GENERAL FICTION
Behind
Venetian B
linds
Little Wit & Creative Goth
Behind
Venetian
Blinds
Little Wit & Creative Goth
Copyright © 2013 Little Wit & Creative Goth.
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All characters in this book are purely fictional. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9923254-0-4(sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4834-0380-9 (e)
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Contents
1. The Emperor ...........................................................................1
2. The World-Inverted ................................................................5
3. The Queen of Cups ...............................................................11
4. The King of Coins-Inverted ..................................................24
5. Seven of Swords ....................................................................33
6. Four of Coins ........................................................................40
7. Strength ................................................................................46
8. Nine of Cups ........................................................................57
9. Three of Cups .......................................................................62
10. The Hanged Man .................................................................71
11. The Lovers ............................................................................80
12. Death ....................................................................................91
13. The Tower ...........................................................................104
14. Eight of Cups ..................................................................... 111
15. The Moon ........................................................................... 119
16. The Devil ............................................................................ 131
17. Ten of Swords .....................................................................134
18. Six of Cups ......................................................................... 145
19. Judgement ...........................................................................154
20. Nine of Staves ..................................................................... 165
21. The High Priestess .............................................................. 173
22. Two of Swords .................................................................... 179
23. King of Staves-Inverted ...................................................... 189
24. The Fool-Inverted ............................................................... 198
25. Five of Staves ......................................................................203
26. The Hermit-Inverted ..........................................................206
27. The Empress-Inverted ......................................................... 210
28. The Wheel of Fortune ........................................................220
29. The Star ..............................................................................227
Chapter 1
Welcome to the reality behind the il usion of the
venetian blinds. Please, come in and have a look around,
you look like you haven’t been here before.
Little Wit
The warm sensation spreading through her silk pyjamas
forced April awake. “What the . . .” April eyed Gavin
warily through half-opened eyes as he stood defiantly by
the side of the bed, pissing over her as though it were acceptable.
Instinctively she made to move away from the steady stream of urine
that flowed over her, and was met with a hard heavy hand, straight
across her face. Her head bounced off the headboard, and blood fil ed
her throat as she bit down on her lip, momentarily causing her to gag.
“PLEASE GAVIN, I’m sorry . . . please don’t . . .”
Grabbing a handful of her hair by the roots he straddled her,
pinning her arms down with his knees, his other hand gripped
tightly around her neck. Pushing her head back into the mattress,
he directed the flow of urine upward towards her face, saturating her
hair and the bedding beneath her.
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Unable to move, tears of fear flowed freely as her words came out
in strangled gasps. “Please . . . let me go. Whatever it is, I’m sorry, it doesn’t have to be like this, Gavin. Why are you doing this?”
“You don’t warrant respect, April, you only warrant being trashed.
You deserve everything you get, you unashamed bitch. I despise
everything about you, and your stupid ideas about your stupid job
concerning the plights and needs of your nutcase patients.” Continuing
to hold her steadfast he sank his teeth into her right breast, and she
felt him harden as she screamed in pain. “Keep it up, baby; this is
how I like it.” He laughed a low dirty growl as he taunted her. She let out a sob as he yanked at her hair again, wrapping her tresses around
his wrist. He stalled and studied her a moment; he was aghast that
she allowed him to treat her in this way. She let him get away with
exactly as he liked and never really objected, he just couldn’t help
himself, he got hard at the thought of it. He liked the way she was
beginning to appear androgynous since he had put her on a diet; her
rib cage was jutting out, her voluptuous chest diminishing, and her
waist he could almost encircle with both hands. Pushing her long
blonde urine-matted hair away from her pretty face, which he only
allowed her to wear down behind closed venetian blinds, he looked
at the shiny bruise that was beginning to appear on her cheekbone.
Fleetingly, he felt a pang of guilt, he was normally more careful to
inflict damage on parts of her body not immediately visible to others.
He dismissed his guilt quickly, it wasn’t like he had broken her bones
or anything, nothing that wouldn’t heal or wash away, plus he knew
she wouldn’t talk. It would be more than her life was worth. She
stayed fixed in his grip, as he began to masturbate over her.
