Nightblindness By Callie

chapter II

The indigo glow of the compact television screen illuminated the room, twisting the colours on Mandy's face and exaggerating the tear that was making its way slowly down her cheek. Brian, her Brian, had been shot. So now she really was all alone in the world. She had no idea where Curt Wild had escaped to, and the groupies had long since deserted her. And now Brian was dead, all of his ridiculous paranoias proven horribly true. Part of her wanted to fly into a psychotic fury, breaking everything in sight as Curt had once done; part of her wanted to lay down and die, wasted away like her shrunken ego; part of her wanted Brian Slade to burst threw the door and hold her, easing her pain and telling her gently that none of it was true. All she could do was stare at that television, at the news anchor on the screen who had crushed her soul with a 30-second report.

Lightning ran through her veins the next day, as she painstakingly lifted the newspaper that had been slipped under her door. Remnants of a sleepless, drunken night were scattered about her flat, evidence of last night's misery. But all of that went away as her sunken eyes fell on the headline, ripping through her like a sharpened blade.

Slade shooting a hoax!

She knew it was over-she just didn't know it was up to her to make it stop.

*********

Slowly, she worked her way down the dimly lit hallway. What was once so familiar to her had long since been pushed out of her mind after three years of vain attempts to rebuild her broken life. She'd returned to her hometown of Los Angeles, trying to reconcile with her family. Her father wouldn't speak to her, remembering that day nearly a decade ago now that she walked out on them all to throw her life away in London. Her mother was a ruin of cigarettes and alcohol, and refused to acknowledge her younger daughter's presence. Her sister was long gone, a victim of divorce and all that comes with it. But word was that Carla had found herself in London, a receptionist for some company or another. So, after traveling the world looking for anything to get her back on her feet, Mandy resorted to calling her sister, finally giving in and asking for help.

Many nights were spent discussing the ten years they knew nothing about, a helpful release from the tension pressed into her through years of the so- called 'glamorous life.' It was Carla who convinced Mandy that it was time to let go, to come out on top and be the one to throw Brian away, not the other way around as history proved it should have been. But Carla couldn't come along as her sister trekked down to her husband's room.

The open door revealed the still azure-headed Brian snorting cocaine off the bare posterior of the woman sleeping next to him in bed. Dazed, he looked up at her, and for a moment forgot exactly who she was. "Mandy," he gasped finally.

"Hello, Brian." He offered her the straw, but barely able to maintain herself she refused. "These are the papers," she said, trying desperately to keep her composure. "I believe they're in order. All you have to do is sign." The divorce papers hung at the end of her outstretched arm for Brian to take, but he didn't move a muscle. Typical. She pulled the file back, turning her head from the shipwreck lying sprawled upon the sheets. Irritated, she walked to the coffee table in front of the bed and slid the folder into the pile of coke. "So you won't forget," she sneered.

"I already have." The lack of emotion in his voice was aggravating.

"Evidently." She turned, forcing herself to leave before she lost control of her emotions, but it was too late. "Fuck you, Brian," she shrieked, whirling around in a blind rage. "Did you ever, for one bloody second in your life, want anything more-" her voice became suddenly quiet, her screams became whimpers. "-than this?"

"No." It was the same indifference that Curt had witnessed that night more than a year ago, only heightened after the lingering strain.

"You're problem," Mandy began to quote, her American vernacular freely breaking back and forth in her constraint, "is: 'You get what you want and do what you will.'"

"'Worlds,' Mandy," Brian retorted, "'are built out of suffering. There is suffering at the birth of a child as at the birth of a star.'"

"'You live in terror of not being misunderstood.'"

"'Women defend themselves by attacking, just as they attack with sudden and strange surrenders.'"

Mandy's breath caught in her throat: the war of eloquence had been won, and she was not victorious as planned. How he always managed to seem better was beyond her comprehension. It was his nature-but, then again, this wasn't the Brian she once knew, but a shadow of a man hidden behind a glittery mask. "'I lost my girlhood, true,'" she said through pursed lips, more to herself than the monster before her. "'But it was for you.'"

"What in God's name is going on in here?" Shannon burst into the room, professionally irate and leaving no traces of the shy girl who had timidly applied for a clerical position so many years ago. "How on earth did you get up here?! Brian, I'm really sorry-"

"It's all right, Shannon," Brian cut in. "Mandy was just leaving."

Shannon reached out and tugged on Mandy's arm. "Mandy, if you'll be so kind as to follow me-"

"Let go of me!" Mandy snapped, jerking her arm from Shannon's grasp and heading for a set of doors to her left. "I am perfectly capable of making my own-" She pulled on the handle roughly and heard explosive laughter behind her as the locked knob repelled her force.

"I really don't want to have to call someone," Shannon sighed disapprovingly, staring down at her feet to avoid snickering.

"Call someone!" Mandy laughed sarcastically along, and then growled with anger and frustration. "I am his wife, for fuck's sake!" Enraged, she turned to the pile of cocaine and swept it into the air, a blizzard of narcotic madness softening the image of the jeering man before her. "Fuck the lot of you," she cried, fleeing quickly in a storm of embarrassed tears. She ran down the hall and banged on the elevator buttons, falling into the narrow shuttle and collapsing on the floor. The instant the doors opened again, she flew out and through the front doors, chasing wildly down the street to escape the ridicule she had left behind her. She never wanted to here the name Brian Slade again.

But nothing could stop her from seeing his face.