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"what do you want to hear?" he whispers, close enough to me now that each word feels like a tap on my skin, the sound causing ripples of electricity to whip and purr up my spine, settling close to the marks he re-opened on the side of my neck. without meaning or self-control my head tilts towards him, a physical offering up that has more to do with need, than desire.he turns away, though. an audible sigh pushing out of him, coming from the center of his chest, or somewhere deeper still. if nothing else, the days between have taught me to read gestures and tones quickly, self-preservation at its finest. body language is the one truth that most people emit from them, even in the midst of the most fantastical of lies. the quiet girl in the corner was ever watching, turned it into an act on stage later in life, figured it a game that my mind devoured with no real practical use as i matured. i was wrong. it has saved my so-called life more than any quick wit, hip tilt, or act of seduction ever could. that said, he confuses me. his every move in direct contradiction to my inner expectation. his eyes cleverly diverting what his body decides to do, his hands spinning webs of distraction as he turns and flees out the back door, leaving me breathless. he is better at this game than i am. and for the fourteenth time in just that many nights i wonder to myself if he sees right through me, if he has figured me right out, if these momentary meetings are just a move on some kind of chess board; as he makes a play at taking my queen right the hell down. i turn then, stepping away from the antiquated music machine, with thoughts racing as i try to tie words together into a string of something to say. somewhere in the recesses of before i fish out a line to a song, sliced and cut clean out of context and melody, random and most likely nonsensical; but it is there running circles in me, over and over again, all the same. "why must not death be redefined?" it is falling from my lips before i stop to pull it back, careful words the only thing i utter any longer, but not these words that are repeating so ceaselessly that i am unsure if i have sung it, or am only just hearing it again in my head."you remind me of her. strong and feral, beautiful despite yourself" his voice is still a whisper, his body still turned away and set far across the room.
he pauses just long enough to shuffle through something, his hands moving quickly, until he is there, back behind me again. his arms reach around me as if in an embrace, and i fold into him, waiting for his next words, a next move. instead of pulling me closer, or touching me at all, he just reaches his long arms over my head to drop an album onto the turntable. i watch it begin to spin as he grabs my hand, holding it in his for just a second, then letting it go, resting it right over the arm of the player, guiding me to lift it, to start the music. it is then that he speaks again, right at the same moment as the needle drops, popping and crackling on the vinyl.
ten people i knew in the world survived. knew is a strange word, though. the ten, well i knew them in that face in the crowd way, not the knowing with any real consequence sort of thing. the girl who rang up my morning coffee who had her bottom lip pierced, and fought every wednesday with her boyfriend on her mobile; trying to text unnoticed under the counter, but whispering each word as her thumbs slammed the tiny keys. she is among us now. the boyfriend may be here come to think of it, but those kind distinctions have become quite hard to tell. coupling lines blur, and bodies cling without much regard to the propriety of love.there is that boy i dated once. for a week, i think. he had a summer green tint to his once blonde strands; the tell-tale sign of an orange county boy with too much time on his hands, and chlorine soaked in his hair. we drove to santa monica and sat under the pier while i came down off my latest and greatest escape hatch. he let me scream into his hands, and i let him slip his dick into me. a fair trade, it seemed. i tossed his number into the third bin from the left, behind his apartment, as i walked home with sand itchy on my skin. i wonder if he still tastes of peppermint schapps and marlboro lights, or if he has either he would be willing to share.the rest are nameless. images peeled off of a blueprint memory, faces from train passes and elevator rides, doctor office receptionists and the gas station attendant who used to sing foreigner's urgent out loud and sold me discounted cigarettes with his number slipped inside. it is hard to tell if they recognize me, or what story they try to attach to my skin, pinned on like a kindergarten reminder. we all forget everything eventually, or at least feign at it, posed and smiling as if all this dark was just the contents of a normal day. anymore now they all back away and turn their eyes from mine, afraid that the things i see above will rub off on them, poison the well, so to speak. they huddle in misconceived safety and try to re-write the world. i am not interested in any of the fabrication.i used to be the girl in the back of the class chewing her nails, and looping letters into lyrical refrains; i would have traded my grandfather's bicentennial coin collection to live within the confines of a song. clumsy and awkward, gifted my life span's height before i hit puberty, towering over all the skinny blondes who fit right into that everybody wants you mold. my first sexual experience was with a shy boy two years trailing behind me, his braces left tears in the inside of my bottom lip, and he kissed with as much grace as two elephants with tied-together trunks. most days i was just invisible, fading into the grey walls and missed opportunities. it was hard to grow up with the beautiful people when your body screamed ordinary, and hopefully refundable. now my invisibility is just their desperate grasps at denial. no one cares to admit cowardice, or to look the community martyr straight in the eyes. even the ones who empty and re-fill my veins avert my gaze, leaving gashes in my arms, but nothing more. or the ones no one mentions, who gave me the job in the first place, and the names; how they send their troops when my head is blood loss fuzzy, their masks barely registering in my view, just the sharp sting of what they take from my body as i lay their motionless, more dead than the last time. it was one of them who gave me my afterworld name. i can still hear it slithering out of his razor thin lips, burning the skin as he pressed them too close to my ear. we all have them, all the old ones tossed aside like the regret, like yesterdays.none of us are who we were before.***"is this an actual record player?" my voice in a half-whisper of awed reverence as i stare ahead, wanting to slide my fingers across the grooved surfaces, lift the arm and prick my finger on the needle; become some sort monochromed sleeping beauty. i held back though, half-holding my breath as i always did when we shared space.i could feel him moving across the room before i caught a glimpse in my peripheral vision, his pallor glowing like chunks of moonbeams turned to flesh. the only colour came from his lips, a sudden splash of rose in sharp contrast to the rest of him. later i would write him as a black and white film strip, cary grant caught in a still frame that someone took a permanent marker to. the burst of red came from a recent feed; it would soon spread across his face into a school girl's blush. life temporarily breathed into him from my bloodletting.
