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             Suffocate your love
            In a barrel full of doubt
            Suffocate your love
            North east and south

                        Here I stand
                        In front of your imagination
                        Here I stand…

            Hesitate it’s normal
           You can’t erase mistakes
            Hesitate it’s normal
            You can’t keep awake

            Come closer
           It’s you I want to embrace
            Come closer….

            Come closer…

            SARANGI

            She wiped the fog from the mirror to gaze upon her reflection.   Her wet hair hung in tight auburn curls from the shower, her face flushed and swollen, green eyes shining.   She reached out to trace the shape of her lips, watching her fingertip glide a path across.   Gazing sullenly, she noticed how perfect her imperfections are.   Not quite Kate Winslet, but not quite the face of medieval plague victims either.

            Turning from the mirror, she exited her bathroom.   Lying on her bed, pressed and prêt a portiere, was a pool blue, mandarin-style dress.   Embroidered with tiny, silver dragons, it had cost her a fortune.   Well, maybe not a fortune, but more than what she could afford on her salary she made as a weekender radio deejay.   A very late night, weekender radio deejay.

            Not that she could complain.   500 quid a show, one day a week, late at night, she excelled in her radio program, a testament of hypnotic music that enthralled her audience to the point of ecstasy. Well, that’s what her listeners write to her.   They tell her all about the fanciful places her music takes them.   A mystical trip through a modern-day wonderland.   She is Alice and her music is the White Rabbit of the 21^st Century.   I guess you could say she is a charmer of the senses.

            She sat down in front of her vanity, applying her scant amount of makeup as per usual; blow dried her hair, and got dressed.   Viewing herself in the mirror one last time, wondering whether or not redheads should wear this particular shade of blue, and not really caring because no one cares anymore nowadays, she sighed, turned, and left her flat.

            West-end London, Saturday night, 11 a.m., not quite rainy, not quite dry.    The streets were slick with water; the sky was hazy, the half-moon peering ever so slightly out of the clouds, a lone bright star twinkling, then disappearing, then winking again.   She noticed how loud your heels clicking on the pavement could sound when you’re nervous.   It’s as if all other sounds don’t exist. She had been feeling nervous for some time now, about a week really.   She’d spoke to all her friends about it, utterly convincing them that she was, in fact, quite loony.     Well, more so than usual.

            But then again she’d always been clairvoyant. Not that she was thinking something bad or unusual was going to happen.   She just felt that things were changing.   She felt as if the whole wide world had changed in the past week.   The food tasted different, the sky was bluer, when it was blue.    The water in the bath caressed her skin in way she couldn’t describe, even after hours of searching a thesaurus to find the word.    It had been a strange week.

            She noticed sounds more.   Things were clearer, smells were stronger, and she understood people better than before.    It was almost like being in love.   Only she wasn’t. In fact she was far, far from it.   Sure, there were men she fancied, and she was sure some men fancied her.   But as far as she new she was not in love and no one was in love with her.   Not that she minded.   She had too much on her mind in the past ten years to worry about things like relationships, and sex, and all the little things in-between.

            Ever since her parents died when she was fifteen, her life had shifted from being homeless on the streets, living in the tubes when she could, and to the life she lived now. She had her friends, her job, her flat, and on occasion, a white alley- cat she christened Gabriel.

            She wanted her life with as little complications or shatterings of the heart as possible. Some people might think shatterings of the heart is what life is all about.   That whole spiel about having loved and lost and all that.   But she truly believed she was happier without all those shatterings of the heart.   But people around her knew better.

           Something is changing
            Growing in your mind
            Can’t do a thing about it
            Living normal life
            Can’t remember the first light
            Must have been something enormous
            I would give anything
            To travel into time 

            BARABAS

Corinne’s Party was always the party to go to this time of year. Not that it was thrown by or for someone named Corrine.   It was just called Corinne’s Party. No one knows why, it’s   a great unsolved mystery.   She entered through “The Gilded Door”, as it is called, and joined the party.    Great music, great drinks, great food, great guests.   All in good fun everyone had decided to dress in blue tonight.   Sapphires, cobalts, azures, indigos and periwinkles filled the room to make one think they were either in an ocean or a party for a newborn baby boy.

            She met up with the hostess, sitting with her on a sofa, and discussing with her the all the best Monty Python sketches.   This conversation of course led to the entire room of people chanting loudly together “ No one expects the Spanish Inquisition”.   For a good hour or so the whole party consisted of ramblings of Python phrases and such, that would send them all home later on with aching sides.   It was altogether fun.   She enjoyed so much being in a room full of people laughing rambunctiously.   Her ribs were already beginning to ache from the laughter.    She felt better already.   The sensations she had been having all week were beginning to ebb away slowly.   She felt much more connected to the world around her.

