The Green Loch By W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh The Green Loch Copyright © 2012 by W. Freedreamer Tinkanesh Smashwords Edition *..*..*..*..* This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. The author is grateful for your appreciation of their work; although if you would like to gift or share this eBook, please do so by purchasing an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher. *..*..*..*..* THE GREEN LOCH Her face showing nothing of her various trains of thoughts, Jax walked into her local pub. 10 pm was early for the Green Loch. The crowd would be really there by midnight, for the loud rock and punk bands. Alcohol, flowing faster, as fast as the bar staff could generously muster it, would turn the patrons into raucous and happy people. She generally left before saturation. But tonight she intended to push her sensible limits; she wanted to see the last band, a blues-rock outfit fronted by a fiery singer and driven by a demented drummer. Still Velvet was a peculiar name that Jax couldn’t really get her head around but she explained it with the now abandoned habit of the band to cover Alannah Myles’s unforgettable hit “Black Velvet”. Nevertheless, Jax loved them, to the point she’d sometimes go through phases of following them around their London circuit. She hadn’t seen them for four months. They had been out of the country and Jax had been busy with her two mediums of creativity: woodcarving and keyboards. To the point of missing their homecoming gig. Still, she was fond of them like only a lonesome dyke could. Her moods had more than a tendency to slide up and down the scales. Prescribed drugs would only get her out of control. She occasionally relied on alcohol to regulate her brainwaves. But tonight, she wanted to keep sober. Standing at the bar decorated with various pictures advertising a diversity of beers, she waited for whatever staff to reappear out of some secret recesses. It never failed. Wolf was back within seconds. The skinny, shaved-head guy seemed to possess a powerful sixth sense. “Hi, Jax! How is it going?” Wolf was one of the rare guys more or less treating her fairly, by that she meant: like one of the guys. “Cool. How is business?” “Rumbling! What are you having?” “Pineapple with soda.” “Sold any piece lately?” “A big one. The Fire Dragon.” “Excellent!” Wolf’s eyes were shining behind his spectacles. He mixed Jax’s soft drink in a pint glass with a generous scoop of ice. He smiled and gave another serving of his pure Scottish accent, “I guess you’re here for Still Velvet.” “Yep,” handing out a tenner, giving a last farewell thought to the Fire Dragon she had lovingly carved out of a piece of cherry wood a few months earlier, logically moving onto the Gargoyle finished only two hours ago. She carved monsters only. Dragons, Gargoyles, Griffins, Werewolves, and Elementals, Fairies, Elves, Goblins and Flying Monkeys, and more. Too sensitive, too tortured, to carve the shapes of human beings, even fully clad. Standing in the doorway of the live room, she started sipping her fruity soda, keeping one hazel eye on the dimly lit room where the DJ had started a reggae phase that no one was there to pick up on yet, and the other on the pub room, the one she had dubbed dead room, where only four Goths had eventually decided to sit down and consume beer. She didn’t care if they sometimes glanced at her somber silhouette. Her hair was bleached down to white and extremely short. She deliberately wore shabby, old, and almost torn, male clothing with huge boots, to deflect sleazebags’ attention. She had five rings going through her right eyebrow and a smooth skin free of make-up. For no reason she was aware of, her eyes decided to sweep the bar. What she saw made her freeze. Correction: it was not a ‘what’, it was a ‘who’. A radiant womon, easily ten years younger than Jax, or apparently ten years younger, whom Jax had never seen. She instantly forgot her grammatical lapsus prompted by the Goths’ energy filtering through her too thin spiritual protections. The Goths’ perception was also telling her that the womon was good-looking, but it was something she couldn’t see despite her sharp eyesight. The energy she sensed was the sweetness that could forever make her melt if she wasn’t careful. Oh yes, this dark-haired womon with probably grey eyes was the typical type who always attracted her regardless of physical features. It was steel hands in silky gloves. Jax felt like a shot of smooth electricity lightning through her being, accelerating the flow of her blood along her hidden veins. She couldn’t see auras or read them, but she could sense energies and understand some, understand enough