melancholia

I wake up alone. The sheets are twisted around my legs, curled tight on my hips like a clingy lover, pushing my skin tight against fabric. I'm slick with sweat and I try fuzzily to remember my dream. It was vibrant and dizzying. I roll onto my belly, grin into my pillow and notice how cold it is.

There's a light on in the hallway, so I know she is up. Jet has fits of insomnia and I often wake up in the early hours of the morning to loud, electric sounds pulsating through the walls like I have been swallowed by a large god and his stomach is digesting and dissolving me.

I get up, peel away the sheets that stick to me like a second skin. There's no music, just silence, and the emptiness of our flat scares me. We've built ourselves up on noise - we are loud at night and loud in the morning. Jet is a concept wrapped in music, layered with a barbaric tongue and a constant need to confirm her existence. She would never sit in silence, let herself be lost in the moving world.

I find her in the bathroom, smoking cigarettes and lounging in the bath like a goddess bathing in milk or the blood of a thousand virgins. When I walk in her eyes flutter over me, butterflies on my skin, glassy and bright - she's taken something, I think, something good, something nice. She doesn't seem to mind me intruding, we have seen each other naked many times, living so closely together, it's hard not to.

She's so pale, a ghost lost at sea, her skin like a porcelain figure standing in an art gallery. Her ribs protrude like water ripples, creating a soft-boned cage for her heart, a stand for her small breasts, a ledge for the dip of her belly. Her hips jut like knives, so sharp you could break your fingers on them just trailing their lines and points. Her black crow-feather hair splays around her, floating like reeds in the water, slick like wet fur or oil, gleaming the way all dark things do.

"Hello love," she whispers, bringing her cigarette up to her lips, pulling back breath and letting ribbons of smoke unfurl from between her clacking teeth. "I got your things back."

My heart jolts against my bones, spurting blood fast through the narrow tubes of my body, warming me like hot lava. I take back a stolen gulp of air and look down at my feet, at my toenails - Jet spent two hours painting them different colours whilst we watched violent gangster movies the night before. I remember the feel of her breath on my shins, how she had her back to the television, her spine arching forwards as I sat on the sofa and tried to concentrate on the guns and thugs.

"Thanks," I murmur, moving forwards to sit on the loo.

"I'll give you a haircut next," she says, clipping her lips around her cigarette and using her free hands to grab at the bottle of shampoo sitting on the shelf. "Wash my hair?"

I shuffle forwards, my knees thumping against the bathtub, my shorts sliding higher up my thighs. She gives me the bottle, slick with water, the smell of coconuts rolling under my nose like a flirtatious sigh.

I wash her hair, like I'm a maid in olden times looking after some glamorous lady, her husband travelling around the world as a socialite, coming home smelling of cheap liquor and stale sex. I'd be the soft young maid, with kind eyes and swift hands, who helps her get out of bed in the morning when everything feels lonely and pointless.

I scrub her skull, careful not to scratch, watch her close her eyes and hum emptily. It echoes off the walls and I trace my finger down behind her ear, up the nap of her neck. She purrs.

"I always loved it when my mother washed my hair," she says softly. "It was like diving head first into femininity, the first traces of being a woman."

"Yeah," I croak, grabbing the metal jug from the side of the bath, scooping up water. "Head back." She obeys and I'm careful to cup my hand on her head so that the water doesn't fall into her eyes. The smell of steam and coconut is heady and delicious and I can feel the heat of the water lick at my cheeks and lips like a hungry tongue.

"You treat me like glass," she hums, coy smile drifting over her lips. "As if I'll fall apart if you're rough."

I don't look at her, instead I reach for the conditioner. "I suppose that's part of your charm, isn't it?" Her hand reaches out of the water, dripping like a monster emerging from a lake. I freeze as she presses her palm to my cheek, wet and hot, fingers smudging against my lips. "My little tiger, burning on the outside, just a tender little kitten in."

I finish washing her hair and go back to bed, my heart hammering under my ribs, thumping, pulpy with blood. She doesn't follow, instead I am lulled asleep by jazz music and her clear, chiming voice singing along.

--

I look through the boxes of things she collected from my old home, my old home that no longer exists, but is rather a memory of a memory that I'll soon stamp out of my brain. She got all my photo albums, even the one I had hidden under my mattress, the one full of photographs of my old lovers, all Polaroid pictures, taken when I was half-drunk on love and lust, dressed in underwear, where the light was dull and dark. I wonder if she tore the place to bits looking for things that interested her, or whether she asked him to help her. I hope not. I don't want them together, ever, even in the slightest of moments.

She stole a few records, I notice, mildly amused. Some of them aren't even mine, but she took them anyway. There's a whole box of mix tapes and CD and vinyl, some of them I can't stand anymore, because of the memories attached to them. She took some of my clothes, only a few, only the ones that suited her current fashion, the fashion she had insisted I be part of. The rest are lost.

I jump as Jet clamberers loudly into the kitchen, a Styrofoam cup steaming between her long piano fingers, nails the color of cherries. She's wearing a knee-length floral dress, belt pressed tightly around her skinny waist, beads and charms clacking merrily on her neck and wrists. She's beautiful, as always, her lips painted red like she's been sucking the juice out of strawberries.

"Love, I'm just going to the market for some food. We're out of edible things, we might get rickets if we keep this up. Want this soup?" She steps over my things and starts fidgeting irritably with her sunglasses. "I got it from that café across the road. It's French onion, you like that, don't you?"

I nod mutely and she passes it to me. "Anyway, yeah, I'm going out, is there anything you want? We're out of peanut butter, which you seem to love, want me to get some?"

She's talking fast, like the devil has hold of her tongue. I wonder how many pills she has taken today.

"Sushi," I croak. "Can you get sushi, for dinner?"

She smiles big, Cheshire, exotic, and my heart does a funny little dance behind my ribs.

"'Course, love. I'll be back later. Why don't you put your stuff wherever you want it?"

I nod again, unsure where to look as she starts pulling at her belt. "Anyway, bye." She leans forwards, presses a timid little kiss on the side of my mouth and trots elegantly out of the room.

The color princess. Where would I be without her?

Dead. Dying. Swallowing cum for three quid a pop, just to buy food.

I take a sip of my soup and stare blankly at the boxes on the floor.