Dancing in the Dark

She danced in the middle of the dance floor flailing her arms and legs as if she was trying to dislodge a multitude of bugs from her body. The disco ball whirled around creating a blinding light as it bounced off of her sequined shirt, I worried that she would hurt someone with her flailing arms. Then as suddenly as she had started she stopped and glanced up at the disco ball as the music and other dancers swirled around her. That is when I noticed her eyes. They were both a cloudy white color and I wondered if she could see. As she made her way off the dance floor she brushed my arm as she passed and leaned in to whisper in my ear, “Everything is better in the dark.”

The Guide

She had found the small book in the very back corner of her grandmother's closet when she was fourteen. As she read the book from cover to cover she was both shocked and titillated by it. Her Grandmother was the kind of women who always wore a suit and hat when she went to church or out to dinner. She was very proper and very well spoken and very intelligent. College educated at a time when few women were, she was the epitome of class and culture. The girl had always been a little intimated by her picture perfect grandmother, so as she clutched the book to her chest she smiled a little smile of appreciation and greater knowledge. This book made her Grandmother more real to her, more human. From that day forward the girl saw her grandmother in a different light. She saw her not just as the loving, cultured Grandmother she was now, but also as the young women she had been. A women full of secret passions and needs. Through out the years the girl would pull out the small book and remember the grand mother she had loved so much, but it was not until years later when the girl herself was a grandmother that she discovered the slit in the back binding of the book and pulled out a letter from the publisher of the book:

Dear Mrs. Donaldson,

Thank you so much for your submission of " A Young Women's Guide to Passionate Lovemaking". We think it will be a huge success and look forward to any future manuscripts you may have. We at True Romance believe that all things are possible. A check is enclosed for you fees.

Yours,
Sylvia Saturn
Senior Editor, True Romance Publications

Late at Night

As I lie awake late at night, listening for the beating of wings, I try to close my eyes and over and over I say to myself, " I will not go this night." But I always go. I can not resist his lure. I want to say no, but I crave the danger and the excitement, so I climb down the trellis by my window and into the night we race. I know that when I am older I will regret these nights. At this exact moment I do not care. All I care about is him and how the darkness and the sweet smell of him make me feel. My mother and father have no idea what I do at night. They think I am snug in my bed dreaming those adolescent dreams all girls should be dreaming. They would be disappointed, not angry, but disappointed in me and perhaps that is why even for a just a fleeting moment, I consider not going each night and then I hear his sweet voice and I am done for, I can not resit him, oh my dearest Bram.......

As I read the words my dear sister had written the night she disappeared I knew that something bad had befallen her and my dream that she had slipped away in the night to run away with her lover is dead for now I know his name and I know that he still resides here in our little town and that she is most likely dead like my dream. He was always an unusal lad and despite his fame and success I have never liked him and that lurid book he wrote... Well I always suspected it was not completley fiction. My dear sister Lucy if only I had known I could have stopped you.