Dustin LaValley is an author and screenwriter from the capitol region of New York. His books include A Soundless Dawn, and the forthcoming, (12 Gauge) Songs from a Street Sweeper, both from Sinister Grin Press. He’s had many screenplays produced and a novella optioned for film.
I recently reviewed the excellent A Soundless Dawn by Dustin LaValley. Dustin has very kindly agreed to share two pieces from the book with readers of Examining the Odd. The first was A Secret Love, and now we have That Pink Haired One.
That Pink Haired One
Dustin LaValley
We are here in this place and though neither of us have a solid foundation… We are standing, she with grace and beauty and I with aspiration. A smile greets me with open arms and I’m brought in, warm and muddled by her charm. Her smile… it lures me, her eyes… they fill me, her touch… it binds me. There is a moment of silence as we separate, our bodies adjust and start anew, and though the night has just begun I am absorbed. She speaks, I listen, secretly wishing, that this encounter is no passing gesture. There is a sense within myself, an ache that cannot be identified or perhaps, is simply not familiar. I grow quixotic, bold, hoping not to nettle the semblance or chance misguidance. I’m bestowed and the air is soft, gentle, subtle… The night ends and as she departs I’m left with the taste of her, the smell of her, and the wonder of what this will become and, the hope that whatever this may have been, that it will carry forth, grow and strike a tune beyond this surreal purlieu.
I hear she cried. Her eyes melted, black tears smeared baby-doll skin. A picture is snapped, tattooed, printed on my brain. Hoping she can hear the thoughts, shake it off, kid, shake it off. I know the emoticon for which is adequate. Thinking of her, I write as I always do… always thinking of her, eyelid twitching to a beat without rhythm, closing to images, blinking flashes of light within the darkness: pink hair upon my chest, a playful bite to a cheek, a petite body warming me. Though she’s hours away I can dream… It beckons me, the memory, the metaphors. I miss her, I say to myself knowing well it could hurt. Knowing well it’s worth it all, everything and anything. A sudden realization, yet nonetheless than truth… I miss her. Tonight, last night, tomorrow night I want her -I want her- to cuddle, to kiss, to share a moment in this lifetime. Whether a moment of tears or laughter, of laughter and tears… a moment of this lifetime…
I wait in our room… The very same room of the last and the first secret rendezvous –the purposely out-of-the-way, dirty, cheap, unknown motel in a purposely unknown, cheap, dirty, out-of-the-way small town– I wait, alone, at a small table for her arrival. A book plays the role of companion. Chapters One and Two finished by the time notices comes via wireless voice command. They come in spurts, jumbled together or short, out of relation and erratic. The country service bars hit or miss, spiking in unexplainable random points. Forty-five minutes she says, thirty minutes she says, forty-five minutes she says and I wonder if she has become victim to a form of vortex or misplaced in another dimension on the lonely, plain and monotonous interstate. Hypnotized eyes unaware her German compact has passed the very same natural landmarks repeatedly… repeatedly… repeatedly… repeatedly… Four hours, three hours, four hours later I’ve finished the final chapter as knuckles rap upon the door to the room, our room… Through years of confined cigarette smoke that clogs pores of skin like sweat on a mid-August night, I can smell her perfume. It lures me.
Overtaken by immediate lustful elation clothes are shimmied up and down and aside other than removed and the bed linen remains folded and straight as we tumble… I, like a forlorn parolee and she, like a woman of the night. We slip from the edge of the mattress to the floor and I twist and wriggle, mounting her atop of me. The carpet brash against my exposed backside creates a burn as we thrust together. A stark pain grinds on as our pelvic bones meet, two small creatures bruising sensitive areas in part for sexual pleasure.
That pink hair dangles as she allows her head to loll forward, the ends tickling my lower stomach below the t-shirt bunching beneath me. I thrust and wrap my arms around her, pulling her down to my chest and she continues to grind and swivel. Tight, strong, my muscles flex as I keep her face buried. Her voice is muffled and her nails dig into my shoulders, hands begin to claw at my face. I continue to thrust until I finish… Not aware that her flailing has ceased, her legs limp and hips stationary and, as I release her that beautiful face –-now contorted in a shocking display of death– slides to a thump against the floor.
We are in this place, our place… and I have just killed my secret lover in a remote location during what was to be –for the better of both our professional lives– a night’s encounter kept hidden from all but the two of us artists. She, the figure of an actress and I, the shell of a screenwriter… we, the socially denied couple. This dreadful death an accident, deplorable, excruciating yet it urges my mind to wander to the form of an outlet. In the perspective of my mistress I live the intense closing moments as her neck is crushed and her brain denied blood and oxygen… a terrifying and unfortunately foreseen coming end of an all-too-brief onscreen life and a long series of hardships off-screen flash in like comic book panels. From birth to the darkness before the final “Cut,” the final exhausted hollering of “That’s a wrap!”
I’m daunted by the images and truth of the task that now lies at hand. The memory of her by fans, friends and family will be judged by the source of her death, accidently forced by a composition of hunger and passion it must not be known and must be countered by a mystery to keep suspicions abound. In a fury, I scribble the note that is to accompany her suicide, an outlet flooded and plugged by the end of a morbidly beautiful vignette. Amongst a heartfelt goodbye and a thank you to some, is a finger poking at the chest of one that broke her heart and drive to carry on.
Some days later I read she suffered with chronic depression: memories, the after effects of countless tragedies of a falling star struggling through life with no place to reach for relief or comfort other than in the arms of an affair with an undisclosed secret lover. A series of misfortunes that brought her to wits-end which happened to also be the end of a belt hanging in the closet of a dirty, small town motel room… her body swaying gently back and forth with the faint echo of delirious laughter in the room as reported by the undisclosed man, the secret lover and unknown co-perpetrator of this purposely out-of-the-way rendezvous.
We were there in that place and though neither of us had a solid foundation, we stood. I heard she cried, black tears smeared baby-doll skin and I waited in that room, our room… to be overtaken by immediate lustful elation and to read some days later that she took her life… that pink haired one… she took her life.
Jay Snelling Art 