Mysteria:
"Duality/Identity"
by Jacob Milnestein
translations by Erlend Larsen

"you will never have the
chance to trace my features
and you won't ever make me
feel like such a loser
and you can have the past
’cause I'm in love with
the future
I met a boy
who makes you look
so shallow
and there is so much time
and so much space
to travel
and I will make the climb
(touch the sky)
and I will kiss the gravel.
- Louise Post,
‘Disconnected’
 

The first snowflake fell.

Delicate, falling slowly like an angel with Dove white wings.

She looked up, her domino mask covering those dark hazel eyes that said so much about her.

Victoria Burke wore two faces, yet the eyes that looked out from each face were identical.

Her long fringe falling over the mask, she cast her head down, hugging herself. The costume she had choose for herself was based on style not practicality and, as a result, the flesh of her arms and shoulders now suffered from goose pimples brought on by the cold winter night.

"Style not practicality."

She repeated the words to herself; soft lips opening and closing as the sound of the words extracted themselves from between her teeth.

The stars alighted the heavens above her, pale messengers of adolescent suns, interchangeable and insignificant.

The city was not her own, the geography alien and indecipherable. For every man, woman or beast that took up the mantle or profession of a 'hero' a unique understanding of the geography of their city, or place of residence was required.

You wouldn't expect Millennium Man to patrol Pacific City with no knowledge of what the city's personality was like; it would be impossible to follow directions at the very least. The same applied to herself.

Her job often required that she leave the city from time to time – it wasn't really a big thing for her to leave Pacific City, it wasn't as if it would ever be unprotected. At first she had been arrogant enough to assume that if Millennium Man served as the male protector of the city then, by default, a feminine protector was also needed.

She was wrong. At best she had become regarded as some as some sort of sidekick, forever pushed into the limelight by his exploits. People did not wish to know about principles of masculine and feminine duality throughout history, they just wanted a star to look up to.

And oh, how brightly did Millennium Man shine.

After several months of cleaning up the messes her counterpart had left untouched, Victoria Burke had decided to take her alter-ego with her wherever she went.

It wasn't difficult, she travelled a lot, she was a fashion designer after all. Her only fear lay in the possibility that someone may one day connect the appearances of Mysteria with her own journeys.

But it was early yet and if she kept a low profile then maybe she could avoid that.

The trouble was that bringing Mysteria with her brought her back to the inherent problem she now faced...Each city has an individual geography.

Silently she cursed herself for not having revised upon the plane.

The huge dome and spire of Sir Christopher Wren's cathedral rose up behind, light spilling from the street lamps across its surface, and the lesser secrets its face hid, constructed by Wren's apprentice, Nicholas Hawksmoor.

It was then that she saw him, a pale, sickly looking man standing a short distance from her, a broad smile spread across his face and a smouldering cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, fingers of smoke rising from its tip and rising in a halo above his head.

Despite her unique 'gifts' – gifts that she had not yet fathomed the meaning of – the pale man seemed to looking right at her, tiny specks of stubble standing surrounding the queer smile that stood out upon his face.

He raised his right hand, a thin band of metal around his second finger furthest from the thumb and plucked the cigarette from his mouth.

With a single nod of the head, he mouthed a single phrase:

"på gjensyn, makker." He smiled and stepped backwards into the darkness.

She reached out a quivering hand before, a hand that she could no longer see due to the activation of her ‘gift’. It was not something she could actively control, rather something that forced her to live her life around it.

She lived in constant fear of turning invisible at some crucial moment of her life.

The invisible girl, just like Daddy had always intended her to be.

The invisible hand touched thin air.

The stranger was no longer there and once more, she was alone...

Alone and unseen.

The second snowflake fell.

It tumbled; drifting along the wind's current and coming to an end as a small stain against the delicate glass of the window.

In the cold of winter, glass is often seen as the brethren of ice.

Victoria Burke placed her fingers at the bridge of her nose, her eyes closing slowly as she tried her best to force the weariness and fatigue from her expression, at the very least.

The previous night's experience still haunted her. Every new individual she met bore his sickly face superimposed over their features.

What was it about him that had haunted her so?

She looked up, her glasses balancing upon the end of her nose.

The cattle-market continued, anaemic girls with long hair, dressed in the patterns and colours she had designed, overweight executives baying loudly, lusting for some return to a reverse Dionysiac principle so as to justify them clambering onto the stage and tearing the clothes from the women.

The façade of her life away from Mysteria was becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain.

She was less Victoria Burke now, more Mysteria.

Suns and moons...

Once Victoria had been the star that burnt brightest, the apple of her father's eye, a sun around which young men would gather.

Now she had been reduced to her position beneath the moon, to the face of Mysteria.

