This was an assignment for my English course; re-write a scene from Macbeth in a different setting. I discovered this lovely fandom (made my life, people) and decided you all needed to have it. So please, little lovelies, enjoy my ramblings and don't forget to review.
Lights up!
The girl was wearing little more than an oversized sweater and the mascara tears staining her face, but she dragged him through the darkened backstage corridors with a somber sort of dignity. It was three in the morning, when the decent should be asleep, but this was Dunsinane, the hottest discothèque on the seaside strip. It was also a haven for the decadent underground, caught in the settling dust of a recent power war between drug lords. Duncan King, the undisputed ruler of the California drug scene and executive of Highland records, was dead, shot point blank in the Hollywood home of some hotshot dealer who called himself Macbeth. One word, like a rock act. King was found floating in a swimming pool tinted crimson with his own blood, and this kid, Macbeth, had won everything: the title, the club, and the drug-running contacts. Macbeth was king, that was undisputed, but he was not above suspicion.
In the here and now, the groupie shouldered open a swinging door marked "private" and led the doctor she had fetched from five blocks down into the forgiving darkness of the VIP suite.
"Two nights you've brought me here," He complained, loosing the girl's vise grip from his wrist and swatting at the tassel on a hanging velvet curtain. "Twice I've been dragged down from the clinic at an ungodly hour by some scrap of jailbait screaming about murder and insanity-"
"Keep your voice down!" She hissed. "I promise you, a doctor is needed. The Dayme's not well…"
"Dayme Chalbt?" The doctor asked, more of a medical intern really. He had yanked a sweater on over his night scrubs when the crying girl had burst in thought the doors of the free clinic, and he felt utterly out of place among the spangles and polyesters of the nightclub. "The French singer?"
"Yes, she's my boss. I manage all her costumes, get her coffee…You could say we're friends. She headlines here every night, this is Macbeth's club and she's-"
"His wife, I know. You can read about their exploits both immoral and illegal on the front page news; he runs some kind of cartel now doesn't he?"
The groupie glowered, pretty young face marred by fierce protectiveness. "Nothing's been proven, and I wont speak ill of an employer. Besides, it's 1976, isn't immoral a little past-tense? Please, she hasn't been the same since Duncan's death, neither has Mr. Macbeth. After her set every night she locks herself in here, won't take any visitors except me, because I bring her what she needs."
The doctor glared at her. "You bring her drugs. You're going to find her OD'ed in here one night and no one will mourn her because they'll be too high to notice! The clinic is overflowing, and do you know why? Not because of your usual ailments and injuries, but because of drug-related violence and overdoses-"
In the darkened room, something clattered, a wine glass shattered, and a woman's voice moaned out a desperate plea. The girl's hands flew to her ears. "Please stop shouting, you'll wake her!"
The doctor was about to drag this disillusioned girl out into the hallway for a stern talking-to when he caught himself. "Wake-? Wake her?"
The groupie nodded, slowly turning up the track lining that rimmed the room. It illuminated velour couches and shag carpeting swathed in the hippest color palettes of Andy Warhol and company. Moody lava lamps bubbled in time with the thumping David Bowie from outside on the dance floor, aiding the low lighting in casting a eerie red glow through the room. A thin, frail woman in a gold lame dress was pressed like a cornered animal into the far corner of one sofa, hands shaking, mouth muttering babble.
"She's been like this off and on for almost a week," The groupie whispered. "That's what I keep trying to get people in from the clinic to see, but by the time they get here, she's back asleep on the couch."
The doctor watched Dayme Chalbt with wide, confused eyes. "Is she…sleeping?"
"Sleeping, tripping, twilighting, somewhere in between. I don't know if she took anything or how much but she gets so scary like this and I just didn't know what to do…"
"It's alright," The doctor soothed, taking some sudden pity on this wilting flower crushed under the weight of a culture of ill-gotten pleasure. "So, she sleep walks. A heavy rotation of hallucinogenic an do, that especially paired with the sleep deprivation of a night performer. Such a perversion of such a natural thing…What else?"
"Sometimes writes then burns the letter, or tires to leave the room. Sometimes…well, she says such things…"
"What does she say?" He asked, a little more firm after hearing the tremor in her voice.
"I won't repeat it," The girl whispered.
"Oh filthy hands," Moaned The Dayme.
