- I don’t want to sing a lullaby,
I don’t want to sing a lullaby,
I don’t want to ... sing a lullaby.
I don’t have to sing a lullaby.
There are some doings that cannot be undone, some mistakes that cannot be unmade, some decisions that you just can’t go back on.
This was one of those things, I think. I should’ve thought a little harder, waited a little longer, but there she was, my beautiful, beautiful, lonely, Gwen all smudgy eyeliner and Snow White complexion; her dark hair, thin and ragged, piqued into lopsided, drooping spikes, white skin almost reflective under the flashing neon lights, cherry red lipstick blurred at the corners, clinging to the edges of her mouth. She danced with all the rage and love that she’d ever felt, red skirt flaring over torn stockings; she wasn’t wearing any shoes. I saw her lick her lips as she danced, saw the way she moved; she didn’t walk, she slunk like a cat. The muses must have moved her themselves; she looked like she was speaking in tongues, possessed by the most holy spirits, or so I thought or liked to think. I suppose most unholy would have been more appropriate, but how was I supposed to know? She looked like an angel in my eyes; a wingless, broken angel.
I was told throughout my childhood, subliminally of course, that beauty was good; all things that were good were beautiful, and all things that were beautiful were good. The message was ubiquitous; in church, on TV, at school - I saw it everywhere. I was never particularly beautiful and I believed I was never particularly good as a result. My hair was ragged, dirty blonde, my eyes didn’t sparkle like the other girls’ eyes did. They were just grey; not storm grey or sea grey or even slate grey. I wasn’t skinny and I wasn’t overweight. I didn’t dress fancy. I was just plain ol' Jane. I hated my name; it doomed me to a life of being unremarkable. Plain Jane Jenson, bound to be boring for the rest of her life. Standing beside Gwen made me look even worse; juxtaposed with her I looked more bland and boring than ever, even though I had dressed up a little, having traded my sneakers for stilettos.
Except for the ballet lessons my parents paid for, I didn't dance, but the fair Gwen, she must have been born to. I couldn’t pay attention to the band, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She moved with the music like she was the music; it was part of her, she was part of it, scratchy sound system and all. In my mind I imagined that she must not talk so much as sing. The girls on stage didn’t matter any more, it seemed to me that they were singing her thoughts for her, so that the world could hear her loneliness.
“You never know who I am, you’ve never been understood,” they sang, “can anyone give me the thing that I need?”
I wanted to ask her, “what do you need?” but she was so far away; a hundred million miles away and dancing right next to me. She was standing on her chair, dancing, dancing, dancing. I had to ask her what she needed; what could I give this total stranger who was calling, calling, calling to me from a hundred million miles away? So up I jump, onto my own chair, so I’m standing next to her. We’re so far back from the stage it doesn’t matter, there’s nobody behind us. What can I give this girl that I’ve never met to make her eyes seem more alive? It turns out that there’s nothing. On stage the band is playing, the lead singer singing her songs about want and need, and I’m trying to yell over them, trying to talk to this dead eyed girl next to me, I’m yelling, yelling, but it’s almost useless, “what do you need?!” I’m almost screaming, “what do you need?”
She can’t hear me over the din of drunken sing-a-longs and adrenaline driven guitar solos, but I guess it’s the thought that counts, because she looks over at me. Her eyes are brilliant black, they sparkle like the night, but there isn’t anyone inside, at least not that I can see; I see only my own reflection in this dead-eyed girl. She smiles, and I see her fangs. Of course, at this point, I should’ve realized that it was in my best interest to scream and run in the other direction, but no, I just smiled back. I thought it was cute that this little dirty broken princess doll girl with the dead eyes would wear theatrical fangs.
On stage, they’re joking and laughing and getting ready to play their next set. It’s quieted down a little, now that they aren’t slamming away on their guitars and drum sets and screaming into their microphones; we’ve got a few seconds to talk. I’m glad she couldn’t hear me earlier; in the almost-quiet between songs, I realize how stupid I sounded.
I open up my mouth to speak, but the band has started up again, “she doesn’t know that she’s been marked,” they’re singing, and Gwen is dancing again with all of her vigor. She looks like a marionette; her face is blank and expressionless, but she’s moving with such grace and skill and speed as has never been seen before at a rock concert. I can’t take my eyes off her.
I’m not an empath, so I guess I should’ve realized something was up when I could feel her ache for me. Maybe-Baby, she said to me, inside where I could hear her and feel her as well as my own heartbeat, Maybe-Baby, come with me into the evening, only she said it in pictures; pictures of a more beautiful me with her in the light darkness just after sunset, the scenery changing rapidly, Tokyo-London-Los Angeles-Dublin-Berlin-Sydney-Cairo-Hong Kong nightclubs flashing around us as we danced; come with me[i], she was saying, [i]and you’ll never be plain Jane Jenson again, Maybe-Baby. She still calls me that, sometimes, Maybe-Baby. I didn’t understand what she meant then, calling me that, I didn’t really understand that it was really her, but I fell for the temptation right then and there, I reached up for that forbidden fruit as she was shaking the limbs of the tree.
“No one to guide us...” sings the girl on stage, crooning into her microphone. “Come on, my baby, I still dream of you, truly I wish...”
