NINE LIVES
By Scarr C.
1.
Seven twenty-three AM.
Like a panther, so deep that purple is black, that morning coffee is cruel and nipping against his thin lips. The saucer is back in its place with nary a spill, for he is immaculate as he is still.
Hands, they are hers and mildly calloused. They are bursting with heart; sliding alongside a canvas of pinstripes that is his waist.
Good morning, a murmur.
It is a theatre of the domestic, what with the curtains heralding a breezy sky, and the saucepan in her sink with gristle on it. Eggs a sunny side up; toast so neatly spread it is discomfiting to swallow. It is like this, mostly – boys have always made breakfast for her; she makes love to them, although not in return. Cavalierly, she recalls the sweet Chad and his overcooked bacon, but shakes it aside. She's with a gentleman of danger now.
Now, his senses take residence in her hair. A rough tug of her forearm and she half-tumbles onto his sitting form, his knuckles grazing her hips, her cheek scraping against his faintly bared teeth. This is his way of greeting.
She withdraws.
It is the phone: he regards it as a nuisance, a meddlesome object. She scoots past the table, knocking his newspaper onto the floor unintentionally. He frowns.
-Hello, I'll be right there.
It takes her a little less than two minutes to paint a smile on her lips. Keys snug in the pocket of her jeans, she makes for the garage.
He mutely retrieves his paper from the kitchen floor and shovels the lettuce into his mouth with a vengeance.
2.
Natalie is casual assortment of broad grins and unsuspecting
flair. Dylan loves her in those off-white sandals and loose pedal
pushers, the way her buoyancy unrolls and strums itself into any
given atmosphere like a pleasant spray.
Alex is the last to enter, her arms occupied with a basket of oven-made delicacies, although her friends insist that "delicacy" is a subjective term.
A giggle, a shove, and an indignant elbow connects mischievously with her ribs as crumbs explode and scatter over expensive teak. Natalie's endless limbs flay across her lap as they struggle to dodge Alex's culinary efforts.
-Revenge of the Chinese Fighting Muffin!
Twice now, the door swings open, and space is happily created on the couch.
-Bosley!
-Lookin' fabulous, Angels.
-Thank you, Bosley. Saccharine and unanimous, legs cross over legs as professionalism takes over in the form of a speaker box.
-Good morning, Charlie.
Rustle of files, the pointless arrangement her wrinkled shirt. She has slept in the past night's clothes again, much to his chagrin. He was the one who took meticulousness into his altar, and she had little respect for religion.
They spring from their seats, buckling gears and tightening laces with a flourish; and once again the Angels are ready to save the world.
3.
Mid-day. She streaks past the
melting trees, one backdrop at a time. He waits, the back of his palm
holding his proud chin in place. Cadaverous and imposing, he gathers
the afternoon in a self-fashioned control, the base of his neck tense
and sharp.
He is sharp all around, a hard-backed gallery of protuberances. Her round face looms into view, and a set of car keys skittle across the coffee table.
-I'm home.
It is unnecessary, but she says it anyway, as if this superfluous act makes up for his unyielding quiet.
(sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here silent all these years)
4.
Laid out in soft diagonals and pinned by the bilious glare of a
lamp, his eyes skirting the arc of her throat, the clasp of her
breath as it tightens and sags like a contemporary rhythm, lacking of
connection.
-Oh, oh.
It is not definable by music, but she draws back a scream, failing to echo his own as they twist and wrangle into bedsheets of an ill-matched lilac.
Their teeth clink fiercely, his palms flattened on the raging brink of her pulse. In a dream she is the one who drags him, past anachronism and wilted thrones, telling him that anything is.
Nightly he splits her open from the juncture of her thighs, while she tries to ignore her burning scalp and how his hands press bruises into the skin beneath her breasts.
5.
She leans into his
mouth, and alkaline suds tilt over the bathtub, her hair like
petulant fronds on clammy flesh. He sniffs gingerly at a cigarette
and waits for Beethoven's Ninth to unwind from the living room. She
does not smoke, but paints for herself a deck of ghosts, and songs
from the past.
He strictly discourages her ruminating; it soils both his mood and hers.
The water hangs at her waist and he is behind her, both legs spread around her own. His head slants in a picturesque degree that allows for him to lick impassively at the veins on her neck. They push against the sopping tiles, and he fills her blood with thick languor.
It is always quiet, the thrashing and sucking. His joints creak so soundlessly she barely notices he comes. There is a bleary hint of fright in his eyes as he leaves, and she is hardly surprised to find the rain beating against the windowpane like a spoilt child.
(and I knew then it would be a lifelong thing but I didn't know that we - we could break a silver lining)
6.
-I can't handle this.
-Oh gods, I can't.
7.
One, two.
He dodges neither boot, but they determinedly fail their mark. It is so masterful, this art of stationary being, that he appears to have suspended the motion of clocks.
Her lips, red of a wild thrush's breast, unclose with a howl. Her arm snaps forwards with each object she hurls at him, a cacophony of picture frames, potpourri bowls and her prized lighter. She gulps, lost and defeated in a test of loyalty, shutting the sliding door so hard that one of the panels begins to sport a crack.
-Just say something, you stupid fuck, say SOMETHING!
He does not. He finds her bemusingly petty, but fears that this humour will one day sour like congealing milk.
-It's too noisy here for the both of us.
-Get out.
He complies, stepping nimbly over the harried mess on the floor, and over the strewn crowns in the platitudes of her mind.
(is there room in my heart for you to follow your heart and not need more blood from the tip of your star)
8.
It is a velvet day when she shows up in his bathroom, vomit
lining the toilet seat and the sides of her arms.
His stoicism is harrowing, rehearsed, and slams against her temper like a caged beast. Firstly, methodically, he wets a bunch of tissue paper and swabs politely at the filth.
Afterwards, he undresses her like a routine. They do not kiss, even when he brusquely sits her at the edge of the sink and fucks her. He speaks to her of the worldly and murderous and she can only hear him with sleeping ears.
His hysteria is deadening, and their breathing flounders, senses anxiously crutching an intangible vow as he rips shrewdly at her hair.
Faster, madder.
She bleeds a little; he is startlingly heedless. They spend the rest of the evening poking at the clothes on the floor with their toes, her body sticking feebly to his chest.
(some boy you are, to wear my colour red- to wear it very proudly)
9.
Dylan Sanders does not like Mondays. She feels a dark pressure on the sides of her temples, a migraine.
When he steps into the room she wrenches the medallion off her neck so that it leaves an obscene red welt, and flings it at him. This time, he has the courtesy to flinch. She observes his behaviour with hollow satisfaction.
-I'm leaving.
What he does next is trademark and redolent, so that she is the one that cries. The cigarette is pinched between pallid fingers –squeezed like a rodent under the cruel mill of tyres – and flung onto the ground with violent relish.
His eyes are a multitude of seas at once, gelid and furious.
-You can't give me my life back- She chokes, looking unkempt and indignant all at once, wishing he were dead.
-I hate you. Her voice is bereft of conviction, her hands outstretched and horribly misplaced, as if locked in a travesty of supplication.
She gathers her clothes, collects her fortuities and the castles that were stretched so meanly over a series of air; but leaves the lighter behind for luck, she says.
Two years, and the blemishes on his sword have wielded a more austere shade. Two years, and he lights a cigarette, ever so artfully, wondering if the red-haired Angel was going to take her soul back.
FIN
Lyrics in parentheses by Tori Amos.