The tiny figure lay on its back on the mattress, underneath the tent of old sheets, looking up towards the starry skies.

With a click, one fell to the ground. And then another, and then yet another. It was time to put them back into the packaging, then. And as the sheet crumpled and the ‘tent’ fell apart, the child knew the dream had gone.

Under the sheet, blue-green-brown eyes began to droop.

Rushed staccato breathing slowed to a rhythmic, barely audible whisper.

Every day, the sound of normalcy echoed just beyond their four walls; of birds chirping from the trees outside, their early-morning music in stark contrast with the cacophonous clamour of the vehicles on the road, everybody jostling to get ahead, knowing they would have to stop not a moment later.

And life went on, within and without, as she lay in bed waiting for the short, sharp yells that signalled that the day had begun.

Five minutes under a cold shower, with a nasty old bar of soap in one hand, her toothbrush in the other. That was all it took for her to be off to school, that rotten place where people threw things at her and called her names, but nothing she hadn’t already heard.

When it got too quiet in her head, which was often, she lay on her stomach on the cold linoleum, searching through dusty old video cassettes that the rage had long since forgotten about, waiting to lose herself in the movies where people were always beautiful, and always seemed to have bright futures and somebody who loved them.

‘But none of this is real‘, she repeated, to the brain that refused to stop thinking.

She lay there, for hours and hours, rolled into a thin sheet on the floor, hooked to the silver screen.

The real-life pig-in-a-blanket, she called herself.

Her day began much as it ended – in the silence in her head, that little place devoid of anything at all, the little cabinet she liked to crawl into when the noise got too deafening and the lights were too bright.

The lights along the bylanes on Main Street were never too bright, though.

Neon signs flashed through the night, silhouetting curvy women in their stockings and pumps, legs moving seductively, beckoning anyone who wanted to watch.

At the age of exactly fifteen-and-three-quarters, on a rainy Friday night, she finally snuck in, silently, part of a crowd of seedy-looking, much-older men who seemed to be rather drunk already. ‘Why would they need to be in a bar?’,she asked herself, though it wasn’t really a question at all.

She found her place in the darkest, most silent corner, at a ‘romantic’ little table-for-two, the ashtray still smoking, an unextinguished, half-smoked cigarette still in it, picked it up, and inhaled, deeply, sipping at the unfinished glass of wine left at her table.

Completely lightheaded, she waited for oiled, half-naked, nubile young men and women to begin dancing, but they didn’t.

In the dark, someone played an arpeggio, and a light flickered to life.

From behind a thick curtain of dark red velvet and mystery and smoke appeared a pair of long, slender, pale legs in fishnet, legs that ended in towering black heels with blood-red soles.

That was the first time she saw Lady Stardust, in tight black leather and fiery lipstick, a feather boa around her neck, her dark curls flying about her face, and large breasts that seemed incongruous with her slight, waif-like frame. She stared intently at the makeup on her face.

As Lady Stardust sang her songs, she felt the music take over her slowly but firmly, like a finely matured scotch that had just begun to sink in, but took hold of her immediately.

And she sang all night long.

The little girl, who was not so ‘little’ anymore, crept to the back of the stage after the show was over, and walked through the wings into a deserted little corridor, a single, dimly-lit room right at the end. She hid in the shadows, as she always did, and peered in.

Lady Stardust took a swig of whiskey, just like the rage always did, puffed on a cigarette and pulled at her mane of long black hair, letting it fall to the ground.

Like a very dead creature, the wig lay on the floor, absolutely still in spite of the wind that blew through the window, as Lady Stardust reached into her dress with one hand, expertly pulling her ‘breasts’ out.

In the mirror, high cheekbones and dark, scrunched-up, chocolate brown eyes peered into themselves as long, bony fingers wiped a face clean of makeup, and as the feather boa finally came off, she saw the Adam’s apple that it had been hiding.

Lady Stardust, she had discovered, was not really a lady at all.

All she wanted was to keep listening to her deep, smooth,rich voice that reminded her of silk and velvet and dark chocolate.

So every Friday night, when the rage was incomprehensibly inebriated, more incoherent than usual, slurring and yelling out its words, and throwing things about, the not-so-little-girl snuck out of home, the change she found under the sofa cushions held tightly in her palm, to buy cigarettes at Lady Stardust’s.

Back home, late into the night, those beautiful melodies haunted her, and she sat at her piano for hours, attempting to decipher the music, to make sense of the lyrics that talked about humans and beings from other worlds.

