NEON DANCER
Her house stood at the junction of two roads. One road led out of town, the other to the woods. She had lived there since her husband died, or left. She wasn't sure which, and didn't much care. All she knew for certain was that everything wrong in her life was his fault. Her son lived in a room in back, which he rarely left.
He usually slept during the day. At night, he made neon signs, and only worked on them in the unreal light, there in the dark. Night time travelers sometimes stopped, hoping to see the source of the surging rainbow hues that creeped between the shades and out through the door, sometimes left open on warm nights. He never asked anyone in and never sent anyone away.
Many travelers asked him about the neon tubes, arranged in lines and patterns, what they all meant. He knew, deep inside, but replied that he wasn’t sure or just shrugged his shoulders.
"Then you don't know what you're doing, do you?"
“If that’s what you think," he said to them, “then that’s what it is.” To himself he said, “It’s what’s behind them, present only in the darkness, that matters most,”
Asking his mother did no good. She was always drunk and mostly watched television, staring resentfully at the screen while someone talked, nodding occasionally, but never answering their questions. When they got insistent, she would get up, turn up the tv volume and go into the kitchen and start cleaning up the kitchen which, in her condition, she never finished. She didn’t want to be seen. She didn’t want to be known. She just wanted to be drunk and be left alone.
She only got one station on her tv set and never turned it off. Luckily for her, it played twenty-four hours a day. It’s signal was non-stop.
Some travelers found the glowing phrases and patterns that the boy created amusing. Others found them disturbing. Feeling personally insulted or offended, they misunderstood his work, and would leave after making derisive comments. Coming back later, some would ask to buy his work. Because he wouldn't take traveler's checks, he rarely sold anything.
One night an unemployed exotic dancer stopped at the house. He asked her to stay. On some nights he painted patterns on her body with tempera paint and the paint glowed under the UV lights he installed in his room. He never asked for more than painting on her body. That was as close as he wanted to get. He painted her and then she danced while he worked on the neon. He worked without looking up at her, occasionally taking a picture while she danced in front of the wall of neon graffiti. She danced and she liked to show the the undulating paint on her shifting body. She loved to dance and she loved to show off and that was as close as anyone was allowed to get.
Sometimes while she danced, he scratched the words in his head into the dark walls that surrounded them. The shifting lights illuminated the messages scratched into the underlying plaster, broadcasting them out from the darkness he held inside, where he truly lived. He didn’t want to be seen. He only wanted to be known.
The dancer stayed for a long time. To find her you had to go through the house, past the tv, through the mother's room, to the boy's room. Once there, you had to work your way through all his equipment and partially completed projects to get to her room.
They never had to feed her. All she was ever hungry for was attention. She didn’t want to be known. She only wanted to be seen.