But no, reduced was not the term, for had not Diana once been the principality of the very moon she laboured beneath? And was not Diana the goddess of the hunt?

It was then that she caught of the woman on the stage.

She held all of the traditions that made her a perfect symbol of lust, the prerequisite gaunt body, the dark raven hair and the pale complexion.

The long, velvet dress that Victoria had designed hung off her, brushing against the soft flesh that lay beneath.

Victoria felt her heart beat faster, the adrenaline rush, the widening of eyes that she had never associated with being confronted by a member of her same sex.

She was beautiful, yet there was something else there, a haunting reminder of someone else...

The woman stopped at the end of the catwalk and bent down till her face was so close to Victoria's that she could feel the warm breath of the other.

"på gjensyn, makker." The woman whispered and then rose once more, turning back down the catwalk.

Victoria watched the woman leave.

Her heart still pounded in her ears.

The third snowflake fell.

Victoria leapt forwards; still visible in the space of time before her uncontrollable lapses into invisibility began. If only she could somehow master the gift, if only she truly understood what it was that had forced her into this life.

At first she believed herself to be in control of her powers, she had believed that if she willed herself to become invisible then surely she thus transform.

It was at a meeting several weeks ago that she had learnt that this was not the case.

Sitting within the enclosed space of her elegant office, conversing with the committee and the sudden rush of nausea. She stumbled, almost falling from her chair, brushing away hands that had tried to assist her and taking her leave from the room. She had locked herself in the bathroom, watching her face in the mirror as it faded from view.

The same thing had occurred several times more and each time she had been able to make her exit but people were beginning to whisper and she knew that she couldn't live this way.

If she were not careful one day she would fade away in front of someone and never return.

Clap your hands if you believe in invisible girls, God knows there are enough faeries...

Mysteria was supplanting her, taking her life over, replacing her.

Mysteria...

Her dark sister.

The foul stench of cigarette rose up from behind her, wrapping itself around her and swallowing her whole.

She fell of balance, that familiar nausea rising as she left nothing but an imprint of ripples upon the collected puddles of congealing rain.

She faded from view, once more Mysteria...

Turning she looked up at the other, the tall man with the gaunt complexion and the cigarette in exactly the same position as it had been the night earlier.

"You alright there, love? Need a hand up?" The gaunt man beamed, extending a hand towards her.

She refused to take it, pushing herself up with her own unseen limbs.

"Who are you?" She demanded.

"Ahhh." The other's smile broadened, a sarcastic glint in the corner of his eyes. "Aussie are you?"

"Yes, I'm Australian." She answered, slightly perplexed.

"Sorry, love." The man said, shaking his head sadly. "Still it could be worse, right?"

"Who are you?" She repeated her earlier question.

He wagged a finger at her.

"Tut-tut, no need to be impolite." He bowed slightly and said: "Mitt navn er Erlend. Erlend Romanov. Jeg dreper guder i min fritid."

"In English?" She said, impatiently.

"Really, Miss Burke," He smiled. "I would have expected someone as well travelled as your good self to be at least conversant in more than one language. But that's what this is about isn't it? Words...and how they sometimes mean more than one thing. Dualities."

"H-How do you know my name?" She groped for him with unseen hands yet he simply stepped out of her reach, easily evading the hands that not even she could see. "How can you see me?"

"Well," He said, placing a finger against his chin and striking a thinking position. "Let's see. I open my eyes and I look in your direction. That's how."

"But...but I'm invisible." She protested.

He quickly screwed his eyes shut.

"Yep, that's right. You're invisible now. I can't see you at all."

"Stop playing games with me!" She shouted, her calm voice cracking with emotion.

He opened his eyes once more.

"You don't know what kind of games I'd like to play with you, love." He smiled lecherously. "The problem with you, Vicky, my girl, is that your perception's all screwed up, innit? You're not invisible; it's just that you're not remembered. You're bland, love, boring as buggery. Your gift isn't in invisibility; it's in effecting the short-term memory. And you're using it against yourself; you're using it to forget who you are because you're not comfortable with your self-perception. Its the superhero equivalent of an eating disorder."

She threw herself at him, pounding her fists against his chest.

"What are you talking about?" She screamed.

He grabbed her wrists and pushed her back.

"I'm talking about your inability to deal with who you. If you pulled your bloody chin up of the sodding ground and learn to live, you sad cow."

He threw her back and she staggered, falling over once more.

"I don't have time for you right now, Miss Burke. But I'll be back. Trust me." He offered and smile and said quietly: "Og når jeg kommer igjen, så er det for å bruke ræva di som feiekost på veggen."

The fourth snowflake fell.

The young woman ran the comb through her long, black hair.

Beyond the window, the moon was full and pregnant in the sky. A bloated circle beyond the city's horizon, the last sigil of femininity.

