A/N: Published with next to no editing. Please forgive mistakes and the lack of quality. Written after watching Anna Maxwell Martin's take on Sally. The Emcee will never be anyone other than Alan Cumming in my stories. Slightly borrowed is a line from The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer; "Black and dark and soaked with dreams of big, big men..."
~o~
Sally's robe slipped from her shoulders and into the Emcee's hand as practiced. The article was raised nearer his chest, his shoulder, with the hopes of preserving it as he passed through the audience. Despite his efforts pink feathers fell silently with his fading. His descent to the bar. She didn't know on which path he'd faded, she couldn't see. But she knew him and that's where he had gone. His half-naked body pressed against the wall, a glass of vodka soon in hand. Watching the audience watch her, all deep red.
With her blonde hair pinned tightly to her head in small whorls, she regarded the girls around her. Helga with her cramps, Lulu with her stained stockings. Frenchie who searched the crowd.
They completed the moves they knew by heart, stomping their way across the stage, silver heels in crimson light.
Sally didn't think of the lyrics nor did she think of her steps. It would all be over soon. Soon, she would be back in her dressing room.
The stage was hollow under her feet, under the Kit Kat Girl's feet. The balcony rang with the Emcee's steps. Returned now from his venture, he attempted to draw attention to himself by dancing in the half-shadows. His pale arms and hands moving this way and that, from air to railing. Let him.
She recounted to a disinterested audience a story regarding the men in her life, then went on to a number borrowed from a motion picture. The arrangement sweeping, swelling; demented and dramatic in ways that it had never been in the cinema. But that fit. It all fit. She walked the tightrope of her life to a mid-tempo score, deep and dark and soaked in twilight and alcohol. And her heart burst before countless unknown faces. Night after night, day after day. A different bed, a different lie.
Soon she would have her fur coat wrapped around her, out on the street for a meal. The lights from the stage, the heat from dancing, made her crave the soft moonlight and cool night air of another world. She'd find someone to buy her dinner and then do what was required before falling into bed to sleep. Falling away and into another nightmare different from waking.
Sally leaned back and for a moment let the blood rush to her head, and she laughed. Laughed as the other girls blew from their mouths streams of smoke.
~o~