*
Chapter 17
When you rage against an injustice
When you distance yourself from others in resentment or bitterness, or a sense of disappointment or unworthiness or superiority
When you long for something or someone
When you’re threatened by another, or fear them, whether it’s a lover, a parent, a boss, or a god
When you envy another
When you see power as external, and you do not feel you possess enough of it to ensure your wellbeing or safety
When you fear for your ability to protect and care for yourself in the world
What can you experience but pain?
The Desire
I run to her side, kneel by her.
‘No no! I didn’t mean this! I didn’t mean to kill you!’
It doesn’t matter what I’d meant to do. She’s dead.
Her blood has pooled in her lap. She’s lost so much, so quickly. Her head limply rests on her chest.
I toss the gun aside.
The fake gun. How could I kill her with a fake gun?
It’s not possible.
And yet; she’s dead. Two massive, ugly bullet wounds in her chest.
I nervously glance up at the door. Why aren’t people rushing in, asking who’s been shot, who’s been murdered?
The muffled sounds of the party, however, continue much as they did before. Chances are, they didn’t hear the shots. Not over that loud music, the chaotic chatter.
Added to that, this office has been designed as a deliberate oasis. It’s reasonably well soundproofed.
There’s nothing I can do for her. It’s too late. There’s no point calling for help.
All that would happen is that the police are called – the real police – and I find myself arrested for a murder I didn’t intend to commit.
How fair’s that?
Not that it’s entirely fair that she’s ended up dead, of course.
But I didn’t mean to kill her!
It’s not really my fault!
I…I need to ensure no one comes in here and finds her. If…if I can just delay the discovery of her body, there’s no reason why I should be suspected.
Sure, my fingerprints are all over the gun. But it’s not a real gun!
It shouldn’t really be capable of killing anyone.
Even so, it connects me with being in this room. I retrieve it from where I’d tossed it only a moment before. Bringing my sleeves down over my palms, I swiftly wipe the gun clean.
Holding it between my covered palms, making sure I don’t touch it with my fingers, I put the wiped gun back on the sideboard, next to the tray of cigarettes.
I could drag her body off to one side, hide it somewhere. But it somehow all seems so disrespectful.
Instead, I drag over the large quilted chair I’d been seated in earlier. I place it in front of her body, effectively hiding it from anyone who’s just making a quick, cursory glance in here.
Covering my palms with my sleeves once more, I wipe the chair clear of any fingerprints I’m worried I might have left behind.
I pick up my book. It had fallen onto the floor, when the officer had been so brutally tossed up into the air by the gun’s blast.
The novelty gun’s blast.
‘Sorry,’ I whisper to the dead policewoman. ‘Please try and understand.’
I stand by the door leading out from the office towards the party taking place in the front room. I ease it open a little, as silently as I can.
I peep out through the small gap I’ve created, trying to gauge when I can step out without being spotted.
Blam!
Blam!
I almost jump in shock. But’s it’s not another gun going off. It’s the heavy crash of a wooden chair being used to try and smash the front window.
‘It’s useless! The window’s unbreakable!’ A frustrated Al Capone at last lowers his chair.
The curtains have been drawn across the window, cutting off any view of the outside. I wonder why no one’s thought of pulling the heavy drapes back, as they’ll naturally be softening any blow.
‘You haven’t even moved the curtains! It’s like they’re made of iron too!’
The X-Men’s Mystique doesn’t attempt to hide her contempt for Al’s fruitless efforts.
Only a handful of the other party goers are interested in this strange attempt to smash the windows. Everyone else appears to be in an intoxicated frenzy, writhing seductively to the pounding music. Bodies slide along or meld into the curves of other bodies. Hands touch, even grope. Arms embrace. Lips kiss, taste, or whisper longings. Mouths gasp and sigh.
It’s strange, seeing a cavorting Cruella De Vil, an eagerly responding Phantom of the Opera. A Medici queen is similarly passionately linking up with a Caliban-like beast. A green-suited, red haired Poison Ivy is incongruously and grossly enamoured with a sleazy, chuckling Penguin.
Wings flap, as if real and movable. Tails of demons flick and curl around waists, as seductively as an arm.
The couples’ hedonistic lust for each other gives me a chance to slip out of the door without being seen. I gingerly make my way through this whirling sea of lovers, edge past couple after couple. Close by me, as I finally reach the end of the room, comes a trilling laugh, followed by an enthusiastic declaration of love.
‘I’m ugly, but I’m so ugly!’
‘No, you’re beautiful, so beautiful!’
I can’t see the man, whose face is buried within Medusa’s elatedly entwining arms. But I can see Medusa’s hair of snapping, curling snakes.
And every snake is real and alive.
*
Chapter 18
You fear the real you is slightly unorthodox
With peculiarities you can’t be bothered trying to explain or excuse
The Desire
How did I end up in this madhouse?
I’m from the wrong school. I wouldn’t usually be invited to a party like this.
But I’m no longer usual am I? I’m odd, I’m unusual – I’m a living, breathing Barbie.
That gets you invited to most places, if only as someone to be gawped at, mocked rather than admired.