to survive. The womon Jax had never seen was radiating an intense and overwhelming energy, while pouring a Michelob to a newly arrived customer. Jax tore her eyes away from the delicately chiseled profile. She didn’t want to switch focus tonight. She was only at the Green Loch for the wild blues-rock of Still Velvet. She wanted the singer to wink at her and the drummer to ignore her, as usual. They were her main fixation these days. She’d never go beyond “Hi!” with the men of the band, but the two wimin, the singer with the powerful voice and the constant chatter, the drummer with the crazy sticks and the quiet silence, were sisters to her, and lovers to each other. She had sensed the intense beauty of their energies entangled with each other at the first Still Velvet gig she had ever attended in her local pub. Being a performer herself, she knew better than falling for any of these two wimin. The pub slowly crowded, Jax forgot about the sticky tables and the dirty floor. The first band was raving. She was attacking her third drink when her favourite musicians walked in with a bunch of friends. The drummer smiled at Jax, the singer squeezed her forearm, “Hey, how are you?” The artist’s face relaxed into a smile, “OK! Good to see you! How was Canada?” “Cool! Extra cool! We’ve got a bunch of new songs. I hope you’re gonna like them!” “I guess there’s a great likelihood I might!” The commotion of a clapping audience broke into the music background. The band was done. “I’ve got a gig soon. I’ll email you,” Jax added, before punters separated them. The Still Velvet wimin were actually the two only human beings Jax had ever carved into wood. They didn’t know. No one knew. No one could conceive the pain and tears generated by the sensuous curves. It was more insanity than the artist could deal with. Her carving knives and chisels had chipped and cut through her skin, too. She loved them too much. She always wore long sleeves. She kept these pieces of work secret, hidden in a closet. Still stained with her blood. She wouldn’t look at them. They felt too real. As real as real bodies. And Jax had no right to touch their bodies, beyond a hand squeeze and a hug. No one would know, no one would ever contemplate the best artwork her feverish hands had ever produced. The wood was so alive. So alive. It was why she only carved monsters. The pub was now full and noisy. She’d sleep late the next day and wake up refreshed, ready for more werewolves, or maybe a Loch Ness Monster. * * * * * * * Still Velvet was not of the standard ilk. They had come to Jax at one of her gigs the previous year. Well, two of them. “Hello,” the fiery singer had said, “ I am Frankie and this is Den.” “From Still Velvet,” Jax had completed with a soft smile, just about containing her enthusiasm. Frankie had the voice Jax had lost to a virus years ago. Den was as wild with her drumkit as Jax was with her keyboards. Surprise and pleasure on Frankie’s face, “You know us!” “Saw you last week. Was impressed.” “Have a drink with us!” A year on and Frankie was still doing all the talking. Jax didn’t need anything else, didn’t need anyone else. Her secret fascination was eating the loneliness in her life. They were inspiring her and instilling some life into her life. She had never told them. How could you tell someones: “You’re the best things that ever happened to me”, without being misunderstood. Once again Jax chose to shut up. She was good at it. She’d been practicing for years. But could she go on forever? She wasn’t sure she still had a soul and her heart felt like stone. She wouldn’t have thought about the dark-haired womon from the Green Loch again, if she had not popped by the pub for a quick word with the sound engineer about her next gig, when the short pageboy cut happened to be on duty behind the bar, radiating her beautiful energy. They looked at each other and Jax looked away, trying very hard to avoid her. The sound engineer being busy, she decided to be strong and grab a drink. “Pineapple juice and soda, in a pint glass, with ice, please.” “You sure?” asked the barmaid with a smile. “What?” Jax was surprised. “The pint glass.” Jax looked puzzled. The voice was soft, so quiet. “Never mind”, and fixed the drink for the musician, who wanted to hear the voice again. She spent her waiting time watching the grey eyes and the long fingers working along the bar. Jax wondered about her name at the same time Wolf waved at her from the pool table and the sound guy walked into the dead room. He signaled for the still nameless womon, who sometimes bit her nails in between actions, and he asked for a pint of Guinness. Jax tried to ignore her and focus on special effects for her voice. She