Confusions of a Wasted Youth
by Kenna Jenkins
She honestly doesn’t know what she’s
doing here, among all of these models and designers and makeup artists. For a
moment she can’t quite remember why she’s here, can’t think of a possible reason. She
can only feel the pounding of the music in her ears, rhythmic and heavy and strong, and feel the crush of bodies
around her as all these people mosh and grind against each other. It’s not as
if she’s here for the dancing, so that’s one thing off the list- this music,
this kind of dancing, so up close and personal with flesh sliding sinuously
against flesh and people way too
close together- that’s not really her thing.
(And yet she’s still
dancing, mingling with these predators and their prey. She doesn’t think she’s
either- she doesn’t have the dead, lifeless eyes of the prey, nor the sharp
smirks and angles of the predators. Rather, she thinks she might be something
different, something...other. Maybe a
bottom feeder, skulking about the room for the scraps of gossip that people
inadvertently drop, or maybe a piece of algae, drifting about creating her own
sustenance, her own life.)
The bass drops, and somehow
in between the beats she finds a way to think again even as she twirls and
shimmies past another faceless boy. She doesn’t think she’s here for the
company, either- she recognizes most people in the room only faintly, as if
she’s seen them somewhere before but never cared to learn more. She thinks it’s
models that she senses familiarity with most often, though they all seem to
blur together after awhile (maybe she’s had too much to drink, or maybe she’s
just the only sane person in a sea of drunken madness). She wonders why,
really, as they’re either predators or prey and they’re all drunk out of their minds, unable to care about who or what
they’re doing.
Their beauty is as deep as
a piece of paper, as transient and pretty as the sunset, and as flaking and
gilded as Versailles. It’s nothing but a facade for what lies beneath the
makeup, the fabrics, the shimmering lights- humanity itself, degraded to the
skinniest, most skeletal of professions. Breath mints and gum do a horrible job
of disguising the stench of tangy blood and vodka and stomach acid on the
breath of the girl in front of her.
(Maybe she’s here as a makeup artist?)
She doesn’t quite know
what’s happening right now as she totters on her heels, making her way out of
the gyrating, wasted figures on the dancefloor as the music shifts,
transforming into some poppy crap masquerading as a rock song. The wine in her
glass sloshes around precariously as it shifts in her hand, but she can’t quite
bring herself to really care. She is surrounded by dolls and the people who
created them- a spill would make them imperfect, would destroy the artifice of
divinity that the models all seem to carry around. She finds herself smiling, a
vicious little grin that bares her imperfect, not-quite-white teeth, at the
fantasy of the deep red wine in her glass splattering and staining the slinky
white dress of the girl in front of her. It’s a beautiful image, the crimson
staining the dress like blood, destroying the already shaky illusion of
innocence-
She snarls in disgust at
herself even thinking like that
(thinking like them), and nearly ends
up shattering her glass at the floor in her vehemence to put it down on the
table.
“So someone’s in a pissy
mood. Isn’t that right, kit?” A familiar voice asks, and she turns to find one
of those empty beings, a smirking Adonis draped in some cutting-edge ensemble
that manages to somehow make him look like he’s not slowly dying from the
inside out.
“Get lost, Harry,” she
snaps, and he pouts. Even pouting he is beautiful, a pretty little thing, but
she can’t quite tell if the teasing twinkle in his eye is real or just from the
glittery eye shadow he’s wearing. He looks just like the rest of them, a
specimen of humanity that somehow manages to make her feel like a lesser
creature, a lesser version of the level of human he is.
Yet, somehow, he is
different-
She doesn’t know how, though,
and it makes her curious. How is it that he manages to make his limbs, long
sticks of plastic topped in his popsicle sticks of fingers and toes, and the
hollow cavities that form his cheeks and stomach look so natural?
“Darling,” he drawls, and it sounds more like dah-lang than anything else, “How much I admire your spunk.”
Her eyes narrow as she
glares at him, and she almost wishes that she could determine for certain
whether she sees life in his reflective gray eyes. She can’t tell whether they
are are truly alive, that he is not yet gone completely, or whether they’re
just reflecting the strobe lights over the dancefloor.
