You Hit The Ground And Died

“Bang bang, you hit the ground, darling.” Her smile licked at Cho, her words twinning around her neck as if to choke her. “I think you are dead.”

Fleur was laughing in the golden smoke of Fin-de-Siècle that flattened into patterns and glitters and schizophrenia, and it was no more Paris than New York, no more romance than hauteur in white and yellow and blue. She wore only one cufflink to her blouse and Cho was rapt by the brash-scarlet crest of fleurs-de-lis bound to the sleeve and secretly thought Fleur was royalty.

~

Fleur’s voice was as silky as her hair, the murder of her choice.

~

It was summer, when ghosts were breathing dreams into the air before them, and Cho was dying piece by piece quietly. It wasn’t until later that she noticed, when the cobblestones weren’t blue anymore and the sky wasn’t quite either. But it was her own mistake for lingering longer than she should in Diagon Alley when she knew better, for even stepping into the marble building under the rusty sign: Gringotts Wizarding Bank. (Never know what they hide in those little vaults, for all you knew, they could hold black sachets with deaths in them.)

And it wasn’t as if Cho could resist her, a golden-haired murderer whose voice poured verve out unto the earth as if she were the soul of the world, as if life was a ring around her finger and hers to twirl with. Her hair was woven about her like a golden bride-veil, and from her peculiar mouth cascaded ruthless fire, and she wasn’t in love with the idea of being in love.

~

She wore a black bra laced with tease and French cut underwear, her skin rich and crème and lips painted with flower stains. The chocolate she put in her mouth had golden letters on its back and Cho could taste the melted words on her lips “Yves Thuriès: le Chocolat.” Her fragrance was pale and weightless, but her smoke was cigarette and harsh.

“I think you should stop smoking, you’ll get cancer.”

But Fleur smiled and traced her finger along Cho’s jaw, and slipped words under the air in front of her. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Wisps of smoke glided out from her mouth and Cho sealed it with hers.

They pulled apart and the bitter smoke faded away.

“No, of course not—” Cho tried to recover her lie.

“You’re so confident that I don’t know you.”

Cho then undid Fleur’s bra. (And Fleur was as poised as Olympia, her body silver and lit and smooth, the white of her teeth hazed by the cigarette smoke sliding from her lips.) And she kissed the blonde hair and the white teeth and airless voice.

~

Things as beautiful and magnetic as Fleur can never be genuine.

~

Cho stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom but it was Fleur she saw in the reflection. She didn’t quite understand what was happening, but raised her hand to touch the glassy metal before her. It flashed a bit, echoing the florescent light of the room, and Fleur was grinning back at her, shellwork hands outlining her own neck like an artist would with a pencil. Cho leaned onto the silver-plated glass and tried to kiss her, but instead Fleur proffered her hand to stop her.

Phantoms were the things in the mirror that watch us, and Fleur was one of them.

“Why are you haunting me?” Cho asked when Fleur came to the bathroom.

“Because it’s fun, sweetheart.” She laughed. “It’s terribly amusing.”

Fleur said as she kissed her, trapping her between her own body and the mirror, and Cho thought that she was going to sink into the glass—to pass over to the other world—and be lost forever. She didn’t and she wasn’t sure why, but she swore that she saw smoke emerge from the cool surface of the mirror. She didn’t know too much about ghosts, but she knew this: if x had happened, y will follow.

It’ll be like a hand grenade, you won’t actually die from the explosion, but the little pieces of metal that’ll get lodged onto you. The ghost won’t kill you, but when the bits and bits of vivacity are wrung out of you, you are bound to fade away.

~

Fleur’s voice is as seductive as the arrow tip of Eros, the weapon of her choice.

~

Cho remembered saying to her, “Sing for me like you would when the angel dies.” And Fleur put her hands around Cho’s, her legs wrapping around her like bondage and she…

Cho was sleeping in the bed, her breath soft and slow and regular. Fleur laughed. She remembered Cho asking if she loved her, and she said no because she was Peitho and not Aphrodite. Cho didn’t say anything in response and Fleur sat down onto the white bed as she felt her way up Cho’s arm. Where else, then, shall she put her kiss, pour her dream?

Fleur put her hand on Cho’s head, and mocked the shape of a gun.

Bang.

Bang.

Sweetheart, I think you just died.