Tail

by Julian Duenker

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Night. Mr Black and grey spread their shades of dominance between each other once more. Susan was dressed in all black dripped clothing. Jeans rose to her hip colliding against a torn and loose belt. Her hair was loose, dropping in the soft wind that curled its intoxicated fingers through the strands. A blue chequered shirt covered the upper half of her body but allowed her nude forearms to hang with clenched fists. Her boots accompanied her down the street, providing ample space between the dirt of the footpaths and herself. Her boots ended up deciding to go out about the town but yet were confused if it was them who laced the idea together or if the thought was woven into their leathery seams by a series of unfortunate events. A sense of release essentially. Regardless, they were glad to get out of the flat into the grasp of what a social life should be.

  The city hummed while it plucked a litter of drunk people from the edge of its nails. Every fucking night, poor city no? Well it got used to sociable nights with the culprits eventually leaving pissed marks along the pavements. It wasn’t particularly fun but it was the price it had to pay if the city wanted to grow. Growing pains, city style.

  Susan neared a corner of a road, an assortment of dirty rainbow colours flashed through the thick fog of Mr Black. Mixes of maroon with toxic purple and pink splashed across the pavement reflecting into distorted puddles scattered. Her boots collapsed the puddles separating and shattering the colours as she closed in on the place.

  A bouncer hovered outside the small wooden door. He was naturally tall and thickly built with a strange lack of hair. It was as if, if someone wanted to become a bouncer they would have to be subject to balding of some degree, like Russian leaders. He ticked every single box of the clichéd bouncer appearance, his parents must have been so darn proud.

  He let Susan in after a bored look up and down of her clothes as if trying to scan the level of toxicity threw the folds and style of her jeans. She was sober so her style was left unharmed from his bulky gaze.

  Walking down the hall she mulled over her plan for the night. Drinking till drunking were the words she whispered to herself. They tickled the tips of her boots delighted by the prospect of forgetting everything that they had stepped on over the past couple of weeks. A sense of release essentially was brought on by the image of a cool drink.

  There was one large staircase going down to the place. The walls were smeared by irrelevant drawings and forgotten posters from years before. Images of bands and attractions advertised the free spaces that were left on the walls. The lights from outside faded to black once she entered, leaving her in a spot of darkness. The more she stepped down to the chattered music and the talking soundtrack, the more apparent the lights became.

  A couple shuffled past Susan on the staircase desperately trying to grab onto steps that seemed to appear before their feet. She had pink dyed hair stabbed back to her skull with scrapes of scalp exposing across her temples. Her hand tattooed arm wrapped around her man who tried to lift his lips from the drinking glass of the ground. He was losing saliva with every lost thought leaving him to dry like bread stamping up the stairs.

  Susan made sure to give them distance, afraid of random puke that might have said hello. Then her boots landed on the last few steps of the long staircase. A door hid the fun of the night in front of her. Through the gaps of the door slithered noise and music could be heard bouncing its way up the stairs. It excited Susan to see the lights seizure themselves awake along the bottom line of the frame. With her index finger on the handle she opened the door slapping the sound of excessive drinking to her ears. Regardless of where she went the noise held onto her eardrums. It was some very strong adhesive.

  The front room had a handful of people spilled across the floor. One heavy built person sprawled along the frame of a waiting room styled couch to Susan’s right. Three people spat words at each other in the opposite corner. A couple with hands scooped into the gaps of each other’s clothes swapped tongues beneath the blanket of noise and coloured light.

  With the bathrooms to the left there was only one other direction to go, straight ahead. As Susan walked through the front room she noticed a few things that she took for granted when she entered. Strings of fluorescent purple lights dropped from the ceiling with hooks. They were straight and hard to the touch. Flashing along the rainbow spectrum they threw a collage colours across everyone’s faces.

  Susan neared the large upside down u shaped passage into the heart of the underground building. Her boots tore from the ground with every step trying to separate from sticky puddles. Susan didn’t want to think too long and hard about what exactly the puddles were.

