Barlee 1
Markus Barlee
Dr. Stillman
ENG 445 - Advanced Non-Fiction
6 September 2017
KissCam Goodbye:
A Story of Betrayal, Basketball, and Public Displays of Senseless Rage
We all flock the bleachers because we have pride. Lakewood Strong. Evergreen and moon-silver blood rushes under our collective skin we painted in school spirit and early March drizzle.
Our rivals call us to battle. We attend, groaning our tribal marches to rattle the knock-kneed nail-biters in the nosebleeds. It's where we shove the opposers. We bear our teeth at them and howl.
Go wolves. We howl. Go wolves.
Brass trumpets are our battle cries. They tumble down the mountain of the stadium and reach our champions at the court. Our heroes play with their meal, showing off, stretching their legs until they've baited the team enough to engage in fits of snarling.
We don't question these ancient games. Instead, we draw our blood and make sacrifices to the basketball gods. We beat our chests, ensnare our mates as heat rushes from the court to our own hands—like anything can be our ball tonight and the net is a constellation of our choosing.
They play. We howl. Go wolves.
Barlee 2
When the players are spent, they wash their tired limbs with colored water and bend their knees to the gods of their sport. Genuflecting at the feet of their divine consultants, the men with clipboards and earpieces question the heavens and pray for answers.
But no one pays attention to these champions anymore. There are women and they dance to appease the howling hoard.
One fleshy offering, whose hair is mocked by mountain rapids that puppet her natural rivulets, dances for the mob with the wolf spirit flexing under her skin the same color of the forest bodies. Her brown eyes are projected in the sky. They're darker than earth but brighter than stars. They gleam with flashes of wildness as the beat possesses her.
Their dance ends. We can't tear our eyes away until the sky screen offers us fools for our entertainment. DanceCam. Dance, fools. Dance for the chance to be seen by the gods. They flail. After watching the vixen goddesses of the game, these clumsy bundles move for mockery. The gods move on.
KissCam.
The mob cheers. Sex. Show us sex, the early stirrings of an encounter, the fledgling touch of lips on lips on lips until our champions return. Occupy us with flesh.
One couple, a projected pair commands the screen as if they're thrown into the cosmos. The crowd cheers. He holds her face and engulfs her with lips. She tugs his brown curls in her long fingers and they crash into the people beside them. Hollers. Sex. Observe this couple in flaming embrace. Any closer and they would be absorbed like an infection.
Barlee 3
From the floor, all the way down on the Earth, the dancer is gobsmacked as if the sun rose from the southwest and informed her it was her fault. We see the dancer, no longer a surge of wolfish adrenaline. She is the Little Red who got lost. The Little Red who asked one question too many. The Little Red who vanished without a trace. The wolves have devoured their prey and expect her to dance on. But she doesn't.
The spectators, we the hungry audience, smell blood. She climbs the mountains of fans who call out to her. They ask her where she's going. Her tribe of women beckon from the ground. But she's climbing to the stars, to the man and woman still locked in the kiss. They don't notice her approach beyond their predetermined rutting.
"What are you doing?" she asks. We the ravenous crowd eat her words and fear upon approach. It's delicious. We lick our lips and demand an encore.
The couple unlocks from each other. The man tenses, but does nothing. The female runs talons through her strands of golden hair.
"You must be the spic," she says.
The dancer cocks her head to the side like a confused pup.
"I leave for a semester and find out some dirty brown cunt's been fucking my man." She approaches the other woman.
"I didn't know," the dancer backs away. We smell her defeat. We identify the weak and now we salivate over the kill.
Barlee 4
The golden-haired woman raises her claws and slaps the dancer across the face.
We all feel the sting and it turns the mob into animals.
We expect a fight. We expect blood. The crowd stiffens, hard-ons for a fight raging in our fists.
Holding her painted cheek, the dancer turns to the man. "You said you broke up."
"Don't you dare talk to him again, you fucking bitch." The female pounces.
We watch the jugular and wait for blood to spill. My, what big claws she has.
With the cheering and standing and return of our triumphant heroes to our court, no one notices as a territorial war progresses in the sky. The KissCam has moved on to project the true heroes of the night. Some are turned toward the game. We howl. Go wolves. Some are turned toward the other game. We howl. Go wolves. Balls. Bruises. A bashing unlike anything we've seen all season. Blood spills.
The victim, the dancer pulls herself away, clumps of her hair missing, blood trickling from a split cheek and cut lip.
We the mob watch her drag her body across the bleachers. We move away to let her pull herself out of danger, to lick her wounds elsewhere where the animals won't sniff her damaged goods. We the mob turn away when she pulls herself into an empty seat and cradles her middle.
Barlee 5
There are no bite marks. We assume she'll transform into a better, stronger offering. What doesn't kill her. What doesn't maim her will be lycanthropic salvation.
But now, she holds her wrist to her chest and cries.
We howl.
Go wolves.
YOU ARE READING
Fishnet Magic
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