Tattoo – reposted because of Becky

This is an old one, but a recent painting by my fabulous artist friend Becky reminded me of it… although her work is far to exquisite to be compared to the mutterings below. Please feel free to check out her work at http://www.rebeccafindlaypaintings.com/

Tattoo

Occasionally it paid a girl like me to be unique. The whispering in dark corners didn’t bother me anymore, or even the calls of ‘freak’ that reached my ears. You see in my line of work men would pay good money to have their curiosity sated and then their desire. Fifty bucks just to look at the freak? I can’t really complain.

They all asked for me by name. Mumbling in back alleyways, they spoke to the other girls and the resentful call for ‘Tattoo’ would drift to me through the district. That’s how this one had come to me. Sitting there licking his chapped lips and shifting in his seat as his growing erection pressed against the material of his cheap suit. He came to fuck the freak and here I was, naked and demure.

I have a beautiful body; no man or woman could ever tell you different. Flat stomach and small waist accentuating luscious curving hips that led down to legs so shapely they made other girls stare with envy and desire in their eyes. This john, like so many of the others, didn’t even bother to run his eyes over me. Fixated they were on that one teasing hint. A flickering tongue of flame snaked its way under my arm and curled itself around my left breast. Those black inked lines held him captive.

A voice husky and dry commanded me to turn my back to him and ever the compliant whore I obeyed. Arms high over my head I held myself for his study, never quite sure as always if that gasp I heard on his lips came from horror or some kind of desire. One thing for sure, there was always a hint of surprise.

Demons and devils stared out from my flesh. Writhing in flame, that licked and scorched at my milk pale skin. Black eyes damning anyone who ever dared to stare. It didn’t matter. They all stared anyway. Swelled for me, wanted me. The freak that I am.

I heard him stand. The rustles of fabric as trousers were abandoned. His eyes bored into my spine. The serpent twisted about my arm luring him to temptation just as surely as it had Eve in the days of the Bible. Clammy hands cupping my breasts even as his mouth pressed wet and hungry against my skin. His disgusting little tongue traced the lines of the fire that marked me. Caressing my demons and tasting my devils as his erection swelled even harder against me. My mind drifted away from him. To another time and place far from here.

It was the middle of a trick. He was just an average Joe. A little weird, but weren’t they all? This guy probably had a wife and 2.4 kids stashed away somewhere in a nice suburb yet here he was trawling the gutters for a cheap piece of flesh.

He had me turned from him. His mouth and hands caressing the creamy skin of my back. He was a talker. He told me I was perfect. He called me his white rose. I rolled my eyes because I knew he couldn’t see and whispered back all of the niceties his kind liked to hear. When finally his hands stopped their ceaseless caressing I almost sighed with relief, enough talk and lets get this thing done.

The sound of hands fumbling in pockets. I turned to offer him some help with the condom, but his hand on my shoulder kept me from facing him and he asked me not to look. Oh great, he was shy. Just what I needed, we might be here all night.

His arm was snaking around my waist, thank God, finally he’s ready. His breath felt hot as he pressed his mouth to my ear.
‘I’ll make you beautiful.’ He whispered
The sharp pain as the needle pricked my neck. I tried to struggle. Blackness seeped in at the edge of my vision. Oh God I couldn’t go out like this. You hear stories of men who murder whores, but not me. Not like this. I tried to hang on but I was falling and there was nothing to stop me.

I woke hours later in my own bed, pain flooded through me before I even had time for relief. A thousand knives stabbed at my body. I crawled to the edge of the bed and vomited on the carpet. It didn’t help at all.

Eyes finally raising I caught my reflection in the full-length mirror. Face pale, my hair limp and rumpled. Blood and ink still oozing from my shoulders. I slid from the bed and crawled to the mirror. It was agony but I had to see. Turning I saw the bed, stained red with my blood and black with ink. Oh God, Oh God. I twisted to look and the demons stared back at me.

Creamy white skin now a living tribute to a madman. I was his walking canvas.

Pulling back to the here and now I slid the gun from between those same rumpled sheets and turned on the john. This time there was definitely horror in his gasp. That big black eye of destiny stared him down, the barrel never blinked. Erection suddenly pathetically flaccid as his bladder emptied down his leg.
Two hands on the gun, ‘Any last words?’

‘Please…’ he muttered. Funny, I have heard that so many times.

I shot him in the head. I shot him like I shot them all, because they reminded me of Him.

