Hearts Around Clavius

A Knock At the Door

Literature was a lie.

By definition, literature is a written piece of work that is considered significant enough to be considered a piece of literary history. Works of Charles Dickens, John Keats, Mary Shelley, and whomever else you can think of, would be considered legends amongst the writing world. Scholars of great feats, poets and story-tellers, moulding their own worlds at the tip of their pens and quills, telling ballads of romance and love, choruses of vengeance and victory, and melodies of defeat and melancholia. Adoration showered them, even now, long after they were buried to rot away in their tombs, pronounced martyrs and angels of literature. And one thing was for sure, and it was that Serena Reagan was anything but an angel of literature, or an angel of.. anything for that matter. She was the devil reincarnate, riddled with sins, the allegory of a bad omen - not to mention her writing was utter garbage.

In her head, this whole.. 'writing' thing was certainly easier than what it appears to be, and considering all that the young lady had been through, she had plenty to write on: severe alcoholism, homelessness, the fact her body count is higher than her age, the hotel... countless ideas sprung to mind, yet none of what she wrote pleased her. To Serena, they seemed to act like pathetic cries for help, a coping mechanism of hers allowing her to wallow in the form of a shitty poem, Usually, it was that her experiences were outright too vulgar or erotic to show to the public eye. She had torn more pages out of her book than she had actually written in them, and out of frustration, she threw it halfway across the room, not even attempting to aim for the trash can. Literature was a scam. A waste of time, but what else did she have, other than being the unseen co-owner of Tranquility Base?

The electrical buzzing of the overhead, hexagonal lights were the only noise that filled the room, the deep orange colour emitting from it gave the place a strange tint, everything slightly off-coloured. Everything about this place was off, intentionally. Mystery and superstition, with a hint of the romantic 1970's charm woven into the walls was Tranquility Base's whole shtick. Neon lights and horrid orange wallpaper that made Serena gag cluttered the walls of the establishment, along with whatever other weird nicknacks that looked like they were taken right off the side streets. Retrofuturism's sickeningly bright scheme adorned each freakishly long hallway, the carpets and tiling patterns were intricate and symmetrical, looking like something ripped right out The Shining. After a while, one would get used to it, she'd thought, but even now, she was still always attentive to listen out for something suspicious, or to slow down when turning a sharp corner, after what? Seven years? Maybe it was five... She wasn't sure exactly how long she had spent cooped up in this whimsical establishment, but she was too far wound up in a strange fantasy to leave now.

Perhaps that is why she attempted to take up the art form of literature, to live in a fantasy within a fantasy. What better way to romanticise her life than to string up a fantastical way of thinking? 'And what better way to make use of that than to channel it right through to poetry..' She scoffed at herself, her left arm resting against her cheek, her hand crumpling her coal-black hair. Maybe this place had riddled her insane, maybe she was as deluded as the owner himself. Perhaps she was crazy to believe that she had a chance at an art form such as writing. Her head was full of whimsical ideologies and beliefs and dreams that she had to project it somewhere, but that was the hard part: actually projecting it. Her sigh enveloped the room, her hand scribbling on the page, making one last attempt to redeem herself.

"Still got pictures of friends on the wall,

I suppose we aren't really friends anymore.

Maybe I shouldn't ever have called,

That thing friendly at all."

She stared at the concoction of words sprawled on the page, not having the slightest clue where that came from, or what had necessarily sparked this verse, but she concluded that it wasn't half bad. Derived from her inner self and her hidden talent, or her strangely wired, traumatised mind and repressed memories, perhaps. It was one of the two, but she chose not to dwell on it. She rose from her seat and sauntered over to her personal bulletin board. Scattered across the board were various scraps of paper, half with entirely unintelligible handwriting, half-arsed and scrawny, some even littered with doodles. Most were keepsakes, little drabbles just in case another idea sprung to mind, but some were actually... Decent. Sticky notes that now permanently stuck themselves around the rim of the board, all in bright neon colours had a different handwriting sprawled along them. Unlike Reagan's they were neat, cursive, and actually readable. They were notes of encouragement, written to her by her eccentric boss, a man who took Serena under his wing, a man who called her his daughter, even if he really wasn't her father. They spoke of praises, good lucks, and "can do this'!" She managed to wince a smile, and turned her attention to something else.