Up the Hill

Up the hill and up the hill and up the hill she walked, hands in her pockets, rain in her eyes, wind in her hair that could probably do with a bit of a trim (it was starting to creep down past her ears and tickle them dreadfully), legs like clockwork against the tiredness of her body. She was fine until she got to the door of the house, then she suddenly didn’t want to do this at all. She really didn’t want to do this. The rain was dripping down the back of her neck, under the collar of her coat (she’d lost the hood during a friendly altercation with Ibn Battuta in China – later that night he had taken her aside and under the light of the full moon reflected in the waters of the great lake which hid the last relics of Atlantis, and had been scandalised, upon his proposal of running away together, to learn that she was a lesbian), and she really didn’t want to stand around too much longer, so she gave up, and pushed open the ornate iron gate to Drake Manor.

Some minutes later, she was sat in the living room – not decadently opulent, but nice – everything was just slightly cleaner, or more aesthetically-pleasing, or more solid-looking, or just older than one would find in a regular old semi-detached in Oldwick – nursing a cup of tea, dampening a doubtless very expensive sofa.

“Jennifer,” smiled Richard Drake unpleasantly, entering the room. “What an… unexpected pleasure.”

“Richard,” said Jenny, smiling sweetly over her tea. “Still torturing kittens in your free time, I hope?”

He said nothing, but picked a cup and poured, slowly slowly poured, some tea from the teapot, and went to sit, slowly slowly went to sit, down next to his wife.

“I do apologise about Donovan,” he said – Laura’s brother, Donovan, was sprawled over a nearby settee scrolling on his phone. “You know, he’s very clever when he cares to be.”

“Fuck off,” called the man, and shoved some crisps in his mouth from the packet he had sitting next to him, crunching loudly and obnoxiously.

“Donovan!” snapped his mother Marjorie, “Not in front of the guests, if you please.”

Jenny squeezed the scream welling up from her insides very tightly indeed and puckered it up into what she thought was the most delightfully charming little smile.

“Oh I don’t mind,” she said. “He at least has the decency to show what a lazy little cunt he is, unlike you bastards with your pretences of blooming work. You’ve never worked a proper day in your lives.”

She watched Marjorie Drake squirm under her eyes. Richard simply stared and stared and said nothing with his eyes except how he was superior to her in every way and didn’t she just want to curl up into a little ball and die. Well, he could fuck off. She didn’t want to do that. She didn’t care. Okay, so she did, but… well… look, just fuck him, alright.

She looked at Richard’s lips, fine, cruel lips. They were moving.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“I – ” she began, feeling rather small and inadequate. But no, that wouldn’t do, that wouldn’t do at all. She was Jenny bloody Everywhere, she had seen more things than this man’s tiny little mind could possibly hope to comprehend in a thousand lifetimes. She did not have to – she would not – dignify him by giving into him. He was nothing; a stain on her life, a little bit of black grit on her scarf. She raised herself up. “I think I left an earbud here,” she said.

Mr Drake raised an eyebrow.

“On purpose?” he asked.

“Of course not,” she spat. “If you’ll excuse me.”

Calmly, she put the tea down, picked herself up, and walked out into the hallway, where she breathed heavily, leaning against the pretty white wall that was kept so brilliantly clean and feeling hot bile welling in her throat like tears. She wanted to scream or cry, but she couldn’t do either, so she pulled herself up the great big stairs – they were so wide! What was the point? – up to the third door along on the carpeted landing lit by light filtered through cloud and trees. When she entered Laura’s room she thought she would cry, but still she couldn’t. It looked just exactly the same as it always had, except the bed had been made and the chair by the desk was horribly, screamingly empty. She tried not to look at the chair; it made her feel like she was going to faint (and she didn’t faint; she never fainted). She walked over to the window, opened it, and popped her head out, looking at the town and the grey grey sea beyond the little houses and hills and trees and cars and buses. She looked for what felt like forever out at the world, thinking nothing and feeling nothing and being nothing but alive. She loved the look of the sea, out there – or rather she loved the look of all the little, beautiful, perfect waves – and she loved thinking of all the people bustling, wandering through the town, thinking and feeling and loving and losing so many different things, an unimaginable amount of depth and complexity in such tiny things. Laura had never cared so much for that; “Look at the clouds,” she had said. “Aren’t they just incredible, such giant structures, up in the sky? Just fantastic.”

