STILL ON FIRE.

The fact that he’d ruined his first suit with a powdered sugar donut irritates him as he enters the Gala about an hour or so late. Jason had picked out a navy blue suit, his favorite one at that, to wear to the first official gathering he’d been to since he moved to Dertosa. However, with the incident, he chose to arrive in a black and maroon number. He hadn’t any big expectations for it as the city was still small compared to New York or even Peoria. Yet as he steps in, he’s pleasantly surprised by how Dertosa embellished the once dimly lit museum. The decor and the lighting would’ve been to his parents’ tastes, especially his mother’s. He has half a mind to snap a couple of pictures just to send to her, but the thought of her mental state as of now deters him from doing so.

As usual, his eyes fall upon the selection of horderves laid out for the guests. His first instinct is to indulge in them, reaching for a brightly colored macaron in what he thinks is mango. However, he restrains himself at the prospect of others watching him. Jason’s dark orbs shift to a group of three girls, most likely far younger than him, speaking amongst each other with a crimson flush to their fair cheeks. A sly grin follows as he nods to them, picking up a glass of Chardonnay in their honor, which earns him a few giggles. In all honesty, Jason knew he was attractive and used it to soften the blow of his idiot exterior.

With far more confidence as he’d intended, he begins to walk towards them until a slinky little number catches his eye. He gives the woman in question a once over, subconsciously pressing his lower lip between his teeth at how it complimented her figure. Although a bit too flashy, he always appreciated a woman who commanded attention with such attire. Turning on his heels, he watches her sift through the crowd and to the bar. It isn’t until he finally captures a glimpse of her face that the intrigue turns to amusement. It was Claire and all her grumpy glory. At her snippy greeting, he scoffs. “ I really don’t think you’re in any position for jokes right now, Celosia. My little Petunia. ”

        CLAIRE TOOK ANOTHER lavish sip of her drink, lengthening the moment until she gulped inches deep. Until she came up and rushed to take a neglected breath. With the glass in her mouth, she was occupied. Claire assessed him sidelong. His hair was suspiciously smooth, every strand in place like he’d just fixed it. At the ends of his long, praying-mantis legs, his shoes were shiny and neat, without a scuff, and she decided there and then ( for the umpteenth time, alternately ) that she didn’t like Agent Lim. Claire’s flesh needled all at once. Her eyes shone back at her in the mirror behind the bar, looking unduly bright. 

       AN IMPATIENT look. “Only if you could afford me.” It cracked into the air like a whip without warning. She let a long hand drape over the bartop, face perched delicately in her opposite palm. Claire paused, tongue rolling searchingly over her teeth, the chapped surface seemingly scouring her enamel. She clawed resolutely at the cuticle of her right thumbnail. Like the elimination of that bothersome cross-section of skin would iron-out every kink of the current situation. A single cut of pain – brief, comparatively mild – and she looked to see a bead of blood. She wiped it agilely on the thin bar napkin, emblazoned with the thickly-penned Import Museum emblem. 

       WITH A SMOOTH, expressionless face, she started in. “The elite have got something up their sleeves. Lots of whispers, lots of cackling about the punch. Apparently, it’s something of a Toxins-hazing party. Like they’re fucking rival sororities.” Claire pursed her lips, shrugged, stayed fixed in place. She turned to him over her shoulder, looked him square in the eyes, slipped to a lower key with an effortless glissando. “And the night’s still as young and baby-faced as you.” 

“Fucking shit.” Frenchie mumbled as she angrily fiddled with one of the two only ribbons on her doily gown that kept her from completely exposing herself to everyone in Dertosa.  The woman normally donned a much more casual look, but for once she wasn’t working and she made sure that everyone knew the usually tough girl had come to play.  She donned what looked like practically one garment of black lace, clad against her front, back, and left arm only as the material met at her ribcage and the curve of her hip.  It was that one on her hip that was giving her issue, threatening to expose her womanhood upon entrance to the event.  She pulled herself aside, resting her champagne flute (that she was in a hurry to get) next to an empty table closest to the mirror-covered walls as she tried her hardest to tie the ribbon in a knot that was both secure and still “fashionable.”  

