#nothing to see here. just my lesbian books about death and six legged dogs

[todd-queen]

So if you haven't gotten a chance to check out my other post (linked above) about the cipher... fun fact! each of the verses Tam picks are part of a code that reads: THE TOWER HAS REACTIVATED

That code, however, is for the published version of Nona the Ninth. In the ARC (Advanced Reader Copy), Muir originally had the code read: THE TOWER WANTS JOHN GAIUS

of course, that then makes the code change, which in turn made the verses change. So I went through and remade the above doc with the original (ARC) verses, so I could see how they compared to the published ones/compared to the text. So if you're interested, here it is! :)

*23:1 -there is no actual Chapter 23 in the Book of John, but I have no doubt that Muir switched it out for John 1:23 (especially after comparing the NTN text)

Once again, I tried to pick a quote I thought best related to the verse, but some of them I couldn't make up my mind, or I just couldn't find a better one, so please feel free to add on if you think a piece would fit better!

and a big thank you to @koshertaako for explaining what the ARC is :) and to @hollowechoes for motivating me to explore the second cipher :))

so I have actually not stopped thinking about the bible verses in Nona the Ninth

(they are actually over taking my every waking moment)

I was raised with a religous parent, so in addition to solving the numbers code, I was curious what any of the actual verses from the book of John were, and typed them into biblegateway.com today.

And god. damn. it. Muir has done it again.

The very first verse is John 20:8 (NIV):

"Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed."

TAMSYN!!! HOW DID YOU GET THE NUMBERS TO LINE UP PERFECTLY FOR THE CODE A N D THE BIBLE VERSE????

i am losing my mind so much

i compiled them all into a Google doc and took a screenshot, so please let me know if the image doesn't load right :)

i went through all the verses and wrote them down to try and find a quote in each chapter that at least correlated to each theme of the verse(s) (please forgive me if they aren't perfect- and feel free to add on!)

[e-z-like-a-sunday-morning]

Somewhere In The Between

‘And Somewhere in the Between

There’s a Love for which we all Dream,

And Nothing and No-one can ever take that away.’

-          Streetlight Manifesto

I return home from a day well spent in London, rehearsing for a recording session for my girlfriend’s EP. She will be paying me for it, which I guess means I’m technically currently a professional session musician, which I find pleasing.

On the train home the people I say hello to actually say hello back and start talking to me. One even plays my drum whilst I play guitar - both surprising and wonderful.

I splay myself down in front my television and eat a pseudo-vegan meal as I watch a 90’s kid’s cartoon called Leo the Lion on my VCR, because somehow the fifteen minutes I spent in Old Street today turned me into a card carrying Hipster. I sink down into my bed with thoughts of music and flames, both old and new, content in the fading tendrils of a day well spent.

Waking life slips away as I find myself swimming in old places and old faces. Reality starts to return to my life, as, ‘with the courage of a clown, or a cur, or a kite jerking tight at its tether’, I drift past palaces and through cheering crowds, and find myself in familiar lands, under the expectant gaze of a billion forgetful eyes.

I am back in New Orleans, in a small dive bar just off Decatur, no bigger than your living room, all dark maroons, low divans and bookshelves, full of the kind of creative service industry types that in London would be Hipsters and in New Orleans would be Gutter Punks. All blacks and browns with too much makeup and too much moustache, or perhaps I am just too naked and hairless.

I am stood by a bookshelf, sifting through the business cards of tattoo artists. Kai Kita. A great one. She did my chest and back. Oh hey Doom Puppy! I think I owe her money.

I turn to the people next to me. A handle-barred hipster and his dark haired companion, both being shown around by Meg.

Meg was an ex-prostitute who lived with Tyger and I a short while, before Tyger got shived in the kidneys for bottling a lesbian in the face, is a phrase I would never have thought I would be able to utter with honesty, had you asked me three years ago.

Meg was short, thin and ginger, with bulbous silver braces over her teeth and tattoos over every part of her body from her face to her feet. A swastika here, a middle finger, a samurai and a swearword there. All violence and vitriol, spewing forth out of an accent so thick with the tones of Boston as to be barely discernible, although I could happily listen to her high-pitched, lyrical cackle and drawl for hours, the same way one might listen to A Survivor From Warsaw, transfixed by the beautiful horror unfolding inside ones earholes.

