white fire
Alicia sighed as her head settled onto her pillow. Another day in this world of strangers, done, checked off against the mounting deficit of her mission, of her life. How many had there been? How many yet to come?
Her assignment was, of course, a mystery. She was not permitted memories. Perhaps she had been created for this alone; perhaps when it was done she would disappear, wither to nothing like the fragile sentients that surrounded her: perhaps she would do the impossible, and die.
She moved uncomfortably among the sheets, pushing out with a leg to straighten them. Her back twinged as she settled again, and her mouth twisted wryly. The attention to detail was impressive, if a little overdone. Aches and pains? Really?
This day had been even more humdrum than usual. She had a job now, waiting tables at a joyless lunchtime eatery. As another viewpoint from which to observe the milieu of human life it had held some interest for a week; perhaps a month at a stretch. But Alicia watched the customers, and particularly her colleagues, with open pity. Their insipid routines, their impotence, their aches: they were real. Not manufactured, deliberately injected, to complete an exquisite illusion. Real: wet rain, biting cold, remorseless gravity.
And yet. Alicia’s open eyes narrowed with a different kind of pain. These creatures had something that she did not: they had each other. And incredibly, for many of them, that seemed to be enough.
She pressed her face into the pillow. How cruel, to create her in their image. To make her feel the same petty emotions, the same fickle hurts, and yet to deny her their one solace. This impenetrable disguise, this solid suit of brittle armour: why?
Why did she have to feel?
She watched her thoughts descend into bitterness, like swirling crows. Not for her the smiles, the touches, the warm meeting of eyes. They could feel her difference, even if they could not see it, even if her every act was a perfect simulacrum of their own behaviour. She was outside their world, beyond, in a colourless infinity. And even there, far from the boundaries of their capacity, she must be one of them.
Hard-edged shadows chased over the wall as cars sloshed through the early night outside. A gaggle of partygoers resolved from mutters to chattering words to mutters again: they would be back later, more raucous, threatening her with their careless sociability. She would not be asleep, no matter the hour they returned. The rumble of a bus, felt more than heard. A cry; of joy?
No. Of pain. Alicia’s eyes fixed on the shadowy join between wall and ceiling. Had it come from inside the building? The other sounds became annoyances as she strained to hear, her breath shallow through parted lips.
Again. More drawn out this time, with an edge of rising fear. Scraping over the blackboard of Alicia’s mind, driving out her habitual desolate fantasies, slicing into her hesitation. She sat up, eyes wide. It was real. Someone was being hurt.
The Police. She reached out for her mobile phone, then jerked to a stop: there was no signal in here. And the landline was not connected. There was another rumble: not a bus this time. Alicia looked fearfully behind her, then jumped to her feet as a flash of pure white blazed behind the dirty curtains, followed shortly by another crash of thunder.
And the scream. Really a scream; no rising shout of pain this time. Alicia’s heart jumped into her throat. The simple imperative to do something clashed against her ingrained timidity, piling up, demanding release.
She cast around in the semi-dark, found her jeans, pulled them on. A t-shirt. Now: she looked at the door of the tiny basement studio. Another scream; and she ran to it, pulled it open, slowed suddenly as the darkness outside rushed in and around her.
Should she shout for help? Lightning flashed again, sparkling weirdly through the stained glass in the front door beyond the short flight of stairs. The cry was almost continuous now, desperate with panic, louder.
Upstairs. Alicia took the steps to the main hall two at a time; round eyes gazed around it, bare feet shrunk from the cold tile floor, shallow breath rasped in and out, in and out. Where were the other tenants? Was she alone with this nightmare? Perhaps she could go out into the street, find help.
No time. The screams were becoming weaker, keening, with an edge like a shard of glass. Alicia whimpered, looking up the next flight of stairs, immobile with terror. She had to help. She had to run. Lightning flashed and crashed; shadows raced, cold wrapped around her skin.
She could see there was no-one in the rooms around. She must act. She pounced; she was at the next landing, then the next. She knew the door: she was outside it. For a split second she was seeing the lightning slice out from under it, and then it slammed aside and she was in the flat beyond.
Time renewed its course, thundering into the world like the fall of the moon. There was a blinding white figure of a woman there, lightning in human form, kneeling wide on a bed; but her light illuminated nothing by itself. Instead, arcs of white fire crackled from her body, to bedpost, to floor, to ceiling, each sharding the room with colour and shadow. She had twisted around, and Alicia felt the bite of her pure white stare.