The doctor's hand flew out to silence his young companion. "Hush. She's saying something; I want to hear…"
"I'm filthy, red with his blood, red blood that stains white fingers…" She was gazing at her trembling hands as though they may come to life any moment and consume her whole. "Who would have thought an old man could be filled with so much filthy blood?"
"My God." The doctor breathed. "She speaks of-"
"MURDER!" Shrieked Dayme Chalbt, tendrils of teased hair frizzed out around her ashen face. Her pale, dilated pupils bore holes into the doctor and her hired girl, but looked through rather than into them. "Oh, God my hands are dripping red forever on fire, won't they ever be clean again? Duncan, Duncan, such a good boy, such a pretty boy, such a dead dead boy. Oh, he bled, darling, he bled."
Suddenly things made a sickening, shocking sort of sense. The doctor gripped the girls arm, voice low nad intense.
"You've heard too much already. Go home. Call your parents, get out of this dive and go find honest work. You're still young."
"I've heard more from sober lips!" The girl snarled. "I'm trusted, damn it, and I won't betray her. Please, she needs help!"
The doctor turned back to the Dayme. She was wiping her hands furiously off on her dress, wrinkling the lame and peeling off rhinestones. "Who started this? I started this; Macbeth started this. Where is his wife now, who shares his bed, who will stand by him when the gates of hell open and scream my name?"
Her voice was rising in pitch and intensity, and presently she sprang from the couch with a tormented wail. She threw a nearby lamp against the wall, the filaments bursting and settling at her feet.
"I've never seen anything like this," The doctor shouted over her screaming. "Her mind is tottaly broken. She needs immediate psychiatric help, not something I can give."
The Dayme was on her knees now, slashing at her wrists with the shattered pieces of glass. The doctor was on her in an instant, ripping the shard from her clawing fingers and pinning her sobbing form onto the nearest couch.
"Go to my bag," He huffed, struggling to keep the singer from injuring him or herself. "Get me one of the syringes marked with blue, light blue only. Go!"
The trembling groupie unceremoniously dumped the contents of the doctor's medical kit on a nearby divan, rummaging through until she retrieved what he asked for. Holding her down and with the help of the girl, the doctor injected the serum into the crook of her arm, struggling to find a taking vein among the collapsed ravages of consistent drug use. Almost immediately, Dayme Chalbt's shrieking dulled to whimpers and weary protestations, ragged syllables slurring together tiredly.
"No, no, I can't wash the blood out, what's done is done. I need rest, yeah, gotta sleep now. Please let me sleep, Oh God, sleep. Let me die now…"
Finally she gave up the fight, beautiful frail face contorted in agony even in the most unnatural of sleeps. The doctor sighed heavily, dismounting the sofa and running haggard fingers through his hair. He turned to the girl, looking into they sapphire eyes worn dull by too much excess in too little a time.
"She'll sleep now. Until morning at least, but I can't make any promise as to her state. She needs professional help, girlie, even if her mind wasn't this ravaged by what appears to be guilt, I would recommend it due to what looks like malnutrition, drug addiction, and alcohol poisoning. I'm calling the hospital."
The girl threw herself in front of him, blocking his way to the phone. "No! She doesn't want anyone to know. Macbeth-"
"Where is he? I need to speak to him regarding the state of his wife-"
"Out. Talking business with some men from Palm Beach."
"Trying to stop a gang turf war, you mean, I'm not stupid! Listen," The doctor sighed, stuffing his medical supplies back into his bag. "I'm not the police. I don't care what you people do until I have to treat it's victims. Do you see this?" He held up one of The Dayme's limp and bloody wrists, wrapping a bandage around it before the blood could stain her dress. "This is a suicide attempt. She's going to kill herself; she's going to die here if you don't-"
"Please just go," The girl begged. "Thank you so much, but I'm not supposed to bring anyone here, and there's no more you can do. She has to end what she's started."
"And what's that? The murder of an innocent man?"
"We take care of our own, doctor. I'll take care of her."
He glared at her, anger bubbling just below the surface, but then his pager went off and he sighed heavily. "Fine. I'm needed at the clinic." he rose to go, but stopped halfway to the door and laid a hand on the girl's shoulder. "And take care of yourself."
Then he ducked out the swinging door, back into the flashing of lights nod seductive hook of the disco music. Inside the suite, the girl dropped to her knees beside her lady and cried.
And yes, Dayme Chalbt is an anagram for Lady Macbeth. Do I offend the fine sensibilities of my audience, or is my folly enjoyed? Give a lady a review?