“I’ve watched you both dance your asses off for the past 3 months. I bet you two thought you wouldn’t get here. Through all of that doubt, you both remained focused and executed the task at hand. Sadly there can only be one of you and-” He spoke with ease. After hearing those words my heart sunk. I had never wanted something more in my life. Although I didn’t want to, I forced myself to keep listening. “I am proud to announce that my new lead dancer is none other than Miss Nyx Sarai.” Everyone began to clap for me. I didn’t know what to say or what to feel. I had finally seen the bright light after living in the dark for so long. It was so unreal, almost as if my life was finally on track.
For the next few weeks, I was living in one hell of a dream. I was promoted at work, and going to practice. Joseph was the sweetest person I have ever met. Whenever I fell or felt like I couldn’t do it, there he was to pick me back up. All my past troubles faded away. Dancing became my life, my release, my safe haven. I loved it so much. Practice was every day at the same time. I would be out of work at 4 pm and at practice by 5:00 pm. Sometimes dancing had run late. No later than 10:30, mostly because Joseph recognized that most of us were still holding onto jobs. In a few weeks, we probably wouldn’t even need it. That probably means that if the investors like us we could continue, get contracts and more money than we all had ever seen. However if not, we’d still be going back to our basic lives. Living a good life while it lasted.
February 17th, it was showtime. All our hard work was going to pay off. We would finally give it everything we got. Although this was something I have always dreamed of, it was hard to portray the lead. The lead was everything I wasn’t. She was confident, happy, and in love. I had never once been in love in my entire life. It was fitting considering I am only 19 years old. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to be in love. It more so that love didn’t want to find me. The role I was playing is supposed to show all her love to her husband in the first couple of scenes. I just wasn’t feeling it. Even though I was feeling this, I swear Joseph knew and never spoke a word. Before the haunting part came in the play, I was supposed to be in a love trance but in those scenes, I kept lying. I went with my gut and tried to think about what love was supposed to feel like. During those parts, I was a stranger in my own body. What the hell was I supposed to do? The show must go on. The show lasted a chilling two hours. I was in almost every scene so you can imagine how tired I was. The last scene was upon us. In this scene, we had found out the lies we were both keeping and in the heat of the moment, he was going to kill me. The twist that was haunting was that I was going to kill him too, in the same way. In the end we laid on the floor, with knives in our backs. Ironic wasn’t it? Applaud had filled the entire theater as we stood up and bowed. I could just feel all the warmth in the room. Then I pulled myself together. Warmth? It was probably just the lights that were burning on my skin. After the show, Joseph raved about the entire thing. At the time I didn’t think anything of it but Joseph had kissed me on my cheek. I should’ve thought about it. He was grooming me. Joseph began to speak to all of us individually and then all together.
“I cannot tell you all how proud I am to be this shows director. It was portrayed perfectly and I couldn’t be happier. Tomorrow morning I will meet with the investors and by afternoons practice I will let you know if we stay and you all get rich or if we shut down and I let you down. Goodnight everyone. Get home safe. It’s a big day tomorrow.” And with that he walked away.
As I was on my way home, I couldn’t help but relive Joseph’s words. Something in the way he said “I let you down” reminded me of my mother. The show had run late so I ran to the train station and missed it needless to say. There I stood for half an hour waiting for the midnight train home. Upon its arrival, I noticed there was barely anyone on the train. I mean does no one come home that late anymore? Drunken teens like myself? I guess in this place we had all become mature. In the moment I didn’t realize that monster that was very well going to destroy me was on the same midnight train. I was too busy focusing on the good, which isn’t like me at all. Had I been focused like I normally was I would’ve seen the monster staring. But it was too late, I was tired and my future depend on tomorrow or at least I thought it did.
The next morning I had woken up to my alarm. Normally I had woken up 5 minutes before my alarm so I had forgotten what it sounded like. For a while I lay in bed staring at my ceiling wondering what today had in store for me. By 7 I was dressed and out the door on my way work. Although I had been promoted I still preferred waiting tables. It had sort of becoming a tradition or something of a routine. Work, in the beginning, was slow. Who wants to spend money on an overpriced breakfast at 8am. About an hour into my shift I heard the doorbell thing jingle and of course who walks through the door Joseph and the potential investor. I stayed in the back had some other waitresses serve them. My mind tried to process this information. It was torn between whether or not it was fate or just a coincidence. Could it have been fate? I didn’t let my mind race for too long. I didn’t care enough for a while. All I know is that I had to make everything perfect just in case things weren’t working in our favor. That’s how bad I wanted that job, that life.
