if the wheels have been falling off since the momentum began. No Danny… no Mike… not even the Roman. But even though the sum of its parts has decreased, the idea of bowing out in the first stage? Of standing aside for people like you... I'm not ready for that. It's not my time to step aside yet.
"Maybe soon, the time for you and those that come with you to replace me will be here. Perhaps I will taste the bitterness that Gabrielle speaks of. Her cynicism hardens her words, but that doesn't completely mask the truth in what she says. Already, whilst I should be enjoying the peak of my career, I feel the rumblings that she spoke about. I feel the pressure swelling beneath me. I feel the ground becoming unsteady. I can hear the footsteps of my would-be replacements."
She sighed, and reached for her cigarettes. She lit one, more out of habit than any real need.
"How do we get back?" Michelle asked, eventually.
"We wait," said the other.
"For how long?" Dreamer said. Vampyra shrugged.
"As long as it takes."