He smirks. “Feisty, aren’t
(ahn’t) we?”
“You deserve it, Harry, trust me.”
He grins, teeth glinting
shark-like under the lights, and though she knows
she should be afraid, should be feeling a thrill of fear running up her
spine, she isn’t. Instead she lets her gaze follow the lines in his face as he
leans back to take a swig of his wine, trailing them down his neck, lingering
in the hollow above his collarbones. If she wanted to she could just reach out
and snap his collarbones, they’re
that brittle and thin, and-
She’s not violent like that, she knows that for sure.
It’s a fairytale, almost,
one of those where the villain is clothed in the guise of an angel. They are
wolves in sheep’s clothing, lurking about trying to snatch up the little girl
in the red dress. She can’t quite tell which he is- an angel masquerading
amongst devils, or a devil cloaked as an angel. She can’t tell, she doesn’t know, and she hates not knowing.
Yet she does know him
somehow, knows his name, knows who he is, so she must know the answer- predator or prey? Angel or demon?
Real or not real?
“Oh real-ly?” he asks, drawing out the real in really, and though she knows it’s supposed to be cocky and
arrogant it just sounds a bit haunting, an echo of something long forgotten.
She feels like she knew him better, once, but now she knows nothing. “And why
would that be?”
To say I don’t know would be a mistake, at least at this point, but to lie
would be to place her amongst their ranks, amongst the deceivers and charlatans
that make up their world. But who’s to say she isn’t one of them already, or at
least on the path to becoming one of them? A girl in a dress the color of the
blood wine she drinks, dancing amongst synthetic perfection- who knows who she
really is?
Even she has no idea who she is.
She nibbles on her bottom
lip, wishing that she knew why she’s here. She vaguely remembers showing up at
the door of the bar earlier, invitation in hand, hair pulled up into a messy
bun, high heels pinching her toes, and a dress of vermilion caressing her legs.
After that...it’s just heat and dancing and alcohol.
“No reason,” she says, and
maybe it’s a second too quick, a mite too defensive, because he gives her a
curious look, the slightest tilt of the head that has his gel-shellacked curls
shifting like ice floes cracking on a polar sea.
“Then why’d you say that?”
His eyes have softened from an icy steel to a stormy cloud, and something there
confuses her, makes her wonder.
“I don’t really know,
honestly,” she admits, and for the first time she thinks she sees true emotion
in the perfect planes of his face. The slightest twist downward of Botoxed lips,
the smallest of small cracks in the skin by his eyes- they are a fissure in the
most perfect of facades.
“I thought you wouldn’t,”
he says, and there’s a strange lilt to his voice. She can’t quite identify it,
but she thinks that it might be somewhere between resignation and reluctant
triumph.
“Why?” she asks through dry
lips, and she runs her tongue over her teeth and lips to moisten them. The
craving for alcohol hits deep, and her fingers shake as her body aches for the bitter, burning taste of
tequila.
No, she’s done with that. She’s done.
(Then why had she been
holding a wineglass earlier as she danced, not caring as the red liquid hit her
throat and burned going down?)
“You’ve forgotten again, dah-lang,” he says softly, rocking
forward on his heels a little, thin limbs reminding her of a baby bird trying
to lift off, trying to escape this mortal realm.
She frowns as he drains the
last of his glass, tipping it in back in a swift, practiced motion. She
remembers, vaguely, another night like this one- strobing lights, dancing, a
different red dress- but she can recall nothing but small flashes,
insignificant details. “I-” she starts, but her voice wavers and she shuts her
mouth, trapping the memories inside of her.
He smiles, but it’s not the
shark’s grin of introduction, nor the smirk of triumph of earlier. It’s a
small, sad little thing, a curve of the lips that looks like it belongs on a
lesser, more malleable human. It seems patched together, almost, brittle and delicate-
simultaneously fake and all too real at the same time, half-mask and
half-genuine. Once again she can’t tell, but unlike before it just makes her
kind of sad. “I don’t expect you to remember,” he says, tone wistful, and she wishes she could figure this out, figure
out why she’s here, why she’s doing anything
at all-
A girl bumps into her from
behind, hip knifing into her side. “What the hell?” she shouts, turning to
figure out who it is, and finds the girl from earlier, the one in the white
dress, even more unsteady and shaky than she is.
