A Fairytale in St.Kilda
by
Kym Milne

Once, not very long ago there was a little girl called Red.  Everyone called her Red because of her long and very strikingly beautiful auburn hair.  It was the kind of hair that could be thrown from the confines of a tower to entice a would be suitor or certainly the kind of hair a female super hero should have.      
Red could see herself now:   Rocket Red stands on long slender pins, the calves of which are capable of cracking a walnut.  Her legs, hip width apart are clad in very cool, thigh high black leather super hero boots.  Naturally they have a razor sharp stilettoed heel!  They may even be capable of shooting a poison dart and concealing a tube of blood red lipstick.  With hands on the hips of her tightly corseted super hero outfit she says in a voice as silky as her billowing hair your bullets cannot harm me my hair is like a shield of steel.  Then ping, ping, ping the silver barrelled bullets shot by a thick necked villain with a bad four o’clock shadow, because for some reason they always have a neck the size of woman’s waist, would be gracefully deflected by her hair alone.  Rocket Red shakes her glossy mane of brilliant auburn hair, in slow motion of course!  Stood about in a small huddle would be frightened children and old folk with walking frames.  Their gathered crowd are incredibly grateful.  They clap and cheer.  Three cheers for Rocket Red, she saved us again.   Damn you Rocket Red says the villain if it hadn’t been for you I would have gotten away with my evil plan.  Rocket Red makes a perfect gun with her index finger and thumb then slowly brings them to her lips and blows.  She winks a coal black lashed wink.  
But as happens with most little girls Red began to grow up.  Only she didn’t have the opportunity to grow up in a home that was filled with love.  These homes only come from the pens of authors who write enchanted fairy stories and folk tales.  Untruths of far off places where everyone marries their one true love, sleeps on mattresses with peas underneath and live happily ever after in sugary castles, the massive wooden doors of which are guarded by large fierce dragons.  Red’s home on the other hand was a miserable existence and she had to deal with a wicked step father who often grew claws at the stroke of midnight.   And as no little girl wants to be pawed to death by their evil step father she decided to run and live her life on the streets of St Kilda.      
Now this St Kilda isn’t the one you know.  This St Kilda is made of gingerbread. A deceitfully alluring substance.  This St Kilda is vomit and blood splattered too.  It smells so acutely of desperation and is sometimes so shocking that the brutality of it will afflict only bleakness and depression upon the very weak.  It’s the smell of piss and rotting garbage.  It is the hookers, the junkies, the destitute and the homeless.  It is a life force so fierce and violent that it will suck the very energy from your soul.  It’s a place intense with smudgy grim where Red’s dreams secrete chimera, illusions that appear with a powerful knowing which only comes from living like she does.  It’s the same knowing that sea birds have.  That sense of consciousness as if a violent raging storm front is coming. Yet for all its distraction and misery Red loved her St Kilda and with a blazing sun sitting high in the sky over the beautiful sweeping bay she finally wakes after a long sleep, induced by the stinging prick of needle. 
She wakes with unbelievable tiredness.  She is twitchy and clammy and in desperate need of a hit so drags herself from the huddle of her blankets laid upon a cold dirty floor.  She will walk now to not only ease the stiffness in her bones but to find a taste, a little something to get her through the long day and equally longer night.  As she begins to walk she notes the ache in muscles and body.  It is an uncomfortableness that comes from positions of bending and squatting over the laps of men.  Awkward positions to adopt when not a super hero with super powers!  She can smell the smells of the men upon her skin and fingers now, always the stink of it in her clothing.  The smells of sex, the smell of unwashed penises, of cum and of their lust and desire.  One man smelt like papa bear.  These smells make her want bitter coffee.  She likes bitter and sour and salty now.  No longer sugar sweet!  
She has seen them all too.  Men with paunches hidden under robes, thin lean men in tights, a man with thick course body hair who lives under a bridge!  The hooked of noses, the pointy of ears, the toads, a giant, a midget and a prince who thought he was a great romantic lover.  For the record he was not!  It’s a nightly business where all the eccentricities of these men finally blend to become just one.  
During her journey Red briefly stops to watch a man, pig like in appearance piss in a door way of an expensive shop on Acland Street.  He lives on the street now because of a great huffing and puffing that blew his house down.  He is very dirty, his clothing has probably not been changed for months and they look moulded to his rounded body.  His hair and skin are filthy yet his penis is still pig pink looking.  Soft and slug like, yet for all its yielding Red knows it will stink.  Like a mixture of rotten cheese and ten day old socks.  Pig man basks in the delight of her surveillance, beaming like an aged snouted actor in the spotlight for one last time.   He does not care that she watches and begins to pull at his penis.  After much effort, a small dribble of grey looking cum eventually leaks from the end of it.  Applause!  
Red walks on smiling with her pace quickening such is her need to find her dealer.  She finally finds the abandoned rundown terrace house where she knows he will be.  Propped up on a filth mattress surround by an adoring gathering is her fiendishly charismatic dealer Jett Wolfe.  You can be anyone on the streets here!  
Hey Miss Red you sure look fine.  Come sit by Wolfie let’s do a line said Jett as he patted a vacant spot on the filthy quilted canvas next to him.  Of course Red did as she was asked because although she lived on the streets she knew she need not be a complete barbarian and always prided herself on displaying good manners.  
Upon the sole of a glass slipper, Jett cuts the white powder.  As it jettisoned throughout her thin body Red looks at Wolfie and says Jett, what big eyes you have.  
All the better Red to keep an eye on the filthy scum junkies who owe me money
With her mind now swimming, languid in the enveloped warmth of the drug she said That’s a big gun you have Jett 
Jett ran his hand, absent of mind over the cold metal of the magnum 357.  He picked up the pistol by the wooden grip and spun the chamber All the better to whack the dirty mother fuckers trying to take over my turf he answered silkily
What a big mouth you have Jett 
All the better to eat you with Red he said as he leapt on top of her devouring her in one bite.
And so it was Red and big bad Wolfie exchanged sex for a hit because that’s just how it is sometimes on the streets of fairytales.    
Finally Red stands to leave.  She is happy now she has a small firm rock wrapped in silver held safe in her pocket.  Most girls want a rock on their finger but not Red.  As she is about to walk out of the door a young woman enters the damp dark hallway.   As they pass Red mutters Snow white my arse then she steps out into the sunshine of the St Kilda day.