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FEARFUL SYMMETRY written by Amygdala
Rain lashes against the window pane, driven by a wind pregnant with the anticipation of Winter. Each droplet forms a minor rivulet of water scouring a meandering canyon through the dusty grime. I watch their aimless movements with fascination, marveling at the transient patterns cast across the glass. Individual streams intertwine before my eyes, some merging to form a powerful river, others shrugging off anything more than just the briefest of encounters. Eventually, they are all absorbed into one vast flood-plain spreading out along the length of the wooden frame.
A song drifts into my mind, its soft and gentle undulating melody blunting the razor-wire bitterness of the lyrics. Lacking a voice I move over to my faithful Fender and switch on its amp. It takes a few moments for me to familiarize myself with the appropriate chords but after that, a fragment of my past rises above the forlorn moans of the Autumnal storm.
Despite the fact that I've been playing the guitar since the age of ten, I've only ever written two complete songs. This is one of them, penned at the tender age of fifteen. I can remember its conception clearly; can recall splashes of tears smudging the ink on the page. Dan, the band's bass player (who'd always supplied the lyrics to my music), listened as I sung the tortured words in my rawest, most agitated voice. At the end he slapped my back and congratulated me on finally having experienced enough pain and misery to kick-start the latent poet in me. That was his Romantic theory - that suffering was the sharpest tool of the true artist. Heh. If that was so, I'd be the bloody Poet Laureate by now.
Christ, it all seems so melodramatic in retrospect, especially in light of the more explosive traumas I've since endured. But, at the time, it was as if my life had come to an end. I was fifteen and I was in love and she'd broken my heart! Everything I'd done from the age of thirteen had been for her - my music, my dress code, even the fucking brand of lager I drunk. At night I'd close my eyes and dream about her; her strong, supple legs wrapping around my waist, the scent of her perspiration-soaked body swelling in my nostrils, her full lips wrenching back over her gritted teeth in an ecstatic moan ... .
And the name of this Goddess that polluted so many of my hormone-drowned dreams? Lila Cheney, rock bitch supreme. She had a place quite near to my parents' home and the number of hours I wasted staking it out is quite frightening. Yet, I was so hungry for her even the most fleeting of glimpses would have sustained me for days. Still, it was during one of these voyeuristic vigils that the first cancerous threads of world-weary bitterness wove themselves into my heart.
I was crouched down by the fractured window of the derelict building that conveniently overlooked my love's garden, idling away the time with a spliff and a bottle of Wild Turkey. Boredom had started to colour monochrome reality with garish fantasy, all heady and intoxicating in its erotic intricacies. I pictured myself beneath the blossomed boughs of the trees with Lila by my side, her shrieking laughter rifling through the unfurling leaves as I lapped champagne from her navel. Dappled patterns of sunlight danced across her taut, naked, imaginary torso, became a hypnotic, pulsating strobe that seemed to encompass my vision. Brighter, blinding - a molten incandescence that bleached my optic nerves and burnt pastel reverie to so much stark and empty white. As the nature of the sterile luminescence started to transform into boiling, blinding agony, I realized this was more than just part of my drug-induced daydream. It was real.
At first I thought I was having a seizure but suddenly, as I was about to start screaming for help, the light seemed to rupture. Phantasmic shadow bled from out of the fissures, shimmering outlines of dark non-substance that appeared to hang in the static glow like shapeless pupae. I forced myself to look away, rubbing my burning eyes and self-administering a hefty dose of bourbon, unsure as to whether I should be running away and hiding or not. By the time the whisky had blazed a blistering passage down my esophagus, the light had dissipated and I found myself looking at about half a dozen young people who, to all intents and purposes, had appeared out of thin air.
Intrigued, I moved closer to the window and studied the newcomers as they gazed at their surroundings with a sense of astonishment that mirrored my own. Two of the group - a stunning but austere blonde and a willowy, raven-haired Amazon - were squaring up to a figure standing behind a gangling, gawky geezer dressed in possibly the most unconvincing metaller gear I've ever seen. Suppressing a derisive laugh, I watched as the gorgeous sort with the pigtails finished gesticulating angrily and stormed off towards Lila's house, the rest of the punters diligently following her. As the geek went to go with them, the anonymous figure reached out and took his arm. Steeling myself with another generous swig of whisky, I gazed at the scene below as the figure stepped out of obscurity and into the auric sunlight.
