When You Fall, Fall Properly

"And that was the last time I saw her,
The girl on the Netherly bus."
The poet closed his notepad and lowered his head like a priest leading prayers at a funeral for his own soul. Midge watched him for a moment as he basked in the polite applause of the coffee shop patrons, but she didn't join in. She pegged him to be a mid-thirties office drone, stuck in a job that killed him a little more every day, squandering a talent that never really got off the starting blocks and letting his dreams out once a week in the complimentary soft focus light of an open mic night. It seemed rude not to applaud his efforts, but encouraging him would be even worse.
The applause petered out and he left the stage quickly, his seat taken almost immediately by a Joni - Long blonde hair, floor length skirt, peasant blouse and an acoustic guitar - who launched into Big Yellow Taxi without a hint of irony. Midge shook her head sadly and turned away from the stage as Ari returned to the table.
"One grande skinny mocha latte with a shot of caramel, whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles pour moi, et pour madame, one straight black coffee."
Midge nodded her thanks, took the tiny white cup and sipped carefully at the scalding black liquid. Ari stirred three sachets of brown sugar into her own drink and ran her tongue along the length of the wooden stirrer, her eyes fixed on Midge's. She didn't get the response she was hoping for and sighed, then pointed the cleaned stick at the stage.
"Wailing witch alert."
Midge nodded, smiling in spite of herself.
"Open mic bingo; one fat stand up ripping off old Bill Hicks routines and we've got a full house."
Ari laughed, tossing her long red hair. To someone who didn't really know her it would sound warm and genuine.
"You're nervous," Midge said.
Ari shrugged.
"It's been a while."
"That wasn't down to me."
Ari's face darkened but she held her temper and took a deep drink from her cup. She tipped it up just a little further than was necessary, gave herself a thick whipped cream moustache and grinned broadly at Midge.
"Still friends?"
Midge nodded, unsmiling.
"To the end. Is that why you wanted to see me?"
Ari lowered her gaze, wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and took another, tidier sip of her coffee.
"Do you want a muffin or something?"
"Ari..."
The Joni finished her song but the scattered applause did little to cover the uncomfortable silence between them. As she launched into a passable rendition of One Day Like This, Midge drained her coffee and reached for her bag.
"Don't go."
Midge paused, surprised by the note of desperation.
"Give me a reason to stay."
Ari's eyes brimmed with tears but she wiped them away with her fingertips and composed herself.
"It used to be enough that I'd ask."
Midge had to fight the urge to sweep her into her arms and make it all better, but in the end she went too far in the opposite direction.
"You were one of us then."
Ari laughed, tossing her long red hair, but no-one would mistake it for happiness.
"I was never one of you. Not really."
Midge frowned.
"What the hell does that mean? We did everything together. You lived at the house. We fought side by side then went home and slept in the same bed. How could we be any more of a team than that?"
Ari lifted her bag onto the table and pulled out a tattered paperback book.
"It's more than just acting like the rest of you. Do you remember this?"
She pushed the book across the table. Midge glanced down at the garish cover with its barely legal depiction of Minnie, Mickey, Adolf and Eva.
"Sure. Going Underground. I found it for you in Portmeirion after the thing with the Magister Templi. What happened to it."
"It got trashed when the orb went wild round the house. The last time. Remember?"
Midge blushed, looked away.
"I remember what we did afterwards... But I still don't see what that has to do with anything."
Ari turned the book over. The spine had been torn in two, so that half of the book was missing.
"Today, Artie Love is almost completely forgotten," she read, "a footnote in the brief history of English underground comics, but his greatest creation..."
She waved her hand in the air, indicating the missing words which floated out there somewhere, waiting to be captured and pinned to the page.
"That's all there is. I searched everywhere for the rest of that book. I even tried to find another copy but it's like it doesn't even exist. There's no record of the author or half the people he interviewed."
"So it came through a lesion. So what? None of us have histories here."
Ari pulled the rest of the book out of her bag and laid it on the table, her hand covering the next page so that Midge couldn't read it.
"How many times have you seen Fliss die?"
Midge shook her head as if brushing away an annoying fly.
"What?"
"And how often has Monk OD'd on some god-awful concoction of smack and jellyfish brains and who knows what else?"
"Don't-"
"You died in my arms Midge. You bled out while I held you in a stinking cellar in Prague. I had to close your eyes and leave you in the water and go home and burn my fucking clothes because they were that stiff with your blood that they would never come clean."