Alicia was breathing hard, her heart was thundering; but now, she was not afraid. She watched herself with strange detachment: facing this elemental, alien creature, fearless. She had been terrified before, but the fear had only been of the unknown, or perhaps of a simple, human enemy — one with the capacity to deride, to laugh, to belittle.
The creature lifted, slowly, regally, and swung her legs to the floor. There was a sheen of smoke in the air, and she seemed to shimmer in it. Now Alicia saw that there was another woman, a human, on the bed. She was sprawled, immobile, perhaps unconscious, perhaps dead.
The creature seemed to float, each step longer than her stride. Electricity arced from her fingertips to the floor. But Alicia’s only thought was: she was beautiful. The brilliance of her skin meant that there were almost no contours to see, only pencil lines around her eyes, and spots of darkness at her nostrils and the narrow parting of her lips. But her outline was enough: a long, long body, long enough to be both elegant and proudly feminine: in the sway of her hips, the hang of her breasts, the drape of her shining hair about her shoulders. As she approached she rose further off the floor, slowing, electric fire dancing about her.
She stopped; inclined her head. When she spoke the inside of her mouth flashed even brighter than her skin, as though her words were made from light; but her voice was strangely quiet, almost girlish. ‘You do not flee from me?’
Before Alicia could answer, the creature negligently raised a hand, finger pointed, and an arc of fire crackled onto Alicia’s stomach. She jumped and staggered backward, her breath bursting out at the shock and burning pain. She raised her own hand involuntarily to ward it away, and the electricity grounded itself there instead, biting her fingertips and thudding dully through her body.
And yet: while the sensations matched the horrific reality, the detached onlooker in Alicia noticed immediately that she was not being harmed. Her heart pounded as it had before, the blood flowed in her veins, the life in her was undiminished. With astonishment Alicia lifted her hand in front of her; it carried the electricity with it. She splayed out her fingers: arcs of fire crackled between them, each drawing lines of pain as they played over her skin, but they did not mark it.
She looked back at the creature: its eyes were also wide, level with hers. Somehow Alicia knew what to do. The energy was no longer flowing to the floor; instead she allowed it to gather within her. Then, with a shout that was both defiance and wonder, she returned it.
There was an explosion of brilliant light. The creature was blasted across the room, crashed into a wall, slumped to the floor flickering like a failing bulb. Alicia was at the bedside touching the shoulder of the naked woman sprawled there, seeing with relief that she was still alive, though traced all over with ugly burns.
She concentrated, listening with an inner sense, tapped a signal; spoke in her mind to an emergency services operator flustered by the spectacular crash of their computer terminal.
Then Alicia turned back to the electric creature. Her bare feet found the floor as she approached, forming once again the light hesitant steps of a young woman in jeans and t-shirt; an awkward human, but one newly determined to make contact, to understand another being.
The shine was returning to the creature’s pale skin. She stirred; looked at Alicia, spoke softly in her youthful voice: ‘You withstood me,’ she said with wonder. ‘You are not,’ she raised an arm weakly to the bed, ‘one of them.’
Alicia remembered: seeing empty flats through solid walls; leaping two flights of stairs without touching the ground; rising unsupported to meet a new power that could hurt her, but not damage her. The fantasy that had been her constant companion, for so many years; her excuse for her own awkwardness, her defence against cruel reality: it had been true, really true.
But she shook her head. ‘I am one of them,’ she countered. With sudden insight she added, ‘I protect them.’
The creature blinked, lowered her eyes. ‘I only wish to love,’ she pleaded. ‘But my passion burns them.’
Alicia held out her hand. An arc of white fire bridged the gap between it and the creature’s, making Alicia catch her breath. Then with a crackle like a new beginning, their hands clasped together.
By the time the ambulance arrived, all was quiet once again in the old building. In nights to come there were some partygoers who wondered at the flickering lights in the window of the basement flat; and Alicia’s colleagues and customers gradually became accustomed to a new openness, a new friendliness, which they returned, with some relief.
And occasionally there were lights in a cloudless sky that no-one could explain, and police would respond to calls with no return number to find muggers unconscious or huddled around painful burns, their victims raving about young women who flew and sparkled. It never made the news.
After all, it’s normal to have a queer imagination.