Mouse
The well-used vanities in the back room at Mamba’s were smeared with red lipstick. Hairspray-slathered mirrors trapped flies that had hoped to find relief from the dry East Texas heat inside the dark, wet jungle of the strip club. There was only one dressing station, Ruby noticed, in the far corner by the washroom, which was pristine. Almost swelling with the slow pulse of a white-hot glow.
“Whose place is that?” Her voice came out as little more than a peep. She felt her cheeks flush. Maybe she was, like her old boss at the roller rink had said, just a little too small-in-the-world to be one of the featured girls at the classiest joint in town. I can see your ribs under yer skin, Ruby. That ain’t beauty, he’d said, wiping fat palm over sweaty upper lip. That’s weakness.
“Shit, girl, don’t even dream about getting that spot.” Mindy May, Ruby’s guide to the underbrush of Mamba’s spoke in a deep growl, perfected over years of howling at and smoking with her clientele. “That’s Adder’s spot. She’s kind of the queen around here. The type of dancer that makes the rest of us seem not so lethal.” Mindy looked over to Adder’s station and gave it a quick nod of respect. “The longer you stick around the further back towards the washrooms you get.” She popped stale-smelling cinnamon gum against glistening white teeth, looking Ruby up and down. “Best take the spot closest to the stage.”
Mindy clomped away in her platforms, leaving Ruby to place her outfits, still in plastic from their trip to the dry cleaner, down on the little empty dresser in front of her filthy mirror. The clothes smelled fresh. Awkwardly virtuous against the musty backdrop of drugstore perfume and clumping, sweat-soaked mascara.
She wandered down the aisle of vestibules, seeking out an identity. Maybe a place to hide. All the girls’ spots were draped in the same glitter, cluttered with the same rusted curling irons. Rhinestone leather slips. Empty boxes of blister-sized bandages.
Except Adder’s. Hers was a nest carefully carved out from a different world. Radiant like Hollywood. Moving like Manhattan. Ruby slinked quietly towards it, tentative steps falling in time with the music on the nearby stage, booming through thin chipboard walls.
Your cruel device
Your blood, like ice
One look could kill
My pain, your thrill.
Adder’s chair was hard-backed, slippery steel. Ruby glided into it.
I want to love you but I better not
Touch (don’t touch)
I want to hold you but my senses
Tell me to stop
It was cold against her sweat-soaked back. She sunk deeper in, hypnotized.
I hear you calling and its needles
And pins (and pins)
I want to hurt you just to hear you
Screaming my name
Don’t want to touch you but
You’re under my skin (deep in)
Ruby slipped out of her jeans. Shook out of her milk-stained tanktop. Heat seared her skin, wanting to slide off, onto the floor. She picked up a boa that sat on the dresser. Wrapped it around her neck. It coddled her veins, squeezing them until her pulse pumped boldly in her ears, falling in time with the beat pounding through the floor, through her hips. She closed her eyes.
She was up on stage in legs that would never be hers, the bass thump, thump, thumping in her chest. Her hands slipped around the cool pole. Like vine after the rain. The crowd called for her. Caws and catcalls and guttural worship from somewhere deep. They were bullfrogs; fat and still, waiting.
I want to kiss you but your lips
Are venomous poison
You’re poison running through my veins
You’re poison, I don’t wanna
Break these chains
An unfamiliar strength rose up through her calves as she twisted them around the metal, suffocating her prey: They stared from the front row frozen. Their mouths opened, sucking in desperate breaths.
Tight in her clutches, they were helpless.
One hand over another, holding tight, she curled up the pole until she was at the top, and then twisted her body backwards. She held there shivering with cool calculation, surrounded by the hot sweat of sin rolling around in the dirt. One last smile, the fangs coming out…
Pain. Digging at her throat.
Ruby opened her eyes. The music had stopped. There was a sharp plastic fingernail at her jugular. Her neck exposed, her body open, she was trapped in a chair that wasn’t hers.
The woman was tall. Black-ice eyes and thick brown hair straight and shining over her shoulders. She traced a line down Ruby’s neck, hand steady. The breath on Ruby’s throat was strong, slow, controlled. Her own was strangled out by fear.
“Christ, honey.” The woman whispered in her ear. “You’re going to get eaten alive.”
This was a freewrite exercise in which I wanted to write a scene involving a character who was mostly absent. How it came to be about strippers, I have no idea. Oh, and the song lyrics are from “Poison” by Alice Copper. Apparently the girls like to dance to it.