The girl grins, showcasing
a mouth of cigarette-tar stained teeth, and holds out her glass of vodka. “Want
some?” she says, jiggling it tantalizingly in front of her face, and it takes
all she has to shake her head and turn back around to face him even as the
craving for alcohol jackknifes deep in her stomach. She wants-needs-to know why she’s here.
“You know me,” she says,
and it almost sounds like I know you.
Her brain catches on that
word- almost. On the edge of truth,
so close to answers- on the edge of, period.
A corner of his mouth
quirks up. “Yes I do, dah-lang,” he
says, and she knows he’s choosing not elaborate. She raises an eyebrow, feeling
like her face is cracking as she does, and he sighs. “You come here (he-ah) every Thursday night. You have
ever since the accident.”
“What accident?” she asks
as the song changes to something more intense, something with more of a bass
line and a heavier beat. Her head begins to throb again, the music pounding out
a dizzying beat, but she focuses on him.
“You used to work here,” he
says as he tosses his glass into a nearby trashcan, and now she knows. Predator or prey? A girl in
skirts of blood, moving unnoticed through a crowd of sharks- there must be a
reason none seek to gobble her up.
She reaches up to touch her
cheek and finds sharp cheekbones and sunken cheeks, traces her neck down to her
own collarbone and finds hollows. She closes her eyes, the only light the dim
red that is diffused past her eyelids. She’s a skeleton clothed in the illusion
of life, just like them- she’s a creature (on Thursday nights at least, who
knows what she does the rest of the time) living on music and booze and
dancing. Wasted on alcohol, wasting away her life- her mouth goes dry as she tries
to breathe, to take in deep breaths that will keep her from crumpling to her
knees.
“Okay,” she says, but she
feels a million miles away from this conversation. There is alcohol burning in
her veins, music battering her eardrums, and a crowd of faceless predators
swarming feet away. She opens her eyes, letting the spastic lighting back in.
“And who are you to me? Harry, I get
that, but who’s he?”
She thinks she sees him
wince, but she’s not sure at what she said that he’s wincing. “An old friend,”
he says, “Let’s leave it that.”
She wants to know, she wants-
“I think I’m losing my
mind,” she murmurs, and she sees it in slow motion, almost, the strobes
flickering across his face as that sad smile slowly carves itself back onto his
face.
“You’re not losing your
mind- you’re just forgetting,” he says, and his words are starting to hurt her
head now. “You won't remember a thing in the morning- you never do. Every
Thursday you show up, Isabelle hanging out drunk somewhere in the crowd, and
end up forgetting by morning. Some kind of amnesia, she says.”
“But why here?” she asks, wanting so desperately to know.
He shrugs, impossibly sharp
shoulders shifting the fabric clinging to his shoulders. “You used to work with
them, with us,” he says. “Eighteen
years old- I guess you’re attracted to the nightlife. We all are (ah), really.”
I’m a hypocrite, she thinks, thoughts already starting to come apart,
splintering and pounding through her head. A
hypocrite, ‘cause I’m just like them, because I am them, because...because-
His eyes flick up to the
wall, and she turns a little to see what he’s looking at. A digital clock
displaying the time 11:58, the
bottom leg of the eight blinking in and out. She turns back to look at him and
finds him staring at her, eyes steely again. "G'night, Ana," he says,
leaning in so close she can practically taste the wine on his breath, "See
ya again next Thursday.” Then he turns and walks away, disappearing into the
feeding frenzy of models and those who are paid to make them look like they’re
still human.
Ana,
she thinks as a girl in a white dress leads her to the exit, That’s...I don’t...
None
of the sharks blink as she sags into the girl’s arms, the girl who she’d
fantasized about spilling her wine on, and they leave, the girl’s hand clutched
in a strangling grip around her arm.
(Life
continues, and anyway, she’ll be back again next Thursday.)
