Mascara
By: Sierra
the butcher, the baker, the candle love maker, the
makeup that shows the soul…
The mascara that dripped down his face was makeup
that he hadn't put on himself, he knew.
He tried to remember, back to the night before, but
the memories were blurred and black in his mind. The very fact that he hadn't
put it on should have been one of those hazy memories too, but for some reason,
that certainty stood very clear and sure in his mind, as if it had been etched
in crystal in his head. While all the other occurrences of the night were
broken and clattering and shattered, he could almost read the fine lines of
inscription telling him that someone he knew very well had done this.
His hand wandered up to his face again, to feel the
slightly sticky black trails down his face that he had first felt caked into
his skin when the sun stirred him from sleep. He had had the hardest time
opening his eyes to see the sun streaming in his window, and for a panicked
moment, he had almost thought he was blind.
But there his eyes were, open and smudged black on
the lids, up to the eyebrows, and then down to the dark circles under his eyes.
Normally this area was dark anyway, but this morning the black was pitch and
heavy, because from there lines of mascara trailed all the way into the corners
of his mouth and across his nose. One offending line even inched its way onto
his chin.
He saw all of this through the small pocket mirror
he had fumbled for on the table next to his bed as soon as he had woken up. He
let his fingers trace down each line, wondering who he knew had done this to
him, and most importantly in his mind, why. He knew he had been insanely drunk
last night, to the point where remembering was barely an option, so it wouldn't
have be out of the ordinary to do stupid things just for the hell of it. But
the point that bothered him the most were those trails of makeup, falling and
dripping away from his eyes. His mind was cobwebs, sticky and tangled, but he
knew one thing for certain. Obviously he had been crying.
And maybe he had been crying because he had found
some unfortunate soul to listen to all of his problems- the stress, the love,
the heartache, the anger, the confusion- after experimenting with the mascara.
Maybe he had pulled them aside and sat them down on some dark leather couch in
the club, swung his legs over the side of it, and started bawling, because
alcohol always made him emotional, as he knew from incidents in the past. And
that stranger had probably listened, nodded, and let him cry because they were
just as drunk as he was, before he stumbled home to his bed.
He wished all of that would have made perfect sense
to him, and he simply could have written it off as another night he would be
embarrassed of. However, something still pulled at his mind.
The mascara was open on his beside table, and most
of it was spilled out in a pool that was still wet and creeping into the cracks
of the wood. His abnormally dark eyelashes darted over this, and he almost
reached out to touch the seeping mess. There were spots of the makeup all over
the dresser, and even on the ceramic of the small lamp in the far corner of the
table. The black stains continued all the way onto his sheets, which he twisted
in his fingers and studied, scared to go on further in his investigation.
Licking his dry lips, he swallowed.
Still in the haze of early morning and sleep, he
lifted his head off his pillow and looked down the rest of his sheets, seeing
large specks of black dotting all the way from his feet to where his hands held
the hem of the sheet tightly. The mascara looked stark and harsh on the white
sheets- bright black spots vibrantly obvious on their clean background. He let
his head collapse back onto his pillow with a sigh, wondering and trying to
remember as the bed moved beneath him.
The ceiling of his room, barely touched by the
light coming into his room, told him nothing. It was gorgeous and pale and
paper thin light, swirled with color. Vaguely, this reminded him of Lance, the
same way Lance was reminded of JC every time he saw glitter or dry-rimmed
coffee cups and leather. And the same way Lance was reminded of JC by the smell
of smoke and sweat and pencil tips and violet, JC was reminded of Lance by the
smells of orange and damp and fabric detergent. He could barely smell orange,
wisps of it out of the corner of his mind, as he stared at the colors on his
ceiling.
With another sigh, he turned over, where something
immediately caught his eye. His chin inched upwards, his stubble rough on the
pillow, and there on his pillow he saw trails and trails of black. Finding the
energy from his surprise to flip his body over on the bed to look at it more
closely, he could see almost the entire front of his pillow dipped in a dull
color of black. Most of it was smudged, but there were definite trails that had
fallen from his eyes and stained the pillow case. He even found those trails,
creeping and rolling during his sleep, tracing down onto his chest.
