I Will Sing When You're All Dead

[archiveofarethusa]

I WILL SING WHEN YOU'RE ALL DEAD 1. Johnny Hollow - People Are Strange 2. Mychael and Jeff Danna - Once Upon a Time 3. Cake - Opera Singer 4. The Ronettes - Be My Baby 5. Diamanda Galas - Interlude (Time) 6. St. Vincent and Andrew Bird - What, Me Worry 7. Bat For Lashes feat. Scott Walker - The Big Sleep 8. Fisher - Mad Girl's Love Song 9. Jean Sibelius - The Tempest, Op. 109 - The Storm 10. Connie Francis - Who's Sorry Now 11. Blue Foundation - Eyes On Fire (Ariel Remix) 12. Radiohead - Climbing Up the Walls 13. PJ Harvey - Rid of Me 14. Kacey Johansing - Spider Song 15. The World/Inferno Friendship Society - "M" is For Morphine 16. Lenka - Like a Song ~ download ~

Faces come out of the rain when you're strange.
No one remembers your name when you're strange.
- Johnny Hollow, "People Are Strange"

Helene hated Bergen as surely as it hated her. She grew up lonely and taunted, poor and disregarded; and if she'd ever been soft, that had necessarily changed too swiftly to take note of. When she was jabbed, she cut back. When she was disregarded, she spoke louder, but she never took a single friend in that damned town. What good was a quiet small town girl to Helene when the world was at her feet waiting to be walked?

The world was no oyster of Helene's, but she had learned how to crack it open and take what was hers.

Instrumental
- Mychael and Jeff Danna, "Once Upon a Time"

Honningstrand Hall was as grand as they said it was. Sweet-smelling incense burned at several doorways, giving the hall a foreign scent that Helene hadn't known the likes of until she stepped foot inside the red carpeted floors. The walls were engraved with every fair thing of a higher plane that mattered to a performer, muses, angels, Milosz Vang. Voices that would make sirens weep lilted tantalizingly, softly, muffled from behind theater doors.

One day not very far off, people would regard Helene as the shining centerpiece of this place. She accepted it as no less than was due to her.

Some people, they call me monster; some people, they call me saint
My talent feeds my darker side, yet no one will complain.
- Cake, "Opera Singer"

People spoke about Helene like she wasn't real. She was a terrible beauty, they said, and paid great sums to come hear her again. She was an angel or a demon, depending upon whom was asked, and sometimes she was both. The one thing it seemed she was incapable of being was awful. A month or two singing in barrooms and dance halls and she was starring at Honningstrand Hall in the latest Erik Hellang opera, and yet none were surprised who heard her.

She owned her dreams and the dreams of others. It was still not enough. Why wasn't it enough?

The night we met I knew I needed you so, and if I had the chance I'd never let you go
So won't you say you love me? I'll make you so proud of me.
- The Ronettes, "Be My Baby"

Vera Thurman moved like a spirit inhuman on stage, but off it she didn't glide as much as stride. And somehow, impossibly, she was more enchanting still in person than playing a goddess delivering the fine poetry of Hellang.

"I think I'd like to run away and produce my own musical some days. It isn't Hellang, not really," Helene said.

Vera nodded sympathetically. "Yes, not really. It's just that his ego is enough to fill the house some nights and his ass is tight enough to fetch top dollar at the hen houses."



It's her, Helene realized. It's this woman I've been missing.

Time is like a dream and now for a time you are mine.
Let's hold fast to the dream, that tastes and sparkles like wine.
- Diamanda Galas, "Interlude (Time)"

The night they first really made love, desperate, tender, and still partially clothed, Helene wasn't sure if Vera would disappear into her dreams on the morrow. Fame she'd welcomed and demanded, but this overwhelming affection she felt and was given - something so wonderful couldn't have been this easy. It still felt transient, but Helene could see herself staying together with Vera like this for as long as her life would allow.

Helene woke the next morning to find Vera draped over her, as if in sleep she'd mistaken her for a comforter. She waited several minutes to wake her up.

What, me worry? I never do. I'm always amused and amusing you.
Without fear of impending doom, life is like banquet food; pleasure to peruse.
- St. Vincent and Andrew Bird, "What, Me Worry (Soiree de Poche)"

And so for a spell life was a song, written just for her. Helene could request the presence of librettists and barroom bards, duchesses and pirate captains alike, and all would answer her summons. And she knew, for she'd asked after all of them in time. She never wanted for company, but she required only Vera and an appreciative audience.

She consorted with whom she pleased and cast aside without thought those without their uses. Why not? The world was as opened to her as a whore's legs, after all, and she dared not forget it offered itself just as sincerely.

How can it be the last show? How can it be?
No more spotlights coming down from heaven; it's a goodbye, it's curtains down time.
- Bat For Lashes feat. Scott Walker, "The Big Sleep"

They were old news.

Vera had tried to tell her, Nik had told her. No one in polite society would openly admire a sapphite, and the Dramaturgie destroyed her reputation with only a few poorly written interviews with ushers Helene had never met.

People spat at Vera rather than allow her to audition, as if they were greater - as if anyone was greater - and when Helene spat back, it was like Honningstrand closed its borders to them.

"What do we need them for?" Helene said. "There's a place for us. We just need to make it."

Vera smiled and nodded, but she knew better.

I close my eyes, the world drops dead
I think I made you up inside my head.
- Fisher, "Mad Girl's Love Song"

She'd reached for the sun and she'd gotten it, oh, she'd gotten her wish. She'd wanted to burn like a beacon, and now the sun was scorching her from the inside. She blinked, and she could see it, a possibility tied round her neck and sewn into her heart, leading...