  The main room was fractured and bent around like an oval shape. Half of the entertainment was hidden around the curve of the architecture, which required people to surf the rooms. This undoubtedly left them in a puddle of their own confusion if anything else hadn’t done that already. A bar presented free seats across from Susan taunting her to warm the torn material hanging from the stools. A dark skinned gothic vibe was the attire of the place. Music rang from boxes at the other side of the building hollowing the sounds which passed all the cubicles laced along the curve. It wasn’t generically base music that pounded the intoxicated fun out from everyone’s chest, rather it was a collection of heightened drum and base with a mix of paced rock.

  The bar acted as the altar for every single soul to flock to with their sacrificed tongues ready for the cutting glass. Beside the bar on both sides were a collection of cubicles indented into the wall, which gave ample space for people to roam past. Susan noticed one to her left which provided the most amount of sound. A group of torn haired people with hats, screaming catch phrases from the top of their drunk lungs. They were young and flaunted their soft skin across the drenched table. Arms were wrapped around each other, as if marking their territory, sort of similar to pissing on something to mark scented territory.

  One boy in particular danced his way from his seat into a standing position atop the cushions of the seats. His friends praised him raising their gold and metal wristed arms up to him as if worshiping his gyrating hips. The more howls he received from the tips of their fingers, the faster his hips and chest swung in the opposite direction from one another.

  It was a very specific dance, which Susan assumed to have stemmed from an inside joke of the group. Making sure that his lengthy navy sliced top still protected what was left of his exposed nipples he proceeded to migrate the dance onto the top of the table. Naturally what followed were more worshipped howls from the people beneath him and the odd look thrown from people that walked past. When Susan had enough of them she moved to the bar to start similar worshipped cries within her own head.

  The bar had a few stranded corpses heaving their worried expressions along the wood. It was inexplicably quiet with very few people part of the line to the bartender. Susan was surprised that the bar wasn’t littered by a crowd of dry mouths. Usually they would crowd the place, removing the notion and purpose of bar stools. But with the lack of people at the bar, it left her with a nice view of half the place atop one of the stools. She was surprised, but wasn’t complaining.

  She fixed her ass on top of the seat trying to rearrange a few loose strands of cloth that bulked up beneath her, which felt like she was sitting on top of a bundle of shredded clothes. Tattoos stretched along the wood of the bar. Susan turned around on her seat and rested her arms on the wood. With rolled up sleeves she fingered the drawn and carved slits in the wood. In a way she admired the crude and filth driven images that laced across the bench. Pictures of caricatured sexual depictions covered the slices of bar, along with a few strung words and names. It was a collection of people’s time and devotion to the idea of significance. That plank of wood on the bar contained every reason why anyone would want to leave a legacy, obviously on a much smaller and sexually driven scale.

  Susan’s lips dried taunting her eyes to call over the bartender. She felt the outline of the drink within
the cusp of her palm. Over the day she had created the idea of drink as her saviour from her acidic problems. She knew it would only be a temporary solution.

  After the bartender finished attending a beard covered man on the other end of the wooded bar he walked over to Susan. He was in the lower half of his thirties sprouting a stubble and hinged goatee as if begging for maturity to come knocking on his narrow shoulders. He wore a hoodie with a generic heavy metal band plastered along the back expressing his shtyle. Hair was cut on the sides and slicked back to the 1940’s. He waddled over making sure that his pants were tightened properly as he lowered his self-esteemed eyes towards Susan.

  All he did was raise his eyebrows, expectant. “rum and coke please” Susan said delighted that she was one more step to her goal, her lifelong dream of having one dirty glassed drink in the gut of a u shaped underground building. It confused her childhood friends.

  He went and fumbled in the back with the clinking of glass and the slush of liquids as he tightened his back muscles to impress whatever eyes weren’t staring at him from behind. She turned on her stool to grab a look at the rest of the place behind her.

