The phone rattled back into its place; a white hand mark slowly melted into the black receiver. After hearing them, it had made everything that she had thought was behind her begin to swell until it had consumed her again. A sensation like liquefied marshmallow filled her stomach and began to move up her throat, paralysing her tongue and stealing the moisture from her mouth. Her body fell into the chair behind her; she stared blankly at the harsh wall in front. She looked over at the phone, and waited. Nothing came, only an empty silence which her characters had captured her within. This stage was killing her. The gold and velvet masked something sinister and hollow. The theatre was full of broken dreams and trapped desires.
She took off the dress that had been confining her, she felt her pearl necklace squeeze and release her neck repetitively as the panic in her chest increased. She reached up and unclasped the necklace; it fell to the ground. She could feel it happening, her thoughts were choking her. Her recollections scraped and grated against her skull. The memories scratched and tore at her; pinned her down as she became mentally numb. They spread from her mind into her lungs, polluting and destroying her slowly. Her hands ran through her hair to try and shield herself, trying to stop the memories contaminating her tears as they moistened her cheeks.
Noises echoed inside her head, she could hear doors banging and the sound of strong feet beating against her stairs. She snatched the tissue box and hastily scrubbed her face. He couldn’t see her like this. The door slammed and her body flinched; it was as if she had felt the door smack into her face. His presence dominated the atmosphere of the room, his anger filled the air, and it was in every breath she took. Her eyes were engrossed in him; she was captured by his anger. The back of his auburn hair was a mess; he’d just got out of bed. She remembered how on the morning after they met she could still smell his hair gel on her pillow, and how he had rushed into the bathroom to groom and re-gel himself. He wanted to impress this young actress; she enthralled him on that first night. After that evening though, he would realise that she had been performing to him, her characters never ended, she had lost herself within her own characters. How could you love somebody who wasn’t even there?
His hand banged against the window that looked out over London, ruining it with slimy, milky marks where his hand had been, distorting the reflection of Kirsten. The apartment was amazing, the window stretched along the side of the living room, which was pure white, everywhere, with a black and white rug placed in the middle. The sofa was white, the T.V was white; everything had to be white.
“What the fuck…” He paused as if to gather his anger and control his frustration, his hand clenched and he bit down on his lip.
“…have you done?” His words were being pushed through his restrained anger. He bent down and leant over her, his eyes were dictating where hers went. He studied her face, her cinnamon coloured skin complimented by the dark red of her lips. That and her eyes were what people recognised her for. Her eyes were a perfect almond shape, they were a dark brown on the outside and evolved into a deep blue in the middle; she had this strange shade due to her colour blindness. But now her make up had run and made her eyes appear to be ghost like, the dark smudged lines around them made her appear hollow, dead inside. He was seething; his hand grabbed onto the chair behind her head, he clutched the material and twisted it in his hand. Some of her hair was caught in between his fingers and she winced as he clamped her hair and the sofa together.
“You, stupid, bitch” As he articulated his words he left traces of saliva on Kirsten’s forehead, they remained there like a jewelled tiara waiting to be shattered. She curled up in the chair and stared at the ground. It had been all her fault she had forgotten, nobody else. She deserved this. She listened to Jack as he blurred into a mess of insults and aggression. She fell inside herself and her characters came out.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she spluttered, she was trying to think of what she could say to entertain him, how could she recover from this? She couldn’t, she knew that, but she had to try.
“You’ve lost me everything, I hope you realise that.” He was getting closer to her face; she could smell the stagnant beer on his breath mixed with the tobacco ash that was invigorating their argument and fuelling his anger. He stood over her, his body parallel to hers. She lay underneath him, her body dominated by his anger.
“I just froze, I don’t know what happened, I’ve never had trouble remembering before” her words were stumbling in between her tears and the mucus that was trapping them inside her. She could see the distant expression in his eyes; he was staring straight through her. He was so close now she could taste his breath within her own; his sweat contaminated the tears which had been dampening her cheeks. His pupils pulsated as he focused on her. He grabbed the bottle of champagne he had brought her for her first night and shattered it on the ground, pieces of glass flew everywhere and the champagne was slowly drunk by the white carpet.