He took one finger, licked it, and ran it across
the lines on his chest, right near his collar bone. He pressed a finger to the
soft skin near the bone and tried to remember any sort of touch at all from the
night before. He could remember none. The mascara there wiped away with the
movement of his finger, but left it stained black, a token and postcard from
dreams and ghosts to his reality.
Letting his face fall into the stained pillow, he
could almost still smell the alcohol on it, and could almost still feel the
dampness from his own tears. Something had happened, he knew, something each
new look was hinting at more and more. He was curious to the point where he
wanted to lie there, facedown, until he had racked his brains enough to
remember, but at the same time he was almost positive he didn't want to know
what had happened. He muffled a groan into the pillow, stretching out his legs.
He was suddenly to the point of taking a shower to
wash off all the smudges of black from his face and body, and drinking a quart
of orange juice before anything else to get the stale taste of alcohol out of
his mouth, when he felt a movement in his bed. A jolt of frozen energy ran
through him as his eyes widened. At first JC decided to lie perfectly still,
his face still in the pillow and his senses turned up to the breaking point.
There was someone in the bed with him. The someone groaned, turned over, and
settled back into the sheets with a sigh. With one more indistinct movement,
the body was still again.
JC held his breath for another minute or so, until
he felt his lungs would burst and his cheeks began to burn. Then slowly,
quietly, he lifted his head off of the pillow and opened his eyes back up from
the sticky mess they were still in. He finally rubbed his eyelashes apart with
hurried hands, and saw the body turned toward him, tangled in his white sheets
that had black spots reaching all the way to the opposite side. The body rose
and fell in a steady rhythm, and from the smudges of black in the body's hair,
JC almost wondered if it was true
that he had brought home that random drunk person he might have spilled all his
problems to in the club.
He realized with a distinct sinking in his chest
that he would have no such luck. As he squinted and turned to get a clear look
at the face of the person in his bed, he sucked in his breath and whispered,
"Lance?"
There was silence as an answer, only the light
breathing that reminded him a little of a small flickering flame.
JC was glad to see the man he loved in his bed with
him, but he couldn't understand why it was Lance
that was also covered in mascara, up and down his arms and spotted into his
hair. JC looked closely at his eyes, but he couldn't see any mascara there at
all, only speckled every now and then across his cheek and smudged into his
hands. It almost looked like dark ash, but more full of pitch and more vibrant,
like his body had been splattered with paint from an artist's pallet.
He looked a bit like an angel like that, his chest
rising and falling slowly and his face and body a mess of speckled black. JC
reached out to touch Lance's face, because something about the entire situation
and the rumpled, tousled, and stained state their bed was in was drawing his
hand to Lance's touch. He suddenly felt a need to hold him tightly, securely,
and bind him to his body with every ounce of strength he had. It became a
pounding in his head, until he could almost feel sparks jumping from his
fingertips to Lance's cheek. Something about the scene made JC feel panicky, as
if the sparks would die at any moment and a giant magnet would fling him from
one opposite side of the room to the other, away from Lance. He wanted to touch
him so badly, and make sure he was real. And suddenly he knew why.
He almost leapt off the bed in one movement,
springing backward onto the carpet and snapping his hand away before it made
contact with Lance's smooth face. JC held his breath and looked around wildly
as he steadied his hands on the bed's comforter and stared down at Lance's bare
feet nearly hanging off the bed. There were little black dots there, too.
Little black dots that mocked him and had held such wonder and novelty and
confusion only a few moments ago that now held such raw, striking memories.
It was Lance. He had known it in a semi-conscious,
half-awake stupor sort of way as he had turned over, searching his bed for the
black intruders and a drunken stranger to explain his state, and finding his
lover instead. But it hadn't quite clicked until he felt it, and he knew, and
he remembered. The crystal in his
mind came together, the pieces fit back into the places they had cleanly broken
off from, and his heart pounded at it.
.
Lance, the one that he had always trusted to hold
his emotions stable, to hold everything together, to support JC… Lance, the one
that drank and usually ended up covering JC with smothering kisses, had done
something totally unexpected that night.
