l'inconnue

julien: u kno when tht person was like "im a bar of soap and God is an instagram girl with acrylic nails and a box cutter" ...yea

julien: anyway do u have weed

cleo: yes

cleo: to both statements

“Oh, baby,” Lana echoed below her breath, lips barely bobbing with how softly each syllable fell. “You sound like a black and white movie.” Not bothering to disclose an explanation in typical Lana style, she abandoned the train of thought in the space of another blink, leaping like a flea to the next topic. “Kind of depressing, sometimes – remembering the whole ‘straight’ thing. Like, I’ll spend a few nights in gay clubs, in a row, and completely forget other people exist. It’s fun, sometimes. Mentally ejecting yourself to Mars, or whatever.” Begrudgingly springing upright, Lana sifted over a fresh stain on her thigh. Her eyebrows never once furrowed. She found it difficult to care about bumps and smudges – in her eyes, they were the girl scout badges of a day lived wild. “Brett? Like, Aldana?” she attempted to place him before Cleo had finished, nose crinkling once she did. “Ew, gross. Probably not Aldana. He’s the worst, but I don’t think he’s… that kind of worst. Anyway, no. I think this guy’s name was… Um.” She itched lazily at her temple. “Ryan? Br–… Brian? Whatever. It’s gone. It’s salad in the wind, now.” Rectifying her posture with a hand on the bench she’d found a seat on, Lana leaned her weight against it, other pulling her cup close to take a sip. “Think we should cut a lock of hair out, each, and throw them together in a cauldron? Go new wave Lana del Rey and hex him? Brett, I mean. Bad Brett. Or we could stomp off all of his toes. Pick them up, when they fall, and throw them into a sandwich bag. Shake like a homemade maraca.”

“Yeah. Heterosexuality is a plague to the earth,” she said as she leaned back, fixating on her white lighter as she flickered the flame on and off. She’d always known white lighters were a symbol of bad luck, but that was why she liked them. If anything, it was the one thing she collected -- this one was a Joy Division-branded lighter that said “Disorder” in black lettering that she found on the ground a few weeks prior. “Stoker,” she corrected Lana. “Brett Stoker. A name too similar to Bram Stoker, quite frankly, the poor bastard. His parents really had it out for him considering he looks like Nosferatu on a bad day. He’s a dick.” Her expression lightened as Lana suggested hexing, causing her to fantasize all the ways she could get revenge on men who were useless to her. It was beyond her understanding why Cleo still had a liking to men, or rather, an attraction as opposed to a liking. She hadn’t met one that didn’t make her so hyperaware of her surroundings due to the fact their company was probably boring her to death. Tragic. “We could get some ski masks and a baseball bet, you know, corner him like it’s Spring Breakers. Threaten to eat his firstborn if he doesn’t succumb. Brilliant!”

“I mean, considering I knocked the guy’s tooth out,” he mutters, the throb of his lip becoming more prominent as he spoke. He took the offered napkin though, and sat down when she slid a bit to the side to allow it. “I’ve had worse, that guy was nothing.” Back home in Boston, it was rare for Ford to be without some sort of injury. A bruised eye from a jealous boyfriend, a red cheek from a deserved slap, cracked ribs from being ganged up on. Still, he seemed to be a magnet for it, consciously making decisions based on what he knew would likely happen. “But feel free to nurse me back to health, it would be much appreciated.”

“That’s not what I saw,” she sneered, raising her eyebrows as she took another sip from her drink. “Yeah? What hurts?” She leaned into him, touching a finger to the bruise looming on his left eye, reddish flesh ornate with small cuts to his cheekbone. Her hand slid down to his bottom lip, fingertip left with a small bit of blood that oozed from his cuts. Her eyes lingered for just a moment before awkwardly looking away, shifting down to her purse to look for a first aid kit she didn’t have. “Huh. Used the last of my nurse’s kit on another guy leftover from a bar fight last night, actually. You’re shit out of luck,” she said, her dark lips curling into a small smile. It wasn’t that she was drawn to violence, not in the way the few friends in her life accused her of, but sometimes she was fascinated by the blow of a punch, of the ways human beings were capable of hurting each other. It disgusted her at the same time it enthralled her, maybe, but it was fascination nonetheless. “I have some... Neosporin back at my place if you really need. Unless you’re concussed and need an Uber? Do you remember your name?”

“Hot. Aren’t there vibrators with remote controls now? I really want one of those. I want to become an android and it just seems like the next logical step.” She stuck the bent cigarette in her mouth, handing over another to Cleo, Bic lighter with stickers all over it lifted up to illuminate her face with light. Taking a long drag, she grinned at Cleo, wiggling her eyebrows. “I’ll join you on the rave scene. We can wear really wild outfits and whip out our tits for a line. Get really into it.” She blew air out from between her lips, a disappointed sigh. “His dick really is huge. Almost big enough to forgive him for being in a shitty band. We can fuck him together. Suck the life force out of his peen for ourselves.”

