[Lewis The Second]

Hello all! Right then. What follows is the first part of an episodic story I've been sort-of working on for about three years. There are various drafts of various bits of the story, but finally I'd deem this bit pretty much finished. From now, I'm going to try to update as regularly as possible in a linear fashion (well, as linear as this story gets!) Make what you will of it. I'm not really going to discuss the subtext or pragmatics of it for now. But I'd bloomin' love if you could take whatever you want from it, and for it to be more than 'just a storybook'.

It's about a little girl and her doll. It shouldn't be triggering. It might be a little in places. This part shouldn't be unless you're particularly sensitive about knives.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy.

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Susie's Doll - 0

Susie picked up the doll and stared into its deep, fiery eyes. She held it there, not breathing, beads of sweat seeping from her forehead and navigating their routes down her soft face. The doll stared back, still, emotionless, a mirror of herself. Susie held the doll’s gaze and waited, waited with a passionate intent; and she focused. She focused all her energy, all her soul, all her life into the eyes of the doll. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped the stuffed torso with all her strength as her features contorted to form a painstaking grimace. Focus, Susie, focus. Focus.

A flash of white. Susie rocked backwards, momentarily startled by the sudden intensity. It was never usually that fast; on occasion, the first flashes had taken hours, not mere minutes. She couldn’t let this distract her. Regaining her composure, and forcing herself back into the routine, Susie concentrated, shaking, on the sparkling glass eyes. Focus.

Another flash; she expected it this time, and took it without so much as a jolt. The flashes hurt - a great, thumping pain in Susie's head and chest, spreading slowly through her limbs and dissipating as out of her extremities as pins and needles - but she was long accustomed to the agony. The blinding white light faded this time, into a new scene: a blur at first, then a colour, orange, followed by the faint shape of a crowd: faceless beings hustling together. The smells came next: a heavy, exotic musk; warm sweat and arid sand masked by the aroma of incense and of cooking meat. Focus. Susie began to make out the sandstone walls, lined with stalls and cut into by tunnels. The orange desert air hung low among the crowds of hurried men and women fighting their way through the medina. For a moment, or maybe a few, silence: only the faint sounds of Susie's own heavy breathing and beating heart were audible. Then,

"'Ello, bonjour, guten tag! You English, yes? French? You French?"

"You no have twenty dinar? Okay, okay, fifteen. Fifteen dinar is good! Come on, you must have fifteen dinar! You rich! Look at that watch, it gold! Okay, twelve."

A large woman - probably German, she suspected – smacked into the side of Susie, knocking her sideways and towards a small Tunisian man dressed in off-white robes and tatty, brown sandals. A grin emerged through his patchy moustache and beard, the tiny droplets of sweat diverted around his mouth by his enthusiasm. "Ello, little girl! You want to buy hubble-bubble?"

Susie composed herself and began walking, faster than usual, through the horrendous crowd. She began to feel agitated: perhaps she was on to something this time, perhaps exploring a place and time of significance. The atmosphere exuded something, a subtle but distinctly noticeable sensation that something was not quite as it should be. It was too warm, too crowded, too... familiar. She'd been here before, she new she had, but the reasons escaped her, tormented her.

Susie broke into a run. She darted through the mass of shoes and legs and torsos, sticking near the walls to remain inconspicuous. Her size helped - four feet, eight inches, and of slight build - as she twisted and turned through the elaborate human maze. Finally, a parting in the crowd ahead: she sprinted, making for the clear area. At last, seclusion, a chance to breath and regain her bearings. A chance to think things through. Almost there. Focus.

"And as you see, these rugs here of highest quality. Hand-woven, only forty din- Ello, little girl. Something is wrong?"

Dead end. Sh*t. Focus.

"Why you run, huh? Something is the matter?"

Turning on the spot, she tripped and fell towards a middle-aged English man, drenched in odorous sweat, football jersey tucked into revealing shorts, beer gut overhanging. He held out his soggy arms and broke her fall, laughing. "Eh-he-he, easy up, love."

Focus.

She barged past him, beginning to cry. She was lost in a place she knew, a place she'd been before, a place something important had happened; but a place lost in time, lost in lives past. She ran.

She ran back through the crowds, past the stalls and the naive holidaymakers, up the steps to the walls of the medina and back down to the lower levels once again. She ran through shops and alleyways, smashing valuable pottery and stepping on pristine artwork, climbing now towards the higher reaches of the bazaar. She let her subconscious guide her, still gripping the doll tightly in her hand as a sharp pain engulfed her left side.

F*ck. F*ck. Focus!

Swinging round in shock, Susie saw the man, wearing a baseball cap and a large jacket. The sun beamed down and reflected a glint of light off a silver blade enclosed in his right hand, his face in shadow from the hat's peak. Focus! She whimpered, switching her gaze to the wound on her abdomen - a long, gaping wound, a few inches deep. She grasped the doll and stared once more. Focus, Susie. Focus. F*cking focus!

The sounds of the market became distant echoes, and Susie stared into the life of the glass eyes. A flash. Another flash.

"Only five dinar! You have five dinar, yes?"

And she was gone.