Royal Birthdays for today, April 25th:
Louis IX, King of France, 1214
Conrad IV, King of Germany, Jerusalem and Sicily, 1228
Edward II, King of England 1284
Carlota Joaquina of Spain, Queen of Portugal, 1775
Mary of the United Kingdom, Duchess of Gloucester and Edinburgh, 1776
Alice of the United Kingdom, Grand Duchess of Hesse and by Rhine, 1843
Mary, Princess Royal and Countess of Harewood, 1897
Muna al-Hussein, Princess of Jordan, 1941
Louis Alphonse, Duke of Anjou, 1974
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Moneymakers, pt.xliv // Interlude
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The house is breathing. There’s no other way to describe it.
An inhale. The room expands rapidly. The walls disappear from view, as does the ceiling, and the floor on which he lies. Conrad feels like he’s falling. Not just suspended; falling, with all the associated panic, the flailing limbs, the flickering sense of orientation. Lights flash around him, and sounds spring from constantly moving sources, a voice that talks to him from below, then above, then below, then above…
Then he’s conscious. It’s the equilibrium, the second between inhale and exhale, where the air moves in neither direction. Dizzy, he raises a heavy head to peer down the length of his body, the fabric over his chest stained red and grey. His eyes seek for meaning and find it, albeit briefly, in the scene unfolding at his side. One foreign hand holds his elbow steady, while another grasps his palm, like a handshake, and slowly lowers the wrist outwards at an angle from the rest of his body. The colors pulse against his retina. His shoulder slides into place.
An exhale. Like water seeping between the fingers of a tightening fist, the air is suddenly pushed out of the room. Humid, smothering. It’s not just that he can’t breathe; it’s the way the room closes in on him, a crushing weight that encroaches on his body, relentless. Conrad is trapped in the lung of a sighing giant, pressed between its ribs and the contracting diaphragm. Concrete doesn’t care much for the plight of the living. Its texture is rough against his skin, and the pain is amplified by the heat of the friction it causes. It hurts so bad. It hurts. The words bubble from his lips. He’s pretty sure they’re not real words, but that doesn’t seem to matter, they leave him just the same. Burst in the air, silently, gone.
There are two facets to it; one is the heaving, the bending of the plasterboard, dipping down towards him, deep beats of pressure, before it retracts once again, and he is free. Another is the texture. Subtle clusters of color and light which pulsate to the rhythm of his heartbeat, writhing like a colony of ants, grainy against his tongue. He can taste the ceiling in some instances, sharp and bitter, coppery.
“You have to lie still.”
Lie still. Still. You have to lie still. You have to lie.
Sharp exhale. Falling concrete slams the air out of his lungs, mounting an incomprehensible weight on his being. The house’s guts churn around him, stone grinding against stone. Arms pinned to his chest by a grip that doesn’t budge, no matter how hard he pushes against it. Red shrieks, and the looming silhouette of his murderer.
Time stands still in the moment where the tension finally breaks again. The sting is drawn out, whining in the aftermath of the crash. He misses against the light, but it vanishes. Seventeen years ago, late at night, they stopped at an inn somewhere along the I-95; Conrad pretended to be asleep. Yellowstone never stuck, but no force on earth could take that memory from him, of being carried through a maze of unfamiliar corridors, rocking along with the steps of his dad, watching the wallpaper drift by through the careful slits of his eyes. An aching cheek is tucked against wool in the thoughtless pursuit of a heartbeat. A heavier core, longer limbs, strange gravity.
He reaches out, blindly –
His hand meets nothing but air.
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