Everywhere. Helene could see everywhere, and it was so loud she wanted to crush the world to stop its blithering. First Honningstrand, then the world, she thought hazily.

She could feel herself igniting, the sun a speck in her shadow. She'd have satisfaction. No simple goddess could stop her.

Who was this for?

Instrumental
- Jean Sibelius, "The Tempest, Op. 109 - The Storm"

Honningstrand was on fire, and Helene laughed. It was less fun than ripping that reporter's face off, but how fantastic was flame, how marvelous was blood!

Honningstrand was built on false dreams; this purge was a boon to the rest of the world, surely. And if they cried and grieved come morning, what were their tears to her? They had paid to read of her misery and strife, they had disowned she and her lover for their sexuality. Well, if it was pain they wanted, she would show them her fucking razor blades.

Helene sang as Honningstrand Hall came down.

You had your way, now you must pay
I'm glad that you're sorry now.
- Connie Francis, "Who's Sorry Now?"

It was enlightening what a week of catatonic delirium could reveal about the people around you.

Say, for example, your sweetheart.

You work endlessly for a way to ensure eternal happiness for you both, you take the sun into your mortal body so she could shine. You suffer. You die a thousand tiny deaths.

She resigns herself to insignificance unworthy of herself even now and gets engaged to some dashing, slack-jawed lordling.

Helene didn't understand what Vera had to cry about, though the sound grew sweeter with each new hysterical hitch.

The jerked heartstrings of Vera's fiance were not officially documented among her wedding gifts.

I'll seek you out, flay you alive
one more word and you won't survive.
- Blue Foundation, "Eyes On Fire (Ariel Remix)"

Extraordinarily enough, it was possible to get paid for freelance justice. Helene liked the jealous lovers best of all. They seldom had cause for worry, but they were always so much happier when their sweethearts were lying guilty and fileted in their graves.

Well, Helene lived to please.

"My father is kind of a big deal," said Clara Hannon. "Can't we just agree to make this - go away?"

"Agree to make this go away?" Helene's eyes lit up like matches. "Am I not working fast enough for your taste, sweetling?"

The brine on the machete really did well bringing her voice out, Helene thought.

I am the key to the lock in your house that keeps the toys in the basement
and if you get too far inside, you only see my reflection.
- Radiohead, "Climbing Up the Walls"

Largessa found a suitable Branded, of course. A child named Holly, uncertain in her own mind, wary of the sudden new infinity she had wired into her fingertips. They met in a dream, and she was immediately trusting. It was easy to slither into her skin and slip her a stray memory afterward. She read horror stories and woke up shaking when she dreamed with twice the imagination of the goriest author, but there was no fear in her. What a delight she'd be to mold, what a sharp little razor!

What a beautiful lifetime moment it would be to break her.

Yeah you're not rid of me, I'll make you lick my injuries
I'm gonna twist your head off, see?
- PJ Harvey, "Rid of Me"

Every year Helene would come back to Bergen to tie Vera down and make her remember.

She would steal the breath from Vera's lungs and grant her air only as she pleased, in gasps and moans and screams. She would bite and lick and fuck, and Vera would damn well remember what she'd given up, and she could shout and bite and snarl, she could twist and claw like she couldn't tell if they were fighting for life or fucking for passion, but there in her respectable husband's bed it meant nothing; Vera was always waiting, and she always, always remembered.

I don't have a reason to believe anything you're saying and I don't have a reason to follow any lines you cast
and out into the night I have only one desire: I would love nothing more, nothing more than to watch you sink.
- Kacey Johansing, "Spider Song"

It was a morning uncharacteristically clear in the Shadowlands when Helene decided she would kill Largessa. Because it was possible, yes; gods could die. Would all die eventually, when the lights of the universe went out. God and insect alike were about as fond of Lady Destiny as Helene, and small wonder. She was forever the mother whose child was never good enough, who was responsible for every good and no ill and was beyond even godhood.

She had her weapon and her mission. Helene had been named after the first and greatest godslayer, after all, and falling short was unacceptable.

You can't help the things you do, can you?
Every man for himself all against you and God against all.
- The World/Inferno Friendship Society, "M is For Morphine"

This was good for an afternoon.

A laughing mob beat a baker with his own stale, cheaply made loaves of bread. The mob was comprised of many poor vagrants wandered into town from many dusty roads and had never spoken to Helene, who presently sat in a corner drinking wine and watching with unimpressed eyes. The confusion and terror rang a terrible toll from the baker's throat, his voice already thin and hoarse, but the scene itself was like art.

Helene pulled a long, invisible thread, and one man began moving the baker toward his oven. Sometimes the classics were the best.

I can't forget you when you're gone, you're like a song that goes around in my head
And how I regret it's been so long, oh what went wrong? Could it be something I said?
- Lenka, "Like a Song"

"Sometimes I wonder about us," Helene said. "I'm not the girl I was, but Vera and I were in love. And then suddenly, she wanted husbands. What's so bad about me?"

The senators - dukes, elders, whatever it was she'd been paid to kill - stared at her with their glassy eyes. They said nothing.

"You're not very helpful," Helene accused, but the bodies remained silent. "No wonder you were killed. I'd have done it free."

She laid herself down on top of them and settled down to sleep. It was still more comfortable and hygienic than the last hotel she'd stayed at, she thought.