It Comes Away Red

The smoke sets off an alarm in my mind, a warning to run from the unclean jazz bar into the bright, frighteningly real city of Paris. Shoulders tensed and jaws clenched in an effort to control myself, I stiffly turn to my right and encounter a freshly exhaled cloud of smoke.1

My eyes burn as a reminder to blink. Through the green-grey pollution, past the sweetly intense saxophone solo across the room, a boulder of a man looks me right in the eye, smoke pouring out of his mouth. He’s like a fucking train. Lethargically, he scratches his chin, covered in stubble and sweat. His movements are slow and calculated, but not once do they lose their arrogance.2

“Do you mind?” I ask, knowing that most likely he does and I’m playing right into his hands. Surprisingly, the man only throws the offending cigarette on the floor and mashes it in with his heel. I’m tempted to argue about sanitation, but bite my tongue, tasting a copper I rarely indulge in.3

I do my best to ignore him as I continue to listen to the band play a nostalgic piece. I hold my beer at the bottom of the neck, as do half the occupants of the room; my stance is casual, and my clothes are meant to blend in. So why the hell is Goliath still glaring at me?4

I smooth down my shirt in an attempt to calm myself. I have been so good for so long… This is not the time to start again. I don’t want to move again.5

And yet, at the first sign of advancement from him, I move. I leave, holding tight to the neck of the beer bottle. I can’t tell who’s watching, I can’t remember the difference between red and green, door and window, danger and safety...6

And then I’m outside, and it’s a lovely spring night – a night for lovers. And I’m standing in the middle of a breeze, shivering from my sudden and sickening paranoia, holding a near-empty beer bottle in front of a prosperous bar. The man’s no where in sight as I do my damnedest to figure out what’s a taxi and what’s an actual car.7

I feel something on my arm and – fuck, it’s just like in the movies – I turn around, and there he is. He’s lit up a fresh cigarette, as if to taunt me. He smiles around the cancer, his eyes unreadable. He’s leading me, taking me from my post on the curb. Where?8

Where else? Where do men take people like me? What am I supposed to think? How am I supposed to act? I love this shit. I’m led around the walled-in jazz music, to where a grey garbage can slumps in a rather forlorn fashion. And the dirty deed is done.9

He doesn’t make a sound as I pierce his belly with a shard from my beloved beer bottle. Only looks down in fragile awe, as if the scent and glitter of the blood is not enough to convince him that this is more than just a movie. Delicately he reaches down and dips a finger in the steadily pouring stream. It comes away red, a red that cackles in the spring night meant for lovers. I am silent, standing away from his, extra glass crying to me from the ground. I bend down and pick up a piece, twirling it in my hands. His eyes widen in fright as I lean forward and carefully, with the detail of an artist, paint a taut tight-rope across his neck. The glass comes away red.10

*11

“We had to drug her.”12

“It was that bad?”13

“Nightmares again.”14