“Let’s see if you can actually satisfy me for once.” He threw his
head back as he manipulated himself and the familiar waves began
to accumulate through his abdomen. “Ahh . . . ahh . . . Gonna
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Behind Venetian Blinds
come, April . . . , don’t stop, don’t stop.” Gavin slowed his pumping
groin, deep sighs of sexual satisfaction emanating from his throat
as he ejaculated over her. Satisfied, he pushed her roughly away by
the palm of his hand against her forehead, rolled over and went to
sleep. April forced herself to lie there, covered in his piss and semen, whilst Gavin snored beside her, the cold wet sheets clinging to her
skin and the urine beginning to pool beneath her bottom. Her pubic
hair was full of his cum, the rough curls matted, sticky and bonded
together. She had long since given up trying to fight Gavin off when
he approached with his depraved intentions. The consequences of her
saying ‘no’ only resulted in assaults of increased severity. Gingerly
shifting position, she tried to get comfortable as she winced in pain.
Her head throbbed; her throat was raw, and her upper body covered
in varying shades of bruising. She moved her jaw a little and winced
at the ache in her cheekbone. She would have to look at that as soon
as she was able.
Staring numbly at the venetian blinds of their newly purchased
home, her head wandered towards her three year marriage; it always
did, even if she wasn’t giving it primary consideration, it lay there
festering at the back of her thoughts. She indulged herself, with a
private laugh, that she had hoped that their recent move to London
might have been a turning point for them. She had left behind her
friends and family in Manchester, and the job that she loved in elderly nursing, and accepted her current position nursing acute mental
health patients so that it all fitted in with Gavin’s promotion, area
transfer and an extremely lucrative wage. She had toed the line at
every cost to herself and her own needs, she did, she just did. She
had no idea what she was going to do. Since their marriage three
years ago, he had begun to enforce his physical presence on her at an
increasingly rapid rate. April’s fear of him, coupled with shame, grew
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Little Wit & Creative Goth
at a phenomenal pace. Gavin got her so she couldn’t think straight.
She felt profoundly unsure of herself, and humiliated by physical
agony and disgrace. She tipped her head up slightly toward the clock
that sat on her oak bedside table. Half past four. Gavin would not be
awake until its alarm rang shrilly at half seven, when he would get
ready to go off to his precious job. She closed her eyes, unwilling to
think anymore, and began to run through a list of household chores;
she would start with the vacuuming and then clean the windows.
When he had left for work in the morning, she would strip the
bed, scrub the mattress and turn it to air thoroughly. She liked her
surroundings to have orderliness about them, it distracted from her
reality and helped her feel calm and relaxed when she tidied, dusted
and cleaned. She knew she appeared the epitome of upper middle
class society, she had the mortgage and marriage thing happening at
the age of twenty two, and her life seemed to be steering forward in
the usual, unremarkable, carefully manufactured fashion. Vaguely,
she wondered what people would think if they knew the truth behind
Gavin`s startling baby blue eyes; flitting her eyes over to the venetian blinds, she thought about how they could do with dusting.
4
Chapter 2
Mine is just the same old story, you know the one where we struggle
for meaning and purpose to our lives? And nothing fil s that void
within; it just gets bigger with each passing day. I have no idea
why I am here and I am almost afraid to ask myself, is this it?
Little Wit
For fuck’s sake, Jay, turn the light off, will you, I’m trying to
sleep!” Groaning, Sienna glanced sleepily at the clock. It was
three in the morning. Turning over, she tugged the duvet up
over her head and closed her eyes. He was pissed, again.
“Si . . . . Sienna . . . I’m sick, like.” Jay tripped over her shoes, which she had kicked off carelessly before getting into bed. “Do you have
to leave everything lying at your arse, Si, Jaysus; a bloke can’t even
make it from the living room to the bedroom without encountering
an assault course.” He fell clumsily on top of her, holding his stomach and groaning loudly. “And you don’t give a shit that I’m ill. I might
need a doctor.”
“You’re always sick, Jay, when you mix drink with drugs, which
is, oh, let me see now, virtually every day. How much speed have you
snorted tonight? Oh for God’s sake . . . . get off me.” Kicking him 5
Little Wit & Creative Goth
off herself, she rose to turn the light out. She crawled back into bed, shoving him further over to his own side as she did.
“NAAH! . . . . Think it might have been that pizza earlier.” He
spoke with conviction.
“Oh real y.”
