The Cello Swing
L M Weaver
The Cello Swing
L M Weaver
Published by LM Weaver at Smashwords
Copyright 2012 L M Weaver
Smashwords Edition
This is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold, or reproduced or distributed in any format without express permission from the author.
Fled
All people, and some places are fictitious and from
the imagination ofFled
Broken, I ran.
For a fleeting moment I thought the day was normal and then the bruises woke up. The cold damp of London stone clung to my cheek while distorted silhouettes passed on by, each one another threat.
So I ran.
I tried to outrun the memories of cold hands around my neck under the dark of the bridge. Under my coat my skin screamed. The tourists of the Thames peeled back until there was nothing but low winter sun and rusting river front warehouses. Anyone else would have called the police, called a friend. I remained silent from the moment I had fallen to the ground.
I ran to the circus.
The Circus
The warehouse I trained in was along a tight alley that smelt of glue from the factory next door. An old hippy had painted a slogan along the wall in messy white letters that dripped as the paint dried.
'Never have fear. Swap it for love and wrap your arms around the world.'
Only I entered the alley from the other end full of nerves for the class ahead. I always used to stop and give it a little shrug at the words 'never have fear' before climbing fire escape stairs and squeezing through heaving doors below the guttering of the roof.
That morning I was nothing but a huddled mess in the alley under the 'world' trying to ignore the smell of my vomit, my panic.
The trapeze teachers hands were warm in mine.
'You come to dance love? Heard you did good last night.' he asked in his old Scottish accent. With a fatherly affection he rubbed my shivering arms to try and get some blood back in them.
Please don't be kind, I wished, you'll make me cry. Tears clogged up my throat so I could not reply.
There was an odd pause where I looked in at his impish face and messy bleached white hair, his upside down trapeze hair. Between years of smile lines those eyes knew my world had shifted and no fake smile could hide it.
'Go stretch, get warmed up and bendy how we like you and I'll come see how your routine's working out,' he said.
I lent over the edge of the mezzanine reception down in to the great pit where ropes and trapezes hung amongst puppets and sculptures tied up near the rigging. A secret circus hide-away from city life. Down below a small group of boys practised handstands. In pairs one of them kicked legs over head and the other held him up. At the back of the space a bald, huddled man made puppets in buckets of papier mache. Newsprint dragon faces stared up at me. How could I have brought all my fear, all my danger in to their creative bliss?