Molly Dancing (standard:horror, 4487 words)
Author: Andrew R	Added: Jun 17 2002	Views/Reads: 3216/2108	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Feel the Dance, spinny, moving, faster, faster. Fell the drum, thumping, like a heart beat, faster, faster...

Molly Dancing 

By Andrew Rough 

A crumpled pack of Marlboro Lights lies by a brimming, dull metal
ashtray.  The barmaid knows not to touch it, even though it needs 
emptied, instead she just pours another double vodka and tonic and 
places it in the exact spot I like it.  It has a dash of limejuice and 
two full blocks of ice, as required.  I nod, barley acknowledging her, 
mutter "Cheers, darlin," and continue staring into space, allowing the 
atmosphere and alcohol to reduce me to a hypnotic stupor.  The trouble 
is, it doesn't seem to be working today, it's just gone twelve thirty 
and I should feel a comforting buzz by now.  The people around me 
should slip imperceptibly out of focus; my eyes should widen as I shift 
into that familiar dream state, the half sleep, half drunk state of an 
alcoholic.  Today though, I can't seem to reach the 'comfort zone,' 
Katie fills my mind, forcefully pulling me back into focussed 
awareness.  Conversations from my surroundings keep jabbing at me, 
snatches from different directions, like teasing children flitting 
around never keeping still. "...Tigana keeps buying bloody frogs, 
that's what's wrong" "Should never have sold Horsfield." I look in the 
direction the voices are coming from, two old men, familiar faces I 
can't put a name to, they're both Fulham fans.  I find I can place 
people by their conversation topic easier than remembering their names. 


I've become a fixture here in this bar; the staff don't know my name I'm
sure, but they know my drink and my peculiarities.  I've been coming 
here every day for the last three years.  I arrive five minutes before 
opening time and sit outside patiently waiting.  I order a pint of 
Guinness first then move onto three double vodka and tonics before 
sitting for a further half an hour staring out of the window.  During 
that time I smoke twenty Marlboro Lights and don't like my ashtray 
emptied until I have finished.  The staff probably think I'm a bit 
strange, but this is the only way I have found of shutting off the 
past, of closing out the fear.  If I lose focus and can't see the faces 
I won't see them coming, I won't know what's hit me when they finally 
decide to take me back.  I like to dull my mind so I don't have to 
think about it, the trouble is I think I just saw Katie.  She's sitting 
in the corner at a table, drinking a cup of coffee.  I haven't seen her 
in five years, since that night in Belton Mowbray.  I don't think she's 
noticed me yet, I can't stop noticing her though, I thought she was 
dead. ############################################################## 

It was six years ago, when I was only nineteen.  I was out at the grimy
little nightspot we had made our own.  It was one of the only places in 
Lowestoft we felt safe; we were with our own type, not the Ben Sherman 
wearing thugs who would give you a beating for walking past them at the 
wrong stage of inebriation.  It was a small club called Blue Notes 
above the South Pier on the sea front.  It was small and uninviting, 
but it felt like home to us.  Tom and I had been going here since we 
were fifteen.  Like anywhere else there is a hierarchical system in 
place.  When you join the group at first you are at the bottom of the 
pile.  The seats are taken and you get bashed around the most on the 
dance floor.  It was almost like school, because the funny thing about 
Lowestoft was that when people reached twenty they left, moved on to 
better things, so the longer you went to Blue Notes the more familiar a 
feature you became and gradually you reached the top of the tree at 
around nineteen or twenty.  By then we were faces, we were there every 
week and amongst the few people allowed to legally drink.  Because we'd 
been practising since we were fifteen we could drink more than four 
pints without puking up. 

I went everywhere with Tom.  He was my best friend and had been since
I'd met him and fallen head over heals in love with him.  He moved into 
town from one of those god-awful hamlets in the countryside, two 
dilapidated bungalows and a broken phone box.  He was instantly cool; 
he dressed like a Goth whilst holding that confident air that said he 
didn't give a fuck what you thought.  He was tall and had dark hair; 
his milky grey eyes seemed to melt into his face giving him an almost 
statuesque appearance.  He was the first boy in our school to develop 
stubble.  Even the footballers where in respectful awe of him, anyone 
else would have been called a queer and got beaten up for joining a 
school wearing a Morrissey T-shirt and eyeliner.  The moment I saw him 
I knew I was in love, he was everything I wanted to be, individual, 


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