The Mirror Girl

There was once a girl who wasn’t really a girl. She looked like a girl and talked like a girl but really she was a mirror. She smiled and walked and ran and played but still she was a mirror. She was perhaps not meant to be a mirror, but a real girl. The problem was, perhaps as it is with all people, that people looked at the girl and did not see her. They saw who they wanted or needed to see and thus as mirrors are want to do, she, without meaning or desire, reflected that back to them.

Her parents, wonderful and amazing people, taught the mirror girl to be both respectful and thoughtful whilst being honest, independent and fearless. It was what they wished and because she was an absolutely flawless mirror she could do all of what they wished. For how difficult is it to be a reflection? Physics will tell you that it’s all just light being bounced back at you from a certain angle. A thing they call specular reflection, the most common kind no less.

She grew and each day a new layer of reflection built itself around her, hard and brittle but somehow strong. It kept her imprisoned. Hands pressed from the inside out made no mark on the smooth surface and she smiled her dazzling smile and said all of the right things and no one noticed the absence of the girl because what they wanted was always where they wanted her to be. Then still more people stared into the mirror and still more layers grew.

Occasionally the girl would take a glance in her own mirror. Fastened to the inside of her wardrobe door she would swing the door wide and hope, from darkness to light, freeing the mirror and what was trapped inside to the world she would clear her mind of expectations and try to see without looking. But the mirror girl would stare back with her face and nothing inside because she had no one but herself to reflect and she was the mirror. If you placed one mirror in front of the other they reflected themselves back into infinity and infinity was what stared back at her because she could not break out of the mirror, only look through it.

Along came friends and boyfriends. A tricky business to be all things to all people in one go. A mirror has only one reflection to give and although sometimes two people could see the things they wanted in the exact same reflection, it want not always possible. Some left disappointed and never looked again. Other stayed for a short while, but the other problem with friends and boyfriends is that they changed their minds about the things they wanted to see. Unfortunately once the mirror has reflected one thing, the thing they wanted most to see when they first met you and liked what they saw, they still expect to see that when they look again. Sadly they all see what they want to see. Even if the mirror girl gives them their new desires they still see the old desires and it is not enough. Try as she might, she was not enough on her own because they could not see her and no matter what the mirror gave them disappointment crept in and eventually they stopped looking because she could never satisfy their need.

One by one they all eventually turned away from the mirror and the mirror girl would watch them leave her behind. Each time she was left behind the mirror girl was filled with a sorrow which did not penetrate the glossy surface and yet she felt the corners of the mirror tarnish, the shine still as bright but the gilt wearing thin and cracked on the frame of her existence until when she chose to look into that old wardrobe door mirror there was just grey where she should have stood. All around her still saw what they wanted, be it a disappointment to them or the steady picture they had built and still she walked and talked and played and laughed like she was supposed to because even flawed mirrors can make a good reflection.

For years it carried on in this way and then she discovered the world and the world came to her in a white box with a keyboard and screen. The world wide web could not see the mirror girl, the people on the other side of the screen could read her words but how could you reflect in words she wondered? And so the girl in the mirror sat down and typed, tentative at first and then faster and faster she tried to show herself to these new people whom she had never and might never meet. But she had not thought this through, for surely a screen is simply a flat surface of glass? Instead of the old wardrobe door she was no longer looking into the mirror at herself and the people on the other side looking back at the true her as she had hoped, oh no, they read her words and took their own meaning and typed that back to her. Try as she might the mirror girl would send herself out into the world at the push of a button but her words were translated though the mirror to read whatever anyone wanted them to mean and the mirror girl grew sad and the reflective surface gleamed bright with the tarnish at the edges and she was more imprisoned than ever.

And so it continued, from real life to screen chat and then to whole pages of herself filling the world yet remaining unseen. But the new people still came and eventually they seemed to begin reading through the shine and tarnish and glimpsing the rarest peek of the girl inside the mirror and the mirror girl grew hopeful and kept trying and people clicked to change her life although they did not know they did so. People from her life found her pages and pages of scripted yet true words and the girl in the mirror felt that the rare one or two did as the strangers did and caught sight of her for but a moment. She made friends, friends who, for the first time knew a true part of her and they were cherished and amazing people but they were not enough, she wanted to be seen from the inside out, for a real person to touch her hand, her true hand, not the cool glass which surrounded it.

