grief is a wild night out
by Indigo Brewer
I lost my mother to breast cancer in 2016. Followed the year after by my grandmother to old age and the family dog by way of ran-the-fuck-over. My 21 year old brain couldn’t duck the heavy-handed fast blowing woes yet so I crawled in and out of bars until they closed and the bouncers shoulder-grab-shoved me out in the politest way possible. I quickly discovered the only places still open at 6am are seedy seething strip clubs, full of thirsty dark angels with clipped wings confined to walk a hopeless land unless they can buy themselves out. And there you were residing on Saturday nights, swaying like a Pohutukawa tree on stage. Limbs dancing in the sweat-air-breeze and red glitter falling with every swing of your ass or shake of your tits. Shed your bark on the pole and showed me your naked roots. You led me to the second floor after helping me punch my credit card PIN and I’d later find out that you cost $2000. I must have got booze-scammed hard or you were really an endangered stripper species. Either way you rolled one up and I high-minded remembered the Molly rock in my pocket. We broke bread over loose paper kush and teeth bit white dust chunks and talked for hours in the fun fairish mirror room upstairs.
When your shift was over they flicked on the bright lights and I watched you retreat to a blue hoodie, grey sweatpants and your mate Emily’s ride. I stumbled onto the early morning pavement, searching for a place to rest my banging head. Passing the homeless and a sleeping bag line of soon-to-be collectible sneakerheads in front of a streetwear store, I frantically found my phone was out of battery. The crystal we took kicked in a little late - must have been cut from a bad egg batch or laced with something rotten. For now here I was, starting to play detective by my lonesome self in search of a missing mattress. I found an empty flat in the bustling - but not yet woken - heart of town and there was a mattress base waiting for me in the backyard. But after all the fence hopping, unlocked window prying and crooked neck left-right checking, it didn’t end up fitting through the door.
The flat was a barren carpet wasteland with all but empty rooms except for one. Upstairs was a bedroom full of cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins. Clothes were thrown and belongings were strewn just to find a charger for my phone, but alas there weren’t any lightning cables - stupid cunt of an Apple thing. And after panic pacing every square inch of the house, up and down and back up the stairs, even the nooks and crannies started to look at me sideways so I told them to fuck off. Bad sinking feeling filled my gut, deep and hollow like a black hole void in my belly. I’m sure this is a dead girl’s room and I think her body is in the attic. I rummaged through her things and fashioned a makeshift shrine, trying to piece together her untimely passing. Then the almighty sun starts to blare outside and it must be lunchtime because there are knit spread picnics and giggling babies and lovey dovey couples in the park across the street. I catch a few perfect citizens eyeballing me and I bet they’re on to me - they don’t want me to solve this sad-storied uni student crime. Lightbulb thoughts send me racing to one of the front rooms with an airer and bedsheet at the ready, in a drug induced hope that I can make them believe I’m the tenant. I meet their ogling eyes again and they won’t look away. This is my house, this is my airer and this is my Sunday morning. Please stop fucking staring!
So I glare back with beady bloodshot eyes and channel disturbed-my-peace neighbour vibes until they shift gaze and I open the window to imitate an old man catching some fresh air for his humble abode. But inside I can hear Amanda crying upstairs. That’s her name and she’s still in the attic. I know because I found her diary and the padbolt keeping the manhole closed is only halfway shut. Hours go by, plotting how to get her down safely and undertake a postmortem analysis of her lifeless two-man lift body. But as fast as the opaque crushed glass toxin entered my bloodstream, it left in a hurry without a trace. Hastily, I checked my hair in the probably-not-deceased girl’s folding compact mirror and rushed out the door, making sure to lock it behind me because it’s the least I could do. Past the city hustle and never looking back. “If you’re fast enough, the gawks don’t matter” becomes my step-by-step mantra.
After a brisk twenty minute dash I arrive at railway station safety but lo and behold the booth is closed. “Cash Only Today Please.” Shit. I don’t have any change and I start to pace again but it’s anxiety fueled and a voice calls out my name. I can’t even see my own two feet yet so I ignore them rigid-headily and board the train on platform two, Johnsonville headed and homeward bound. I caught a lucky break because the ticket lady never came. I scurry scuttle home and our friends are leaving our apartment and meeting me in the middle of our suburban street and I realise you booked us in for a Sunday brunch catchup today. The sinking feeling comes back as I’m hugging them and excusing my absence with tales of a work-do gone wild but this time it’s guilt, not paranoia. I could see in their eyes and thine eyes unto mine, the stories I tell were mere masking lies.
So after 10 years, here’s the real long story short. I found silence in a stripper’s conversation and was punished by artificial earth.
Photo of Indigo Brewer
BIO: Indigo Brewer is an aspiring rookie poet from New Zealand with work publishied in Tarot Journal.