Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 01:40:27 -0600 From: Julie Randolph Subject: Of One Soul **Okay, here's another one of my infamous experimental fictions. This is, again, in first person told from the point of view of a narrator who is not necessairly me. This is, again, a deep probing into the psyche of LaCroix...don't know why he fasicinates me so much lately. One thing about FK though, when I find myself in the throes of writers block, it gives me an outlet I would never have had, had I not met all of you. Keep the dream alive.** JCR Of One Soul Julie Randolph I am a creature of the night. Well, a person of the night. I suppose "creature" makes me sound like a vampire, which I am not. I live in Toronto, Ontario and I world the night shift at a local stop and go. Basically, I hate my life. I suppose that comes with the territory of consistantly being bored, which at present, I am. My only outlet from this everyday turmoil of boredom come to me at exactly 9pm EST on CERK radio 91.4. I did not know what his real name was unti a few weeks ago, I was simply happy to listen, I do not quite recall what forced me to change my mind. I suppose you would have to hear him speak to understand what I am saying. He has a low, soft voice that clings to the lilt of an English accent. He talkes many times about things that are everything and nothing at once and sometimes, I feel as if I am the only person on earth who understands him. As he speaks, you can hear the melodic touch oof his voice change octaves, as if he has drifted off to some other time, to some other place, somewhere that I cannot see. He is the only color that casts me out of this world of darkness into which I have managed to place myself. But then you don't really know me, do you? And in order to understand my fascination with this man, you would have to know me as well. How it came to be that I still stand here in this circle of nothingness, waiting for destiny to move me once again. I come from a generation of youth that really have nothing to live for. there are the up and at 'em baby boomers in front and the incoragable Generation X behind, I am in between somewhere, lost, or at least...I was. I was always a night person, even in my childhood my parents could not make my eyes shut until the first lights of the dawn had risen over the horizon. Perhaps that is why I have currently dropped out of five colleges, all top notch, all waiting for me, each wanting to steal me away from the other. It was a fight in which I had no interest. Perhaps I should have been interested, but my special nature was meaningless to me, I had no real justification for being anything and so I was nothing as a result. You see, I am what they clinically call a "genius." What I mean by that is that I can do anything. Some people found me amazing, most found me scary and shied away. By "anything" i mean academically, artistically, whatever the need, I could do it, it was a curse I live with to this day. That is why I became a person of the night, it was so silent then, no one wanted to hurt me, and then there was him, the soft soothing sound of his voice, his beautiful accent, it dwels in my heart, even now. He was the only thing I have ever found comfort in. That is how I found myself in Toronto, a dropout of the London Academy of Arts and Sciences, I moved to Canada, truthfully to get away from my parents, but something held me here. Something about the air, something abuot the way the magic of the city whirled about my head. It was a beautiful sight, Toronto in the darkness, and yet I cannot say if I have ever seen in in the daylight. Anyway, enough about me, I am a relitavely boring individual and I have a boring job, those are the facts. It was this man that intrigued me so. Sometimes he would speak of pain and lovers lost, things that the heart cannot bare and yet still we must go on. Occassionally, he would receive a call, although never from me, and he would give out generally depressing advice that seemed in its initial stages to be useless. The thing about what he said, however, was that the more one thought about it, the more useful it became, because you realized the reality of what you were going through, instead of covering it in a shroud, which people have a tendancy to do. He had an amazing ability to remove those shadows, and look at the real person. It was one of those nights, when his soothing voice had touched my heart and caused tears I had promised I would never again shed, that I decided to search him out. Fortunately, I know the law, and the government cannot without public documents and because he chose to brodcast to the public, he was public property, at least his radio station was. I used every means within my power, bypassed city ordinances and certianly officials who had been bought to achieve this address. I was granted access to the public records, yay. I was standing in the courthouse, looking up the address when a