Slipping in and out of dreams. Voices laughing and the smell of hard cider, soaked into the hardwood cedar floor. Shadows flickering like the moon dancing across the face of the sun, far too fast, crazy and wild as the Bacchanades. Crawling, skittering nymphs with antennae brushing over my skin, driving me mad. Diving in and diving up, out of the water and sinking upwards into the cold air. A boy whispering his secrets to me, silly childish secrets, when he thinks that I cannot hear him. Sister, he calls me. I smile and my nod, and my glazed eyes and painted smile bob up and down, and I am staring off into space because no matter how I strain, my eyes won’t move towards him, and he is a ghostly peripheral vision.

In the morning when I wake up, I am exhausted.

Everything seems to be leeched of any interest. When I try to come up with a song, the only thing I can think of is a vast, empty doldrums filled with grey.

Skerry has decided to pretend that nothing happened last night, which is fine with me. It doesn’t really bother me, and it’s very discreet of her, but it leaves me blushing with shame when she is not looking. She has forgiven me, in her strange way; she took my arm when I was coming out of her bathroom, headed back to my room, and she told me that she had forgotten, that Andromeda had said something once about me being hypoglycemic. I didn’t know what it meant to be hypoglycemic, but I was still too mortified about what I had done to ask any questions.

I sit here, in this room, looking at the things Andromeda left behind in my bag. Skerry is at the hotel, getting a few small things left behind in our room that the hotel held on to, nicely enough. I wonder if it was Jin who made sure my odds and ends were held for me; but it hurts to think about Jin, hurts to remember him, and Sathi, and the hotel, because they belong to a dead world, and it makes me angry, somehow, that from that dead world in my memories, they have lived on.

I am still shocked about what I did last night.

I wonder if I have any place in this world.

I don’t think anyone needs me.

will you love me forever?

will you sink claws of MINE into me and

never let me go?

in truth, I am sick

and I would be ever so grateful

if you would give me some chains,

to keep me glued to reality.

I’m walking on the streets in a cream silk dress – it’s more or a slip, really – with cowboy boots and a floaty scarf tied around my neck. I’ve got two white taffeta ribbons in my hair, holding up two little pig-tails. I found the clothes in the bottom of my bag. Skerry doesn’t know I’m out of the apartment. Skerry doesn’t need to know, I don’t think. She’s not my mother. I’ll probably be back long before she gets home to find me missing.

I’m sort of numb.

Tears rise behind my eyes again. It just feels so wrong, so wrong for this to have happened, like a dream or a joke played on me by god. This was not how it was supposed to be, you know. It was supposed to end happily, happy like the kingdom waking from the century of sleep. It is not so, not so, not now, now that Andromeda is only a constellation and a shell lying somewhere in the morgue.

Shells. I have not seen the ocean. I would like to see it someday, and collect shells, make a doll from the seashells – or maybe just a crown. I’m just desperate to think of something else, because if I think of Andromeda-

Another club. I can tell that it is a club because of the music coming from the door, open wide like a mouth waiting to swallow me whole. It’s dark in there, and I can smell the reek of alcohol from where I waver on the sidewalk. The sign says 24 Hour Slam. I suppose that means it is always open.

The air itself vibrates. I am lost in a sea of heat, radiating from the bodies on the dancing floor in front of me.

A hand grabs my shoulder.

“Hey, you got an ID, kid?” asks the man, a human with so many piercings on his face and in his ears that he frightens me. His eyes are behind black sunglasses, and his bare arms are wrapped in tattoos of monsters. Teeth yellowed and fingers cold, he leans into me. I stand very still.

“Do I need one?” I say softly, too softly for him to have heard me over the music, but he does anyway, and he laughs and lets me go.

“What’s your name?” he asks, reaching for my hand. He is full of energy and bounciness, an energy that is slightly mad with bloodlust. I smile nervously. His aura of excitement infects me.

“I’m Aja,” I say, loudly enough to be heard, and he smiles, and it makes him far less frightening.

“I’m Magne,” he says cheerfully. He pulls me closer to the dancers and I stiffen.

He frowns. “What’s the matter, honey?” he asks, brow furrowed.

“I don’t know how to dance,” I mutter, blushing.

“Neither do I,” he says with a secret smile, and he yanks my arm and before I know what’s happening I am stuck in a mass of writhing bodies and a hypnotic beat. I can’t help but move a little, at least to get out of the way of the hips and torsos and arms and legs. Back and forth I go, like a starfish, curling out of the way. I begin to rock my own hips a little, and suddenly Magne is dancing in front of me, and it makes me feel a lot more confident – he really can’t dance very well, unless his movements are a joke to make me more at ease.

The song is heavy on instrumentals, which is weird to me, but I like it. The tempo is manic, which I like even better. The faster I move the more difficult it is to focus on anything but the music and my own moving. Thoughts flash through my mind like fireflies, blinking in and out. One of them says that yes, Magne was making a fool of himself on purpose, because now he is dancing well, and next to me. Something in the way he moves, touching his own skin through his open shirt, makes me want to touch him, too. So my hands flutter over to his body, and it’s very startling; in my head I know that people are usually 98 degrees hot, in degrees Fahrenheit, but my hands are discovering this heat now with some surprise.