“Some fucking nurse you are.” He groped at her.
“Jesus, Jay, not now, I gotta be in work in a few hours!”
He leaned right over her, squashing her into the mattress. “Why
don’t you just phone and tell ’em you’re sick, like, and get some other eejit to go and do all your nut job activity programs for the day, like.
Because I can think of some nice little activity programme just for
you . . . with no patient involvement what-so fucking-ever . . . but
it’ll do you good, therapeutic like.”
Sienna closed her eyes and pulled the duvet tighter to her body,
further up to her neck. “No Jay, not now, just go to sleep or go
somewhere else.”
“Awwww . . . Si, . . . go on, go on, go on . . . what’s up with you?”
“I’m pregnant.”
He lay still for a moment, staring at her, momentarily sobered,
and then he started laughing. “You’re pulling my pisser; you had me
going there for a moment, Si.” His throat dried up when he was met
with a stony silence, and he suddenly found it difficult to swal ow. He raised his hand and stroked his neck, rolled off her and settled back
to his side of the bed. “What the fuck, Si, you can’t be.” He scratched his head, perplexed. How was he ever going to make something of
his life now Sienna had dropped this bombshell on him? “How did
this one happen, like?”
“I fell off the chair and banged my head, Jay . . . how the fuck
you think it happened!”
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Behind Venetian Blinds
“Well, how soon can you get rid? I mean, you can’t be thinking
of having it, like, I mean there’s just no way. I’m not ready for this
kind of shit; I got my degree and all to finish, like.”
She slowly turned, moving the cover back as she did, looking
at him in disbelief. It was something that had crossed her mind,
without doubt, but it was not the conclusion she had expected Jay to
reach immediately, without careful consideration. “You mean your
philosophy degree? That same degree you been studying for the past
six years since you were eighteen, and you’re still trying to make it
through the first semester of freshman’s year? That the one you’re
talking about, Jay? Huh? The only achievement you’re ever going
to make is into the Guinness book of records for being the longest
standing student ever!”
“Och, Si, don’t be such a bitch.”
Snatching a cigarette from its packet, her hand trembled as
she lit it. “Good old Jay, who just can’t cope with life. Good old
Jay, who reckons that spending all day propping up the bar talking
philosophical bullshit to his mates is going to steer his life in a
different direction from everyone else on this planet. It might help if you made it to class once in a while.”
“You’re the one that’s changed, Si, you’re the one that doesn’t
come out anymore since you started all this nursing bollocks.”
“Well, someone’s gotta earn the money to pay for your drug habit
along with the bills. It’s called growing up, Jay.” She slammed the
lighter back down on the bedside table.
“Now, just hold on a minute . . . There’s no need for that, Si . . .
And did you have to tell me that you’re pregnant tonight, like? The
lads are still next door, Si, how am I meant to go back in there and
pretend everything’s normal, huh?”
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Little Wit & Creative Goth
“Good on ya, Jay. Thanks for your support. I’m sorry this is such
an inconvenience for you . . . Thanks, Jay . . . Thanks a fucking lot.”
She wondered at her feelings of wanting to smack him if he said ‘like’
one more time, and she had found it so endearing in the beginning.
“East Belfast class,” she muttered to herself as she swung her legs
out of bed and yanked the bed cover completely off, ceremoniously
bal ing it up and burying it in the corner of the room before flouncing out and slamming the door behind her.
Sienna lowered the porcelain lid of the toilet and sat on top of it.
She shivered involuntarily in the small confines of the damp-smel ing
bathroom. Their one bedroomed flat was always cold, no matter how
many layers she put on, nor which season they were in. The tiny
radiators did little to take the chill out of the air. Blowing her nose, she opened her toilet bag and unwrapped another pregnancy testing
kit. Every day for the past three weeks Sienna had got up, thrown up,
unwrapped another pregnancy test and tried again, in vain. She had
spent a small fortune and tried several different brands. She had even
urinated in a variety of positions . . . she waited . . . hoping that this would be the one to prove al the others wrong, this would be the one
that would be negative, this would be the one to pull her out of the
shit; nope, no sirreee, not a chance. She knew damn well her behavior
was completely idiotic and she was attempting denial, but she went
ahead anyway, it helped her retain just a little hope. She watched as
the two blue lines came clearly into focus. Sienna Saverese, twenty
two years of age, sensitive to dust mites, pollens, latex, avocado,
animal hair; you name it, she was allergic. And her contraceptive
pill had failed her. It was symptomatic of her existence. Prescription
drugs didn’t suit her system either. She was most definitely pregnant.
