This is Acting

Tia

Tia is Tia as her friends sometimes say...

As she stood in the black room, the strobe lights illuminating the writhing bodies, the Jokers, the slutty nuns and those who'd decided that their idea of a costume was a pair of plastic horns.

Tia went through the motions of trying to figure out how she felt once again; hollow, shallow, empty, repeating, stereotypical, strange, wasteful. She was soon supposed to travel alone for one of the first times in her life, preparing to face the whole world, but hadn't worked out how she (or anyone else for that matter) could summarize their whole existence with anything beyond one word; complicated.

Boyfriends had come and gone, she'd even settled a few times, always aware and careful to protect herself. She didn't foster the same desire as her friends, who used to spill out of clubs with her, the ones that now met her for coffee, looking tired and smelling of babies. The ones who talked about their times together with the introduction: 'Back when we were in school...'

In the bathroom, Tia went through the motions of checking herself in the mirror, staring at her blue irises, wondering if it was really that long ago and wondering if she'd stopped growing and got left behind. She became aware of a skeleton behind her, a boy who'd dominated the smoking area with rich laughs and the rich fog of something else.

Dancing with bitter gin and tonics, they break away for a kiss and then back to dancing: the hypnotic beat as repetitive and so common that it rendered it anonymous; a rhythym unknown to anybody in the club beyond a few of the cooler kids hailing to the DJ. It seemed to fit to Mia, that this boy, this boy that squeezed her hand just like her ex had, was essentially rendered mute by the beat.

Rendered into an outline in yet another black room.

Tia hyperventilates...

Tia drifts through the club...

Jay

...something had unnerved him and he'd had to stop. Perhaps it was due to the fact that they were in a toilet, which was just fucking awkward and that it didn't seem like her first time there.

What he was really looking for ways to feel ashamed, but as he stood closer and still continued to grip her, lest they both fall drunkenly crashing down in the cubicle, he just couldn't understand how he'd managed to keep a hard-on knowing that he was here, cheating on his girlfriend with one of her distant waifs.

Back at the bar, he finds his girl and she gives him a sweet smile, like she doesn't know.

Appearing normal all the way through to the 4am closing time, Jay manages the situation. After all, he was a manager, so he managed the next round of drinks, he managed who's house they'd go back to and he managed the taxis, the drunken lads spearing their kebabs, still looking for sex.

They are younger than me...they don't give a fuck yet...

He couldn't push it out of his head really, they had a sore head and next weekend to try again, Jay had a safe bet with tits, was (now) officially a cheat and was currently destined to a city centre commute every week.

Sometimes, while all of the weekend warriors at the club waited to clock-in on drink, drugs etc on a Friday. Jay would get privately a bit pissed and scroll through YouTube. looking at old bootleg vids of concerts from before he was born. Trying to mimic that passion, widening his mouth and loosing himself in a borrowed feeling.

Passion

The taxi ride home surveys most of the city center, or what is left of it. His girlfriend has gone quiet for a while, though the smell of vodka is enough to fill the taxi with an idea of what is to come. Perhaps a few lines of coke, or just a couple of drinks to keep up the false economy of pulling out as much energy from the group as possible. Still gazing hungrily as he passed the boys with kebabs, but he had no appetite, it wasn't the food he wanted, he wanted the feeling back.

Lucy

The table groaned with shots, the thundering of Grimes Genesis rang through as Lucy bit her lip nervously. The blood tasted...Amazing! The bartender was Beautiful! Lucy felt born to be here and it didn't matter that nobody knew that god was on the dance floor and how god had smiled at her and passed onto her their powers and made her god. She could feel the beat pulsing through her, she could talk to everybody, it didn't matter that they were looking at her, it wasn't their fault, that's what happens when you see god. You are just awed by it.

'I don't mind if you don't know you are my angels'

Angel Catherine, who she'd graduated from shots to pills with suggested they get up and dance and the feeling for Lucy was almost impossible, but now she was god so she had to handle it...as she moved with the beat; everybody gathered around her. To worship, flashing pearls and raising their iPhones in praise.

Last time she was here, things were a bit askew. Her boyfriend had ended it finally, he must not have realized her potential right here and in the right now. She wanted to run a marathon, when they got out of here, start volunteering in Africa...finally learn another language...She'd always have boundless energy and she'd be able to change the opinions of leaders. Make them see what we are doing, because she was special.

So she'd let the DJ know, that was the best way to get her message out, the DJ, the main communicator in the club. She'd go run a finger along the deck and prick her finger and let the sound of holy blood sound out. The DJ was going to be her priest and the bread of heaven would simply be have to be phase changed into a lightly mixed drink or evaporated into a powder.

She knew she was god, because she didn't have doubt. Not like those who followed her, merely struggling through day-by-day. Her story was short for now, this was merely part of god's plan...

(Nameless/Faceless)

She'd eaten only a spoonful on peanut butter in two days, but she was making up for it in Prosecco. The truth was, she didn't get out much except to the club. She'd developed her own world now. A world only she could see when she looked in the mirror.

When she breathed in her already chasmic chest, admired the flatness of her tits and admired all the features that made her a bit of a show for all the residents on her street. She'd really tried to gain weight, but something inside her had really prevented it. It was an image thing and a control thing...and it was killing her.

Time to make a wish

She heard sirens blare as she sucked on a fag in the smoking area, cream still clinging to her fingers. To her they'd become grim taxis taking away several people she knew; her nan, the boy who'd cut his finger in a door handle and any number of barely known vagrants that hung around WInd Street.

She secretly identified as a fully fledged mess herself, fucked up by magazines.

One thing she was sure of; this was acting, it had been acting from the beginning. This trick of the light. Smoke drifted out of one end, sound drifting from another...she eyed a stain of birthday cake left marooned on a leather sofa. It had a lit candle and everything. It was so cartoonish she even had to lightly exhale to see if the flame would budge and when the candle went out, her heart stopped.