Jenny looked at the clouds.

“They are, Laura,” she said, quietly. “They are.”

She closed the window, and, avoiding looking at the blaring empty chair she had leant on the back of so many times before, she retrieved the earbud from the little compartment in the desk she had left it the last time she had visited. She replaced it with a hair clip. The desk smelt of graphite and old wood and Laura, just like it always had, only there seemed less and less of the Laura-smell now.

Squeezing the earbud in the palm of her hand so that the squidgy smooth soft hard dug into her skin, she collapsed into Laura’s bed, though trying not to disturb the covers. She pressed her face into the soft darkness of the sheets and smelt the washing powder Marjorie used that she so associated with Laura, so that she could almost pretend the bed was Laura and the soft hotness happy. Almost.

She stayed there a long time, and probably many thoughts ran through her head that she could not remember, and many feelings that she could not describe and had not noticed in the first place, but at length she got up, brushed herself down, and, red-faced, descended the overly-large stairs lit through clouds and waving trees, and let herself out. She did not dignify Laura’s parents (if you could call them that) with gratitude, or even acknowledgement, she simply walked out.

Much to her dismay, however, Donovan was standing outside waiting for her. Surprisingly, though, he did not seem to be so obnoxious as usual; he looked apologetic, even contrite, as Jenny approached. She didn’t know that she cared, though, and tried to stride on past him. He moved himself, hurrying to keep up with her.

“Look,” he was saying. “I’m really sorry about my parents. They’re – they’re a bit old-fashioned and they – but they oughtn’t – they oughtn’t to – look – ”

Jenny stopped. He seemed pretty genuine, and she wasn’t going to pass up an apology, even as she was trying with all her spirit and body not to cry out of sheer frustration and exhaustion.

“Go on,” she said.

“Look,” he said. “You’ve got to be – I mean you must be feeling – feeling really shit right now. I mean, I know I am. And, I mean, I don’t think that they should’ve – look, I’m sorry, alright. And I would like to get to know you better, if you – ” Oh. “ – If you – ” Oh no. “If you wanted to come out for a drink with me some time?”

Jenny looked at him, quietly and coldly.

“Fuck off,” she said, and her voice was trembling far more than she’d meant it to or cared it to and she turned away and decided it hadn’t been because that wasn’t who she was, it wasn’t who she was. She resumed marching down the hill away from the terrible house, faster than before, and her arms and legs and mind seemed to swing out from her like out-of-control pendulums and Donovan was rushing behind her saying “Jenny I’m sorry,” but she was faster and away and away into the Infinite and the great black starry sky where there was nobody but herself and an infinity of universes to hear her crying. She didn’t cry, though, she was quite clear about that, even as she sat curled up in a little ball, knees hugged into her chest like they could give more than the most perfunctory of comfort, curled up in a little ball on the great blank floor surrounded by nothing but stars, stretching off into infinity.

You make your readers wait six months for a new story in this series and it’s only 1.5? What are you doing here, Molly? Well, firstly, I remain somewhat sceptical that there are a great deal of readers hanging on my every word, though if there are and you’re reading this thank you very much indeed. Secondly, I was trying to write a longer thing a la Ad Infinitum, and it was just ending up as this sort of disparate bunch of scenes, and I was thinking “You know, it’d be really fun to do sort of shorter things in the vein of Scott Sanford”, and so I did this. Thirdly, I think this’ll be easier to keep up commitment on. Fourthly, it means more entries in the Concerningly Comprehensive Spreadsheet, which can only be a good thing. Anyway. Yes. There will be a long one at some point, which is ironically two stories merged into one for reasons that will become clear, but mostly I’m hoping to keep up with a few short Jenny Everywhere Fridays. So that should be fun!

The character of Donovan Drake was created by Bastian and is available for use by anyone.

The Infinite was created by Benj Christenson and is available for use by anyone.

The character of Laura Drake was created by Jeanne Morningstar and is available for use by anyone.

The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition: This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, that others might use this property as they wish. All rights reversed.

All characters and concepts original to this story are hereby made available for use by anyone, with attribution welcomed but by no means necessary.