Poetic Concrete

Jocelyn made her way out of the gym, adjusted her outfit and looked up at the night's sky. A few splashes of water against her cheek told her that the sky was currently pondering whether or not to let the rain fall from the bellies of its bloated clouds that hid in the darkness of the moonless night. While she waited for a cab, the answer was given int he form of a light drizzle that did little more than dampen her already sweat soaked hair.

She slid into the taxi and gave the drive a scowl that clearly indicated she was not to be ogled during the ride. She consistently checked the rear view mirror for betrayal of her silent decree while he motored through the busy streets towards her destination.

She ran her fingers through her hair and hiked up her dress to let her legs breath a little. She leaned back in the seat and let out an exasperated sigh. The last few daze had been a blur. She scrubbed her eyes with her hands. She needed a hot bath, a cold drink and a long rest. She didn't know when she would get any. She didn't know what she was doing even as she sat there. Jocelyn couldn't believe that Allison had sent her to beat up her own kin or that she had done it quite well and even enjoyed it a bit. Actually, the horrifying part was that it was all believable and anything else but what had happened might have been odd.

Jocelyn grinned as she thought about how things would end. Allison was too good for he or believed she was. They could never be together like Jocelyn desired. Jocelyn knew that going in. She'd have to destroy Allison. That was just all there was too it. Could she do it? She didn't know. Right now she didn't care. All she knew was that right now she felt a little alive. She felt like she had something to drive her forward and so the ride, the lies, the shame. They could continue. It was better than being a brat or a selfish girl who wandered aimlessly.

Jocelyn opened the door to the cab and threw some money at the driver, leaning in to give him a well deserved peak at her nearly non existent cleavage. He'd been a good boy and kept his eyes on the road, after all. When she stepped out, the drizzle had turned into a downpour and she stepped quickly to the building's overhang. She was at Allison's apartment complex. She knew Allison would be here. After she'd left Jocelyn to do her work, why would the blonde lynx have any reason but to slide back to her den and congratulate herself on a job well done? She probably didn't even care how it went.

Jocelyn clenched her fists tightly. She was mad but she didn't know why. She had no clue why she was here. She kept telling herself it was to give Allison a piece of her mind and she would but really it was the best way for her to simple SEE Allison again. She had to. She didn't care why. It was sick. She wanted to throw up but she collected herself and tugged at the door. Locked.

"SHIT! FUCK!" She yelled tot he dripping sky and pounded the door. All this way to be defeated by Allison's own slice of better-than-you right in the heart of Tokyo.

"Rrrrghno!" She growled and went to push the buzzer on Allison's door. She stopped and looked up. She couldn't. Warning Allison, letting her prepare. That was putting her right in Allison's hands. She had to let Allison know that SHE wasn't one to be trifled with either. She let out a deep breath and buzzed a random apartment. She got an angry response. She tried to explain half assedly that she was a guest of Allison's and wished to surprise her. She was turned away. Four or five tries later and she finally received a little help. She was buzzed in and rushed up the stairs, ignoring the elevator.

It was like she could run right up and into Allison's waiting arms. Her heart raced and whens he got to the floor, she wanted to just knock the door down and tackle Allison to the ground. She wasn't sure what her next move would be and it wavered between punching and kissing. She shook those thoughts away, water flicking off her hair. She calmed herself down and clenched her fists. She put on an angry yet calm scowl and straightened her back. She then lifted up her hand and politely, yet firmly knocked on the door.

Allison had stayed in her office for much of the night, busying herself with various business matters ranging from the operations of her spa to her AFW career. There was always so much to do, and it was good to lose herself in it for a while. Getting things done, availing herself of overhanging responsibility, always made her feel better and inevitably turned her mind to finer pleasures.

It was late when she returned to her apartment. She made the slow climb up the stairs, and her mind hovered on each object as she touched it. The carved wooden hand rail, lacquered and worn, each wooden step, painstakingly constructed but showing their age with every creak, the long, ornate windows every alternate flight. She breathed deeply of the somewhat musky air of the old, dignified building and thought of wine and chess and poetry and firelight.

She entered her apartment and the open expanse of her foyer, the fireplace and her chair on her left, book case and art displays on her right. She set her purse down by the door and immediately built a small fire, taking care to place each bit of wood just so, arranging the kindling and very deliberately handling the flame as she placed a match in the middle of it all. Every piece was in line, and as such it took such a small effort from her to set things in motion that would result in a fire. It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was art. She scowled, and went to the kitchen for a bottle of wine.

Time passed, and later there came noise at her door. There was someone there, but she hadn't knocked yet... Allison could hear her thundering up the stairs like an elephant. She knew perfectly well who it was.

