She Danced

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Finding salvation in the damndest of places.
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Liar
Liar
59 Followers

People say that the shy and scared hide in shadows and secluded corners, that agoraphobians dwell in their own cocoons, safely locked away from our everyday humdrum. They might be right. Most of the time. But the shy and the scared are lured forward sometimes, to the clattering beat of a new twelve incher, to the clattering beat of high heels, and to the clattering, shattering strobe of the slitter on a punch drunk crowd's glitter, sputter, sweat, spit, smiles, strips, body shots and acid trips. Whenever the sun sets and the zoo is on. At midnight in anything from the fancy uptown establishments to the seedy underground improv clubs, it was the same old story, night after night. The pulsating jungle of basements, back beats and bass drums thumping new truths into the scattered souls of the everyday gloom.

This is where they go to forget, to be all that they wish they were. This is where they let alcohol and pheromones mix and overdose on each other, where new chapters in comedies and tragedies are initiated. Night after night, drink after drink. Beat after beat after beat... It's here, in the night, that the hidden comes forth. But still remains just as hidden.

She danced. There was no other word for it. No poetic orgasmatron of syllables and sex that could intensify that sight. A black hair like a waterfall swayed back and forth across her bare back and the opaque blue halter top scattered with deep blue spangles clung on for dear life against the rhythm of her twisting torso, threatening to slip loose at any second. The short, pleated silver skirt slapped her upper thighs like a curtain in erratic draft. Her feet moved to their own melody, and her lips, her blood red lipstick, mimicked a monologue that nobody could hear.

She danced, in every sense of the word, a combination of ancient traditions and futuristic ideals, clashed into one body in motion, always finding a new form for her balance between madness and structure. She danced alone, in a sea of other writhing forms, none that could touch her, none that could ever compare with the girl in the silver skirt. She was not there, not in their world of debauchery and skin parade, although she looked the part, wore that mask to blend in and stand out all at once.

This was her moment, her chance to escape, to enter the cocoon and live her own agoraphobic utopia for a few, vibrant minutes. This was where Aki hid from things. Things that did not match her pace, things that tilted her universe the wrong way on a daily basis. Things that made her feel that creeping sense of not belonging. This was her home, her hideout. Where everyone could see her.

Aki danced, and the world, the command of her destiny, somehow still belonged to her.

----

Like a fish on a spear. There was no difference. He thrashed around, sputtered and shook, while some thick black liquid that didn't look at all like what she had expected human blood would look like seeped from the multiple entry craters and from the corner of his astonished mouth. He shook so heavily that the black liquid slobbered all over her like the drool of one of those bloodhounds that always looks so depressed.

Then she saw that it indeed was as red as blood ought to be. Finally, just like the fish, the long silvery fishes she and he used to catch down by the quay at eight in the morning on weekends, the trembles stopped, and the bulging eyes went blank. Then his head, until then carried rigid by panicked sinews, slumped down to one side, and a flood of accumulated blood and froth came out, running down his chest and left arm. It dripped off his fingers and down on the seat.

Everything was silent. Just seconds ago, her world had been filled with the frenzied shattering of hardened glass, the bending of steel frames and the shrieking of tires against the dry asphalt. And then the surreal, wet series of thumps, articulated through a momentary pause between the impact of the windshield and the front of the car smashing into the refuge and coming to a stop against the mid highway concrete barrier. The wet thumps of the seven long reinforcement bars that had rocketed from the truck in front of them, cut through the windshield like butter, and through the driver even easier, before embedding themselves in and through the driver's seat.

The long, ribbed iron bars went through the man with surgical precision, one trashing his left shoulder, another entering just above the left collar bone. One punctured his lung and two took the route through his intestines. One last iron bar pinned the jacket of his right forearm to the seat behind him, and two other bars barely missed his head and throat.

Not that he needed them. Impaled on five spears, he died rather quickly anyway. But it gave him just enough time of spectacular spasms for Aki to start thinking of the fishes the man and she had caught with sharp sticks in the shallow water of the portside lagoon down south, at her grandparents' villa. Her father had promised to tell her why they could flop around like that, even after they had had their heads cut off, been opened and gutted. But it slipped his mind and then slipped hers too. Now he would never be able to explain, unless you could count his own sickening struggle against the inevitable, a very hands-on lesson.