When she was having no luck, her dark eyes darted to the entrance about 10 feet to her right, eyeing each person that filed in to see if one of them would be trustworthy enough for the job.  The last thing she wanted was to flash everyone when the night had just started, spending the rest of the night as “the girl whose coochie was served before hors d’oeuvres.”  When the first familiar face came through the door, Frenchie hissed and beckoned for them to come over to her, clutching the two fragments of the silk ribbon in one hand.  “Now normally I’d ask you to get me a drink before I had you feeling all up on me, but I’m desperate.” Frenchie rolled her eyes before offering them a small laugh, “Not like that.  Just do me a favor and tie this in a bow that’s gonna stay, but not look like a huge, lumpy knot.”

        THE MUSEUM had begun to awake from its stillness. The very world seemed held in suspension, awaiting the beginning, the moment, the night’s event. Before it really began, Claire decided she needed a smoke break, which she earned only by her whispered promise to repay her date ( employer ) for the evening. After she burst out the doors, though, Claire realized she faced a significant road-block: she had left her pack at home. Quietly fuming, she returned indoors — lighter still in hand — but was stopped before she could get more than a few steps in. 

       SHE LOOKED devastating. It was Frenchie, a face that was familiar, fond, perhaps even friend. Given how little in which she was clad, Claire could not help but be entranced. When Frenchie turned to her, a smile lilting her stained lips, an innocent plea on them ( though nothing was innocent from her mouth, not to Claire ), Claire could only comply. Clack incrementally closer. Lay her lighter down on the nearby table, rendered irrelevant. Fix her grip upon the ribbon of fabric. Tie it tightly, bow as plump and lovely as ones her mother had adorned her hair with as a girl. Then she stepped backward with a single press of her heel, leaning back to appraise. Her hands trailed the material, roaming under the guise of smoothing. There was scarcely a roll or rumple to be found, only lace, and yet she touched again, light as a feather. And then — once — a flitter of flesh on flesh as she surreptitiously brushed Frenchie’s bare shoulder. 

      “ALL GOOD,” she breathed, working her tone into nonchalance. Tilting her head, elbow cocked from her hip. The smile that spread her lips was undisguisedly un-innocent. After a beat, she snatched the lighter off the table, lifted the hem of her dress high ( exposing a flash of black lace of her own, dashes of red she hoped went unnoticed ), and tucked it into her waistband. Claire smoothed the fabric once, twice, then regarded Frenchie was darkened eyes. “That dress should really be outlawed. You’re upstaging the artifacts.” 

Mirrors. The root of vanity, the easiest way to narcissism, and yet, who could look away? People spent so much money to like what they see in a mirror, and at the moment, Angel couldn’t stop staring at her reflection. Not her own. A Flower stood behind her and, if she wasn’t mistaken, they both liked what they saw. A snap echoed in the hall as the blonde popped the top of her lipstick back on, tucking it away into her bag. Moving slowly, she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, tilting her head to the side as she focused only on the woman standing just behind her.

To say the other wasn’t amused, would have been a severe understatement, Angel knew why she was here. Or more importantly, how she’d gotten here, but who was she to judge? She’d done the same. Pulling her eyes away from her, Angel met her own green eyes and dragged a finger under her bottom lip, taking her time as she wiped away the lipstick she’d managed to get outside of the lines. Laughing sweetly, Angel finally turned around, back against the little table her bag was resting on. “Clever. I can’t argue with that. It sounds like you aren’t really enjoying yourself - that’s too bad.”

         DESPITE ALL HER CONDITIONING – the repetition of her objective, met with only vague pleasure or mild annoyance, depending –  there Claire was: crouched cowardly in a hallway, palm flattened against the cool wall like it was the only thing keeping her upright. She had been more drunk in her life, but she felt considerably further gone in the moment. The typical modus operandi (get wasted, entertain oneself with inevitably catastrophic decisions, pass out at home, rinse, repeat) swapped for a taxing back-and-forth, all under the guise of Celosia. 

         THIS WOMAN was the most interesting thing she’d seen all night ( though she needn’t do much to overtake Robert on the scoreboard ). Time sulked by with agonizing lethargy, dragging its heels as if in retribution. Claire’s hands were dead things at the ends of her arms, needled through and clumsy. As a means of distraction, she needed to fill them. She wanted to be fixed into inebriated regality, waxed over by layer upon layer of whiskey, champagne, pungent vodka. “The problem is these hands,” her words were razored, lacking patience. She held them up demonstratively. “See? There’s no drink in them.” 

