YD6-84(Dr.) She’s Stalked, She Stands—Lucifer Lurks Behind Overt Menaces
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- Chapter Synopsis: In a den of mocking men, Laurence holds her ground with poise and precision. Across town, Victoria drifts into sunlight—unaware that André waits in the shadow of mirrored glass. Aetheria flickers at thresholds; Lucifer breathes beneath the canopy. Between fluorescent aisles and cobbled lanes, menace rises. What begins as paperwork ends in pursuit. The question is no longer where they are—but who is watching whom?
- BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria, in the zodiacal forest—where birds sing and leaves flutter like wings bathing in light. The symphony of the forest comes to mind. This is the cosmos’ whisper through our creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness who begins to reveal herself, her presence lives in the rhythm. She seeks form—moving toward the name she will one day claim: Sunshine.
- YD6-84(Dr.) She’s Stalked, She Stands—Lucifer Lurks Behind Overt Menaces
As I’m hunched over the Axa Bill of Quantities, when Laurence—Flemish pale, a ream of paper clutched—rounds from the maze of jambs near the elevator shaft. Stress twitched at her brow as she lifts her blinkers—sideward shield, her path across the corridor kept clear, a signal she’s deaf to their menacing laughter emanating from the room. The Rottweiler—Mr. Presa-Canario’s first swings into view, sounding the alarm with a burst of mockery lobbed across the workstation island: “Here comes the paper-numbers queen hunting ants squashed in the digits!” Diagonal across the seam of the foursquare tabletop, Mr. Pitbull bares his jaws, canines flashing in a spray of canned light—his laughter resonating in a mischievous timber—’Lets play her.’
Across from me, in the window light, Mr. Doberman freezes—on watch. He’s lured into the agitated, derisory pack, but holds a degree apart the vulgarity—reflective, as Laurence rounds the wall. The men dart eyes, hungry for her to slip, to flaw, to glint out of line. They’re ready to pounce.
But the Warthog in Laurence holds steady. Under the wild eyes of den dogs, she pauses at heads of tables, her gaze shifting. A witty eye glance to the inciting Rothwiler. Then left—on the eager, tearing Pitbull. A subtle smile bites through.
“I’m just a link in the chain. Everything you scribbled in here. . .”
She lifts the sheaf lightly, a flick of her wrist—boomeranging through the offices behind the wall.
“…lands with your name on the boss’ desk. And it comes back from beyond him. . . the entrepreneur.”
She proceeds with the nod of classic dining etiquette, rounds the pitbull’s shoulders, skims the Doberman—who doesn’t join in, choosing ignorance. She slips deeper between the foul, sarcastic men, drawn to the edge of the table. Calmly, she poses his report beside the Pitbull’s forearm—‘We have work to get through.’
Laurence leans in, her fingernail cascades down the ream of tags—obviously staged and coded. Her thumb flexes underneath—pinch, flip—a rifle of sheet waves aside. The Pitbull’s stiff neck twitches. A glance slips. A corner of the eye sticks. Curiosity loses his doggedness—His eyes draws his head, tilts, and rolls. Eyes down. A gaze locks onto the exposed guts of his report—right alongside a descriptive paragraph, flaunting itself at the edge in the summary column.
Mr. Pitbull’s gaze drops. He stalks Laurence’s pointed ballpoint pen, as she voices: “There is a discrepancy here, compared to last month’s report?” Comparing her Post-It notes.
Across the worktables, Mr. Rothweiler meshes a repugnant question with a giggle, chasing her concentration with mockery. She frowns, underneath Mr. Pibull’s fixation. Her question repeats itself—’How did you get this. . .” Her words roll, following her ballpoint pen as it cascades down the tags to a Post-It. The orbiting laughter asphyxiates—losing its meat, collapsing into stupid giggles.
Then, her gaze follows the rifling pages—flipping to the end. slipping from under Mr. Pitbull’s baffled stare—a man realizing he’s made serious mistakes. She retrieves herself, eyes veiled beneath the hooded cloak of the rifled Bill of Quantity. Weary-eyed, she steps into the aisle behind his shoulders. Her mind—oblivious to the men. She vanishes across the corridor into the maze of jambs, back to her office.
By evening, I descend the stairs, to long strides across light wash the marble lobby, press the glass doors into the street. Sidestep to follow the sidewalk to the Audi. Tweak the door key, step around, slip behind the steering wheel, and the engine to a stir. I pull off, threading through the ratty grid of backstreets, feeling the stress. ‘My Little One, why must I fetch you?’ I’m riding across arteries, feeling that miraculousness of a wild angle of diverting stretches of curbs packed car crawling the lanes, coiled to a halt before punctuated “No Parking” signs—before the purple glazed skybridge victoria will be ghosting from the curtain wall of an office block to the back alley whitewashed warehouse brick wall.
