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August 27, 2020
Flash Dancers: Ekphrastic Singles - "Fallen Angel" by Kyle Hemmings
The Flash Dancers: Ekphrastic Singles series is curated by Meg Pokrass. Authors pair an original work of flash fiction with a song.
"Fallen Angel" by Kyle Hemmings
Inspired by “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” by The Beatles
You've been keeping a count. Your estimate: she appears at the edge of the wharf two-three nights a week. As if taking in the vastness, the solitude of nothing. It's around the time you're learning to play the harmonium. Something about her gently pulls you downward.
Your butterflies get risky. You creep behind her and clear your throat. She turns. Unimpressed by your cliched mod look--your Cuban heels, your paisley print shirt with button down collar, your cotton motorcycle cap.
In a tight, too tight baby doll dress and no shoes, she could pass for a darker shade of Jean Shrimpton with bruised feet. The two of you stumble into small talk and that leads to bigger things--murder on the docks, how London is becoming a city of zombies with no sense of beat or echo, how her father never recovered from his wounds, courtesy of Franco's men, circa 1937.
Light and dark play hide and seek across her face.
She calls herself Fallen Angel, the same name as her all-girl band. Angel Caido. And says it's hard, no, impossible, really, to score an album contract.
"It's a boy's world, isn't it?" she says.
Then she states that she knows your face from somewhere but can't recall the name.
Her eyes twinkle.
How can that be? you wonder. Is she playing you?
You tell her that you too are in a band working on the purest album of a career--a white album.
***
At night, you visit her working the underground clubs. Her singing reminds you of a beautiful manic depressive, a comet falling and reversing.
At a square wooden table, decorated with placemats of a cartoonish King George, she confides that her fingerpads are still too soft for the Fender. They either form huge blisters or fall off. Sometimes, she adds, the pain is so bad, she curls herself into a musical whole note and cries herself to sleep. When she awakes, her fingers can't move.
She then leans toward you and looks you directly in the eye. In a hushed voice, she issues a proposition: she will sleep with you in exchange for a contract with a major label.
The air in the club reeks of stale cigarette smoke and a cheap mint-smelling varnish.
You sit back in your seat and study her soft dark eyes, sucking you in like a voice in a tunnel, the small, tense mouth.
You agree, but warn her that there are no guarentees. Never in this life.
She lowers her head and with her fingernail plays with a small knot in the wood table. She says she always wanted to be famous, if only for a short while. She always wanted to be loved from a distance because up close, it almost killed her more than once. She admits that her worst fear is to end up a waste, a nothing that no one can see or hear.
***
In her room overlooking the docks and the impression of white birds flying too close to the water, your thrusts begin to fade. Then your hands, your fingers seem to go through her until you can only feel yourself. She's getting too thin, you think.
You dress and reach the door. You turn. She's lying on her side at the edge of the bed. Her face is titled to the floor. You can't tell if her eyes are half-open. You want to say something more than a "good night" or "I'll be in touch." But the words don't form. And anyway, she might not hear you. She might be asleep.
She then mumbles "Did you ever have sex on broken glass?"
She doesn't look at you.
"No, " you say, somewhat taken aback.
"My favorite place to shag is the basement of this old abandoned school that I once went to after moving here. They used to make us wear these dreadfully starched uniforms with thick knee socks that made us sweaty in the summer. One time, a teacher took me to that basement and we had sex on shattered glass. I didn't bleed. But it took me a long time to walk away. Sex on broken glass is riskier, is unforgettable. And it might make you hate yourself. But I want to go back and do it again. Like a circle. So I can feel whole, normal. Let's"
"Yes," you say, "maybe next time.
Your turn to leave. It's the last time you ever see her.
Kyle Hemmings is a retired health care worker. He has been published in The Airgonaut, Jellyfish Review, Twin Cities Review, and elsewhere. His latest collections of poetry/prose are Scream from Scars publications and Split Brain on Amazon Kindle. He loves '50s Sci-Fi movies, manga comics, and pre-punk garage bands of the '60s
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