went home to carve some more. Wondering “What’s her name?” over and over. Jane, Kate, Marla, Anna, Catherine, Nicola, Liz, Maggie, Karen, Lana, Chloe, Phoebe, and why not Pru or Piper while she was at it. She was totally off the mark and she knew it. She looked up from her behemoth and looked beyond the blank wall of her front room, not seeing, but searching for answers she couldn’t get. She knew how deep it cut. She was generally so good at sensing if a womon was lesbian or straight or whatever (bisexual vibes, when labeled as such, always unsettled her). She didn’t know anything about the womon who had settled in her mind. She couldn’t sense anything. Her judgment was clouded. A quiet smoker rolling joints. She wanted to know more than her name, she wanted to know her. She wanted to know what she did when she wasn’t working at the pub. What she had every morning for breakfast. What kind of books she liked reading. What kind of music she was into. What she dreamed every night. She gently let the narrow chisel slide onto her workbench. She didn’t know who she was anymore. She had withdrawn from the world to try to understand and heal. Would she dare to ask the Green Loch womon out? * * * * * * * Jax kept a diary on an almost daily basis. She had entered the nameless womon as Jane Doe. She didn’t want to call her Jane Doe forever. She wrote about Jane Doe’s long fingers combing hair back, sticking it back behind the right ear. Jane Doe was right-handed. Jax had noticed the stoop of the shoulders. Jane Doe was unconsciously embarrassed about her height. Three inches taller than Jax’s 5’5’’ probably. Restless, the artist went to watch pool games at the Green Loch a few nights later. The pool room was alive and alight. Spider, another skinny, shaved-head man, was officiating at the bar. Wolf was shooting pool. Jax’s intuition told her Jane Doe was not on that evening’s rota but it was worth waiting a bit. She was actually about to leave the now crowded and smoky pub, having reached extreme saturation by 11.30 pm, when Jane Doe walked in. Her pace was generally fast and knowing, when she wasn’t just standing, fidgeting and undecided. She greeted Wolf and Jax smilingly. Because of the smile, Jax forgot about leaving, forgot about saturation, didn’t even notice that Wolf had lost his game to chance. Jane Doe sat with them, drinking Dutch beer out of a green bottle. The next players were good but Jax couldn’t care less for the white ball’s shenanigans. Wolf got up to order his next pint. Jane Doe was rolling a cigarette. Jax asked, “What’s your name?” Long Fingers looked up, “Nessie.” Jax could only stare back for the next thirty seconds, so surprised by the name, her hazel eyes unable to tear away from the gentle grey eyes, forgetting to speak or look away. The name was Nessie. And wasn’t she working on a Loch Ness Monster. Nessie broke the spell, “I know your name is Jax.” Jax’s right eyebrow shot up, amused and questioning. “Wolf told me," Nessie explained. The aforementioned guy chose that moment to come back with his new pint. They re-focused on the current game. The green table was mostly red. That night, Jax wrote in her diary: “Her name is Nessie, like the Monster of the Loch Ness I’m currently carving, but I have to remind myself it is no sign of anything and I have to hold my (Velvet) horses still, because I know nothing about her. She could be straight or she could have someone already. In my whole life, I’ve never found myself in circumstances where I would have to ask a womon out. “If I had a friend, I would ask, he’d know”*, but there is no one I can talk to, no one I can ask for advice. What do I have to lose. The line is simple (it is not a line). I can simply and directly ask: “Would you go out with me, like, you know, on a date?” OK, sounds terribly lame. But I have nothing better. And nothing to lose. And if I don’t say anything, the usual nothing will happen. I cannot keep on watching nothing happen. I gotta change my life, otherwise I’ll die. I’m already dying, a slow and boring death. I gotta do something. But what if she says no. If she says no…….then…….” * * * * * * * Within the Green Loch, behind the friendly bar, in the back room and upper rooms, was hidden a secret. While some punters knew that Wolf was originally from Scotland, they knew nothing of the Metanochs. Traditionally these creatures were from the shores of the Loch Ness. Hence Nessie’s name, as she happened to be born in Bristol after her mother had moved away. The Green Loch was the first community ever started in London. Tradition had it that in their mid-twenties Metanochs would choose their adult name and undergo a rite of passage. Failing the rite meant