The Rose and the Beast: Bones

Here's the next Installment from The Rose and the Beast. I decided to do Bones, since it was a bit shorter than the other stories and I've been pretty busy lately.



I dreamed of being a part of the stories- even terrifying ones, even horror stories- because at least the girls in stories were alive before they died.
My ears were always ringing from the music cranked to pain-pitched in the clubs. Cigarette smoke perfumed my hair, wove into my clothes. I took the occasional drug when it came my way. The more mind-altering the better. I had safe sex with boys i didn’t know-usually pretty safe. I felt immortal which is how you’re supposed to feel when you are young, I guess, no matter what anybody older tells you. But I’m not sure I wanted immortality that much then.
I met him at a party that a girl from my work had told me about. It was at this house in the hills, a small castle that some movie star had built  in the fifties with turrets and balconies and balustrades. People were bringing offerings- bottles of booze and drugs and guitars and drums and paints and canvases. It was the real bohemian scene. I thought that in it I could become something else, that I could become an artist, alive. And everyone else wanted that, too; they were coming there for him.
Once, he’d come into the restaurant late at night and i took his order but he didn't seem to notice me at all. I noticed him  because of the color of his hair and goatee. I heard that he was this big promoter guy, managed bands, owned some clubs and galleries. A real patron of the arts, Renaissance man. Derrick Blue they called him, or just Blue. It was his house, his party, they were all making this pilgrimage for him.

It was summer and hot. I was sweating, worried my makeup would drip off. Raccoon pools of mascara and shadow around my eyes. The air jad that grilled smell, meat and gasoline, that it gets in Los Angeles when the temperature soars. It was a little cooler in the house so i went in and sat on this overstuffed antique couch under some giant crimson painting of a girl’s face with electric lights for her pupils, and drank my beer and watched everybody. There was a lot of posing going on, a kind of auditioning or something. More and more scantily clad girls kept coming, boys were playing music or drawing the girls or just lying back, smoking.

Derrek Blue came out after a while and he made the rounds- everybody upped the posing a little for him. I just watched. Then he came over and smiled and took my hand and looked into my eyes and how hungry I was, in every way. I was always hungry for food- blueberry pancakes and root beer floats and pizza gluey with cheese- I thought about it all the time. And other things. I’d sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work- the boys with silver earrings and big boots- would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelets and undress me and make love to me all night with the palm trees whispering wind songs about a tortured, gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting out candle bodies. And I was hungry for him, this man who seemed to have everything, and to actually be looking at me. I didn’t realize why he was looking.

He found out pretty fast that I wasn't from around there, didn't know too many people well, lived alone in a crummy hotel apartment in Koreatown, ate what I could take home from work. He knew how hungry I was. He asked everything as if he really cared and I just stared back at him and answered. He had blue eyes, so blue that they didn't dim next to his blue-dyed hair. Cold beveled eyes. They made the sweat in my temples evaporate and I felt like I was high on coke coke coke when he looked at me.

The crimson girl on the wall behind me, the girl with the open mouth and the bared teeth and the electric eyes, looked like she was smiling- until you looked closely.

Derrick Blue caught my arm as I was leaving- I was pretty drunk by then, the hillside sliding and the flowers were blurry and glowy like those 3-D postcards- and it was pretty late, and he said, stay. He said he wanted to talk to me, we could stay up all night talking and then have some breakfast. It was maybe two or three in the morning but the air was still hot like burning flowers. I felt sweat trickle down my ribs under my T-shirt.

We were all over his house. On the floor and the couches and tables and beds. He had music blasting from speakers everywhere and I let it take me like when I was at shows, thrashing around, losing the weight of who I was, the self-consciousness and anxiety, to the sound. He said, You’re so tiny, like a doll, you look light you might break. I wanted him to break me. Part of me did. He said, I can make you whatever you want to be. I wanted him to. But what did I want to be? Maybe that was the danger.

The night was blue, like drowning in a cocktail. I tasted it bittersweet and felt the burning of ice on my skin. I reeled through the rooms id antiques and statues and huge-screen TVs and monster stereo systems and icy lights in frosted glass. If you asked me then then if I would have died at that moment I might have said yes. What else was there? This was the closest thing to a story I’d ever known. Inside me it felt like nothing.

That night he told me all the tales. You know, I am still grateful to him for that. I hadn’t heard them since I was little. They made me feel safe. Enchanted. Alive. Charms. He said he has named himself for Bluebeard, if I hadn’t guesses. He said it had become a metaphor for his whole life. He took a key from his pocket, I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t quite remember the story. I felt the enchantment around us like stepping into a big blue glitter storybook with a little mirror on the cover and princesses dancing inside, dwarves and bears and talking birds. And dying girls. He said, The key, it had blood on it, remember? It was a fairy, and she couldn’t get the blood off, no matter what she did. It gave her away. I knew that Bluebeard had done something terrible. I was starting to remember. When I first heard that story I couldn’t understand i- why is this a fairy tale? Dead girls in a chamber, a psychotic killer with blue hair. I tried to speak but the enchantment had seeped into my mouth like choking electric blue frosting from a cake. I looked up at him. I wondered how he managed it. If anyone came looking for the women. No if they were a bunch of, lost girls without voices or love. No one would have come then.

Part of me wanted to swoon into nothing, but the other women’s bones were talking. I didn’t see the bones but I knew they were there, under the house. The little runaway bones of skinny, hungry girls who didn’t think they were worth much- anything- so they stayed after the party was over and let Derrick Blue tell them his stories. He probably didn’t even have to use much force on them.

I will rewrite the story of Bluebeard. The girl’s brothers don't come to save her on horses, baring swords, full of power and at exactly the right moment. There are no brothers. There is no sisters to call out a warning. There is only a slightly feral one-hundred-pound girl with choppy black hair, kohl-smeared eyes, torn weans, and a pair of boots with steel toes. This girl has a little knife to slash with, a little pocket knife, and she can run. That is one thing about her- she has always been able to run. Fast. Not because she is strong or is running toward something but because she has learned to run away.

I pounded through the house, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I opened it and collapsed inside. I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep.

But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song.