Abalyn
Member
~BBW, ~~WG, Historical, LGBTQ – A young urchin given a chance at better prospects finds herself embroiled in a world of appetite, desire, and the lowest of foul play.
(A reimagining of Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith / its film adaptation The Handmaiden—one that introduces certain other proclivities to the narrative.)
Prologue
London makes for bad beginnings.
Of course we all have read Mr. Dickens’ ruminations on the famous fog, rolling in off the river and hovering over the city like some shade; but despite its title, his novel is poetry in prose. London is not poetry, nor is it prose. It’s a stink beyond words, a constant texture of charcoal at the back of one’s throat, a patina of filth that clings like grease floating atop water. It is anathema to metaphor—one cannot render the city an analogy once it’s wormed its tentacles into them.
(Yes, yes, there is a paradox there—metaphor used to describe its own uselessness. I shall repent only in admitting that I am a narrator, and we must be allowed our hypocrisies.)
On the page, the city’s blackness has romance. In practice, even for the rich it’s toil. For the poor, it’s hell.
Still, even hell is not without its share of locales, way stations, refuges where eternal black is perhaps a shade less sooty. And, as Dante was led by Virgil through those nine infernal rings, we have our own guide just up the street, close enough for us to hear his boots clip-clop briskly against the cobblestones. Come, let us walk with him.
Yes, walk—the sun has not yet risen high enough to be anything more than a faint suggestion of orange at the edge of a curtain of black, and the hansom cabs will not be rolling for a good while yet. I know, I know—mud will stain the bottoms of your shoes, and filth worse than mud will assault your nose. Still, it cannot be helped. No story is without sacrifice, and characters and readers alike must risk a bit of dirtying-up for the great things that are to come.
To keep your mind off things, let us take a closer look at our gentleman. And a gentleman he does seem to be—his silhouette, made solid by the lamplight that gutters above our heads, betrays a coat whose cut is too elegant for utility alone. In his right hand he bears a walking-stick which he clacks against the cobblestones in time with his footfalls, as if announcing his own presence—not necessarily the thing to do in London while it’s dark. There’s a boastfulness to the sound—Here I am, it seems to say, if you’ve a mind.
The gentleman is too distant and too dark for us to make out the color of his clothes, or anything notable about his hair, frame, build. There’s something about him, though, that suggests youthfulness—a swagger that the old either think better of or have had beaten out of them. He walks as though London were made for him, or will be his eventually—as if the muck collecting on his shoes is a transient thing only, simply an obstacle on his path to better things.
If better things are indeed what he seeks, this hardly seems the place for them. This is not the part of London that pretties itself up for its wealthy patrons—this is closed-up London, deep London, the streets only wide enough for a single carriage and the buildings winding in ever-tighter curves. What sounds can be heard are earthy—swearing shopkeepers readying for business behind closed doors, faint splashes of chamber pots emptying their contents onto the pathway, and the moans of beggars raising cups as our gentleman passes them with a swish of his stick. If he is our Virgil, we seem to find ourselves in one of the inner rings—and passing further inward.
But I promised you a refuge, and I do not make promises in vain. In fact—yes, look! Our gentleman has reached his destination.
Nothing marks it as in any way different from its brother and sister buildings—it’s just a squat, tight structure with dirtied-up windows, a sign impossible to read by lamplight alone, and every inch caked in grime. But our guide knows it—his pace picks up as he nears, the swishing of his walking-stick growing louder. When he reaches the door, he pauses, as if to consider—what, or who, it is quite beyond us to know at this juncture.
Another moment passes. Then, with that same confidence of youth, he reaches upward and raps three times, smartly, on the door.
Here, dear reader, I leave you for the time being—we narrators know not to overstay our welcome, and there are other parties far more interesting than myself that you are about to meet. But fret not—this is, after all, only a beginning.
(A reimagining of Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith / its film adaptation The Handmaiden—one that introduces certain other proclivities to the narrative.)
Artful Increase
by Abalyn
by Abalyn
Prologue
London makes for bad beginnings.
Of course we all have read Mr. Dickens’ ruminations on the famous fog, rolling in off the river and hovering over the city like some shade; but despite its title, his novel is poetry in prose. London is not poetry, nor is it prose. It’s a stink beyond words, a constant texture of charcoal at the back of one’s throat, a patina of filth that clings like grease floating atop water. It is anathema to metaphor—one cannot render the city an analogy once it’s wormed its tentacles into them.
(Yes, yes, there is a paradox there—metaphor used to describe its own uselessness. I shall repent only in admitting that I am a narrator, and we must be allowed our hypocrisies.)
On the page, the city’s blackness has romance. In practice, even for the rich it’s toil. For the poor, it’s hell.
Still, even hell is not without its share of locales, way stations, refuges where eternal black is perhaps a shade less sooty. And, as Dante was led by Virgil through those nine infernal rings, we have our own guide just up the street, close enough for us to hear his boots clip-clop briskly against the cobblestones. Come, let us walk with him.
Yes, walk—the sun has not yet risen high enough to be anything more than a faint suggestion of orange at the edge of a curtain of black, and the hansom cabs will not be rolling for a good while yet. I know, I know—mud will stain the bottoms of your shoes, and filth worse than mud will assault your nose. Still, it cannot be helped. No story is without sacrifice, and characters and readers alike must risk a bit of dirtying-up for the great things that are to come.
To keep your mind off things, let us take a closer look at our gentleman. And a gentleman he does seem to be—his silhouette, made solid by the lamplight that gutters above our heads, betrays a coat whose cut is too elegant for utility alone. In his right hand he bears a walking-stick which he clacks against the cobblestones in time with his footfalls, as if announcing his own presence—not necessarily the thing to do in London while it’s dark. There’s a boastfulness to the sound—Here I am, it seems to say, if you’ve a mind.
The gentleman is too distant and too dark for us to make out the color of his clothes, or anything notable about his hair, frame, build. There’s something about him, though, that suggests youthfulness—a swagger that the old either think better of or have had beaten out of them. He walks as though London were made for him, or will be his eventually—as if the muck collecting on his shoes is a transient thing only, simply an obstacle on his path to better things.
If better things are indeed what he seeks, this hardly seems the place for them. This is not the part of London that pretties itself up for its wealthy patrons—this is closed-up London, deep London, the streets only wide enough for a single carriage and the buildings winding in ever-tighter curves. What sounds can be heard are earthy—swearing shopkeepers readying for business behind closed doors, faint splashes of chamber pots emptying their contents onto the pathway, and the moans of beggars raising cups as our gentleman passes them with a swish of his stick. If he is our Virgil, we seem to find ourselves in one of the inner rings—and passing further inward.
But I promised you a refuge, and I do not make promises in vain. In fact—yes, look! Our gentleman has reached his destination.
Nothing marks it as in any way different from its brother and sister buildings—it’s just a squat, tight structure with dirtied-up windows, a sign impossible to read by lamplight alone, and every inch caked in grime. But our guide knows it—his pace picks up as he nears, the swishing of his walking-stick growing louder. When he reaches the door, he pauses, as if to consider—what, or who, it is quite beyond us to know at this juncture.
Another moment passes. Then, with that same confidence of youth, he reaches upward and raps three times, smartly, on the door.
Here, dear reader, I leave you for the time being—we narrators know not to overstay our welcome, and there are other parties far more interesting than myself that you are about to meet. But fret not—this is, after all, only a beginning.