My heart became distended in my chest, pressing against my ribs until I could barely suck air into my lungs. Fluttering arrhythmias elevated me into the giddying, breathless stratosphere of rapturous hypoxia - lifted me away from the mundanity of teenage life and into a world that existed on the lilting syllables of her name. Lila stood there, barely covered by a revealing black rubber leotard, her carefree laughter liberating the stilted Englishness of her garden as she padded closer to the trembling sacrificial lamb in the lame leathers. There was a predatory smile on her lips that snarled a song of lust, a song that pounced on the gormless tosser and dragged him screaming and kicking into her clutches.
Nausea gave way to hysteria gave way to a shell-shocked emptiness that dropped me to the floor in an incredulous heap. Another mouthful of whisky, another quick glance at the garden below to make certain of what I'd seen. They were locked in a passionate kiss, strafed by rays of gold arching through the branches. A gentle precipitation of blossom fell about their entwined bodies, so perfect in its prosaic beauty I could have chucked my guts up. I lit a fag and tried to pacify the furious envy raging through me but all I could think of was how that should've been me down there, not that lanky git.
If I had to define the moment when I realized life was a vicious and sadistic joke, it would be watching my fantasies melting in that hated boy's arms. Up until that point I'd never known anything but the charmed and gifted existence my parents and my ego had created for me. Sprawled out over the rubble-strewn floor, my heart charred and blackened by the brutal conflagration of despair and loathing, I received my initiation into the grim cabal of adulthood. For the next year I dwelt in the obsidian shadow of depression, a wreck of a youth tossed this way and that by his irrational emotions. Then, I met Gayle and realized what it actually meant to truly love someone.
Tears mimic the trickling precipitation running down my window. Alone in the dark, I allow my callused fingers to slide down the neck of my guitar and try to remember how a woman's body feels. I'm thinking of Gayle, I'm concentrating on Lila but the only face imprinted on my imagination is hers.
Outside, a violent blast of wind throws a sheet of rain against my window. Individual droplets spatter the pane and are dragged together by forces outside of their control. I shut my eyes and listen to the desolate rage of the night, listen to the strident, acerbic howl that would echo my own if I still had a voice. On my first night here in America, there had been a storm every bit as furious as this one. If I was one to believe in superstition, I might have seen it as an omen ... .
Thousands of miles from friends and family, still shaken from the after effects of Emplate's welcoming party, I sat in Cassidy's office and tried to fill out the pile of forms scattered in front of me. All the way from the airport I'd craved for something - anything - to remind me of what I once was before I arrived here, a freak amongst freaks. Unbelievably enough, I was to find it in that cramped, cluttered room, pinned to the wall like a trophy.
Tired eyes wandered across the collage of photographs and certificates that displayed all that was Cassidy's life. Sepia fragments of nostalgia fading behind their dusty frames even as time drained the youth from his body - graveyard epitaphs to the man he'd once been. A shot of him as a pig, one with his arms around a bookish brunette and one in an outrageously camp costume posing with a group of weirdoes I recognized as the X-men. And a large photograph of a troop of teenagers, one of whom peered out at me with all-too familiar humorous eyes. Lila's lover, my rival, his homely, rustic looks that had been such a source of ridicule in my handsome days now something to envy. Cassidy identified him as Sam Guthrie, ex-New Mutant and latest X man, a friend of his daughter's and brother of my new teammate, Paige.
My fingers form a chord and I strike the strings, a faint shiver rippling down my spine as the jarring, aggressive note dismembers the stagnant silence of the room. Not for the first time I wonder if her affection for me isn't just another facet of her desire to be her brother. I'm a Londoner, I used to be in a band and sing and play guitar, my wardrobe is wall-to-wall black leather ... . A second, discordant growl rumbles from the amplifier, any semblance of melody mangled by the gain. Not for the first time I wonder if the two of them aren't laughing at me, laughing at the way they've destroyed all my aspirations and dreams. The third note is grating and savage, a prelude to the sneering, venomous hostility yet to come. I pause to consider the workings of capricious fate before I vent my frustrations out on the instrument, chugging and bending and shredding until the air hemorrhages beneath the onslaught.
Outside, the wind shrieks a promise of bleak January to the starless night. I watch the rain through tear-misted eyes and carry on playing, trying to ignore the parody of life dribbling down the glass. Somewhere in this building she's sharing her smile with another man whilst I sit here in the dark and hate her for it.
I said I've only ever written two complete songs and this is one of them, penned in the hollow warmth of my bed the day she stopped loving me.
