Almost fatally, she was beautiful. And searching for something equally as beautiful and at the same time frightening and grotesque was something that people could never understand. But search on she did, and it made her cry at night. She would lie in bed, with a terrible fire in her bones, and toss and turn because there was passion there, real and visceral, the kind of passion that most people lose when their breasts begin to grow and their voices become deeper and sadder. She was more melancholy than most of the people she passed on the street, simply because she was trapped and unloved and also because she couldn’t decide if she wanted to disconnect herself from society or fly into it fully. Most of the time she decided on the former, because everyone knows that success is more difficult that failure. But on a day with interesting clouds she decided to be new. Or reveal herself anew. Either way she felt trembling in her stomach and decided that it was a good thing.Going out and walking around was a start. She smelled a barbeque and the rejected cans of baked beans and grease that were left strewn in garbage cans and on the pavement for the cats to lick at. Next she saw the strong lips and the waltzing hands of the boy that she loved, who rode his bike all around the town. He was wearing cutoffs like her own and he looked at her without a smile, so that her smile immediately left her mouth. It was alright, however, because his lack of a smile meant that his wanting stayed in the eyes. Almost imperceptibly, her pace quickened, and her hands grew damp so that she hurriedly wiped them on her hips.
Her ankle itched and she reached down to scratch it. It was a bug bite, and she licked the blood off of her thumb. She wondered why the taste of blood, acid, was strangely addictive. She wondered about the people who ate hamburgers, cow meat, when it was nearly raw and the blood juice would drip down their chin. They didn’t need to be meat eaters anymore, soon their canine teeth would go away and they would be smooth again, a waiting and patient brontosaurus species.
She then saw a child sitting on the curb with his finger in his mouth. She could see that he was biting on, and not sucking his thumb, and sat down beside him and looked at him. He looked at her also, waiting.
“Here again?”
He nodded. “It gets worse. I can’t look at her today. I spilled her drink and she licked it from the sofa cushion,” he shivered, wrapping his thin arms around the tops of his shoulders, bird skeleton. “We are all animals.”
She looked at the ground, thinking of the smells and the hungry boy. “I’d become an animal if it meant not loving people and dying quick.” She felt sadder than ever.
The little boy shook his head, tears moving slowly. “I wouldn’t. Better to live in pain than be numb, dumb animals. I’m an animal, but I feel so much that I want to die most of the time. But at least feeling is something she can’t take away, long as I stay awake.” He stood up and began to walk away from her, down the street. He swayed softly and sang through clenched teeth, “beauty beauty, look at me. I stayed this way for you to touch me. Beauty’s gonna kill me, but I’ll help you every time.” The girl remained where she was and the sounds around her became the screeching chorus, echoing among the sudden and brutal hilltops that encircled the valley she inhabited.
Photo, FeverishPhotography
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