Chapter 15: The Mirror-Skin Gospel
The neon hums her name, though she has forgotten what it is. The letters bleed pink and cyan across the sweating walls, the air thick with the molasses-throb of bass and the stink of want. Men are open wounds with dollar bills for tongues, and she glides between them, something more than human, less than divine. Sapphire—was that it? No, that was last night. Lola? A week ago. Eve? Always and never.
Her body moves to a rhythm that no longer syncs with the music. The poles are not metal, but veins, warm, pulsing, whispering things. She grips one, slides down its slick, breathing surface, and feels a shudder of recognition—not hers, but the pole’s. The bills in the patrons' fists flicker between green paper and curling tongues, slick with ink, whispering numbers that never existed.
In the mirror across the bar, her reflection doesn’t match her movement. She turns; it lags. She smiles; it sneers. And then it laughs, the sound of glass breaking underwater.
One of the men—faceless, or maybe his face just won’t stay in place—leans in, his breath like rotting paper. “Baby, tell me your name.”
She parts her lips to answer but nothing comes. No sound, no word. Only a wet exhale, something slithering between her teeth. His grin stretches too wide, past his ears, past the realm of anatomy. “Thought so.” He presses a bill into her garter and when she blinks, it's not a bill but a scrap of flesh, twitching, muttering in a language older than money.
The music slows—no, it molts. The beat peels back, reveals something underneath: a distant, animal keen, an atavistic call to a time before throats knew words. The other dancers are moving wrong now, too many joints, too fluid, their eyes like holes punched through thin film. The men don’t notice. They are drunk on the shape of her, not the wrongness crawling beneath.
The mirror across the room ripples, a liquid pane. Her reflection is not behind the glass but stepping through it, peeling itself out like a shedding skin. It knows its name. She does not.
The music dies in a gasp of static. The men finally notice. They see too much, all at once, and she sees them seeing. Their mouths collapse inward, throats folding like crushed paper cups. They claw at their eyes, try to keep from understanding but it’s too late. The words are gone. The rules are gone.
The club is unraveling, the walls peeling back into the dark. The poles bend and twist, writhing, whispering, reaching. The neon flickers out, but she can still see, because she is no longer looking with eyes.
Her reflection—no, the thing that was waiting to replace her—smiles and tilts its head. “Ready?”
She does not answer. She has no mouth to speak with anymore.