Because the man in the driver's seat was that man. Aki callously, almost absently, watched her father die an almost aesthetically intriguing death, and held a curious finger to his limp, red dripping hand for a tentative prod.

It took nine seconds for the first iron bars to start slipping from the top of the truck, until that incredible silence up on the refuge. It took Aki five minutes to start screaming. And then another ten after the ambulance arrived for the medics to pin her down, so they could give her a sedative injection.

----

It had been a long journey in space, but not nearly a long enough journey in time for her. The pulse, the noise and the mess-up from last year was still echoing in her ears. She could feel the sting in the palm of her hands as if it was only hours ago that her tiny world of make believe safety came crashing in with the windshield of her father's car. It was as if no six months had passed from that flurry of confusion and fear, as if the man she had loved like a god all her life just recently were eradicated in an explosion of steel, glass, blood and crushed bones. It's funny, she thought in a moment of clarity, the only thing I can really recall in real time is how that fucking truck blocked my view of the Nikon building. That truck with its concrete armoring bars, and that hatch opening in the back. Slowly, ever so slowly.

But those moments of objectivity were only occasional mishaps. The constant state was the avalanche. The rush of cold that she tried desperately to dance away. The escape, the decision to put as much physical distance between her and that shattering memory as possible, had never really cut the cord to the terror that disturbed her sleep at night.

But still, she carried her scar, both the external and the one that she didn't talk about. Clenched her jaws and carried on. A good girl does what is proper. A good girl does not wallow in self pity. Such a machoism is not exclusive to men these days. Come think of it, it never was.

Legs finally too tired to carry her swaying on the dancefloor, Aki stepped out of her cocoon and into the jumping crowd. The sharp hi-hat stabs and pulsating bass that she almost didn't hear before came rushing back and it almost hit her in the face with the sheer force. Unknowingly she had moved across the scene further and further towards the large speakers, and was practically resting her head on them by now.

Startled, she staggered away from the roaring box, knocking about other dancers as she made her way through the crowd and away from the most immediate chaos. No, the cocoon didn't do her much good tonight. The flashback images like cigarette burns on the inside of her skull kept yelling at her to relive it all over and over again. She needed something more, something stronger. Whatever could make it go away for a while. Booze, heroin, adrenaline, orgasms, origami, razors, electricity, yoga ... she wished she knew how to meditate, to store herself away in a corner and become a nothingness for a few hours. An observing spirit in a hollow body, while the real Aki slept. Like Grandma used to do. Back there, in a city Aki now desperately wished to forget. Kobe was no more in the heart of the girl in the silver skirt.

Stumbling on, slalom skiing style to avoid the drunks and the punks and the Don Juans lunging themselves after anything with feminine features and a slightest degree of exposed skin, Aki made her way to the bar and was greeted by an indifferent but professional smile from the rugged bartender.

"What'll it be, pretty?" he asked over the holler in a outback ranger Australian accent. For some reason, the fanciest places in Stockholm all had foreign bartenders. Probably to give the place a flair of internationalism in some bizarre way. Or maybe no locals could make a decent Black Russian.

She replied with a jaded smile of her own, handed over her Visa card and ordered a simple vodka tonic in her own slowly improving but still at best manageable English. On a second note, she let him keep the card and feed her fresh poison whenever she ran out, before she slumped down in a chair. Which for a girl of her limited stature meant an elaborate climb up a too high barstool. But she was getting used to that by now. This country was built for tall people, and her own distance from the floor was that of a Swedish kid who had one or two more years left to grow.

Downing the first drink in a few swift gulps, she spun around on her stool to inspect the perimeter. She knew the attention she was attracting. Not as much for being the scaintly clad, attractive young woman, but for being the kind who went to an underground club without male company, or even with a bunch of girlfriends. For being the kind of girl who tilts her head back to feel the sweat beads travel down her neck while sweeping from face to face with her sultry but ice cold gaze. It was a role, of course. A mask for the occasion. But she had grown so accustomed to it by now that she didn't even consider the moves.

