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@missahlgren
planet of love, richard siken
artjomjaager:
The voice, the touch rang from another dimension. A dimension parallel to the one he now exists in. A voice and touch which he might have studied (gotten his Ph.D and everything in) each intonation and edge had they stayed in that bed all that time ago. He could smell her hair wet with rain now. But they didn’t. And life moved on, just as it does, with the ebb and flow of time. People change - for better or worse - he couldn’t begin to predict her actions. Comforting. Or, maybe, he was the only one who hadn’t changed. It was this thought that would keep him up tonight. This, he was sure of.
Instead of responding, he watches her piece the puzzle together. He’d time it if he had the time to focus on anything but the subtleties of her person. But he brushes these feelings, like most, to the side. And the driver is still there. “Don’t be ridiculous. You are the gift, Miss Ahlgren. Now the festivities may truly begin.” He remembers his place and there’s a piece of him that wonders if she’d prefer the chocolates.
They say most cravings average three to five minutes. After that, you’re free. This is if you’re lucky. If you can tame the darkness inside of you and stitch yourself up before it comes spilling out. You can resist the urge by timing the length of your cravings. Science trumps the urge, it has been written. They say if it lasts more than fifteen minutes, you may still be exposed to the stimulus causing your craving. You ask an addict to remove themselves from the equation, see if they tell you logic dictates there.
So when there’s nothing between them but this silence and that damn ticking of the clock, he wants to pin her against the art covered wall - ignoring the mental signs that read ‘Do not touch’ all the while. Though it was a juxtaposition that pleased him. But instead, he breathes. Counting down all the while. “You must have had a long journey. I can have some tea brought to your quarters.”
They play greetings like it’s a children’s game, the kind where you open the book and spot differences between page left and right. How many changes can you count between last time and now? One, where my hand rests. Two, the place your lips go. Three, how many thoughts I hang out on the noose behind my teeth. They’re terribly good at it. The contrasts are immediate -- she can point them out and press at them with her finger.
And because she is playing one game, she overlooks another entirely: it takes the reminder of propriety to grasp a breach of protocol. He self-corrects and she knows better than to compensate, watching without looking as the third party leaves.
“Not that.” There’s a hand near his hip where she doesn’t mean it to be, and she wonders if she’s angry. Wonders where the anger is and why she can’t feel it. “You can’t. You can’t.” Her thumb strokes over the round of a button, tracing its curve so she can avoid concentrating on the warm beneath it. Her voice is quiet, and ll things considered, Ilsa is just a girl who can’t stop touching. It’s the distance, she could say - absence makes the heart grow (bigger, bigger, until it brushes up and through the ribcage and reaches out to touch). But the truth of the matter is that the time apart is missed lessons in restraint. She tries to play practice now.
She takes the porcelain in both hands like she’s mistaken the fowl for a dove and places it on the bedspread, watches it sink into the quilt. “What a poor present I make.” It’s quiet. She smiles when she looks back because she has to. “Not a bow in sight.”
Unwrap, unwrap, unwrap. The surprise hits her under the ribs with how much she wants him to tear off her paper, play a racing game with the little confetti pieces to see who can hit the floor first.
“Tea would be lovely.” There’s so much quiet and so many footsteps. “You look well.” It is one of the many incongruent phrases they exchange with casualty as their own version of unsure, disjointed i love yous, cataloged with worn-out remarks like You win and It’s been some time.
How many questions can they ask where they don’t care for the answer? Let’s play I spy.
@missahlgren, timestamp two: miss ahlgren’s room
The ticking of the clock beats like a metronome. He can hear Frank somewhere in the distance:
“In the wee small hours of the morning, while the whole wide world is fast asleep…”
His most recent trip to China had included the retrieval of a porcelain swan water dropper from the 12th century. A lost art form, they say. He places it on her nightstand. Fingers lift just as the door opens and his arms wrap in front of his chest. This was the poise of his mother. Cold and distant. Controlled movements and words - ‘careful, my son, do not reveal too much.’ His back straightens likes a priest offering communion. “Miss Zehren,” he bows his head, “I’m glad you could make it.”
It didn’t sound like it, but he was saying ‘I love you’ without saying ‘I love you’ (even if he didn’t know it) - I love you, but I am broken and I am not so easily put back together. Believe me, I’ve tried. He wouldn’t be here, in this room, if he wasn’t trying.
She enters, and he speaks to her like a postcard: a beautiful frame with few words on the other side because there’s only so much space. If the room was any bigger, maybe he could have said more. Ilsa stops at the foot of the door because if the room was any smaller, they would’ve been fucked.
“Artie.” Ivory fur falls off her shoulder, and snow off her hair. She’s a white bird in a blizzard and she lands on him, a hand on either of his elbows as she leans a kiss onto both cheeks. He’s so warm. “Are you so surprised?” Sounds like: Are you really glad? Means: Do you really love me?
“What are you doing in here?” Her driver puts trunks down on the floor, a reminder that a third party is there. A witness is the only reason she can be this close, the excuse she gives herself for looking into Artjom’s eyes. A third party makes plausible deniability. I’m only this close to you because there’s nothing to hide. “Leaving chocolates on our pillows?”
Rules of criminality, when the witness leaves the girl looks away and finds the beautiful thing over his shoulder instead. She picks it up and wipes a thumb over the neck of a thing that hasn’t been loved in quite some time.