Fitting that myth had ascribed the transformations of men to wolves under the light of the full moon. The concept of the werewolf of course was a metaphor for man's uncontrollable urges and desires, the moon was the temptation that woman apparently placed before him.

Superstitious folly.

The smell of stale cigarette smoke hung in the air; ashtrays full of discarded dog ends and ash. Significant to some, unmemorable to others.

She was a model after all, highly paid enough to be disdainful and cynical of her profession. Excessive abuse of the body came with the job.

She looked down at her own ample breasts.

Defacing Diana's temple...

Silently, she dropped the brush down upon the dressing table and looked at her own slender features in the large mirror that was fixed against the wall and above the table.

It had been a long night and she had accomplished only the first act of her story.

Before her lay the long road she must follow in which she would redefine not only herself but also Victoria Burke herself.

For she had not simply crossed Miss Burke's path without rhyme or reason. Everything she had done had been for the greater purpose, every passing word and every assembled prop – everything had been a matter of stage setting.

And now the play had begun.

With long, spidery fingers she folded back the top of the red and white cigarette box, drawing out a thin white stick with a discoloured, almost orange filter and placing it between her lips, leaving lipstick traces upon the orange surface.

She struck a match and raised it up to meet the cigarette tip, smoke coiling from the flame as it met the nicotine and quietly she slumped back in her chair.

A book lay open upon her desk.

In the top corner of page 44, a single phrase stood out more so than all the others:

‘I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I'm not myself, you see.’

The fifth snowflake fell.

Victoria Burke had returned, the invisibility had faded and she had dressed herself in something other than her Mysteria costume. At present she found it difficult to look at the uniform she had designed for herself.

Paging her assistant, who had been somewhat disgruntled to be awoken so late in the night, Victoria had retrieved the address of the hotel that the young woman who had affected her so deeply was staying at and travelled by taxi across half the city in order to reach her.

Apparently she was one of her own girls – well, she must be, she was wearing one of Victoria's own dresses, after all – but she was convinced that she never recalled employing her.

The strange, cigarette smelling man could wait for Mysteria to return, for now she was content with dealing with her own problems and pushing her alter-ego's to the back of her mind.

After a brief conversation with those in attendance on reception, who all complained of the lateness of her visit and after she had persuaded them that her visit was of the utmost importance and that she simply must see her treasured employee she stood in the lift, travelling up the building's nerve centre until she had reached the corridor contained the door through which the mysterious woman resided.

Mysterious woman...

That was a laugh.

Gingerly she rapped her knuckles against the door and to her surprise was beckoned inside.

That same stench of cigarette smoke once again filled her lungs. For a moment she didn't know where to turn, two spheres of her existence had been brought threateningly close to one another, close enough to have caused a schizoid embolism.

The adrenaline rose and then the fear kicked in.

She felt her body rebelling against her, threatening to transform her once more into the invisible girl – Mysteria threatened to eclipse her once more...or maybe it was just that the sudden terror of her situation aroused in her the desire to run and hide, the desire to throw up her arms against the tide of events and cover her head.

She could no longer tell which was which.

Her legs began to shake violently, trembles spreading through her aching limbs.

The chair's occupant rose, revealing herself to be the woman from earlier and not the strange Romanov man she had feared her to be.

Her heartbeat slowed and she regained her composure.

"I'm sorry," She said, faintly, gesturing at the cigarettes. "I didn't know you smoked."

The woman smiled quietly, blowing a plume of grey smoke from her nostrils. She tightened her silk dressing gown and removed the cigarette from her mouth.

"Im sorry, Miss Burke. Does it offend you?" She asked, her soft voice contained the faintest hint of an accent.

"Yes. No. Well, that it is to say..." Victoria stuttered.

The woman smiled and ground out her cigarette in the ashtray, extending a hand.

"I'm Anna Romanova." She smiled. "Pleased to meet you."

‘Mitt navn er Erlend. Erlend Romanov. Jeg dreper guder i min fritid.’ The voice of the past whispered in her ear.

A frown crossed Victoria's brow.

"Do I know you?" She questioned, fumbling for words.

"Yes." Anna smiled. "You always did."

Victoria backed up, placing her hand against the door handle.

"Don't go." Anna whispered, advancing seductively forwards. "Stay with me."

Victoria felt her heart beat quicken once more. Part of her yearned to stay but at the same time, her other self screamed at her to run.

Yet who was screaming: Victoria or Mysteria?

"I can't!" She blurted out. "I have to go!"

Quickly she tore the door open and ran down the hall and into the safety of the lift.

Anna Romanova lit another cigarette and smiled.

"See you soon, love." She whispered.

The sixth snowflake fell.

