Show Me Your Carmen
By: Paula Sue Bryant
Tags: Novel, Creativity, Dance, Feminism, Fiction

Show Me Your Carmen

Photo by Yuliya Kosolapova | Unsplash

“Dancers, let’s begin.”

Tessa and Lana swayed, twin cobras facing a snake charmer.

The tone arm lowered to the spinning disc. With a hiss and a pop, the needle found its groove. The first throaty notes of proud Carmen’s song winged upward — sultry, driving, hypnotic. Tessa recognized it — the aria told the story of a wild-hearted seductress.

“Show me Carmen.” Martha crossed her arms, one hip jutting, tapping her foot.

Tessa’s thoughts raced, but her feet hung back. She couldn’t feel it yet. Carmen’s aria was a woman’s battle cry. Carmen was rebellious and aggressive, like a man. Yet Carmen was unmistakably a woman.

She looked down. She was tough and lean — a rebel, aggressive as any man. Hadn’t she pushed her way to the spot of lead dancer in Martha’s company? So how could she improvise the feminine role of the cunning and sexual Carmen when her instinct was to stay strong and hard?

Lana Rippled Like a Biblical Concubine

She watched Lana ripple like a Biblical concubine trailing veils, and forced herself to think and feel like a man. How did men react to the soft parade of Lana’s round breasts and rolling hips?

Tessa sucked in her breath. She couldn’t let Lana distract her, let alone defeat her. After all, a man would never be so weak as to surrender, not even for love.

Tessa felt a steel rod form in her, stiffening her from head to foot, filling her with a furnace jet of desire. But what did she crave, as Carmen? What did she want, as a woman?

She strained to work out a plan, but a strategy refused to take shape. She couldn’t choreograph this one.

Martha pointed at Tessa. “Show us your Carmen. Move!”

At Martha’s cue, Tessa stopped thinking, raised her arms, and spun into motion. Powerful, she soared and plunged. She became the beautiful killer who swooped down on lovers and swallowed them up, a bird of prey arrowing toward her lovestruck victims.

Carmen, bloodthirsty and overmastering, was like a man, after all.

Show Me What You Do With Freedom

Martha urged them on. “You are uncaged birds, free to do as you choose. Show me what you do with freedom.”

Tessa swiveled in mid-stride to face Lana. Lana bent and tossed like a tiger lily in a hurricane. Tessa could feel Lana’s confidence waver. Tessa showed her — Carmen’s furnace-like heat, her bold pursuit of love, her clever escape from every snare, her teasing allure.

Lana missed a beat, hitched, then snapped her chin up and bared her teeth. Tessa had to admit, Lana was a worthy opponent, woman to woman.

With quick heat, Tessa wanted Lana for herself. She was determined to devour her. She was bone weary of this fight for the spotlight.

She wanted to grab Lana, overpower her, and eat her alive, spit out her bones like rind.

“Come and Get It If You Dare”

She clutched Lana’s arm and glared. “Look at me. You know you want what I have. Come and get it if you dare.”

Lana’s face was a fierce mask, and her eyes hardened into agate. She jerked her arm free of Tessa’s grip. Tessa was startled by the pain. She couldn’t let Lana Rosenthal, a dancer six years older, get the upper hand in this match to the death. Why couldn’t this pampered princess give up dancing altogether and let Tessa command the stage alone?

Tessa wanted her, but she didn’t need her.

The old rivalry between them flared and crackled. Tessa clenched her jaw. Circling each other, they lunged and thrusted, arms raised, fingers snapping. Stamping her feet in a flamenco, Tessa threw back her head and howled. She felt a blast of heat sear her chest.

She unsheathed an invisible dagger. Raising it high, she plunged the blade deep into Lana’s heart and twisted it.

At the death blow, Lana stumbled backward. Tessa saw fear lurking behind Lana’s beautiful mask of a face. Lana dropped to the floor and lay still.

With the jaunty grace of a young warrior, Tessa straddled her beautiful enemy, lifted her head, and gazed into the dark wells of her pupils. Their panting breaths mingled. The defiant ghost of Carmen’s aria lingered and murmured in a hushed echo, then subsided.

Tessa raised her fist. “I win.”

It was true. She’d won the prize she’d been lusting for. She’d forced Lana to give in.