She had apparently been involved in some kind of kidnapping plot, the details of which elude me, but which I believe may have precipitated her arrival in New Orleans.

‘Hey! You guys want a free tattoo? I owe this chick money.’

The hipsters look confusedly to their guide for guidance.

‘Naaaaahhhh. I’ve got no space left. Why don’t you get one off her?’ Meg splutters to me, all smiles.

‘Oh no, I couldn’t do that’ I splutter back, looking down at one of my tattoos – Let It Go, This Too Shall Pass - ‘I’m not sure I’m still the tattoo kind of guy.’

My three companions exchange knowing glances and smiles, and return to their reading a moment before a bell chimes to announce the beginning of the night’s entertainment. Eagerly, I take a seat on the floor by the entrance amid a packed crowd of maybe six to ten other patrons. Happily, the first act is Meg. She is doing Cabaret! I love Cabaret. She is singing a song of sexy sadness, and stalking, woefully and elegantly waving from side to side as she admits, dramatically yet unsurprisingly, that it was in fact she who snuck into my house to steal the blue cheese from my fridge, the absolute villain.

Suddenly, the music ramps up a notch. It probably changes key and becomes a tango, as everyone in the crowd that isn’t me jumps up into a synchronised dance that they have obviously rehearsed, and obviously not rehearsed enough. I find myself terrified – are they all in on it? Is this all for me? What else might these blaggards have planned? Will I ever go back to using normal words again?!?

Drinks are knocked over and vases shattered as Meg is pirouetted between her supporting cast, lifted this way and that, passed and thrown from side to side, and waved up and down like she were made from flags and string and this were Dirty Dancing.

Meg is found, splayed and drenched across the shoulders of six dancers who barely manage to keep from using her as a battering ram to accost the patrons of the bar one wall over. The music takes a darker turn, as notes of anger and frustration begin to enter. The wall she barely managed to avoid headbutting becomes, rather poetically, with hints of the afore-mentioned blue cheese, symbolic of the emotional wall of her inner spiritual life, or some-such.

She spins down onto her feet, staring at a book that she picks up and drops again, all sweat and hazy Paisley, amidst whispers from her team of dancers.

‘That went well. We didn’t even break her neck this time.’

‘She’s had it – she’s got no more in her.’

‘She’s not serious. She’d never actually do it. She’s all talk.’

‘Like he’ll ever actually notice. He’s not bright enough. Anyway he’s too lazy to actually care.’

All their words start to melt together as familiar songs start to play and old fears start to arise in me. It’s my turn to move. My solo, and I’ve failed too many of these to not notice when it’s my turn to dramatically fail at something.

A screeching of car tyres outside. Meg jerks out of her reverie, looks at me and then past me to the exit, with daggers in her eyes, and starts to sprint, in slow motion.

‘Meg, don’t do it!’ Tears well and chest clutches. Heart chokes as body scrambles over itself, clutching, clasping, for redemption and forgiveness. Not another one. Please God, not another one. This time I can be fast enough. I can be better.

His arms wrap themselves about the girls leg and cling on for dear lives, stopping her from leaving the bar, dragging her to a muddled, joyous, and rather unexpected halt. It’s a little awkward as I look up through tears and pleas to a face looking down at me with disappointment and annoyance, more than anything. at having her big moment ruined. The anger hasn’t been externalised at me yet, unfortunately.

Outside, a car drives itself into the distance as we stare at each other across the space of three thousand miles and about as many emotions. I find myself, unsure of what to do next, wanting to apologise and tell her that this doesn’t normally happen to me. To be honest, I think I’m more used to being the one crying over the mangled body in the street.

It’s funny, I never took Meg for the suicidal kind, back when I was in New Orleans. I wonder what part of me was trying to kill itself. I don’t wonder for very long, though, as that’s a story for another day and another dream, and another crowd - hopefully one exponentially smaller.

Well, the moment is somewhat ruined and we’re all a little bit of the wrong kind of soggy, as the crowd mills about despondently and Meg stomps off grumpily to the other end of the bar, through into another room.

