"My name is Faye Valentine."
It didn't make sense at all. She was utterly baffled, but she should be used to it by now. She shook her head and slapped the palm of her hands against her cheeks. She paused as the mirror swallowed her image, and she took in another deep breath. Pushing out her chest and propping up her chin, she focused again on her features as they warped themselves back from dots and shapes into human form. Her lips rounded to sound out the foreign words again.
"My name is Faye Valentine." She laughed. The laughter pounded against her chest so hard until she cried from the pain. "Come on girl, if you can't convince yourself, how are you going to convince anyone else?"
With a grunt she swallowed the lump of sobs she had collected over the week and attempted to perform for herself one more time. For her best goddamn audience.
"I am Faye Valentine." Cue the smile.
----
Faye fucked-up frail fraudulent Valentine. What a beautiful name they had given her, mommy betrayal and daddy debt. Didn't everyone wish to be her anyway? Didn't people wish they could be born nineteen ready to enjoy the pleasures of life: alcohol, sex, and gambling? She was old Las Vegas packed into a cheap vinyl yellow little outfit. Oh damn, she almost forgot nicotine again. God bless nicotine for its wonderful addiction inducing relief. Nothing like good old sixty woolong cigarettes that could make her feel like a real winner.
She packed her cigarettes against the wall with a metallic thud-thud-thud. She slid the carton box open and placed the brand new ready for a good smoke cigarette on her lips. Brand new, just like her died yesterday and born tomorrow persona, and only good for one smoke. In reality, she passionately hated the taste, scent, and choking breath of tobacco, but it eased her so unpleasantly that she fell into the habit at the snap of a finger, or the snap of a Zippo lighter.
Yeah, Faye fucked-up, frail, and fraudulent Valentine. But hey, at least she had been the chosen one for a second life. A second life when she didn't even know if the first one had meant anything at all. Was this what reincarnation felt like? She knew she had lived another life so long ago, but no idea of what it was. Except no one had been waiting for her at the end of this tunnel. No one had held her, nurtured her, or taught her the ways of the present time. Well, no one except mommy betrayal and daddy debt.
Back to the cigarette, why did she need to smoke it again? It was so early in the morning to be smoking one anyway, didn't she have any manners? She glanced over to the alarm clock flashing three red digital numbers. It read three fifteen in the afternoon. A smile crept to her face, so she wasn't a pig after all. It was perfectly acceptable to smoke a cigarette at three in the afternoon kind of like tea, but not really.
Then it happened suddenly she laughed until it choked her at the throat and she started crying again. She was twenty years old for god's sakes. She couldn't weep every time she had a nightmare.
"Except that, Faye, there haven't any nightmares plaguing your sleep. Nothing at all but blank. I go to sleep and wake up. Like a split second and here I am again." She took a long drag from her cigarette and let out the smoke in spurts of laughter.
Faye Valentine would wake up some mornings, or afternoons for that matter, slowly opening her eyes as the sun crept into her 'five hundred woolong a night' room. Panic would immediately set in as her emerald orbs surveyed her surroundings. Minutes would pass in which she would recognize nothing around her and none of it made any sense. She would franticly ask herself in pounding spheres of thought what day it was, where she was, and finally, but most frighteningly, who she was. Gripping the covers for protection from whatever shadows might have stolen her memories, whatever closet monsters might have kidnapped her away to some faraway place, she would scan every possible corner of her mind and dig for answers. The more she dug, the less she found and the more she stared the hazier everything around her became. Usually this would only last five minutes or so, but sometimes it lasted an hour or two. Today had been an hour wake-up call kind of day. She could do nothing but lay in bed until panic resolved itself into a headache and she finally remembered the only little piece of anything that she owned.
"My name is Faye Valentine."
After finishing her tobacco with a side of tar and nicotine sunny-side up, she dragged herself into the bathroom to add color to the pale mess she was and brush out the headache from her tangled violet hair. She cocked her head to the side glaring at the person increasingly familiar by association that she confronted each day in the mirror. She actually didn't mind her so much anymore. Slowly but surely she had gotten used to her staring back with that numb and dumbfounded look on her face. Faye would smile back, wiping the girl's tears away and reassuring her that today lady luck would be on their side. Then off she would go into the shower, the only kind of absolution she had in life. Absolution from the dirt, alcohol, smoke, and sweat from last night, but it was better than nothing.
The lonely teen stepped out with her hair still dripping wet and when she rubbed the steam off the mirror she nearly jumped back in shock. Two centimeters she estimated. Her hair had grown two centimeters, but since when? She went on a hysterical search through her small duffel bag for her scissors. Where the fuck were they? Impatient, angry, and trembling, she finally decided to dump all the contents out and rummage through underwear, make-up, pants, shirts, a magazine, her gun, and finally—good god finally—she found the stupid scissors.
