Ascent
or, the Risen and Fallen on the Seventh Floor
by Kirryn Lia Todd
Nutmeg’s apartment was as close to luxurious as a room here at the hotel could get. She had hung sheets of burgundy gauze, or perhaps chiffon (I failed home economics in high school, but that wasn’t saying much, since I failed everything, towards the end) over the walls, held up by pins in the shape of golden butterflies on the cornice pieces. Her furniture was sparse, but undoubtedly antique: the rich, redwood coffee table, the chaise-lounge upholstered in velvet or something like it and two matching single chairs, her single bed with its satin comforter – no, it was probably a genuine duvet, not an imitation doona, but a duvet filled with duck feathers, brought direct from Europe. (Where was it that duvets came from? Switzerland? Germany? I wasn’t sure.) There was a rich scent in the air, like how Marlboro and Nag Champa perfurmed my apartment, but it didn’t seem to be cigarettes and incense in here. It smelled like roses, like fresh bunches of roses had been placed in every corner of the room, but I couldn’t see any flowers anywhere.
I loved the look of Nutmeg’s apartment. It was completely different to my own, and there was no way I’d have been able to pull it off, myself – I would have spilled coffee on the finely upholstered chairs, tripped over and accidentally torn the chiffon off the walls – but it was beautiful, and strangely relaxing to be in.
Nutmeg let both Mephisto and I in, but not before giving Mephisto a filthy look (which of course he responded to by smiling serenely). I was impressed that it was eight thirty in the morning on a Saturday and she was already dressed. If I had been in my pajamas, and the demon hadn’t been around, I wouldn’t have bothered changing out of them until ten or eleven. On bad days sometimes I just didn’t bother changing out of them at all.
“Tea?” Nutmeg asked, as Mephisto made himself comfortable on the chaise and I sat awkwardly in one of the matching chairs. As much as I loved Nutmeg’s apartment, I never felt entirely comfortable in it. It wasn’t anything that Nutmeg did or didn’t do, it was simply me, being crazy. No matter how often someone said to me, ‘make yourself at home’, I never could unless I was in my own space.
“Coffee,” Mephisto replied. “Black and nothing, if you please.”
“I don’t please,” Nutmeg shot back from across the room in the kitchenette area, “And coffee wasn’t even offered, if I remember rightly. Which I do.”
“Well, that is a pity,” Mephisto drawled, and waved his hand in a soft flowing sort of movement. A moment later, he was holding one of my whiskey tumblers, filled with the mysterious clear liquid once again.
“I’ll, I’ll have tea,” I stuttered, hoping to muffle the argument (or whatever it was that Nutmeg and Mephisto engaged in, I wasn’t sure that ‘arguments’ were really the best term for them).
Nutmeg smiled. “Rose or caramel?”
“Expensive tastes.”
“Shut your face, demon. Sweet pea?”
“Rose, just, rose…please.”
Nutmeg brewed the tea and brought it over to the coffee table, in her lovely black teacups with gold roses and butterflies around the rim. I think they were made of expensive china, or antique china, or something along those lines. I lifted the cup to my nose and inhaled deeply – I just adored the scent of rose tea, and I loved drinking it when visiting Nutmeg. It was a scent and a faint taste that I knew I would associate with her for the rest of my life, even if she–
Left? Disappeared?
Made like Amaranth?
“Shut up,” I mumbled to myself, squeezing my eyes closed as I sipped the scalding tea. It burned the tip of my tongue, but I didn’t care.
“So,” Nutmeg said, looking at Mephisto and I over the rim of her own teacup, her eyes carefully veiled. “You wanted to talk to me about…these dreams.”
“You know more than the average Joe, when it comes to dreams,” Mephisto said. He was lounging on the chaise, now, looking as if he owned it. He looked utterly decadent, relaxing on that expensive, antique piece of furniture – decadent and completely sinful, richer than a drop of pure honey on my tongue, like the soft strains of an alto sax being played to the night sky. Again, my knees went weak. I was suddenly very glad I was sitting down, and that I had put my teacup back onto the coffee table.
“I know some things,” Nutmeg replied, warily. “I never really concentrated on dreams.”
“Some things should be enough.”
“Don’t you know about dreams? I mean…knowledge…”
“Concrete knowledge,” Mephisto replied. “And I know how to appear in dreams, but meanings…I tended not to care. I don’t go around giving humans nightmares, after all.”
“You give me nightmares,” Nutmeg smirked.
“Like I said, humans.” Mephisto sipped at his drink calmly. Nutmeg gritted her teeth.
“That was a low blow, you piece of…I told you, I’m not here to–”
“And I told you that I understand, and I believe you, and that I think you were punished far too harshly for what happened.” The demon looked at Nutmeg seriously. “I’m not here to judge you. I need your help. You have one foot in my world and one in the human world. I don’t. There are many things I don’t understand. I need your help. Please?”
Nutmeg laughed hollowly, her eyes dropping from Mephisto’s face to the portrait on the coffee table, the redhead in the gilt frame. She looked as if she was fighting the urge to either pick up the frame and throw it at the wall, or to hold it to her heart.
“Why on Earth have you gotten involved in human affairs like this, demon? Don’t you know it only leads to heartbreak?”