By this point, I’m starting to loosen up, starting to sway a little with the music, starting to enjoy myself despite my secondhand heartbreak. Gwen grabs my hand, and now I’m dancing with her, up on our chairs. With my boots on, I was taller than her; without them, we’d have to be about the same. I’ve never done this before, danced with a stranger in a strange land. Next to her, I’m a clumsy, awkward, idiot. Ten years of ballet lessons and this strangely pale, skin-and-bone stranger can out-dance me at a nightclub in Nowhere.
“Come on, my baby, I still dream of you,” she pleads with me through the music around us, although she does not speak, and her eyes and face betray no glimmer of emotion, I can feel her, wanting me, wanting me, and I am desperate for that want. I want her to want me the way I want to want her. Lonely angel, lovely angel. I’d always loved lost things, because they reminded me of myself.
“Johnny, my love, what’s up?” sings the girl with the guitar, but I can barely hear her, though the music is a constant roar in my ears, because Gwen is speaking inside of me again, come away with me, you’ll be beautiful, I’ll be beautiful, come with me and we will live forever and we you will never be lonely, and I will never be lonely, because we will always have one another, always and forever, together, best friends, okay, best friends, come with me, come with me, I’m so lonely, so lonely, but if you come with me we’ll never be lonely ever again because I’ll have you and you’ll have me ... It’s hard to keep up with her thoughts, because there’s just a glimmer and then they’re gone; a flash of an image, of eternity, of best friends and night clubs and cigarettes and loud music; the image of us lying in an expensive hotel bed together after a long night of dancing and drinking the reddest wine there ever was.
“Yes,” I said, and she nodded, and she smiled, and she lead me away into the night. It wasn’t that romantic, I’m afraid. She jumped down from her chair, and I stepped down from my chair, and she flounced off, and I followed. I didn’t flounce, that’s for damn sure; Gwen did, and does, all of the flouncing around here, because I’m just plain Jane Jenson. She lead me into the girls’ bathroom; it was dingy, for sure, but it was clean. I followed her, blinded by the images of love and eternity. “Yes,” I said again, and again, and again, and again, over and over and over, “yes, yes, yes,” I told her. “Yes.”
She kissed me, and I was surprised how cold her lips were. All of that dancing, and still so cold. Something in side of me told me that perhaps I ought to be worried, but I wasn’t, I was in love, deeply, desperately in love with a strange pale girl with dark hair and smudged lipstick that I’ve never even spoken to before. I hadn’t noticed when she held my hand, because she wore gloves that I assumed were part of the get-up. She pressed her smudged lips to mine, but only for a moment. I was surprised; I’d never kissed a girl before. (Actually, except for one boy on a dare, I’d never kissed anyone before.) She kissed me one last time before she killed me.
Forever? she asked, flooding my mind with images of eternity; an endless starry sky, a city that sprawled out over the horizon, the sea shining on forever in the sunset.
“Forever,” I agreed. There was no need for me to speak out loud, I needed merely think it and she would know, and she would hear my answer, know my answer.
She kissed me again, kissing down my throat until she got to me neck. I wasn’t afraid; even as I felt her fangs on my throat she sent me lovely images of an eternity of friendship and fun. You will never be sad or lonely or sick again, she told me as I was dying, it’s okay now, because you will never die; you can live with me until the end of eternity.
Even as I lost my grip on the world, I could hear the band playing. “Do I drink or do I drink, do I drink that pink soda?”
Drink, she tells me, putting her wrist to my mouth; she’s bleeding. Drink, she insists, you must drink or you will die; you won’t die, will you, you won’t die and leave me here alone again, I don’t want to be alone again, please, please, Maybe-Baby, don’t leave me here alone again.
I drank. It’s truly, deeply disgusting that as a human being I could drink blood, but this blood was not the blood she had taken from me. It was cool and sweet as a freshwater spring on a hot summer day, not hot and salty like a boiling ocean. It was blood, but it was not living blood. I knew the instant that it hit my lips that it was not human blood, it was vampire blood, and I was dying and she was dead, and we would be dead but would never die for the rest of time. I took that forbidden fruit and it was delicious.
She pulled away. Enough for now, she said to me, and I could hear her louder and clearer than ever, enough for now, you wouldn’t want to hurt me, would you, Maybe-Baby? You wouldn’t ever hurt me, would you?
No, I told her, opening my mind to her as she had opened hers to me, allowing my thoughts to flow out of myself and into her. I played for her the images she’d sent me earlier, of us dancing through eternity together. I showed her more, too, my own added scenes, of us in underground music stores and watching the Russian ballet perform live, of us holding hands in Harajuku. We had the rest of forever to do whatever we wanted. You might've seen us somewhere, we're everywhere.
Look in the mirror, she told me, turning me so that I could see my reflection on it’s cracked and spotted surface. My eyes were dead as hers had been, although they sparkled and shimmered. I wasn’t plain Jane Jenson any more, I was a newly born vampire baby now. I wasn’t afraid, I was in love.
She nicked her thumb on a broken piece of mirror and smeared the blood across my forehead, baptizing me into my new life. Eve, she says, Eve, Jane Jenson is dead, come with me and we will live forever, and I did. I followed her back out of the bathroom, back into the sea of hot bodies and loud music. I’ve been waiting for you, she told me, I’ve been so lonely, but we won’t ever be lonely again.
I returned to the concert a new girl. I took Jane Jenson’s seat, wore her clothes, carried her purse, but she was dead. I had killed her.
“Yes, you did!”
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A couple of things: this is a little old but newly edited. All of the song lyrics are by Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her. They're weird and I love them, I recommend you check them out.
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