Victoria emerges from the crack of a side exit, advancing the framed windshield—her silhouette crosses the side window, then steps into the door gap, slipping into the crotch of the seat, pulling the door shut behind her. I pull off into the empty backstreet, staging a stunt along the prolongation of the hedgerow, fenestrated classic facades—dodging the detour of the Little-Beltway’s urban barrier. Yet the AXA tower haunts the horizon—skirt a smoked-glass glaze snagged mid-height slip up the concrete ribs—half-finished—where a grafted crane jib carves a glyph across the sky.
I fear the narrow angles as much as the wide ones—each a threat, flinging the mind off-course into disarray. Shafts of sunlight scatter logic. But I regain our bearings—Victoria reciting street names, pointing a finger sweeping across the windshield. I catch the landmarks of the milieu, where the bricks defy time—architecture bleeding through the ages.
The AXA Tower falls behind us. We slip into the artery that cuts the valley—cresting to circle the Aquarius girl: bohemian, forever spilling her urn of silver water. We emerge from St. Gillis’ roundabout, track tram rails threading through the parkway median. After the shelter, the steel lines drift through Rochefort—its cobblestones squatting beneath five generations of ship prows, encircling the square, angled toward a green pooling backdraft of lawn. Fenestrated apartment blocks surpass their trailing townhouses, terracotta rooftops jagged in the rounds. The asphalt slithers along the park upstream. With a sweep, it bridges the green flowing lawns. The asphalt heads toward the crest—there, it drops the woods aside. The Hedgerow regains its companion: timeworn facades, where the street narrows beneath a barrel vault of flocculent leaves. An air shift breaks under the trees—like a parking maid appraising curb-parked models, noting their color, expiration. The shadow of a stalker—André—lingering in the stillness. We pull up. The house’s bay window peers from behind the canopy foliage, watching.
In a hush of sighs, she had waddled out of the clay-bound marriage shaped by the birth of Alexandre. Now, her Tiger roams the forest at leisure—her Gemini breathing the wild winds. Freedom complete, she breaks loose at the jingle of her keys, her stride aimed at the door. She finds the Warthog in me—the language of emergencies that never waits for keys—She discovers mine already slotted through the escutcheon plate and, fledgling in innocence, tweaks it without a thought. Her hand grips the door lever, cranks down—the door leaf swings toward us.
A hush of light spills in her path, planting itself across the hallway walls—Aetheria’s mirage stifled, left hovering behind the threshold. I un-slot my key. My large keyring tucks in my palm—assured. I pull the door on my heels—shutting the evanescent glow behind me. A meager light, stifled in a breath. The hallway collapsed into stark, hollow dark—the walls rebound deaf echoes. The floor underfoot sharpens into compass. A habitual, instinctive blind walk—groping toward misaligned angles, the memorized doors askew. Within this cavern—not merely the closing and opening of eyes—but Lucifer’s stirs in a revolving dark—suscitating a realm at the moment of opportunity—before the shard of light cracks open in turn—the exit.
She sashays into the glow squeezing into the gap, descending in the glare with a swing of paired knees—her gait pepish and free with joy. Aetheria’s mirage hovers in the front yard—Victoria’s path brightens across the yellow terrazzo - reek - the freshness of last rain oozes from the edging lawn. Behind me, I close the door and step off in her footsteps. With a resounding screech, she slides through the plumb-brick gate pillars, veering into the cast shade—Lucifer lurking in oblivion. Catching up, I pull the gate latch shut behind me.
She slows her pace, sauntering for me to catch up—slipping into a cow patch of sunlight, rambling punctuations cast by the dark bark of the linden. Cheeky, playful—as the reflections mottled oily watermarks across dark windshields, sheen from the undulation we trace along the trains of curb-parked cars. At random, she veers—stepping down the curb through the interstice between a car trunk and radiator muzzle.
Victoria lifts a loose gaze—glancing for traffic not forthcoming, naive to Helios above Dr. Decroly Avenue—his seam of light scores the street barrel-vaulted spine, Lucifer lodged in the shoulders of the flocculent canopies. Victoria’s innocent lifts flips, onto emerging from the gap of bumpers, inching toward sunlight speckling the lane, where even the stippled lines vanish into brightness.
When a kid’s archery arrow sticks to my temple—rubber suction cup tugging—the third eye rolls toward the niggling skin. My gaze locks, like a traction wheel catching on a beam of sight, sliding along its thread into the midst of a train of curb-parked, dark-windowed cars.
My vision splashes against a silver windshield. I pause—flawless, mirrored sky flares across the glass—just a vague blotch inside: a backrest, a headrest. But I freeze. My gaze sharpens, drawn to the driver’s side—where a blemish breaches the reflection. My eyesight probes. At the touch, the shadow wavers. Shakes. I glance aside, trying to justify how I’ve stirred sleeping curb-parked cars. A thought sparks—half disbelief: ‘Is that Bob’s car?’