She ran to the bathroom and faced the mirror again using her fingers as the marker to trim her hair. She'd always cut it so furiously the minute it grew past the mark beneath her chin. She'd notice so easily, and she'd get so goddamn angry. She had memorized that length she had been reborn with. It had to stay the same length, the same style, and shade of when they had regenerated her back to life. It just had to, because one day she would recognize that hair and that face of that girl with those green eyes filled with tears that weren't hers. She could feel them, but she wasn't the one shedding them and it scared her so fucking much like watching the same ghost on the haunted walls of yet another unfamiliar bathroom. One day she would stop touching some stranger's pain and reek of her own sadness for once.
She bent down to pick up her same yellow outfit that she always wore on black bet night. She hadn't woken up feeling up to putting on a Poker Alice dress for a casino, though she had planned she would do that yesterday, but who likes to plan anyway? Besides she had feeling those fighting dogs would do her some justice tonight. Black Velvet would fight tonight, and she'd place a black bet that would win her the money she needed to at least get to Venus, hey, maybe even more.
Yellow, wild vibrant yellow. She had to pick the brightest color, her favorite one too. No one could ignore the color yellow, after all, since when has anyone heard of the sun being ignored? It just shines that acid color on your face and melts into your being until you realize you can't live without it. Most people don't exactly love it, especially on Earth, it radiates with so much light and heat all the time. But the sun is the sun, as unforgettable as the blood in her veins, and not like the moon. The moon had died away long ago like that part of her. It was a white ghost that people barely recalled. No one would treat her like a ghost. She'd walk in and everyone would turn to soak in her, because she was as vivid as the fucking burning sun. She would burn herself into their memories if she had to just in case she forgot herself again.
Faye Blindingly Bright Valentine.
She looked in the mirror and told herself to stop. She would have to make it today, no more wondering about a non-existent moon and the past it took with it. Today she would be Faye Valentine, fuck tomorrow. Tomorrow she might be Poker Alice, or no one she'd ever met before, so it didn't matter.
One thing she did know. She would not die Faye Valentine.
She would die as Faye, with a past, Valentine.
It didn't make sense at all. She was utterly baffled, but she should be used to it by now. She shook her head and slapped the palm of her hands against her cheeks. She paused as the mirror swallowed her image, and she took in another deep breath. Pushing out her chest and propping up her chin, she focused again on her features as they warped themselves back from dots and shapes into human form. Her lips rounded to sound out the foreign words again.
"My name is Faye Valentine." She laughed. The laughter pounded against her chest so hard until she cried from the pain. "Come on girl, if you can't convince yourself, how are you going to convince anyone else?"
With a grunt she swallowed the lump of sobs she had collected over the week and attempted to perform for herself one more time. For her best goddamn audience.
"I am Faye Valentine." Cue the smile.
----
Faye fucked-up frail fraudulent Valentine. What a beautiful name they had given her, mommy betrayal and daddy debt. Didn't everyone wish to be her anyway? Didn't people wish they could be born nineteen ready to enjoy the pleasures of life: alcohol, sex, and gambling? She was old Las Vegas packed into a cheap vinyl yellow little outfit. Oh damn, she almost forgot nicotine again. God bless nicotine for its wonderful addiction inducing relief. Nothing like good old sixty woolong cigarettes that could make her feel like a real winner.
She packed her cigarettes against the wall with a metallic thud-thud-thud. She slid the carton box open and placed the brand new ready for a good smoke cigarette on her lips. Brand new, just like her died yesterday and born tomorrow persona, and only good for one smoke. In reality, she passionately hated the taste, scent, and choking breath of tobacco, but it eased her so unpleasantly that she fell into the habit at the snap of a finger, or the snap of a Zippo lighter.
Yeah, Faye fucked-up, frail, and fraudulent Valentine. But hey, at least she had been the chosen one for a second life. A second life when she didn't even know if the first one had meant anything at all. Was this what reincarnation felt like? She knew she had lived another life so long ago, but no idea of what it was. Except no one had been waiting for her at the end of this tunnel. No one had held her, nurtured her, or taught her the ways of the present time. Well, no one except mommy betrayal and daddy debt.
Back to the cigarette, why did she need to smoke it again? It was so early in the morning to be smoking one anyway, didn't she have any manners? She glanced over to the alarm clock flashing three red digital numbers. It read three fifteen in the afternoon. A smile crept to her face, so she wasn't a pig after all. It was perfectly acceptable to smoke a cigarette at three in the afternoon kind of like tea, but not really.