Joseph and the investor seemed to be having a good time. Laughing, talking and drinking. Drinking as in the hard stuff, scotch. I made sure the food looked perfect and that our chef did his job. An hour after them being here, the investor got a phone call. Joseph’s time was up, you can see it all over his face. It was almost like he had lost his best friend. With whatever pride he had left he got up and shook the investors hand and watched him cover the bill and leave. Joseph sat back in his chair for twenty minutes. It was like he was doing what I was doing last night. Processing the information he had just received. Knowing then what I know now I would’ve been happy that his face was distraught. But I didn’t so my brain was unhappy with what I was seeing.
Later that day I made my way to practice. All throughout my day I had thought about Joseph’s face after the investor left. It was like it haunted me. His face was telling me that I wasn’t good enough and it was I who failed Joseph. Considering what I had seen earlier I was the one who didn’t have a smile on their face upon walking into the studio. Everyone was so full of hope and here I was back to my old self. Assuming the worst. Joseph was late and it scared more than anything because Joseph is never late. I could see the growing concern everyone started to have. Theirs was short-lived.
“Sorry I was late guys. No need to panic.” Funny, I could hear the panic and anxiety. in his voice. Yet he said all of this with a smile on his face. “ I was on the phone with the investor. Earlier he had left before he had given me an answer. I’m afraid it’s not good news guys, it’s great-” Joseph didn’t finish his sentence before everyone got up and hugged each other. Something weird happened. My eyes filled with tears and then one came down my cheek. I had never truly cried before. If I had I wouldn’t remember. I didn’t even cry at my own mother’s funeral, so why was this so important to me? Why did I cry? Where did it come from? All questions I had tried to answer all at once.
Within the week we had received our contracts. I signed mine almost immediately. I wanted to show Joseph that I was serious about dancing and that I was ready for it. After our legal binding we received a healthy bonus for our first show. The investor must’ve really liked our show. Surprised me a bit. I felt as though my dancing during the first few scenes were horrible considering I had to dance as if I was in love. Yet everyone spoke highly of me. We had gotten our show schedules and began to adjust to our new lifestyles. Almost all of the things about me remained the same except for the fact that I was being recognized. Joseph had told me to play nice and sign some autographs. For a while, things seemed to be going great for us. I could finally say I was beginning to be happy. However, as much as I crave happiness I couldn’t help but think when the other shoe was going to drop. And then on March 13 it did.
March 13th is a night I will never forget. That night, the sun didn’t set it fell, crashed and burned. After that nights show Joseph had spoken to us like he always did. That night was different. It’s like his soul wasn’t in that speech. It was more like he said it to get it over with. Afterward, he asked me to stay behind so he could talk about my performance. My mind went blank. Joseph talks to me about my performance in front of everyone, why was tonight different? My next thought was he was firing me. I had barely made it and he was already firing me. What did I do? What did I say? What was wrong with me? But I could never imagine what was really on his mind.
“Please have a seat. I don’t want you to speak, just listen.” I nodded my head. I could tell he was drunk. You could smell all of the alcohol on his breath. Almost like he robbed a liquor store. “ You’re doing a great job. I like what you’ve become. Just like your mother. But I need you to be better.” As he talked he was walking around. He locked the door and I was still naive enough to not think anything of it. And then he put his hands on shoulders. He didn’t really speak or make a sound beforehand but everything about his touch told me what was about to happen. “ You want to be famous, this is what you have to do and if you resist I will destroy you. I will make sure you never work with anyone ever again.”
“Joseph, what are you do-” He took my head and slammed onto the table and told me to shut up. I could feel the blood running down my face
He ripped my shirt off and tried to pull down my pants. I tried to fight him off but he was a man and I was a dainty ballet dancer. I had fought my hardest to keep my innocence but he fought harder to take it. Pretty soon my pants were down and so was his. I could see him getting harder, I became scared and started screaming at the top of my lungs. It didn’t take him long to shut up me up. Joseph put a knife to my throat. I couldn’t believe that this was the sweetest man I wanted to work with. Why didn’t I see the signs earlier? Within a feel moments, he entered me and I screamed because of how much it hurt. “Joseph no!” As he kept going my mind faded, I had stopped fighting and I couldn’t bare it anymore. I wanted him to kill me. Just when everything started going black I heard “Get off of her now! You sick freak!” And at the same time I blacked out. My body was too overwhelmed and my mind had to reboot.
Comments (0)
See all