CW - Part of the story has a body description from the perspective of a woman with body dysmorphia.
Written whilst listening to the Gone Girl soundtrack
Grace is sat on the toilet imagining she's holding a ball of light - pants and pyjama bottoms still at her ankles, the bathroom door purposely closed, the light switched off. The toilet paper rolled to the floor when she accidentally knocked it off the handle and has disappeared into the darkness; the room, still warm and humid from her shower an hour ago. She can't help but hope that her housemate doesn't call out for her, and that someone, somewhere, is doing this too so she isn't a crazy person.
This is her ritual. Squeezing her eyes shut, so tight she can hear the dull vibration through her skull, she holds out her hands, open, palms horizontal and opposite each other like she's holding an invisible ball. Her hands shift slightly till, in her mind's eye, she can feel it, the warmth from the glow the ball emanates, almost beating softly like holding a heart.
This is her ritual. Squeezing her eyes shut, so tight she can hear the dull vibration through her skull, she holds out her hands, open, palms horizontal and opposite each other like she's holding an invisible ball. Her hands shift slightly till, in her mind's eye, she can feel it, the warmth from the glow the ball emanates, almost beating softly like holding a heart.
It is then when Grace succumbs to the sinking feeling that drags her down deeper into her mind, drifting deeper, and deeper, till she feels herself settling into her body, propped up in the corner of Lift, where she left it before.
It takes her a moment to settle into past skin. The world is blurry, and she has to blink a couple times before the environment comes into focus. She is sat on the floor of an ornate gold lift, opposite closed doors with no light peeking through from beyond them. On the right hand side of them is an elegant, gleaming lever, and above her, on the back wall, an arch of numbers and letters that when she looks up, she struggles to focus on. The symbols shift and dance into a haze, ever changing, and glitching into infinity. Above them, a gold, embossed, arched line, and an arrow at the very left tip pointing to one letter that does not dance with the rest: G. Grace sees herself standing, and suddenly she is stood, gazing up at the mess of symbols deciding what she is here for today.
The left and right walls of Lift are painted with a rich tapestry of colour; from a glance, the style seemingly deriding from classical antiquity, the High Renaissance. Moments from her life are detailed here, but Grace does not focus on it, so the colours wash together in her peripheral vision, like a watercolour painting. She has something else on her mind, a daydream she specifically travelled here for.
Once decided, two numbers settle along the right tip of the gold arch: 10. Facing the doors, she pulls the lever, and the Lift whooshes it's way up to her destination. Behind her, the arrow curves along the line and eventually settles at the right tip under the 10. Softly, Lift stops, and the golden doors open.
I step out into an alleyway, a cigarette unlit between my fingers, low rise jeans hugging my waist which is... small. I don't have hip dips anymore, and I have forgotten my jacket inside the club at some point in the night, so now I stand in the cold in a distressed long sleeve mesh shirt, purposely cropped at my belly button. The first thing I do is run a hand over my chest, now flat, and feel the scars healed and slightly bumpy beneath my finger, continuing lower, I feel my flat stomach and smile. I don't have to find a mirror to know what I look like. Grace can see it and thinks I'm beautiful. My hair is short, a 90s pixie haircut, and bleached blonde, but grown out, not freshly dyed. My makeup was done without trying too hard and yet of course it's perfect. Everyone in the club wanted to fuck me and buy me drinks and hold my waist when I danced in the centre of the floor but I was never in danger, and I didn't let them. I was untouchable, unreachable. They could only hold me in their minds, their eyes - except for one person.
Grace looks beyond me, and the club's back door is pushed open. A man steps out. He is looking for me, eyes darting side to side till he spots my lithe tall frame below the street light across the alley. He straightens his back, and walks towards me, letting go of the door. It bangs shut.
As he approaches, he runs a hand through his dark hair, pushing it back into perfect hairstyle we like, and his clothes change and melt into different outfits till Grace has chosen her desired look for him: black shirt, unbuttoned at the collar and a couple lower till you can see the top of his chest hair, half tucked into black suit trousers, the front seam still starched and straight, and any old smart black shoes. We don't care about that. Under the street light, a thin silver pendant glimmers against his chest; his ears are pierced heavily on each side.
He reaches into his inner pocket and pulls out my lighter. I lean towards him, maintaining eye contact with his steely blue eyes, and he lights my cigarette. There's no smell from the smoke, and he doesn't complain about it like I know he would in Grace's world.
"Why did you leave?"
I hear his voice clearly, but Grace does not. For her it's like he's speaking underwater, the voice warped, the words just intelligible. I stay standing here facing him, and Grace blinks to the other side of the alley, watching from a distance, to get the far away shot.
I wave my other hand, and suddenly decide that holding my cigarette is not cool enough. Grace thinks of those old Hollywood movies, where the ladies have long silver cigarette holders, and suddenly that appears between my fingers instead. I never take a drag; I'm holding this because Grace likes the look of the smoke rising beneath the streetlamp between the two figures stood close. There's neon graffiti on the wall behind us but the words haven't been rendered.
"I needed fresh air. I'm still getting used to those big parties."
Grace thinks I'm cool but not cool enough yet. I can feel her impatience, she wants to hurry the scene along.
He steps forward and now he's no longer my height, but a step taller, and the cigarette has vanished. My hands hold his waist. He cups my chin with one hand and leans in to kiss me, and we both kiss him back. No longer a voyeur, Grace steps inside me and we both hungrily lose ourselves in the embrace. My hands are pressed against his back, his hands roaming the cool skin showing above my jeans, slowly going up the back of my top.
It is raining now, heavy, the drops streaming into lines through the streetlight. We step out of its glow, my back against the graffitied wall, his lips now pressing kisses into my neck, my collarbones, and Grace decides this is when I sigh, a sexy sigh - I love this and he needs to hear that I love this, that I want this.
Do I?
Grace watches the couple again from across the alley. They are frozen mid embrace, his trousers now unbuttoned, mid thrust, her, mouth agape, head and eyes rolled back. As she steps closer again, she can see her makeup hasn't smudged, but his face has glitched, a magazine ripped in half, the binary code of her dreams streaming from his neck into multicoloured pixels like the screen of a smashed TV.
Then suddenly I'm back, and he's facing me, no longer fucking but staring, stood in his default pose.
"Grace, you do know this isn't real."
"I know."
There's a pause - then Grace feels herself being pulled back into the lift, watching the world and him, now a black hazy figure jumping forward on all fours, stream forward towards her, racing to reach Lift, to reach her, colourful pixels retracting from the darkness that's reaching forward to consume them. Thrown onto the floor, bars clamp down at Lift's entrance and the golden doors snap closed.
The force continues to pull her higher than Lift, out of that body where it slumps against the ground and into the abyss, and she rises into herself again.
Her eyes blink open, and paranoid that's she no longer alone in her bathroom, she flicks on the light. Sitting so long, her legs are numb from pins and needles, so she rocks and stamps her feet against the cold tiles. Spotting the toilet paper rolled under her sink, she leans over, picks it up, and wipes.
Written by Erin Louise Harrison at 2am on 23rd February 2023
Cover image by Dmytro Kormylets.
Not inspired by any other direct work. Was thinking a bit about Inception.