exile and isolation. Metanochs, lacking sensitivity in their Metanoch shape, had no problem seducing and/or killing a human being, eat the heart and the brain, and in some cases the fingers. Nessie had chosen her name after a Metanoch hermit, who, according to legend, was fond of bones, skulls and skeletons, preferably anthropoid, to the point of collecting them: N’Rek. Obeying her mother, she had moved down to London and settled at the Green Loch where the senior Metanoch would choose a suitable victim for her rite of passage. Beowulf was his name and his instinct constantly dictated him to keep his community safe. In his human guise he was a rather good man named Wolf. Behind his benevolent smile he hid worry: he had contemplated and admired the work of a rather talented, local artist in a nearby shop. She carved monsters out of wood, her imagination realistically and amazingly detailed. Werewolves were one remote kind; flying monkeys with blue faces were one step too close. Nessie was a quiet and unconfident womon. She had grown up in Bristol, acquiring an accent unlike her mother’s Scottish one, feeling weary of people, and taken up the habit of biting her fingernails when she had nothing better to do. This didn’t show on her Metanoch claws. Contrary to most of her kind whose furs were dark yellow, she had a mixture of black and yellow hair, the black as black as her human hair. Her fingers and claws were long and her fangs were sharp and white. The facial features were simian with slanted eyelids. Generally tall, Metanochs were asexual and were endowed with senses of smell and hearing as acute as those of predatory animals. They had a tail that could lash and sting as swiftly as a scorpion’s would. Some could control their morphing, others could only slow it down. Beowulf was a master and encouraged other Metanochs to practice. It was about survival. N’rek was effortlessly as good. * * * * * * * Restlessly Jax tried to work. Restlessly her mind wandered. Restlessly she’d drop by the Green Loch every evening. Sometimes Nessie was not there, sometimes she was. Sometimes she would be served by Nessie, sometimes Wolf would spot her first. Sometimes there were so many patrons, sometimes Jax could exchange a few harmless and meaningless words with Nessie. But the artist was losing her sleep. She had to do it, she had to talk to Nessie, she had to ask her out. It was three days before her gig. She had lyrics on her mind, Will she speak will she fall, She is waiting for you in her dreams, Will you be the key will you be the light, With or without you she’ll jump off the bridge, when she walked into the Green Loch. It was a quiet evening. Wolf was playing pool with an audience of a dozen patrons. Jax chose the dead room. Nessie walked up to her, pushing her hair back behind her right ear. Jax found herself suddenly asking for Schnapps. But there was no Schnapps. She asked for an Ice Smirnoff. Nessie corrected into Smirnoff Ice and brought her a bottle. Jax felt shy, powerless and so non-confident, still unaware of which way Nessie swung. She felt like the cat had gotten her tongue. She was exceptionally and deliberately wearing clean clothes. Well, still crumpled and shabby, but clean and free from the usual smell of Danish oil she favoured as a colour finish for most of her woodcarvings. What was she gonna tell Nessie. Could she just say: “Would you go out with me?” She realized she had unconsciously sped up her drinking and was slightly higher than her standard threshold. She dug a fiver out of a trousers pocket, didn’t say a word, didn’t try to call out Nessie’s name. She simply tapped the counter with the bottom of her empty bottle. Nessie looked at her, Jax signaled with her empty bottle for a fresh one. But what she really wanted was to say, “Nessie, would you go out with me, like, you know, on a date?” But she said nothing, looked Nessie in the eyes, didn’t even notice their shiny grey, world had gone in black and white again. And Nessie wandered away, while Jax kept thinking about what to say, kept drinking too fast for her metabolism. This was Dutch courage, growing, building confidence. After the third Smirnoff Ice, the pub was still quiet and she felt rather drunk. What would be her line. Nessie was watching the pool game. She could say, “There is a point to my getting drunk tonight. This is called Dutch courage. If you answer my question by the negative we can forget all about it afterwards. Would you go out with me, like, you know, on a date?” Jax signaled for a fourth bottle. When Nessie put it down in front of her, the artist kept silent and watched her walk away. Unexpectedly, she felt centered and at peace with herself, free to