Outsider
someone I knew went for breast
reduction. People’s grapevine spat it out as double mastectomy. I
went into a shop and the woman at the counter said “You’re the one
with the double mastectomy” and looked at my chest. Everyone in the
shop looked at my chest. “Oh no,” she said, “it’s not you.” I got
very pissed-off with their attitude and shouted that SHE had gone for breast reduction, not double
mastectomy. But I would go for double
mastectomy.”
    “ Let me give you the moon and the
stars
    Let me give you the song they won’t let me
write
    Let me give you the world and the sun
    Let me give you the dream they won’t let me
have”
    “ By the way, Terri was in my dream last
night and I was great at roller-skating.”
    “ Dawn was in my dream last night. Can’t
remember the details now [I know it was a “tired” dream because
last night I fell asleep while listening to SL’s CD and in the
dream I put on the T-shirt that in so-called reality I had left on
one of the pillows for the night but anyway], we went walking
together, Dawn to her car and me to my motorbike, talking.”
    “ So many vampires in my dream, an endless
parade. They couldn’t care less about me. I was a total laughing
stock because whenever I tried to stake one of them, I’d miss the
heart. At the end, when I caught up with Sharon my team leader [Dr
Lewis from “ER”], my team had apparently been decimated. I had to
stake Sharon because she had been turned into a vampire. I woke up
feeling like a failure.”
    “ Loneliness is the price for lack of
knowledge.”
    “ Second Look in my dream. We were at
Terri’s ranch. While Terri was explaining something to do with
horses to someone else, Dawn’s left hand was caressing my hips
under a blanket. No comment.”
     
     

CHAPTER TEN

    He hadn’t given Jasmine the chance to say
good-bye. For all her relatives knew, she was dead. She had been
ill, weakening, wasting away, and then she had disappeared. They
probably explained her vanishing act as a moment of dementia.
    She did mind. Life had been fun and
inconsequential. Born during the second half of the nineteenth
century to a bourgeois but aristocratic couple, she had married a
rich, handsome and extremely eligible bachelor at the very dawn of
the next century. They were the most talked about couple in
society; they looked so suitable to each other. And they were.
Jasmine’s husband had other tastes in the bedroom and was more than
happy to let her enjoy her personal choices.
    The Stranger didn’t ask her if it was ok, he
was used to take whatever he fancied. And he fancied Jasmine all
right. He had a fetish for long, dark hair and matching eyes. She
was her type more perfectly than anyone he had encountered.
    She was the queen of every ball, favouring
luxurious gowns of green and purple silk that enhanced her natural
beauty. Dancing partners were queuing, women were jealous. She
would waltz until first light, and the Stranger would watch, hunger
biting inside more fiercely every night.
    Jasmine had enjoyed her life of pleasures,
the lack of responsibilities, the attentions of dashing young men,
her husband’s courteous friendship, and the male and female lovers.
Ahh, her lovers. Some of the men enjoyed perusing her wardrobe and
trying out her make-up, for some kinky and fancy cross-dressing.
Some of the women would try out her husband’s outfits for similar
reasons. It was the dawn of the twentieth century, she had money
and freedom; she was, by her own standard definitions, happy. She
was about to turn 29, but didn’t look a day over 20. Life was
grand.
    Until the attractive Stranger danced with her
and crushed everything.
    Her husband, her parents, her children, her
family, were certainly dutifully mourning her now. She missed them.
She missed her turbulent twin children, her effeminate husband, her
supercilious aunt, each and every relative, no matter how
irritating she used to experience them.
    She hated the Stranger for

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