Off Track

She is the product of her own demise.

            “Okay, babe, you know the drill.  Smile; wave; look good.  You’ve done this a thousand times.  You’re set up to sit between Iggy Azalea and Ariana Grande.  Make small talk with them.  Joke.  Your job is to look happy, so the press can take loads ‘a pics ‘a you.  You’re bad.  You’re stupid.  You’re the next Madonna.  You know the words you can’t say.  You know your part.  Don’t trip up.  Or else.”

            If we hadn’t been pulling up to the red carpet, he would have gripped my face with his beefy hands, leaving a red mark and a numb tingling in my cheeks.  Three ... two ... one...

            The door to the limousine swung open, and I reached for the rubber threshold that sealed the car.  Stepping into the blindingly erratic strobe of camera flashes, I put on the mask, the smile.  I became the character, D-Marj.  Danielle Margy, still sitting in the limo, shook with a growing sense of foreboding, fearing her managers and publicists and body guards just as a child of alcoholic parents hides when her father reaches for the alcohol because the dragon breathes white hot fire and scalds the flesh and memories of its kin with third degree burns when the air is flammable with booze.  D-Marj feared naught.  D-Marj thought naught.  D-Marj felt naught. 

As the paparazzi hooted and hollered to get a reaction, I surrendered control and sat back into my conscious sleep and let her take the wheel.  I could not hear here.  I could only be aware of what she was saying and seeing and doing, but I had no control.  I loved it with a hatred that can only be described as a supernova swallowing its surrounding neighbors, those with whom it has coexisted and loved with for millions of years, those to whom it waved as they passed and aligned.  The black hole loves them with all it knows, but it must follow the path laid out for it by fate, so it has given in to the nature of the situation; it must deceive itself.  It must trick itself into believing in the deepest, darkest catacombs of its being that it loathes its lovers so that evolution and victory may be attained.  I must evolve and win, but She must falsify my thought process so that I may clamber out of the ashes of my peers a victor.

Elegant was her path.  Sensually, like a panther stalking its prey, She approached the event.  The train of her dress bestrewed a glittering catwalk behind her, which created a small cloud around her feet and settles as She moved on.  Flash!  Flash!  The carpet is red for a reason, I believe.  It stands out when they walk down the blinding, deafening warzone.  On their stilt-like heels, they can see where they are going.  Nothing else matters as long as they can make out that crimson path into the safe haven.

Upon entering the building, free from the bursts of white hot light, away from the shrieks, She displayed her true form, the top of the food-chain; She was the apex predator, unperturbed by her competitors, for whom she could find no level of empathy, for she wanted no interactions with them.  She radiated the light of a thousand suns, which she swallowed, as she illuminated the room.  She was infinite, elevated.  She was the Vega Kamen, the brightest star in the darkest night.  She made her way to her seat, where She would spend the remainder of the glamorous evening staring off into the distance as if She were a robot, clapping when it was appropriate but not too much because that would contrast her apathetic aesthetic as a pompous, unruly wild child, who would rather be out partying, getting drunk and intoxicated for fun as if I weren’t behind her, as if I didn’t get drunk to numb the blows, to force the apathy to drown me because it didn’t care enough to do so without the liquor.  She won awards for her newest movie role, which could have been stickers for all she cared because in the end, no matter how egregious her thunderous and booming exaltation, she cared not, for someone could not drink an Oscar, and if she could, it would not have the same effects as the bottle of vodka in our bedside table.

Suddenly, I was back in control.  I absorbed my surroundings to the best of my abilities, as I was reasonably drunk by that point.  One, two, four, six, eight, nine people were in the limo: two body guards, Marc, my other manager, Tim, four unknowns, and myself.  I attempted to gather myself and to recede into my mind so that She could return, and I could dodge the emotional spears that could be triggered by provoking the dragon, for without forming an emotional, fire-resistant cocoon, I would have been singed to a gray, ashy dust, rippling through the air to be scattered across my own consciousness like a sandstorm across the Sahara.  But no matter how much of myself I poured into my subconscious, I remained, and She was gone.

