The Aftermath Of You

Chapter Eight

Toni had wanted to learn Rock n Roll dancing ever since she'd watched 'Grease' as a child. As she rushed into the little hall in Arrowtown in a bright purple tutu with large black leather boots, she stopped in shock. Apart from the young couple clutching hands (and lips) in the far corner - and a seventeen year old girl staring in a jaded fashion at her nails, Toni could have mistaken it for a pensioner's ball.

"Hello." A man's voice leered in her ear. "Are you new?"

"Yes." She swung around to find a human vulture hovering nearby, and played spot the tooth for a few enjoyable moments. There, she found it; he still had one molar intact - on the far right. Smoke clung to him like a thick veil.

"Interesting dress," he sneered.

Her hand flew to her purple dress to touch the scratchy purple taffeta nervously. "Err... yes."

"You look a lot like a very skinny Audrey Hepburn," he said, or rather, drooled.

Well, that's a more positive way of looking at my weight loss, she thought. Toni treated the Toothless Wonder to a coy smile.

"Here." The madman clutched her hands and pulled her in tightly, spinning her this way and that so quickly she was afraid she would lose her dinner on the floor. Every so often he would bellow, "No! Look into my eyes!" and the odd, "Relax your elbows." Which was easier said than done, she thought angrily, as whenever she managed to relax the damn things he would leer at her and whisper, "It's a very sexy dance, a great place for meeting people," or something equally horrendous and her elbows would seize up again, like the Tin Man getting caught in a sudden downpour.

The Toothless Wonder didn't release his grip for the next hour; nonetheless Toni was obliged to admit that she flourished under his rule. She just wished the smell of cigarettes and beer didn't make her feel quite so faint whenever she got close to him.

"This is the last dance of the night," a short brunette woman who'd been the master of ceremonies barked. "Let's all change partners."

Toni's doting madman caught the eyes of a drunken, flirty, forty year old woman passing out on a man nearby. He clutched her hands tightly and they spun off into the sunset together. Toni turned to find a short fat man waddling towards her. Toni took his hands happily, thankful that she would no longer be the subject of such obvious sexual harassment .

The short fat man smiled stiffly, and asked, "Do you have kids?"

"No, I don't," Toni replied..

"You're very skinny," he tut-tutted.

"I watch what I eat," she fibbed, peeking at the clock over his shoulder.

The man had a gammy hip, and he swung side to side sharply without the neat little backwards step that Toni had quickly become accustomed to. When the moment came for her to twist under his arm and do a few orderly steps prior to racing forwards vigorously, disaster struck. The stout man's large hips swung this way and that, then his large unwieldy foot planted itself on her ankle and he stepped on to it, with all of his might.

The bone crunching in her foot echoed sickly through the building.

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