Steven Cook's Alternity

SALOME - by G.B Pert

Salome Dancing beneath a diamond sky with one hand waving free. Skirts whirling dervish like. The other hand grasps its burden to her breast and she is come again. Between us is a rickety gate, no lock to keep it shut, it yawns open, defiant of the country's code. Curiosity Girl breaches the first of seven and the little girl with the little curl closes it firmly behind her. The world turns white and the first veil drops revealing soft, pale things.

i
I swing on the gate. The century old grey wood is locked under my armpits, I look down at my toes peeping over the bottom bar. My little girls feet in shining black patent Mary Jane's. I am swinging on the gate with purpose. Dressed in my finest clothes, swinging on the gate and awaiting Daddy's return from sea. Back and forth I swing. My mother picked out my outfit for me, I am wearing antique black silk that was quite the height of fashion in 1877. Mother said I looked grown up and that I matched the décor splendidly. I am swinging on the gate with a straw boater perched on my yellow head. With my free hand I wave at the few people who pass by on their way to church. I catch admiring smiles and adoring glances from these strangers. We don't go to church anymore. Even though to get there you need only walk out of the gate and walk 66 paces. As I swing I am the perfect little girl with hair that is plaited and pinned so tightly it gives her a headache. Back and forth, I wait for Daddy. No more people pass by. To and fro, my eyes stare at the derelict house that lies across the road. Only 26 paces away, but we don't go there either, it is OUTOFBOUNDS. I fix on the 100 year old glass and see the velvet and straw girl swinging on the gate waiting for her Daddy. I stop swinging and I am through the gate, across the road to be with the girl with shiny patent Mary Jane's. With her free hand she loosens her hair and drops the first veil.

ii
You have probably seen me. 'The woman at the window.' You might have seen her, but she didn't see you. On November the 23rd 1993 I started staring. I loosed my waist-length grey hair and waited. I listened to you all laughing false laughs, fucking whores, eating away your drabness. I am standing in scarlet silk chain smoking. My liquorice-papered cigarettes are filled with a sublime scented blend of amnesia. No one came to call because I had sent them all away. The fucking and fighting has left me with just the Prophet for company. His baleful eyes look at me accusingly whenever I go. The Hermit's Head hangs on my wall like a hunters prize. He used to be a conversation point when people came for dinner. My guests laugh with joy at his blistering curses, they clap their hands when he humiliates me, they clink their glasses when he spits in my red hair.

The guests are not welcome anymore and I sewed his lips shut. That was all long ago, and now I wear scarlet and wait. My loose hair caresses too thin shoulders and I begin to rock. It is 99 years before the second veil drops.

iii
The gate had been left open and there was no KEEPOUT sign, I checked to see if anyone noticed me and I slipped through into the vaulted courtyard. A large crowd had gathered. You stood in the centre of them all, a figurehead of untouchable desire. As the dance begins your head was held still, all elegant grace and poise, with a liquid centre like the earth itself. They didn't realise that the dance comes from the black honey that bubbles in the belly. As you start to tip your hips the delightful sweetness fills your pelvis. It warms as you move, fluid, hydraulic and hypnotic, moving up your backbone and gathering at the point

where spine becomes neck. It pools there pushing out all thought of just what is at stake. The oil breaks its dam and floods your skull. The dance gets slower, all movements are calculated. Girdle, petticoats and corsets fall away and I am lost. Hips circling, shaking, quaking, all movement coming from the centre. The veil slips. Her hips describe eternity and they promise the world. Anything. Anything.

iv
In the warm attic room with yellow wallpaper and fingers exploring a girl with malamute eyes and throbbing beats for thought. A golden honey pot buzzing with bees.

A security light catches a headless body laying between pale things . The halogen buzz cues her climax, Head in hand I step onto to the dance floor.

Two teenagers, sensible, sober and in love. This veil is ruby wet, a scarlet splash on a soiled sheet. A panicked examination reveals that the door is firmly shut and there is no handle on this side. I didn't see the sign, usually there is a warning when somewhere is OUTOFBOUNDS. My mother demands that I see a Doctor which is BADENOUGH but made worse by the fact that it is quite hard to hide the Hermit's Head. This was back in the day when I was embarrassed of my burden and would seek to disguise it. In the WAITING ROOM Mother tells me to 'STOP FUSSING'. She is cross because I can never sit still, but she never hears the music and nor does she have to try and disguise a Hermit's Head.

