Alien

The dress was blue with purple, silver, green sequins. Fish scales. And when she touched it, she could feel it tremble from its past life. Sequins came off and stuck to sweaty fingertips.
She would squeeze into this dress tonight, seams gently tearing around her hips. The flesh below her ribs lined with red. She would wear the dress with the seven thousand dollar silver ring bought by her parents, who are not here. In the moments of solitude, after waking and before sleeping, she yearned for someone's eyes to look at, to look through. Lonely in her constant body. 

But then, there she was. Standing in the corner of a room at a party with eyes full of the promise of possibility. She reached, pulled at her fingers and mouth all greed, give she said. 

Lipstick smudged into her creases. She used the key to let her into her home, the bed that she had slept in alone. There on the wall looking down was the family portrait, her eleven year old face and the tooth that used to turn inwards. She wished that the photograph had never been taken. She touched the photo, dust flecks spiralled slowly. She played Gnossienne number one and looked at her the whole time, her hands slipping easily over the white and black. No one played anymore and the piano had gone stale lemonade flat. The music moved around the house, slipping under doors, pressing fingers against windows. She had to turn away to laugh, so she couldn’t see. 

Her sheets seemed to sigh as she peeled them open.
She could feel the hard edges of her heels, hands, elbows. Her mouth in the place where the jaw starts, in the hollow of the collar bone. There is a photograph that she took found hidden. Her naked back to the camera and she looks to the sun. She does not recognise herself, yet she remembers what she felt in that moment.
She woke from a dream in which she stood close to her, looking out at the dark world. In the dream they had hidden in a glasshouse. The place still lingered with the smell and sound of grass, echoes of a garden at sunset. They had spoken about, nothing- and she had looked at her with such longing. In that moment beneath the aged glass, only existing for each other. There was no one else. 

She could feel her move beside her on the bed, watching the sun rise over the wallpaper. Reading the spines of the books that she kept close. Looking at the pictures of people who had died and who had grown up since and at the tooth that turned inwards. Three wooden birds on the mantelpiece, faded by the light of the day.
She turned them around with one finger, so they faced the other side. The dress crumbled into the floor. 

-

They walked to the local pool that closed late on Tuesdays.
She stood in the shallow end of the medium lane, wearing a swimsuit that had faded from red to palest pink. She covered her hips with her hands, hiding stretched seams. A swimming class in the little kids pool where babies were dragged through the blue by cautious mothers who held tight to fat wrists. The lifeguard paced the edge of the pool, his eyes forever scanning. The water licked at his shoes. Soon, people begin to drip away and it’s just them in the pool and the lifeguard eating lollies and watching the clock.
She surfaces, shimmering, her hair a fan. I have loved this day with you she says, although she shouldn’t have because she lets go and instead of looking at her, swims away.

The blue of the water bounced, reflected on the wall. She swam to her, she held her wrists again, and the rain fell around them. 

That night she heard her sing. She stood in the garden with its lock and grey flowers that nodded between black iron gates. A pale face turned to the sky. 

Here comes the stars. Tumbling around me. And there's the sky where the sea should be.

She smiled, wrapped up in soft blankets. She scratched at her neck and in the dark didn't see the blood beneath her nails until later. 

She stayed close to her for the whole day until her brother knocked on the door that evening. She sat on the cream couch in the hallway, and they sat on the front step. They talked and she heard some. Take the truth and break her world or keep your reality. It's the choice. She didn't understand. The soft of their voices made her sigh into the fabric. What do you want? The brother said. 

She could see her through the curtain that lifted a little in the cold wind. She shifted away from her brother and looked up at the lights slipping over the sky. 

What do you want.

I don't want for anything. 

She rubbed the back of her neck and felt the skin erode. Bought her hand forward and cupped within the palm, saw the filmy peels of pink. 

They stood up tall and and she walked to the kitchen, turned on the lights, stove, kettle. She washed her hands in warm water.
She closed the door on her brother, but she could still see his shape for many hours afterwards.
He glowed a little, but it was just the light. 

They sat on the roof at midnight and watched as the pink and gold sparks washed over the sky, the grey smoke lingered. And again, she sang, a strange song. We will never go again, like the other years. And to say that it was the town, of my first love, I do not believe that I will return there one day. As the song finished and a blue light from one last dying firework passed over her face, she climbed down to her bedroom, closed the door. She lifted her hair and could see the yellow of fat, the thick red of muscle in the opening on her neck. 

The final day she woke, curled within her. She turned the three wooden birds with one finger.

They sat outside in the sun, she ate an orange and sucked the juice from her forearm. She touched her face and she could smell the fruit every time she breathed in. 

In the bathroom mirror, the light illuminated the white of the vertebrae. She stared into her own eyes for a time. She could hear someone leaving. 

They stood at the gate, at the very edge of the land, beneath the shadow of the house. 

I never asked you she said. Do you believe in something other than this world? 

I don't know. 

I do she said and the blue light bloomed from nowhere and filled, she was blinded and brought hands to her face with a cry that she couldn’t hear over the noise. Her figure moving away, swallowed, she fell, calling her name. The red roar of the post truck, a little early today, came around the corner and clipped into her side, a hard paper edge cut at her cheek and as the envelope spun away she fell and was lost underneath a sky full of soft words written in the dark - falling from within the ruined post truck that lay on its side. She found a postcard with her mothers handwriting. Held on. 

-

She lit a candle that smelt like pear. It flooded the bathroom with light and sweet. 

Water ran from gold taps, hot against the soles of her feet. But she shivered, shaked. She could feel the bones in her back click and move and shake. The water moved to absolute stillness, only broken by a cold drip of the tap. She held her breath and looked up at the world from the bottom of the white bath. She closed her eyes. 
She was so young, yet saw her life stretch on. She would watch others fall in love and even when surrounded, would feel alone. Finally unlatching herself from the vessel of this world. As she grew older she would remember her voice and the touch of her body, the memory would change, twist and fade completely. She looked at the moon through the window as it eclipsed. She raised one dry finger to the back of her neck. The skin was whole. Complete. 

Like it had never happened. 

The candle fell and was snuffed out at once and she was bent over the toilet naked and dripping. She wished her mother was there to smooth back her hair, to hold her. 

But she was all alone in the big house.