Similis - There's no such thing as normal

Chapter 02 - 47 Langport Road

She stood in front of the dark concrete building. She couldn't see any lights on anywhere.Was she at the right address? Was it the right day?

A ball of hot nervousness was starting to form just below her solar plexus, despite Freddie Mercury coming at her at full volume through her headphones. Freddie with his magical power to keep her sane.

She took the phone out of her jacket and double checked the address her uncle Ron had sent her.

47 Langport Road

She looked up at the huge silver 47 mounted on top of the entrance. Yup. This was it. She went up to the glass double door. It was an office building with a reception desk, an elevator and a flight of stairs off to the left. But no sign of life.

She looked at her phone again and saw the time. Three minutes past eight. She was late. How had she managed to mess this up already? Jen took one deep breath in order to calm herself down. No big. She'll just call her uncle and figure it out. She walked a couple of steps down the road and took off her headphones.

As her ears adjusted to the silence, she could still hear the faint drum of a bass line travelling through the cold evening air. She listened closer. There was definitely music coming from somewhere. Jen followed the sound along the outside of the building to a little footpath that seemed to lead around to the back. Past the fire escape stairs the music started getting louder. She turned the corner and stood in front of a set of concrete stairs leading down to a black metal door. The music came from behind the door and she could now hear voices mixed in with the beat. This must be the place.

"You're not alone in this.", Ron had said when he had seen Jen's confused and frightened face. "I know a place that might help you work things out much better than I can."

Jen would much rather be alone in this right now. But here she was, about to go into a room full of people she didn't know, but who surely all knew each other, to tell them that she was a freak amongst men. The knot in her stomach grew tighter, and she felt a little wave of nausea washing over her.

"What's the worst thing that could happen?", she asked herself trying to muster up the courage to go in. A lot of things came to her mind right away. Maybe complete and utter humiliation. Or losing control again like she had the other day and potentially hurting someone. While her mind was distracted mulling over which one could be classified as 'the worst', she took another deep breath, and walked through the door.

The place was not at all what she had expected. She had thought of all those self help groups in the movies that sat around in a circle of chairs in a bright and empty room, with a table of coffee and donuts on the side. Instead, she was standing in a grungy dimly lit room. To the left of her was a huge bar with a random collection of different bar stools in front of it, and two big banged up fridges behind it.

Along the walls to the right and opposite of her were groups of sofas in different shapes, sizes and stages of disrepair. An ocre three seater that might have been yellow at some point. Black fake leather sofas that were cracked and so worn down that you could see the grey fabric underneath. Lamps with floral patterned shades. Wooden coffee tables with decades of stains and cup rings.

The back wall was covered in graffiti. It surely had some sort of motif and meaning to it, but all Jen could see was colour blodges with lines of paint running down the wall.

Three people around her age stood at a small pool table in the middle of the room. The table looked as worn down as everything else in this place. The cues were probably crooked and the table out of balance. She made a mental note never to play for money on this table.

While she was still analysing the aptitude of the pool table, the tallest of the three picked up a cue. He had black hair with bright red and yellow tips tied together in a ponytail that came just to the neckline of his tie dye t-shirt. He started waving the cue around like a lightsaber. An insanely blond guy clapped his hands but the girl next to him didn't seem too impressed. To be fair, with her long blond hair and her super tight mini-dress, she didn't look like she would be a Star Wars fan.

Ponytail made a couple of moves, paused, lifted the cue high up over his head and brought it down with full force across the girl's forehead. Jen stood in shock for a second. She heard the loud crack as the cue crashed into bone. Miraculously, the girl was still standing.

"Oh my god are you ok?", Jen ran over to the girl.

Visibly annoyed, the girl batted her fake eyelashes at Ponytail before turning to Jen.

"I hate it when he does that... Hey, you must be Jen. I'm Madison".

"Hi... i'm... hi..." Jen mumbled. She wanted to answer, but had apparently forgotten her own name.