Pink Butterfly (9 page)

“Did you find you Diet Coke?” Phoenix asked.

“I’m covered in blood and the place is on fire,” Melvin replied like an asshole.

“Don’t get all bitchy on my mister,” Phoenix replied. “If you want to stay at my place you can, but you better learn to treat me right. I could get any man I wanted to be my sugar daddy fuck buddy so you better get your act together!”

“Fine,” Melvin said flat wiping the blood and guts off his security shirt. “Fuck, I need some new clothes and I don’t have any other pants to change into.”

Four minutes later, fire and rescue pulled up to the Tasty Nipple, pulled hoses and hooked them up to the hydrant at the end of the block. Police cleared the area of spectators and the bomb squad set up base across the street next to the thrift store. Across the radio, Melvin and Phoenix could hear that there were still two or three bombers in the bar and that a large group of men were still being held against their will.

“We better get out of here,” Melvin said to Phoenix who was standing in the alley wearing only a G-string.

“We can go to my apartment,” Phoenix replied pointing to a closed door about twenty feet to the left of the exit.”

“Is that part of the club?” Melvin asked.

“It’s a doorway to the basement apartment under the Tasty Nipple, I live there.”

“The Tasty Nipple is on fire,” Melvin stated looking at Phoenix like she was an idiot.

“The firemen are here can’t you see?” she asked. “Don’t worry, fire burns up you know, not down.”

“I’ll take a look, but if there’s smoke down there, I’m getting the hell out.”

Phoenix took Melvin by the blood stained hand and led him to the old steel door that led to her downstairs apartment. The door was surrounded by worn and chipped brick and looked like something from the time of Al Capone. The building had to be a hundred or more years old and the patchwork of cement and brick showed how many times it had to be repaired over the years. Phoenix let go of Melvin’s hand, opened the door and to Melvin’s surprise was not filled with smoke but was eerily dark. Phoenix flipped on a light switch at the top of the stairs but it did little to brighten the view. The staircase was still dark enough that stepping down was very unsafe.

“You should ask your landlord for more lights,” Melvin said watching Phoenix walk down the steps like she was a cat seeing in the dark.

“Use the handrail,” Phoenix said from out of view.

Melvin stepped slowly, using the handrail like she had told him and made his way to the bottom where he now saw Phoenix standing at the end of a long hallway. The air smelled musty and the dust he kicked up from the steps hung like fog. There were boxes piled up and old panels leaned up against the walls covered in dust from years of storage. This didn’t look like an apartment, it looked like a discarded basement that was only used to keep crap the owners didn’t want to throw away. At the end of the hall where Phoenix stood, was a single light bulb hanging from a twisted wire. It was about a sixty watt bulb and didn’t do much to light up anything around him.

“You live here?” Melvin asked. “I hope there’s a room you haven’t shown me yet, because this is disgusting.”

“Come over here and I’ll show you,” Phoenix stated, her shadow cast hard against the wall.

Melvin walked to the end of the hall to where Phoenix was standing and she pointed to another doorway that led into another poorly lit room. This room looked worse than the hallway. Melvin stepped into the room and felt a web from a spider drag through his hair. He quickly brushed the webbing out and stepped away from where he was standing. “Fuck,” he yelled. “I hate spiders.” Once in the room, he looked around and saw box after box piled up along the walls. On the wall opposite the doorway was an old wooden shelving unit filled with empty canning jars and various canning supplies. Everything was covered with dust and the air felt thick. “Where do you sleep?” Melvin asked.

Phoenix pointed up to a spot at the top of the wall to her left where the brick had been removed creating a small opening large enough for a person to craw. The area in the space was completely dark and impossible to see inside. “I live in there,” she replied.

Melvin looked at her to see if she was joking and she wasn’t. “What do you mean you live in there?” Melvin asked. Then he heard a popping sound from above and quickly realized another suicide bomber had blown herself up in the name of respect.

“That’s my home,” Phoenix stated as a matter of fact. “I have lived in there since 1968.”

“1968?” You don’t look like you’re more than twenty years old. Even if you were born in 1968 that would put you over forty.”

