The Girl Who Dreamed

Dancing around a huge bonfire in a forest clearing, the High Priestess intoned the sacred words of the Midwinter ritual. Moving her body in rhythmic waves which undulated with the music, it felt as if her very cells were vibrating with the magical words she spoke as she danced. A beautiful, resonant language poured from her lips, melodic and sensual, evoking images of the dawning sun, sleepy animals emerging from the deathsleep of winter and the bright green points of flowers-to-be poking their heads through the thawing soil. Through the ecstasy of the trance she could see the faces of her Sisters gazing at her with adoration when she had finished calling on the Spring; each one of them bowing and touching a hand to her forehead before joining the circular dance which represented the ebb and flow of the eternal cycle of life.

Later, when the dance was over, she asked the blessings of the Spirit of Life to descend on the feast which had been prepared and they passed around a jug of fermented honey-wine, the liquid pouring down their chins and over their naked breasts, eyes shining in the firelight, energised and happy.

****

Shannon sighed and rubbed her eyes as she groped at her alarm to switch it off at 4 a.m., feeling for the warm body next to her in the bed she knew would not be there. Momentarily disoriented when she felt the cold spot, it took her a few moments to remember. He was gone. The realisation almost made her turn over and go back to sleep so she didn’t have to face it.

As much as she would have loved to go back to sleep, Shannon knew that she must get up and go to work or starve. Swinging her legs to the floor, she shivered slightly in the cold room and looked out of her bedroom window at the  nearly deserted street. Rain again; she was so tired of it.

Donning the too short, too tight uniform, she wondered what had ever possessed her to take a job at a twenty four hour restaurant. Sure, she had been hard up, but she probably should have looked a bit harder first. The owner of The Deer Hunter Grill was so tight that there were only two shifts; twelve hours each. Staff got one day a week off. Shannon was usually so tired when she got home that all she ever wanted to do was have a glass of wine and fall into bed. Maybe that was why Jared had just upped and left? Maybe she was too boring? Sighing, she pulled the door closed behind her and made her way downtown, arriving at work cold and damp after a bracing walk through the dirty city rain.

 ”Hi Janice,” she called as she went to get rid of her coat and bag, “Jonno here yet?”

“Jonno? Here at quarter to five in the morning?” replied the sixteen year old sarcastically,”Why would he do that when he can lie in bed and let us make money for him?”

“True,” said Shannon with a laugh, “at least I can have some coffee before I start my duties. It’s freezing out there, feels like this winter’s never going to end.”
 
“Well,” said Janice “if it helps at all, I heard on TV last night that it was the longest night of the year. Winter solstice, they said.”

 ”Hmph, I didn’t know that”, said Shannon thoughtfully.

Work  was the same as always; hot and noisy with loud customers talking with their mouths full and making disgusting remarks about her embarrassingly tight uniform after she’d sold them too much beer. Shannon plastered on her fake waitress smile and thought about the two-week-old chip oil and the festering spare ribs in the kitchen lying in dirty crates under the grill. Every morning she saw the kitchen staff swill the filthy water they were washing the kitchen floor with right over those crates. Her ‘friendly service smile’ grew wider than ever as she put down a heaped up plate of those steaming spare ribs in front of a particularly noxious customer and silently wished him food poisoning along with her usual “Enjoy your meal, sir!”

Jonno, the owner of the restaurant, arrived eventually and was his usual oily, blubbery, hungover self. He always smelled; stale alcohol and stale cigarette smoke seemingly oozing out of his pores. His oversize stomach hung over his jeans, straining against his shirt. He treated the girls like shit, and liked to push them around and swear at them in front of customers, especially when he was entertaining friends. He seemed to need to prove his manhood even more since his wife had run off with the previous kitchen manager.

That evening after the shift, when Shannon had eaten her ‘free’ toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, Jonno called her into his office last so that she could receive her tips and practically non-existent wages. Telling her to sit down he walked around behind her and shut the door. Immediately she knew something was wrong; he never shut the door. Was he going to fire her? She knew he could, none of the staff had contracts so none of them could prove that they had ever even worked there. She had seen quite a few girls running out of here in tears, never to be seen again. She clenched her hands in her lap and stared at the overflowing ashtray on the desk in front of her.

“Hey, relax” said Jonno. “I just want to talk a bit. Janice said you’d been a bit depressed lately ‘cos your boyfriend left; are you okay? ” His tone of voice was wrong; too solicitous. Out of place. He put his meaty hand on her shoulder. She tried to keep her voice steady, and silently cursed Janice and her prattling teenage tongue.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “It’s been a bit difficult, but I’ll survive-” she swallowed nervously as his  hand began to move in circles ever closer to her breasts. “My work hasn’t suffered, has it?” She was starting to panic.

“No, no of course not,” he breathed. She felt the words spoken with smelly breath close to her ear and fought down a wave of nausea. “You know I think you’re beautiful,” he said, his voice rough and his breath coming faster. “You’d be much better off with me.” His hand was inside the front of her dress now, sweaty, squeezing mechanically. Abruptly, Shannon got up and made for the door, knocking the chair over in her haste.

 ”I must go, I need to feed the cat”, she lied. He came after her.

 ”Aw, c’mon gorgeous, you know you want it. Every girly does.”

 ”No!” she shouted as she pushed him hard and opened the door. Once outside she bolted, and didn’t stop running till she was safely at home with the door triple-locked.

All she wanted to do was climb into a bath as hot as she could stand and lie there crying until her eyes were swollen, imagining the hideous things she would like to do to Jonno; fat pig, bastard asshole! The worst of it was that she knew there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do about it. She needed this job, needed it desperately so she could send money home to her Mom for her little girl. And now she would probably be fired, just like all those other girls. Unless she… no, that wasn’t an option; she would never allow a man to use her that way again.

When she had cried herself out and scrubbed herself down until her skin was almost raw, she took herself off to bed with a couple of Valium. She decided that as she still needed the money, she would stick it out at the Deer Hunter until she found something else. Maybe if she pretended nothing had happened he would get the message and just leave her alone? Part of her knew that wasn’t going to happen, but she needed to kid herself to be able to sleep…