Dance with Me

It was on the first Monday of spring when the sun emerged from a cotton shell, that I worked out how to kill myself.

'Trudge trudge trudge. Bridge steps bus. Same black line. Same black life.

Broken glass. Puddle of urine. Train ride to nowhere.

Stop.

'This is it. This is how it will happen.'

The thought had played on me daily. It was like a crossword puzzle I couldn't solve.

Across:

1. The act of ending one’s life (7)

Suicide.

Suicide.

Suicide.

Down:

1. Method of ending one’s life (8)

…

…

…?

Yet all that came into my head was a stupid song.

^♫I don’t wannnna dance, dance with you baby no more.

Da da dadededa da. Da da de da da da da^♫

I went to the chemist and saw large packets of paracetemol:

^♫I don’t want to dance, dance with you baby no more^♫

I stood at the station and trains thundered at me:

^♫I don’t want to dance, dance with you baby no more^♫

I cut myself shaving and looked at the blood on the razor:

^♫I don’t want to dance, dance with you baby no more^♫

It was only that first Monday in March when I stepped under the highway and onto the riverbank that the words stopped.

'I....’

Concrete melted.

^♫Dance ^♫

Shoes became slippers.

^♫Dance^♫

The highway pirouetted.

^♫Dance^♫

And the world opened up and I saw it.

^♫...^♫

And there was no more song.

'Hey.'

'Hey!'

'Hey there you handsome devil!'

Then she appeared and it all changed.

'Get out of your fucking dream and look at me.'

Her legs scuttled from beneath a rusting caravan and began snapping around me. I tried to cover my ears:

^♫Don't^♫

^♫Don't^♫

^♫Want^♫

But the song was back.

^♫Don't want to dance^♫

Her white skin blinded me like an interrogators lamp.

'Look at me.'

'Look at me now.'

And the only answer I could find was her - everywhere.

She was beautiful but not how things normally are. If you were walking by that morning you'd probably only have seen a black eye, a bloodied nose and necklace of tattoos. You wouldn’t have noticed how her blue eyes trickled over you like water, how her lips lifted you up in the air or how her fingers waited for yours like a child crossing the road.

Maybe it was because I was about to leap into infinity but there was something about her - the smear of red on her chin, the hair like sheet lightning - that felt more real than anything I'd seen before.

'Shall we go somewhere?' she said, stumbling into my chest. ‘Just me and you, my handsome saviour?’

'Peter,' I told cold lips. 'Yes. I think we should...'

'I'll show you Peter,' she said. ‘You don’t know anything you handsome fuck.’

'Okay...you show me,' I said.

She pushed my chest, stepped to her feet and dragged me like a dog.

^♫I don't want to dance, dance with you baby no more^♫

The graveyard behind the town hall steamed like rotting flesh. Through glass windows it blew a stench of hot desperation, staining suits and choking throats, and onto computer screens it released stinging images - a tramp rolling in excrement, drug addicts in empty graves, an old whore asleep beside an emaciated dog.

Faces withered. Bodies rotting. Furnaces firing.

Lick. Lick.

A prison for the undesired.

'Are you sure we should go in...?' I said as the girl marched into the smoke. 'I mean...'

Tongues licked.

Eyes blinked

Veins opened

‘Yes,' she said.

'It's just...I guess I should be at work. And....'

The skin on her neck shivered and her vest blew over a leather bra. 'Yes,' she said. ‘We should.’

The gravestones multiplied and the smoke thickened. Crows squealed like newborn babies and tramps and whores aimed arrows through the trees.

Help

Help us

I followed her golden mane like an orphan cub.

'Here we are my saviour, Peter,' she said, as we approached a giant stone tomb. 'I am yours. Do whatever it is you like to me.’ She turned and opened her body. 'Show me where the future lies.'

The skin on her cheeks became luscious syrup, melting over the graves. I wanted to touch it and throw myself in. 'Show me the truth,' she said.

'I...I...'

'Beauty,' I thought. 'Love.'

^♫Dance^♫

^♫Dance^♫

‘I want to dance with you.’

'Ha!' she said, suddenly sat cross-legged on top of the tomb. 'I can see you. I can see what you think. Don't think it. That isn't true at all.'