She waited for the knock, and waited another moment after it, before answering. "Come in, little Lu Jiao." From her place in her chair facing the fire, which had crept over only half of the wood by then, she couldn't see the door behind her and to the right. She didn't need to.

Jocelyn growled audibly at Allison's words. How the fuck did she know it was her?! She hated that woman so much! The only consolation was that it made the choice of approach a very easy one. She shoved the door open ungracefully and rolled her shoulders over to look at Allison. Jocelyn grit her teeth and flashed them at the woman.

She snorted through her nostrils before marching over to Allison. She reached out to grab Allison's collar and give it a sharp tug. "Fuck you!" She screamed. "You're a ripe cunt you know that you old hag!?" She barked rhetorically.

"Don't think I don't know what you're up to! What you made me do. WHY you made me do it! you think this is funny, don't you!? That this is one big joke! It's not! We're not the same... not by a long shot and I'll prove it to you definitely! Do you understand?!"

Jocelyn was raving faster than she could breath and by the end of it was panting heavily against Allison's cheek. She let go of the collar and turned her head. She stiffened back up and blushed deeply. How unsightly. It needed to be said though. Jocelyn was certain that she was trying to show that she and Emily were cut from the same cloth and Jocelyn wasn't going to have any of it. She'd give this bitch more than a piece of her mind. She'd give her all of it. Though she also realized that she didn't specifically say who she was comparing to whom.

"You're sick..." She muttered weakly. Allison hadn't even said or done anythign and Jocelyn already felt hot and weak in the knees. She hated herself and was ashamed utterly as she stood there like a scolded child despite the fact that she had just berated Allison.

Allison began to lift her wine glass, but with Jocelyn incoming she opted to set it down on the small table at her right hand so as not to spill. She regarded Jocelyn with a calm, wry smile as she shook her. The things the girl was going on about had all occurred to Allison, but none of them were counted among her goals in sending Jocelyn out. They just made everything that much more interesting.

"And you're a sad little girl. All that you are would be undone in an instant if your daddy only told you that he loved you." Allison said smoothly, and laughed. Her easy, lilting, feminine laugh tickled out of her throat and grew, uncharacteristically so.

"Darling, by any name would you be as lovely." She said, after she'd had a good laugh. She sighed. "We're all players, aren't we. All of us, playing our parts on this grand stage, one part and then another, and then another... Can you imagine anything more grotesque? That we choose the parts we play or that the world forces them upon us, it matters so little it sickens me. But there are the worldly accompaniments to our seven ages that make them all... easier."

She lifted her wine glass up to the firelight, holding the stem between her thumb and index finger, and examined it's color, and then brought the glass to her lips and drained it all at once. "What else do we have?" She said, her voice darker. Heavier.

She stood up from her chair to face the trembling girl and despite the grace with which she moved it became apparent that she was quite drunk. She stood only inches away from Jocelyn, her back straight and her shoulders back. Her head tipped slightly to one side, and her short blonde hair hair hung down.

"What a dreadful subject. Now, why was it that you came here?" She asked, having nearly forgotten about Jocelyn's outburst.

Jocelyn snapped back into defensive posturing when Allson stated off in her usul way. Her fists clenched and she was about to speak when Alision boldy, and casually, tossed out the 'Daddy Card'. Jocelyn's jaw dropped and she turned her head. She hated how eaasil Allison could cut through her.She let ot a resigned sigh. Her knees quivered. She felt so defeated and helpless.

But once again the Chistalin was reeled back in by Allison's honeyed words. Her cheeks flushed. Then Allison went on some sort of strange rant. It seemed weird and confusing to the oung girl. Her head tilted and she tried to understand. There was one thing she figured out though. As Allison stood up.

"S-Sarah... You'e drunk, aren't you?"

Jocelyn tucked her chin downward. "I... Just came in to say those things..." She admitted. "Now I just..." She sighed and looked sheepshly at Allison. "Can I stay... Maybe?" she sked a hint of sheepish, mischievous, hope in her tone.

"Always perceptive, aren't you?" Allison said with a mixture of mirth and loathing. "It wouldn't be right for you to leave now. The fire has not yet realized its potential. Come sit. We might both learn something."

Allison's speech, while loose, was not slurred at all. It was a testament to her discipline that she retained to much composure, even after draining an entire bottle of wine. "Of course, we'll need wine." She walked smooth and serpentine to her wine rack and selected another bottle, and returned to the fire holding the neck of the bottle between her thumb and first finger and a corkscrew between her next two. Instead of returning to one of the chairs that faced the fire, she sat down on the rug in front of it and lounged on one hip with her legs pressed against each other off to one side. She leaned up against the side of the fireplace and felt the warmth radiate through her shoulder while she expertly uncorked the bottle.

She took a drink from the bottle and looked up at Jocelyn, without saying anything, as if prompting her to decide what she would do.