There exists a distinct difference, like a row of flowers separating an area once bordered by a maximum security cement wall with electric razor wire spiraling around the top, in being alone in your own head, conscious of your own human experience, of your ultimatum, and floating through a void-like high, on autopilot, depersonalized and unaware; it is sickening.  I snapped open the magnetic flap on my crimson red handbag, unzipping the gold of an inner-pocket, and pulled from it a pill, small, white, simple.  The other passengers in the car were enraptured in their own side conversations, which were unnecessarily boisterous, berating my ears with their crude cadence.  They lacked the sense to observe their own situations, and therefore, they did not notice when I quickly swallowed the Xanax tablet.  200 mg was enough to put most people into a comatose sleep in minutes (and kill others), but I, through years and years of self-medication, after I received my M.D. in Psychiatry for the sheer purpose of diagnosing and prescribing my own emotional discords, had grown tolerant of the potent muscle relaxer.

As I closed my bag, I felt the limo jolt to a stop, spilling the other passengers’ drinks.  I began to accept that I would have to fend the party under my own controlled, conscious psyche.  As the inhabitants of the sweaty limousine staggered out of the crowded vehicle and stumbled onto the pavement of the sidewalk, I tapped Marc on the shoulder.

“Can I talk to you for just a second?” I asked in his ear.  I had hoped that he would comply.

“Yeah, babe, just follow me, so I can find a quieter place,” he muttered in my ear.

I sighed.  A false sense of relief washed through my being at the thought of going home to my bed and letting slumber take me, washing away the memories of the night like an eraser on a dry erase board.  I could reinvent the night in a fashion that would better suit my memory.  Like the rest of my absurdities, most of my recollections were falsified in order to maintain a steady existential state, which, in reflection, is the epitome of an unsteady existence.

I followed Marc through the conglomeration of sweaty, grinding bodies, low lives, and shells of human beings, all of whom were high on designer drugs and weren’t coming back down any time in the then foreseeable future.  The lights, spinning wildly from the ceiling flashed blue and red and yellow and green through the smog resonating off of the horde and their intoxicants.  The club rocked and quivered with the sound of blaring electronic dance music, feeling like an airstrike against my eardrums.  I grabbed onto the crisp cuff of Marc’s blazer so that I wouldn’t lose him in the swarm of baboons that was the after-party; he grabbed my hand, jerking me forward so that he could put his arm around my waist.  I felt myself wanting to recede again.  I wanted to fly out of my body.  I didn’t want him touching me like that.

The sound in the back room we found wasn’t much quieter it merely muffled the shouts and the music as if I had shoved cotton balls into my ears but it was a space separate from the general population, so I could breathe; I inhaled the warm air, which smelled tainted of drugs, but was much more pure than that of the dance floor

“I want to leave,” I blurted as soon as the door closed.  “I feel sick, and I really don’t feel up to it tonight.  I know I’m supposed to make an appearance, but honestly, I really don’t care.”

“Now, D, you know why I can’t letcha do that,” Marc said, stroking my face.  I felt a chill run down my spine and my breath hitch.  “Your contract is very clear about this kinda stuff, babe.” " my heart was deciding to test the strength of my sternum at that point " “You can’t leave until I leave, and I want to stay.  I think I’m ‘ma be here a while.”

“Please, Marc.  Just this once?  I’m so tired; I’ve worked all this week.”

Slap!  I felt my cheek go numb for a second, and then the fire-y sting of his blow run through my being.  My hand shot up to my quickly reddening face, blushing in anger and pain and indignity.  I tasted the iron flavor of blood, oozing from the inside of my cheek.

Marc grabbed my wrists with his large, beefy hands and held them together.  With one of his hands, he grabbed my face roughly, squeezing my mouth.

“How dare you?  You know the rules, you little b***h!” he snarled.