The blond, having swallowed several drinks and reached
a point past his limit and past even JC's limit, had done the expected at
first. He was lounged across a leather couch in the club with his blue-eyed
lover, with JC looking to Lance in his drunken state like the most beautiful
angel on earth. He shone like glitter, he smiled like oceans, he laughed like
love, he radiated energy and Lance could almost see the unpolished halo tipping
slightly off of JC's head and slipping into his drink.
Lance laughed, touched the angel's face, and
straddled him, beginning to feel every inch of his face with his lips, until he
wanted nothing more then merge into one with the angel. His angel, his soft, brown haired angel. He whispered it into the
angel's ear, and JC believed it.
Very faintly, out of the corner of both JC and
Lance's tunneled vision, there were other people in the room, but three stood
out most prominently.
"There they go again…", the brown haired
one mumbled, pushing his hair back and revealing dripping sweat on his
forehead.
"Get them out of here…", the sun-child
whispered, a girl hanging off each arm.
"We've warned them about this, not here, not
now…", the dark-eyed one rasped, his voice gone into his drink along with
the deep orbs of his eyes.
They both were aware of this in only dream-like
way, because all they felt and all they knew was the leather they were sitting
on and the skin on their own skin that felt alive and beautiful and shining in
the dim lights. Feeling tugging on their arms, they were pulled up as one body
off the chair and back into a mess of limbs in an up-right position. And
although the faces were grim around them, smoky eyes without a purpose and
without much of a care of a future, the two laughed.
They found the entire scene around them gorgeous
and funny, even the girl in the corner nursing her drink and bruises. They
found beauty in the couple in the corner in vintage clothes and rolling pool
balls on the floor for entertainment. But most of all, they found their own
faces exquisite, and collapsed upon each other in smiles and giggles and
laughter, even as they were pushed out the door into the night air.
It whipped by their warm cheeks like a blast of
ice, but that made them only feel more alive. Averting stares from the
late-night city crowd prowling under the neon lights, they stumbled together,
their voices loud in the night and over the din of the music inside.
"And where is it, angel?", Lance asked
the celestial being next to him, even more drunk on his laughter.
"What, heaven?" The blue eyes lit up,
sparkling in the bright signs high above their heads.
"No, no…", Lance gulped, holding JC up
from falling to the pavement below. "But close… the hotel?"
"Second star to the right and straight on till
morning," he giggled, collapsing back against the storefront behind them
and slightly shaking the closed iron gates protecting it. He lifted his face to
the sky and realized he could barely make out the stars beyond the bright
lights that drowned them out so very high. "No…" JC whispered, letting
his hand that pointed upwards down slowly. "That must not be it,
then."
Lance attempted a frown through his laughter in
concentration. "We need to find it… because… why?"
"So we can fly," JC uttered in a hush of
a lighted voice. He drew Lance closer to him up against the storefront and iron
gate so that they touched noses. He laughed at Lance's confused face and then
gently pulled away from the side of the sidewalk and ran out into the middle of
it. "And we can fly…," he said, spinning around with his arms open
wide and his face to the sky, "Here!" He stopped abruptly, his right
arm outstretched to a building only a few feet away.
The sign in front, pearl colored and painted in a
rosy hue, was in fact the right hotel building, and JC and Lance shuffled
together toward it as if by divine intervention. Or, as in Lance's case, JC was
the divine intervention that led them there.
Given a sly look that showed the flame in Lance's
eyes, JC rose in the cream colored elevator with him and gave his own attempt
at a look as well, which was more of
a drunken grin. As they collapsed together again, never quite off the roller
coaster of lights and laughter they had boarded almost an hour ago, a smell of
orange and violet wafted through the air.
.
Lance pushed JC up against the back of the
bedboard, still fully clothed. As JC sat there, his back imprinted in hotel
pillows, Lance climbed over his long sprawling ripped jeans and reached JC's
chest, moving heavily with breath. Lance's eyes were swimming with alcohol and
energy, and looked once deeply into JC's eyes with lust. Then they shot away.