  The back of the joint toyed with lights. There weren’t any lights in the immediate vicinity of Susan which left her to strain her eyes to gawk at people. Instead all the flashing bluntly and toxic coloured lights were summoned from the back as they bounced from cubicle to end up at the bar. The burnt purples and wasted yellow shined up against the backs of people casting shadows along the puddles of broken glass and misused drink on the floor. Now that she was turned around, face to the people, she had a better and more inconspicuous look at all of them. To her new left was another cubicle, quieter than the first she saw, but yet equally as erect. Five people in total ranging from the higher scale of youth to the middle age of parenthood.

  A man built from black inked muscles sat in the middle with a few fingers hanging onto a woman beside him. His face expressed age through his wrinkle’s inability to accept their own existence. His black shirt was laced by torn and hard ideals with, of course, harsh drawings to warn anyone off who didn’t think he was a tough man.

  The woman was on the latter half of the group’s age scale. Wedged in the middle she flaunted her mouth and worded words to the group. She was clearly the extravert of the group. Short blonde hair that cut down to her neck with abrupt strands. With her sleeved forearms of tattoos she maintained a sliver of femininity through the top that she wore. It had sparkles with make shift glitter sliding down the edges of her neck. Pink flowers were the main message attributed to the piece. She was a strange character that demanded the attention of Susan. The main part that she concentrated on was the apparent age that sharpened around the edge of her eyes. Her subtle crows-feet didn’t instil a negative image, rather it emphasised a superior aspect of the woman. Susan immediately started to hone in on her, running her eyes over every other aspect of this woman. That desire, that cuddly and enticing desire was poking at the back of Susan’s neck again. She felt the fingered touch slowly turn into a warm palm the more she watched the older woman.

  The drink arrived with a simple tap on Susan’s shoulder from the barman. He gave her a polite look with a quick glance of her up and down as he walked away. Blink and you would have missed the millisecond indication that the drink was prepared with adoration and nightly longing. Susan was oblivious to him and in no mood to explore the landscape.

  With that the thought of Mathew had taken a quiet backseat in her head. It wasn’t his night, she wouldn’t let her fun be controlled by the idea of him. Every frame of thought that she afforded to give to Mathew, was quickly accompanied by the horrendous experience of the agency. Without fully realising it, both Mathew and her newly formed disdain for the agency had become one, morphed into the same feeling through simple associations. She hadn’t accepted it yet, but she had already emotionally detached herself from whatever beautiful flowers Mathew dared to give her. He was fun, was.

  Next came the first sip of the night. Fucking glorious... o my god; is pretty much all the vocabulary she thought of when she sipped on her rum and Coke. Her fingers tightened around the body of glass as if protecting it from spilling itself. She trusted her own ability to keep a drink, just not the flimsy glass that it came in.

  The music of the place had morphed from something so foreign to Susan, to a familiar beat that knocked on her knees. Sitting out from the bar she had one hand on her left knee with the other locked around her half empty drink. All the noises fitted into the night, backup singers from youthful lips created the smooth transition between each song. Susan was comfortable, clean with the composition of her body. A finger full of sideways looks passed her every so often, tickling her libido.

  Her plan for the night was driven by impulse. Nothing new. Regardless of where she looked, she seemed to end up gazing into the cubicle to her left. The blonde woman moved her arms in the pool of air in front of her as if sculpting an invisible masterpiece. Everyone waited with baited breath for the punch line from her dancing fists. Susan watched the woman’s fingers as they hung from her flailing arms. Without any immediate thought she followed the woman’s fingers with her own in the private of her lap. They curled and stretched between each other pointing out into a spiral shape. Susan was enjoying herself, on the path to fulfilling her empty goal for the night.

