Palahniuk ekphrasis
Fade in. I look up and she is sliding over to me from the other side of a chessboard, her big bong-bong hips swinging from one side to the next, her cat-eyes gleaming. Well, well, those eyes whisper, a pretty little mouse-pet. Come to mama.
Cue Hello Operator by the White Stripes.
See, it’s this pop star grunge-chic goddess thing she has going on, like she’s above death, like she’s above God. It’s all a sham, though. Somewhere along the line you realize it’s not God or the devil you’re talking to inside your head, it’s just you. And then you realize you probably went insane a long time ago. It’s the same with putting a girl like her up on a pedestal. They’re all just human. They’re all just insane.
She’s clip-clipping her way over to me in those thigh-high dominatrix boots. She’s the only one that can pull them off, this death-cat. My heart’s beating in my throat, and my face is going green, as green as her eyes. Aventurine.
Cue Sad Girl by Lana Del Rey.
She licks her fangs, the cat-queen does. Runs her long red tongue right along them. She sniffs and shimmers. Silver, that is what I am to her. Silver. Not as valuable as gold but covetable nonetheless. She wants me.
You know, I never get depressed by Lana Del Rey. I’m always fucking depressed when I start listening and then after hearing each album seven times over, I feel good again. It’s just how it works.
Cue Get Free by Lana Del Rey.
Anyway.
The first time I saw her she was surrounded by her pack, this femme fatale with this Bettie Page smile. This was two years ago. She floated above her crowd that day in this kind of sparkling daze, talking to all of them in turn as if each one was the quintessence of her world. She was the heart of theirs. A cat-mother, generously tending to her young, but still fanged and dangerous. She met my eyes from a distance, and for a brief period, I circumnavigated a peculiar universe I didn’t quite understand. Then she slipped away, swirling ever downward into the black hole of her admirers, and I had the strangest thought they might tear her to pieces.
Now, she stops beside me, Queen to h5, and that’s it, gotta be, the end is nigh. Silver to a faraway place. But she just says: ‘I’m trapped by lies.’ She says, ‘I’m not real.’
Woah, woah, woah. I’m alive. But it’s not quite a checkmate. And it feels kind of like listening to When I Grow Up by The Pussycat Dolls and thinking of it as a tragedy, an SOS from famous chicks who don’t want the attention anymore. Totally kills your groove.
I say, ‘I know.’ I say, ‘Neither am I.’
Cue Genius of Love by Tom Tom Club.
But see, it’s like this, it’s like the cat doesn’t get the mouse but the reckoning happens anyway. In, like, a second, or three, I give all that a mouse can to a cat. I show her I am the bulwark against all the evils that come her way. This big nothing, this cage, let it fortify your bones, I tell her, let it make you stand stronger and taller, give you the strength you never realized you had. Let your darkness become as much a part of you as your light, and your light will shine that much more blinding. FLASHBANG. You have your whole life ahead of you now, I say, like some mouse-mother, and a wealth of power in you such that I have never seen. It’s why I am head over heels for you, see, this way you have about you, this way of commanding, of demanding, of leading. That is all yours, and this melancholia, it will only serve to make you better than you already are in the end. Etcetera, etcetera, the Queen and I.
And I don’t know how it happens, right, how it came to this, but the game is over, and the scene is ready to end. It’s like this: like truth on display, like putting out all your faults for the whole damned world to see and the world says, yep, that’s me too, and aren’t we all just the same old sinners and the same old tryhards and all that bull crap on a cracker. I saw it in her and she saw it in me, right? And now the rest is history and the cat and the mouse are friends or whatever.
So I’ll do it like an eighties movie, ‘kay? Cool. Watch me leave the chessboard, and she’s cheering and so are all her friends. Watch me dance by myself all the way down the hallway, boogieing and swaying, swishing and bouncing, clapping on the walls with my hands, and swinging them above my head. Watch me holler and whoop. Watch me clap my hands, bang on doors, laugh like a madcat, still dancing. Watch me at the end of the hallway, right in the middle. I leap, throwing my hands to God, with a grin on my face.
Freeze on me, happy.
Fade out.
Natasha Mihell is an artist-at-heart living amidst the forests and urban decay of Canada’s West Coast. Her writing explores the reclamation of self-love, hope, and power, amidst systems and circumstances that threaten hearts and minds. Connect at natashamihell.com.
The Disappointed Housewife 