Morphine

It is the night of her dance. The dance at which I will attempt to get her, because I need her, no matter what I’ve said. I hope that it works. My sudden spark in interest? Or at least, it should seem so.

“Wow, you look so… scene appropriate.” Edmond says when he pulls up in his ancient Subaru XT (silver, never has to wash it). He says it used to belong to Gerard Way. No one believes him.
“Shut up, Mister Simmons.” I say, slamming into the passenger seat. “How many times did you go back to that store this week?”
“Seven,” he says, quite proud of himself, pulling into another subdivision. “We gotta pick Mela up.”
“Mela?”

Any notion of teasing him for this infatuation is lost when she comes out her door, sending my vision swirling. Edmond’s eyes have never been so green or so wide and he can’t seem to close his mouth.

Melanctha doesn’t walk. She floats in a mist of black and silver. Tiny black flowers are tangled in her perfectly curled blue hair and Edmond can’t help but to rush out of the car and kiss her… Or rather, attempt to falling down a few inches away. She laughs that spectral laugh and helps him up with a gloved hand. I decide we’re less likely to die if I drive.

We pull up to her house at exactly nine. The door is locked. No one answers, but we can hear the music blasting in the back. Melanctha sighs, walking down the front steps and around the side.
“Damn her and her ‘early or never’ point of view. She says nine, but she means eight twenty-five.” She pushes some ivy out of her way and maneuvers through a thin space between the house and the gate. Edmond follows and they disappear. I go next and fall like Alice down the rabbit hole into a glittering Wonderland like nothing I’ve ever seen.

All the girls look like flowers and the boys their stems. They waltz and shimmy, samba and shake, jitterbug, pop, drop, bump and grind, even twist like a meadow in the breeze.
I grin. No straight man would ever think the way I do… Not in this age of messed up, chewed up, technology-driven pure mainstream obsession. Everyone is synthesized through series of wires and software and electrical rape. And for what?
So we can say we’re real? So we can say we feel?

We are fake.
We are robots.

She stands in the middle of the crowd, but I spot her immediately. She’s smiling at Melanctha who doesn’t see her for sliding up against Edmond. But she sees me. The music changes, stuck in my head.
“I wanna girl with lips like morphine!”

I walk over, the flowers swaying fiercely and take her hand. She looks surprised. I pull her closer and spin.