'I....'

She threw back her hair to display a dragon's neck of veins and bones. An army of bloodthirsty shadows rushed from the graveyard below. 'See what they think of your pretty words and thoughts. Ask them if I'm a gift from heaven or a goddess on Earth.'

I tried to climb but the stone was freezing cold.

'Stay down with them,' she said, kicking with stiletto claws. 'Lay with those that are dying before you try and understand.'

'I...'

The silhouettes snarled behind granite crosses.

'Listen,' she said. 'Listen to your pretty words. That's how they sound.'

Help us.

'Let me up with you,' I said.

'Listen to them.'

Touch us. Fuck us.

'Tell me what you want,' I said, black smoke billowing.

Come. Be real with us.

'Tell me who you are!'

'I don’t have answers,' she said, dragging on a cigarette. 'Listen to them. They will tell you who I am and why you are here.'

Love. Hate. Love. Hate. The dark army pulled back their bows, faces contorted with hate.

'Okay,' she said, reaching out and lifting me onto the tomb. 'But only if you promise me one thing.'

'Anything.'

'After I tell you, no matter what you think, you have to kill me.'

I felt a black dart pierce my spine.

'I...'

Coldness rushed inside.

'You have to kill me.'

Black

Empty.

'Kill me.'

'Okay.'

She sparked up a cigarette and a series of brass plaques flickered through the gloom.

The angel of my life

Souls united in infinity

A child in the arms of God

Letters curved and flowed like the voices of a children’s choir.

'Fucking lies,' she said, squinting through cigarette smoke. 'Who do these people think they are? Fucking lies right until the end.' I saw black lips curl into a sneer. 'Don't raise your eyes at me sunshine. I know. Trust me.' She scraped her heel into the grave wall like a bull preparing to charge.

'Why do you say that?'

'Because that’s what people do Peter.' Scrape, scrape. 'They lie all the time.'

'Really?' I said, coughing on her cigarette. 'Even on the graves of their family?'

'Especially then,' she said.

Words appeared through the tomb, etched by invisible hands.

My angel

My soulmate

My love

'He said that the moment after he came in me,' she told the stale air. “My angel. My love.” Zipped up his trousers like he'd been for a half-time piss and crept out of the door. “Good night, my angel.”

Then she said it when I went to her crying. “I love you Samantha. We both love you, you know that don’t you? You’re my angel; I don’t want to hurt you.” Then she took off her glasses and slapped me in the face. “It’s just...sometimes we need to show it in different ways, that’s all.” She smiled like this was nicest thing in the world and sat back on the sofa with her book. “What an angel you will grow up to be.”

The girl's face flickered, blistering like burning meat. 'Your mother...and your father..?'

'Hit me - yes. And fucked me...yes.'

'I'm sorry, that's...'

'No you're not Peter,' she said, brushing ash from my hair. 'You don't mean that. It’s okay. He didn’t mean it either when he came into my room and stuck it in me. It’s just what people are and what people do. They make it okay. They make it real.'

The angel of my life.

'Do you know he used to do it once a month before my period?' She stamped the cigarette it into the dirt. 'What a time we had eh! At least you're sorry about it though Peter. That’s good to know.'

Darkness wrapped around us like an execution mask. I could no longer see the girl or the way out of the tomb.

'I'm sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what you meant.’

She kicked the wall and the entrance rolled open. Grey light washed in and she stared into the mist, eyes shooting around like schooling fish. 'That’s why I'm here,' she said. 'Because you don’t know, because you don’t know what real is.' Her eyes froze me into the stone. 'Don’t look at my face and think how ugly they made it,’ she said. ‘Think about what they did - why they kissed every morning and fucked me in the evening, why she cried when he left but spent the next month hitting me, why they didn’t speak for years but when the police came round they gassed like parrots...’

The wind blew her hair onto my cheeks.

'You may think they're right,' she said, stroking me. 'That it was okay for her hit me and him to fuck me - because that was what they had to do right? That was how they kept the illusion going. They did it because they loved me.' She stared out to the graves and bit her lip. A tear of blood dropped to the floor. 'There is no such thing as love Peter. It’s the first lesson you should learn. At least my parents taught me early.’ A flood of ice poured from her mouth. 'At least I won't die believing it.'