There was something in the corners of her eyes and the way the edges of her lips curved–but only slightly–that always gave the impression that she was one step ahead of everyone surrounding her; like she held the answer to questions Val had not yet thought of. He believed this to be the reason why he liked Claire more than others. That, and she was one of the rare ones that knew the qualities of silence. That was always a plus in his book.

He watched as she moved; a slip of fabric over her thigh, the curve of her shoulders. And he, too, moved a bit closer to sit on the windowsill, though not as fluid or graceful as his company. The moment her attention was drawn to the crowd, he allowed his eyes (that really should have been on Juliana) to sink to her neckline, but for no more than a moment as he exhaled. 

He wants to ask where she’d been, why she hadn’t come around to Vices in a while. Why she hadn’t called. But that wasn’t part of the unspoken arrangement, was it? They were never those people. It wasn’t that deep. And so he played aloof, as always, rolling the butt of a cigarette between thumb and forefinger like rolling the questions in his head into a little ball to be disposed of. “Sounds about right. Lily Muenster would’ve been more into disco, though.”

The gesture made the pack heavier in his breast pocket. Though he was down to the final two, he reached for it without hesitation. The cigarette was held out to her, but he withdrew it a beat later.  “What would you do? It’s been pretty boring here, holdin’ out might be worth it.” 

       SHE COULD tell him about the unexpected turns her life had taken of late. Perhaps that cursory friendliness could give way to honesty in order to revise the ellipses they had concluded with. The sting of unsaid words, crawling up her throat like bile, was swallowed with a suppressive gulp. Claire chose silence. An unfathomable plume of fog before him; calm, obscure, and curiously unreadable. She was skilled at keeping her mouth shut when advantageous. It was the only way to stop herself from feeling like she was a bird headed merrily toward a ceiling fan. 

        “YEAH, but vampires are played out,” she supplied, tone level; blithe. 

         AS HE REACHED to hand her a cigarette, Claire felt a swell of relief. It was startlingly familiar, a joint smoke-break. Muscle-memory, she could attest, was a powerful thing. In rapid succession came a revocation of her tranquility. As he drew the cigarette away from her, a single vein pulsed against her temples. Desire. She had grown into addiction. It grew into her. It and she blurred at the edges, became one amorphous being. Cloying, needy. A scratch along the inside of her stomach. Threatening to make itself seen. All she could do was feed it: with cigarettes, alcohol, sex, whatever was on hand. 

         CLAIRE THOUGHT a moment, rolling the borrowed bracelet up and down her wrist gently. “Something that’d have me and my disco-ball ass hauled out of here,” she foretold, mouth a wry twist. “Let your imagination run free.” 

The headache growing behind his brows was increasing by the minute, and the melody washing throughout the room in waves wasn’t helping it in the slightest. Valentine had spent the previous five minutes trying to guess what it was from the few chains of notes he thought sounded familiar. It was Smooth Operator, but it also wasn’t. Shoulder blades met in the middle of his back, and he cracked his neck in a fruitless attempt to stretch the frustration away. 

Juliana wasn’t too far from his sight, which was starting to look like where she would be for the duration of the event. Fine by him. Valentine didn’t know her as well as some of the other guests apparently knew her, but she appeared to be smart enough not to get herself in any trouble. Maneuvering his large body through little groups of socialites, he made his way to one of the large open windows, thankful for the cool air that hit him when he got close enough. 

Truth be told, he’d been aware of her presence at the event early on. She—or, rather, her outfit—wasn’t the type of thing that was easily missed, certainly not by him. There was a little happiness that bloomed inside him when he saw her, but also a curiosity at seeing her on the arm of a man he did not know, did not care to know. There were days when he wondered if she had met the fate of many beautiful and quiet women in Dertosa, but she seemed to be doing well for herself. That’s what the dangling gems on her ears seemed to say, at least. 

Being a shadow gave one plenty of time to ponder many things, but approaching Claire was not one of them. It was clear she wanted distance in the way she all but disappeared in thin air, and Valentine, as ever, was fine with that. And so her voice caught him off-guard when turned to see her in a nearby chair, cigarette dangling from his lip and a lighter cupped mid-flick.

The name brought images of a television screen illuminating a motel room, and his adolescent eyes, in a lonely blue. Old movies he’d consume in the night waiting for Marianne to come home, wondering if she even would. He changed the channel with a flick of his lighter and its yellow flame. 