She had dreamed of escape for months now, something different, and
something not so humdrum and ordinary.
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Behind Venetian Blinds
She stared at the venetian blinds and realized how much she
hated the entrapment they represented, suburban dreams and two
point four children. She suddenly hated the accommodation they
inhabited in London’s West End. It seemed suffocating. Her whole
lifestyle was closing in on her, and simultaneously shifting out of
her control. She thought about ringing April, her closest friend, and
then dismissed it quickly. It was late, or early depending on how
you looked at it, and a phone call wasn’t going to change the facts
that confronted her right now. She would catch up with April soon
enough at work. She wanted to run and hide; only this time there
was no cover, so she sat there and, flicking another lighter into life, sucked on a bong Jay had thoughtfully left half-consumed, ledged in
the bath. She felt herself float away, and the pain of her own existence began to subside.
As a young child, Sienna had always found ways to slip away from
reality, more often than not she floated on a cloud and detached herself from the girl below that had long dark, nearly black hair. Sometimes
she felt sorry for the little girl she left behind, like when her mother trapped her in the corner of the kitchen, near the cupboard under
the stairs, and nipped her all over her small body, the tiny pinches
leaving their sting in her soft skin. She could never remember what
made her mother so mad, only that she had made her angry for some
reason, like the time she had fallen and cut her knee and got blood
on her school uniform. As she reached adulthood, she had found
that the quickest way to float away was through recreational drug
use. It worked quickly and it worked a treat. Crossing back into her
bedroom and clambering back into bed, she lay there listening to the
bass of Primal Scream dancing its way through the thin plaster board
which divided the walls, as Jay and his throng partied on next door.
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Little Wit & Creative Goth
Jay stumbled over the myriad bodies that littered the living room
floor and made his way towards the kitchen, fuelled by his need for
another beer. This was not what he had moved to London for; there was no way he was about to succumb to societal constraints and have
the soul sucked out of him by a life of full time work, or any kind of
work for that matter, children and mortgages. He resolutely refused
to get on the treadmill every other human on this planet seemingly
got roped into, and had little choice over. He believed it was going to be different in London; a clean slate, a fresh start, a chance to make
something of himself and break away from his family history that
threatened to define him; a father with a history of mental il ness and a mother whose mantra was that she had been driven to alcoholism
by his dad. Moving from Ireland, Jay had done little but transfer his
drug habit along with his degree course. Not wanting to embrace the
truth, and that so called crummy life he took great pains to avoid,
he cracked open another can. Pumping the stereo up a notch, he
smoked another bong and settled back into the sofa, staring at the
venetian blinds as they took on a life form of their own, rippling and
morphing to the sounds of Primal Scream in his spaced-out, drug-
fuelled reality. It wasn’t long before he had forgotten all about the
conversation that had just taken place, and fell asleep.
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Chapter 3
Does mental il ness exist? Real y, does it? What if
everyone label ed insane is actual y only operating on
a far higher level of perception than the masses?
Creative Goth
“SHIT!” Sienna fell out of bed; she was already half an
hour late for work.
“Fuck, Si . . . Do you have to make so much noise?” Jay
groaned, as she banged her way through to the living room where he
lay sprawled out on the sofa. She stared at him in disdain.
“Och aye! Sod Sienna. Who gives a shite if she doesn’t get to work
on time? Work is for the bureaucrats and conservative arseholes. I
take it you aren’t going to university today, then?”
Jay ran through the usual excuses of why he couldn’t make it into
university today. He was too tired, too high, too hung over, had food
poisoning.
Sienna duly ignored everything he said and concentrated on
rummaging for her purse and keys, she found what she needed,
grabbed her Ventolin and cigarettes, and ran the two blocks to her
nearest bus stop. Once on the double decker, she wound her way
upstairs, and was grateful to find a seat to herself as she thought about 11
Little Wit & Creative Goth
her conversation with Jay. She wondered whether it had impacted
on him at all last night, probably not. Jay seemed to know onl