The graveyard crackled in the darkness. Stone slabs exploded into dust and carcasses froze deep in the earth. Grey mist swirled.

Through the glacier a plume of steam shot into the air and formed a cloud over the tomb. I looked up and saw her sat upon it, cheeks shining in the moonlight.

'Come here Peter,' she said, smiling. 'Come and sit with me.'

We floated above the city. The graveyard became a cloudy puddle, the town hall a broken seashell and the highway a trickle of spilt milk.

'It’s beautiful up here isn't it?’ the girl said, rubbing my shoulders. ‘It’s like we're the only two people in the world.'

I gazed into her. Sunrise on an alpine peak. 'I don’t feel like I'm in the world.'

She blew on my head - a warm kiss. 'It feels better though yeah?'

'Yeah.'

The cloud floated through the sky. Her arms wrapped softly around me. Warm, soft. Light and clear. Eyes like blue stars.

'Love me. Love me,' she whispered.

The cloud bobbed and danced.

‘Touch me. Hold me.’

^♫Dance. Dance^♫

I love you.

^♫Dance. Dance^♫

What did you say?

Love.

What?

^♫I don't^♫

What?

^♫Dance^♫

‘Get away from me. Get off. Get off now!

My body hit the ground with a metallic thump.

‘You like it down there do you?' she growled from the firmament. 'Lying in the cold covered in shit.'

Shadows stood over me like wolves to meat.

‘Doesn’t feel so good now does it?’ She leapt down and stabbed my forehead with a stiletto. ‘Not so good at all.’

Worms burrowed through the soil around my head.

'Ha! I was stuck on that cloud for five years Peter. Five years! Thank God I'm here to bring you back to the real world.'

The stiletto rotated like a drill. I closed my eyes.

I want you so much.

I want to help you.

You want to fuck me

I don't want to kill you.

Kill me.

I can't

Kill me.

Who are you?

Kill me.

Open your eyes

Open your eyes.

She dragged me to my feet and wedged her hand into mine like a child running from a ghost. ‘Did that hurt?’ she said. ‘You poor thing. Don’t go dying over it.’

Where did you come from?

'I saw you know. I saw you this morning, standing on edge of the river about to jump in. You looked happy as a bird in shit.

Are you alive?

'I spent five years in a place like you were - dreaming, looking at the sunset and reaching for the noose.'

^♫Dance^♫

'There's so much you don’t know.'

^♫I don’t want to dance^♫

'You can kill me first, and then see how you feel.

‘Dance with me,’ I said.

We walked silently through a labyrinth of glass houses and emerged into the gleaming city square. Grand stone palaces circled like planets.

'Your hands are sweaty. Is it because I make you nervous?' Her fingers tapped musically onto my thigh.

'No,' I said.

‘That’s nice,’ she said.

We stopped amongst the fountains and let the pools of water pulse through us like whales' hearts. She stared up into the canopy of rainbows. 'Ahhh, hhhhaa, hah, haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. I love it!'

Doric columns stood proudly around. Light bounced off white chinos and silver watches. Champagne sang through whistling flutes.

‘You make me nervous’ she said, turning to me through the sunlight. ‘I don’t know what you’re here and I don’t know why you're with me.' She removed her shoes and perched on the edge of the pool - a swan preparing to feed. Lunching office workers flapped beneath her golden wings and tourists snapped at her glittering feathers. 'Why are you here Peter?' the swan asked. 'Why do you look at me that way?'

'I don't know,' I said

'Are you sure?'

We entered the theatre at the head of the square and walked through a foyer of marble, clear as an arctic sea. She skated and spun leaving a trail of snowdrops in her wake.

'It’s wonderful isn’t it?' she said floating up a cascade of steps. 'We called it The Winter Palace - a fairytale where cold is warm, dark is light and the real world is left at the door.' She held out her hand, pulled my face to hers and kissed me on the lips. It was as she said - warm, light and make-believe. ‘You have to see,’ her lips shimmered. ‘You have to see what used to be mine.'