Isn’t that what I wanted, this sense of being different, of being a new version of Frankenstein’s monster, only one seeking beauty and perfection?
Don’t we all wish to be desired? To be regarded as beautiful?
In the hall, the partying is every bit as crazy as it was in the room. It’s like a version of Hell, all these odiously costumed characters, all suddenly throwing themselves at each other as if someone’s been spiking the drinks with aphrodisiacs.
By the front door, a creepy looking clown and a leather clad girl are vainly kicking and banging at the panels and woodwork. The door doesn’t move, the wood doesn’t shatter.
‘You want to get out too?’ the girls asks as I move up alongside them.
I nod. ‘What’s wrong? Is it stuck?’
‘It’s like it’s been glued in place!’ The clown’s make up is running with sweat. ‘The backdoor’s the same; and the French windows.’
‘Has anyone tried to smash the glass?’ I ask the question, even though I know what the answer is going to be.
‘It’s like iron,’ the girl sighs miserably. ‘Won’t even move in the frame.’
‘Has anyone phoned for help?’ Once again, I’ve a good idea what the answer to my question is going to be.
‘No signal!’
‘Even the house phones aren’t working: they’ve all weirdly melted inside.’
The girl smiles grimly, like she’s apologising, like she’s somehow responsible.
The police will be here soon. That poor policewoman must have called them ages ago. I’m only surprised they’re not here already.
I need to get out of here.
Later on, when I’ve had time to think, to calm down, I might call and admit I’m the one responsible for her death.
That
it was all a bizarre accident.
No one’s going to believe me if they catch me here. And then I’ll probably be blamed for the death of the other poor girl too.
‘I’m going to find Veronica,’ I say determinedly to the couple trying to break out. ‘I’m going to tell her to let us out! This is crazy!’
‘Good luck with that,’ the clown snorts. ‘She’s taken this evil queen role to new levels! She’s walking around like she really is an evil royal!’
He turns back to his fruitless task of pushing and pulling at the rigidly unmoving door. Exchanging ashen smiles with the girl, I drop back amongst the mingling, entwining couples.
Soft wings, leathery wings, sharp talons, hard horns, all accidently brush against me as I worm my way through them all.
Veronica’s much easier to spot than I’d feared. She’s wearing her tall hat, making her tower over most of the people there. As the clown had intimated, she’s also putting on comically regal airs, striding imperiously past everyone as if they were her subjects, her minions.
‘Veronica! Veronica!’
I have to scream out her name in an effort to be heard above the hypnotic thumping of the music, the laughing and chatter of the people milling around me. Either Veronica doesn’t hear, or she chooses to ignore me, but the result’s the same; she moves farther on ahead of me, flowing past those about her as if they’re moving aside to allow her through.
Frankly, I’m a little surprised she’s down here, taking part in her party rather than sitting upstairs in the room where the dead girl lies.
Says me, who’s just killed someone, abandoned them. And hidden their body behind a chair.
But. I. Didn’t. Mean. It!
It. Was. A. Novelty. Gun!
Not. A. Real. One!
I didn’t know her. I had no reason to kill her. No intention to kill her.
Just as I had no reason or intention to kill the girl upstairs, whoever she is.
She came with Paul, the policewoman had said.
That would be the girl, then, who’d come as the Red Queen.
Tim Burton’s version of the Red Queen.
All massive red, curly wig. Graphic makeup, with lips pursed into a tight little heart. Eyes topped with large squares of pale blue. Dress that flared out, covered in hearts.
Wait.
Was it Paul who’d blamed me for the girl’s death?
Is that why the policewoman was accusing me of her murder.
But I didn’t know her.
Whereas Paul, of course, did!
*
Chapter 19
If words pass from my lips
It is only so they can caress your soul
With their tremor
The Desire
Paul’s much harder to find than Veronica was.
In a party where everyone’s grabbing the nearest person and melding lips, Paul’s bound to blend in.
I eventually recognise him thanks to an elegantly thin pair of female hands enthusiastically running through the soft curls of his familiarly thick, dark hair. I remember – oh yes, how I remember – how much I used to enjoy running my hands through that incredibly wonderful hair.
It could be me, those hands. It used to be.
But it isn’t anymore, of course.
‘Paul? Paul!’
It takes not only a few shouts but also a few light touches and slaps on his shoulder and the back of his head. When he finally gathers enough willpower to pull himself free of the girl’s lips, he turns to me with drowsy, heavy-lidded eyes, as if in a daze, even a little dreamily delirious.
Did I ever have that effect on him? I doubt it.
We’d still be together, wouldn’t we, if I had?
The girl responsible for this effect on him stares at me with an easy contempt. It’s a sure sign that she doesn’t regard me as serious competition. I’m just a brief irritant she’s going to have to swat away in a moment if I don’t stop bothering her. She’s dressed in the bright lozenges of a harlequin, her hair a tangled mass of nut brown, her lips as red as drawn blood.
Paul’s furious that he’s had to break out of his clinch with this wonderfully exotic girl.
‘You again!’ he sneers, keeping at least one arm wrapped around harlequin’s waist, making sure he doesn’t lose her to the crowd. ‘What do you want now, crazy woman?’