JC had his own eyes closed in anticipation of
Lance's lips and touch and was smelling in the electric air. When he opened
them into nothingness, however, he glanced across the dim room to see his
lover's back to him. Lance steadied himself on a chest of drawers and sucked in
breath with a passion.
"La…nce?"
"You see," his voice unfurled into the
thick silence, "I was walking down Branch Avenue today, looking through
the stores for that one book you recommended to me awhile ago. Remember?"
Staring and blinking and trying to focus in his
drunken state at Lance's back, and not quite understanding why he was met with
air when he had almost touched passion,
heat, and lust a few moments ago, JC nodded dumbly.
"I… um…"
"And on the way there," Lance
interrupted, striking a match from a packet in one of the drawers and watching
it ignite into flame, "I saw this gorgeous church. High stained glass
windows. Gothic style. Beautiful architecture. And I looked up at it, realizing
that I really haven't had the chance to go to church nearly as much as I've
wanted to."
Lance turned around, holding a match in one hand
and a small white candle in the other. The flame lit up and matched the fire in
his eyes, giving them a feline look. JC still blinked, rubbed his eyes with one
hand, and tightened his grip on the bed sheets beneath him. Lance looked like
another person had possessed him, but JC knew it was the alcohol calling to
him, deep in his veins.
"And I just walked inside," he whispered,
putting the wick to the flame, "as if I belonged there." The wick
instantly caught, and was devoured by the flickering light. "I walked to
one of the pews, sat, and began to pray."
"I was a little clumsy at first, as if I had
been out of practice. It was as if God was some person that I had met a very
long time ago, and I was clumsily trying to make conversation." Lance
walked over to the bedside table next to JC, who was frozen in his spot and
transfixed on Lance's absent, other-worldly stare. He placed the candle down
softly, the light wavering in the slightest, and then walked back to take
another.
"And when I was done, I was left with an empty
pit in my stomach, like I was some intruder there. The saints seemed to be
looming down from the stained glass, mocking and shunning me. I could see their
eyes, JC. Their eyes… some were even red. And I felt such a coldness when I saw
that, an absolute chill except for the burning in my chest."
Lance looked up to the ceiling, watching as the
next candle he lit flung orange lights up onto the white tapestry. "You
remember the cross I always used to wear? The one that's all wrapped up at
home, now? If that had been on my chest, I swear it would have melted on the
spot. The silver would have just dripped away, link by link, until it burned
and sent up curls of smoke… up, up to the ceiling."
"I was a little scared, to say the
least," Lance sighed, as he placed another candle next to JC. " I got
up out of the pew quickly, trying to get back out into the daylight, find a
small bookstore, and let myself drown in the old paper smell and run away from
the burning eyes."
Lance reached for a third candle, swallowing, and
lolling his head to the side a little bit. "But I… I saw these two men. I
tried to walk by them, and they just stood there, fixed on the tile. They both
looked at me, with those same burning eyes, straight into my soul." He
struck a third match and held it steady this time, absently running his finger
through it. "I didn't know what to say to them. I had this strange urge to
explain myself, to apologize even though I had done nothing to them. The larger
one, with his face rough and close to mine… he whispered…" Lance lit the
candle and looked down into the flame. "He whispered… 'You will not be
forgiven.'"
Lance choked on the last word and then hurried his
speech as he brought the last candle over to the bedside table. "I could
almost feel my skin melt. He burned straight through me, igniting my flesh and
turning it black. It was like those movies, JC. Where you want to scream so
badly… but nothing comes out."
"I'm pretty sure I ran out of there. But the
sky wasn't the same. It was mocking and harsh. Everyone's eyes seemed to
pinpoint me, label me, shun me. The entire world was full of smoky eyes, broken
bird wings, melted crosses. It smelled stale, even in the bookstore, as I tried
to keep my finger steady as I scanned for my book. But it wouldn't stay still.
It… it wouldn't stay still."