Were he more clever, he would have compared her outfit as well, but the headache won this war. “I feel like a muppet,” he said, instead. Part of him was glad he at least looked the part. “You look–” he stopped to think of the right word to use, and his eye caught the glint of the monster hanging around her neck. “Shiny.”

           HE WAS ALL THERE, though not precisely as she remembered. The fact his suit was visibly worn was the only thing about his dress that recalled the Val she’d come close to knowing. Claire tucked a rogue strand of hair behind her head, but it stubbornly slipped forward again, bobbing distractingly against her cheek. It was custom, lately, that things rebelled rather than acquiesced. Her late-night ambling had turned sour, vexed by her position with Mercury, furious over the latent threat she provided. Contemplative, she’d sat outside on the curb and nursed a nervous cigarette, tendrils of noxious smoke coiling like snakes as she breathed them out. Another. Another. Claire only chain-smoked when she felt storm clouds encroaching. They felt so real, so visceral, that she almost expected there to be gray blotting the horizon. Instead, it was clear, which unnerved her more. Another cigarette.

         THAT WAS HOW her pack, tucked into her underwear, came to be empty. Claire looked around, gaze flitting from edge to edge, as far as she could see. Cocked herself to one side, content to sit silent on the room’s periphery. When she looked down, she noticed the angry pink of a scar was just exposed at her hemline. She took a moment to shift in her chair, smooth the too-short dress. Claire was grateful for the length of the sleeves, the coverage that the glittery black – dark and slick as tar – allowed her. The things they hid: Raised fissures in her flesh, like so many seams along the skin of her forearms. The dramatic faultline where she’d ruptured herself in two when she jumped from that window; then again, deliberately, when she was twenty-one. 

        SHINY. She tasted that for a moment; looking to him, then to the crowd, then to her own wrist adorned with the diamond bracelet ( which she had strictly on loan ), then back. The quirk of a smile curved her mouth. She molded her shoulders inward, suddenly aware of the bony bit of chest that blossomed from the plunging neckline of her dress. Liquid – molten – it was. She had to look worth every penny he’d spent on her. It was part of the gig. 

       “SORRY, the phrase we were looking for was Morticia Addams meets disco ball,” she shot back, remembering days in Ian’s house when she used to get drunk on a heady mixture of Family Feud and Absolut Citron. She had been seventeen, eighteen years old. With a flick of her wrist, Claire emptied the whiskey in her glass with a single gulp, then gestured to the sheeny pack of cigarettes. “If you don’t give me one of those, I cannot be held responsible for what I might do.” 

        THE NIGHT WAS YOUNG, though her date was decidedly not. Thus far, he’d been an innocuous, rather dull presence. Moving her from corner to corner, group to group, only asking of her that she remain standing and grin vaguely. She was only halfway tuned into his chatter — yes, I hope Cynthia’s good, tell her I said hello — when she spotted a familiar form. He had a long face, a darkness about it, features leaping out in an assortment almost as aggressive as his gaze. Val. A bygone relationship, if one could call it that. He was like that. Or maybe it was Claire who was like that. When he was, he was there, and as soon as he left, it was like he’d never been there at all. She thought that was good. It was what she liked about him; he didn’t press. With him, it was a quick collision — hands, teeth, tangled hair — and then over. No long drawn-out goodbye and then moments of his post-presence hovering in the air. Just gone, all at once. 

       ‘ALL AT ONCE’ had come approximately a month ago, after an adept conclusion from Jason had her bristled. Paranoid. She made herself permanently gone out of self-preservation. Now, dressed as she was, she knew what he could see: hair dark and tumbling in sleek ravines down her back. Limbs slim and lithe. Eyes shadowy, two orbs of dusk on her face. A lot of jewelry, all of it beyond Claire Marlowe’s means, on a face deceptively young. She looked like she needed a good shower and a pastel nightie and to come to Jesus. She looked different. She looked like trouble. 

      IN ALL HER REVERIE, Claire hadn’t noticed the woman approach, a presence that commanded attention and respect. The air had shifted, and she was left on the outs. Much to her chagrin, she could only smile as Robert breathed hotly into her ear — this is boring business, not for a lady — before he kissed her and turned to leave. Fuck. Some agent she was turning out to be. If she was going to fail, she reasoned, she’d better do it thoroughly. On her terms. When Robert was gone, she slinked to where she’d spotted Val, collided with a chair, and perched her glass against her exposed knees. She was aching for a cigarette, but the band of her underwear — the usual stashing place — was empty save for a bobby pin and a shitty plastic lighter. 

