The Liquid Girl of Berlin

Okay, so here is the final piece after a few weeks of creative writing tutoring. Please see included added 'dramatic tension' and 'contrast.' I ahve also included my commentary on the piece due to popular demand. I'll let you know how it goes.

The Liquid Girl of Berlin


Raymond Phelps could have been God as far as the world was concerned. He was the highest paid model in Hollywood, regularly feted as the world’s most eligible bachelor, and at a ceremony that evening in Berlin had been crowned ‘Man of the 21st Century.’ On the wall of Sonya Monfis, the French actress, there was even an enlarged print of his face.
‘It’s your eyes,’ she said, stroking the paper with her fingernails. ‘With eyes like that you can have anything.’
But Raymond Phelps didn’t want to look at another picture. He didn’t want to look at anything at all.
As the beautiful French actress tore off his clothes he felt his limbs start to grow cold, and as her body curved and squeezed around him his breath begin to choke. He focused on the perfect undulations of her legs and stomach and the measured tip of her nipples as her breasts rubbed gently over his groin, but then he froze completely.
‘Come on Raymond. I want to feel you. I want your body in me.’
With every move Raymond’s body shivered.
‘Your mouth.
‘Your chest.
Shake, cold, ache. More and more.
‘All of you.’
‘Your beautiful face.’
Numb.
He closed his eyes, then kicked the beautiful actress onto the carpet and ran away.

A thousand faces stared as Raymond walked through the city. Couples pointed out of cafe windows, tramps wandered through the Tiergarten, tourists gazed from the TV tower. ‘Look,’ said their pouting lips. ‘The shoulders. The mole on his chin. That beautiful olive skin. It’s him!’
Raymond lit a cigarette, forming a cloud to sting the eyes of the watching audience, and then ducked into an empty square of plush white blocks.
‘All they do is look. All they see is him.’
Above the glass dome of the Reichstag revolved.
‘Look.
‘Look.
‘There he is!’
Tiny heads spun to look.
‘Here! Here!
‘Look here!’
He reached for a cigarette.
‘Look at me Raymond.’
But it was too late.
‘Her.
‘Him.
‘Them.
‘Look.
‘Look at us.’
A million light bulbs flashed.
‘Look here.
‘Here.
‘Here!’
The sky exploded with light. A galaxy of telescopes pointed at him, and the TV Tower, the Reichstag and the Wall gripped onto his neck. Raymond looked one way and then the other and, unable to breathe, dived into the darkness.

The girl leant over a bridge and looked down at the River Spree as it drifted into the east of the city. Her light summer dress rippled in the wind, emitting a purple glow like phosphorus out at sea and her skin hovered over the water like dragonfly wings.
‘Hey,’ she said, without turning around.
Raymond’s legs drew him towards her. ‘Hey, he said
‘It’s a nice evening to be by the river,’ she said, whistling into the breeze
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose it is.’
Below them the water rippled and caressed the bank.
‘Would you like to look?’ she said.
On the river Raymond saw her reflection.There were dashes of flotsam on her face - blue on her eyes, white on her skin - and a steamy halo on her head. It seemed to jump and dance like seagulls over the fisherman’s net. He followed the current, washing and rippling around, dragging his body under.
‘No…no!’ he coughed, losing his balance on the cold stone wall. ‘Ahem, no its okay. I…’
He tried to stand but his legs had frozen in the water.
‘Come,’ she said, stroking her hand up the nape of his back. ‘Come and look. Don’t worry.’
Raymond blinked and peered over the bridge. On the surface of the Spree a new form took shape - dark close hair, light skin glazed in toffee brown, eyes like the sky over the arctic tundra - and around it a hundred lights swirled - cameras, crystal glasses, television screens, diamonds, screaming voices gurgling into the vortex
‘Raymond! We love you.
‘Look at us.
‘Come and to us.
‘Ushhh.
‘Usshhh.
‘Shhhhh.
‘Shhhhh’
The face they so desired floated precariously on the waves, and on the bridge Raymond staggered in the storm.
Plop.
A drop of rain lobotomised his forehead.
Splsshhh.
The wind contorted his sculpted cheeks
Ripple.
He sank under the current of a passing sawn.
‘It’s you,’ the strange girl’s reflection said. ‘And then it’s not you. It’s something else floating in the water.’
The girl’s hand gripped on his shoulder and turned him to her.
‘What are you doing to me?’ Raymond cried.
Her eyes glinted like sun on a cobweb. ‘Here’s you, Raymond Phelps,’ she said. ‘The one they all want. And then in the water there you are as well...until you go, and come back again.’
He tried look away but his neck had become limp.
‘No,’ he said.
‘The one they all want.’
‘Stop it.’
‘The one they all want.’
‘Get off me.’
‘Then nothing at all.’
‘Leave me alone!’
Her liquid glow enveloped Raymond. It was warm and luscious, embracing him into a lightness of being. Her hair waved around like golden reeds and her eyes dipped him into blue pools. Then she whispered, inside his ear:
‘Raymond. My name is Sophie. I am the liquid girl of Berlin. I think I will jump into the river. Would you like to jump with me?’
Reeds rustling around his head.
‘Come on. It will be nice. It’s fun to be liquid in Berlin. You never know what form you’ll take.
I don’t want to drown.
You won’t.
What makes you so sure?
I think you are drowning now, wouldn’t you say?
I’m still breathing. My heart beats.
Is that what it means to be alive?
People still love me.’
She took him to a platform above the bridge and they looked out to the city. Streetlights melted into an ethereal glow, blocks of apartments exploded into expanses of yellow and green, towers shot up like fountain jets and concrete walls flopped around like jelly.
‘What do you see when you look out there Raymond?’
‘Walls.
‘Walls and lights. Flashing lights.’
‘That’s all a beautiful man sees?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that what love is?’
The platform expanded into a giant golden cloud and in the centre stood Sophie opening her arms.
‘In Berlin we will not let you be like this. We will not be trapped by walls or blinded by lights.’
They walked to the edge, hands held together.
‘We see a future that is free, where can flow into whatever form we choose.’
Then they jumped into the Spree - the liquid girl and the beautiful man.

