I wrote this for inkblot, but I don't think I ever managed to submit it...so you get to be treated to the story. Fictional.
Januce
"Y'dont dance any more. Do you."
Flat words, flat voice. "No." My sidelong look at him. My Southern therapist with the voice that makes me want to drown myself if it would get rid of him. This is what they call cure. They make it intolerable to stay sick.
Tongue licking dry lips. A crust on them, I think, if I smiled they would crack. I'm not allowed too much water right now. They don't understand the thirst.
"Y'used t'dance. Wh'appened?" The sounds are long and slow but the words themselves are abbreviated into near incomprehensibility.
I decide to reward him. I stretch, allow myself to glance at him fully, pick up a small ball from the table in front of me and roll it from hand to hand. Slowly. Slowly. Mustn't let it get away. My concentration sharpening, focusing on the ball.
"Y'do that when there's a question y'don't wanna answer, y'know." I don't look at him. Maybe he hasn't figured out it's deliberate. "Why doncha dance any more?"
The ball, rolling from hand to hand. It's florescent orange, the scar of its casting a raised ridge all the way around it. I stop rolling it and trace the seam with my pinky finger. I bring it up to my mouth and run it along my upper lip to really get a good feel for it.
Running the ball along my upper lip. I speak while my focus is elsewhere. "There was a bar. Right before...well, right before."
Silence hangs there, covering the words "psychotic break".
"I danced."
Silence, covering the word "lewdly". Of course it was lewd. I was among friends. It was 80's music, too loud, too close, but we all danced and it was all right. With my friends, I could be sexual and nobody minded. They were, too. We all liked it.
He sees the story in me, now. He thinks he's getting somewhere. I can hear his breathing hoarsen and then smooth out as if he's remembered that my hearing is quite sharp.
"Took BART home. Deserted. There was a man." The words have broken wings, they flop around on the ground. They feel aborted, wrong, ugly. I raise my hands to try and better describe it, but then decide against it.
"Deserted except for me and the man. Dressed well. He looked at me. Said I was pretty, I danced like an angel. I knew he was wrong. I'm clumsy, always have been. Ugly's debatable and depends on my mood and the light. But there it was. He sat next to me, between me and the exit."
I start to wonder where this story is going. Which way will it end this time? I can't ever fix the story in my mind.
"There are different endings depending on who I am. Sometimes he's just a nice man, a handsome man, who took a shine to me and asked me for my phone number. Sometimes he's a devil. When he takes off his hat I see his ears and they're pointed. A devil. An evil being, sent to call me an angel. Temptation."
I'm speaking to the little orange ball I'm holding. It understands, perhaps.
"We were going under the Bay. It always makes my ears pop. Like an airplane. The pressure, all that water, and I realized we were going into his world, whoever he was, and I was frightened but didn't show it.
"Sometimes, I think there was no man at all, that perhaps I was just imagining him. Practicing for a day when a handsome man might come up to me and compliment me and show me only the angel side of his skin and not the devil side."
The orange ball speaks. No, it's the Southern therapist with his long slow words, who I'd almost forgotten about. "Everyone's two sides'a their skin?"
"Angel and devil. Good and evil. Some's got more of one or the other." Licking my lips again. Refusing to ask for water. I don't say how I know this. They never believe me.
"So y'might've 'magined this man, 'magined he's a devil?"
"If he was there, he was either a man or a devil. No imagining." I sort of feel sorry for the Southern therapist who doesn't know who he's dealing with. Briefly, before the feeling is noted and taken away. "Probably he was a man." I add this to mollify him a little bit.
He harrumphs. I look down at my friend, the little orange ball. This story is easier to tell to it than to the man who sits across from me and is not my friend. "So I might have blanked out for a bit. Because he was gone when next I remember anything. That curious blank space, like stepping over a space of time. It's gone and I'm not sure where. But he was gone, too, and the car really was deserted except for me. I was still sitting there."
The skin of my lips is a cracked crust. Licking doesn't help but I do it anyway.
"Y'never answered the question."
"Question?"
"Y'don't dance any more. That's whatcha said."
"Oh. He said I danced like an angel. It scared me. I was afraid I'd given myself away. This disguise--"
He leans forward. Eyes avid. This is the first time I've slipped. It's just because I'm thirsty. I shrug helplessly.
I can't say any more about that. I try again.
"I don't dance because it attracts unwanted attention. That's all."
His blink of disappointment is sharp. I rub the little orange ball along my upper lip. My phantom wings rustle behind me, attached to those two long scars running down my back, the ones the hospital people always remark on. The ones I can't explain.
Wingrustle. Phantom misery. An angel wearing a devil suit. Temptation. The void beneath me roars again.
I whisper to my round imperfect ball.
A sphere.
The ground, approaching.