Mephisto was silent for a moment, staring at her, then answering quietly, “Who knows? Perhaps for the same reason that you…”
“All right, all right!” she cried, throwing her hands up in front of her face as if to shield herself from something hurting her. “Leave it, just leave it. I’ll help you. I think you’re a fool and a liar and not only that, a complete…complete…a vaffanculo! Never mind. I’ll help. Elouise?”
I jumped. “Y-Yes!”
“Tell me about this dream.”
Haltingly, I tried to explain the strangely lit room with no walls, just ceiling and floor that went on forever and ever, its twisting pipes on the roof, the chill of the place, the mysterious slime that appeared to coat the entirety of the floor. Even more hesitantly, I describe the no-faces, how their mouths had appeared, then their eyes, then how they were torn out and grew back, the constant low humming. By the end of it, my hands were trembling where they lay in my lap like pale, injured animals. I didn’t even think about picking my teacup up again.
“But that’s not…that’s not the only thing. About the dream, the room and the no-faces. Mephisto seems to think they’re important but I think there’s something more important…”
Nutmeg arched a brow. “Oh? And what’s that?”
“The last two dreams – the ones where they didn’t…didn’t…get me…it wasn’t me.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t you?”
“It wasn’t me in the dream,” I replied.
“It wasn’t – you mean, you were watching someone else fight them?” Nutmeg frowned. I shook my head.
“No, I mean, I was someone else. I was in their body, and it felt and looked like mine, but it was someone else entirely. They wore combat boots and a short skirt. They knew how to fight…and they were good at it. Really good, Nutmeg. I mean, I know how to knee someone in the groin–”
“You take note of that,” she smirked at Mephisto, who inclined his head, mockingly.
“–but I don’t know how to fight, or to knock people over, or where to kick to kill someone. I don’t know how to gouge eyes out! This person, this girl, she…” I gestured helplessly. “She was unafraid, too. She didn’t tense or anything. She made herself all limp and then she’d explode like a firecracker overstuffed with gun powder. She was a fighter…”
Nutmeg pursed her lips. “And what do you think, demon?”
“I think she’s being perfectly honest,” Mephisto replied. “She has no reason to lie.”
“I didn’t mean that!” Nutmeg shot back heatedly. “Idiot. I believe her as well. But it sounds like…I don’t even know if there’s a word for it.”
“Soul parasitism?” Mephisto suggested.
“Does that work in dreams? It just seems…off.”
“I don’t know. I was thinking it was merely a portent for something, and you would help us figure it out.”
“It could be.” Nutmeg crossed her long legs, and leaned her chin on her fist, deep in thought. “But…like I said, coincidence is a word for arrogant atheists, not…not us. If it is a portent, I have no idea what it could mean. Well, some vague ideas, but…”
“Couldn’t you look it up in one of those dream dictionary things?” Mephisto asked, waving his hand towards a mahogany bookshelf against the wall.
“Dream dictionaries are complete bullshit,” Nutmeg replied contemptuously. “Take the crow, for example. Crows are harbingers of death and doom and too much Edgar Allen Poe–” I giggled at that “–in the English speaking world. In Japanese lore, they’re a good omen, very good luck. There is no single definition for anything, and then you get into personal mythology and so forth…they are rubbish, complete rubbish. I thought you would have known that.”
Mephisto shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t give people dreams. I merely walk through them.” He tilted his head and grinned a little. “Which is like walking through the middle of a Dali painting, most of the time. The human mind is a fascinating thing…”
“What are you two talking about?” I asked, timidly. I’d stopped shaking from discussing the no-faces and the terrible wall-less room, and was now just simply confused. “I don’t…I don’t think I understand.”
Nutmeg sighed. “You won’t, sweet pea, and that’s probably a good–”
“Oh!!”
I leapt out of my seat, standing up as if someone had electrified me. It was hideous manners, I knew, but that sound, that sound–
Killian was playing his guitar again, shimmering suns being born just across the hall.
“Oh!” I leapt across Nutmeg’s apartment in three long strides, and pressed my ear to the door, rapt. My skin was tingling, my head humming, my heart thundering uproariously in my throat. “Oh…”
“El…Elouise?!” I think I heard Nutmeg’s shocked and puzzled voice behind me, but I couldn’t answer – I was having life and breath and missing time breathed into me yet again, by that sound, that glorious noise.
“This is what he was playing…this…when I first met you,” I said to Mephisto, breathlessly. “This is the music that…that made me giddy and stuff…”
“The music that turns you into a song?!” Nutmeg asked.
“No, no, that’s different…this is just…music like a drug…” I closed my eyes, pressed my hands against the door. “Like the best drug no one’s ever invented.”
“Demon–”
“It’s all right,” I heard Mephisto say to Nutmeg, just barely within my hearing. “It’s very different when she turns into a song itself. This is…well. A very interesting form of musical appreciation.”
“Honestly,” Nutmeg huffed. “Elouise, stop standing at the door and drooling like an idiot. Go and see the boy.”
I blinked at her, somewhat confused. “But…I’m talking to you and Mephisto…”
“At this moment, you’re not. And I have things I need to say to this fool of a demon in private. So go on, get out of here. Shoo. You’re ridiculous.”
I grinned at her widely, and slipped out the door. “Thank you, Nutmeg!”
“Ridiculous!” she said again, as I closed the door.