“And here I am without even a host’s gift.”
But in fact, [Aphrodite] is just as wise as she needs to be. She knows how to get what she wants.
Anne Carson, Hippolytos’ Preface (via antigonick)
BASICS.
name: ilsa ahlgren, née ilsa ludendorff. maarja zehren.
age: twenty-eight. thirty.
pronouns: she / her.
hometown: zurich, switzerland. lausanne, switzerland.
occupation: actress ( film, occasionally stage ).
relationship status: single.
QUESTIONS.
Q: does your character have a criminal or questionable past?
A:
ilsa ahlgren has the perfect life. she’s born ilsa lunendorff, an only child with two loving parents, and raised in a secluded manor in switzerland. the trio summer together in the alpes-maritimes and spend winters at their estate in the alps, where she learns to ski at age seven. she begins acting in her early teens, after joining a school production of rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead, which she recalls at “the first time i felt real.” her breakout role in european cinema comes at age twenty-one, in the role of lucy in narrow view. seven years later, her career has taken her to Ilsa ahlgren has the perfect life. and ilsa ahlgren is dead.there’s two girls chosen from the orphanage before maarja zehren. they are younger and have no freckles and rounder faces, and housemother says it’s because they eat more risgrynsgröt when they’re told too, but maarja leaves spaces between her ribs for the dreams to fill and keeps herself thin to fold into the barest of opportunities. weeks after their adoption, each girl comes back in a clean frock with a new sharp-edged haircut and pink skin, as if scrubbed clean of dirt and misfortune only to be found disappointing at the core. they tell of kind people and white marble chateau and a closet full of dresses, and it makes maarja frown. maarja zehren may have many freckles and weigh too little, but she is all the cleverer for it, and when the couple with the light hair and big black car come for her, she knows she will be the one to make them happy and earn her stay.it took only a year for grief to drive the ludendorffs delusional over the loss of their daughter in an estate fire. it took another of searching through institutions across the country to find the one to replace her. it takes two months for her to figure out she’s wearing a dead girl’s clothing. four more before they take her to the surgeon citing deviated septum and have her awaken with a brand new nose. in two years, on a birthday that doesn’t fit, they wake her up with a cake and call her a name that isn’t hers. ilsa. we love you, ilsa. this is the mistaken belief about survivalism: it applies only in the hospitable environments. but some circumstances are more subtle, and their heroines less clear. sometimes, the girl making it to the end of the forest doesn’t have the wolf’s teeth in her hands, and she wears no blood. sometimes, it’s a little girl tucked into a pink bedspread willing to murder herself for a chance at love. i love you too. love is always, always a type of killing. ilsa ahlgren has a name that hasn’t been spoken in nineteen years. she is thirty, not twenty eight, and never visited the alps before the age of twelve, but can recite every family vacation before from ages four to eleven with dazzling narration. she’s an award-winning actress and carries the life of a girl who perished twenty-three years ago. ilsa ahlgren is dead, and she just arrived at the winter palace. ( tl;dr? ilsa’s real name is maarja, and she was adopted by a couple turned delusional with grief when she was 9 years old. in slow form they started to mould her after their dead daughter before pushing her to “become” her completely, and she was willing to give up herself/her identity for a chance at a secure life and the hope of love. while her parents believe this is now the truth, and that they never lost their 7 year old in a fire, ilsa is very aware it is not. that being said, there’s only one individual in her life that knows the truth, and every interview she’s ever given cites her growing up on her family’s luxurious mountain estate. )
Q: does your character have a motive to kill?
A: what do the dead want?
Q: any important factors to know about your character?
A: for those raised in europe, or familiar with the cinema, she’s an excessively well-known figure that would dominate magazines/google searches/the box office - but her fame is contained there, as she’s never done an american/western film. as a fun aside, she’s certainly brought at least two marabou feather robes with her, so expect her to swan around in those in the early hours.
Q: any wanted relationships / connections for your character?
A: people familiar with her work and wanting to brush up against fame/interact with their cinematic crush. there’s only one individual outside of her adopted parents that is aware of her history, but i’d adore someone who has the slightest inkling there must be something off about her/her life and try and play cat-and-mouse to figure it out (this could work particularly well with those whose pasts are -- not entirely full of legality). i’m a sucker for a relationship centering around a battle of wits. ex-flames, hook-ups. ilsa and artjom know each other very well, so playing off that, any other guests of his on the estate could be acquaintances, friends, rivals, etc!
The Girl on the Train (2016)
Love Is My Profession (1958)
Aphrodite’s thirst was never quenched; it was cruel and dreamy. It was certainly the most splendid kind of thirst.
Arthur Rimbaud, from Selected Poems & Prose; “Silence and Sacrifice,” (via violentwavesofemotion)
Love in the Afternoon (1957) dir. Billy Wilder
Boudoir by D'Lish dressing gowns
Always be fuckable. Even if you are standing in line for a Baguette
How To Be Parisian, Caroline de Maigret. (via chic-a-gogo)
I L S A A H L G R E N
➛ the actress, the muse, the diva.
❝ all women are actresses, dear. i’m just clever enough to get paid for it. ❞
forgive me father for I have sinned in all the coolest and most glamorous ways possible