Then it happened suddenly she laughed until it choked her at the throat and she started crying again. She was twenty years old for god's sakes. She couldn't weep every time she had a nightmare.
"Except that, Faye, there haven't any nightmares plaguing your sleep. Nothing at all but blank. I go to sleep and wake up. Like a split second and here I am again." She took a long drag from her cigarette and let out the smoke in spurts of laughter.
Faye Valentine would wake up some mornings, or afternoons for that matter, slowly opening her eyes as the sun crept into her 'five hundred woolong a night' room. Panic would immediately set in as her emerald orbs surveyed her surroundings. Minutes would pass in which she would recognize nothing around her and none of it made any sense. She would franticly ask herself in pounding spheres of thought what day it was, where she was, and finally, but most frighteningly, who she was. Gripping the covers for protection from whatever shadows might have stolen her memories, whatever closet monsters might have kidnapped her away to some faraway place, she would scan every possible corner of her mind and dig for answers. The more she dug, the less she found and the more she stared the hazier everything around her became. Usually this would only last five minutes or so, but sometimes it lasted an hour or two. Today had been an hour wake-up call kind of day. She could do nothing but lay in bed until panic resolved itself into a headache and she finally remembered the only little piece of anything that she owned.
"My name is Faye Valentine."
After finishing her tobacco with a side of tar and nicotine sunny-side up, she dragged herself into the bathroom to add color to the pale mess she was and brush out the headache from her tangled violet hair. She cocked her head to the side glaring at the person increasingly familiar by association that she confronted each day in the mirror. She actually didn't mind her so much anymore. Slowly but surely she had gotten used to her staring back with that numb and dumbfounded look on her face. Faye would smile back, wiping the girl's tears away and reassuring her that today lady luck would be on their side. Then off she would go into the shower, the only kind of absolution she had in life. Absolution from the dirt, alcohol, smoke, and sweat from last night, but it was better than nothing.
The lonely teen stepped out with her hair still dripping wet and when she rubbed the steam off the mirror she nearly jumped back in shock. Two centimeters she estimated. Her hair had grown two centimeters, but since when? She went on a hysterical search through her small duffel bag for her scissors. Where the fuck were they? Impatient, angry, and trembling, she finally decided to dump all the contents out and rummage through underwear, make-up, pants, shirts, a magazine, her gun, and finally—good god finally—she found the stupid scissors.
She ran to the bathroom and faced the mirror again using her fingers as the marker to trim her hair. She'd always cut it so furiously the minute it grew past the mark beneath her chin. She'd notice so easily, and she'd get so goddamn angry. She had memorized that length she had been reborn with. It had to stay the same length, the same style, and shade of when they had regenerated her back to life. It just had to, because one day she would recognize that hair and that face of that girl with those green eyes filled with tears that weren't hers. She could feel them, but she wasn't the one shedding them and it scared her so fucking much like watching the same ghost on the haunted walls of yet another unfamiliar bathroom. One day she would stop touching some stranger's pain and reek of her own sadness for once.
She bent down to pick up her same yellow outfit that she always wore on black bet night. She hadn't woken up feeling up to putting on a Poker Alice dress for a casino, though she had planned she would do that yesterday, but who likes to plan anyway? Besides she had feeling those fighting dogs would do her some justice tonight. Black Velvet would fight tonight, and she'd place a black bet that would win her the money she needed to at least get to Venus, hey, maybe even more.
Yellow, wild vibrant yellow. She had to pick the brightest color, her favorite one too. No one could ignore the color yellow, after all, since when has anyone heard of the sun being ignored? It just shines that acid color on your face and melts into your being until you realize you can't live without it. Most people don't exactly love it, especially on Earth, it radiates with so much light and heat all the time. But the sun is the sun, as unforgettable as the blood in her veins, and not like the moon. The moon had died away long ago like that part of her. It was a white ghost that people barely recalled. No one would treat her like a ghost. She'd walk in and everyone would turn to soak in her, because she was as vivid as the fucking burning sun. She would burn herself into their memories if she had to just in case she forgot herself again.
Faye Blindingly Bright Valentine.
She looked in the mirror and told herself to stop. She would have to make it today, no more wondering about a non-existent moon and the past it took with it. Today she would be Faye Valentine, fuck tomorrow. Tomorrow she might be Poker Alice, or no one she'd ever met before, so it didn't matter.
One thing she did know. She would not die Faye Valentine.
She would die as Faye, with a past, Valentine.