A gust of wind blew us through a lace curtain and into the box over the theatre stage. The canopy was adorned with flowers and the stage framed with Renaissance paintings.

'I was in a trance for five years and art was the only cure they could find.'

A switch flicked and chandeliers lit up the heavens.

'Everything else made me spin into a void of darkness and self-harm, but art kept me alive. It shone clear through the chaos.' Her fingers tempted me to a frame over the stage where in a forest at twilight three nudes were tempting a youthful king. 'Rubens,' she said. 'The Judgement of Paris. My favourite one.'

We stared as the image, alive with light and flesh.

'I studied so much that I knew more than any expert or dealer could. I understood not only value but also how a painting could reach into a person's soul.' She posed in front of the nudes, stroking her thigh and poking out her tongue. 'You like mister?'

I looked at the cream body, gold hair and the glittering auditorium. 'This is all yours?'

'It was,' she said, walking into my hands. 'The Rubens, the Canalettos...they were all mine until I sold them on to someone else - someone who needed them more than I did it. I only kept the money.' Her eyes looked down to the stage, where a pianist and soprano stood gazing into the empty stalls. 'It gave me quite a life. I came to see the finest operas, I went to restaurants with celebrities, wore dresses designed for me, jewellery cut for queens and had beautiful men propose to me every night. My house the size of a palace and servants, I had servants! Everything was for me, as I dreamed when I was a girl.'

A cold breeze crept through the theatre. The chandeliers creaked. She shivered and brought her neck onto my shoulder, bruises pulsing beneath tender skin. 'It was what everyone wants Peter.'

The nudes prostrated in front of Paris, showering him with offers of riches and flesh. I could hear them whisper. 'Take it. Have it. All that you desire.'

'I bought everything I could think of. I went to parties every night, I slept with different beautiful men, I wore the dresses and I watched the plays. I gave myself all the pleasure it was possible to have.' She let go of my hand and danced in front of the stage. 'And when I woke up every morning with a pretty boy beside me, all I wanted to do was die.'

The curtains opened to golden Valkyries flying into space.

My angel.

My love.

‘Hey! Hey!’

The theatre doors closed and she leaped away from me, sprinting towards the highway bridge like a bolting unicorn.

'Hey,' I said. 'Come back.’

'Get the fuck away from me,' she said without turning back. 'I want to go home now. I don't want you and your stupid dreams anymore.'

The cars and buses snarled past.

'What...what's happened to you?'

She sprinted again, then swayed and collapsed into the side of the bridge. 'Don’t come near me.’

‘What?' I said. 'What have I done?

Her legs flopped over the railings. ‘I'll go, I mean it!'

The river bubbled like hot oil.

‘Don’t do it,’ I said. ‘I want to know you. I want be who you are.'

'I fucking will Peter. Come near me and I fucking will right now.'

'What’s happened to you?' I said.

She perched on the side and flapped skeleton wings. 'Look at your pretty gold sunset,' she said. ‘Then maybe you’ll see.'

I stared out to the ball of orange light and felt it pull me like the morning when I walked to work.

Where are you?

The ball revolved.

Are you real?

My eyes fell inside

‘Do you see?' she said.

^♫Dance^♫

Light.

'It's what you want, isn’t it?'

^♫Dance^♫

Gold.

A swan about to fly.

'I...'

A whirlpool of orange and yellow. A speck of magma falling into the vortex.

'I want you,' I told her as lava poured around.

'No you don't.'

'Help me,' I said. 'I want to see you. I want to dance with you.'

^♫Dance.^♫

Limbs melting.

^♫Dance. ^♫

A hand reached through the side of the bridge.

'Do you want to come back?'

I gripped child-like fingers. The sun fell into the water below.

'I won’t let you go, I promise.'

We walked through an empty bandstand and turned into the graveyard.

'Thank you,' she said kissing me on the cheek.

‘I’m not sure what for,’ I said, blinking away orange light.

She kissed me again. 'Do you need another clue?'

We kept moving until we reached the edge of the cemetery where the bridge loomed like a giant crucifix.

'I left the parties and the beautiful boys,' she said wrapping her hair behind her head. 'And I came to live here.'