One of the strangers was a beautiful creature, she saw him through his words in a way that penetrated the mirror and moved her soul. She called him the wordsmith and she reached out with words, tentative and afraid yet he replied, with his own words. There was no reflection of what he though of her in the words, it was a page of words filled with him and with questions, not her or his impression of her. She read the words with joy and pressed against the cool walls of her prison to be closer to those words. They were the most important words in her life so far and she reached out and touched them through the glass and the screen. Real words with meaning and feeling and truth. They were for her, but not to make her. She replied, still afraid but a different kind of fear, a thrill that spun her heart and made her tremble. She filled the page with herself and questions, as he had done, and she waited, the thrill and the spinning and the trembling never ceasing she would stare and glare and wish at the screen to give her a reply, never knowing what it would hold but never hoping for anything specific. She would not mirror him, but she did want to feel his truth, feel him through his words.

Always he replied and she returned until pages and pages flowed into space and filled the empty grey in her mirror, finally, with her old face. Certainly she saw the tarnish on the edged and the cracked and faded gilt of her worlds frame but she smiled inside the glass cage because at least there was vision and colour here now.

Of course there is only so much truth and self one can pour into infinity with words. Words are not everything, they are important and full of promise, but they are not all. And the wordsmith and the mirror girl agreed to meet and she was more afraid than she had ever been in her life. If he saw the mirror and the reflection she would turn to sand inside the prison and let the mirror live. Her heart and her soul would not stand the crush of being unseen, not by him. Not when she knew all the truth of him and he the truth of her.

The day came. He travelled to meet the mirror girl and waited for her behind a closed door. She paused at the door, smaller than it should be and slightly crooked it was as though once the door opened she would be entering a magical world, but everyone knows, even a mirror girl, that magical worlds can be rainbows and ponies or witches and brambles. Fifty-fifty some would say but the mirror girl knew the world more than some and knew that witches and brambles were more likely than rainbows and ponies and the glass squeezed around her until she almost couldn’t breathe. It whispered to her that it would crush her and take her place and she knew that it would be happy to do so because mirrors were happy to reflect, but she was not the mirror, she was the mirror girl and she did not want to be just the mirror, she wished to be just the girl.

She knocked.

And he answered.

Door swinging slowly open to show her blue eyes and a dazzling smile that was shy and almost boyish but excited and hopeful all rolled into one. The smile reached his eyes and made them shine. She felt as though she couldn’t breathe, but it wasn’t the mirror squeezing her now. She realised she was taking him in with the briefest of glances yet keeping her eyes from seeing what he saw. She drank him in, the person he showed her but refused to let herself see what he saw when he looked at her. They left the room and went out into the world together. Hours passing in moments, or so it seemed and she knew him. Through the mirror and filling her heart from the inside out she knew him for the person he was both inside and out. Too reluctant to let it slip away she pondered never checking what he saw and simply fooling herself into believing that everything she had hoped was simply the truth.

But a person cannot live that way. Even a mirror girl must either been seen or give a reflection and neither can divert their gaze forever. It was a simple thing that did it. The simplest of things if it can be believed. It lasted less than a second she thought, but for one tiny moment, as they sat and talked and ate, with her not looking, hiding even, he had reached his hand across the table in a casual manner and for the briefest moment in time his hand brushed against hers.

And it was warm.

It took her a moment to register. You see like I said, it was the briefest touch. And she had touched people before and she had known she was touching them. It’s just her hand, her true hand, had never felt it. Only her mirror hand. But this had been her hand, real flesh and blood connected to her and full of feeling, her really real hand. As it dawned on her she realised she had raised her eyes. Not on purpose you see, no decision had been made, it simply was.

And he looked at her and he smiled and the warmth of the smile bathed her face, her true face, with its beautiful heat. Like the sun on a spring afternoon, warm and light and lovely. His eyes looked directly at her, the delicate exploring weight of their gaze fluttering across her features and searching inside her eyes and seeing what lay beyond. He looked as easily as though the mirror did not exist and she was just a girl to him. And because he felt it was so, it was suddenly as though it was so. There was no melting or breaking of the brittle yet impenetrable glass, it was as though it just was not there and had never been.

She talked and listened and smiled and laughed like a real girl would and she did it because she was a real girl, not the mirror girl. There was only her and he saw her, liked her and even fell in love with her.

So in years to come, the former mirror girl and the wordsmith said the newest most important words in their lives and they married and she was the happiest real girl in the world. She could see and touch and sing and dance and love. She could be seen and touched and sang with and danced with and loved, as if by magic, by the whole world. Some would like it, others not, but she was a real girl now and that’s what being a real girl meant and it was all because of one good look by one good person.

