Here is my entry for the creative writing contest.
The Woman from Heaven
There had been fanfare, and fans. Outside, where the sunlight could stream, beneath the arching folds of a canvas ceiling, dancing off the glinting happiness of those in the rink and those surrounding it. Handcrafted stages, tightropes that crossed below the cloud-woven grounds of heaven: that is where she used to dance as the Woman from Heaven. That is where she once found home. She, the Woman from Heaven, who would descend from the cloud-woven grounds to the earth below. She, the Woman from Heaven, the angel sent from tightrope above, floating, falling, a dance downwards with fanfare, to her fans, their cheers and cries a hark of heralding. Those days were stolen from her long ago, wrought from beneath her feet by a red velvet curtain and a camera lens. A grand stage, a pinstriped tent, collapsing into a pile of dust, destroyed by a Californian earthquake sprung from the south as quick as an acrobat. Destroyed by an unnumbered street in a city that never dared to sleep. The very curtain she stood behind—a testament of the time.
From behind that curtain she sprung on stage, arms outstretched and feet feather-light, dancing for the empty world before her. She closed her eyes and drew her arms close, angel’s wings enveloping her in warmth, taking her back, behind her closed eyes, to her handcrafted stage. The sun streamed through, the spotlight on her. She flew across the stage, an elegant angel, feet and fingers painting a show to the breathless gasps and shouts of an enchanted crowd. They gasped, they cheered, they shouted; a very choir of hallelujahs, singing as the sun shone down from heaven. She twisted and twirled, gliding across wood as if gliding across string, bending and dipping, curving as a feather in the wind. Their applause resounded, echoing to the furthest edge of the world; and she danced, and danced, spinning, spiraling—and then the sharp sound of a door closing. A cacophonous cry, a door slamming shut the path between two worlds; she stirred her from her reverie, and she stopped, alone on a dark stage.
The stage performance ended that night, and the audience trickled out, a stream of top hats and fur coats for a bitter winter. Never did the audience stay for the celebration of art’s completion—off to bar and lounge, brief conversation of an actress’s nuance here, an actor’s delivery there, scotch and Chambord and good company kept of most heightened importance. The stage on which she stood, an examination of talent, but never an invitation towards it—so unlike her reverie as The Woman from Heaven, beneath the canvas ceiling, her fluttering arms inviting the crowd to waltz with her. Here in a dark theater, the people only watched; content to forever do so, to critique from a distance. The audience left, and she remained, for every dark night, alone and abandoned. But it was in that solitude that her wings took flight, and to the stage she took, performing again.
What is an actress who cannot float, who cannot move as if a woman from heaven? Words could instill such emotion in the hearts of an audience, but she needed no words—none at all. Let them be amazed not by her speech craft, but by her body—as The Woman from Heaven, descending from cloud-woven grounds to bless them with her gift—how she tiptoed on thin rope, her balance impeccable; how she spun and swirled, her movements, inhuman. She stood on the stage, pale lights upon her, casting a light of death on her frail frame, wingless now, starved of stage. But she swept forward again, weak and pale, arms outstretched towards the sun. There it was again—her otherworldly spotlight, illuminating her otherworldly gift. And the crowd she envisioned behind closed eyes—they roared, they cheered, as she danced for them again, arms as wings, the stage a tightrope, high above the ground, high into the heavens. She saw it before her, her heavenly dance—and the crowd around her, who came from the furthest corners of new continent to see it. Her eyes are clothes, and there it is: delicate atop the tightrope she dances—arching, curving, twisting, angel wings reflecting the light from above. She leaps; she spins, tiptoeing the clouds, captivating, as all hold their breaths at the smallest sight of strain. And then she finishes her cloud-floor waltz, and prepares for her leap to the Earth…. The spotlight shut off and she stumbled to her hands and knees. Gasping, she stared at the stage floor, its hard, lifeless wood cold to the touch.