sense. And she knew. Nessie liked guys and therefore would say no. There was no point in asking her out, except if Jax wanted to feel like a fool. She swallowed another gulp of sweet Vodka, hating the taste of lemon. Too drunk to feel sad. Nessie’s eyes left the pool game and turned to Jax. Jax sighed slowly and walked out of the pub in a cloud of dejection. * * * * * * * “Will she speak will she fall, She is waiting for you in her dreams. Will you be the key will you be the light, With or without you she’ll jump off the bridge.” The flanger was a nice effect on her voice. She was singing for Nessie; Nessie didn’t know, no one knew. Her fingers were flying over the keys, wild tunes blasting out to the sparse, but enthusiastic, audience of the Green Loch. She was singing for Nessie, watching her through the wide-open doors. Unsuspecting Nessie vaguely working behind the bar. Only vaguely because most patrons were under the spell of the weird performer. Jax was wearing what she called her Sunday best, as an ironic reference to the mother she had chosen to kick out of her life. An anthrax man’s suit with a white shirt, a black tie and a pair of assorted loafers. Nessie was under the spell of the music, too, even if her face wasn’t showing any more emotion than usual. But she was listening, wishing she was someone else, but she couldn’t be someone else, she was whoever she was. The song ended. People whistled and shouted. Jax’s last number turned out to be a soulful piano tune with classical undertones. After her set, she packed up her keyboards and effects unit, stored them in the back room behind the bar, trying to ignore the patrons’ attention and admiration, and trying to be polite when avoidance would have been rude. The singer and the drummer from Still Velvet were otherwise engaged and Jax had no one to hide behind. In that regard, she was very much like Den. She decided to have a drink and was met by Nessie’s smile. “You were great!” “Thanx!” Slightly embarrassed, like after every gig. “I’d like a double tequila with pineapple juice in a pint glass. And ice.” “It’s on me!” “OK.” But she didn’t really have the choice. She walked around in the pub, trying to unwind, trying to dodge admirers, especially the drunk ones. She was only successful at drinking her alcohol too fast. The pub sounded too noisy to her ears, but she didn’t feel like going home yet. She would have loved to sit down with Nessie in a quiet corner and chat. But there was no chance of it ever, she had no illusion. There was no quiet corner at the Green Loch anyway. It was foolish to even think about it. But she was too tipsy to care. It was after midnight, Jax didn’t feel like listening to the next band. At the sound check they hadn’t sounded so good to her. As the sound engineer had told her: all the right moves, but nothing to show. She wanted people to forget about her, look elsewhere for entertainment and talk about something else. The crowd was oppressing her. Alcohol gave her space to breathe, but evaporated too quickly out of her glass. * * * * * * * She caught Nessie’s grey eye and signaled for a refill. She was already too drunk to be surprised by Nessie’s reply. Jax’s feet followed the hinted direction to the door marked ‘Private’ next to one end of the bar. Jax didn’t think. She was already through the door and long fingers were locking it. They looked into each other’s eyes. The grey eyes looked grave. The hazel eyes looked vague. Nessie didn’t smile. She wished Beowulf had suggested someone else, but this was a rite of passage. They were standing an arm-length from each other. Jax’s eyes, fascinated, witnessed the controlled and almost silent morphing of Nessie’s body. Slow and methodical. Selective. She started with her eyes. The grey irises widen and grew yellow flecks. Nessie could actually be the most skilled Metanoch, even better than Beowulf, at morphing, if she bothered. Jax watched the rippling of the muscles, sinews, nerves and veins, under the skin. The fur growing a shiny mixture of black and yellow. Jax didn’t see the tail come out of the lower end of the spine under the clothes. She was now staring at a Simian creature of unknown origin (they didn’t even know themselves how or when they had landed in Scotland), a Metanoch whose dark, thick lips shape a rictus, revealing fangs dazzling with an only huge hint of threat. Jax smiled, she knew she was staring into the cold eyes of her Death; she only said, with a hint of irony, “I’m all yours!” ### (Spring 2002) (Autumn 2012) *The quote “If I had a friend, I would ask, he’d know”, is from a song entitled “Ball and chain”, written by Nikki Lamborn and Catherine “The Been” Feeney (aka Never The Bride).