Dead Secrets

“Can you keep a secret?” she said

Her eyes gleaming with seduction but tinted with something else… An emotion that lived just beneath the surface, beating like a drum but going unseen. The midnight chill had begun to set in, the type that creeps its way under your skin and into your bones without you knowing it, until it is all you can feel.

The question brought me to a halt, the words had an innocent texture on her tongue, but I knew from her eyes that her words hung heavy, boulders tied in double knots to each syllable.

“Of course, you can tell me anything”

The distant city lights were reflected on her soft features, the crease between her eyebrows standing out like a jagged rock in comparison.

The girl in front of me was as familiar as the city that spanned out below us, the one I grew up in but just like a city, I never seemed to be able to discover or understand every part of her: vacant expressions would slip over her face like running water and when she resurfaced they would be dismissed quickly with the swipe of a hand and a delicate, seductive touch to my thigh. Any small insight that let me into her mind was like being invited to a hidden club with tickets marked VIP.

***

His eyes looked at me with a sense of trust that echoed through my body. For 5 years now we had been building the foundations of this trust, this appreciation. I liked this one, he felt safe. He was not like the others that haunted my dreams: distant memories of monsters that had made themselves apart of me, down to the very blood that made my heart beat.

 Bright eyes looked at me expectantly, I knew he was waiting for me to gift him with another piece of me… I fought with myself to tell him, but the others said I should not. The monsters in my head didn’t like this man, they told me he wasn’t safe.

His face showed everything, it was like an advertisement board that showed all his thoughts.  Concern was etched into each tense muscle, and a small smile of anticipation was painted like watercolor onto his lips.

The monsters were beating at my chest, I could not tell him. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. I softly grabbed his thigh to ground myself… This was the first man that wanted my mind… the monsters didn’t like that…

They found comfort in the gun resting in my purse… but… I liked this one, he felt safe.  

***

It had not taken a long time for me to become accustom to her strange ways. We had each worked at the strip club, I watched her most nights from the bar. Captivation overcame me each night as I watched her transform her identity her long limbs climbing up the stairs into the spotlight. The stage and her became one, her mind oblivious to the gawking men as she found comfort in her body: It was as though on stage she finally found silence in her mind as the worries moved through her like autumn leaves falling off a tree, slowly, silently but the whole world changed because of it.

I watched now as the blank stare swept over her and thought back to those times. After I saw her, I took no time in waiting to approach her. I knew she had demons the first time our eyes met, and she told me so too… but that was okay, because I did as well. Over the years we have built a string of strong ties that linked us to each other, I didn’t ask about her past, and she didn’t ask about mine… but now when she gets on stage as she dances, as she finds comfort in her mind, her body and her soul she looks at me… and I am a part of her silence, I am a part of her safety… and that’s all I need.

“You can trust me, you know that. Don’t you?”.

Her eyes blinked a few times as though realizing my presence, and I saw her fear there. My body ached to comfort her… but I did not know if she feared the me, the world… or herself.  

***

The voices were getting louder now, telling me things I didn’t want to hear. I didn’t believe them… He was safe and I could tell him about them. I knew I could. They had always made a rhythm in my mind, like a melody only I got to hear. Sometimes I wish I didn’t hear it. The dull thud of my heartbeat crept into my ears until my entire head was apart of the chorus. The midnight chill had set it… it was the type that you feel seep into your skin and your bones until you are numb and you feel nothing at all… ‘he wants to hurt you, he is not safe… kill him, he can’t keep our secret. He won’t… he’ll take you away, or worse, he’ll do what they did’. No.

I look into his eyes. Bright and trusting, his fingertips twitching. I know that means he wants to reach out and touch me, I know every part of his body. I think back to the first time I noticed him as he watched me dancing… it was the first time I had noticed someone looking at me. His eyes were not prying with salacious, seductive need… they were soft and wide, he looked at me as though I held every answer to life’s questions… For the first time I had something that anchored me from my demons… but what if he is like the others?

***

Every once in a lifetime you find someone, someone special. The person that was a part of the fairytales in your dreams. They whisper healing words into your wintry soul and make you feel warm. They stitch up the wounds that were made by people who wake you up at night, no matter how many years go by, and no matter how far away those people are now. But they can’t take away your demons in your nightmares. They can’t take away the fears that sink themselves into your soul… I have known this for a long time, I knew I couldn’t heal her… I hoped she would love me enough to heal herself. In hindsight I could have stopped it, in hindsight there were signs… Is it true that love makes you blind? Or was I just willing to risk it all to know the secrets behind the surface of her eyes.

 ***

My hands felt like ice as I touched the metal gun, the voices in my mind screamed, no words, just excited, hungry screeches that filled my mind.

The realization hit him in the chest before the bullet did. I watched as his eyes put two and two together and he fought to keep the trust alive: the foundation of love that we had each wrapped around our spine to stop us from falling. I also watched as it died.

“I can’t tell you my secrets” I whispered as my hand stroked his stiffening thigh.

“because now you are one of them” As my lips met his, the silence was finally back again… so I danced.