Running his finger through all of the candles in a
group on the table, he glanced to JC, who wouldn't have been able to move if a
hurricane ripped through the building. "And, standing there, wanting the
stars to shine in reality, not with glitter and plastic, I realized
something." Lance turned once more to the dresser, and pulled a small tube
from a plastic bag lying on top. Curling it into his palm, he approached the
bed once more. He crawled up over JC's legs, moving the bed and shaking JC's
rigid body, tight with drunkenness and fear.
"You're so beautiful…", Lance whispered,
touching a hand to JC's cheek and running it up to his eyes. "An absolute
angel. My brown haired angel." JC relaxed a little with those words and
his eyes searched for Lance's, which were so intently studying JC's face.
"Why did I have to fall in love with you?"
JC gave him his best attempt at a questioning
glance, only to see the glazed over look in Lance's eyes remain steady. Those
eyes were transfixed on JC's face, accompanying light fingers running over each
area of skin, dimly lit in the flickering candle light.
"If only you were a woman," he whispered,
leaning in close to JC's ear.
JC twitched slightly, unconsciously, and swallowed,
feeling Lance's breath light in his ear, paper-thin and alien. He moved his
eyes over to Lance's face and licked his lips, making a small moaning sound. JC
was almost sure that if he reached out and touched his lover, he would have
shattered into a million pieces on the floor. Everything seemed so surreal, and
even though his fingers were frozen to the sheets, with ice creeping up to his
chest and down to his toes with delicate wisps of frost, his face felt very
mobile. The areas around his eyes stung deeply.
"Things would be so much easier," the ghost-voice
continued to spill into his ear. "The eyes wouldn't burn. The perfection
we live… it would be even more perfect. I would still be able to wear my cross.
The hurt, the burns… they would seep away. If you were a woman JC, a
woman...". His blond hair shone in the light and his eyes jumped to his
palm, which he uncurled slowly to reveal a tube of mascara.
"If only…" His voice was a light whisper,
floating on the air and swirling into JC's ears. A window was open somewhere,
and threatened to cover up the softness of his voice. Instead, it mingled with
the air, magnified it, lit it up with candle light, and crashed it toward the
blue eyed mannequin propped up on the bed.
Lance unscrewed the top, with the bristles licking
the sides. "Shh…", he seemed to tell himself, as he brought the brush
up near JC's eyes. The first stroke was hesitant, but as JC's eyelashes
darkened on impact, Lance was urged on and took a second, and then third
stroke.
Leaning back to admire his work, Lance smiled and
then let out a small laugh. "Yes… that's how it would be. So much
simpler…"
Visions swam in front of JC's eyes as Lance leaned
in once more, his fingers brushing tenderly up against the creases in his eyes and
Lance's own eyelashes close enough to brush up against JC's. He laid very
still, not understanding, not blinking. Lance coated his left eye thickly, and
then the right one just as much, far beyond it ever needed to be.
With each stroke, Lance's excitement and smile
climbed stories, until he began to flick the brush back in and out of the tube
wildly, letting the black makeup spray everywhere. It dotted the bed sheets,
Lance's own face and hair, and even JC's chest. Like an artist entirely caught
up in his work, Lance ignored the mist of blackness surrounding his head and
kept lunging to coat JC's eyes with even more makeup, an unorthodox canvas for
his emotions.
"Yes," he murmured, over and over again.
"Yes… yes… that's much better. My angel is so beautiful." Lance
shoved the brush back into it's tube with one last thrust, showering the bed
with black stains. He flung it onto the bedside table, over JC. He took JC's
chin in his hands and began to dot his face with kisses- slow, luxurious kisses
that JC could not do much else with except lean in to.
"Now I can love you forever. Now I can be
forgiven…". Lance pushed soft pieces of hair off of JC's forehead and then
placed more kisses there, until he traced them down to JC's chest.
JC sat as still as possible, his blurry vision
still not convincing him that what he had experienced was real. But before he
could understand anything else, he felt Lance's dotting lips stop right near
his bellybutton. The cool touching on his light-thin skin was frozen, and he
felt Lance's body slack and ease off into a smooth roll onto the pillow next to
him.
