Vincent sitting alone in the dark except for the soundless images, images the LCD projector was making on his screening wall. Boots kicked and askew two thirds of the way from the first row of couches toward the screen. Like ominous shadows of crumpled men.
As Nadrea entered he is sitting alone in the dark, in the silence in the still of the night, his leather pants turned inside out and still drenched in sweat, discarded in the aisle way between the two sets of theater seats in the second row. She didn’t know what to say. She just stood in the doorway watching him sitting in the darkness staring as soundless images from some god forsake early sixties movie.
“you can come in.” his words breaking the silence. “I fell asleep.” She replied walking through the light on the screen and heading towards him. He just sat there.
“Look I know I’m more than a little fucked up.” She said sitting down next to him wrapped in a towel. Continuing on “We all have our days. Really if I’m out there floating then what the hell does it matter? Maybe I just like myself more as a train wreck.”
“Nice self image!” he said in tone that almost let a shred of genuine concern show through. “You don’t really know me, very few people do.” Nadrea stated almost mystified as if the thought had never occurred to her before. “lets play a game.” she asked. “it’s too late or too early. You pick but I’m not in the mood.” Vincent said talking to her but he still hasn’t looked in her general direction. She might as well not have been in the room. “ok then I’ll play by myself!” she said not missing a beat, “but you can join
in any time you like. Ok?” “Sure” Vincent said indifferently.
“The game is called if my life was” he didn’t move but he was listening. Nadrea began “if my life was a flower it would be a rose, beautiful but still dangerous. Cliché and common even among other roses and hated by the daisies not because I was so beloved but because I loved no one back” Nadrea had never done this before but she needed to define herself not just to him but for her own edification.
She continued on “if my life was a poem it would be tragic and dark, I would meet an untimely end. People who despised me would morn the lose of something they hated and celebrate my departure all in one breath.
If my life were a play it would be Dr. Faustus ” she looked at him he was listening, he was processing. Vincent had not yet spoken and his reaction was becoming apparent. “I would be surrounded much like I am by abilities and a charmed life but would renounce all of it for something no man can have, exchanging my soul for what I believe to be of great importance. The things I’ve surrendered can be taken back but I am blinded by the tempters and can’t find my way back until all has been lost and it is far too late even then my four demons taunting me. Sex, Vanity, Pleasure and Love, they are no less tempting to others but insanity ensues when they can’t be had, there is no compromise, no deal that would not be made but in my vanity so long ago lying emotionally naked and alone I learned to separate sex from love, something so many can’t do.”
“If my life were an album it would be Kiss Me, Kiss me, Kiss Me. It would be slow and dark and tortuous, lost, and angry, and confused but some how at the same time it would be delicate, and gentle. It would be loving and beautiful but in the end it would be alone. The good times serving as nothing more than reminders of the bad, of the things I had and lost, misunderstood and misconstrued.”
Vincent looked at her for the first time since she had entered the room. Not truly understanding what she was saying or even what she was thinking or feeling but for the first time since they had met he was starting to understand just a little about who she really might be. She understood all too well at that moment that his feelings for her were no deeper than for any childhood play thing, a favorite toy, a beloved doll but not ever intending to be anything more. Some thing time would eventually cause to be cast aside no matter how beloved the item.
“Are you in love with her?” Nadrea asked.
He looked away, as if the lack of a glance might make the answer easier to accept “ I always have been”.
Nadrea stood and gathered her things, as she packed her bag downing gulp after gulp of straight vodka Vincent just sat there, in the dark motionless and silent, not offering any explanation, not attempting to comfort her or converse. She lingered but he didn’t move, she hoped he would explain, perhaps clarify something, share that he had a feeling of any kind of genuine emotion for her. She continued to drink trying to cleanse herself of what she had become, human. She wondered into the darkness and cold air, not knowing what to do next.
Nadrea would be found in the next morning she had been recovered from the park by Regan National, her blood thin from drink and the parts of her body that hadn’t been used to the point of near mutilation were chilled from exposure. Her breasts bruised a deep dark purple, cuts across them in an attempt to further defile her body, her thighs were raw an beyond words with marks, cuts and gashes from her knees extending to her waist. Her genitals raw and bleeding she looked as if she had been fucked with a knife to the point where you couldn’t tell if she had been a man or a woman. Upon her discovery by the park police the first assumption was it was a hate crime against a transsexual. Rape was considered, but upon investigation it was determined that all of the marks, every scratch, cut and bruise was except for some already fading from her inner thighs were self inflicted. A portrait of her hate for what she had become, she always had been able to separate her feelings and love from sex. A trait that Vincent didn’t have, there were his play things and then there was the woman he loved, a woman he had no intention of sharing with anyone else ever again.
As she laid there in the cold, her body destroyed, her mind long since gone her breaths shallow and fleeting even then her face was seductive. Nadrea à la fin elle fait un beau cadaver.
