Another night, another party.
I find myself wandering in an upmarket suburb where the houses all have double front doors and glowing in-ground swimming pools as clear and cold as glaciers. It's Friday night, and it doesn't take long to find the street with too many cars on the curb.
Static crackles in my ears expectantly.
I let myself in, fashionably late, rehearsing my lines.
I'm a friend of Tom.
It's a nice place, with cool white corridors and an open bar.
I'm Sarah's cousin, just up for the holidays.
Pick a common enough name (it's a big enough party that there's bound to be at least one Tom or Sarah here), take a sip of your drink, and casually change the topic. Look comfortable, smile and giggle on cue.
My eyes pick through the mess on the tables. Clusters of half-empty bottles, crushed lemon rinds and a potted plant overflowing with ash. A glass of tequila vanishes with loud approval and another rind is discarded onto the table like a corpse flipped into a mass grave. Greasy and yellow.
The static is slowly gnawing a hole inside me. I can feel it right there between my bones like a tangible thing. Like I could put my fist into that void. It's aching and stretching and I'm crumbling around it.
Only one thing can fill it.
The heavy base of a shotglass slams onto the table, shocking me back to myself and I forget about the brimming drink in my lap.
Everyone's laughing and I blush, embarrassed, and press a napkin feebly into the dark stain spreading between my thighs.
I taste salt and citrus and thirst.
I hear applause and static and desperation.
The dutiful hostess beckons me to follow her through a maze of corridors and I watch her hand gliding over the walls for balance. Her fingernails whisper against the white plaster, and I see instead her stroking pale creamy skin, as though the house is made of living flesh that stretches and sighs at her touch.
“Here it is.” She slurs, flicking on the bathroom light and hurrying back to her guests.
In the time it takes to close the door I watch the walls droop down until they melt together, arching to caress and embrace her.
“Were you at Mandy's sheventeeth lasht weekend?” Someone asks, later.
“No. I had a family thing.” I smile politely.
“Oh.” She squints over her glass. “What'sh your name again?”
I pretend to see someone I know and she immediately finds someone more interesting to talk to.
The static swells and ebbs with tidal insistence as I drift between the clusters of guests. I watch people laughing in a way that doesn't light up their glazed eyes. They've all reached a comfortable cruising altitude and switched over to auto-pilot.
I want to join them in that immutable space of blissful indifference.
If you could only see, the beast inside of me...
The singer's haunting voice washes over me.
I held it in but now it seems you've set it running free...
I find myself inside, standing in the gloom by the speakers. There's a little mirror ball turning slowly in the corner, flicking coloured scraps of light on couples dancing together.
Screaming in the dark, I howl when we're apart. Drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart...
Each stroke of the bass clings to my bones, begging to be shaken off. Instinctively I start to sway, my shoulders weaving figure eights that ripple down my spine to my hips. I watch my fingers (so far away) describe an invisible looping pattern and feel that familiar stir beneath the static at the edge of my control.
I feel myself slipping.
My fingers claw your skin, try to tear my way in...
With a surge of impatience the static swells and I crumble into it. I'm swept away helplessly, dissolving into the bass like a glacier plunging into a boiling sea.
You are the moon that breaks the night...
The static ripples. It craves ecstasy and passion and eyes-wide tearing pain. It longs for sudden aching moments of connection in the rage of brutality. It wants me to dig deep down into that part of myself I hide inside walls of static.
The beast howls in my veins...
That black, animal place.
I want to find you, tear out all your tenderness...
I pick him out easily.
At a table, leaning away from a swaying little scrap of a thing who giggles at every second vowel he utters. A polite devil in a pressed cotton shirt with a tattoo peeking above the collar and a ring in his ear. He's bored. There's a glass at his elbow but it's warm and there's a clear undisturbed layer on top of the amber liquor.
He has smiling lips I want to taste and tidy hair that I want to twist between my fingers.
He looks up as if sensing my attention and his eyes find mine across the room. He raises an eyebrow and we share a knowing smile until I glance away, demurely.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch him untangle himself from the blonde.
He opens his mouth with a great pick-up line at the ready.
“I'm not interested in small talk.” I tell him, holding his gaze.
Static crackles around him. He is careful and neat but his eyes are ravenous. They pin me against the wall, searching for something.
“Ok.” He says, finally.
Impatience grips me and I curl my fists into his shirt, pulling his face down into a kiss.
The static thrums in time with his heart.
I turn and walk outside in the darkness.
He follows.
We find each other in the dark, the muffled throb of music and chatter a distant reminder of a world we don't fit.
We make our own world for a little while, a holy empire of dirt and dust and dry leaves.
He is an artist. My body is a canvas. His belt and my stockings bind and strangle us, and he discovers new macabre uses for his pocketknife.
The whisper of the blade forces a shudder and gasp from both of us and bright blood spills onto the earth. It paints our skin like savages and in the darkness he can't see that my wounds close almost instantly. That my hands are suddenly free.
I bite down, and taste his blood and surprise and delight. His ecstasy and pain and terror and finally...
It's the only thing that can fill the crackling void.
In the sticky silence that follows I collect myself. I kick some leaves over his body.
It wasn't enough.
The static returns swiftly and demands more.
More.
More.
More...