An old caravan curled beneath a withered cedar, rusting bones cradled around its chest.

'It’s nice,' I said

She scoffed and hitched up her leather skirt. 'This is where I sleep, where I eat and where I fuck. And where I have found what is real.' Her hand reached out and brushed my chin and she stared at me with squinting pockets of darkness. 'No love, no money, no delusions. No art, no beauty, no wealth. No-one to hurt. No-one to kill.'

I put my hand on her shoulder. It shivered to the touch.

'Just the truth Peter,' she said. 'Nothing more. I live as I am - 60 pounds of flesh slowly rotting, doing what it needs to stay alive, nothing more, nothing less.' She rubbed my hair maternally. 'Nothing for you to think about, nothing wonderful or beautiful, nothing from a god or from the sky - just this, some decomposing metal, and me, a woman being herself.'

'I like it,' I said.

'Is it the answer you thought you'd find?' she said.

I looked at the metal, the broken bedsprings and the withered tree. Then I saw her face splashed in make-up, the bruises on her neck, her hair tangled in knots, her teeth grinding and her thighs shaking. 'I don’t think I care,' I said.

'You've found what is real,' she said.

'It’s the best feeling there is.'

'Yes,' she said.

The smell of rainclouds filled the air around us, heavy and hot like the breath of God.

'Well, that's it then. You can leave me now.’ She unzipped her stilettos and brought out a gun. 'There you go,' she said. 'I’ve done my bit. I’ve serviced your needs. Now you can pay me my fee, just as you promised.’

Her words hung in the smouldering air. A crow squawked from behind the caravan.

'Well?' she said, narrowing her eyes.

'Is that it?' I said

'What else do you expect there to be?' Her stare pierced my skin. 'You agreed,' she said. ‘You said you would do it.’ She threw the gun in front of me.

'I...'

Her arms locked to her hips and she turned to face the highway bridge. A cat sniffed at her ankles as they shivered in the breeze.

'I...'

I didn’t know what to say.

'Come on. I saved you, now you can save me. That’s fair isn’t it?'

'I....but it was you I...'

'No. It’s not me, why can't you understand that? I’m here for you, nothing more. That's all I ever have been.' Her fists clenched. 'So could you hurry up and do it and get over with? No-one will notice. They'll be no one writing on my grave.

'I'm getting cold here.

'Come on.

'Come on Peter, do something once in your life.'

The wind skipped around the graveyard. Metal creaked, flowers bowed. A foghorn groaned over the river.

'Come on!'

I put down the gun,

'Come on!'

Walking slowly forward I placed my hands carefully on her back. The shoulder blade stabbed back.

'Get the fuck off. What do you think you're doing?'

My hands stroked her shoulder and then moved through her hair, plying the strands apart on by one.

‘It’s okay.’

She gripped onto my waist.

‘I’m not going to hurt you.’

Her fingers rubbed my side and wandered over my spine. The she turned and flopped into me, swaying like reeds in the breeze. ‘You don’t want me,’ she said. ‘Let me go.’

I moved her with the wind, a slow waltz at an empty ball.

‘I don’t...’

'Get off me.' Her hands clambered and held my neck. 'They hurt me so much Peter, you don’t understand.'

'I know,' I said.

'Every day, it was her or him, hurting me.’

'I know.'

'It hurts.'

'I know,' I said.

Her nails pressed into my back. A lone flute sung in the air.

‘I can let you go, if you want to.’

'No,' she said. ‘Dance. Dance with me.' Her eyes gazed into me. ‘I...’

‘Dance,' I said. ‘Just dance.’

The sun rose over the stage and flutes began to sing, and we moved, staring into each other, the waltz rippling this way and that, through bristling cedars, swooning rosebushes and a lake of white lilies. The girl opened her arms and held me close to her, kissing me over and over.

‘Who are you?’ I said.

She smiled at me, white, pink and shining. 'Dance,' she whispered. 'Dance.'

'It doesn’t matter.’

'Just dance with me.'

And so we danced through the night and through all the days that followed, her arms wrapped around me and my eyes holding her close. The graveyard bloomed blue, green and white and the sky showered us with light from an eternal sun.