Episode 8 - The Next Day...finally!!!
The sun rose on Carlisle street. Over night guests skulked back to their homes, some to their husbands and wives, checking carefully that no one was observing them leave.
Nan was up, sipping her tea on the landing and reading her paper. Soon she would potter around the front garden, picking up empty champagne bottles and those little transparent balloons that someone kept discarding amongst the bushes.
Midge, Paulie and the ambo driver returned from the hospital in a taxi. Midge's head was stitched and her dark, previously slicked back hair was poking out from under a huge bandage. Her suit was ruined with dried blood and she staggered groggily into her first floor apartment, looking for about a dozen paracetamol tabs.
Paulie led the paramedic into Midge's bedroom and she passed out on the sofa.
Jez got up to find the usual crowd of baby dykes comatose in her living room. She searched her medicine cabinet for something to abate the constant pounding in her head and the churning in her stomach. She was late for work and considered phoning in crook but decided it was too late and she'd had too many sickies. She opened a fresh beer, downed it and promtly flew to the toilet. Feeling much better, she put on her uniform and headed off to her place of work; the local taxi company.
Sara was still tossing and turning, those red, hateful words burnt into her mind. Everytime she started to doze, she would hear footsteps on the stairs and would imagine some psycho coming to attack her. Or worse, a lesbian trying to sleep with her. To block out the outside world, she put on her head phones and one of her kd lang cd's to try and take her mind off her troubles. She found her music comforted her.
Chloe was up and doing her stretches naked in her living room. She dressed in running shorts and lycra sports bra, laced up expensive running shoes and went for her ritual 5 km run before she went to her job as fitness instructor at the local gym.
Jules was logging off her computer after hours of typing her undying love for her grrlfriend, Helen. She was on top of the world. Helen was finally coming over to visit for the first time. They had spent the night doing Net searches on immigration for lesbians in Australia and planned their lives together. Jules was disturbed to discover that in order for Helen to stay, she would have to sponsor her, which meant getting a job. She shuddered at the thought and promised herself to look for work...tomorrow...after a good day's sleep.
She pulled the blinds that darkened her room so much that she couldn't tell night from day. She curled up beside a laser print out of a polaroid of Helen naked.
A stranger watched from a parked car across the street as shades were pulled, an old lady gardened, and a bull dyke rode her Harley to work. Finally she saw what she had been waiting for. A tall, amazonian goddess, barely clothed, jogging down the stairs.
The stranger waited for Chloe to reach the end of the street before she started the engine and followed her like a predatory shark.
to be continued... |
