Something on
|
Writing extracts by Rosa Barbour |
Something on
|
Writing extracts by Rosa Barbour |
I caught a glimpse of myself in my mirror. There was a feral, banshee look about me; my eyes were dark, a livid red blossom was climbing from my cleavage up my neck. I walked closer to my reflection, put my hands on my breasts. With my long pinkie nail I drew a bright red line across my throat, dragging harder at the last moment so that tiny beads of blood came to the surface of my skin. I slapped my throat once, twice, and looked down at the fine trail of blood on my palm. Not enough. It’s never enough.
I snaked my hand down under the fine material of my skirt, formed a fist with my fingers and pressed it hard against my clitoris. I could tell immediately from its dull, numb response that I would not be blessed with an orgasm tonight. The novel mystery of someone else’s touch, perhaps, could have coaxed one out. But not my own. Not now. I clenched my teeth and let out a low, animal growl. ‘There are two of her,’ I remember my mum saying to a nurse. There was a frightened look in her eye. ‘She’s… she changes.’ If I were a banshee, I remember thinking, I’d transform myself into a real bat-girl and smash out of my bedroom window, shrouded in a cloud of undulating black smoke. Up, up I’d fly, over the Sainsbury’s Local and through the city night, leaving a trail of shadowy sexual mischief in my wake. George Michael would wake from his slumber and provide a luxuriously forbidding, glittering version of ‘Fastlove’ just for me: my personal soundtrack. He’d know that my bat-self would perceive in full the profound loneliness of that song – not the upbeat disco number others took it for, but dark, so very dark. In the absence of security, I made my way into the night. (‘How could you be lonely if you were George Michael?’ one of his fans had asked in a documentary. ‘You’d be with George Michael all the time.’) Eventually the haze of smoke around me would clear. My wings would carry me back through my bedroom window and I would curl up in my virginal white sheets, spent and peaceful – human again, and as whole as I could possibly be. I was just sane enough in that moment to accept that supernatural Chiropteran antics were not a workable Plan A. The favoured option thus - sadly - eliminated, I knew I had to find a way back to myself that did not involve two bottles of red wine and nicking an artery. I closed my curtains to the harsh streetlight orange, leaving the window open a little, not quite ready yet to fully close myself to the night. My face softened - lit only, then, by the soft womblike glow of my bedroom. I pulled my black lace top over my head. I breathed in, out, slowly, slowly. I clotted pad after pad with thick black mascara. Then, with bleary, slightly burning eyes, I noticed in the mirror the box of DVDs Briar had left for me when she left. They were cast-offs, I knew, from her mum’s collection; the ones that Briar knew I’d like more than she would. I rustled through them, smiling slightly as I selected and discarded Terms of Endearment, Sleeping with the Enemy, Steel Magnolias… settling eventually on Local Hero. I shuffled over to my old DVD/telly player and stuck it in. The title screen loaded and – yes, mmmmm, there it was - began to ooze gently with that gorgeous, dreamy soundtrack. (‘Is that Knopfler?’ the nice Seb might have said into my hair, absently. I’d have loved him for knowing). As I lay on my bed and settled into the story, the evening’s sharp-toothed adrenaline creature finally flowed out of my body, through the open window and out into the night. She was, I knew, a formidable being, not accustomed to surrender. With hours still to go until morning, she sought another body to possess; another mind to stir up and sizzle and, eventually, short-circuit. But it wouldn’t be mine. Not that night.
0 Comments
Five songs in particular were haunting me when I came up with the concept for the novel I'm working on. I was very unhappy in my personal life at the time; struggling to focus on anything, struggling to feel passionate about anything at all. My mind was, in many ways, numb. But there must have been some tiny part of me that knew I still had something important going on in my consciousness that had to find a way of coming out. The way that little part of me managed to get my full attention was by bringing me back, time and again, to these songs. Throughout that whole period, the lyrics and melodies would pop into my mind at the strangest moments - often moments when I was otherwise disconsolate or completely debilitated and ill with anxiety - and the songs themselves were so cinematic and beautiful, I knew I had to try to heal myself enough that I could create characters around them. These songs are so much part of the fabric the story now, that I have assigned each one to a character, and each will have their moment in the text as a defining moment for the character they relate to. Here are the songs, and the specific lines from them, that played a huge part in giving birth to the first characters I knew I wanted to stay with: Cathy, Briar, Marius, Edward and Jack.
The ones you dream of, the ones who walk away With their capes pulled ’round them tight Cry for the night – cry for the nightbird, tonight. ‘Nightbird’ – Stevie Nicks In the absence of security, I made my way into the night. ‘Fastlove’ – George Michael My hands are shaking Don’t let my heart keep breaking, cos I need your love. I want your love. Say you’re in love, in love with this guy. If not I’ll just die. ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’ – Herb Alpert Now I can see you wavering As you try to decide You’ve got a war in your head And it’s tearing you up inside You’re trying to make sense Of something that you just can’t see Trying to make sense now And you know that you once held the key But that was the river This is the sea! ‘This Is The Sea’ – The Waterboys Who do you love? Who do you really love? Who are you holding on to Who are you dreaming of? Who do you love When it’s cold and it’s starlight When the streets are so big and wide I love you An ordinary girl. ‘Saturday Night’ – The Blue Nile I spoke about wings You just flew I wondered, I guessed and I tried You just knew I sighed, but you swooned! I saw the crescent You saw the whole of the moon. ‘The Whole of the Moon’ – The Waterboys |