Dancing in the Dark Room

Amalie

Waking up here is like waking to the sun creaking through drawn blinders. Amalie feels a honey-bee brushing by her earlobe, depositing pollen into her hair and the sound of bird-song has her creaking open a single eye. She smiles, a gentle thing, before bolting upright to the trill of rapturous giggles.

"Sorry" she gasps, and Elisa pulls the soft bristles of her paintbrush away from Amalie's ear. She's giggling, and her cheeks are glowing a faint pink as she feigns innocuous indifference. Her composure shatters when she can no longer hold back a boisterous laugh.

"I'm so sorry" she swoons, brushing Amalie’s shoulder, "we were going to let you sleep, but…"

The other girls giggle, and Amalie groans as she rubs at the sleep in her eyes. "It's not your fault," she says, giggling too. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.” She smooths over her hair, frazzled from where it had rubbed against her arms, and holds a pin between her teeth as she grabs at stray locks. Looking down at the stack of dials in front her, she realises just how much time her nap has cost her.

“I’ll help you catch up,” Elisa says, plucking a dial from Amalie’s stack.

Amalie throws her a grateful look, and represses the impulse to tell her no.

“Thank you” she whispers.

Amalie watches as Elisa holds her paintbrush between her lips and dampens the bristles with her tongue. She lays her brush in the pearly radioluminscent paint and draws a perfect ‘6’ on her dial. Amalie copies her, placing her own brush between parted lips, creating a fine tip to draw with.

She’s never felt as warm as she does here, in the factory.

Amalie has always been a bright person; overflowing like a bubbling cauldron with resplendent laughter and carrying lyrics in the elegant motions of her limbs. She was a charming girl, and a charming teenager. When she was scooped away for marriage she didn’t know how to contain these gifts to only her husband. It tired her, the kind of fatigue that comes about after forcing a basket of laundry into a linen-closet that’s already over-full.

She didn’t want to think that she was grateful for the war. Such blasphemies would never pass through her lips. But when she lay in bed in the early hours of the morning - eyes still open from the night that passed – guilt would clog her mind like sticky butter, only melting at the first signs of the rising sun.

The sleepless nights were retribution for her sinful thinking.

“Lost in time?” Elisa asks, drawing Amalie back to the present.

Amalie shakes herself, “I’ve never been a fan of watches” she jokes.

Elisa snorts, then she cocks her head as if to speak.

“What?” Amalie prompts.

Elisa considers her for a moment, then says, “Do you ever think about who these watches go to?” The jut of surprise in Amalie’s bones is almost imperceptible. She has wondered this. Too many times to count. She nods.

“All the time.”

Elisa

When Winter rolls around it becomes dangerous for Elisa to walk the cobble streets alone, but she will continue to do so for one reason. She likes to watch the moths play, their fragile wings silhouetted by the luminaires, and she likes the way the tap of her heels echo across the empty streets. But these are not reason enough to walk through town when others are nestled inside their houses, cooking the evening’s meal, or tuning into the radio.

Elisa likes to dance in the dark room.

She pretends to take longer to paint her dials, using extra care as the day grows old. Suddenly, drawing a 6 is a matter of deep concentration instead of second nature.

"Why don't you change the water?" Elisa asked, when she sees Amalie's eyelids begin to droop.

As Amalie carries the water for changing, Elisa watches her leave. When she's finally obscured from view, Elisa drops one of her painted-dials onto Amalie’s meagre stack, swift as a pickpocket with muddled intentions.

“You really need to stop covering for her,” the girl across from her – Deandra - chides, all the while passing one of her own to add to the collection. Elisa smirks. Deandra is the most skilled worker in the factory. She can paint a whole dial from 1 to 12 before Elisa’s even gotten to half-past. Deandra dips the brush to her milky paint, smooths over the numbers, then back to her lips. The other girls learned the lick and dip trick from her.

When Amalie returns with a fresh cup of water she pretends not to notice her growing stack. She plucks a clean dial and begins to paint, concentration causing her lips to purse. Watching, Elisa muffles a giggle.

She watches as Amalie’s lips turn from pursed to slack, and now she’s beginning to grow tired, but she’d rather go home tired than miss a moment with the girls in the dark room. Deandra is growing restless, too, bouncing in place on her chair, distracting the other girls from their final pieces. Elisa casts her an annoyed glare.

“Sorry,” Deandra say, holding herself in place.

