curiouser and curiouser | lunette & roman.
Lunette was full of things: blood (fresh), bones, veins, dreams (expired), hopes, the water-logged memories of a past life, and the numerous pieces of mental bric-a-brac that one acquired over the years, some fact and some opinion. And she was not the only one like this -- every person, to her knowledge, consisted of varied and wonderful things. But unlike others, Lunette had learned to take stock of what she had every so often: how to make a souffle (by asking the chef; check), the names of every boy she’d ever kissed (blanks; no check), the names of her family (strong check, red check), when it was appropriate to dance with a married man at a party (never; check), where silverware goes on a table (check), how she liked her eggs (not at all; check). She did this because the threat of losing parts of herself was always present -- handfuls of forgetfulness passed down to her by her doctor and her parents in little blue and pink capsules, the clinical and austere staff of Elswood watching on as they moved down her throat. She did this because she was a self-serve, individual-practice rebel. She did this for times like these, when she had to empty herself bit by bit.
It was easier to play hollow when you could sort out all the parts of yourself you had to put aside.
She was becoming an awfully good actress these days, and seeing as she was an authority on the subject of being herself, and what not doing so consisted off, she knew this with certainty. The sedatives had been administered, and for all intents and purposes to the casual observer, they had worked: her limbs were slow moving, her eyes large and glassy, as if she had borrowed them from a degenerating doll. But to step inside Lunette’s body would be to make clear that all was not as it seemed (and wasn’t that true with the best of things?). She was learning. She was lucid.
But she was also good at playing this game (so she thought).
Sitting quietly by herself, cross-legged on the floor of one of the lounge areas, Lunette flipped passively through a book in a manner that was at once inattentive and too-fast, her gaze skirting over the page in a manner that assured she was not actually reading what as in front of her. It would be a perfectly convincing act to anyone that would bother to look at her, another sleepwalker on campus, but perhaps there was yet a flaw in her design: words appealed to her, language meant something, and so her eyes hooked on a few black-print words at a time before she leafed to the next page.
When a shadow crossed over her, Lunette looked up, watching the person pass her idly, blankly, one foot in a dream and the other on land.
