Wet.
The atmosphere clung to her skin, drenching pale skin with icy droplets of sweat. Whether from her own fever, or from the terse conditions, streamlets flowed from her leaving trails of sorrow in their wake. Her eyelids fluttered during her restless dreaming. Somewhere before this hellish confinement there was a moment of breathing easily. When normal body functions such as sitting up or urinating no longer occur painlessly, a mind will travel back to cozier events, cushioning the present reality.
Evey observed V shaping the smooth surface of the pale face resting in his lap. The man glanced up and the baleful grin snorted in amusement as fingers brushed away the dust from another of the masks meant for mass disbursement. V had assembled most of these Guy Faux replicas years before this night, but fresh enthusiasm flourished in further productivity. Electric lights lit the cultural mixing bowl sitting room as Madonna enthroned rested in her frame beside a 17th century Kuran. The Shadow Gallery smelled like chilled, moist earth and the moisture clung to the hands and face leaving one with the essence of mild dew.
Somehow, V's vibrant energy did not extend so far as to infect Evey with his charismatic joy. There was a distance between them larger than life in the form of black gloves and a dead revolutionists smirk. They cannot eat in the same room. Weeks had passed since she had maced that detective. Evey's time floated by among books, the tele, and the fascinating artifacts missing to the outside world.
"Remember, Remember the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot..."
V held a silence before continuing,
"I etched that phrase into the reverse of each mask when I first started making them. Too soon I realized that course of detailing would set me far behind schedule, so I discontinued the trait; however, I think these last masks can carry the message."
Evey nodded, not deeply intrigued by his idle conversation. Too often she found herself resenting him for his inability to touch her.
"It appears I am boring you. I will continue this after you are asleep."
She does not know where he sleeps, or if he rests at all.
"What is this you are reading."
V crosses the small living room rug and sweeps the hard bound book from Evey's lap. She grins up at him as his unseen eyes scan the cover. The Divine Comedy emblazons back at him and V cannot help but laugh out loud.
"Awe, Dante Alighieri is the agent of your ill disposition. Evey, wouldn't you like to read something more...uplifting?"
"I wasn't actually reading it. I found it here on the end table."
"Why don't you place it back in the library and pick out something suitable for this evening. You can read out loud to me while I address the finishing touches."
Evey pouted internally at this request, but obeyed V's desire with a smirk of consent. Reading aloud to V while he enthusiastically cut her off during each passage was a far cry from something suitable for this evening. Evey still held several questions that she still wanted decent answers for.
The "library" merely consisted of countless volumes squatting in heaps up the walls and along the stone floor. Evey wrestled her way into the mess of knowledge, setting The Divine Comedy atop a sturdy tower before she randomly selected a dark cover from the floor and turned toward the door. Evey cringed as her shoulder jilted a stack just enough to shake the top three books from their resting place down to the vicinity of her foot. Twelfth Knight jumped out at her and Evey abandoned her first choice for the beloved Shakespearean theatrics.
Metal grinding across itself shoveled Evey's conscious back into her head as the cell door swung open. Each time they came for her she prayed silently that maybe this time instead of the jailor, V would be standing there in the doorway, extended a gloved hand, and the grinning Fauxe mask would gleam eerily in the half light. Rough handling dragged the girl from her cell and back down the hallway. She had long since given up any form of autonomy other than screaming and breathing. Evey returned to consciousness feeling with an odd pressure on her neck and face. It pinched slightly in some places. Her breathing was hampered, so Evey lifted her arm to feel what was clinging to her. She felt hair and then a sharp bite. Evey sat up screaming, launching the large black rat across the cell floor. He scurried noisily back into his hole leaving a sobbing girl curled up in the opposite corner.
Later than day, she heard the rat scraping inside the opening. Evey had not been able to sleep since the incident as she had been crouching outside the hole. Keeping her eyes peeled on the opening, she waited for the rat to waddle out once again. Revenge would be strangely sweet. Evey planned to scare him so badly he would not dare enter her cell anymore. There! His nose poked out and Evey grabbed for him. Instead of scoring rat whiskers, though, she managed to procure a rolled up tube. Upon closer inspection, the toilet paper was scribbled on front and back. Evey's numb fingertips uncoiled the parchment as she scrambled for the remaining light.
"I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you. I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me."
Evey smiled a this common concept.
"Perhaps I won't be able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper...
I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's Grammar. I wanted to be an actress. I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class, staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.
In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.
But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.
London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I wanted more than that.
Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other. We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much. Those were the best three years of my life.
In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.
In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food. Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I didn't blame her.
But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that last inch. Oh Ruth. . . ."
Evey's sun was set by now. She would have to wait until morning to finish the rest of the parchment. Wiping the moisture from her eyelids, Evey curled up beside her toilet bowl, hugging the roll of toilet paper to her face. That night she dreamed of walking in the rain hand in hand with the woman. God was in the rain, washing away all the agony, filling them with new light and luster for life. The men awoke her sometime during the night. Evey slipped the paper behind the rim of the toilet bowl, but all through the day, these words whispered through her hollow mind,
"They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.
The other gay women here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to nobody.
I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.
An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.
I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss you.
Valerie
X
"For the last time, we are going to ask you for the whereabouts of Code Name V. Are you ready to cooperate."
"No"
She couldn't see his face, but the investigator must have scowled as he hid in the shadows.
"Take her out behind the chemical sheds and shoot her."
Evey's heart might have stuck in her throat at those words, but hatred had long since melted away and this new found strength kept her chin from wobbling in terror. Sitting in the darkness of her cell, Evey clutched Valerie's words tightly, listening to the footsteps draw closer to her door. Metal grinded against itself for the final time as the opening widened. The man stood silent for a moment and then he murmered,
"All they want is a name. Give them something."
Evey did not smile. Her heart didn't flutter in realization,
"Thank you. But I'd rather die behind the chemical sheds."
"Then you have no more fear. You are completely free."
The man walked swiftly away from the door, leaving the exit clear and frightening.
"What?"
The panic rushed like black blood from her brain down through the rest of her body. It settled in her stomach and heart as recognition of the Shadow Gallery appeared behind the metal door. V spoke. They had executed Gordon after finding a Koran in his home. Evey's fury raged inside her head at how nonchalantly V was addressing the death of her friend. The weeks of torture flooded back to her in a nauseating rush and she managed a strangled,
"You... You tortured me?"
V furthered his well sketched explanation, but Evey's hearing became watered down and she only caught glimpses of what the masked perpetrator was saying. I hate him...I hate him...
"I hate you!"
He continued his reasoning
"I saw what you see in me every day when I forced myself to do those things to you,"
until Evey screamed,
"I can't feel anything anymore!"
The panic sucked her breath. Evey's lungs heaved and her temples throbbed, but the air wasn't coming in large enough gulps. V's gloves wrapped around her shoulders as they sank to kneel on the floor together. Evey found herself resenting him for touching her.
"This is the most important time of your life,"
V continued to spout encouraging words that muscled through the fog and terror. The panic was slowly subsiding under the forced entry V's painful truths. Breathing wasn't coming any easier, but the same strength that filled her in that cell began to chew away at the blackened edges of her raw emotion.