[P] & I wait for something to rot (party)

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

hug the world
suffocate it with a pillow

T

his party is fun, but there’s a reason I don’t envy Miriam, or Pilate, or Adonai for their importance. I do not particularly want to be important, I only want to be seen.

It’s easy enough: I stand at my booth in the courtyard, laughing with rich men and far richer women, smiling in a way that I know they will like. The lights are low out here and the music is softer; all the more ostentatious decoration and celebration is saved for the rooms that can be heard from the street, each one a neon sign that reads: come play.

(Or, I tell myself, to be more accurate, each is a neon sign that says “we are playing without you,” and an arrow that points to a door that’s not there.)

I see her see me before I really care that she does. I am used to being noticed–frankly, one of the only things I do without trying is draw attention, and the other is why I’m at this booth by myself in the first place–but there is something different here. I do not draw her eye like I expect, either with a hint of admiration or some amount of what I can only describe as ‘intimidation’ now that I’m several drinks in.

No. Nothing like that at all. This little girl looks hungry. Starved, almost. When her eyes meet mine it is not in a kind way. I stare at her as she comes. There is something in me that is fear and… an unnameable thing. Excitement.

I don’t want it. I don’t want to know it’s there.

As she draws closer, as the world around me unravels, I am growing impatient. I’m sure it is the way of all deadly things to be alluring, the way deep-sea fish dart through the dark with their own source of light. She is that, for me. A lamp bobbing in the black-blue of the courtyard.

I don’t want it. Really I don’t. But is grows as her shape does, nearer and nearer, until my skin crawling feels more like anticipation than outright fear.

Hello, she says, no more than a sigh on the wind, cutting knife-sharp through the cold night. I imagine the music that floats our way falling in tangible, rotting notes as they touch the planes of her face. A piece of my booth, a scrap of soft, wine-red fabric, falls away from the frame and curls into a gray-black leaf on the ground.

I look back up at the girl. I smile. I do not know if the thing twisting in me is bravery, or stupidity, or both. I don’t want it. I don’t have time to look. “Pilate wouldn’t like knowing you’re doing that to our things,” I say. “but I won’t tell him.”

I want to lean forward, to reach in and smile, but I cannot move at all.

“Well.” I sigh. “Truth or dare?”

@isolt (what's self-preservation hagar has apparently never met her)