            The drinks were beginning to fill her veins with warmth she loved so much, smoking cigarette after cigarette, laughing and talking.   The magic of the room filled her and all those around her. It was magical, the honesty of friendship. She glanced at the faces around her, smiling at each, remembering all the good times they’ve shared, and the bad times.

            She honestly felt that if she were to die tomorrow, she would die happy. She would die happy with the thought that she had been so lucky to have had such times like these, with the people she cared about.   Rich in the knowledge, that no matter how alone she felt at times, she was in some way, loved by her friends.

            Fear is talking
            In my head consulting
            But my inner voice it says
            That I’m falling
            Could you be the pillow
            That solves this problem
                        Sometimes I want to
                       Close my eyes and trust you
                        But my inner voice it says
                        That I’m falling
                        Could you be the rock
                        That solves this problem

INNERVOICE

           It was all going well, until she caught sight of a pair of steel-blue eyes glancing at her.   That’s when all hell broke loose.   She could not look away, for even a moment to catch her breath.   It was almost painful. Shattering even, something she’d rather forget, so she could get back to feeling connected.   But now it came back, that feeling she’d had all week.   And it was his fault.   Or was it hers because she couldn’t look away. She prayed for someone to take her attention away form him.   But he kept staring, with those eyes, traced in a smidgen of black, dark brows arched above them.  

            He was dressed in a velvet gown, a paler blue than hers, almost gray.    Slit up the side, quite high up the thigh, with black stiletto boots that reached the knee.   His lithe hands grasped a cut crystal glass of some amber colored liquor, his nails painted a fetching shade of dark blue.   He frightened and excited her all at the same time.   She knew she wasn’t going to get out of there alive.   He would have her for lunch.

            Thankfully her hostess plied her with another drink and begged for a smoke, and her eyes were finally parted from his.   Curiosity got the better of her and glanced back to him, but he was gone.   She thought she should scan the room for him, but afraid, she kept her eyes on the hostess for the next two hours.

            Eventually, the party started to dwindle down, and guests began to leave one by one, or two by two.   Some left as they came, some left in the arms of someone they fancied, for at least one evening.   She thanked her hostess for the party, and offered quite obligingly to help clean up.   The hostess thanked her for her polite suggestion and said she had people to do that and so she left the party to go home and sleep off the effects of he good night of getting pissed.

            The clouds had gone away by the time she left and the streets were beginning to dry.   But this time she noticed her heels did not click so loudly.   This time she felt her heart pounding in her chest so hard, she knew the neighbors could hear. Deep down she knew it was just the drink, but part of her assured it that it was pair of steel-blue eyes that were making her heart beat faster than normal. Not that she minded that feeling, but she would rather go home and go straight to sleep.   She knew she’d have a sleepless night, filled with dreams she would never, ever admit to, not in a million years.

            But all at once, she heard the clicking, not her clicking, someone else’s clicking.   Someone else's heels clicking on the cobblestones.   Someone with longer legs than hers. Keeping pace with hers, she knew it was someone following her.   Too scared to turn and look, like in all those scary movies she’d seen.   Oh the cliché of it all.   The footsteps behind the girl on a fog driven night.   She turns and looks. Lo and behold it’s the madman coming to assuage her of her innocence.   She turns and runs…and trips on her heels. And falls prey to his madness.   Women are such stupid creatures in horror flicks.  

            But this was no horror flick, this was real life.   No clichés, no ironies.   Hard cold reality stared her in the face.   Someone was in actually following her, and she was either going to make it home and feel like a fool because it was just someone going the same way. Or she was going to end up a victim of something she had never known.   Either way, it was going to be an exciting ten minutes home.

           It enters your veins
           It enters your soul
            It tries to obsess you
            It looks for defaults

                        Try not to lose
                        Not to lose control

            It tries to destroy you
            It tries to tear you down
            Am I lost in your backyard
            Feel the pain

            PLUS PROFOUND

            At long last she reached the stoop of her flat, breathless and a little weary.   She pulled her key from her garter, afraid almost to feel someone’s breath on her neck.   She no longer heard the footstep and knew he had stopped and    was watching her.   She unlocked her door, and just was she was safely inside the arch, she turned around to see who it was.   And saw nothing.   No one was there.     She closed the door behind her, clutching her heart.   She pulled back the valance and peered through the glass, into the dark shadows of the street.   There, across the street, a shadow, darker than the blackness around it, stood a figure.

            Not moving, but certainly watching her watching him.   She closed the curtain.   And went to bed.

            She slept a deep sleep.   No dreams.   No visions of a dark clad man in the shadows watching her, waiting for her.   The next morning was as if the night before had never happened.    She made her breakfast as usual, opened her window and set out a saucer of cat food in hopes that Gabriel would grace her with his presence today.   She showered and left to run her errands for the day with only the slightest twinge of a hangover.   Nothing a little sunshine a fresh air wouldn’t cure.

