Purple
“You don’t have to worry about a thing, Celeste.”
The place was dimly lit with nothing but colorful strobe lights to illuminate the space. Music, songs that I couldn’t identify, blasted abrasively through the several speakers that littered every corner of the room. Close to a hundred people filled up the space, swaying carelessly and drinking ceaselessly. It was bodies on bodies and shots on shots.
In the midst of the chaos, there was a calmness behind my closed eyes. The beats reverberated through the ground and filled my senses. I was in control of myself, and I was ready to lose it.
“‘Scuse me.”
The barricades shattered, bedlam flooding in, and the shoulder that pushed past me brought with it the realization that the clock was ticking.
Tick-tock.
I screwed my eyes shut, my body tense as I willed myself to think less and feel more. The voices around me echoed fighting against me, and I shut my eyes tighter. Slowly the music seeped in gaining power taking control and bridling the reality of my mind. My hips swayed and my hands roamed my body, exploring it as I’d never known myself before.
Tick-tock.
The tension was back, choking my emotions and numbing my senses.
Maybe I shouldn’t have done this.
Tick-tock.
The smell is going to be a dead giveaway.
Tick-tock.
“How dare you go flitting about in that short dress of yours?!”
Smash.
“You think you can waste the money I work so hard to earn, useless bitch?”
Slap.
“Stay at home and make something that’s worth swallowing this time. If you embarrass me in front of my friends…”
Spit.
My eyes shot open and my hand flew to my cheek, quaking ever so slightly. The bodies bumping into me added heavy boulders on my chest, constricting me, and making me gasp for every breath. My mind was reeling, leaving my brain muddled with echoes of panic, and the heterogeneous mix of voices that barraged my ears seemed to be speaking a foreign language I couldn’t understand. The longer I stood there the more I wished I hadn’t come.
My rattled vision that darted erratically across the room, focus on nothing, suddenly zeroed in on a glint from the far end of the dance floor. A pair of amethyst orbs watched me, gleaming with desire. I stilled as the luminescent lights somehow put her in such a spotlight that my eyes couldn’t stray. Suddenly, she was all I could see, my senses tunneling in on her and blanketing the world around us. Unbeknownst to me, my hips had resumed their movements, swaying to the left to the odd beats and right to the even beats.
I danced. I danced for those alluring lavender eyes that beckoned the sways of my hips, for all the hues of purple that were captured in the blaze of her pupils, and for the electricity that ripped through the room from the intensity of our locked stares. She was coming closer, and closer still, as I felt the temperature of my body increase steadily. Her lips were stained deliciously with rouge the shade of the blood and a small smirk danced on the curves.
I shouldn’t be doing this.
Precipitously, her hands anchored around my hips, sending a jolt of electricity down my body even with the layers between us. As her hands directed the way my body moved against her and her jasmine-laced vanilla perfume filled my nostrils with every inhale, I forgot my whys, wheres, whens, and hows. I shivered as she pushed my hair to the side and ghosted her lips over the expanse of my nape. My knees almost gave in as her hands roamed my body with the skill and precision of a lover in erotica.
I should go before it’s too late.
I swept my fingers over her grip on me, melting away into her heat, and guided her hands to my chest like it was as organic as a bad habit. She squeezed and I gasped, she bit my neck and I trembled in her embrace, she pulled me impossibly closer and I bit my lip. I closed my eyes to cave into her presence, a feeling of lust much too novel overwhelming me. Her fingers traced my jawline and stopped on the plump of my lower lip, swiping her thumb over the cut that tainted the canvas of my mouth. I winced, the physical pain of the smarting wound not holding a candle to the agony of the memories of the night the scar appeared on my lip. Soft lips pressed against the shell of my ear and my ache soothed to the sensation of the scandalous kiss.
“You don’t have to worry about a thing, Celeste.”
My name ricocheted off the walls of the club like a rogue bullet. A tremor of shock bounded through me as I froze in her embrace. Her hands which had grounded me mere seconds ago now felt like the scalding touch of acid-coated whips. I pushed away from her desperately, the tightness in my chest coming back at a fearsome speed. I felt unsafe, vulnerable, and naked. I turned to look at her and stumbled back. My skin crawled as I looked into her mauve eyes and surveyed her twisted smile, goosebumps spreading across my skin. I ran towards the exit, cutting through the crowds, and scrambled into the back of a taxi craving safety to calm my excited nerves.
Soon, the dim scene of the house came into view, and a different anxiety broke into my conscience. It grew with each step I took toward the foreboding door. It peaked as the keys in my shaking hands jangled against the lock. It consumed me as I took a gulp to douse the fire of worry in the pit of my stomach when the door swung open to reveal…
Darkness. Silence. Peace.
An atmospheric trio that was as jarring as it was alien. Cautiously, I took a step into the stillness of the house, jagged pieces of glass crunching unnervingly under the sole of my heels. I called out for him; my voice meek, akin to the mewl of a helpless prey awaiting inevitable capture. The only thing that greeted me was the strange quiet. I gingerly made my way to the bedroom and warily opened the door, finding it unlocked. As my eyes adjusted to the dark room, I found him.
There he was, lying face down on the bed with his mouth hanging open as if in deep slumber, clothes disheveled, and a cigarette teetering between his fingers. As if in a trance, I moved across the room to sit on the bed beside him, breaths coming out in short spurts as I braced for the aftermath of my night of freedom.
Nothing.
I guardedly lay down next to him, not daring to look anywhere else except the ceiling. Still, there was nothing, not even a grunt. Inklings of realization crept their way into my thoughts and my heart pounded in my chest, deafeningly loud in the silence. Seconds passed and metamorphosed into minutes, and something threatened to break free from the hollow of my chest, pushing against my enforced restraints. A chuckle. Then two. Then a couple more escaped until tears sprung in the corners of my eyes from the force of the laughter.
As the sun rose on the horizon and the rays pierced through the panes, far brighter than the house had ever given ingress to, familiar wafts of jasmine and vanilla floated through the room and lulled me to peaceful slumber.