Her voice was rising and a couple of people at nearby tables began to watch in the hopes of a full scale meltdown, but Midge just laughed. For the first time since Ari's call she felt relaxed and in control once more.
"Is that it? You're worried about us getting hurt? Oh, you poor, sweet baby!"
She reached out and laid her hand over Ari's, turning it over to entwine her fingers. For a moment she felt the old tingle in her fingertips, the static charge that always seemed to flicker between them.
"We can't really die baby. We're not here. The silver star - "
Ari gripped her fingers tightly and turned her hand over. Midge's words died on her lips as she saw the long, puckered scar which ran the length of Ari's forearm.
"How...?"
"If I ask you, will you come with me? Leave this behind, start over in the real world?"
"Ari, I can't - "
"You mean you won't. Course you can leave. Just get up and walk. Say the word and you'll be free. Well?"
Midge looked at her across the table, remembering a time when they were closer than any two people can get, tears blurring the woman across the table into the girl she had once loved.
"I can't."
Ari nodded, released her hand and began to pull away, then paused with her fingers still covering the page.
"I didn't understand when he brought me the rest of the book. I didn't understand why it was him, or what the book meant. Now I do. Look."
Midge frowned, looking down at the book. Ari pulled her hand away with a flourish and read the remainder of the line aloud.
"Arihaily Ilya lives on."
Midge stared at the page, the words swimming before her like inky fish. She took a moment to digest their meaning, then looked up at the stranger sitting opposite as she covered the book once more.
Ari fired once, the bullet tearing straight through Midge's left eye. As the impact rocked her in her chair, she coughed up a sudden gout of blood that splashed across the back of Ari's hand, staining the pages between her fingers, leaving a perfect hand print of text and yellowed paper..
The Joni screamed and dropped her guitar as the other patrons struggled to back away, turning over tables and chairs in their terror. Ari stood and fired three shots into the wall behind the singer, barely even glancing at her.
"Sit. Down."
The screaming faltered and died, leaving the sound of a barista hiding behind the coat rack whispering frantic directions to the emergency services operator. Ari swung the gun around and fired another shot into the mass of coats and scarves.
"Now!"
The barista stepped out, holding his phone up in his hand, then sat heavily on the floor.
Moving quickly now, Ari stepped around the table, placed her hand against Midge's soft neck and felt the warmth ebb away. She closed her eyes, blinking away a rogue tear, then looked up at the ceiling. As the final laboured pulse faded beneath her tender fingers, the smell of violets filled the room and a soft glow began to shine from every surface. Somewhere a choir began to sing, a song she recognised but could never quite recall. She fought the urge to fall to her knees and bow her head, to show obeisance and piety.
She raised the gun above her head, her arm shaking. The pressure behind her eyeballs grew until she had to cry out, but she gripped Midge's shoulder to steady herself and kept the gun trained on the spot directly above the corpse. The music became louder, shaking the room, rattling cups and glasses and sending them to shatter on the floor. The other customers began to moan in fear and awe as the light became blinding and cold as ice. Ari barely noticed as she turned to one side and vomited.
The gun in her hand felt like an anvil, Thor's hammer raised to the heavens. As the pure white light enveloped her the gun grew cold enough to burn the flesh from her palm. A thin skein of ice formed across her fist and down her arm, her breath clouding in the air before her. The choir became a shriek of feedback, a loop of distortion and glory that blew out the windows and began to peel back the roof like a sardine can. The light rained down like shards of frozen fire, pushing the coffee shop patrons to crawl in the debris like worms, barely able to breathe beneath its crushing weight. Only Ari remained standing, arm outstretched, leaning on her dead lover for support.
As the room shook like a miscued filmstrip,
As the singing reached its crescendo,
As the world opened up like a flower,
As the silver star descended,
As her lover's eyes fluttered open,
She fired a single bullet into god's heart and plunged them all back into darkness.
Midge slumped forwards and began to bleed across the cracked tabletop.
The Joni wept uncontrollably on the floor of the stage.
The barista huddled in the corner with his hands pressed to his eyes.
The poet clutched his broken spectacles and began to crawl towards the door.
Ari wondered if her hearing would ever return, flicked open her mobile and hit send on the message saved in her drafts box.
And somewhere in the darkness on the other side of the world, Elliott opened his mobile, read Ari's message and smiled.
"It's started."