Breaking Glass II

Anne. The ceiling is unfamiliar. The realisation is tormentuous. The disappointment in myself spreads across my face like a desert sunset, burning twice as hot. I feel as though I could be physically ripped in half as I try to decide between curling down as far as I can into this alien bed and ripping off the sheets in disgust and running until I'm on the other side of the world.
I settle for the compromise of a more sane person, and try and leave as quietly as possible. My clothes form convenient stepping stones towards my shoes, and I dress myself as I get nearer the door. I check I have everything and make sure I leave no trace of myself. I don't want to be found by whatever happened last night.

Outside on the pavement I can practically smell Sunday morning. I'm not the only young female blinking in the first autumn light, but I'm convinced I'm the only one considering mass murder right now. I instead settle for marching in the general direction of my flat, firing death glares at anyone whose gaze so much as accidentally sweeps past me. Right now I'm possibly most angry at the fact that I didn't bring my coat with me last night, but as I piece together what went on from about midnight onwards, my loathing is solely for myself, and my step becomes dragged and my glance desolate.

From the time thinking about how I was alone, there was then sound. The image fires up like an old-fashioned cinema projector, a clicking and whirring and sudden colour injected into the film. I'm reminded of watching a James Dean movie in an outdoor cinema. If anything my motion picture is as tragic. Nowhere near as beautiful though. Something that people will forever be mislead into thinking is that there is beauty in tragedy. Hearing about a tragedy makes it easy to see the beauty. Seeing a tragedy makes it harder, but remembering it reminds a person that beauty came out of it. Living a tragedy, however, is different. To live a tragedy and label it that is to see no beauty in anything. That, it could be said, is the tragedy itself.
Sometimes I wonder if I'd be better off labelling my existence a comedy.
The film starts.
- Are you high?
A voice behind me. I look to see who they're talking to, but no one seems likely to respond. They'll figure it out eventually, how things work around here.
I jump at the hand on my shoulder.
- Hey, did you hear me?
I turn around to see what is, at first glance, someone who blends entirely in with the red background, but quickly realise that they're simply dressed in white, pale skin and hair acting as a perfect projection screen for the oddly bloodlike air around us.
- No, I'm not, and I don't want to be, sorry.
I try and give the guy a look that says 'I don't want to buy your drugs.' He seems vaguely amused and one eyebrow arches.
- Neither do I.
He's still holding my shoulder, which is a bit odd.
Before I can stop myself there's resignation in my eyes and comfort enticing me from where his finger strays onto my bare shoulder. There's plans, excitement, life and murder in the wonderfully not-dilated pupils I reluctantly inspect.
For maybe an hour and a half we do not touch again. I follow him in silence as we walk down the road to where he is taking me. Half the reason I'm doing this is because it feels like a stupid thing to do. I'm irritated with myself for trusting Eloise tonight, and so I'm teaching myself a lesson by seeing what trusting anyone leads to. I'm quite interested in the thought that he might just take me to an abandoned warehouse and murder me.
When we get there I'm surprised by the relatively conservative decor. The lift isn't broken and the building isn't filthy. On the journey up I stare at the doors, and he does too, occasionally giving the side of my face a knowing smile.
We enter his flat with still no words. I take off my shoes by the door and follow him, ridding myself of an item of clothing with every step. It feels boring, this prospect I haven't been met with in a very long time. There's no anticipation here, no rush to follow this person to their room. The only reason I move quickly is because it is cold, and now I'm in this situation I want it to be over.
-Here.
He gives me a glass of something. I don't know how he got that so quickly. It's a bitter spirit, one I haven't tasted in ages, and never really liked anyway, and can't put a name to, but I finish it quickly because I'm sick of my head by now.
On assessment, I suppose this person is attractive. I don't know why he's all dressed in white, he looks a bit like a person in the film of A Clockwork Orange - not the book, mind, because they got the costume wrong in the film. In the book they wear black. All black.
This inevitably leads to my wondering where he keeps his baseball bat and stores the bodies. I try not to think about this again. Standing out in his ghostly features are brown eyes. They don't match the rest of him because they aren't white. They focus mainly on my own eyes as things happen around me. They almost distract from how much I am aware of myself going through the generic, repetative motions of casual sex. I'm grateful of a thing to concentrate on that isn't my hatred for my body, gender and self giving in to it.
I could think for hours about what it is to be female. Open, destroyed, the natural victim. As he takes from me I envy his body. I was not born to be in this situation. I was not born to know this repetition, this dullness, this acceptance.
I make the decision to shut the boy out. I close my eyes and in my head, I leave the room.

And now I'm here. Back in the land of the living- well, not quite. I open the door and collapse once again, and my head meeting the pillow is the burial of the idea to go out ever, ever, again.