Oh no, I don't mean that it's an unrealistic scenario for Claire/Elle! We have seen Claire be fairly casual about self-injury, after all.
What I liked about '1 BR / 1 BA':
From their fathers they learned this: it's always the women who weep, and the women who carry on.
Elle handed over her cellphone but stomped on Claire's, stiletto heel digging into the plastic frame as if it were Claire's skeleton cracking under her boot.
Claire reaches out to touch and Elle shoves her, hard. "Get your own shower," she says.
(What she means is: I have no power here. What this means is: I am defenseless.)
How does it feel, Claire wonders, to set aside the still-crackling ghost of yourself each morning so you can shampoo your hair?
Any sensation is a stranger, a foreigner in the dull land of her body. If she were a normal human, Claire calculated, she would have been 97.9999% scar tissue by now, and evolution has its bumps, of course, its hiccups. Perhaps her nerves do not heal at the same rate as the rest of her cells, or they grow back strange. Perhaps the quicker she heals, the less she feels, until one morning she will wake up and not feel anything at all.
Is that what she was thinking, when she smashed her hand through a reinforced car window? Or is that what she thinks now, when her tongue traces the stress lines of Elle's face? Soon - soon for her, at least, the immortal one - those lines will be real, they will be permanent. Elle may be a flat plateau but wind can cut through rock. And when it happens, she'll be ready. When it happens. In the half-light she thinks is the sun through the curtains, plans follow the shell-curve of her ear and slither into her mind. And at night, Claire dreams of escaping, and wakes to find she's sweated through the sheets.
"Aren't you cute?" Elle grins, and Claire looks in the mirror.
"No," she says, "I look like you."
The scene with the groceries, and—
"What're you looking at?" she snaps, and Claire doesn't have the heart to tell her.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-05-16 12:11 am (UTC)What I liked about '1 BR / 1 BA':
From their fathers they learned this: it's always the women who weep, and the women who carry on.
Elle handed over her cellphone but stomped on Claire's, stiletto heel digging into the plastic frame as if it were Claire's skeleton cracking under her boot.
Claire reaches out to touch and Elle shoves her, hard. "Get your own shower," she says.
(What she means is: I have no power here. What this means is: I am defenseless.)
How does it feel, Claire wonders, to set aside the still-crackling ghost of yourself each morning so you can shampoo your hair?
Any sensation is a stranger, a foreigner in the dull land of her body. If she were a normal human, Claire calculated, she would have been 97.9999% scar tissue by now, and evolution has its bumps, of course, its hiccups. Perhaps her nerves do not heal at the same rate as the rest of her cells, or they grow back strange. Perhaps the quicker she heals, the less she feels, until one morning she will wake up and not feel anything at all.
Is that what she was thinking, when she smashed her hand through a reinforced car window? Or is that what she thinks now, when her tongue traces the stress lines of Elle's face? Soon - soon for her, at least, the immortal one - those lines will be real, they will be permanent. Elle may be a flat plateau but wind can cut through rock. And when it happens, she'll be ready. When it happens. In the half-light she thinks is the sun through the curtains, plans follow the shell-curve of her ear and slither into her mind. And at night, Claire dreams of escaping, and wakes to find she's sweated through the sheets.
"Aren't you cute?" Elle grins, and Claire looks in the mirror.
"No," she says, "I look like you."
The scene with the groceries, and—
"What're you looking at?" she snaps, and Claire doesn't have the heart to tell her.