Topic: Days Like This - 18+

Lelah · Date: 2011-04-13 17:40 EST

The need hits her the moment she steps through her front door. It brings her to her knees, bathing her in an oily sheen of sweat. She needs the rush and the high. The initial feelings that hit harder than any orgasm she'd ever had, followed quickly by the feeling of being wrapped in a blanket of warmth and safety. She wants to float along, removed and remote from troubles and stress. Completely numb and apathetic to Rhys's scary admission, the frustrations and terrors of getting the studios up and running, the loneliness that always seems to cling to her no matter what or where she is.

She falls to her side, curls up in the fetal position, knees pulled up to her chest. A wave of nausea runs over her, bringing with it hard muscle cramps in her thighs and stomach. She groans, reaches for her phone. She enters the first five digits of Sato's number before she realizes what she's doing. With Herculean effort, she shoves the phone away with a grunt of disgust, and drags herself to her feet and stumbles along the wall to the bathroom.

She falls once more to her knees in front of the toilet and empties her stomach of her dinner, retching again and again until there is nothing but dry heaves. The spasms clench so hard that she thinks she's going to break a rib or two. The spasms pass eventually, and she slowly slides to the floor again. She curls up on the cold tiles, sweating and shaking. A thin, high noise reaches her ears and she realizes that it's Oscar, sitting in the doorway to the bathroom, whining and worrying about her. She lifts a foot and closes the bathroom door with it, shutting out the dog and the guilt.

The people at Last Chance, a small working ranch in the nowhere land of western Montana, the rehab where she'd spent 18 months of her life, said that the physical effects of her addiction were gone a week and a half after she went cold turkey. The psychological effects of her addiction, however, would likely last for the rest of her life. She snorts softly, wondering if maybe they shouldn't have told her the psychological addiction was at least a thousand times worse than the physical need. Hell, they probably did tell her, but she hadn't listened.

The tears come now. Tears because she can't get gear here on Rhy'Din. Tears because she wants a fix so badly. Tears because she's just walked away from someone and something amazing. Tears because she's praying to God that Sato somehow walks through her front door with works and gear in a bag. Tears because beneath the glitz and the glamor, she's nothing more than a hop-head junkie and she'll never be anything but. She cries, curled up alone and pathetic, her face pressed against the bathroom floor, a place she's spent a good portion of her adult life in. Nausea, muscle cramps, shakes, and cold sweats are now her constant companion and vie for attention from her with the bottomless pit of self-pity and self-disgust.

She must have fallen asleep at some point in the wee hours of the morning, because when she opens her eyes, sunshine is pouring through the bathroom's single window. The spasms in her thighs and stomach have left her sore and she sits up, draws a bath and climbs painfully into it. She washes the sweat from her body, the dried tears from her face, and sits soaking in the tub until the water is cold. As she's drying off, she realizes that today is Monday and she has an interview with a reporter from the Post. She turns to the mirror and stares at her face, mentally preparing herself to be confident and gracious while she talks to the reporter. She needs a hit so badly. Maybe she'll find herself a new Sato, someone who can give her hits on demand, just for days like this. Just for days when she needs to be confident and gracious and not afraid or alone.

She barely notices the trembling or the soreness as she gets dressed and heads out to the Red Dragon. Someone there will surely know where she can find a new Sato. Just for days this this.

Lelah · Date: 2011-04-18 15:51 EST

Her new dragon slayer, her new Sato, is on the corner across the street from a church. The name of the place ? Our Lady of Perpetual Misery ? is not lost on her. She wonders if the guy picked this spot for the delicious irony in the name, or for the wonderfully naughty feeling of sticking his thumb in the eye of God, or if it's as simple as this corner being the only one in the surrounding area that's not already occupied by gangs of thugs, whores, or other dealers. The latter is almost certainly why she finds him on this particular corner, but she pretends that it's a combination of the first two. It's how she would write it if this was a scene in one of her scripts.