In Hollywood, on Broadway, after the performance—that was when the sorrow came. Snuffed out were the bright lights that made so dead the appearance of an actress, caked in powder and rouge, those spotlights and floodlights. The warmth of the crowd escaped with their exit, the drafty halls cold as soon as the gilded doors splayed open. The clean-up help, gone with the curtain drawn; all that was left was she, lonesome on a lightless stage. No one could see her; no one would see her. Once where she danced as the Woman from Heaven, and fated now as a woman of keys, securing the doors of dressing rooms, of blinding lights and stage supplies. How unglamorous she had become, untalented and unclean, a mere sliver of her former self. Heaven help her, to draw her up.
She closed her eyes and drew herself up, her tumble vivid in her mind: the dance towards Earth, the most elegant fall, caught in the arms of her partner on the ground. Where was he now? His tanned arms, so strong, angel wings too—a protector. Dark eyes that shone with the vigor of Vaudeville—where did that vigor go? Lost to the western desert with him? And she remained here, in vigorous naïveté, grasping helplessly for one brief glimmer of a dance. She moved across the stage, eyes turned skyward towards the rafters that blocked the sun. She would leap from them in emulation, to perfect her ethereal performance, the last—the last of which would shame her to her end. The rafters of the stage, black as night. The theater dark as the day the curtain fell, so they say in Hollywood, on her last dance—her heavyhearted last dance. At the end of it, a half-turn instead of a full—imperfect, her last routine, as haunting a thought as the heavy beams above her. If only, she thought.
Keys jingled at her hip, the one to the dressing room sharp at her side. The actress, she left, her furs cascading down her back like tears upon a cheek. Filtered cigarette and playwright lover at her hand, their warmth, too, gone from the stage, gone from the theater. Up at the heavy wooden ceiling she looked; always an impediment to heaven’s sunlight, it was, the rafters above her like a wooden cage, and she, a clipped canary. Did the actress not realize—it was her time, now? To seize her art and transcend it on stage? Tears streamed down the hollow cheeks of the Woman from Heaven before she suddenly ran—fast as soft footsteps could manage, behind the stage, towards the machinery—unstable, rickety…and she climbed up, towards heaven, atop the rafters, in her mind, now, a tightrope: her stage, her chance to redeem her last performance.
The rafters stung like black ice on her feet; and did not heat travel skywards, so they said? The sound of the theater door opened and she heard someone cry out, anguished and anxious, calling out to her from far below. But she closed her eyes and stood once more on clouds—softly spun and white as snow, gentle as a child’s cheek. And the sun came down again, her spotlight, and she stepped forward gently, tender on the tightrope. Her tears dried. Vaudeville, what was your doom? You voice muted—voix de ville!—with the sounds of T-Models, of actresses shrill. Silence the noise, silence the crowd—take away their breath as she prepares for her downward dance. Into his arms; how he waited for her, stretched out to the sky, to embrace her and launch her up again, back to heaven. She felt the tears fall again on her face—cold, sorrowful, an icy stream down her sallow skin. The voice in the theater still called out to her, nervous, scared, echoing emotions she would no longer feel. She had not been able to perfect her final return to the Earth—the full turn, the full, not the half—and how it haunted her. But she would now, if she closed her eyes, and opened up the sky for the sun.
The theater filled again with the caught gasps of an entranced crowd—no longer scared, the voice, but now excited, she would pretend; and down below no more cold stage ground, but the arms—the arms of a man to catch her, embrace her, return her to heaven.
She leapt off the tightrope, feet in place, sprung from their trained steadfastness. Down below, to the man whose arms spread wide for her, to the warm that would welcome her, the Woman from Heaven, to Earth. She was the Woman from Heaven, and she would dance her final dance perfectly. At final full turn on earth, before she would return upwards, flying on her angel wings, with fanfare, to her fans above, their cheers and cries within her mind a hark of heralding.
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