Today though, my solo is to be an extended one it seems, as I hear music begin to mumble its way out of silence and I remember that the other room also has a road-facing-exit.

I clamber over bodies and through treacle to the other room, where I see Meg making another mad dash for an appointment with collision.

Sprinting through the watching crowd, I tackle her to the ground. Straddling her and pinning her arms, I try my hardest to not get turned on nor bitten whilst also trying to work out which is which amidst this snarling heap of hatred and limbs. I remember the sickly fascination and gleaming eyes with which Meg had described to me the traumatic experience of watching her cat get torn apart by Tyger’s massive dogs.

I don’t remember it for long though – soon all my energy is exerted trying to calm and placate this screaming ball of beautiful death. For a second I am reminded of my girlfriend, before I am bitten on the hand and reminded that such thoughts shall be the ones to kill me, in the end.

The music picks up into the jovial waltz one might find in The Sound of Music or Educating Rita, as the bar slows down and around us a brawl breaks out, tumbling bodies colliding and exploding, glass shattering and Jokers being thrown through walls and windows, as tooth digs into skin and eyes turn to red pinpricks of frustration and confusion.

I, on the other hand, am smiling quite amicably, and moving quite slowly, almost elegantly – finally, we’re in a familiar setting, in a key signature whose notes I know well. I can relax a little, as Meg loses her strength and becomes like cute putty.

I begin to sing, with the kind of voice one might use to proclaim the benefits of discovering that their testicles were situated in their ears. It’s a duet, although Meg’s part mostly consists of snarls and well timed shards of eye murder.

Imagine a hauntingly jaunty folk melody. Also imagine that it rhymes, if you will.

‘You could build an orphanage in Ghana! You could climb every building in Peru! You could show Pirates of the Caribbean to every pirate currently in the Caribbean!

‘Did you think I would leave you? From my first brick smoke stack to my last raging fire, did you think I would be the one to let you go? Surely you know me better.

You could learn every song from the 40’s. You could take flowers to the elderly, you could rob a bank, or sell cars, or save strangers, or kill time. You could learn, to move me.’

At the time I had a whole list of similar reasons to choose life, and what’s more, it actually rhymed, but as is always the way with things, I spent too long making testicle jokes and choreographing a scene from Sucker Punch to actually remember the lyrics to a song I found both hilarious and beautiful.

The music fades to a close as, outside the door, we hear a barking noise. Snapping out of our sado-masochistic stupor, we crane our heads around a door with eyebrows raised to see an adorable little sausage dog, barking at passing cars and floating on feet too fast to count. It seems to be looking for food on Decatur Street, oblivious to the inherent danger of being so cute around so many obvious psychopaths. So far most of the cars have managed to avoid hitting it, but I’ll be called Larry if I didn’t see some of those drivers trying to swerve toward the poor thing, when they thought people weren’t looking.

Meg and I untangle ourselves and crawl out onto the side walk to call to the dog and scream at the passing cars, hoping each time that the creature will survive and come towards us.

Finally, he listens, and trots towards us, eyes wide, tongue lolling, lead trailing, tail wagging.

‘Well Done! Good Boy! We’re so proud of you!’ He jumps into our arms and licks our faces as we cuddle and stroke him ecstatically. Somebody fetches some food for the poor thing, and I find myself petting him alone, lost in the moment, as Meg slinks back into darkness, the gleam of her eye leaving a trail in the shadows.

As I feed and pet the wonderful little creature I think of home, and day-life, and how I wish I had a dog, and am dragged from my reverie by the sound of screeching tyres and a sickening thud. I look up, wondering where Meg is.

I awake in my bed. It’s 4.50am, and I have work to do – after all, apparently I’m a writer of some sort, and those were some exceedingly fine lyrics, if I’ll ever actually remember them. It’s a shame about Meg, but I think she would like to hear that she’s been haunting my dreams and caressing me with her dying moments.

Begrudgingly, I clamber out of bed and begin the monumental task of finding the motivation to write something that will never be as good as Monkey and Bear by Joanna Newsom. Or Emily by Joanna Newsom. Or anything, in fact, by Joanna Newsom.

Omid Ezekiel Ramak