Colours

The room was colours. A thousand different colours, spinning and weaving through each other like trails of light. "They're dancing," I whispered, my words barely more than an exhale.

I gazed out at the club floor. At another time, I might have noticed the grating music, the gyrating mass of bodies and above all, the smell of sweat. Now though, everything was blurred. Blurred, but not faded - everything pulsated with vibrance, the colours humming behind my eyes. The grungy room, previously bubbling up with human desperation, was gone. It'd been replaced with something beautiful, and sweet Jesus, I felt free.

A stranger's hand alighted on my shoulder. It felt rough and warm through my thin shirt, the sensation slamming me back into my body. I swayed on my feet. My nerves were singing, begging for more of this harshly intense, swimming feeling. I slammed my last shot of whiskey - burning, burning, all the way down my throat. I laughed. Said, "Your eyes are all of the colours." It was true - his irises were a delicious mix of blue and grey, flecked through with glinting hazel. I scarcely even noticed what he looked like. All that mattered was that his eyes were sparking with everything I wanted - more, more, more - and  I said, "I wish I could climb inside them."

I followed him to a back room, my steps faltering for a moment, and I knew there was something I was forgetting. Best of all, I knew I wanted to forget. I grinned, and let the purple curtain flutter closed behind me.

The only light inside the tiny room was from candles, and my breath caught as I saw the flames dancing in his eyes. "So bright," I murmured.

He held his hands out with the palms facing upwards, a silent invitation. When I put my hands in his, he spun me around until my knees buckled and I fell backwards onto the narrow couch, its leather red like cherries.

I sat back and he kissed me like he wanted to eat me alive, until my breath was short and everything had melted into hot and wet, tongues and lips and more, please more. He roughly stripped me, the buttons snapping on my shirt until I was laid out naked in front of him. For a moment, I was disappointed - I couldn't see the colours in his eyes anymore. 

He leaned down, lips brushing against my neck, and began to paint red into my skin. Dark bruises were everywhere, each one a memory, an instant comprised only of soft lips and the scrape of teeth. And I was so very pleased, to see my very flesh marked as a painting. There was something beautiful about it, rich like sin and light like dreams. 

When the world was swallowed away in a sea of shudders, there was nothing more I could possibly want. My eyes were squeezed shut and even then, I could see colours buzzing like TV static before me. The word, "Beautiful," slipped from my lips. 

With a low laugh, the man with the colours in his eyes was gone. 

In the morning, I felt like a train wreck. Like my body was made of screeching pieces of metal, destruction shining too bright in the sun, smoke rising from the top. Glorious in my catastrophe.

Shaking and barely able to stand, I put my crumpled clothes back on as best I could. I walked across the bar, ignoring the eyes on me. In the light, I could see clearly the hickeys which littered my chest where my shirt hung open.

I threw up in the parking lot, wrenching my insides out, my elbows stinging where I'd propped them on the concrete. I dropped my car keys and fumbled for them on the ground. Passers by laughed at me. The sky seemed painfully blue, throbbing in its clarity. I was filthy, miserable, but I didn't feel dirty. Not inside. Inside, I felt like something had been shaken loose. Freedom, perhaps. Or colours.