Two Short Stories

The first one is for Erin Cole´s Of the Night Contest:

Predator Instinct

Maybe there´s a ton of fun in this, watching this; women writhing shamelessly, naked and displayed on stage, their oily skin glistening in salmon filtered light.

Maybe.

All the men seem to think so. They´re all raw cheering and heavy eyelids. Strangely focused through the beer-haze.

Alexia brings another round and tries to ignore them, their looks and insistent hands. She waltzes effortlessly through the crowd, that´s the trick; never stop, never hesitate.

Her concentration slips when midnight is long since gone and her feet are bleeding tales of pain. She´s in the bathroom trying cold water on the blisters when he enters. Too fast. Too determined.

He´s fat, drunk and in one of those checked flannel shirts that smells of sweat and dust and predator instinct. She grabs his ear and tries to rip it off, but that only seems to fuel him and her tights are torn and he´s pounding, pounding. Her forehead hits the mirror repeatedly and she feels that, only that, and then he´s gone and she´s on the floor, her teeth clattering in a way that could have been funny in another time and place.

She disciplines herself and exits.

The next round she brings is on the house. And the next one after that. The men cheer. He´s still there and there´s a shadow of uncertainty in his stupid, wasted eyes, but she gets Vodka and then there´s nothing more than intoxication.

Come dawn they´re all too drunk and sleepy, they want to leave.

So she locks the door, undresses and climbs onto the pathetically filthy stage. Does her waltz around a pole now. And they forget about sleep, excited gleams in their eyes as they watch her, respond to her.

They drink Vodka from her Cinderella shoes and she offers her breasts for touching, licking.

When they pass out she drenches the old wooden floor in spare gas she finds in their trunks. It´s more difficult to set on fire than she would have thought, but she´s persistent.

She leaves in that checked flannel shirt, a strange trophy, high on predator instinct.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The second one is my winning entry =) from last week´s Lily´s Friday Prediction:

A Profound Mistake

”We are grateful,” said the Japanese empress, three years old, and returned to her tea.

The interpreter nodded, uncertain.

”You do realise, you can´t own it, the Stonehenge, I mean,” said the Dealer.

The slant of a smile as she accepted her third cup.

”You´ve already given it to me!”

The Dealer exchanged looks with the interpreter, a pasty man draped in too bright red.

She laughed, a chilling sound, betraying her immortality.

”It´s already been placed in my garden. It fits perfectly.”

The Dealer paled as he realised his mistake; ancient magic should never be revealed to a vampire.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Happy Halloween, everyone =)

Pop! Goes the Weasel.

Don´t ask me to define freedom, it´s such a spectacularly grand concept, just realise we don´t want to be tyrannised like the Europeans.

Here´s how this would work: in real life, I would never introduce you to my sister because you might like her more than you like me and that would not be my preferred cuppa.

I watch a documentary about the Egyptian pharaoh Achnaton and there are these reliefs that show his belly, I think it looks rather like my own. Halfway through they present a theory stating that he might have been disfigured based on those reliefs and ain´t that just peachy.

Angst! But I buy new towels -- petroleum blue ones, so pretty, so pretty, with hems in complementary colours. Only they shed copious amounts of fuzz. Petroleum blue fuzz. On the floor, in the bathtub, on me, on my contact lenses. I now vacuum twice a day. I fucking hate it. Petroleum blue hate it.

You and I need so much therapy. It´s not only the way we both obsessively pretend we´re someone else, with different careers and different prospects, while our normal lives carry on as usual. It´s the mood swings, the borderline hysteria, the mental pain that we can´t learn to defend ourselves against. I brush my teeth and I put the head of the toothbrush on my right tonsil and I press hard and white lumps come out of it and land on my tongue and I gag as I scrape them out. I then rinse my toothbrush with chlorine.

Flaming Swords Ahead:

Wha´d´ya mean ”you´re back?”

What´s with your voice? All that breathlessness carrying strangely in the air -- kinda creepy, actually.

And you look like hell, sort of like a pale sponge drifting in and out of sight.

Stop sighing! And stop slapping your forehead like an effing drama queen!

Wha´d´ya want?

No! We´ve been over this; we don´t do ghosts, we do angels. And them downstairs do devil stuff.

No one does ghosts. Ghosts. Do. Not. Exist.

Now go dissolve yourself. Don´t let me catch you here again!



And maybe there´s nothing about me that you fancy, nothing at all. I look at you; your confident laughter is what saves my mornings and your ass in those jeans brings me off before ten a m and the way you run your hand through your hair makes me despair. You´re so young and where does that leave me? I can´t live like this and you compliment me on my experience, my knowledge! You want me to teach you and I want you to touch me.

I menstruate but I put one of my new towels on the floor and I lay down and imagine a Nazi clinic with blond psychopathes impregnating Norwegian women and I come fast and hard.

Never mind me, I like to randomly click on links.