Victoria Burke looked out of the taxi window, watching London pass about her. She felt distant, as if she were drowning beneath the waves and had not the strength to break through to the surface.

Since she had arrived in London, her entire life had been turned upside down.

Everything she knew about herself had been uprooted or called into question.

Suddenly not only was she unable to draw a line between Victoria and Mysteria, she was unable to define which aspects of herself belonged to which uniform.

The uniform of capitalist respectability or the uniform of vigilantism? Who was she really?

Who was Victoria Burke?

Who Victoria Burke was?

She shook her head and called the taxi to a stop, figuring that a walk in the night air might do her some good.

Once she had paid the cabby and watched the taxi pull away into the night she realised that she still had no real understanding of the city's geography.

This place was still an alien landscape unto her.

She promised herself that tomorrow she would book the earliest flight out of the city, her work could go to hell for all she cared.

She had to get out, had to put as much distance between the strange, cold architecture of this place and herself.

Christ, she wished she'd never left Pacific City, she wished she could send Mysteria out into the world to right all wrongs whilst she hid herself away within the warm, gleaming and comforting womb of her native city.

All the Erlend Romanovs and all the Anna Romanovas with their threats and sexual advances would be cast out by Mysteria in all her majesty whilst she – whilst Victoria Burke – lay upon her bedsheets, dreaming of her father.

But she already knew that could never happen.

The Erlend Romanovs of the world had confronted Mysteria and she had been found wanting...just as the same could apply to Anna Romanova and Victoria Burke...but she dared not admit that to herself.

All she wanted was her stability back.

She wanted freedom from the duality of symbolism that had besieged her during her stay in this hideous place.

Freedom...

The seventh snowflake fell.

Illuminated upon the grey of the early morning sky, the snowflake drifted past Victoria Burke as she pushed the wide glass doors open, her luggage in tow.

After sleep and a comfortable breakfast, she had picked up the telephone and booked her flight, conveniently being in the latter half of the morning, giving her ample time to travel by train to her airport of choice.

That in itself was more miraculous than the advent of such costumed heroes as Millennium Man.

Sometimes she wondered if someone had not orchestrated her entire life.

Often it felt as if there was someone outside of her sphere of influence, dropping heroes and mysterious magicians into her path to simply see how she would react.

But the idea was ludicrous.

That would make her life no better than a story scribbled in some adolescent notebook.

She handed her ticket and passport over at the desk for inspection then retired to the row of shops that waited.

She could use a magazine or something, just to distract her upon the flight home.

Her eyes drifted needlessly to the cigarette display behind the shop assistant, alighting on the red and white box behind the middle-aged man.

She placed a five-pound note upon the counter.

Dickens smiled back at her.

"Erm, twenty Marlboro, please." She said hoarsely.

The man plucked the box from behind him, placing it on the counter.

"Four seventy, miss." He said, retrieving the note and handing her the change.

"Thank you." She smiled and stepped outside, placing her luggage upon the machine that would store it upon the plane she was travelling on.

She had already familiarised herself with the details and times of her flight and saw no need to double check.

She stepped outside into the cold morning air and looked at the familiar red and white packet.

Of course she had no intention of smoking the cigarettes, at least she didn't think she did, in which case why had she brought them?

"That's the nature of duality, innit?" A familiar voice whispered from over her shoulder.

She jumped.

Standing behind her was the slim form of Anna Romanova; dressed in clothes identical to those she had seen Erlend Romanov wear.

"W-Why are you dressed like that?" Victoria gasped.

"You already know." Anna smiled. "You're a reflection of the very same principle. Why would you so fiercely force yourself into becoming a feminine depiction of Millennium Man? As for me, well there is no Erlend Romanov but then again there is no Anna Romanova, however there is me and I am Erlend Romanov, just as I am Anna Romanova. In that same fashion, you yourself wish to become Millennium Man."

"You're speaking rubbish." Victoria protested.

"Am I really?" Romanova smiled. "Well, time will tell that, won't it?" She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture at the other woman. "Go on, run away back to your Pacific bleedin’ City, don't learn what I have to teach you. Just remember, the story's not over yet and I've a few more lessons in store for you yet, love. Some lessons that you might not want to learn."

She smiled broadly and for a moment Victoria thought she could see stubble on the woman's chin.

"Anyhow, enough of my gab, you've got a place to be and some bedsheets to cower beneath. You go do it, love. Just remember that I know who you are." She turned and away and began walking diagonally across into the car park. "på gjensyn, makker." She said and waved with the back of her hand.

Victoria Burke dropped to her knees, trembling as she watched the other woman depart.

Warm tears began to spill from her eyes, trailing down her soft skin.

Slowly but surely, Victoria Burke faded into invisibility once more...

Or maybe it was simply obscurity...