The faces she met, men who she knew were measuring her up, probably even slamming her against that bar, or against the mattresses of their beds in the porno flicks of their imagination, reacted the same way to her subtle but obvious visual confrontation. Most of them looked away, feigning indifference, although she knew they had been staring at her ass and back, and then at the curve of her breasts and trying to peek in between her thighs as she turned around to face them. Some didn't even manage to do that, but just cast their heads down and blushed. And then there were the real losers, the last state of intoxication. Tongues lolling, eyes glazed, stupid horny grins on their faces, and not a sensible enough bone in their body to stop oogling.

Aki knew what she was looking for. With a little luck there was one or two in a crowd like this. A pair of eyes that didn't flutter off when she homed in on them, combined with a mouth that didn't actually drool. Someone who knew, or deserved to find out, what she really was about. She didn't ask for much, just a little bit more than all the other crash test dummies, cardboard figure extras in the grand theatre of life. Someone with a little gleam in his eye and a healthy "why the hell not"-attitude, someone who gave fuck all about conventions. She wasn't there for the alpha males. They were usually easily discouraged with her patented glare, when they realised she wouldn't swoon for them and was beyond easy conquest. No, it wasn't 'a real man' in the cliché sense of the expression that she was after. She'd settle if the man was a real person.

But there was nothing to be found as she made made her round of unspoken challenges, one after the other. Every stare was broken by an uncomfortable evasion. A vast emptiness of characterless masks was all that met her. Not a steady eye, not an amused glare, nothing. Just the same old wax museum of meek, bleak expressions and pasted smiles as fake as their owners' alcohol-cocky attitudes.

Disgruntled and increasingly frustrated, she spun back to the bar. A fresh vodka tonic greeted her. And by the side of the glass, another smaller one. It contained a strangely oily but clear liquid. At first she thought the whole serving had to be someone else's, or at least that shot glass. But she was the only patron at the bar whose hands weren't occupied with a beverage already. And the shoot glass stood on the same napkin. A questioning glance over at the bartender was rewarded with a smug smile and a nod. She curiously dipped her finger in the clear liquid of the shot glass and let a drop fall on her extended tongue.

A peculiar taste of liqourice and other more earthy spices that she couldn't quite put names on spread like bushfire on her tastebuds. She closed her mouth and let the flavour swirl and bloom until it finally died out again. Lifting the glass and taking a careful sip produced the same result. Only more intense. With a final deep sigh and a swift move, she emptied the contents in one gulp, and a taste explosion of liquid fire, pepper and panic rushed down her throat and shot her dulled consciousness back into full awareness. She closed her eyes, threw her head back and let her mind focus on the instant rush of stimuli that the hard liquor provided, gripping the edge of the bar with both hands to keep her balance.

When she came back from that instant high and opened her eyes, they immediately met those of the Aussie bartender.

"Enjoying yourself, love?" he asked.

"What was that thing?"

"Ouzo. I reckon you never tried it before?"

She shook her head. "Never. That's Greek, isn't it? It was... interesting."

"You can say that again," he laughed. "Nothing wakes you up like a lemon spiced shot of Mykenes' finest. Want another? On me. It's my private stash."

"Are you trying to kill me?"

"You want me to?" he said with a tilted smile.

She had no reply to that, just a long glare. But a glare that was returned. Friendly and calmly. There was an amused gleam in the corner of his eyes as he leaned forward over the bar counter and rested on his elbows. Aki took a deep breath, a mouthful of the chilly drink and settled her own patented visual probes at his gaze. And then she know it immediately. His eyes didn't flicker. In the last possible place she thought of looking. At last, more than a puppet. Maybe a way out of this downward spiral. An escape, a new cocoon. At least for the moment.