Jocelyn regarded Allison and he words much more carefully than her bight cheek and open mouth with softly quivering lips inhaling hesitant breaths would indicate. Allison in this state, however shewdly she tried to play it off, had given the Chistralian an opportunity that she could not pass up. Her cheeks flushed and she nodded he head.

"Yes, Sarah. I hope so." She said in a polite tone and watched Allison as she talked and stretched out in front of the fire like an elegant cheetah.

Jocelyn took the bottle when offered and knelt down next to the crrackling fire, just to the side of Jocelyn's legs. The stared into the fire and liftedup the bottle, tking the barest of sips but looking like she was downing the wine. She might drink more if coaxed. She certainl wanted to, bt still, she felt on edge in some way. Like letting herself go while Allison was in this state would be inviting folly, pain or misery.

"Sarah..." she asked, looking down. She felt a meekness wash over her but it was nice. This was nice despite her trepedations and she hoped Allison was right about them learning things. "What's the occasion? You seem to usually be very ummm.... Discreet..." She offered a gentle smile. "I mean to get bloody arse faced and all..."

"I don't need an occasion, do I?" Allison snapped sourly. She gazed at the fire, watched the smoke curling up into the chimney, and her mind began to wander.

With the same delicate gesture she used while sober, she carefully brushed her hair to the side with her first two fingers. It struck her how much it took to style her hair the way she did. If her hair style and its messy perfection was a part of her identity, who would she be without hair products? It was a grim, silly thought, and she felt silly all the same.

"Jocelyn..." She began. "D'you like my hair like this?" She asked, still looking at the fire. "It's a great deal of work... But certainly any woman worth her salt must be willing to do that work. A true woman is art, you see, living art. Practicality itself is so impractical to a woman. What good would that do her?"

She laughed, and it almost resembled a giggle. "And you... look at you." She said, turning her head to look Jocelyn over, and then said in a surprisingly, uncharacteristically convincing chav impersonation "I'm so mayjah, I'll fuckin' bang ya clean out, mate! Oi, wheah's Brittney..." She laughed, and then sighed, and then picked up the cork from the wine bottle, with the corkscrew still embedded in it, and began turning it over in her fingers. "May I recommend only visiting the slums, darling, not making your home there." She said, her voice soft and controlled again.

Jocelyn turned her head at Allison's scorn. She then let out soft chuckle. "No... I suppose not..." She then pulled up the botle and took a real, deep drink of the wne. Jocelyn blushed at Sarah's soft words and remarks. She let her eyes draw up Alllison's body slowly until her eyes fell upon Allison's carefully attended to mess of hair. Jocelyn lifted her hand and teased the back of her own messy hair with her fingers gently. "I like it very much. I like short hair." She sid and pushed her fingers through her hair. "It's petty... It's beautiful, just like you."

No! No! No! She screamed at herself. What was she doing?! She took nother had sip of wine and pushed the bottle at Allison.

She listened to Allison giggle andmake fun of her. She furrowed her brow but then aised one of her eyebrrows. "Oh?" She said with a creeping wrryness in her tone. "Are you saying that to me, or yourself?" She swallowed hard. "Believe it or not I know a thing or two about refined life. It's suffocated. It's like a cage." She pointed at Allison. "At least where I'm at now, I can do what I like, even if it's self destructive."Jocelyn smirked, feeling good. The heat in herr throat from the wine mixing witth her confidence.

"I don't think you ever want to admit how much we're alike. As much as you think and act like you're not, you're down here with me and all the smoke and mirrors you use to fool others aren't going to work on me." Jocelyn laughed. "I so wish I could see you when you were younger. I bet we were exactly a like!" Jocelyn laughed. "When I get older will I finally start acting like I should? But... I don't really have to pretend." Shesaid eyeing Alison coly.

Allison smiled and laughed softly to herself. She both liked and hated Jocelyn more and more with nearly every word she spoke, in part because there was some truth to what she said.

"Really?" She said. "We couldn't have been that much alike. I remember winning a great deal of matches. When I was your age I had several years of wrestling experience. On my eighteenth birthday I began training at a wrestling gym, and elsewhere before that... I remember being driven, even when lacking confidence. I remember being determined to succeed. And I remember being successful." She took a long drink from the bottle, and then looked Jocelyn in the eye. "You?"

She put the bottle down and began idly twisting the corkscrew back out of the cork, creaking with every turn. "You've noticed that I'm quite drunk." She remarked. "You seem to think that you have an advantage over me now. You seem slightly more confident. Why? There are always things that you think, but think better of doing. Even I have limits to what I consider to be in good taste, but after a bottle of Cabernet I find myself looking at you and thinking 'why not?'" She gave Jocelyn a cold, sterile look. "This is a very special night, don't you think?"