Surprise! Violence! creeps over a red-light district through dirty binocular lens. The magnified glass reveal grungy stone streets and seedy clubs. The ‘closer look’ from the safety of a roof top apartment, the anonymous birds-eye voyeur that becomes part of the crime. That creepy nocturnal e-ciggie eyewitness is the one guy Kate really wished was there watching her tonight, but instead.
Kate face-palms onto the concrete sidewalk. She picks herself up again and walks towards the people.
She pushes through the rainbow crowd, wiping blood onto their activewear club clothes. She staggers past the overdressed Chinese men who sit with underdressed women chain-smoking in front of empty cafes. It's too cold without a jacket. She always the one that feels the damp night air. She slips over her feet again, her giant heels unbalanced and heavy from the impact of violence. The left side of her head has cracked open a little and a steady flow of warm blood pours down the length of her hair cascading down her exposed back. She’s been working out lately. It could be the only reason she made it this far. She wants to believe, because of her current state of fitness and that degree of rage she tapped into during the violence, luck had fucking nothing to do with it.
She stops and touches her sticky hair. It reminds her of hair dying kits.
Dying, why do these two definitions share the same damn word? English will never make sense to her. A car swerves around her because she is in the middle of the road.
It affects people differently, but in Kate, the act of violence combined with the slow transition into shock has made her contemplative. She is O.K with not feeling her body anymore, it lets her concentrate on walking but she does begin to question why she feels her heartbeat throb through her hands that grip the sides of her head. A car curls around her again. She looks to the windscreen but the drivers identity is disguised in streetlight flare. It gives the car a spectral entity. Ghost driven cars rolling around at night, unwilling to help the living.
Kate is having problems keeping the blood out of her eyes. Her eyelashes can’t cope with the amount oozing down her face. She suddenly becomes self-conscious because she is so tall, even without heels, and with her arms up exposing her armpits like that, reminds her of the 1960’s Hollywood Glam bikini pose, on the beach, the big pearly smiles. Or is this pose too similar to a woman who has lost her mind and needs a straightjacket to prevent her fingers pushing through her hair, squeezing at her brain. The main source of psychological pain is not the fungal infection between her toes that will push her over the edge. It's simply just a thought or feeling that will do it.
The blood will never come out of that silk dress.
What are the rules of violence? Kate considers this when a kind stranger drops her to the Accident and Emergency Clinic. Should she have asked the kind strangers for his email to send a thank you card? It would've been a great opportunity to explain why she is so drunk and hurt. Kate hates doing things by halves. Her employers celebrate her for this, but in this situation it is not a ‘blessing in disguise’ situation.
The waiting room is empty except Giggle TV. A six min loop of babies falling off slides and awkward-teens-skating-bad. It's calming to know other people hurt themselves too.
When the nurse wheels Kate into the shower box she explains the door will be closed but left unlocked. Kate is unsure why a small pair of scissors are left next to the hospital towel and gown.
It suddenly becomes clear though, when she tries to pull her dress off. Kates breathing quickens while she concerntrated. Blood-clots fuse to hair and silk incredibly well.
What are the rules to violence? She's upset with herself she doesn't know the answers. Is it frowned upon to wear the dress post violence?
She remembers buying it a week ago in a boutique sale. Secondhand. It’s not usually what she wears but it fitted her so well. Kate got a lot of complements when she wore it out, even Kate’s boyfriends sister Emile, whose fashion opinion she respected, said something about the dress, but what Kate really liked about that particular dress for, was that night her boyfriend peeled it slowly off her body. It felt sexier than other items of clothing she preferred to be undressed out of.
Kate throws the mangled silk dress, stiff with blood, hair and skin into the paper bin.
What a waste of a flash dress.