“I was born in 1947,” Phoenix replied.

Melvin stood dumbfounded and scratched his elbow thinking about what she had just said. “That puts you over sixty,” Melvin said in disbelief.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Phoenix replied.

“You have nice tits for a woman of your age,” Melvin said nervously trying to ease his own tension. “So if I try to make sense of what you are saying, you are saying you are over sixty years old, are a regular stripper at the Tasty Nipple and live in a basement hole in the wall.”

“Sounds odd doesn’t it?” Phoenix asked.

“Sounds like bull shit to me, or you’re stoned. If you brought me down here to rob me, you won’t get much.”

“I brought you down here because you are the only person in forty years who’s been able to see me.”

“I don’t get it,” Melvin stated shifting his weight.

“Climb in that hole and tell me what you find in there,” Phoenix said.

“I’m not climbing in there,” Melvin replied. “Probably filled with rats, snakes and spiders. Did someone dig a tunnel under the club?”

“No, it’s a crawlspace under the bar and dance floor. Only three feet high with a dirt floor. You can see the joists above you and feel the soft dirt below.”

“Do you sleep under the dance floor?” Melvin asked.

“I have slept under the dance floor since I was discarded and tossed to rot by the owner’s son in 1968.”

Melvin paused for a moment and chewed on what he was hearing. “Are you saying you’re a ghost?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “I have lived here since I was raped, murdered and left like garbage, hidden under the floor of the club where I worked.”

“Didn’t they notice a smell?” Melvin asked.

“I guess not, my body is still there, dry like a mummy.”

“What happened to the guy who killed you?”

“I don’t know, strippers come and go and the police assumed I had moved on. They didn’t even investigate.”

“I still don’t know if I believe what you’re telling me, but if it is true, what happened? I mean, how did this all go down?”

Phoenix hung her head and thought for a moment. “You know you’re the only person who has ever been able to see me. When you came up to the stage and sat down, I wasn’t sure what you were doing there. It took me a while to figure out that you were there to see me. Why is it that you can see me when no other person is able?” she asked.

“You tell me your story first,” Melvin said.

“Ok, fine, I was twenty years old in 1968. At that time this was a topless bar, not an all nude bar and times were different yet the same. We had different music and different drugs, but men still had the need to breed as they say and women were still willing to get paid to give them what they wanted. I had been dancing for a year and had a good friend that shared an apartment with me above the club. My landlord and employer was the same man and his son was one sick bastard.” Phoenix said getting emotional. This was the first time she had ever shared the story with anyone. “His name was Leslie and he liked to wield his power like a slave driver. His daddy let him be in charge of the bar and entertainment and it was his job to hire, fire and schedule the girls to dance. If you didn’t suck up to Leslie, you didn’t get on stage and you didn’t make any money.”

“You and Leslie didn’t get along?” Melvin asked.

“I saw the way he treated the other girls. Always grabbing them, and teasing them if they didn’t give him a little extra they would pay. His favorite perversion was sitting in our dressing room while we got ready to go on. He like to watch us get dressed and undressed and put our make up on. He’d sit on the counter and get a boner that stuck up in his pants. He called it “Charlie” He said if you could make Charlie get stiff, you got more pole time.”

“Did any of the girls do anything to get him to give them more time?”

“Oh yeah, there were plenty of girls willing to take Leslie in the back and pay him for a few extra dances on the pole. He ran his own personal harem and was paid well.”

“So what happened with you?” Melvin asked.

“I refused him one too many times,” Phoenix replied. “He waited until I was alone, dragged me down here, raped me for six hours and strangled me till I was dead. He had that spot in the wall torn out in advance so all he had to do was shove me in the hole and drag my body far enough back that nobody could see. For the last forty odd years, my body lie under the dance floor, but my spirit continued to dance on the main stage. You are the only person who has been able to see me dance in all that time. Why?” Phoenix asked.

“I think it has something to do with the fact I was dead for a while,” Melvin replied.

“What happened?”