young detective approched me. She was, oh, I don't know, 26 or so, about my age. She told me she had received a call from the courthouse saying that someone was there trying to look of the address of CERK radio. I remember staring, yes I was looking it up. It was my intention to speak personally with the Nightcrawler (for that was his name on the show). She told me she could save me the trouble and the CERK had been shut down about five months ago, but that her partner would like to speak with me. I wondered at the time as we walked out together what that gentle man on the radio could possibly have done to make the police so wary of him. I mean, seriously, I didn't even know him and they wanted to speak to me? When he walked into the interrogation room, something began to crawl up my back, it dug tendrils of ice into my hair making my hands shake. I forced them still. I looked into his eyes, a sparkling blue, but something behind them...something I could not place was watching me. As if he were two people and yet still the same person. He introduced himself as Detective Nick Knight, the blond woman was his partner, Tracy Vetter. He asked simple question, as if he were speaking to a child. Why was I looking for this man? What did I want from him? I finally remember erupting and asking if I was under arrest. No, was the response I got. Then I did not understand the need to question me about a quest of my own person desires. certainly people have had crushes on radio personalities before and almost as certainly that crush would end after I met him, but I needed to meet him. I want to and I would not stop lookin until I had. And with that, I stormed out into the darkness almost shaking in fury and anger until Det. Knight caught up with me. He knew the Nightcrawler, he said, and he knew what he was capable of, and that he was dangerous. He was simply concerned for my well-being. I laughed. Why should he care, he didn't even know me. Besides, if he did know this man as well as he said, why not take me to meet him himself and he could be my guardian, if you will. Because one thing was for certain, I was not stopping until I found him. With or without his help. Perhaps, now that I look back, I had finally found a quest worthy of alleviating my boredom. reluctantly, the good detective told me to meet him at a club across town called "The Raven" the next morning. Ugh. Morning. You know, Toronto is not nearly as exciting or beautiful in the daylight. I remember it now, completely. I had no car, so I had to walk. It was quite a ways, so I started out in darkness and watched as the dawn crested over the horizon. The absolute normality of my life actually took over at that moment, and the dawn forced me to become dizzy and sluggish. Ah, instinct is a bitch, isn't it? I pushed on, however, my quest somehow blocking all the needs my body was screaming at me. I reached the club, it looked incredibally dreary and eampy. But the door swung open upon my knock and there was Det. Knight standing in a corner conversing with a man. I knew instantly that it was him. He stood over 6'5, his long body covered from head to toe in black that made him look slender. His hair was white with age and spike up on the type, and as he turn bright shimmering blue eyes rages at me like a firestorm. He was certainly no the gentle creature I had envisioned, in fact, hiding behind the beauty of that smile was a power the likes of which I had never felt. Certianly, I had met others as smart as myself, but I got the distinct impression that this man far surpassed me, and I found it oddly disturbing and intoxicating at once. He had a sterling silver sword which was lanced through the collar of his shirt. Slightly punk, slightly Renissance, absolutely beautiful. At the momennt, I remember stopping, to know the face that went behind the voice would be enough, I needed nothing else. But he approached me, Det. Knight lingering in the shadows. He smiled and a bolt of lightning coursed through my body in one brillinat flash of want and desire. I wonder if he had that effect on everyone? He bent gently at the waist and introduced himself as Lucien LaCroix, kissing my hand. Would it have been more perfect, I know not how. For my part, I simply stared in awe as the voice of my dreams and fantasies came alive before me. He laughed at my starstruck expression, it was a gently, soft laugh that sent small shivers up and down my back. He leaned closer, speaking softly in French. I am going to assume that at this point he did not believe me capable of knowing French, because what he was saying was gibberish. The spell had been broken, he was just a man, like any other, or parhaps, like no other, I couldn't decide. I asked him, laughing, if he might speak in complete sentences so I could understand his words. Those beautiful eyes glazed over and for an instant, I would have sworn they took on the color of my own. A golden amber, as bright as the sun, but seeming