Elisa frowns, “why don’t you put that energy to use, Deandra?”

Deandra huffs, scraping her chair across the wooden floor. “Fine” she says, clearing away the unused brushes and pots of paint. “But you girls owe me,” she chides, sauntering to the cleaning room. The other girls blush, but Elisa shrugs it off.

“The curse of being the best” she explains.

Deandra

Deandra sits the collection of paint-pots in the basin.

“All done for the day?” Her supervisor – Gerald - stands to her right, peering over her shoulder and into the sink. He raises a brow, “You do too much, you know? You’re carrying the camels work.” Deandra chuckles silently.

The irony is not lost on her – that she is the only girl in the factory who doesn’t need to hold a job, and yet she’s been gifted with a plethora of natural talents. Painting – and her penchant for the meticulous – is just the surface, but she keeps the rest of her talents to herself, feigning at modesty to keep the girls – and men’s – favour.

If she had of been born to a paupers family perhaps her natural talents would have gained her an illustrious reputation. Instead, her family resigned her to a life of sitting pretty, like a decorative China-set to be viewed and not used. When the men left for war her family protested at her eagerness to work. She explained the will away by insisting it was for her country, but really, it was for herself.

Her supervisors words are a bell to attention, reminding her that she came here to do more. “I don’t mind,” she breathes, turning to face him. He takes a step back, always pleasantly put-off by the lilting tone Deandra reserves specifically for him. He looks her up and down, wanting to reach out to touch her. She can tell by the twitch in his fingers, the unsteady bounce in his legs. He doesn’t. He never does.

“Well, best get yourself dusted off then” he states matter-of-fact. He’s turning away, but only by half.

Deandra makes a mental note, to wear a single print of paint on her forearm, to give him the chance to reach out to her and brush it away. Next time, she thinks.

“Yes Sir,” she answers.

A cacophony of micro-expressions play across his tanned-face. He doesn’t know how to feel about that word. She suspects he’d like to hear her call him something else. The butterflies in her gut are swelling now, breaking free from their cocoons, but she’s always been good at pretending. She breezes past him - not a care in the world - and shares an easy smile.

“See you tomorrow.”

When she walks up to the girls Amalie is pretending to doze off.

“Stop it,” Elisa says, shaking her by the arm.

“I’m just kidding” Amalie almost shouts.

“Girls” Deandra interrupts. Their eyes dart toward her, waiting.

“It’s time” she says.

The Dark Room

The girls enter, one by one, like a line of glow worms queuing into a cave. Amalie is first, because she’s always eager, and she passes the precipice like it will bring her new life. And it does. Her dress lights up with a thousand green lights. Twinkling, a galaxy lined with aurora blown off the sun like petals from a periwinkle. As she looks down she’s already laughing.

Elisa follows her, pink lips smiling too. They turn to green as she enters the room, and Amalie laughs louder. She reaches out to brush them, causing the green paint to smudge down Elisa’s petite chin.

“Hey!” Elisa chides playfully, batting her hand away.

When Deandra enters the trill of the girls' laughter fills her like a song, and she stretches her arms to the roof. Tiny particles of dried paint have collected in the light hairs across her arms, so she holds them up for the other girls to see.

Elisa gasped, “This is why you wear long sleeves.”

“This is why you don’t” Deandra corrects, her mind wandering into a world of its own. She draws her hands in imprecise patterns, blurring the glitter into shooting stars. She wonders what it would take to get Gerald to follow her inside.

When Deandra and the other girls have left, leaving only Elisa and Amalie behind, Elisa reaches out a hand. Amalie takes it, swinging herself into a gentle pirouette under the arch of Elisa’s elbow.

“I don’t think I know how to lead” Elisa chirrups, becoming shy.

“Oh if the men know how to do it, it can’t be too hard” Amalie jokes. Elisa giggles, seeing a grain of truth, and tugs at Amalie’s arms again. She pulls her inward, but Amalie stands at a distance watching the green flicker on Elisa's lips. She wonders how it would feel, to have Elisa plant kisses on her cheeks, leaving a trek of lip-stained galaxies bundled on her neck and shrinking planets down her collarbone. Instead, she offers her hand for Elisa to peck. The brush of her lips is a Midas touch, leaving two bow shaped galaxies in their wake. Amalie blushes, admiring the print.

She could get lost in those galaxies forever.