Lamia [NaNoWriMo 2018]

Chapitre Cinq

"Misery loves company"

-Anonymous 

There was a swanky little bar on the Santa Monica strip, right on the corner of You Didn't Hear It from Me Street and My Lips are Sealed Avenue that swallowed the darkness dwelling inside its patrons and filled that void with music, merriment, and Moscato. It was a place you went when you wanted to forget, when you needed to lose yourself, and Divinity couldn't have dreamed up a better place in her sleep. If only she could get there.

Falsetto, named partially for its status as a karaoke piano bar, and partially in honor of its signature drink: The Screamin' Demon—which featured your typical gin, melon, ginger ale combo but spiced things up with the juice of three Grenadine soaked habanero peppers—loomed dim and inviting on the other side of the street as Divinity dodged a mini-skirt wearing, Christina Aguilera wanna-be belting Adele's "Someone Like You."

More like butchering, Divinity thought as the girl stepped into her path for the third time and made yet another sweeping hand gesture to the business cards and homemade EP lying in her empty guitar case. She had been two measures early the entire time, and if Miss Platinum Blond Barbie in a Tube Dress sang "Sometimes it's laughs and love, but sometimes it hurts instead," one more time, Divinity was going to flip shit.

For Christ's sake! The girl was reading the lyrics off her phone, yet she still couldn't seem to comprehend that the words were actually "Sometimes it lasts in love" not "laughs and love." It was pissing Divinity off to no end. But then again, she'd been in a pissy mood since even before the party.

Oh, it had started off pleasantly on the surface. Sure, there was the fifteen-page paper, work, school, an internship, and other...activities to make Divinity wonder what it was that was keeping her from keeling over into an early grave. Well actually, she knew exactly what that something was, as it was the same thing that had inspired her to double major in Anthropology and Folklore even though her psychology studies were more promising upon graduation. Generally, though, she could have handled that in her sleep.

It was the things that she found herself dealing with once her eyes grew heavy that caused so much discord to her night. Things that had her out at one a.m. looking for relief at the bottom of a bottle and made sure that she couldn't even look at another bed without feeling both hungry to return to it and full of dread at the sight of it. Of her apartment. This city in general. And that was a thought that made her sick to her stomach because Divinity loved living in Los Angeles.

She loved walking past tree-lined restaurants like Thai's Dishes on Broadway on the Santa Monica strip watching people eat spicy Emerald Bay Shrimp Noodles while having conversations like:

"So then I was thinking we'd have Trevor open up a wormhole in the middle math class and jump inside—"

"Okay, have you seen our funds? This is an indie film, not one of your fantasy dream sequences where we have an unlimited Black Card and tons of CGI effects."

And:

"What if we get a bunch of hair and makeup students from the community college and pool our money together to rent the studio downtown?"

"Yeah, and where are we going to get the models?"

"This is Los Fucking Angeles, Land-o-Dreams, my friend. Every chick with an Instagram account claims to be a model. All we have to do is slide into those DMs, claim to work for some hot shot talent agency, and WHAM! The rest of the story tells itself!"

Everyone in the city just seemed so driven, so inspired, so hungry to become the next overnight success. So...alive.

It was a feeling that Divinity hadn't felt in a very long time. If she were being honest, this walking dead existence was why she and half of Los Angeles—succubus or not—frequented party upon party. Because they didn't have anything to go home to and it was better to have artificial love than no love at all. So with a side step and shoulder check to Miss 90s Pop Star, she charged across the street.