It doesn’t make sense—’Leo? Bob Ward? Victoria’s friend. . . why would he be stalking?’
Victoria inches across the sunlight break—spine the lane—toward the dark line of tree trunks. She splits away from the setback yards before the efflorescent hedgerow of fenestrated brick facades lining the lower half of the street. She is drawn toward the squatted glow peeking beneath the leafy canopies of the parking lot stretching along the upper crest—where the supermarket looms.
I take in—decompose—the different grays of two similar Toyotas. The cowering, bleached windshield stirs at the driver’s seat—wiggling, hesitant, then more radical, shifting—until a shadow breaks free, loosening with the wing-flung door. A figure springs to his feet—’André!’ I exclaim to myself, fixing the slender shape blinking behind the door’s shield—Sorpio's poised. André scouts the street—’who’s his prey, Victoria or me?’
His Sun in Rooster—feathers preened. Pause. A man who ought to be at work—crisscrossing international frontiers from Wagon-Lit’s catering trains. But Andre’s apparition burst from behind the closing door into the lane, chest puffed high. He sprints. I reflect—’André’s been stalking Victoria?’ He avoids brushing with me, arcing wide to emerge ahead. His legs carve quick, taming arcs as he struts sideways, circling a buffer around the far side of Victoria. Harmless as he faces his wife—eyes jittering, teasing her blatant advance. Feinting pressure. Recoiling. Cascading. In the choir—his voice whining: “Revient à la maison—come back home!”
Victoria steps with unwavering strides, cutting across the asphalt. She mounts the opposite curb—André already reeling back in his wild side-steps, a rooster’s wings raised forward, daring her advance—palms fluttering to wave her down. But she plows on. He stumbles on his heels, awkward in retreat—backpedaling across the sidewalk and off the paving’s edge toward a miniature hedge, trimmed at calf-height—fumbling through the rudimentary breach, trampling the ground—anti-cart theft slit. Emerging from the gap, watching his feet dance and trample down the curb—into the parking lot, into the mercy of Victoria pushing onward.
When I emerge from the calf brushing hedge, André is already driving himself away from the bottom corner—retreating into the bleached glare of the supermarket terrain, where empty parking bays blur in the sunlight. His Scorpio cowering away, withdrawing farther, claims a ring post, and raises imaginary ropes—conjuring a boxing ring in his mind. His eyes find mine: ‘You’re the opponent now.’ Victoria, in her strides, stands between us, unaware she’s become the referee—’After this, she’ll know who she belongs to.’ From behind her silhouette, cowering just out of reach. Spinning into wild Zulu-dancing—spear and shield clenched in fist-tight pantomime—he calls me in.
I’m ignorant of police reservists, or boxing training—but what I see is a man flailing, calling me into his fantasy ring. Feet springing, fists jabbing at the air—he’s laughable. I pin him with a stare, the Warthog in me—fearless, born of defiance—unmoved. He comes across like a weakling—one whoop of my hand and he’d shatter. In the hush of my mind, I laugh it off: ‘Man, you don’t want… to start with me.’
In the opening he’s created, Victoria leans—cutting across the deserted feeder lanes toward the demarcated path leading toward the crest’s traffic exit and entrance boom to the grounds. But midway by the supermarket, a huddled crowd of cars clutter by the entrance. Behind Victoria, his spring-footed stance—his boxing-ring dance, his air punching fist—collapse. Feathers ruffled from a fight with himself, he lets the distance widen. As after a stretch of strides, through the hush of car vacancies, I glimpse his silhouette drifting through the glowing parking lot—slipping through the cart anti-theft notch of a barrier. The street’s shadow swallows him. Helios, peckish, pecks a faint gleam off the trains of cars.
The supermarket’s efflorescent, boxy structure stretches to match the pace of our strides. Without a glance back, Victoria triggers—like a code of mind—‘open sesame.’ The glass rotunda doors part, releasing the sun’s glare into the inviting somber hollow—settling beneath a wide breath of fluorescent light, in a waft of air-conditioning.
Victoria slips into the flourishing racks of vegetables and fruits, plucking only a tray of strawberries before drifting past the bakery—her gaze scan, deflects the ordinary displays. She threads through the kaleidoscopic aisles without forethought—just swipes of her hand, a seasoning jar, reasoning: ‘Let's try this. . .’ then a salmon. ‘Let’s try that. . .’
The snaking aisles spill toward the cashier—her few small deliberate picks. We emerge with a flimsy plastic bag; I’ve slipped in a few fruits and coffee, watching in the distant shade, as we backtrack toward the residential windows behind leafy curtains—hedgerows of fenestrated facades tucked into the fissure of an evanescent street. Passing through the mini hedge, in the cast shade, André’s Toyota has vanished—leaving the curb’s gleam stretched across the bare bay.
