melancholia

The cat is called Vodka and she slinks through the flat like a small-pawed ghost, amber eyes dripping with disdain, the wet-red slit of her mouth yawning each time you look at her. She's grey, grey like sheets of iron and thunder storms, fat, with a little pink nose that gleams as she burrows curiously in the dark corners of each room.

We pretend she's a spy from Russia, so each time she walks in the room we cut our conversation and whisper to each other, using it as an excuse to grab each other's wrists and press our lips against the shell of our ears. Vodka's watching, she's listening, she'll report us. I can feel Jet's breath like moist fire on my throat, gnawing against my skin like a hungry mouse. Her fingers against the pulse point of my wrist, pressing on my veins so that I can feel the throb of my blood like a thumping, pulpy clock ticking down the seconds until she lets go, until my world stops.

For a while, things are happy.

"I met a guy today."

I look up from my magazine and frown.

Jet is stood against the kitchen counter, her fingers gripping her mug, nails painted sparkling green, eyes dancing with amusement. She's wearing tight black jeans and a t-shirt from a band she loves, her jewellery dancing like gleaming beetles on her wrists.

"What?" I snap, irritation crawling the length of my spine. My marrow feels like it is writhing under my jaw, making me a snapping, growling creature with small eyes and small teeth.

"I said, I've met someone. A guy. A nice guy."

I try to imagine what a nice guy would be to her. A lizard in faded jeans with an acoustic guitar strung to his scaly, rotten-green back. Twitching cocks and snarling lips, that's all she would want, I'm sure. I smirk into the magazine and feel something scathing and cruel surface my cold belly.

"Really," I deadpan.

"Oui, really." Her eyes are dancing, dancing like sparking-hot coals, cheeks flushed and fingers twitching like she's taken pills, except she hasn't because we've been lounging around the flat all day in our pyjamas. "He's a musician and he lives above this second hand book shop. Like Bernard."

"Is he like Bernard, then?" I stutter back a smile and her lips quirk lightly.

"Not at all. He does smoke a lot, though. He's coming over tomorrow, to show me his guitar and play me some songs."

My stomach is led and I am sinking, slowly like Mob-victims in their cement boots.

"Well," I say softly, looking at the same word I have read fifty times in my magazine; zebra, zebra, zebra, zebra, zebra, zebra, the zebra patterned heels, zebra, zebra, zebra. "I'm at work. So you can fuck him if you like."

Jet throws her head back and starts laughing, and the twist in my belly tells me there is something different in her laugh, something vindictive, cruel. Desperate.

"Love, I'd fuck him if you were here anyway."

Her nails slit deeper than she could ever imagine.