  The rest of the group span the bumps and spikes of a leather necklace. Two of them were young with wrecked faces stretching for the older edge. They indulged the woman entirely, throwing their smiles onto the table with enthusiasm after every joke she spat out. The fifth one of the group hung from the edge of the cubicle with his back against Susan. From the few twisted necks he gave, she guessed he was somewhere in his early thirties. His hair was long with hints of dyed red flowing subtly through a few strands. He had lengthy brown boots with paint splashed across the straps that crawled up his legs merging with the edge of his jeans. A few inked drawings spilled his skin, but Susan took that for granted in the bar.

  Then she reached the end of her drink, sending her into a reflective state as what to do next. Get another drink? I can’t just hover at that bar all night staring at people. Boring. Maybe I could go talk to someone? Her thoughts trailed on that track of thought all while her boots had ordered another drink. She was equally surprised and impressed that they could do it without her conscience consent. Before she took a sip from her newly christened drink, the long red headed man came over to the bar beside her.

  Susan kept to herself keeping the company of her drink to a silent whisper. He signalled for a drink from the barman while taking a paced scan of everyone that hovered at the bar. She caught a few sneak peeks of his face, just out of curiosity. It was lengthy, with his nose acting as the slide for every other feature. Small eyes glinted through gaps, making it difficult to judge what exactly he was looking at. Every few seconds he scratched the cup of his neck right above his chest. His fingers were pitch black as if dipped in a bucket of black, they didn’t even have design, just made from Mr Black himself. His white skinned arms clashed with his “gloved” hands which made them by far the part of him that stood out the most. His sleeveless shirt didn’t help the situation either.

  “What do ya think of the place?” he said leaning his shoulders into Susan’s space. He was shouting against the wall of music which made her jolt an inch.

  “Why is it that every time I go into a bar a guy always asks me what I think of the place? Do I not look like I belong here?” She said with a tight grip on her drink, not a hostile grip, more a protective grip as if the drink was the only thing in the world that gave her shreds of confidence.

  “That’s the thing... you do look like you belong here... the boots... the hair and all. But the fact that you are here alone at the bar means you have never been here before. Plus I’ve been spreading my shitty presence in this bar long enough to remember faces.... and your face is too fresh for the fucked battery lights and the piss stained woo
d of this place.... so I guess what I’m getting at is.. Why did you decide to come here?” He said resting his bent body into the stool and bench combo. His gaze was now entirely fixed on Susan. She couldn’t help but notice how empty his eyes looked. A dead corpse of a man hung from his retinas, particularly his left eye which seemed to slide down his face as he spoke. Susan couldn’t decide if she enjoyed his company yet or not. A few more words and then I’ll see.

  “Maybe I’m waiting for someone to meet me here.” Susan said with a few confident fingers attached to her drink, sucking all of its mystical powers from the edge of the glass.

  “Because if you were scared enough to want a friend beside you then you’d be scared enough to have them walk in with you… and you don’t seem intimidated at all.” He seemed so pleased by his logic is that he attempted to pick up his newly arrived drink without looking. Well, jokes aside, he actually managed it.

  “Fine. You got me. I’m here all by myself. Are you going to tell me next that a girl like me is gonna need a man like you to protect me in such a cum rubbed place like this. Then let me guess you’ll lean in and brush your black hands through my hair... or maybe my cheek. I don’t know.” Susan took a victory sip delighted that her days of cardboard watching had some use. She was ticking all the boxes to a smooth and confident woman’s conversation. Her drink tasted like sugar squeezed through the nostrils of a chocolate cow. Good... just to clarify.

  “Nahh... I’m not interested in woman.... But if find a guy, then that’s exactly the conversation I’d have with him.” Susan relaxed her boots and took another sip of her drink, while she eased herself further and further into the gooey and blurry centre of the bar.

  “So what do I owe this talk to... do ya have a friend you are trying to sell me off to?” She said with a messy laugh.

  “Not unless you want me to.... I just saw you all lonely over here and thought you might have needed a friend, because I am just that… a good guy. Actually that’s a lie. I was thirsty so I came up to get a drink and I saw you shuffling awkwardly beside me so I thought I might say something.” He said with genuine wet lips from his beer. Susan was floored.