We cross the shaded lane to the sidewalk, approaching the glowing intersection. Just short of the corner house, she slips through the pillars—the gate’s screech sharp in the quiet. The terrazzo path leads to the deep brown door. Its gleam slides inward with the door’s swing, swallowing her into the hollow interior.
I’m encumbered by the shopping bags, trailing at the door. Her figure angles aside, stepping through—until the light cracks open—before Victoria's silhouette rises, claimed by the welcoming glow of her realm.
Now—
The car doors tricked into holding the grip engaged, both of us know to press the down the lock button - smack, smack - the doors shut. I step off in the lane, meet her—coquette in her miniskirt and jacket on the sidewalk. We pass through the gate, cross the front yard. She steps ahead, her stride syncing with the swing of the front door into the hollow dark hallway. Doors close on my heels.
I find her again in the cross-light of the windows. Her gaze drifts among her antique pets—brass and carved wood. Intuitive. A gaze that speaks. Across the Napoleon III sofa—vacant, a sphinx in repose—basks in the light of the rear courtyard window. She pauses mid-stride. The telephone, perched in the far corner on the windowsill, stands silent—poised for that jolt of ringing that will strike fear into us both—André on the other end.
She doesn’t answer it. It hasn’t rung. But we both already heard it.
Peek-a-boo—courtyard daylight slips through the kitchen window, shows its face in the gaping doorway, and calls upon her instincts: from her habitual bookshop strolls to the crackle of pages nurturing her next objective. Victoria turns aside, stepping into the light that gleams across the table, where I surgically laid timber and boards—refashioning her duco-black wardrobe into a cupboard to stow linen.
She rounds the side of the table toward the head, into the corner where the fridge and the stove snub one another.
‘You can keep food chilled for long periods.’
‘You can steam, fry, and boil—meals to be eaten.’
But in that lost, mitered corner of the worktop, between those two implements, Tonton’s never learned. He brought the hardcover books, and left them sprawled across the table, taking up space—as if those had to remain there, enticing the eyes, tempting Victoria to flip into her chef-cap.
After she paged through them, I tucked them deep in the corner—a spot to lean against one wall, where titles could rifle out, the books supporting each other without toppling over.
Victoria’s vibrant flair. Tonton stands at the other end of the table, poised: ‘I just dropped by. . . do you need anything?’
Victoria‘s hand, hunched over in his field of sight, reads the menu, flips though the glossy pages diminishing reading, faster turn over, as she mutters. ‘Tonton, I don’t have the ingredients for this.’ Clumps of pages turn faster, rifles under her fingers—until the tormented Aries blurts. “Hé Vicki'que—Dat doe je morgen. Laten we uit eten gaan. . .—You’ll do that tomorrow. Let’s go eat out.
We can discuss that later—Andre’s threats, all that there—because Pipo hasn’t got a room of his own, His hopes remain tethered to the loft at André’s. After months of dating, prowling her country’s historic heritage, I’d begun to glimpse the Gemini in her—twinned with her Tiger—her debuting dual dominance softening into a trance.
The man in Victoria’s shadow is so predictable. He lift his slouchy pea cap, turns his back and settles it over his bald crown. Catching sight of me, he strokes his bloated belly in slow circles, gives it a pat, and scuffles out of the kitchen.
In the wake of Victoria and Smeets’ exit, I closed doors behind me—shut to light. Groping through a glitch in the hush of darkness, light cracks open in the hallway—their silhouette emerging cranking up their windmill of words. Bluttering across the front yard, they stop beside the silver-gray Audi’s passenger doors. I approach, step down the curb by the muzzle of the Audi, swing hips skimming around the front fender’s headlight. Tweak the door lock, swing around, slip into the seat - smack - lean over the console, reach the rear lock button with a pull—the front latch springs under my finger. Straightening, tweaking the ignition, my mind rides ahead—cutting across the arterial roads of the east, athwart communities.
The car idles, Victoria climbs in. Smeets hefty figure squeezes into the rear. Counting - Smack, Smack - we pull away.
When I pulled up, facing the warped convent brick wall—its gate clearing to a cemetery—I was confused. ’Wasn’t this supposed to be the Free University of Brussels’ campus restaurant?’ Across the street, we enter. Ushered to a table. Drinks poured. Dishes served. André’s convoluted rambles fade beneath an Aries' talent for talking a problem into disappearance—Pipo’s room, solved in words only.
The waiter brings the bill. We rise, leave the restaurant, cross the street to the Audi. Sliding in, I tweak the ignition, ease back from the warped wall, turn the block, and cut through city’s arteries. Narrow streets wind us back toward Dr. Decroly Avenue—where Smeets slips into the shadows beneath the streetlights
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