The bartender's eyes calmly returned the gaze as if every consensus of the western culture's decorum of non confrontation had been put out of play. She stared. He stared. And that felt like the most natural thing in the world. Like magnetic poles attracting. She couldn't have looked away even if she had set her mind to it. Measuring, musing, make believe in the back of her mind played up all possible and impossible scenarios that the immediate future held in store. Nobody moved. They just rested there while the beats and commotion faded away into a barely noticeable background hum. A nexus over a bar counter and a glass of liquor separating them. A barrier. But not an impossible one to breach.

"I don't want this drink," she finally stated and extended an index finger, sliding the glass across to the opposite edge of the counter.

The bartender didn't even blink, didn't waver, didn't ever lost the connection, iris to iris. He swept up the glass, put it aside and put up two more shot glasses, into which he poured more of the Greek throat burner. In unison, with a static charge like an impending thunderstorm hanging between them, they gripped a glass each and swallowed the poison. The effect hit Aki like a sledgehammer in the back of her head. She felt the world tilt slightly, and she couldn't help but close her eyes for a few seconds again.

This time, when the curtain of her lids parted, the bartender had disappeared. So had the shot glasses. Instead on the counter lay her VISA card and a tab receipt for two vodka tonics. Blinking in surprise, she picked up the paper. The was some scribbling on the flipside of it, four words in a fast, fluent handwriting written with a red ball point pen. "Back entrance, 15 mins" was the message. Aki had to laugh at the boldness of the man. But then again, his approach wasn't much different than her own in matters like this.

----

Afterwards she couldn't recall collecting her belongings, slinging the purse over her shoulder, climbing down from the bar and climbing the stairs up to ground level. She couldn't even remember, or ever again trace her steps back to the back alley where she had found the bartender standing leaning against the fire exit door. But there he was, and this she would remember for the rest of her life. Not as a timeline of events, memories don't quite work that way, but as images, sensations, snippets of drunken, delirious conversation, tastes.

This man, this person, this escape from the word of unreal make-believe charades. His hard, chisled face, his slender features and his soft but strong, curious eyes. The smooth, deep voice and the drawly accent. The yellow bleached stubbled hair in contrast to his adventurer's deep tan, the tribal tattoo on his neck and left shoulder. The bottle of oily booze in his hand. How she walked up, a first hint of nervous butterflies in her stomach, promptly slipped her arms around his neck, leaned her body against his and let her tongue circle the perimeter of his lips, and then sunk into his face, surrendering her being to that moment, in a long, deep and wet plunge, still tasting of liquor and liqourice.

It was like skydiving. You are only scared before the plunge, and then you fall, and all other rules of conduct and fear are annihilated. No more anxiety or hesitation now. She lunged at the man with all her physical might and will power, gripping, clinging, ripping, licking and sucking and gasping for air. His hands sought out her back and her ass, the cold bottle drawing spiked tingles from her as he let it slide down her spine. His other hand was planted firmly on her buttocks, moving over the soft folds over the skirt before taking a firm grip and pulling her closer to him. She could feel the bulge in the man's jeans grinding against her groin, a promise of relief, redemption, of everything she needed so desperately at that very moment.

He took her right there in the alley. Or did she take him? Does it matter? Was there a difference, when intentions and basics were so firmly out in the open? The lines between taking, giving and receiving were blurred, or not even there to begin with, as the rough-cut man filled the silver skirted woman with all he had to give, pinned her up against the wall and let the animal inside take over the steering. And the woman filled his mouth with her tongue, his ears with hissing whispers in a language from far far away, and the alley with the ungodliest symphony of pure fucking abandon.

Her skirt was hiked up to the waist, his jeans down at the ankles, and the cold, raw concrete of the alley wall grinding at her naked back. The top was untied in the back and hung dangling to the side from her neck, and her breasts were pushed straight up at the bartender's equally bare chest, pressing Aki's slender body between his torso and the building behind.

Trapped between a firm, forceful heat and a firm, cold, unbending foundation, she clung on to the man, dug her face in between his shoulder and neck and wrapped her smooth thighs around his waist like a flesh and bone deadlock, a seal of ultimate approval for him to plunge, penetrate, possess, use and abuse until exhaustion eventually would turn them into writhing, shivering piles of lust, and their bodies wouldn't even remotely obey their wills anymore.

Liar
Liar
59 Followers