“This is sort of embarrassing, but I spent some time in prison. They seemed fit to end my time in prison with the electric chair. Only it didn’t work and I’m still here.” Melvin explained.

“What did they fry you for?” Phoenix asked.

“Um, I killed a woman,” Melvin replied expecting to get yelled at.

“Why?”

“I don’t think I should talk about it anymore,” Melvin replied avoiding the issue.

“Did you rape and strangle a woman as well?”

“No, I didn’t have sex with her at all actually.”

“And how did she die?”

Long pause. “Suffocated in the trunk of my car.”

“So the one mother fucker who can actually see me in the last twenty years is no better than the son of a bitch who killed me in the first place!” Phoenix yelled. “What kind of fucked up world are we living in!”

“Why are you still here?” Melvin asked trying to change the subject.

“Where am I supposed to go?” Phoenix asked. “There’s not a lot of opportunities out there for single dead stripper ghosts you know!”

“No, I don’t know,” Melvin snapped back. “I’ve never met a dead person before, I’m new to this. For all I know, I died in that chair and I’m living in hell right now.”

“No, you don’t want to see hell, I’ve been there, it’s a lot worse than you can imagine.”

“I need some time to digest what I’m hearing. Is there anywhere we can go where there isn’t six inches of dust and spiders crawling all over the place?” Melvin asked.

“I don’t know any other place,” Phoenix replied. “If you want to go somewhere else, you pick it, I don’t really have much to stay for around here anymore, after the bombing and the fire, and I don’t expect the Tasty Nipple to be open much longer anyway.”

“So your “spirit” isn’t attached to this place?”

“No, it’s not like in the spook movies, I can come and go as I please.”

“Why is it I can’t see any other dead people besides you?” Melvin asked.

“How do you know that every person you see is alive?” Phoenix replied. “Do you do a medical exam on everyone?”

“Touché’” Melvin replied. “I have another question. If you are a spirit, why do you stand on the ground? I mean, why don’t you pass right through?”

“It looks better this way. Won’t freak you out as much if I walk through the walls.”

“Makes sense, so it’s more of an aesthetic thing than a functional thing.”

“Yes,” Phoenix replied.

“Are there times when you find yourself drifting through the floor? I mean, how do you know when your feet are touching the ground?”

“They never touch the ground. It just looks that way. And how often do you look at people’s feet anyway?”

“You’re making me feel stupid,” Melvin said in dismay. “Do you eat?”

“No.”

“Do you have friends?”

“Not really, I prefer to be by myself.”

“Do you know other ghosts?”

“I know a few,” Phoenix replied.

“But not in a friendly way?”

“They come and go, and we chat, but we don’t hang out and do stuff. I like to dance and hang out at the bar and see and hear the customers. Most of the spirits I meet still think I’m a tramp. Some things never change.”

“That makes no sense. Can spirits have sex?” Melvin asked.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s the past impression that matters. You can be eighty years old and living in a nursing home and if you had the reputation of being a whore when you were younger, people will continue to think of you as a whore.”

“You make a lot of sense.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” Phoenix replied with a grin.

“So now what am I going to do?” Melvin asked.

“What do you mean?”

“My job as security is probably shot, I have no place to live, met a stripper ghost old enough to be my mother and I have about a hundred and twenty five dollars to my name. Oh, and you hate me because I killed a woman.”

“That reminds me, if you were electrocuted in the chair, what are you doing walking around? You’re not dead.”

“Long story,” Melvin replied. “Turns out I was only dead for a while then came back to life at the mortuary. The staff decided to sneak me out and hide me until their plan was busted by one of the sales people. Now I’m basically a fugitive on the loose with real bad burn marks on my scalp.”

“What happened to the staff that snuck you out?” Phoenix asked.

“Good question, haven’t heard from Gunnar since I left him at the truck stop. He’s probably in jail for stealing a body.”

“Do they know you’re still alive? The authorities that is?”

“Who knows? I’m assuming they’re looking for a stiff by now. Who would believe that after what I went through that I would still be kicking? In any case, I need to move on to different pastures and start over before they put me back on death row and try a second time.”