If there ARE aliens out there, she thought, thinking of little green men on Mars, are they happy? Are they loved?

With the final drag of her final cigarette for the day, she fell asleep, her body slumped across the piano, her tongue lolling out, looking for all the world like a lost, sleeping puppy.

School, that tormentuous, wretched hellhole where she was supposed to be educated, was finally over, and the not-so-little girl with the mousy hair had graduated, second-in-class, with a certificate from the school and beatings from the rage for her trouble, all in one day.

Thin pink lips were bright red, covered in blood, a deep gash beneath her nose where her lip had been split with a shard of glass that had broken, and her eye shone a peculiar shade of bright purple.

Months later, she could still taste the rusty, metallic blood, her left pupil now permanently dilated. What was it that doctor had called it again?



Mydriasis, child.

My-dear-ass-is, she repeated to herself, in the mirror in the little room she now lived in on the eleventh floor, alone, away from the rage and its tormenting ways, and she pinched it, squeezing at all the excess flesh, pulling the skin on her face tight, sucking in chubby cheeks under high cheekbones and slapping the stomach she thought was too fat, the stomach that made her tilt her head over the toilet bowl every day, retching as much as she could till it was all gone. She always walked past the cafe but she didn’t eat, she’d lived too long.

Her lank, mousy hair in a ponytail, she pulled and pinched at too-large breasts on a too-small frame. Her breasts, those of a rubenesque woman, had somehow ended up on her lithe, tiny body, and there they stayed, no matter how little she ate or how much she tried to purge.



Every morning, off to the Emerald Bar it was, to cleaning tables and fetching beers for people that came to drown their sorrows, to overhearing conversations about why each of them were there, learning a little bit more about their lives every time, and staying nearly until the sun came up every day, cleaning tables to pick up any extra money she could get.

Friday nights, however, were always reserved for Lady Stardust and her voice of gold, best enjoyed with the Marlboros that she snuck out of the case at the Emerald Bar every few days. There were so many of them that nobody ever knew.

Woozy after having smoked the whole pack and intoxicated by the music, she would creep into the cinema across the street to catch the midnight show. In her favourite dark corner, hidden from the prying eyes of the ticket-man, she watched the beautiful women with perfect figures, their tiny waists and big, expressive eyes, faces plastered with pristine, glistening smiles, people falling in love with them at every corner of every street.

She watched as gorgeous women and perfect, chiseled, gallant, chivalrous, loving men held hands and kissed under the sunset and made love and held each other close, as parents held their children to their chests and promised to love them, as young children enjoyed their lives, playing on swing-sets and running through parks, their innocent laughter echoing through beautiful surroundings where mummies waited with glasses of iced tea for their tired children, who were showered in hugs and kisses.

‘But none of this is real’, she reiterated to her tired brain, and went to the piano that had been dumped in the alleyway behind the apartment where she had a little room, beginning to play the songs she had written, of femme fatales that emerged from shadows, and young boys who stood up on their chairs to make their points of view.

Singing as silently as she could, her long, bony fingers glided across the keys, playing a soft, mellifluous glissando. She hoped nobody like the rage would find her again, yelling for silence. Nobody did.

Two years passed.

As unobtrusively as the night fades into day, the girl with the mousy hair disappeared, quite suddenly.

Nobody at the Emerald Bar ever saw her at work again, nobody had ever known where she lived, and she never spoke to anybody at Lady Stardust’s, except the bright red ashtray that knew all about her, the ashtray that seemed out of place.

A new sign appeared beneath Lady Stardust’s one day, proclaiming the arrival of the Queen Bitch.

Nobody knew who he or she was, but they came anyway, for Lady Stardust, for she would be there, with her silken, deep voice, her beautiful pale legs that went on forever and those breasts that people stared at all day.

The spotlight came on, just as it always did, illuminating the dust in its path, and an arpeggio played. But no pale legs in fishnet appeared, no huge breasts in a tight black dress.

Flaming red hair glowed like fire under the spotlight, and a lanky figure in a baby-blue suit began to sing, its blue-green-brown eyes with two different pupils, staring into space as it sang, sitting at the piano, in the light for the first time.

Bright light and darkness were much the same, thought the Queen Bitch – blinded either way, unable to see anything or anybody else, life would go on.

