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Aubrey’s Shoes

Absinthe and Tiaami

By Victoria BamberPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 4 min read
11
Aubrey’s Shoes
Photo by Brandon Hoogenboom on Unsplash

Aubrey sat on the alcohol stained steps of the nightclub, below green light, emanating from a rotund lady's chest- a string of old Christmas lights she’d thrown on at the end of creating her clubbing outfit:

Garish lights and effervescent, papier-mâché tentacles about her body; part of her gaudy, Moulin Rouge getup.

Aubrey wasn't there to dance; she could think of nothing worse. The woman above her dripped sweat on to her head. Drip. Drip. And the green lights shone freely across Aubrey’s bare feet. She’d kicked off her shoes somewhere else in the club, during her drunk state, and lost them.

Aubrey looked at the light moving across her feet and toes in a rolling movement, as the fat lady swayed. She decided she’d like a pair of shoes in that colour green; not an emerald green but the green of a broken bottle of wine that had been weathered away by the sea. That kind of green.

She eyed her dress drooping damply from the humid, sweaty dance air...what was her delicate, dusky pink dress now resembled an ensemble that someone might wear in a dance troupe, or in a theatrical show, about candy floss..in mud..at a circus.

Aubrey hated these places. She was only there because her friends had made her. She had drunk the absinthe, the red wine, the absinthe, to help her drift oblivious to somewhere else, while they did what they did; Every weekend like they did.

There was that man again. With his silver spectacles and neon headband, his UV paint on his cheeks and arms. Also pungently sweaty.

She just wanted to go. But she’d promised. She’d promised Tiaami that she would wait there like a good dog. She would wait until her friend had come out of the bathroom, because for some reason girls went together to the bathroom. For whatever reason girls did that, she wasn't one of those girls, she didn’t understand. But she sat. Good girl. For her friend. Below the dripping, sweating mess of the Effervescent Tentacles of the Voluptuous Lady in her far too tight bodice, who lent there on the stair rail, with her noticeably lovely, delicate wrists; flicking cigarette ash on Aubrey. Why was this fun for others, when for her it was the last place in existence she wanted to be?

Was it them or was it her? Maybe she was just messed up. She closed her eyes, tried to block out the sounds, the smells, the drip, drip, drip, And the muddled messy head the absinthe gave her: a place she put herself, imagined herself, back to her bed snuggled under her duvet, with one of her many books.

Please hurry up Tiaami, please. Tiaami who was the best kind of friend.

That's why she did this, why she played a part in this play.

Tiaami was there for her when no one else was. Tiaami put up with her every mood, every sentence, every thing that she did. Things that to all the other girls seemed wrong, odd, strange, out of place. Crazy.

Tiaami in fact, loved her for everything she was, and she loved Tiaami.

She loved Tiaami.

More than Tiaami would ever love her, and she was okay with that. She understood that.

What she felt for Tiaami was... a not so well mixed cocktail of love, envy, obsession...

She was free spirited, yet she fitted in. She was beautiful and vibrant but kept an innocence and naivety that Aubrey adored.

Aubrey clenched her feet and jaw. Stop thinking about Tiaami! It he did her no good, no good at all. She brought herself back to the present, the exact spot she sat in: to the stench of cigarettes and alcohol and vomit, coming up from the carpet below her. Why did they put carpet in places like this?

The rotund raucous lady who had perched behind her for what seemed like forever had now gone.

She wished she hadn't. In her place, there stood the spectacled man. The leering, jeering spectacled man. He didn't drip sweat, it was more-so saliva over Aubrey’s shoulder. She swore she could feel a finger stroking her.

If he wanted her to tingle or respond with reciprocated affection, he would be sorely disappointed. Her emotion was as far down the other end of the spectrum as it could manage. A wave of anger came over her and flooded her every particle.

She'd had enough of doing and trying and being everything that everyone expected and wanted of her. She wanted to find those green shoes and walk off. Walk off the edge of this world into a new one.

Where she would feel free and accepted. Where she and Tiaami could play like little girls, carefree on a beach with no judgement from anyone else. No conscience beyond what they were doing in that moment. Tiaami..

The club’s music emenated and buzzed through her, making her absinthe soaked stomach convulse.This was too much.

If Tiaami didn't come out of that toilet right now. She was walking out of that door, onto the putrid street in the putrid night, with the fake laughter, the jeers the screams. The puking the peeing. The faces drawn and drugged and drunk, she would walk, stumble back to her bedsit, crawl under her duvet and forget about the world...Be safe, be warm, be silent, and forget about the world.

“Aubrey, are you okay...?” Tiaami half gazed down at her, half at the dance floor below them.

“Yes. Yes, I'm fine. I'm fine.” Aubrey faffed her hands about her head as though shoeing away a fly or a mollycoddling grandma. She knew Tiaami wasn’t listening but went on to say, “There's so much to look at down here, so many sounds, and smells mmmmm.”

“Aubrey, you’re so funny; You see things in such an awesome way! Come on, Let's go dance!”

Dance.

Sure.

“Sure, sounds perfect Tiaami, let’s go...”

Love
11

About the Creator

Victoria Bamber

Previously #wildgreensurvivalgirl now #wolfgirlcreates

https://wisdom.app/wolfgirlcreates/ask

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090424525141

https://www.youtube.com/@wolfgirlcreates

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