She has never bought from a street vendor and she is nervous about doing it now for the first time. All her gear in the past was given to her by various friends or friends of friends in the privacy of her own home or on set or at parties in other people's homes. Even the works that she has now in her pocket was given to her by her first Sato, a businessman's attempt at making sure she was a repeat customer. Buy your gear, get your works for free! She giggles, a thread of desperation in the sound, at the image of an ad in the newspaper with this headline.

She stands next to the steps that lead up to the church and watches a skinny girl with stringy hair, too-pale skin, and ratty, thread-bare clothing approach the dragon slayer. The girl hands him a jingling, coin-filled bag and he in turn hands her a silent, gear-filled bag. The girl leaves, returning to her own street corner, where she sits down, brings out her own works, and shoots herself full of Heaven. Lelah is shocked; they didn't retire to an alleyway, out of sight of passing Watchmen, to deal. Everything was done out in the open. There is no secrecy, no furtive code words. A small part of Lelah is disappointed with this whole affair being above-board. She had been looking forward to carefully selected phrases that to the untrained ear could have meant a thousand other innocuous things, but really meant that she wanted gear and was willing to pay top dollar for it.

She glances both ways before crossing the street and approaching her new Sato. He turns to face her and tilts his head, a certain look of assessment in his beady, rat-like eyes. Is this a new customer? This pretty, well-dressed, put-together girl wants some of his pearls? She's got to be a chipper. He hopes he doesn't have to give her wings. He doesn't have time for that today. He's behind on his quota for the month and Montague has been riding him hard. Still, a sale's a sale, even if this girl is a first timer.

Lelah stands near him and holds out a bag that jingles. He looks at the bag, looks at her eyes, and smiles. No way this girl is a chipper. He can see the need in her face and can read the monkey's signs in the way the hand holding the bag trembles ever so slightly. He'll give her his best, prettiest pearls. That's no damned monkey, that's one, big, ugly gorilla she's carrying around. She'll be back.

He takes the bag, opens it, counts the silvers. Then he gives her a bag of his own, one containing five of his best. He gives it to her with a smile; she takes it with downcast eyes, shame riding the lines of her body. He chuckles softly and she leaves, clutching that bag as if it's a lifeline. Oh, yeah. She'll be back.

She stuffs the bag into her pocket, its negligible weight a millstone around her neck. She's not willing to plunk down on a street corner like the first girl so she begins looking for some place with a little more privacy. A deserted alley, a deeply sunken doorway, an abandoned storefront. Instead she sees a familiar face staring back at her.

((OOC Note: Continued here.))

Lelah · Date: 2011-04-27 20:42 EST

Strung out.

The words reverberate over and over in Lelah's head. How could he know? This gossip vulture, Emmet Bane. How could he know? Had he dug into her past? Did he find the magazine and newspaper articles with the same words as their headlines? Had he found the awful photos of her, strung out on heroin, a creature made of sticks and bones and huge, haunted eyes? He must have. They weren't hard to find. All one needed was a computer with an internet browser and the capability of pulling up Google, typing her name into the search bar and clicking enter. This vulture, this harpie, this Bane of her existence could surely do that, right?

Lelah stands in her bathroom, fresh from the shower, with the day's copy of the Rhy'Din Post open on the counter next to her. She stares into the mirror, examining her face closely, looking for tell-tale signs of exhaustion, the minute lines across her brow, the black circles beneath her eyes, the tightness of the skin around her mouth. They are all there, staring her starkly in the face. And somehow, some way, this hyena, this carrion eater had seen them, had plucked them off her face and splashed them all over his column.

Stressed out, he said. Taking on too much, he wrote. Dark secrets. Any press is good press.

She screams in wordless rage, snatching up the paper and tearing it to shreds. She lets the pieces fall between numb fingers, as silent, hot tears track down her face. She pulls open a drawer, reaches up to the underside of the one above it, scrabbles with newly-shorn fingernails and pulls out a plastic baggie filled with oddly-shaped black nuggets. She clenches it in one hand and slowly slides to the floor, her free hand clutched to her chest, pressed tightly against her heart.

God, it would be so easy. Spoons in the kitchen. Needles in her bedroom. The Zippo Ori created for her. It would be so easy to just float away for a few hours, forget the stress, forget the confusion, forget trying to be perfect for a whole new audience. Blissful, warm, contented, uncaring. And when the pearls in her hand were gone, she knew where to get new ones. She wouldn't even have to go back to the West End. She could call Jon's cousin, get more delivered to her door.