“Yeah, dude! Once I was about to hook up with this guy but his thing was that he likes to watch porn beforehand. So we’re on PornHub and we accidentally click on a hentai and it ends up with this girl getting controlled by the guy via remote control vibrator. It was actually the best comedy,” Cleo rambled. “Anyways, the guy lasted for about five minutes and we never spoke again.” She shrugged, lighting the cigarette and blowing a tunnel of smoke towards Cecily. “Hmm. Down for that, honestly. You can mount him while I rob him. I definitely need to take something before that encounter happens, though.”

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dead gorl walking

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Blake was having one of those moments where he realized, just after the words escaped him, he’d shared too much. Lips pressed into a tight line, he shook his head. “Last thing I want is Brit Marling writing my life. Something tells me she’s boring as fuck,” he joked, a small smile turning up the corners of his lips. There were many instances in which Blake thought about having his name in the New York Times for some particular reason, but that was certainly not one he’d considered. “See, I think the reaper wants more for us to suffer and that would be the opposite,” he said with a shrug. “But it’s whatever, honestly. Not like we can do much about it.”

“Hey, I like her. She kind of typecasts herself, though. The OA was a good binge. I love shows that are so plot-heavy that I forget what the story arc is whenever a new season starts,” Cleo mused. She wanted to share his nihilism, and she did, in moments when she realized that her bank of human connection with others was rather empty and being abroad didn’t exactly fill whatever void New York had left inside her, but the presence of the reaper instilled something new within her: fear. “Right. I just... fucking hate being in some kind of, I don’t know. Unfriended type plot. One day our phones are gonna pull a Final Destination on us a la Lockwood reaper.”

Watching as she picked up one of the instruments, Miles abandoned the effort to watch over her, hoping that it wouldn’t come back to bite him later. He’d chosen to work at a venue bar simply because he loved being around the live music and the energy, but keeping things under control was a lot of pressure. “Think it was the last band. Some weird… black metal wannabes,” he shrugged. “I’m — Stage manager, I guess? I don’t fucking know, honestly. I just kinda hang out around here and make sure no one overdoses.”

“Ew,” Cleo wrinkled her nose. “Some Lords of Chaos shit, huh? Guess this is where we get sacrificed for a Satanic ritual. Aw, fuck, I’m still a virgin and everything.” She raised an eyebrow to the other after her spiel, forgetting what her plan was when she had come up to the attic for refuge. “Luckily, I’m 100% straight-edge. Haven’t had a heroin injection in a couple days. Choose life and whatever, as Ewan McGregor likes to say.”

Cecily hadn’t really wanted to go to the show. But she had been fucking the drummer for a while, and he looked at her with such puppy dog eyes when he invited her that she felt a little bad saying no. She figured she’d take something, have a few shots and try to get high enough to find the music actually tolerable. But now she felt slightly dizzy, and had wandered up to the attic trying to find a quieter place to sit. The strength of Cleo’s “Jesus” was enough to make her jump, clutching her chest, as her blue eyes widened. “Fucking hell, if I was forty years older I’d be having a heart attack right now,” her short leather skirt rode up as she sat next to Cleo, making room for herself by the window. “Oh, did you come up here to masturbate or something? Nice. Sometimes I need a mid-evening wank too. Releases all that social anxiety and whatnot,” she joked, voice monotone as she took out a cigarette, slightly bent from hanging around in her jacket pocket unsheathed all night. “Just needed to get away from that basement. Was gonna fuck the drummer after this but honestly? After watching that shit my dick couldn’t be softer. You could wave it around like an elephant trunk.” She lit the cigarette, despite the fact that being in a dusty, wood-made attic was probably the most dangerous place to smoke. “You want one? Little something to take the edge off.”

“Yes, I was actually going to hook the Hitachi Magic Wand from my back pocket up to this bass amp right now and make some real music,” she replied. “I should get into house music and go to raves instead. Feel like the rave scene in Deutschland is more exciting than... whatever this is.” She made a vague waving gesture to the air in front of her. Taking Cecily up on her offer, she gladly took the cigarette, considering her body was running out of liquor to depend its amusement on and nicotine was second best. “Tragic,” she huffed. “You know what they say about drummers? Big dicks. They don’t drum until they bleed to not be good at shoving their fingers up you, I guess. Maybe I’ll fuck him.”

