St Charles and the floats of Bacchus move slowly down the oak-shadowed, ancient route, glowing shimmering rainbows of manufactured fantasy. The floats are confections of light.
The Krewes bombard the cheering crowds with glittering beads of all hues and the small translucent dots of colour are caught by eager grabbing hands. Faces gleam with smiles; stretched thin on some faces, heavy and sweet on others.The beads throw back the warm orange flames of the flambeaux; the convicts pause in their dance to catch up the silver quarters tossed by the bewitched onlookers.
The prized, long pearly strings sail briefly through the moist New Orleans air- free floating in history-only to be pulled excalibur-like beneath the waves of questing hands. They disappear in a white spumey flurry of triumphant laughs and disappointed shouts.
Green. Gold. Royal purple.
Enchanted children gaze with soft shining eyes, their faces glowing in the purple gloom, the familiar jarring brass of the bands slicing the smoky air, bright blasts of noise, shining sequined dancers writhing like fishes caught on a gaff of music.
I’m back in New Orleans, he thinks, back home after all this time
The years roll back as the excitement fills him anew. He could be ten again instead of forty as he breaths deep, the warm, moist air redolent with the stink of spilled beer, attar of bruised sweet flowers and the sour tang of sickness.
“Throw me something, mister,” he shouts, upturned face flashing in the illumination and the beads fall neatly into his upstretched hands and he laughs, the sound bright on the dark air, the sheer pleasure of the moment filling his soul.
There is sharp tug on the spoils of carnival in his hand. A smooth white hand, long black nail tipped, touches him. Slim talons grasp the dangling beads and hold fast and the pale skin shimmers with a thousand points of light, knuckles lucid with assured strength.
Glitter, he thinks. I remember the costumed girls and the fairy-tale shimmer of glitter on their smooth skins.
He turns, unwilling to relinquish his plastic treasures, but smiling. He is happy and eager to please.
The face upturned to his is neither young nor old. There are faint lines reaching frost-like from the corners of the dark eyes, but the skin shimmers, firm and thick as cream. Her smile is wide and scarlet, a disturbing carnal stain. Green sequins shine like reptile scales on the white temples. There is a drift of colour on the wet eyelids, a faint misting of silver. Small gilded horns reflect the red light of the flambeaux and the oily flames shine in the wise, wicked eyes. Little red fires that drown in the glee of Mardi Gras.
“Mine.”
The voice is soft, low and amused. The clawed hand tightens on the string of beads; teeth show in a flash of white.
Red on the mouth, with red feathers shivering on her shoulders, catching the warm breeze and quivering with secret exaltation.
Red flames. Red wings. Red smile.
Costumes and beads, blaring music, the synchronized high kicks of the be-glamoured children as the school bands march towards the wide boulevard of Canal St and the throngs that wait patiently for them.
He remembers …and smiles.
“Sure.”
He lets go his grip on the sparkling beads with a bow, and turns back towards the tree-lined spectacle, obscurely pleased by his random magnanimity, hand upstretched to catch more favours, smile shining, oblivious to the smell of beer and sickness.
He feels the hair on his neck prickle – she is behind him.
Cold hands slip around his waist like an icy eddy of water, raising drowning shivers of sensations as her soft body presses against him. Attar of jasmine and roses and black burned wood.
Mardi Gras, he grins into the dark as he leans back into her cool embrace, briefly clasping the wandering caressing hands, his head thrown back. If you can’t get laid at Mardi Gras…
A low laugh ripples behind him
“Catch me something, mister,” the soft voice of her entreats.
And he reaches again into the darkness for the bright baubles, his heart beating faster, collecting a dowry of colourful sorcery, eyes blind full of carnival.
The hands around his waist grip tighter and he can feel the feathers of her wings tickle the back of his arms as a sharp chin digs between his shoulder blades, replaced almost at once by the soft press of lips.Devious kisses burn a trail over his skin, hot through the thin cotton of his shirt. He leans back into something sharp which cuts through his shirt, breaking the skin and causes the thin, stinging blood to rise but he hardly feels it.
