Chapter Text
The bleak blue backlight of the neon sign fixed to her wall left a white afterimage when Soul closed her eyes. It was almost perfect.
She removed her hands from where they covered her face, smudged eyeliner on the ridges of her palms. She stared at the black streaks for a while, then wiped them down on the pleats of her dark blue skirt.
This room had been the product of three months of hard work - acquiring a custom-made sign, plain white furniture, the giant glass tank at the side of the room.
It was constructed to be a photography studio, maybe a darkroom, and she liked the way the soft powdery light from the sign outlined wispy edges of the simple white box positioned in the center.
She had painted the walls in soft cornflower blue, removed the main lighting from the ceiling, leaving only the neon sign. One of her friends had loaned her an old projector, and this she used to illuminate the walls with a pretty sapphire glow.
She needed something else - another colour, perhaps. Not just blue.
There was a glowing square around the white box in the middle of the room where she had drawn a thin line of luminescent paint on the floor with a brush. Around this box she had lined little tin cans in random order, some stacked on top of one another, some lying on their side. Most of them were taken from the kitchen pantry, where she knew her mother kept the baking supplies. Canned cherries.
She had one balanced on her knee now, as she sat cross-legged on the floor and surveyed the layout of the room.
Canned cherries were rather sweet. She was careful not to get any of the syrup on her clothes. They were little red jewels twinkling in the almost-dark as she held the can up to the dim light and turned it this way and that.
Red colours were striking, even while they were submerged and choking in blue.
She set the can down carefully, took another bite. The empty glass box by the side of the room was something she initially planned to paint with glitter and fill with blue sand.
It was an old fish tank, and that was where fish belonged.
Soul finished off the last of the preserved cherries and observed the reddish syrup swirling around at the bottom of the metal can.
She thought about fish.
Something red or blood orange would be nice.
Soul went to the aquarium with a jar and a plastic bag in either hand. She would buy a red fish and a blue fish. She thought the colours would complement each other very nicely against the deep-coloured backdrop.
The tanks were angular, crystalline prisons. Water was filled three-quarters of the way up, a kaleidoscope of burning orange and blue. She wandered over to this section of colour, where the glass boxes were arranged in straight rows.
The ornamental fishes. The pet fishes.
The lady who ran the shop was very nice, and showed her to a corner of the shop to view the Siamese fighting fish. Their fins were chiffon-like shreds drifting behind them, shawls fluttering in liquid wind.
Blue, mauve, orange.
The lady wasn’t looking her way.
She dipped her fingers into the water - delicately, like she was afraid of puncturing the surface. Everything was cold and alive, glistening and rippling and pulsing beneath her fingers.
Inside, the fish coloured the glass a bright orange, some blue at the corners. For one moment she allowed herself to be dazed. The water, gone mad with light.
With the other hand she gently lowered the glass jar into the tank.
It was a simple job. She had caught herself an angel to take home.
Golden hair drenched blue, wondering eyes framed with neat outlines of black and glossy lips set in a slight pout. This was the girl who later filled the tank with water and released the fish into the glass hollow. This was the girl in the gutter, pink-cheeked with rosy hesitation.
The lone fish, swimming in circles. She trailed her finger over the surface of the water for a while, cheek pressed to the edge of the tank. The red was a nice touch. She pressed her lips to the cold surface, a sudden, small gesture of affection, a rush of tender commiseration, and left a red smudge on the glass.
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THINGS WE GAIN IN THE FLOOD - A SHORT FILM
The things we gain in the flood are composed with great care, almost as if the storm had willingly controlled its violence, held something back when carving out statues of dead towns. The sea washes, thick and heavy over bio luminescence stuck to the seafloor. Yet they give you fairy lights of green and blue, and you are pressed with wonder at the extent of how detached beauty can be.
It is almost a kind of music.
TRANSCRIPT
She flicks the switch of the projector, dons a silk varsity jacket and turns the camcorder around on its stand. The room is bathed in a gently trembling blue image, a superimposed ocean on the plain walls.
Soul moves the angle of the camera around the room in a slow pan, starting from a close-up of the blue fish tank tinged with a stain of raspberry and a thin, bending river of white back light.
(voiceover) That’s my little friend. I haven’t got a name for him yet ... but I will, very soon.
(camera pans slightly to the right to show the impressive neon sign: four Chinese characters.)
Soul tries to read them out in a strained whisper, keeping her voice intricate and hushed. The accent is a little off, but still captures that wistful, perfectionistic charm of girlhood.
(camera zooms out, reveals the white box and the cherry cans arranged around a glowing blue-white line on the floor)
(voiceover) That’s the main spot for photography. It’s a little art project I'm doing. Want to see?
(camera remains still for a few seconds, then pans to the fishtank, zooms in on the Betta fish)
(voiceover, amused whisper) Hey there. (pauses, laughs softly at her own silliness) Do you want to see it?
(camera shakes a little, then stabilizes and focuses on the white box in the middle of the room)
Soul moves out from behind the camera and sits on the box. She crosses her legs, folds her hands primly in her lap, and looks around the room, seemingly waiting for something to happen.
The following audio is muffled and grainy, but the words are clear enough.
(voiceover) I was quiet for a while. There was an obsession with the colour blue, I think. (laughs) The air tasted sweet. It was good back then. I held my own hand and ... stopped biting my fingernails.
Soul bends down, still seated, and picks up one of the cherry cans. It seems to be unopened. She takes her time to prise the lid open, gently inching it forward, completely focused on the task at hand.
The audio crackles slightly.
(voiceover, quiet, steady) When you breathe, you don’t notice it. (pauses, heavy breathing) You don’t normally remind your heart to keep beating, but it’s still beating, isn’t it?
Soul takes a cherry out and places it carefully into her mouth, chews without looking at the camera.
(voiceover, whisper) Sweetness clings to your mouth when you leave. It disappears when you wash it away.
The footage suddenly switches to display still, monochromatic scenes in which nothing happens.
Curiously, only the colour red is highlighted.
Apples floating in a clawfoot tub. (subtitle) Looking for forbidden fruit in a bathtub.
Pulling stems from cherries. (subtitle) Tying cherry knots with your fingers instead.
An ornate mirror with nothing reflected in it. (subtitle) Stranger - where are you going? Whose clothes are you wearing?
Footage switches back to show Soul, now facing the camera, seated back in the blue room.
(voiceover) You pretend to pretend to know them, imagine knowing someone other than yourself.
The audio is abruptly cut off. Soul leaves the rest of the cherries in the can, places it idly on the floor. She turns to look at the neon sign behind her, expression hidden from the camera.
(voiceover: quiet, steady, benign) Maybe we can be scared of one thing, if we are allowed to be scared at all. (pause) My song has already ... paled.
The projector image shivers behind her.
The sprinklers turn on. The room becomes a distorted diorama of blue, punctuated by thousands of falling silver specks.
Soul remains seated on the white box, looks slowly up at the ceiling and covers her mouth with one hand.
The cherry cans are rapidly filling with water, knocking over, coral and rose and vermilion spilling out onto the flooded floor.
In the background, the neon sign flickers. Sparks that escape are faintly extinguished, and one by one the individual letters blink and burn out. The blue light of the room fades with lingering slowness until all that remains is the weak, watery glow from the fish tank, the lone fish travelling in lazy half-circles behind the thick glass.
Soul is nowhere to be seen, even though she can unmistakably be heard in the concluding audio.
(voiceover, strained)
When you sink to the bottom, you can’t feel the rain.