‘Okay, okay!’ I raise my hands in submission. We’ve already been through all this. ‘I’ll be quick! The girl you came with: what happened to her?’
I have to just about shout directly into his ear to have any hope of being heard correctly.
Paul glowers hatefully at me.
‘Are you still jealous of her?’ he almost spits in fury. ‘Just how pathetic can you be?’
Harlequin’s interest in him is wavering a little. She’s noticed the action she’s after is now going on elsewhere, not here. Paul notes her waning interest, is shocked by it, angered by it. He pulls harder on her waist, begins to turn away from me.
‘Where is she?’ I persist. ‘It’s important! It’s not jealousy!’
‘How should I know?’ he snaps, his teeth bared. ‘You’re the one who completely peed her off! When you came out with all that bull about being Kate! She went home, I suppose!’
Now I’m angry. How many more times tonight am I going to be accused of lying?
‘It wasn’t bull about me being Kate!’
He sniggers.
‘Look, crazy woman, I should know what Kate looks like! I went out with her long enough!’
‘I’ve had surgery, you arrogant idiot! Can’t you see that?’
‘Sure, I can see you’ve had so much work done, even your own mom probably wouldn’t recognise you! But, see, I know you can’t possibly be Kate!’
‘Oh yeah, and how could you possibly know that, smartass?’
‘Because the girl you’re trying to find? That’s Kate Denham!’
*
Chapter 20
We fool ourselves into believing there is only one kind of beauty
But there are many kinds of beauty, more than it is possible to imagine
So why envy another’s beauty
When someone, somewhere, is waiting to appreciate yours?
The Desire
I can’t get any more information out of Paul.
He pushes me aside. Locks lips once again with an almost animalistic harlequin.
Where’s she likely to be – this other Kate?
If the policewoman was telling the truth, and this other Kate’s dead, and yet the party hardly seems to be even remotely aware of it – then she’s probably hidden away in a locked room somewhere, I presume.
Upstairs?
That’s usually were the secret things taking place at a party occur.
Once again, I find myself having to force my way through embarrassingly uninhibited couples. Many of them are shedding odds bit of their garments, if not their costumes. The whole place reeks now of ludicrously heavy scents and sweat.
If someone splayed these people with water from a fire hose to cool their ardour, all you’d get is a massive cloud of steam, the world’s most crowded sauna.
Pushing my way as fast as I can up the stairs, I come to the closed door of a bedroom. Despite all the wildly amorous couples surrounding me, no one’s made an attempt to enter.
The only thing that makes me doubt this might be the room I’m looking for is the fact that no one’s been left on guard outside, which I’d expected.
Although a little worried that someone might be on guard inside, I push the door open. Suddenly, an arm reaches out from the crowd beside me. The hand, covered in an old, fingertip-less glove, clamps solidly and unshakably around my wrist.
‘’Ere, where d’ you think you’re going?’ demands a gruff voice.
He not only sounds like something from a Dickens’ novel, he looks like it too. All ancient, shredded clothes. A top hat that flops idly, it’s so threadbare. There’s also the obligatory a
ccusatory leer, the wicked ‘gottcha!’ grin.
I’m lost for words. Fortunately, the girl whose embrace he’s just broken free of isn’t.
‘Now, you’re not more interested in her than you are in me, are you?’ she chides with a mischievous chuckle full of promise.
She pulls him back into her embrace, lifting and wrapping a leg around him. Slipping her arms snake-like around his head, she forces him not unwillingly into a lingering kiss. A Goth girl, she could be some amorous corpse he’s just dug up.
As his hand slips away from my wrist, I step into the room, silently closing the door behind me.
The light in here is generally dim, what there is coming from nothing but a bedside lamp. The lamp’s severe cone of light, however, although limited in its extent, is sharp enough to brightly illuminate the poor girl lying across the bed.
Yes, it’s definitely the girl Paul came with.
This fake Kate Denham. This girl who’s supposed to be me.
And fooled Paul into believing it too.
I know it’s her because I recognise the dress. The Red Queen’s flouncy, layered dress, decorated with large, red hearts.
Drawing nearer, I also see the immense red wig, half squashed beneath her head. Her real hair is splayed around her, as black as the surrounding shadows.
Hah! The real Kate Denham doesn’t have jet black hair. The real Kate, well – she used to have–
My book, The Desire, is laid alongside her head.
*
Chapter 21
Beauty
Wealth
Success
Happiness
At some point in our lives, we might well desire all of these
Yet such desires fade by comparison to that most urgent and uncontrollable of desires: the desire for him, for her
Why, ultimately, do we desire beauty, wealth and success, but as the means to attain this uncontrollable desire?
How can we attain happiness if our desire is denied?
The Desire
I look down in surprise at my own hands, wondering why I never realised I was no longer holding my book.
When did I lose it?
How did it get up here?
It is my book, without a doubt. It still has the crushed residue of lipstick on its corner. The lipstick I’d accidently smeared on it earlier, when I’d carelessly stored it away in my bag.
Horrifyingly, the lipstick is the same colour as the patch of blood matted into the girl’s hair. The part of her head where she’s obviously been struck by the murder weapon.