I felt myself pulling away within my head.  I had become an expert at this.  I habitually reinstated my cement wall; as it slid up, I could practically see the galvanized wire spiraling around my vision, pulling back, letting her take the reins, subjecting her to this horror, rather than myself.  It wasn’t uncommon.  I knew I would have bruises littering my body in the morning.  They would be a solid blue-black then, scattered along my torso, my breasts, my thighs.  I had to take care to cover them, which would be easy with it being winter.  I let him do as he pleased.  So did She.

I thought of what led me to where I was at that very moment.  At 15, I graduated from high school; by the time I was 23, I already had a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence, as well as having had an M.D. in Psychiatry for two years prior to that.  I was driven until I got sidetracked.  I had somehow obtained the idea that becoming an actress would have been beneficial, that Fame wouldn’t be toxic to me because I was too smart for them.  I signed a contract with Markson Management at 24.  And I was never myself again.

After he had finished, we made our way back to the party.  She drank with an unquenchable thirst, trying to forget what had just been done to her.  The clear glasses, the brightly colored lights, contrasting with the liquor, it was bewildering and nauseating.  She danced and drank.  The sweat pouring off of her must have smelled like straight vodka, for soon, people began to avoid her.  They looked at her as if she were an animal.  She swallowed still more of the liquid fire.  It still burned my throat every once and a while.

Everyone seemed to have a sense of uncertainty about them.  Like gazelles in an enclosure with a cheetah, the partygoers were hesitant about any sudden action.  The swarm became paranoid like schizophrenics in a manic state, which was probably some side effect of the drugs they were taking.  The crowd pulsated nervously; as each person hesitated to dance, to drink, to breathe because doing so might have disrupted the emotional capacity of his or her neighbor, which would cause all action to cease.  As they grew alarmingly conscious of their images, as pretentious as they were, the celebrities emptied their bottles and glasses, bottom up, into their pathetic gullets, silently begging, pleading for their confidence, which had been stolen by their emotionally incapable capacity.  They were capable of faking the arrogance, of inflating their own heads like balloons, yet, like any barrier, theirs had its weakness: alcohol.  It eroded at the wall in the same way a hurricane destroys the wetlands and barrier reefs surrounding its target.  It wreaked havoc upon them as they slowly degraded into the lowest and weakest form of human consciousness.

Everyone began to pass out or go home, be it with strangers, friends, or enemies.  She, still in control, was at that point a mangled mess.  Covered in warm vomit, she laid in a crumpled pile in the corner, waiting for Marc to retrieve his pet.

I came to around what must have been right after they brought me home.  Dizzily, I stood up.  I peered around my cool room.  Everything kept pristine, they manicured my living quarters and made sure I stayed busy enough to be drained so that I could not explore them.  I felt sticky and damp; I felt the pounding inside my skull; I reeked of vodka and martinis, a Fame perfume.  I rose slowly from my bed.  I needed a shower.  I felt the cold marble floor under my toes as I treaded my way across my living space to the shower.  Turning the screechy lever, I pulled my arm back quickly to avoid the cold rush of water so that I could wait for it to be scalding hot.  Hot enough to burn his traces from my body, my home.  Once the water began to steam from the floor of the shower, I stepped under the current.  The burn felt marvelous against my flesh.  I scrubbed myself clean four or five times.  It may have been six.  I lost count.

⃰  ⃰  ⃰

She was in the shower.  A figure, dressed in all black, face covered with a mask, silently stepped through her room.  He heard her turn the shower off, the lever squeaking.  The sound of the water droplets sprinkling from her nude body pierced the otherwise silent room, slowing in a  decrescendo to a night as silent as Death’s kiss.  The figure made not a sound as he crept towards her.  Her grand exit from the shower was met by the rough, yet steady, grip of a gloved hand over her jaw, slamming her skull onto the white marble surface.  The deed, quick and professional, was silent in the night as Death sealed the end of his next victim.

It was publicized as an accident.  D-Marj was drunk.  She slipped and fell in the shower.  She was found in her residence the next morning when her best friend went to catch up with her after the Academy Awards.