        basements were terrible to moon about in at the best of times. mildew sour-smelling in the nose and a mismatched array of armchairs, it suddenly became worse with the the voice that roared into the microphone, inflecting with the ebb of a headache. ivy left silently. all that seemed to matter was to escape the noise. climbing up farther from the guitar that reverberated in the walls, the cavity of her chest, the trail of lights sprawled in a trail to the attic. it felt strange to seek company. she’d learned to be content with solitude, the swirl of her own thoughts. but tonight they’d become haunting ; to be alone was what frightened her the most.  ‘ i did, ’ ivy shrugged, hardly fazed by the indignant outburst. ‘ but i guess nobody else had gone up here. i’d hear talking, or something, wouldn’t i? ’ sat at the other end of the seat, a hand outstretched to fiddle with a loose thread. it was tugged so harshly it cut the tips of her finger white. ‘ nothing except a bit of quiet. i told the vocalist they were terrible, but he just helped himself to my drink and kept playing. badly. ’

“Very predictable. Were The Goons playing? That sounds like something Bram would do. Pinkish hair? We went on one Tinder date and he kept going off about his band being the best in the Dutch DIY scene,” she scoffed, rolling a cigarette between her fingers. She wanted to light it, though the suffocating atmosphere and the pink cellulose insulation above told her not to. “This gig fucking blows,” she mumbled, sticking the cigarette in her mouth just for the oral fixation of it. “We should go down there and play ourselves. Can you drum?”

“Not really. My memory isn’t great to begin with but had a pretty fucked up brain injury when I was eighteen, so that did me in. I don’t remember a lot about my childhood. Growing up. The brain’s a fragile thing. And unpredictable. Maybe it’ll come back to me in my eighties,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders as if passing off complaints of the weather. “Also fascinating, though. I mean, imagine the history in the making. Nothing’s happened like this before. Even Blue Whale was just a hoax turned reality by few. This is big. Bigger than all of us, I think.”

Cleo frowned, not really out of pity but because the personal anecdote made her shift uncomfortably. She never knew what to say when people did that -- shared things about themselves -- because she never could. No one from her childhood knew her so intimately and she preferred to gatekeep any personal information with an iron fist. How stubborn of her. “Maybe you’ll have a near death experience and it’ll all come back to you. Then you find out you have magic powers and Netflix makes a show about you,” she offered. “Even if this is a hoax, I think there are other ways I’d rather die than perish by the hands of some classmate blackmailing our institution. Fucking cryptic. Imagine being in one of those exposés the New York Times writes about tragedies and murders and sex cults? Fuck that.” She crossed her arms and made a face. “If there’s anything this anonymous reaper could do, it could be making themselves useful and deleting our collective student loan debt.”

            ❝ Probably would’ve heard you ‘nough to not come in. What , I’m SMART. I know whenever I hear those ugly-ass noises there’s some hanky-panky goin’ on behind closed doors. I got it. ❞ Nell coarsely replies - clearly unbothered except for the annoyance written across their face. But it is their fault and they did barge in. One earbud sits in their decorated lobe and another dangles in the air as it hangs from their shoulder. They’ve only really come out for the fresh air - there’s too much going on inside. Too much for them to focus. And it took EVERYTHING for them not to blow up on other students talking shit - not to say it wasn’t hypocritical , oh no. Nell talked more shit than anyone else. But they didn’t like it when other people did it. ❝ Whassa matter with you ?? Getting stuffy ?? Don’t blame you. Felt I was about to fucking suffocate in there. ❞

She took a moment to pause, already overwhelmed with the newcomer’s presence. It was difficult for her to relax her hardened jaw. She didn’t even bother to bring up the use of the words hanky-panky. “Everyone’s taking my hideout spots,” Cleo sighs to herself, looking up as if cursing whatever higher being was responsible for her chronic headaches. “Yeah, this house is a bit suffocating. Particularly the people in it. Felt like just existing had men jumping down my throat with small talk or preliminary sexual assault.”

Taking up a job was meant to be solace for Miles, something to busy himself with when he wasn’t wasting away in a classroom. But it was already gearing up to be a disaster, the bar scene much different in Amsterdam than the Rochester pubs he was used to. Moving to the green room to catch a breather, he jumped when Cleo spoke, having not even noticed her presence. “Jesus,” he mumbled. “Sorry… Do you — This is kind of staff only,” he said, but he didn’t have the energy to push the rule. “Just don’t fuck with anything because I won’t know how to fix it.”

“Yes. I’m essentially staff,” Cleo replied crudely, eyes unwavering with the stranger’s as she managed to turn on the bass amp without breaking eye contact. Picking up the bass, she finger-picked a few strings before groaning. “This tuning is so... gross,” she grumbled, playing with the machine heads as she experimented. It had been a while since she had last practiced, hopping from band to band until she realized that working with men didn’t align quite well with her musical pursuits, not to mention her mother loathed the fact that her daughter had evolved from classical training. “So, whose groupie are you?”