Songs came and went, of love and loss, of romance, of beauty and happiness, of things the Queen Bitch had never felt, except through those characters in black and white, those gorgeous couples that yearned for one another every moment of every day,those perfect little children that were held to chests and kissed goodnight and never cried, the people in the world that were wanted by somebody. Anybody. Even those little green men.

The songs went on forever, and every night the Queen Bitch was back to the alleyway behind her home, at the piano again, writing about all the things she had never felt, in words that seemed to fly into her head at will.

There was not a trace of the girl with the mousy hair in the Queen Bitch, with hair redder than the bloodshot eyes of the rage when it was at its zenith, at that point where it had had one drink too many, except for the my-dear-ass-is.

Too-big breasts on a too-small frame had been bound to fit into the suit Lady Stardust had stitched, spindly legs hidden underneath long trousers, and the jacket was cinched in at the waist, just like those dresses that the women-who-were-loved, those angelic ones with the beautiful smiles, who were kissed under the setting sun, wore.

People sat at dark tables in corners to watch the Queen Bitch, just as the Queen Bitch had to watch Lady Stardust, hidden in the corner, cigarette in hand, letting her voice take over from the ones in her head, the ones that never had anything pleasant to say, even the new ones that came every day, like they were visitors, stopping by to say hello.

There was no escape from the light or the voices, except to drown them out, with the piano and voices without.

And then, the music began to run dry. The voices outside her head began to echo the voices within. Little green men perched atop her shoulders began to tell her more of love, of how it was only for the beautiful, the perfect, the pristine, not the damaged. They walked among the crowds, strutting like the rage,with bloodshot eyes and a glass of whisky on the rocks in one of their hands, they walked with the musical scores she wrote by night in the lights that filtered in from the few lampposts down the street, waving them at her, yelling that they were no good.

One Friday night, beneath the spotlights, as dizziness took over, the Queen Bitch collapsed, in a crumpled heap at the piano just as a song ended.

Assuming it was part of the act, which had now, apparently, concluded, the crowds filtered out.

The Queen Bitch stirred in the silent, lonely darkness, unsure of where she was, staggering to the door, a burnt out cigarette in her mouth, stumbling down the street to the room she called home.

In front of the mirror, chubby cheeks were pulled at yet again, except there was nothing left to pull. Sunken, hollow cheeks and blue-green-brown eyes with two different pupils stared at the little green men that were huddled around the Bitch in the blue suit, the Bitch that knew not how to love.

Beneath the building, in the dawn light, smiles and laughter echoed as a couple laughing, kissing in the deserted street, smiled at one another as they linked arms and went on their way.

A mother held her laughing, gurgling child by the hand as they skipped down the street, and bent down to kiss his forehead, his arms tight around his mother.

But this isn’t supposed to be real, she yelled this time, to the little green men in the mirror. You said this wasn’t real!

Melodies had disappeared, and the screaming and the little green men had now taken their place for good, with no way to drown out the noise anymore. In a blind daze reminiscent of the rage, the Queen Bitch picked up a crystal glass, threw it at the wall, watched as it shattered. Then she threw more.

Again, and again, and again.

Shards strewn across the floor, she walked right across the room to pick up the remnants, as if in a hypnotic trance, leaving behind a trail of blood as she walked.

The little green men followed, but left no blood. They whooped and cackled as they trudged through the mountain of diamond-like fragments that littered the glittering floor.

Eleventh-floor-windows opened onto the alleyway with the piano, the piano that was now in the little room beside the bed.

A dazed Bitch walked into the currently-deserted, just-constructed edifice across the street, with its shiny new windows and doors, and soon, fancy people with their suits and briefcases.

Screams continued to reverberate in her head as the Bitch walked into the rickety elevator, riding it upto the eleventh floor, watching the cruisers below, the children, the couples, the dogs that roamed the street, foraging for scraps.

Sandstone and brick debris littered the base of the building that was still incomplete. With its clinical steel and glass and the carmine rocks below, it seemed to be part of a different planet, another world, a world that nobody inhabited, except the screamers and the little green men.

Blue-green-brown eyes with two different pupils looked up at the stars they hid beneath as a child, trying to hide from the rage.

Pushing open the window, the Queen Bitch, the Maid of Bond Street, the girl with the mousy hair beneath the flaming red, breasts no longer bound, leapt towards the rocks, leaving the little green men in her wake.

Back at the bar, Lady Stardust, with her dark curls and her beautiful, pale stockinged legs, sang again.

And she sang all night long.