Who: Lettie & Open When: 2/13/2012 Where: Outside the burlesque tent What: Once upon a midnight dreary...
It wasn't easy, even after so many weeks back, to remember that amongst the freaks and monsters, Lettie was just another face, another hulking silhouette in the darkness, another oddity to be dismissed as 'a good makeup job'. She didn't need to hide, not really. She didn't need to lurk out of view in rafters and odd corners, behind the fun house or under the costume trailer; she didn't need to shy away from light and laughter and the ominous glint of mirrored surfaces. But she did. Even here, now, when all eyes were sure to be locked hungrily on the supple, sweat slick skin of the dancers, she hung back, watching the performance through a gap in the tent flaps, a heavy cloak bundled around her to hide the arch of leathery, scaly wings rising from between her shoulders.
How glorious they looked, she thought; beautiful, free, unhindered. What it must be like, she couldn't imagine; to bask in being looked at, stared at, to know that it gave the viewer pleasure. The thought alone made her guts churn, and a spasm of something painful, some violent impulse stung her nerves. Lettie swallowed it back, sliding her hands into her pockets as though she didn't trust them to behave if left out alone. As if they were something to be hidden.
"One thing at a time," she muttered against the indignance, the sudden anger that flared up inside and pushed against the boundaries of skin and bone. "Watch first. Learn to see, then to be seen."