       FUCKING CREEP. She grumbled it, repeated it to herself like her own personal hymn. A scratched record, a skipping film, a segment of audio scanned meticulously over and over and over. Fucking creep, fucking creep, fucking creep. She knew better than to believe he was the exception. 

      SHE WORE THE LAST FEW HOURS like a shift-dress, hanging loosely from her shoulders in silken folds ( unlike the skin-tight excuse for a garment that refracted glittery beams every time the light hit her, making her feel like a gaudy disco ball ). It was woven into the dark of her hair, curls long-since flattened. Celosia had been hired out by another man, similarly bawdy as the others and who required only a variation of the same kind of attention. Robert Northcott. A suspect. Her date for the evening. He paraded her, plied her with fine champagne, tangled her up in lavish jewelry, clasped two diamond earrings under her loosed tresses. It was claustrophobic, dizzying; an endless throbbing, all of her a single ache. 

      THEN THE GUY, high off the attention of those who wished to gain his favor, had surreptitiously shoved his hand beneath her dress. Groped it continually, for good measure. She had every desire to shoot him down with all the concern of one squashing a bug; grope for her own, then squeeze hard enough that he’d yelp, leave him bruised and sobbing. Instead, she only smiled that demure, good-girl smile. Men like him could get away with anything. It turned out that one could dump millions of pounds worth of pollutants into the waterways and walk away, if only they had the money and enough sense to deliver it to the right person. When faced with eight figures, even lawful right and wrong dissolved to nothingness. Nothing is stolen when you can simply buy the whole world. Not even Celosia — not even her breasts, her ass, whatever he desired to take of her. 

      CLAIRE STOLE AWAY from a moment, telling herself it was for the purpose of gathering intel and not what it really was — a chance to exhale. Her stomach was pulsating with hunger beneath the clingy fabric of her garment. Claire swirled the whiskey in her glass — I like a woman who can handle a stiff one, Robert had joked ( and then chortled to himself ), as if her drink preferences were related to what he liked or didn’t like rather than her desire to get truly and thoroughly soused — before sliding a smooth ribbon of it down her opened throat. She released a single gust of air, savoring the vanilla and malt on her tongue. Then she looked up and saw who was approaching and her stomach sank fast, a heady mix of relief and irritation. 

      “SHIT,” she started in immediately, eyes hardening, growing flinty. “Did someone say Beetlejuice?” 

where: back hallway by the bathrooms when: 9:00pm

The night had arrived. Finally. Everyone knew about the Gala and everyone wanted to be at the Gala. Angel had finagled an invite from a bachelor, one who had too much money to spare and couldn’t say no to a beautiful young thing. One who planted the idea of the night into his head early on and let it grow. She wasn’t planning on spending the night tied to his arm, oh no, as soon as they walked in the door, she made up some kind of excuse to get away - the bathroom, getting a drink, some important phone call. Small things, but enough to explain why she was never there when he wanted to show her off. 

Angel made her rounds, smiling, flirting, exchanging small bags filled with your wildest dreams for large sums of money. She took Venmo, obviously, this wasn’t the 60s. Having wads of cash on you was a dead giveaway these days. She was having fun and doing her job, no one was the wiser. 

At the moment, she told her date she had to ruin to the bathroom once more, to touch up her lipstick. He, of course, told her she looked beautiful and she didn’t need to but a laugh and a wave as she walked away was all he got in return. The hallway outside the bathroom had a mirror - good enough. It was quiet, a little reprieve from the noise out in the main room. This time, Angel was actually doing what she said she would, focusing on her lips before a figure in the mirror behind her caught her attention. “Some party, isn’t it?”