  “Thanks.” she said with a heaped humble look. They both stared at their respective drinks.

  “So, I doubt you’d want to stay here and wait for another kind fella to talk about you looking lonely. Why don’t ya come over to where my friends are at? Sam is the name by the way.” He said standing up to leave.

  “Susan.” she said as she pondered the idea for a moment. The fear clawed thought of meeting new people was eradicated by the strong shouts from her boots to get one step closer to the older woman with the pink hearted glitter shirt.

  “Look we need you as much you need us... there are only so many times I can laugh at the same fucking stories. Every time… every time we go out it’s the same shitty jokes. Please for my sake will you join us?” With that Susan lifted her drink from the table and stood prepped for introduction. No need for words from Susan, just a confirming smile.

  In the few steps that it took to reach the table the night seemed to shift into a higher gear. Lights shattered into depressed strobes from the opposite end of the building. None of them shined directly at Susan, but instead crawled their bounced and reflected bodies up her legs. Puddles appeared drowned and pummelled by the smashed dancing of shoes. The further she walked away from the landscape of the bar the more she saw of the rest of the oval shaped place. The half she was in seemed to be the loudest, covered and protected by a sheet of background base. Towards the end of the shape people amalgamated into a frenzied orgy of thrashing limbs and loosened lost expressions. Their faces and awareness faded into the mixed and confused light that shaded their motions. Sweat pooled out from the reasonably sized group wetting the nearby walls and posters. Susan could tell from the crumpled and dried edges of the paper that the posters were used to the nightly salt water boarding.

  Sam introduced Susan to the table with a flick of his tar dripped fingers. The table quickly said hello and shoved their way further into the cubicle to give space to Susan. She felt uncomfortable to an extent. Meeting new people is one thing but Susan didn’t enjoy intruding on a group’s conversation. The cubicle was wrapped in a dried layer of drink from years of abuse. She sat at the edge of the table in the spot where Sam was originally, with him squeezed further into the rotund gut of the group.

  “Crash and fucking slam... hear that slap sound ya? Well that’s how he sounded when he fell. Took us a decade ta pick him back up again, but seeing his face all like… smashed and cringing was more than worth it. Funny shite like, you don’t get that kind of pure comedy in real life anymore” said the blonde woman smacking her hand against the potted belly of the table. The few drinks that were still naive enough to rest on the table shook with fright as her palm connected. Her short hair flung with the velocity of her words. Half the group hung onto her story as if it was made of processed food, Susan included, with her gaze locked firmly on the woman. Sam and the bulked man that sat beside her seemed disinterested throwing their looks out the cubicle at more captivating things.

  The blonde turned her look towards Susan and placed her arms around her chest resting them on what was left of the table. Glint and you could see a tiny spark fired up beneath Susan’s eyelids. The hair on her arms warned the rest of her body of the indulgence that might proceed. Her knees clacked together for protection, but mostly for warmth. The natural cold numbness of her drink hadn’t kicked in yet, which left her to rely on the skin of her legs. “So... Susan ya?” came from the shaking lips of the blonde. Susan nodded hiding her words at the bottom of her glass. She didn’t know if the woman’s quivering lips were because of anything in particular, but they seemed to set loose every time she started a sentence. The more she talked the quieter they got, yet they still maintained the unintentional attention of Susan.

  “Why you staring at my lips... something on my lips?” she said without shifting a single inch of her expression. “What? No nothing wrong with them... ” Susan said with knifed laughter. “Relax... I aint pressurin ya. Don’t give two frilly shits what you into. I personally love tall and muscle. It’s all he got aint that right?” she turned to her man on her left who was staring into blank space. When she realized that he wasn’t listening she grabbed his cheek, followed by a baby intended cooing noise. “Taunting his brain, it’s the only way he’d ever listen.” She broke into a lost fit of laughter.