The air is humid with everyone’s sweat. The scent would normally make me wrinkle my nose, but somehow it is the right scent, and it whispers secrets to my lungs and throat that make my breathing tight and ecstatic. I’m sweating from nearly every pore in my body, and it’s making the slip cling to me and my body is outlined against it. I’m not wearing a bra – I’ve never needed one – but my nipples are visible, and that makes me blush scarlet.

I look around, though, and it’s okay. Nobody cares; everyone looks about as stupid as I do. My embarrassment fades, but I can still feel my blush by the pulsing blood in my cheeks. My legs are starting to ache. That’s all right. I ignore them and keep on dancing, dancing with this guy I’ve just met, and his name is Magne, and his hands are on my waist, and how did that happen?

It is like red has come over my vision, making me a creature of fire. I don’t care about anything else. All that matters is the wild, frenzied dance. I can understand the Bacchanades perfectly. This is not thought; it is action. I’m reacting and acting with my reflexes and body alone. My brain is somewhere else.

…And, did you know? Kissing is nice.

I wake up tangled in someone’s arms and loose clothes. My sweat has dried into a thin layer of salt over my body. There is dried semen between my legs. I feel crusted and grimy.

I leave Magne to use his shower. It feels very good to wash off everything, to clean myself off and scrub away the muck. He has peach-scented shower gel and an interesting cologne. I use both.

He is still asleep as I slip on my clothes from yesterday. I leave the hair ribbons behind. It’s cool outside, misty with a bluish, hazy fog. I smile to myself.

It is before sunrise. The streetlights gleam, and their metal poles shine like silver spoons. They are arched so delicately, like the back of a dancer, or the curve of her slender leg. I hum softly to myself. I’m walking to Skerry’s apartment to brush my teeth, because the inside of my mouth tastes nasty, and I know my breath must smell awful. My feet have blisters from the hours of dancing in these boots, but the sting is only a small one. And my boots click so nicely as I stride down the street, more comfortable moving in this body than ever I have been before. I smile mockingly at the pigeons, and they quibble at me.

Suddenly Andromeda is hanging, swinging from the nearest streetlight, a rope around her neck folding and straining the pale skin – her crown is still cracked, split in three – and her eyes are open so wide, and there is blood on her body, dripping, and oh, god, my mother, my mother! She is naked and drenched in sweat and saliva and mucus, her mouth is open, her face is blotched with purple. Her teeth horrify me, the upper lip peeled back – her ribs jut fiercely from her sides, her hands claw for breath – and I can tell she is still alive, still suffering, still twitching, and her eyes are following me –

Gone.

I collapse, shuddering, on the ground.

I am panting hoarsely.

All the ease which I had assumed, the grace, leaves me, and I am more awkward than a newborn horse, struggling to stand, to shuffle over to the dirty brick wall, to lean against it, half sobbing, half choking on the bile of my fear.

It feels like there are spiders inside my mind, skittering and tapping me dreadfully with hundreds of nasty little feet.

It passes.

It passes but I am shaken, so shaken right now.

I don’t want to go back to Magne’s apartment. I don’t want to go to Skerry’s. I don’t want to go anywhere but home to my house by the lake. But that’s just it, isn’t it? I can’t go back there because I need a job, and I can’t get a job except favors from friends, because apart from doing stupid things, I have no skills. I think I’m mildly retarded, I can’t remember my childhood, my toes are cold and I’m hungry; the only way for me to eat is with Skerry’s money. I rub my elbows distractedly.

I realize, bemusedly, as I stand on the sidewalk, dusting off my knees and straightening my dress, that there is no purpose for my life. I suppose I could whore myself, but I’d hate it, and it wouldn’t sit right with my gut feelings about things like that.

I walked to a bridge.

You know what?

Life isn’t all that bad.

But I don’t have a lot of use for mine right now.

I think I’m going to cut my losses.

A gust of wind lifts my skirt a bit as I climb up onto the railing and lean into it, balancing myself. When I look into the east, the sparse clouds are pink and orange, and the sun is yellow. It’s going to be a beautiful day; I can feel a cool breeze from the water, and my elbows are cold in the shadows cast by me.

“You gonna jump?”

Andromeda hovers five feet in front of me, dressed like Skerry, sloppy and cheerfully, a mildly interested look in her eyes. She smiles at me, encouraging me to answer. I smile back, and she disappears with a puff of giggles and the scent of baking apples. I close my eyelids, and turn my face towards the rising sun. Even with my eyes closed, I can see it.

“Yeah,” I breathe, breathless, confused, delirious, and it doesn’t really matter, does it? But I feel like it’s my birthday, or something, feel giddy, and calm and serene, like there’s light flowing through my body, washing all the flaws away and leaving me clean at last; and I step, not down but up, into warmth.