              THE MINUTES DRAGGED ON, and the arm draped about her waist felt more like a vice than an embrace. With a murmur into the man’s ear, and a promise to return quickly, Celosia retreated to the bathroom. It was a few minutes before she could do anything other than press her palms against the granite countertop, its surface swirling like an Escher before her eyes. With a hardened jaw, Claire blinked once — hard — keeping her gaze carefully cast to the floor. Without looking at herself, she smoothly exited the restroom. Before she could return to the man — to his sneering friends, to the other women who similarly collared and domesticated at their sides — she was stopped by a lovely figure in the hall. Her dress was long, fluid, gauzy and sparkling under the overhead lighting. Claire stalled behind, lustfully eying the blonde hair careening down her back, begging to be snatched.  Wrapped around a wrist. Her mouth opening in a moan, a rupture of pleasure at the pain. The full bend of her neck exposed; blue veins pulsing wildly. Claire touched her own neck lightly, hand running down the olive column of it. Slightly sun-darkened, a patch of tan caught in the shallow of her collarbone. 

             SUDDENLY, and with a start, Claire knew that framed face. Recognized her, the vermillion of her lips, the vague mystery she carried around in tow. Angel. A person never met, but known nonetheless. There were many of those around Dertosa; figures that were neatly categorized within the confines of Claire’s mind, pictures and statistics recorded like dossiers. A file marked: ANGEL DUST. When she spoke, Claire kept her face lacquered smooth. “Linguistically, that it is,” she replied, her mouth a sardonic twist. She stared herself down in the glimmering sliver of mirror, voice an unsubtle punctuation point. “Some. Party.” 

— EVENT 001 

     + SA CLAIRE FLANDERS — personality types

who: @agentflanders​ where: Pulp Kitchen when: 3pm

It was surprisingly busy for so late in the afternoon.  Usually, the lunch crowd had petered out by now, so when Allie showed up same time she always did on Thursdays and couldn’t find a seat, she pouted.  At no one in particular, of course, unless you counted her favorite armchair in the corner by the window that was currently occupied by someone who looked like they smelled bad.  She’d have to remember to bug Simon about that reserved sign.  Maybe he thought she had been joking.

After snatching up her regular afternoon pick-me-up, she scanned the room again for an empty seat, even if she had to borrow.  Her eyes landed at one of the tiny high tops that were occupied by a single woman who seemed very focused on whatever she was reading.  Allie recognized her instantly, (Allie recognized a lot of people in this town) and her stomach twisted instantly.  She’d made a habit of looking into all the newcomers of Dertosa that seemed to attach themselves to her crew or any of the others; knowing how they got there was key to ‘persuading’ them if the need ever arose.  But this one was special– because she wasn’t what she seemed at all.

Instead of simply asking to borrow the chair, Allie slid into it and went about her settling down routine as if nothing else was different.  Once she finally had her computer open and logged in she finally looked up with a smile, slinging the strap to her bag over the chair.

“So, Special Agent Flanders.  Who exactly are you investigating?” 

A pause breezed by. “Don’t panic, I know how to keep secrets when I have a reason.”

       CLAIRE HAD ONLY semi-slept, an awkward state where she kept flashing awake but was not quite aware of her surroundings. Then she woke to find that the thoughts were still there. They followed her out the door, into the car, and into her work. Her work where she poured over photos of their dead bodies like illustrations in a children’s book, playing spot-the-differences. Her cases hadn’t always been like this. For a while it was arrests, beat cop work, simple stuff with evil that had a distinct face. Pin them down, cuff them, put them in the car. All the while they screamed at her, hurled little pellets of spit into her face, spewed obscenities with such venom that they almost managed to scare her, but not quite. They were too simple, too transparent with their malignity. That work was easy. Then she transitioned into homicide, dealt with lots of spousal abuse, lots of killing done by someone known to the victim. That did not frighten her, either. The best thing she could have ever heard was that most crimes are committed by a husband, a wife, a friend. She clung to that little bit of information, told herself that was the appeal of an orphaned existence.

      IT WAS ALMOST two o’clock when she finally emerged from her motel room. Gracelessly, she hurled herself into her car. It was familiar, every chip of paint and dent accompanied by a story, albeit fabricated ones. Claire Marlowe and her various accidents: two years ago, when she had veered out of her lane and sideswept a Jeep Grand Cherokee. Seven months ago, when a disgruntled Walgreens shopper had keyed the entire left side after she’d cut them off. Claire plugged her phone into the auxiliary chord as she surged down the highway. The tune pounded out of her speakers, thrummed against her temples, fogged her mind. Signs, signs are lost, signs disappeared. Somebody got busted. Got a face of stone and a ghostwritten biography. In the distance, city lights faded with the sunlight, and around her cars whirred by with urgency. She had the windows rolled down, wind loosing long strands of dark hair from her ponytail. They flattened to a fan against her cheek. Wrong, something was wrong. 

