Live
The thick air bore a tempting scent, a mixture of sweat with cigarettes and branded perfumes. Her skin tingled as strangers brushed past her. Unaware of him who had a good hold on her, she swayed to the beat, her heart thumping in sync with the music. The dazzling disco lights blurred her vision, beads of sweat trickled down her tanned forehead before she felt someone grasp her wrist. She had not the slightest idea of who it was but she did not care. She was going to live tonight.
She had every right to rebel. They had presented her with a million reasons for why she should. They had made her realise how faint-hearted she had been all along, how her silence had swallowed her whole, how she was insignificant and a nobody. They set her heart ablaze with passion for they decided she had to live. The faint smell of scorched muscles did reach her nostrils, but she decided she had to live.
It was never easy watching a woman as strong as her mother break down in front of her, bawl her eyes out and curse her fate to have given birth to such a demon. She just stood there, cold and numb, and took solace in silence once again. Her big, glossy eyes were as frightened as they had been the day her mother held her wrist and walked out of their old house together, leaving their father, to start a new life. Her vocal chords were clogged with confusion and guilt. She had only decided to live.
With every tear drop she shed, she made a promise to get back to her old self again. She was not the demon her mother said she was. She really was a good girl, who got good grades, and had good morals that could potentially catapult her to the pinnacle of success. She promised to shed the cloak of pretence that had weighed down on her for too long, and turn over a new leaf. But they managed to creep back into her veins again. Their cumulative whispers were too loud in front of her mother's faint cries. The goodness in her remained cage, and she decided she had to live.
That she would regret her deeds the next morning was no doubt to her. The bags under her eyes would be too heavy, and she would writhe in pain and drown in self-loathing for the next few days. But the scars would eventually fade, guilty tears would soon dry and she would find herself back here, walking hand in hand towards a perilous darkness with a stranger, for the umpteenth time. The booming music slowly died down in the background. The lyrics echoed inside her hollow skull,
'Toy-like people make me boy-like
Toy-like people make me boy-like.'
This was what she had always feared. She feared the unknown but this was all she wanted tonight. She wanted to live.
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