We dressed up and trepanned the pumpkin. It sat ribbed, brain-dead and dribbling strings on my lap in the car. Our breath smeared the windscreen, and when he twisted the key, the engine skipped like a scratched CD. He swore, and, thinking happy thoughts, made stripes of fairy dust on the dashboard. Sharp jewelled headlights swept past our iced up windows then disappeared, leaving us in our tin igloo. We snorted the dashboard clean. A geyser of ground glass. Confetti behind my eyes. I tugged the seatbelt from my throat, felt the cold condensation of a window on my cheek.
The car came to life when we did. A rickety magic carpet, McDonalds wrappers on the back seat. We screamed out the windows. Ran a red-eyed traffic light. Showered a hen party with orange pulp, their perfectly manicured fingers sticking up like stop signs. Lampposts streamed tangled Chinese dragons.
I touched his thigh like it was an accident.
We stopped and I wobbled on my glass heels, soaked my hairy legs in piss-flavoured puddles. My moustache bled lager with every sip. People pinched my fake tits, balled-up sport socks in a bra, and other men laughed like I wasn’t in on the joke. I danced and my plastic crown was an aurora overhead. He took my hand and I was a princess. ‘I’m knackered,’ he said.
Back at his, I slipped a size 12 foot from a slipper. It glimmered on the stairs. He stared. I stared.
I was no princess. I was Sharon Stone, and Glen Close. Mata Hari. Cleopatra. The banister shuddered beneath my palm, like the arm of some smitten bastard. Terrified hairs erect. The electrocuted air of that messy hallway. I licked my lips. Woman’s lips; sharp and red as a painted razorblade. I smiled at him. Mirror, mirror on the wall.
He swallowed, and said: ‘You look a right dick’ed in that.’
I hung up my dress and picked off crispy pumpkin seeds, licked my thumb and polished the diamontes. He snored on the couch. My Prince Charming.
We never went on a lad’s night out again.
He thinks I like the magic too much.
Benjamin Eaton is a Creative Writing MA student at the University of Chester. Having just finished his first novel, he spends his time editing beneath his remaining light bulbs and saving his money for printer ink. His work has previously been published / is due to appear in Pandora’s Box, Kind of a Hurricane Press and Eunoia Review.
–Art by Denis Olivier
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