The mirror girl looks every day for other mirror people, to see through their glass and break the spell of sadness they are under and that is her gift to them as it was his gift to her, reality in all its painful, delightful, terrifying and awe inspiring glory.

To really see and be seen is an incredible gift and even if the person who originally saw you should one day stop looking you must never let the mirror layer itself over you like a cold heavy cloak because you might as well crumble and let the mirror live. This is the lesson that the real girl has learnt and she will never be a mirror girl again because once upon a time, one good person took one good look and saw a real girl where once a mirror had hidden her.

The replacement

Awesome night of comedy last night, the big G and I headed out to the Gala to watch Shappi Khorsandi do some live stand up. She was amazing, she was tiny, she was sweet and she was funny, and the audience….well, they were weird. When I say weird, I mean woman got up on stage with the star of the show and had a chat about her piles. Most unexpected!

The golden comedy moment of the night however, came not from Shappi but from the big G himself…

In line for the book signing at the end of the evening my Husband was as ever his wonderful self, asking how we should get the book signed to us both despite the fact that I insisted it could be his book and the inscription should be for him. He argued otherwise.

Until we got to Shappi.

Then my besotted husband became a jibbering giggling nut job who elbowed his wife out of the way to bask in the glow that is Shappi all on his own while muttering ‘just make it out to Garry!!!!!! Heheheheheheeeeeeeeeeeee, my wife says I can have your number too!’

It was the weirdest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life and to top it off, this wasn’t star stuck big G, this is ‘OMG I fancy the pants off this woman’ big G.

Replaced….dang!

I never thought I’d say this…

…but the giant talking drunk bi-polar teddy bear was completely unexpected.

Night time adventures – time travelling sensation

Tonight I got to go time travelling. Hopping through time a-la quantum leap (awesome show by the way), only I didn’t have to do anything and I was always me, not other folk. I found Garry serving cake and sweets in a cute little cafe in Victorian England and persuaded him to run away with me and hop through time together.

How romantic, however we have decided that this dream is certainly not like me at all…we didn’t take all the cake and sweeties with us!

Night-time adventures – the invention of Sexy Boi!

I have awesome dreams.

Ask anyone and, as I’ve said before, they will confirm because I feel compelled to share my adventures.

This weeks adventure was a multi-episode affair where Garry and I were the main characters, yet each time we went through a closed door the entire scenario and our characters would change.

We began as vampires. Woohoo, too much telly. We were fighting with the king and queen of vampires against the evil hoard. If you get bitten you get infected with evil and cross to the other side. Giant battle ensues and eventually the whole of our army is infected save for Garry and I. We’re forced backwards into another room, the doors being pulled closed while he and I regroup. Decision made we burst through the doors super hero style to fight the enemy, do or die!

But like I said before, every time we walk through a closed door the scenario changes.

We are now in a huge arena and Garry is a professional wrestler with flowing golden locks, chest hair, tight leather pants, pink lace up boots, his own song and sexy dance which proclaims him to be Sexy Boi the international superstar.

We head back to the dressing room through the door and ta-da we’re on the London underground, students at university and we’re trying to diffuse a bomb.

Whew, it’s a lot to get through in one night!

Upon waking I am immediately compelled to tell Garry of his new persona, he is somewhat disturbed…especially considering I have decided to call him Sexy Boi forever from now on.

You may feel free to do the same although I cannot guarantee your personal safety, at this point I’m not even sure about mine!

Even more reasons not to have babies…

Colleen has around three weeks left to go before her spawn pops out.

Yesterday she spent the day down at the hospital because her water had broke.

Last night they sent her home telling her she wasn’t in labour yet but had just developed a ‘slow leak’ and she could do so for the further three weeks until her due date.

Niiiiice…..erm actually that doesn’t cover it, ‘gross’ is more what I was thinking.

Quote of the day

Seen on Lamebook;

“HOLY SHIT YOU RIDED A SLOTH??!”

Even if you take away the fact the the picture was of a guy riding an ostrich, it still tickled me pink to imagine the posters awe and respect for the “rideder”

Oh my god, they 999′ed Kenny!

While watching Traffic cops for some light TV relief I heard the following;

“Call reports a suspicious object situated on a bench in the town centre. It would appear to be a turnip with some eyes and is apparently quiet spooky.”

Yep, some tool called 999 because they saw a “turnip with eyes” sitting on a park bench. The turnip turned out to be a Kenny doll from Southpark.

Morons!

Will the drama never end?

There is a murderer and rampaging gunman gadding about the area shooting people he thinks have wronged him….

Crap, he’s our client.

Heads down boys and girls.