Show Girl
Every night I prepare for my death, every night it is the same, I feel no panic as I sink into myself. I feel nothing but sensation, not good nor bad just sensation. Now it is the slip slide of stockings over my legs or the roughness of the heavy sequins as I shift the dress around me. I steam my hair into curls and lay wax upon it to hold it’s shape. I remove a feathered head dress all fluff and glitz and place it with precision upon my head.
The candles flicker around the mirror and distort my reflection, it is a parody of self and I am in mourning for the person I could have been… but that time is gone now and all there is is this. I brush colour onto my cheeks and smear grease on my lips, my eyelashes are sharp form black gloop that hardens.
And I am almost there, almost ready to face my death. I slip my small feet into sparkling jewels of shoes, the sort that it is better to pretend you are not wearing and just be a ballet dancer for the night. ‘Are you ready?’ comes the gentle question and I nod not daring to look into his eyes in this moment for if I did both our resolve would melt and neither of us could face what awaits.
It is show time. We whirl onto the stage, the lights are hot and glaring and smell like burning bone to me, I smile at the audience I can not see and skip to my postion. I bend and contort and hear the wows, I provide the rings and flags and hat for him and our dance continues. My death is drawing nearer and we are both intensely aware of each other in this mirage of play. These acts, this false hood could be the last things I know and so I glow with the awe of it and win the hearts of those beyond in the darkness.
He saws me in half but that is nothing, not to someone as flexible as me but the audience sigh at my apparent demise and applaud at it’s reversal and the real death hovers over me – waiting, and I can taste the tang of blood in my mouth already.
Doves fly into the rafters and we stare at each other, it is now time and the tank is wheeled in, I am tied and trussed and knots checked and I know those knot and feel the binding is tight but have had worse and I sigh internally as I am lowered into the water. It is not cold mearly tepid so that I do not go into shock. I have a glimps of the theater through mermaids eyes as the curtain closes around me and I am there with a lung full of air that will begin to burn soon.
My hands begin there work automatically and my mind wonders to the plain of self. The memories and reasons for this creep up on me and the greatest danger rears it’s head. Why struggle? Why keep going? I could just let the water fill my lungs, but I don’t I keep going with the wriggling and bending and my hands are free. I pop the key out of my mouth and reach into the little opening – too small and slight to be noticed, to far away and at an awkward angle for any normal person to reach. But I am not normal my joints bend the wrong way and a dislocated shoulder is nothing but mild burning to me.
It clicks and I am up and out my crown of feathers left in the tank, I pose and the curtain lifts. The rapture spills over me, the noise of the audience pulls at me and make me want to strut and crow and bash in my head in shame.
I face my death each night and for him it is for the jollies of the audience for me it is penance – the first time I faced this… this death I escaped but I could not save the others, I did not in truth try I just flew to the surface to breath and cough up blood and they… they all burned to death in their chests with blood mixing with the water and I swam and left them there for the fishes.
One day maybe the people who killed my village will spot me in the city lights and maybe they will come for me, it does not matter for every night I face my death and this act is just a reprive to break the monotony whilst I await to join those I left behind.
Posted: Thursday, August 11th, 2011 @ 4:34 pm
Categories: Flash Fiction.
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