2 Stories

The Not-Kate-Bush Experience

is tutting.

Watching them whispering amongst themselves. She stops the music - a slow violin instrumental of Sensual World - goose-walks en pointe towards the audience. Unsettlingly supple in her wrinkly, grey leotard. A few people titter nervously.

Not-Kate’s red,

crinkled lips are smiling graciously as ushers appear.

These men

are placing pinches onto neck napes. Fixing gazes to the stage.

She holds them; they are the tribute tonight, and she’s a princess

of patience and white greasepaint, nodding at the orchestra,

who is a man with saggy jowls

that pool over a wormy fiddle;

opening strains of This Woman’s Work.

Her throat extending in a sinewy scream: “Hee-HAWWW!”

reverberates

high into the Art Nouveau ceiling. Several people pass out and are laid at her feet like wilted petals.

Not-Kate-Bush, is crying

happy tears,

dancing in jerks and

hip-

thrusts,

opening her wet, wide eyes,

and she is perspiring,

and she is starting to feel beautiful

again.

Beautiful

“Here we are, Beautiful” he’d said, as they stood beside the empty pool. At first she’d thought he was talking to her. Earlier, they had met at a bar, talked about her relationships: the one who’d left because she didn’t want a family; the one who’d begged her not to go. After a lot of cocktails, she’d flirted awkwardly and he hadn’t said much. She liked that. It was refreshing to have someone just listen. He’d listened so intently to what she had to say, she’d imagined he was riveted. It thrilled her. Her life was not normally this exciting. She worked, she swam, she ate, she slept. She had a window garden, for christ’s sake. That day hadn’t been so very different from all the rest, but somehow the walls had seemed a little closer than usual. The air, a little staler. She’d taken a shower and left her hair down for a change. Her ex had always said that made her look “like a Social Worker”. She had stared at the woman in the mirror. Handsome, maybe, if not exactly pretty.

The bar was called SubSpace, one of those basement places that played Northern Soul. It was almost empty so she sat at the bar with a mojito, worrying the straw with a chewed fingernail.

Would have missed him if he hadn’t offered to pay for her cocktail. Not an attractive man. Small, mid-fifties, hair unnaturally dark, accentuating pallid skin that was faintly pockmarked. But since they were the only ones there, it had seemed churlish to refuse.

Now they were back at his place. This was not the kind of thing she would normally do, she was drunk and excitable, so when he’d showed her the pool and the thing he was keeping there, she’d been disappointed more than anything. When he’d told her earnestly that the gristly mass before them contained his “children”, she snorted, swaying wildly from the alcohol, slurring, “You know, I’m not really mother material. I thought I’d made that clear…” as he pushed her firmly to the edge of the pool. “They don’t need a mother,” he said, making cooing and clucking sounds at the sticky pouch writhing on the tiles. Before she could say anything else he pushed her in. As she landed with a wet ‘plap’, several greasy creatures mewled at her. The penny finally dropped and all she could think was, “Typical”.