Carmen

By V.R. Vesper

Two ballerinas. One role. One Carmen

Ballet was my life. I alienated myself for it. I broke my body for it. I rose, I fell, I rose again.

Three years carrying a struggling neoclassical company on a body that should have retired me at eighteen. I had become the dancer nobody wanted to follow. Then the company announced Carmen. The ballet of the season, and the role every dancer wanted. The cigarette girl, the seductress, the woman who chooses death over surrender. She was going to be mine. The part that would finally get me out, into the career I had bled twenty years for.

Then she arrived from Russia.

Perfectly trained. Beautiful enough that I should have known better. I didn’t. She conquered the room. She danced like she was on fire. Not better than me—different. Different enough that I noticed.

We measured each other across the studio. She moved like nothing in the room could touch her. I moved like the floor was mine and she was trespassing. When she danced angry, she danced better. When she danced better, I went to a place she couldn’t follow.

Then she smiled. She kissed me. We danced together and the room held its breath. I forgot what she was coming for. I stopped watching her like a threat.

She wanted my role.

I gave her too much.

Somewhere between the studio and her bed, we stopped pretending we weren’t destroying each other. Something broke. I still don’t know which of us broke it first. By the morning of opening night, I had crossed a line I could not walk back from.

Only one of us was dancing Carmen. The decision was mine to make. I made it.

I’m Carmen. Don’t ever call me anything else.

A sapphic psychological thriller about ambition, obsession, and the violence of two women trained their whole lives to never be the first to stop.