?No,? she says and throws the pearls back in the drawer, slams it shut and climbs to her feet. ?No,? she says again, this time with more conviction, more volume. ?F*ck Emmet Bane.? She faces herself in the mirror again, grabs her brush and hair dryer and begins fixing her hair. Once it's perfect, she picks up her make-up kit and fixes her face. Once it, too, is perfect, she leaves the bathroom and the pearls behind and goes into her bedroom to select the perfect outfit.

A coral dress to bring out the pink, healthy glow in her cheeks. La Perla lingerie, silk against her skin to remind her what she would give up if she went back to being that horrible, hollow-eyed creature again. Vintage Chanel bag and towering heels, glittering golden bangle bracelets, hoop earrings, a gold-and-diamond tulip pendant created specifically for her by Harry Winston to wear to the Oscars the year she won Best Actress.

She looks in the full-length mirror hanging behind her door. She is perfect now. Beautiful, a Hollywood glamor goddess, clever and shiny and shapely. Lovely.

But only on the outside.

Lelah · Date: 2011-06-05 15:57 EST

((OOC Note: Continued from here))

It's all in front of her, laid out on the kitchen table in a neat row of blissful, warm emptiness. To her left is another plastic baggie from Sato, filled with black dragon pearls. In the middle is a sharp, brand-new-never-been-opened, still with its orange cap tight over the tip. Next is a spoon, a cup full of water, and her trusty Zippo. Last in line is her phone, her contacts list pulled up, the names of friends and business associates and employees and stars staring at her in awful condemnation.

One phone call, a short wait, and then someone would come for her. Someone would come and dump the drugs, take away the needles, hold her while she cried. Someone would say the right words, make the right motions, try to comfort her, try to understand. Someone would save her from herself.

But no one can understand. No one can say the real right words or make the real right motions. No one can save her from herself. Nothing but what is in this bag can make any of this better. Losing Ori, The Need that threatens to consume her every time she is around Gideon, the pressures to make the studios a profitable investment for Alain and Julian and Mataya, the insistent demand that she be the very picture of perfection every second of every waking day ? it's too much. It weighs her down, bows her back, makes her curl up into herself, makes her want to withdraw and go into hiding.

She just wants a moment of silence. A single moment when there aren't a thousand people pulling at her, grasping at her, stretching her in a thousand different directions. A single moment when their voices aren't so loud in her head that she can't find the quiet. A single moment when she doesn't want to drown The Need that is constantly threatening to sweep over her, to roll her under, and drown her.

She opens the bag of pearls and takes out three of them, dropping them into the bowl of the spoon with a bit of water. She picks up the Zippo and looks at it, studying it intently as if it held within its shiny, steel sides the answers to life, the Universe and everything. A broken sob masquerading as a laugh escapes her throat as she realizes that, in a way, it does. Fire, after all, was a gift from the Gods. The gift was like a viper hidden in the grass, though. Its return to Man had angered Zeus, who sent Pandora, the first woman, to live amongst men as a punishment. ?From her is the race of women and female kind," she whispers, recalling a passage from the Greek poet, Hesiod. "Of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth."

She gives another strangled sob as she flips open the lighter, bringing forth the gift that had been at the root of so much pain and suffering. Holding the bowl of the spoon in one hand, she runs the lighter under the water and pearls, watching as they slowly melt and bubble into a thick sludge that held hours of peaceful silence. She puts the lighter down and picks up the sharp, tugs off the cap and lays the point in the bowl of spoon.

There is a sharp knocking at her front door. It startles her and she drops the sharp, spills the melted pearls across the tablecloth. The knocking continues. She watches with hot tears streaking down her cheeks as the silence soaks into the pristine white linen cloth. The door opens and strong arms pick her up, cradle her against a broad chest as warm, soft lips kiss her forehead. "Phūla," whispers a gruff, gravelly voice.

Someone has saved her from herself.

((OOC Note: Continued here))