The old cry beats at him, the large garish shop beads destined to disgrace the necks of drunken tourist fall forgotten to the ground. The street is packed with jostling bodies, a sea of blurred faces with mouths opened wide to gulp down more booze and fill the humid air with bacchanalian cries.
The eyes of the revelers are vapid with unthinking frenzy and instinctive hunger, eyes staring like the glassy orbs of sacrificed animals, their throats bared to the killing knife of carnival.
The screams of frantic laughter hand in the air like torn streamers, gleeful and doomed to desperation. He staggers a little, suddenly dizzy
.
She is cool and scented and soft and welcoming.
He turns to face her with his treasures and a smile that wants him beckons with flytrap sweetness. Her eyes are bright and strange and savage. Her hands hold tight to his. They are cold. He studies her face.
Her skin is pale as wax, chalky and shimmering, each green gem floating like a bubble on milky water. The golden horns peek slyly from the dark tangle of hair; he can’t see the tying band he knows has to be there. He raises her hand to his mouth, playfully biting on the long black nails, wanting to hear her squeal and snatch back her disguise before his teeth do damage.
How perfect the make-up is, he thinks, wondering in a careless way at the illusion.
She looks into his smile, holding his gaze, eyes predator steady, almost opaque, strangely amused. The hand is quiet in his mouth, relaxed and content, the shiny nails just touching his tongue. He bites down tasting salt, and a surprised yelp is forced from him as razor tips pierce the sensitive flesh. The copper taste of blood fills his mouth, and the smile on her face widens in pleasure.
She softy laughs as he tentatively touches his wounded mouth, his face uncertain.
Cold hands stroke his face, gentling, teasing, coaxing, tempting.
His gaze drops to her neck, her half-exposed breasts, swelling under a cobweb of fragmented light. Her perfume stings his nose.
His speculative eyes are caught by burnished beads that glimmer around her neck. More like gems than beads. Dozens, some blue fire in the dark, some strangely dull and blasted, strung on silver ropes. He is looks closer, studying the interplay of light and shadow in the strange gems. Like moonstones but not, opalescent but other.
Swamp indigo blue. Palmetto green. River red and violet. The Aurora set in ice.
She murmurs laughter, dark and bubbling. An image of bright white ice cracking to reveal black chill waters fills his mind, here and gone in a flash of apprehension.
Her eyes are the colour of ash, black pupils reflecting the fire, flames burning under ice, black lashes like spikes of wire in the clammy skin glisten beetle-like in the light. He can smell a wet musk of jasmine, burning wood and meat. The red lips part, suggestion of black movement inside. Red as blood on snow; her smile now feral.
He stares, mesmerized by that labial parting, and leans towards her. He doesn’t feel the sharp claws puncture his skin. Red blood-beads well to the surface and fall , tumbling through the air uncaught, to be consumed by the starving soil.
Freezing lips fasten on to his in an icy communion of want, and his thoughts explode, boiling and unraveling, spiraling into the darkness, screaming into the devouring silence, his eyes blinded by the blazing violence, searing his skull, fading, fading, fading going out into the maelstrom of light.
The parades are over. Carnival is over. The bars are starting to refill.
The convicts sweep the refuse away and blaring sirens replace the blaring music. The rotating yellow lights from the cop cars smear the ancient oaks with a sulphurous and rotting patina. The bars on St Charles are warm neon in the night, snatches of songs and strands of conversation strewn out into the night.
Blue beads on a silver chain are twirled by a taloned hand. On the chain one more bead is shining bright and blue; one less hangs dulled and blasted.
The figure walks alone under the Indian oak trees, horns glinting gold, red feathered wings shivering, feet tapping a cloven hoofed tattoo on the wet New Orleans sidewalk.
Tip…tappitty…tip…tap…tip.
Tags: Bacchus, beads, Carnival, convicts, costumes, demons, French Quarter, Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras. Krewes, Rex, St Charles Ave, Zulu