            She decided to walk that morning.   She wanted to walk all day and all night and never stop.   She wanted to keep going, see how far she could, where she would end up.    Who would be there at the end of the line?    Staring up into the crystal blue sky, she wondered why this feeling was bursting inside of her all of a sudden.  

            And so she walked.   Through the city streets and the residential neighborhoods.   It was noon by the time she reached the outskirts of the city.   She still felt she had enough energy to keep going.   And so she kept walking.   Something was pulling her. Yes, most definitely, something was pulling her.    She wondered what would be waiting for her at the end of the line.

            Hours and hours later the sun was beginning to set.   The sky was starting to turn hazy purple and pink, but she knew it would be bright a few hours more.   But her energy had most definitely been drained.   She was tired and thirsty. Her feet were sore and certainly blistered.   Her stomach rumbled from hunger.   But she cared not for these things.   She wanted to lie down and rest. Rest was what she needed.   She would sleep out here in the softly rolling hills and sleep the night away, and then in the morning she would hitch a ride back home in hopes that whatever is going on inside her had worked itself out in the night.

            She pulled off her jacket and wound it up into a tight little ball to use as a makeshift pillow.   Laying down into the grass, she took in one last look around her, closed her eyes, and promptly fell asleep.    And slept the sleep of dreamers.

            I think it’s dark and it looks like rain you said
            And the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world you said
            And it’s so cold it’s like the cold if you were dead
            And then you smiled for a second

                        Sometimes you make me feel like I’m living at the edge of the world
                        Like I’m living at the edge of the world
            It’s just the way I smile you said

            PLAINSONG

            The brush of a hand across her temples is what awoke her.   Startled, she jumped awake already defensive.   As her eyes adjusted to the light in her eyes, she heard a single voice ask, “Had a nice rest, eh?”   Sitting up a little more, she brushed blades of dirty brown grass form her face and hair.    She peered into the dimly lit face of the person who woke her, seeing a face unlike any she had ever seen before, and would ever want to in the future.

            His face was like that of a tiger, but white instead of orange.   He had the hands and body like a man, but with the face and tail of a tiger. But his manlike body still held hints of the tiger cross within him.    He was dressed impeccably in what looked to be a Brooks Brothers suit. And perched across his cat-like nose was an antique pince-nez.

            He sat down next to her, pointing the torch out into the darkness.   “Cigarette?” he asked turning towards her offering a crumpled pack of Morley’s.   She shook her head in response.   “ Ah well, do ya mind if I smoke?” he inquired tucking the pack back in his vest pocket.   Once again she shook her head no.   Lighting up the cigarette with a funny shaped lighter (it looked sort of like a dragon) he turned and said “ Do you speak at all love?”

            Smiling she replied, “ Of course I can talk. But shouldn’t I be asking, how can you talk?’

“I suppose you could, but that would involve a lot more talking on your part, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I suppose so too,” she answered tucking her legs under her Indian style.   “But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Well, how about I take a stab at some questions myself” he asked taking a deep drag and exhaling after a few seconds.

“Let me guess, you’re wondering what’s a girl like me doing in a place like this’ she chuckled.

Laughing himself he replied, “That’s just what I was going to ask you love.   But you see unlike you, I already know the answer.   The funny part is, do you know why you are here?”

‘I felt it calling me here” she answered.

“I thought you’d say that.”

They say side by side, each contemplating what each had said, and what they should say next.   She gazed off into eh distance and tracked a lonely star on it’s slow path across the sky.   She must have watched it for over an hour, just sitting next to him, trying to figure out what was going on.

“I’m dreaming aren’t I?” she finally turned and asked the tiger in the Brooks Brothers suit.

“Very good love. I as wondering how much longer it was going to take you to figure that one out.   I hate to say it, but most everyone else says it the moment they see the person who wakes them.”

“How do you mean?   You mean I’m not the only one?’   she asked puzzled.

“Lots of others, just like you. Lost and scared, sleeping in the hills alone.   A different person or creature, whichever the dream suits best, awakes them.    Your dream is me, a tiger, in a Brooks Brothers Suit.” He paused, “ A thousand pound Brooks Brothers suit that is.”

She laughed at these words.   She turned to face him, and caught herself gazing into his eyes. He had removed the pince-nez, and she could see his eyes quite clearly.   They were steel blue and were piercing a hole right thorough her soul. She jerked her head away, trying unsuccessfully to keep the tears from falling from her eyes.

“Why are you doing this?” she sobbed “ Just leave me alone”.

