Dancing in Fury

2: Suspension

There were days when she saw him, a figure covered in ink both smudged and fresh. He was a character whose reputation preceded him, one that everyone felt compelled to whisper about whenever he passed by.

Keeping her gaze low, she would, like everyone else, find it difficult to look away from him. She didn’t know if he could recognise her, but she always spotted him from his messy dark hair and ink-filled skin. She longed to be close enough to read the words off him, but she was a disease that ought to be quarantined. People noticed her gait and saw something in her eyes, saw the madness and chaos within, and glanced away, eager to put distance between them.

She didn’t know what he saw when he looked at her.

The first and only time he did so was at the bus-stop on that rainy day. The ground was slick, and raindrops rattled on the shelter. She was trying not to look like the handicap she was while also trying not fall flat on her face. Rainy days were always harder.

He stood before the bus directory, looking so pensive she wondered if he had been expecting to be stranded at the bus-stop that rainy morning.

When she fell, she landed not on her face but on her bad ankle. The pain took a while to register due to the cold, but when it hit she gasped and squeezed her eyes shut. Rain slid off her back, her arms, and seeped through her hair into her scalp.

When he spoke, his voice was low, the sort that was not used to making an inquiry or argument. “Are you okay?”

She let out another gasp when she opened her eyes. His hand was on her elbow, holding on without much conviction. She was seized by a fear that the ink on his skin would run under the rain, and she would be responsible for destroying the lovely, bizarre painting.

It was a feat getting up, as the rain blinded her and her foot kept slipping on the pavement. But with his support, they managed to dive back into the shelter. Shaking the rain off, she could not stop staring at the droplets of water caught in his hair, or wondering what it would be like to run her hand through it.

But she would not want to taint him.

The air grew thick between them. Their gazes met, then turned away.

“Th – thank you.” A stutter was the best she could do.

Seconds slipped by, and the silence was filled with the rattle of rain. 

He recognised her. She could tell from the brief spark in his eyes. Back then, her name had already been dragged through mud, and she wondered if he regretted helping her.

She tore out of his grasp and took off, stumbling.

*

He never appeared at the bus-stop again. Sometimes, she would take the later bus just to wait for him to come by. But he never did.

She wondered if it was her fault, if he was somehow avoiding her. Maybe he was just avoiding her because, like everyone else, he had heard a version of her story and was afraid of her. Disgusted by her. By how she continued living with the man her mother married, despite the hell he put them through. By how she had succumbed to the easy life he offered. By her handicap, her awkward body, her poisonous melancholy.

But she saw him and believed again in love. Not the bold, sweeping declarations that everyone seemed so fond of, but the kind that you could return to over and over in a fabled place like home.