to hold within them many things, including a promise of death. Detective Knight stepped forward, almost in a protective gesture, but Lucien LaCroix waved him off and spoke once again in French. The soft melody of his voice was as it always had been on the radio, utterly intoxicating, completely spellbinding, low, hoarse, beautiful. Why had I come to see him, he asked me? Why here, in this place, where there could be danger? I knew of no danger that I could possibly be facing, I told him, for if it was my destiny to be hurt, killed or anything else on this quest, I would certainly not have avoided it by turning down Det. Knight's kind invitation. I had come here to thank him, to meet him that I might listen every night with a face attached to the voice I so oft heard in my dreams. I was simply a fan, nothing more. What should anyone fear from a fan? He smiled at that. My words were wise. He took my hand, I remember his touch, icy cold, so very cold. He led me to the bar. How had is come that one as young as myself could be so very wise? I didn't know the answer. Certianly I had studies, but wisdom comes from the inner woul, a place that grows iwth age. Perhaps, I told him, I simply have an old soul. Perhaps, he agreed. He told me that he had never had a fan come looking for him in this way. Bypassing city ordinances and laws in search for something that exists only along the lines of a radio. I snuck a look at Det. Knight, he looked guilty, he had told Lucien LaCroix of my quest. I swung abruptly into Greek, wondering how far I could push this beautiful man, who seemed to eminate both danger and inexplicable beauty and gentleness at once. I told him that it is within my nature to seek out that which I do not understand or find disturbing and put it to rest. And why, he asked me, would I find him so very disturbing? He spoke Greek as fluently as he did English and French. Perhaps we were of akindred soul, he and I. I looked up into his pale eyes and was honest for perhaps the first time in my entire existence. We were the same, I told him. he laughed, but I blundered on, embarassed. Certainly not in any physicaly way, but inside, our knowledge, our wisdom, our passion for a darkness that seems to free up the world around us, the way neither one of us will every fit in. I had finally met someone with whom I could speak and they would understand what I said. And whether it was foolishness, or true wisdom, they would always know that I wished only to grow within myself and never condemn me for that. As Socrates said, they who believe they are wis are fools, but they who know that they know nothing are the truly wise. He was nodding, to my great relief. Yes, in that way, we were definately the same, for he had met very few in his lifetime who would willingly sit and talk with him this way. I asked him why and he simply shrugged. Either he was too overpowering, or they wre frightened of him. I'm sure a look of sympathy crossed my features, for now I understood what drove us both. The thing that drove me to move from place to place, the same creature that drove him to talk into a radio night after night. Lonliness. I was not afraid to speak or be near him, never afraid. He stood and smiled, he understood me better than I thought and his insight was truly amazing. I was a free spirit, a restless being and my destiny was to move, he said. I remember the sadness in my voice and tears that came out of nowhere as I realied he was right, I would leave again, because that was my nature. He reached out with his cold fingertips and getly wiped the tears away. His voice touched my ear, caressing in its softness, saddening in its beauty. No tears, he said. each one of us has a destiny, each one of us myst follow that destiny no matter where it leads us because that is the ultimate meaning of life. I must not weep at this passing of two lives, like boats adrift in a storm at sea, for when I turned on my radio, he would still be there, and I would always be a party of his soul, for eternity. So I stand here, still in Toronto for the moment. I never went back to wisit him again, and somehow, I know he knew I would not. Still ringing in my ears, I can hear his words, as though they were directed at me, and perhaps they were. "Sometimes, gentle listeners, when the night has cast its shadow over us, it creeps into our hearts, causing a shroud to cover our soul. A travesty of lonliness that can overwhelm our senses, lest we forget that somewhere in the world is a person who can share those moments with you, and then, my children, you are no longer alone." ***************************************************************** response, flames, oreos, letters of recommendation, definitions of "irony", and/or Geriant Wyn Davies home address to randolph@tenet.edu "I do hope this wave of altruism passes quickly, it is quite...distressing."--LaCroix, Night in Question *****************************************************************