Dancing girl

I've never seen the red light area, nor have heard any accounts of it. What I wrote below is purely from my imagination.  A short story written on a deadline for a competition. Didn't win anything though.

 

 

I scan the crowd. There is not a single young man in sight.  The youngest you would find here would be a 35 year old.
They are all rich men, corporate bastards, my stage manager likes to call them, with bratty wives who control their lives, women whose social obligations donot allow them to give their husbands any time.
As a result most of them turn up here, in the slums of Lahore, to sate their hunger.

I stand on the stage, waiting for the lights to dim. I wear a fitted red bodice which flares at the waist and stops just above my knees. Bright orange stockings make my legs stand out. My hair are put in elaborate curls and silver bangles dangle from my arms. From the kajol in my eyes to the Ghungrus,which jingle at the slightest movement, on  my anklet, my manager makes sure I look as provocative as possible.

The song starts. It's a slow melody by Reshma Ji. I raise my toes and begin. My arms lift and my waist bends in well practised moves. Now and then, someone steps forward and showers money at my feet. Tens and Twenties. Sometimes someone more generous, or more intoxicated, throw hundreds.

My six minutes are over. I climb off stage and head towards the left side of the room where we are required to sit until the show is over. I make my way through the nearly packed room when a man, well above 50 with a paunchy belly and a balding forehead, stops me.
"Care for a muffin,Chanda?" he asks coyly.
"Too much sugar Sahib,"I joke.
We've been instructed not to accept any eatable from customers after an incident two years ago when a man fell madly in love with a girl on stage, after he realised he couldn't marry her, he poisoned her through a glass of milk.

I sit down against a wall and watch the others perform. Occasionally someone from the crowd would offer me an inviting smile. I seldom smile back.
Through my peripheral vision, I spot the man who approached me earlier, talking to my manager.He keeps gesturing towards me.
I have successfully sold myself for the night.

 

Prophecy

Wrote this for my English teacher last summer. A short story about castle politics set in 17th century Spain. A young princess forced to leave, her curse comes true 30 years later.

"You are playing on dangerous waters Miss Izzie."

his tone was patronizing but the message he carried was clear. Elizabeth Marrie Stevenson spun round and took three  measured steps forward. The  leaves crunched under her feet on the forest floor.

"I plan with the precision of a fox, the cunning of a leopard, the shrewdness of an owl. Rest assure no harm may befall you."

The chamberlain adjusted the  reins on his horse and rode away. He would not be seen for the  next 4 days and in the circumstances he would  reappear, the situation would be entirely different.

 

"But mama ,I am just like you," the child whimpered, on the verge of tears ."Don't send me away," she tottered forward and burrowed her face in Izzie's lap. The sobs quickly turned into hysteria.
"I will act normal, I  promise," her four years old mind could not comprehend what she had done wrong.
Two days ago they had presented her in front of the king. she was amazed at the complaints of her behaviour, the courtiers and her mother had made to her father.  Still she thought, as she fingered the unfamiliar badge on the lapel of her coat 'Asylum patient no.24,' that if it was her mother saying all this then she may have done something wrong, unknowingly so. She loved her mother with a love that a sheep may have for the butcher.

Anabella Clarke Stevenson was the only child of the king of  Spain and the  potential heir to the throne. It  was widely believed that the queen, the king's second wife,  despised the young princess and lived in eternal fear of the day she would ascend the throne. The only people unaware of the castle politics were the king and perhaps the little girl herself.

"An Asylum is no place for a child!" The king had protested on hearing the Queen's suggestion.

"The castle is no place for a mentally unfit princess , imagine what the consequences would be for your country," the Queen had retorted.
This did it. Everybody knew the king was a man of principles. His chief concern was that he be able to carry out his duties properly and that nothing should harm the country's prospects. He gave in.

 

Anabella looked up. The chamberlain had entered through the double doors with three guards at his heels. She was led through the castle, two small suitcases in both hands. As she looked at the  tapestries, the plush carpeting, the french windows through which the afternoon sun beat down, she wondered when she  would walk these corridors again. Her mind was yet too simple to conceive the notion that she might never be returning again.
She entered the courtyard, past the king who stood motionless, a man caught between loyalty and love, and the queen who carried her son Patrius on her hip, her chin arched upwards.

 

 And then everything happened at once. The princess's body went rigid .The guard slackened his grip on her wrist in surprise. She turned a full circle and her eyes zeroed in on the queen. Her jaws hardened and her face became a taut mask and she began,
"Never will the oppressors be the successors,
nor shall they live in peace.                                                                                                                             
Tit for tat,
revenge will be taken,
they shall be amongst the severely diseased."
According to old legends the night before Patrius was to be sworn in as the  king, he and his mother, the aging Queen Elizabeth, took a trip to the capital. On their way back their carriage slipped on ice and skidded off the side of the mountain. Patrius died and never became the king. The queen became paralyzed from the neck down. Three decades later the 'Prophecy' had come true. Coincidently this was the day princess Anabella Clarke Stevenson died in the dungeons of the chamberlain's private facility for the mentally unstable. She was driven to insanity by the sheer loneliness that surrounded her.