Somehow, Lana always seemed to get herself tangled up in these kinds of scenes: the microphone stand scraped in over a fading Persian carpet, air sticky with soda spills and an excess of perspiration. She always wound up feeling like a puppet with the strings finally reconnected, like she’d fallen back into her rightful place again, when she was surrounded by people that at least claimed to love music. It was probably her father’s influence, spurned forth by years with an ear pressed to the door of his study, absorbing whatever notes of vinyl she could. It was like she thought she could clamour the warmth of a song together and use it to sponge at her subconscious, as if loneliness was just a leak that could be pat dry and forgotten. “God,” Lana practically gasped for air, a fish tossed back beneath the water, as she stepped into the room. Barely paying attention to Cleo’s outrage, she kicked the door shut behind her with all the curt promptness of a disgruntled Shetland pony. “I just nearly choked on a crooked dong, down there. Felt like I was, like… a boomerang closet. Such an unreasonable shape.” All but flopping onto the closest surface, Lana ignored the slight slosh of rum over the brim of her cup, too consumed by the dull ache settling into her bones now that she’d finally gotten comfortable. She felt like a student after a long school day, finally back on the couch. “Really wish they’d play something… better. Can hardly clap an ass to whatever this is. Talk about my longest ‘no, boi’ ever.”

“Oh, baby, house shows aren’t the place to suck dick. Half the crowd is straight edge white men from Dead Kennedys worship bands who seem to have never met a woman in their lives, the other half is straight white men who evidently go to our school. Elitist frat boys, if you will.” Chewing on the pendant of her necklace, she slunk into her seat as she watched Lana, her legs feeling too long for the seat as she swung them towards the wall. “That’s why I’m here. Headache has been induced. That’s what happens when all your songs are one riff and one riff only,” she huffed, blowing a strand of a frizzed curl away from her face as if she were a cartoon. “Were you targeted by Brett already. He kept asking me if I had coke and then proceeded to tell me I’m pretty about 37 times before I told him I was sixteen. The best part is he still kept going.”

Surprise etches it’s way across stony features, eyebrows lifting above dark eyes that reveal little more than passive interest. The plastic of his solo cup clicks between his teeth as he holds it there, fishes out his pack of cigarettes before returning the garish red container to his hand. Cigarette now lodged between his lips, and with an eye roll that paints him far crueler than he intends, he sets his cup down on the counter, snatches a kitchen towel. “How the fuck did y’even manage that?” Mumbled around the smoke, his words are muffled. He picks careful steps around the glass, pressing the towel into the cut on her hand to stop the bleeding before glancing around for a broom. “Didn’t realize being your friend involved cleaning up your messes. Not fuckin’ interested.”

“Owwww. Fuck off,” Cleo whined, removing the towel and examining the cut. “I’m too high for this.” Rejecting his lame attempts, she turned around towards the sink, running her palm over cold water and sighing. Looking him up and down, she snatched the cigarette from his mouth and put it behind her ear. “Pretentious. Very Augustus Waters of you to pull out a cigarette while I nearly slash an artery. Do you think the hosts have gauze or am I supposed to make a tourniquet for this?” She was exaggerating, though her cut really did sting much to her annoyance. She almost didn’t notice the tiny trail of blood on the kitchen sink. “Ouch, way to put salt in my wounds. Who said we were friends?”

“One can only hope,” he said slowly, eyes scanning the crowd. There weren’t many there he’d miss if they fell victim to this mystery and it made his stomach turn just thinking about it, how little he cared about those immediate to him. It made it easy to fantasize about leaving, packing up his bags and pulling out of the semester abroad program and pretending none of this even happened. But there were still people here he hung onto. “Tatiana was my cousin,” Blake said, clearing his throat. “Apparently we were close when we were children. Went to Equestrian camp together and our beach houses were right next to each other,” he said. “Don’t remember, though. But I still felt it the same when I found out like a compartment had been emptied out and I had important things in there. Things I needed,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s weird how quickly it became just a story to me. Sometimes people talk about her now and I forget I even knew her.”

“You don’t remember what she was like?” she asked. “Don’t wanna pry, though. I didn’t really know the girl. Not super tight with the cheerleaders, I guess.” She bit her lip in contemplation. It was moments like these where she was forced to remember the hell they were in, the simulated reality in which focusing on her studies didn’t even seem worth it anymore considering the events. She was surprised the school wasn’t simply shut down, but it was obvious how much Lockwood hated scandal. Cleo knew enough being a college professor’s daughter. “It’s so weird, you know? This whole thing. It’s like... Survivor Virgin Suicides. Now that this poor girl is dead everyone is just digging up all her secrets like they’re robbing her body.”