       EVEN AS SHE SAT in Pulp Kitchen, knocking back black coffee after black coffee, she couldn’t shake the feeling. The song played over and over, murky vocals whispering at the back of her skull. No sense of harmony, no sense of time. She was reading some pulpy detective novel, a mystery with a puddle of blood emblazoned on the cover, when Mercury sat across from her. It was foolish, to let her guard down; last night’s bad dreams had her reeling, senses dampened. When Mercury spoke, Claire had the impulse to let out an inappropriate, yelping laugh. Something about the utter absurdity of her reading material and the gravity of the moment -- too much, too dramatic, like some scene from Law & Order -- made her stomach leap. Lyrics filtered into her mind again, unable to be exiled even by the threat of Mercury’s words. They're blind, blind.

      Blind, blind, blind, blind, blind.

       WITH CAREFUL composure, Claire clenched her own secret firmly between her teeth. It was all she could do not to grin like the cheshire cat; pearly whites glistening under the overhead lights. Claire stayed frozen still. A face of stone. Then, measuredly, she placed her book down on the tabletop; slowly, meticulously removed her glasses from her face. She folded them neatly beside the gaudy cover, taking a long pause before she looked the woman dead-on. Her voice was low, calm. Even unimpressed.

      “What do you want?”

                       TECHNICALLY last call was at 1am. But technicalities didn’t mean shit on Thirsty Thursdays. Let’s be honest, they barely meant squat the rest of the week either. It was almost 2am now and the Vice’s patrons were ripe with liquor. “You’re gonna drink me dry, Bruce.” Craig had to shout over some Danzig track that was blaring. Now it was back over to service the lady who’d been drinking whiskey for the better part of the evening. He had seen her around before. She had a clean face. He wasn’t sure if that would come across as a compliment or an insult. Though he had every intention for the latter. Maybe it was just the sleazy dancers as a backdrop, but there was something compelling about this chick. 

                       HER DRINK OF CHOICE? An Irish whiskey with a substantial price tag. She looked ready for another top off. Craig fastened a spout to a bottle of Teeling. Her first night here came with one special request: keep the drinks coming. Enough said. Her outreached hand atop his was enough to peak interest. A verbal prompt followed, and he was all ears. Despite the loud trembling bass, she didn’t have the common courtesy to raise her voice. There was something about it that Craig liked, a dominance of sorts. He listened to what she had to say. Was it a proposition? Sure as fuck sounded like one. “Where am I?” He was pondering, albeit sarcastically. “I’m wherever you want me to be.” Good answer, man. “Your car… Your apartment… Your bed? Hell, maybe between your thighs.” Now he was really pondering.

        CLAIRE’S EXPRESSION was unflappable, face composed with mock solemnity. With intention. Claire’s gaze moved incrementally toward him, taking a moment to inhale measuredly through her nose. Letting a beat pass. She kept her manner blasé, lacquered smooth. In truth, she was itching. She didn’t want to go home to her own empty bed –  that cavernous mass of subpar foam and down comforter. There was only loneliness there, and another bottle, and the raging headache she was sure to have tomorrow. Empty evening hours with nothing to help them pass but alcohol-induced exhaustion. Instead, she looked to the person across her – fortunate, how hazy they were. Gauzed into loveliness by the whiskey coursing her veins. 

       ABSENTLY, Claire’s tongue found its way between her clenched teeth, and a rare smirk quirked her lips. In her irises, danger cracked and leapt like forest fire. She gratefully eyed the replenished whiskey in her glass, then downed it lavishly in a single gulp. She opted for brevity, her voice low; deliberate. “I’ve got one hell of a backseat.” 

“AH, FUCK. Most of my childhood was being primped. If I try to capture one solid memory, a specific moment, it always has something to do with my hair or a dress or the pattern on my stockings clashing with my jumper. My sister and I both used to be posed for photos all the time. It was an ordeal; my mother would put us in our finest clothes, do our hair, give us lollipops to make our lips pink, and then snap them, submit them to child modeling agencies. -- We actually got a few ads. I was the one in the warning posters, the ones urging you to watch out for child predators. My sister was the one in the pea pod, the toddler being sweetly slathered with sunscreen. She was the classic.” 

“ELEANOR.”