MINYA
take that look from off your face
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
you ain't gunna burn my heart out
Slowly, slowly, she draws the fire down the curve of her throat. Closer, closer, her hair slips toward the licking flame. Beyond the glow of the vibrant fire, the rest of the Scarab was black, save for the flicker of lights dotted hither and thither. Minya smiles to the black, as if she can see each member of her audience.
Oh she feels the heat of the flames as they brush at her cheek, hissing and laughing. The music is loud in her ears, it drowns out the voice of the Scarab – filled with revelry, laughter, the roll of dice and the chink of glasses.
Her show ends as her lips and teeth close over the fire and it is gone. Suddenly everything is black. Suddenly the darkness without fire is so utterly complete. Suddenly she is just a girl locked in a mercenary’s trailer being dragged out into the heart of the desert. The only air, the only light was what could filter in through the tiny bullet holes sporadically sprayed across the wooden walls.
The stage is firm beneath her feet as she turns suddenly. The air in the den is as stiflingly hot, as airless as the tiny cell. Her limbs are as unsteady as the rattling wagon wheels that rocked her cage this way and that, but she walks with the grace of a girl well used to hiding within her every piece that screams and cries with horror.
Minya glitters in gold. She smiles in beauty and every inch of her is as divinely beautiful as a picture. Every inch of her steel skin is polished like gems. Every inch of her is fake. Except, of course, for the gems, for the myriad of jewels that litter her torso. No, each one of them is real, each one sent to her with adoration and hope. She keeps each piece and she vows to wear every one.
There are more gifts, resting beneath the golden light of her dresser. They blink and sparkle and beg to be worn. In Minya’s mouth is only poison and her veins are full of ash. Oh the gypsy carts call her, the hiss of flames carried upon the sigh of the midnight winds. She will leave the Scarab this night, she will slip into a caravan of travelling artists and sleep beneath a blanket of stars.
But, for now, she slips through the backstage curtain and out into the main rooms of the Scarab. Her acid pink hair is a sheet of silk that cascades down her slender throat. Beneath the lights Minya glitters, with diamond dust upon her lashes, with glitter across her skin. Within her antlers trinkets hang and they glitter, catching the eyes of adoring fans. And oh, beneath the fan of her lashes she smiles demurely, beatifically at each of them, her gaze studiously avoiding the mirror and the pauper girl who smiles a grin of dirt back at her. Oh, was that truly her? A shudder slips along the slender curve of her spine and she steps up to the bar.
“White.” Is all she says to the bartender, but he knows and places before the broken girl a glass of semillon. It is nectar upon her tongue and oh she drowns in it, oh she drinks it and knows it is the most expensive bottle here. She knows that if she lingers just a moment longer upon its taste, it would not be wine at all, but water and poison or desert water slick with pollution.
Minya is safe and adored now. Yet still she does not look too closely to the wine glass and the broken girl who stares back
Anyone is so very welcome! <3 | "speaks" | notes: <3
