hi all - just a short story I wrote last year sometime; tell me what you think! comments/constructive crit. or anything else, and above all, ENJOY!

The lights will go down in the theatre, a hush descending; curtains will rise with applause, ringing in your ears as you step onto stage, lights glimmering glistening pink satin that appealed to the three-year-old you were. Ribbons and skirts floating out and round, up to the sunlight; you didn’t know what was coming for you, amidst your world of fairy tales.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them point your toes ‘you only came in third, honey’. Working harder the footlights picked you up and spun you around; fatherly figures of masters of ceremony smiling sickeningly at the camera [I was in the paper yesteryear] and your perfect white teeth flashed, matching magnesium powdered across your costume. But behind all that nobody saw the blood and blisters backstage, resin crushed between your toes and scalp scratched red from countless pins and cruel-teethed combs, metal and tortoiseshell. You were only seven years old.

Stand beneath a red umbrella in line, audition after trial after audition after test after trial, and that all got you here, shrouded in black; wait, hoping [knowing] this will be victory, a wide ribbon of success, hanging down your bedroom curtain before the night is through, brilliant blue. Poised, you are ready for the screaming lights and garish music that will shatter your mind; fractured seconds suspended, tolling bells hanging before your eyes are dizzying and joyful all at once.

Dissolving into the floor, congratulations and salutations from every blurred face, you were famous and paraded. Hide beneath expensive gowns and silken hats, these days no child would ever wear such a thing. Any world of sense and honour was burnt long ago with your playthings, dolls and books, cups and saucers Mummy wouldn’t you like some tea? But all she wanted was success; she paid and was paid in money, she hadn’t time to spend.

Spectators waiting, teacher fussing over the gathered tulle that will not sit ‘just so’, and your image of perfection just stands and waits, brilliant smile gracing your features smothered in makeup, so much that you can barely breathe the costume doesn’t help. Stomach clenched tight but you’re not nervous. This is familiar; you’ve not eaten today, head feeling light and cloudy, match the illness with the profession and you’ll find so many like you.

Nine years old, cats with those tails. Convicts and the settlement in Australian history, over and over again; the third year you read Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and you asked to switch – you’d read it already. Black cats white cats you were black to match your dark hair, Russian in the stage lights as you scampered and capered like the Jellicle cats with green eyes, white socks. You slipped over in them and got a bruise and scolding and second place nonetheless.

Make the last adjustments to yourself, presentation to be perfected as always - never a stray hair or ribbon or thread - everything in its proper place each time no matter the price. Forty-seven costumes hung, immaculate, in your wardrobe today, and they’ll be back tonight; brushed and polished ready for the next time because there’s always a next time. Check your list and you know this will turn out alright, for you. Not good, never good enough there is always more and better, but alright.

You hit double digits with a double pirouette at 6:47am, your first perfect turn in the dark light of the studio, 6 until late night, training your life away. Waking to ashen circles burnt beneath your eyes you avoid the mirror, turn to another day of colourlessness, sanguine blooms and chords of steel pull taut every waking moment. Apple here and there in sickly green the only other colour, out on stage like a flower of monochrome, hiding behind presentation night. Crying happiness that evening you danced home for pure joy you stole the show with a western sunrise and ran down High Street away from it all, real tears falling now because you are barely there and cannot feel delight, you aren’t here.

Tearing at the gaping hole in your heart you couldn’t breathe, no room for air and still gasping in futile desire - wanting, needing anything - the smell of madeleines, scents of sweet peas and roses and perfume sprayed across the night, shimmering behind your eyelids. In that moment you woke to face the day with nightmares of raw terror.

Seized up, racking pain through your bones; cry out like a wounded child, salted cheeks unseen. Entering stage left to applause equalling no storm of frenzied madness you began Daily Telegraph: youthful dancer speaks of happiness and wonder of performance behind the mask you are crying crying and nobody would ever know. Throwing yourself from the crowd, from it all; you wished for the nearest bridge, falling away, nobody there to catch you while the water embraced you lovingly.

Afterwards, clad in your colours you stand up there again unsatisfied although that blue streak will add to your collection; you wonder why - it could have been painless and carefree and wonderful and nobody told you what you really did. But out here, exposed to film and magnesium you danced left to right and forwards to back, raked stage playing havoc with your balance, teeter-totter-slipping beneath your toes, unbalanced in the unblinking lights, pitiless as if this is unforgivable, but perfect.

You were always perfect, that night.