The tiger stood up, brushing grass and dirt form his suit, extended his hand out to her.

“Just come with me. It’s the only chance you will ever get.”

“Chance at what. I don’t’ understand anymore.   Does this dream have some semblance of insight into my life, or is it all the drugs I did in school?”

Chuckling he replied, “ Well, the drugs help, but I’m afraid anymore than that I can’t tell you. All you have to do is stand up, take my hand, and trust me.”

Standing up she asked” Trust you with what, I can’t just take your hand without knowing why”

“Please listen.   I can’t tell you why.   But I beg you, please,   just take my hand.   I can’t say whether or not you life will be better or worse, whether you’ll keep dreaming or awake, or anything else if you take my hand. All I can say is that you have to.   If you don’t, well you’ll find out soon enough.     Either way, you’ll find out what I can’t tell you.”

            One last time he reached out his hand.  

She stood for a while. Looking at him, looking into his eyes, looking at his hand.

“I feel something strange” she finally said.

“What do you feel my love?’

“It’s so funny, I’ve been trying for a week now to try to say what I feel.   And now that I know what to say, I feel it’s so foolish to say it.” She smiled wiping the damp tears from her cheeks.

“Tell me. I won’t laugh,” he promised.

She stood in silence for one more minute. Opening her mouth she replied, very slowly “ I can feel the night behind me.”

The tiger smiled, reached his hand out further, and was grateful to soon feel her smooth, cool hand joining his at last.

            Tell me baby where did you sleep last night
            I heard noises in the cupboard
            Were you trying to hide
            Because you should know I hate this
            If you were I’ll hit your hiding place until sunrise

                        And I’m falling in love
                        Cause I need your loving
                        Every day and every night

WARDROPE  

            The twittering of a hundred little swallows awoke her this time.   She looked around for the tiger, but saw that she had slept alone all night long. No one had been there. No tiger, no suit, no cigarette ashes on the grass.   She wanted to go home and shower very badly.   She was way past famished and thirsty.   She was to the point of exhaustion and was suffering from exposure to the cold night air.

            Sitting up she glanced around and spotted a road not too far off from where she had lain the night away.   She brushed the grass from her rumpled clothes, wrapped the jacket around her, and made the long trek down the hill and to the road.

            Almost an hour later she found herself walking the winding black river of asphalt, her hand outstretched to catch the eyes of any kind passerby’s.   But alas on this lonely country lane, there was no kind passerby’s to be had.

            She pulled her thumb, nearly blue with cold, back into he warmth of her pocket and ducked her head for the long walk back to civilization.   She wondered how long it would be until she finally saw a human face.   She noticed she no longer felt so strange, but the lingering images of her strange dream still haunted her.    She dreamt of a tiger with eh eyes of the man she knew had followed her home the night before last.

            She wondered what it all meant, why did she say what she said.   How can anyone feel the night behind them?   How was that the solution to her strange sensations she’d been having.

            A few moments she heard the faint, far-off noise of a car approaching. She glanced around to ascertain from which direction it would come.   She prayed silently that they would pull over and give her lift and not drive away in the fear that she was a raving lunatic.

            Cresting over a distant hill, she made out the shiny outline of a car coming from behind her, heading towards, what she hoped was the main city of London, to home.   She stood a little back from the lane, but close enough to be seen, and pointed out her thumb. Almost before she knew it, the car was very close.   She could tell it was sapphire blue, and heading right towards her, slowing down.

            It pulled up to her and came to a halt.   The passenger door opened and she slipped inside gratefully.   “Where ya headed love,” the driver asked.   Closing the door beside her, she whipped her around, recognizing the voice.   Once again, she peered into steel blue eyes that now, she knew, belonged to her at last.

She stared at him, awestruck at his presence, A thousand questions and answers swirled in her brain.   She flicked her tongue around in her mouth trying to choose her words carefully. “ Wherever you want to take me love.   Wherever you want.” she finally replied.

            Smiling he put the car into gear and turned his car back onto the road.    Reaching out with his left hand, he placed her hand in his.   He squeezed her hand gently, turned and smiled, turned his attention back to the long road ahead, and drove on.

Epilogue  

            A few hours, safe in the warmth of his house, she curled herself deeper into his arms.   Anyone passing by could have gazed through the windows and seen a beautiful man and a beautiful woman, wrapped around each other on a pile of blue velvet pillows, sharing the most passionate kiss they had ever known.   She traced the pattern of the embroidered tiger on his shirt and smiled, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.    They both slept smiling.  

The End  

All lyrics (except Plainsong) are by Hooverphonic, from the album “a new stereophonic sound spectacular”.   1996 Sony Music Entertainment (Belgium)

Plainsong by The Cure From the infamous album “Disintegration”    1989 Elektra/asylum Records.