The Doctor was older than the Hermit with knotted olive-branch fingers that were freezing cold. He had that condescending demeanour that lonely men of a certain age develop, Doctors do it particularly well. It's the way they look at their notes through spectacled lenses and then cast a sly glance at your body from over the rim. Mother silently handed me a tissue, I didn't need it but it wasn't an offer of help, it was an accusation. Neither Mother nor the Doctor seemed to notice the Hermit's Head even though he was kicking up a terrible fuss. I suspect it was probably easier for them both if they just ignored him. I do as I am told, but secretly I keep time with my hips. The cold metal, the Doctor and Mother are drowned in the sea of glistening bodies stretched out before me.

v
The Hermit does like a smoke and it is funny to watch. As he grasps the prison rollie between his lips his mouth resembles a cats bum. A wisp of smoke wafts upwards from his neck forming a grim halo. He likes it because it gives the illusion that he is floating independently, not clutched in my strong grasp. Sometimes he smokes a pipe and after that his eyes roll back, his acid tongue sweetened. I can take the lead in these moments. While the hermit is dreaming of Baptismal Fire, I slip away.

I am sitting on a single bed in a warm apricot smelling room. Waiting, I have oiled my skin and perfumed my hair. In the rooms around me men come and go, I can hear their fucking and their fighting, but not one of them knocks on my door. In the next room a moon-eyed couple finish making love. In harmony with each other they share intimacy, a toothbrush and a family. While looking through a photo album they recognise faces at a wedding, their own faces as children and realise with a jolt that they are first cousins. I look down at a young woman's body, a body that has growing to do, a body that you grow into. A body, that after a long wait, he grows into.

vi
When I was very young, I suffered
repeatedly from tonsillitis. I was unable to eat or speak; my little body was gripped in a fever that made me hallucinate. The Doctor, who wore a black cape and white magicians gloves came often. He was accompanied by dripping hypodermics that I barely felt, he finally declared that my useless glands would have to be removed. A short memory-lapse stay in hospital and that was that, no more tonsillitis. Wonderful men these Doctors, how they mould your body in their image. Anyway, years later I am lying by the windmill with the sun gold-lighting the afternoon. The Hermit was being pleasant, we had enjoyed a smoke and the warm August laziness has quietened his tongue. I tied a gold cravat around his tattered neck and we danced a two-step. The windmill was long deserted but its sails still creaked in the breeze. We must have been kissing for hours, never once missing a beat.

A week and a day later I was back in the attic with the yellow wallpaper, whimpering in agony. My tonsils had grown back. The Doctor had left a root in my throat that had taken hold and silently, innocuously, they had grown back. These new, axolotl organs had easily succumbed to infection and had to be ripped out all over again. I wondered if other parts of me would grow back, those small, fleshy bits that often get ripped and torn away. I performed numerous small experiments in my attic room, unable to keep my fingers away from the sore. All of my little explorations proved to be more final than the Doctor's inept surgeries.

vii
It is March 12th and I am standing at the crossroads again. I walk to the middle point; I sit down and place the naked soles of my feet together. I hold the Hermits Head to my breast, his vacant eyes roll back and he stares up at me. I cannot place his expression. It might be revulsion or it might be gratitude- I don't think it is desire. It is hard to tell what is he thinking with a puffy pink nipple in his mouth. Still, he makes no complaint and it is better than his usual torrent of abuse. I think back to the time at the Windmill. I took a photo of myself on that day and I look at it again now. I have that haughty expression that comes from holding a camera at arms length in order to snap yourself. My pale eyes are lit with afternoon gold and I remember how I felt, I deliver the message and I know she understands.

Beneath a diamond sky my old bones click and pop. I am dressed in only an emerald veil that covers my nose and mouth. It is hard to tell my emotional state, my eyes are closed and my breathing rapid. What would you have thought had you seen me dancing that night? My black hair was bound up migraine tightly and my movements were stiff with age. The Hermit has not spoken in years and hangs limply from my hand, my arthritic fingers trammelled in his matted hair.

It has been so long since I had an audience that I entertain myself by messing with the Head. I got bored looking at his flint-lock eyes and so I put sunglasses on him, and lipstick. I found an old Spider-man mask that made me smile for a while, I used gimp hoods and cowboys hats, helmets and pirate hats. It's nothing but parlour games with Carrefour. We spent 33 months at that crossroad but we both knew that I would eventually pick a road. Finally my legs cramped up and I had no choice but to get moving again.

I place the Hermit in the centre and ask him which way I should go. The stubborn old bastard says nothing so I continue to dance. The emerald veil falls at last and the old beast opens his mouth burbling, making sucking noises like a trout on a line. In that moment he is finally mine. There will be no more false prophecies, no more grunting critiques and no more mocking attacks. I stand astride him pondering my route out of here and it's actually an easy choice, I choose the one with the best tunes. I look down at the Hermit's head with its camel-tail locks, I smile and as I dance away I use the emerald veil to cover those dead and spiteful eyes.