Allowing his head to slowly, slowly turn to the
body that was very still, passed out, and rolled up beside him, JC allowed his
own body to slide lower in the bed. The candles next to him were dying slowly,
and two had already snuffed themselves out, drowning in a pool of silvery
white. The ghost flicker of one candle danced across his face.
It lit up the pillow that was already stained
black, which his head collapsed into with a weight of confusion and heaviness.
The world was swimming, careening, and crashing to a halt. And in the middle of
that world, the single flame lit up his face, staring straight ahead but
visualizing Lance's peaceful sleeping one. That one face didn't understand
anything at all, but didn't understand specifically why, even as thick trailing
tears had driven down his face in streams of black, that his lover had
continued to apply the makeup. And questions built up in the thick puddles of
mascara, dripping down his face. Why he couldn't be a woman for his lover? Why
he couldn't bring Lance happiness? Why did he have to be who he was? Did Lance
love him at all?
The candle died, bathing him in darkness and an
empty mind.
.
Memories crashed at JC that morning and left him
wanting for more air. All thoughts of showers or breakfasts disappeared from
his mind and left with the normal, sane person that usually continued through
his daily morning routine. And as he remembered and put together why simply looking at Lance made him
want to bind his lover's body to his own out of fear of losing him, he found
himself crawling softly back into the bed.
The sheets felt foreign and naked to him, but he
still slipped himself under them and resisted the urge to rip them off and burn
them, because of all of the spots marking what had happened.
But he waited. Patiently, staring up at the ceiling
and trying to piece together scents in the room… orange, violent, pencil,
leather… he found himself less frightened of the night before and more likely
to blame it all on both of their drunken states.
JC studied his fingernails, chipping away a spot of
black, when he heard a slight stirring next to him. Immediately shutting his
eyes and allowing his body to take on a steady breathing rhythm that mocked
sleep, he felt the body turn over, stretch, and slowly lift its weight off of
the bed.
JC could feel the sunlight burning through his
eyes, bright and hot from the window across the hotel room, and resisted
temptation to open his eyes and see Lance stretch out his arms in a wide arch,
breathing in the morning and yawning slightly.
And he waited. He waited for Lance to turn around
once or twice, look over his body, and let out a small gasp of surprise. He
waited for Lance to look over the bed, look over the sleeping form of JC, and
begin to shake JC awake, wanting to know what had happened the night before.
He could almost feel the light touch, the hurried,
frantic breathing, the confused stare. Had they been attacked by violent black
pens in the night? No, no... you did
this… JC would explain. And they would talk and maybe cry a little over the
very depths of Lance's true desires that were only uncovered because of his
drunken state. The real things he wished for but never wanted JC to see had
been shown in true Freudian style, the unconscious had let JC known everything was not right with Lance and
their relationship. But they would work through it. They would.
The touch, seeming to be every breath of air coming
in from the window, never came. JC heard the slight squeak of footsteps cross
from one side of the bed to the other, and he heard hands gather up the candles
and dump them into a trash can. There was no pause as he took in the pooling
spill of mascara on the bedside table, no small yell at the speckled lamp.
Instead, JC heard Lance flick on the bathroom
light, and push something into the sink, wetting it with damp. And even though
he was surrounded with darkness, he could see Lance coming back out, wiping up
the mess of black makeup on the dresser, and stepping back into the bathroom,
ringing the towel back out into the bathtub. The water ran faster, and then
faster, rinsing the towel and the slight ring of black around the drain, and
the towel was hung wetly over the side of the tub. There was a slight dripping
noise as the towel dried out onto the tile.
The rush of water stopped abruptly as the dripping
continued, and when Lance walked back out into the main room, embodying
everything JC had come to trust and love in the world, JC opened his eyes
slightly. In this way, only a slit of vision slipped in and to the rest of the
world his awareness was shrouded behind his eyelids. He saw Lance reach for the
tube of mascara, slightly sticky and staining his wet creamy fingers.
Lance looked from the tube to his lover, who was
sleeping soundly. He fingered the tube, closed his eyes, and breathed in
deeply, tipping his chin up to the ceiling. With a slight breath, he dropped
the mascara into the trash can and it clattered to the bottom.
"If only…", he sighed. "If
only…"
The End
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