The Runway Life: An Excerpt From a Project In the Works

A tale of an aspiring model and her distant drug-addled friend that team up to face an incident from their high school swamp adventure that left them drowning in guilt and mental issues.

Written by Nicotine Jasmo (Nico). Enjoy, and prepare yourself...

I rub the velvet curtain slowly between my manicured, styled fingers. It’s a tradition for me at these events, and a reassuring one at that. It’s taking its effect, I can feel that now...the anxiety in my body draining away to the closest I can come to a positive emotion these days-detachment. Uncaring. 

My body is loose and the muscles are slack, as my regularly scheduled pre-show massage has achieved. Somehow, though, it feels like there is still something underneath all my lean muscle. It feels like a swarm of insects are working their way through my system, grinding collectively through my veins. I glance to my left, spotting myself in someone’s display mirror, and I can see that my eyeliner is a bit too thin beneath my lower eyelid. I pull myself away from the curtain and go to reapply it, quickly, so that I don’t miss the opening cue.

I itch. I itch all over. Especially on my scalp, at the exact points where the hair implants reach my bare skin. The nerves are creeping through again, and I attempt to bite it back as I snap the cap off of a small plastic eyeliner tube from my dresser and begin to carefully stroke it around my eyes.

 Anxiety is the only thing I’ve swallowed since yesterday. Models do have to stay thin, after all. I’ve seen some of the other girls ingesting small bits of tissue paper before each show, claiming that it staves off the hunger pains and stomach cramps, but it feels wrong to me. I’d much rather complete my long list of rituals for each runway with the most important tradition: binging at a fast food place after it’s over, rather than trick my body into starving itself.

My thoughts of my own famishedness don’t help my worrying, and I instinctively float back over to the curtain, although my hand stops mid-stretch towards it as I see our manager walk into our dressing room. “Onstage in three,” she hisses, then frantically backtracks out of our room, pulling a pen from her tightly wound bun and scribbling something on a clipboard as she leaves.

I readjust my scarf as I stride forward through the room, and the other models step backwards with haste. I’ve been chosen to lead off the show, and they all respect that. I’ve become distant from them all, cut apart from them by their envy, but that’s alright. I haven’t had friends for a long time.

And I don’t need them now.

The next few minutes fly by with the confusion and ruckus that comes with the profession. I remember my stylist, Vishni, giving me a once-over before readjusting my skirt length, adding another Ciavelli bracelet (pure Nicaraguan gold, but treated in such a way that light reflects off it in abnormally vibrant, patterned colors) and giving me a few words of encouragement before I was sent towards the opening curtain with just a split-second to gain my bearings, pop my back and apply the proper model posture, and, with all of the blurred chaos around me culminating into a singular moment of clarity where, deep down, in the darkest, most guarded corner of my mind, I am able to hear a whisper that I usually block out at the latest hours of the night with my sobs-

-they’re dead because you left them-

-and then I explode onto the runway with all of the confidence, sophistication, and elegance that I have been practicing for months on end. I’m sporting the new Auvoir Lanister brand, a line from a parisian startup that mixes urban chic with bright, tropical extravagance. I own the runway, each calculated step from my long, leather-and-grass-weave pump boots marking the turf that I am dominating from my years of practice and experience. The clothes become an extension of my personality, and I bask in the glorious lights of the stage. As cameras flash all around me, I reach the crest of the platform and turn, adding a beautifully sensual flip of my long, vibrantly dyed hair to my turn as I rock the stage back to my exit: the velvet curtain. 

I am fully in control of my surroundings, and of myself. Strong. Confident.

I allow myself a glance into the audience.

Carlie sits there. Her unbrushed and messy midnight-black hair falls in strings across her face, pale, like a china doll. The dark strands seem stuck to her skin by something, and the more I gaze upon her the more she seems to be off. Her limbs are appearing bent at increasingly uncomfortable angles, and something is starting to seep through her skin as I stare.

My stomach twists and I nearly lose my balance. My throat is starting to climb up through my neck, that horrible feeling before you vomit, but I keep the smile plastered on and I don’t break stride.

I gather all of my willpower and use it to tear my gaze from Carlie-only for it to fall onto Elle.

I barely knew her, although the part I did know I had liked. She had always been so friendly and warm, but so...reserved. Her eyes bugged out of her beautiful oval face, drained of color, her long blond locks dripping with a dark substance. Her body was as twisted as the girl next to her, but there was something sticking out of her chest. The object glinted wickedly.

My stride had broken. The only thing that moved my vision from my friends’ twin crumpled bodies was a look that I caught from the corner of my eye. A woman, someone I didn’t know, looking concernedly at me, her brow furrowed. Beside her, a man was starting to look annoyed, his eyes on me as well.

I realised I had faltered, the boots, once as much a part of me as my limbs, seeming heavy and unnatural. I stumbled, caught myself, and then continued the confident stride. I felt people’s gazes slip off of me, lock back on to the clothing, the other models. Good. I couldn’t afford any more mistakes, but…

I couldn’t stop myself. I shifted my head the tiniest of degrees, and that’s when I saw the rest.

They were lined up together, like dominoes, in the same row as Carlie and Elle, all in various positions of death or dying. Trent. Casey. Aaron. Portia. Kris. Lucas. Vic. Snapped necks, knife wounds, strangling bruises, missing limbs…all of their faces were masks of anguish, their glassy eyes only holding unanswered pleads and unimaginable pain. 

I finally reached the curtain, a few short seconds turning into eons as I examined each grisly detail on the corpses of my former clique. I snapped my head back and away, weaved through the soft, velvet curtain, and spotted an open chair that I instantly collapsed into. In the back of my head I could hear Vishni yelling something about an extension I was crushing by sitting, but it was immediately blocked out by all of the memories I had repressed through hours of forced solitude. This wasn’t something I could bring to a therapist.

But...why couldn’t I? I wasn’t directly involved with what had...I mean, I never could have known that…I mean, none of it could be traced back to me if, say the police were to investigate-

No. I needed to stop lying to myself.

I think, in actuality, what is keeping me from going to a higher authority, proper investigators and all that, is my guilt. The horrible, twisting thoughts that invade my head every day are those of malice and self-deprication. I’d never had any of those feelings ever in my life before then. Everything had always been so perfect, and so easy.

But it had all started with me. 

To be continued!

Reviews

[Philip Muls]

Good flow. Intriguing.

Credible description from within the fashion world.

[Thomas Edward 'Timothy'..]

Awesome. Literally awesome. I want to know more.