  Susan watched the woman, simply watched her. Small spills from her drink coated her t-shirt along the edge of the pink hearted drawing. Her fingers moved as if detached from her hand, holding their own intentions beneath her roughly cut nails. The two people that sat in the middle of the cubed fun, were dressed in generic. Black and streaks of pink filtered through their skin, ending up being the only thing that was visible when someone looked at their faces. They threw reflected laughs onto the table in perfect timing to every single one of the older Woman’s alcohol dripped words. Their drinks were empty, forcing them to sip on loyalty. Sam seemed more interested in Susan than he did for anyone else at the table. He played with the rim of his drink waiting for Susan to dive into the conversation.

  “I don’t think I caught your name” Susan said. The blonde paused mulling over the question as if pulling random letters to make up a name.

  “Charlie... that’s all ya have ta shout to me whenever ya need ta reference me... ya know like a normal name and all that shite... because I’m a normal little girl.” She said with her hands praising her chin giving a sarcastic look of innocence. He man laughed shaking the foundation of his stomach against the table. “Fine pink ya? I love the sparkle.... uh I wish I could just stuff all the mouths in this place with handfuls of glitter. You know the one with all the different shiny colours, the one you can get in the pound shop down the road. Mix a bit of glue with it and away ya go.... suffocating the people with glamour and kitty beauty. Every time they’d eat or fuck, suck... imagi
ne that shite ya? Big man over here would film it… If he knew how to work a damn camera.” Sam let go of his drink and pointed his bent long nose to Charlie.

  “O ya you’d be up for that I’m sure. You’d be like a fucking dog, I can just see it now.” Sam said with an inkling of seriousness. Susan watched them spread tense words between the corners of the table. Sam was stable and proud of his spot, careful of his seat and cautious of his open drink. Regardless of where Susan looked, her attention was forcefully grabbed by Charlie.

  Charlie leaned back in her seat after the dogged remark from Sam. Susan watched Charlie’s arms fold around her chest with exaggerated expressions torn into her widely brushed face. Without realising it, Susan had leaned back into her seat and copied the same physical position as the woman. Charlie’s mouth opened taking in large and quiet gulps of air under the dark colour of the place. Her man leaned forward to Sam.

  “No talking about dogs.” He said with paced breathing between each word as if contemplating the very essence of language before the next word. He then lifted his palm which revealed a tattoo of a dog and a name scratched lovingly underneath. The dog was silhouetted and the name was too small for Susan to read it. Besides she was more interested in the heated tension that fumed between Charlie and Sam. Sam raised his hands in playful defence, trying to relax the man’s flexing muscles.

  What proceeded was something Susan deemed impossible. The group had fallen asleep to their own quiet thoughts and awkward drinks. The silence from Charlie’s dashing and unsettled eyes nerved Susan out the most. She almost wanted to reach over the table, fuck their drinks, and scoop the eyeballs from Charlie’s sockets so she could take them with her. The thought somehow comforted her. Then the thought of how it comforted her made her feel uncomfortable. All in all she was close to being drunk.

  Then without warning, Charlie broke into the table with a goofy smile, mixed with eyes stolen from a doll. They aren’t her eyes? Susan thought to herself, confused by the sudden change in the older woman’s wrinkles.

  “Ahh… fuck em… he was a good dog.... a good dog with a broken head.... do ya remember that look he would bring with him everywhere. No matter what ya did in front of him he would salivate with feckin joy.” She said leaning over to her man with one hand firmly rested on his bicep. “Don’t ya remember what he did to our neighbour’s dog... oooh this is a goodin.” Leaning back into her memory she flaunted a smile as if chewing on the bones of a pleasant childhood memory. Her man seeped out laughter, which hid underneath the sound of the background music. Susan could only tell by the slight jolt in his upper lip.