“How can you just, freeze? It’s not hard to remember lines” He grabbed her hair this time instead of the chair; his hands clenched it and wrenched her hair from her scalp as she whimpered. As he smacked his hand against the sofa it shifted the air from her lungs into the palm of his hand, he walked towards the door; he turned round and looked at her in repugnance.
“You better think of a good excuse to tell people, they already think you’re a joke, what are they gonna think now?” He knew this was a lie, he was just angry. He felt she didn’t understand, he’d invested a lot of money into her - and he wasn’t going to let it go to waste.
Kirsten’s body began to uncoil from the chair and her feet perched on the ground. Her hand crawled to the back of her scalp. Strands of hair fell away and stuck to her hands, his words from earlier on that night were tapping against her skull.
“It was the
opening night Kirsten, Jesus!” He grabbed the door handle and turned it, just as he was about to walk out the door he turned around.
“I’ve been helping you out Kirsten, I didn’t need to act as your manager; remember that” He spat these words at her like venom as he closed the door behind him. She knew that’d be the last time she would see him; she’d stopped being an asset to him, and had become a liability. Jack didn’t waste his time with liabilities. She wondered how it had come to him acting manager, instead of boyfriend. She often wondered if that was all he had ever wanted from her, she could be a goldmine; she knew that; she could also make him the poorest man in the world. She feared she had accomplished that tonight…
As she had been waiting backstage people smothered the real her with powder and eyeliner; as she walked past the mirror she looked nothing like herself anymore, it was as if she had been wiped away.
“Do I really need all this make-up, I mean, I look so fake” She babbled the words, pausing as she gathered her bravery for the next word. After the last word fell out of her mouth as if into a huge ocean, Jack came over.
“You look perfect, just like a porcelain doll!” He moved his arm around her; holding her up as if for show. She cowered in his arms and whispered.
“I’m scared” She looked up and realised that Jack was talking to the stage director now.
“No, no, no, it’s all wrong!” The frustration inside of him held the words back and stopped him roaring at the stage director. He looked confused.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise, but it’s too late to fix it now” The stage director delivered these lines in a matter-of-fact way; Kirsten acknowledged this and respected him. He wandered off somewhere behind stage, probably to see his partner in their dressing room, Kirsten rolled her eyes.
“Can you believe the cheek of that man? I fucking give this place £100,000 to put this play on, and they treat me like that?” Jack carried on complaining. Kirsten had heard it all before; when the costume director had given her a short dress instead of a long one, when the background was painted black instead of white, etc. Kirsten delivered the same line she did every time he was having one of his episodes,
“I’ll make you the money back, just you wait till I get out there” Jack smiled and kissed her forehead. Her dress stuck to her like gum on the roof of her mouth.
“You’d better; I can’t afford to lose this money Kirsten” He had never said this before. Suddenly, her arms felt as if all the veins inside them were violently shaking as they poured lemonade into her chest.
As she walked onto the stage she could smell the aroma from the cloudy smoke that travelled down her throat and sucked at her lungs. The lights blinded her and she couldn’t see the audience, this relieved her - but she could still feel Jack’s gaze pricking all over her body. She looked around her and she realised she was on her own up here; her colleagues were engrossed in their characters, in their own world. Her world was empty though, the lines that helped comfort her and befriended her in this world were gone, and she panicked and ran off the stage. She ran through her apartment door and slammed it shut. The phone rattled back into its place; a white hand mark slowly melted into the black receiver…
…after Jack left she stared at her reflection in the pieces of broken glass from the champagne bottle; suddenly she saw herself from every angle. Everything that she thought she knew was a lie, she didn’t have the strength to move anymore, as she looked at the smudge on the window her eyes became blurred and the living room turned into a mass of white.