Raymond looked around, right and left, up and down, but all he could see was a dark mass of water. It grew heavier above him. Slowly he started to sink, deeper and deeper, into indigo, navy and then black. Black void.
‘Where am I?’
His voice was flat, like he was shut in a box.
‘What’s this pla...’
‘Wha...
‘Wh
‘W.’
A solid wall which even words could not breach.
‘Help me...’
‘Sophie...!’
‘Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom.’
A heart began to beat.
‘Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom.’
And Raymond saw something through the darkness.
‘Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom.’

On the bank of the Spree a hundred bodies sat slumped on deckchairs. A muscular figure hoisted himself out of the river, wiped the water from his olive skin and walked towards them. Beers dropped to the floor, ice creams melted and sunglasses steamed.
Then he turned towards the city. Cars skidded to a stop and cyclists slammed their feet to the floor. In cafes and bars men and women put down their drinks. Offices turned to morgues and computer screens winked off.
A million eyes stopped and looked.
Raymond Phelps didn’t notice. The beautiful man slipped by without a glance. He didn’t feel their eyes burn into his skull and he didn’t hear their voices scream at his face.
Raymond didn’t notice because he was looking for someone.

‘Hey!’
‘Hey you, over there!’
In a square of perfect green grass sat a girl. She wore a small yellow dress and glinted like the sun on a snowy peak.
‘Hey!’
She put down a book and waved at Raymond, her hands dancing up and down like ballerina. He stopped, looked back at the cars, the offices and the shops, and then he ran over to her.
Ba-dom. Ba-dom. Ba-dom.
‘Hey,’ she said, brushing golden strands of hair from her face.
‘Hey,’ Raymond panted.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve been distracted.’
‘You know, you should really give up smoking,’ she said, folding her arms like a teacher.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I have.’
‘It’s very bad for your skin.’
She rubbed her arms up and down her side and laughed, a yellow halo forming around her.
‘Come for a walk through the city.’
He took her hand and clasped it tight into his. It was warm and soft like a child’s.
‘Where shall we go?’ he said.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.

Commentary


The initial idea for my story came from an episode of Horizon on the BBC about parallel universes, and the idea there may be one type of ‘you’ existing in one place, and another different ‘you’ in a completely separate universe. I had written this down in my notebook as an interesting concept for a piece, but it was only on a visit to Berlin that I saw a way I could develop it in a narrative. Here I found an entire city forming a new identity, from division to liberal progress and felt this could be an evocative environment to set a story. I revisited the thoughts I had noted down, researched the quantum theory behind it and then had the idea of representing a particle change, from solid to liquid, in a human tale. To me it seemed to represent of the change in Berlin - from two defined states to a malleable form - and also the journey of my character, from a staid world of appearance to an epiphany of emotion.

I first wrote as two separate narratives colliding at the liminal centre of the river, however, I found that the lack of interaction between the two characters was of detriment to the story’s dramatic focus. I considered the techniques built in Activity 2.6 in the Workbook and rewrote from the perspective of only the male model, building the tension first through his confrontation with the physical world and then from his fear of embracing the ‘liquid’ world of emotions. I wanted to concentrate on the motifs of light and water, taking inspiration from a reading of Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea, but the story became overly abstract so I rewrote again giving the ‘liquid girl’ a more human role.

It was important to me to try and create and reflect the consciousness of the city, however I didn’t want to convey a mere series of landmarks. I formed a cluster to gather my images of the city and asked some local people I had met to do the same and used these to create an authentic sense of place in the piece – liquid as well as solid.