  “Right out the front door with that little puppy between his teeth. Blood and shit guts spread all over our front garden. “Must have been a fight” I said. Do ya remember me sayin that ya? Vicious fucking dog. Didn’t bother feedin him for a while. Didn’t need to I guess.” Charlie said leaning her body in with her arms under the table, firmly grabbing onto her knees. Susan sat still as the woman’s chest came over the spilled wood of the table knocking against the attention of the cubicle. She was having fun with Susan taunting every possible skinned fear one could have. Uncomfortable ideas caressed Susan’s stomach stabbing frightened thoughts into her alcohol drenched gut.

  “Ya see, cause of that Susan, our beloved friend, our child, the love and purpose of my life was put down. Simply because he chased a puppy and actually caught the damn thing. Easier then chasing his own stump of a tail, but that’s the beauty of an animals love though, am I right like? Those bastards of neighbours, feckin devils in my eyes, decided to put our baby down. Why bother feed a dead man walking I asked myself? No point wastin dog food... no one ate the dog food after he died which meant we had to throw it out anyways, but it’s the principle ya? The fucking principle.”

  It was the thrown movements of Charlie’s half eaten fingernails that created the essence of Susan’s night. That innocent lathered desire that fondled Susan followed every wave of the older woman’s movements. Susan’s fingers mimicked the abrasive nature of Charlie’s bitten toxic pink painted nails. But after she heard the story of the starved dog unfold in front of her, she calmed herself into a settled rest at the table.

  Drink proved to be the appetiser for the rumbling whacked minds of the group, with phuckin plucked pills being the attraction for tickled tongues. Charlie and Sam stood up and got ready to move to the dance floor. Susan was in the mood to dance which was the extent of her thoughts as she continued to drink her rum.

  For a few moments after having got up from the table she tried to balance herself on her loosening hips. Her boots seemed to fade away, with less of a connection between her and their laces. Even their existence seemed to disappear as she finished off her drink. Charlie broke out from the table with a romantic and protruding chest mimicking that of a feathered swan. Her arms raised above her head, touching at the tips with kisses from each fingertip.

  Everyone dispersed slightly leaving room for Charlie to claim her attention. Susan stood close to the bar staring through the sweat fog. The silhouette of Charlie held Susan’s devoted jaw. Charlie swung on her heels with splashing saliva and carved her presence in the light that flashed behind her. Susan was on the receiving end, fixated by Charlie’s raised arms, careless hair, sloppy mouth, and stone legs. That little forgetful jolt that pushes someone to shake, to match the rhythm of intoxicated music, crawled across the sheets of puddles from Charlie and landed on Susan’s boots. Then she danced, desperately trying to mimic the pink hearted woman.

  Shifting the group closer to the dance floor, Sam rested on the side-line pacing his drink as he soaked in all of the bodies presenting on the floor. His drink was held by a strong grip while his right hand rubbed his lower neck for comfort.

  People, yes that’s right, people flooded into the place. Newer fresher meat hung with strange and clean clothes unknown to the scratched skin of the bar. They seemed to be driven into the place by curiosity and maintained by the lure of a large wet crowd. Before anyone could stand up the place had filled up to a choking capacity. Stools were removed and the necessary help was brought in.

  Susan danced loosening the restraints that had built over her tight muscles after the past few weeks. She felt liberated, not being able to feel her tired and self-conscience joints. It all left her to enjoy the dripping wet fog and flicked whipped hair along the dance floor. This is the point that might deserve a lengthy metaphor to describe the intricate dance routine that went on. Quite frankly the night was too soaked in sweat to deserve one. So Susan just danced, unattended and unaltered by anything higher.

  She felt numb, in the positive sense, with having forgotten every facet of her past few weeks. Worries of Mathew clung onto the tips of her wet laces, trying desperately to crawl their way back up to the fore front of Susan’s attention. But her drink dripped eyelids couldn’t see them. Her rum filled ears couldn’t hear them and her ADHD legs couldn’t feel them. Everything was on the full side of a glass of cheap rum for Susan.