Title: Shock Me Pink
By: TheTheatreGroupie (clearly)
Rating: PG-13 for obvious reasons (it's Rocky Horror. Think about it.)
Genre: General
Filter: Rocky Horror
Summary: A naïve girl, barely eighteen years old, looking for something to hold on to, finds herself in a world where anything can happen and anything will happen. (This is a Columbiafic.)
Disclaimer: I don't own RHPS or any of the characters in it. Or anything I may unintentionally reference.
Author's Note: It seems nobody writes RHPS fics anymore. This idea came to me after watching the movie a third time. I know I'm not the first to write a story about Columbia first coming to the castle, but I at least hope it's a little different. It's dark in parts, be warned. But the darkness is often made up for by sparkliness. (Literally and metaphorically.) Mainly I'm just writing this cause I thought it would be fun to take my own personal look into Columbia's head, but to some extent I want to encourage more people to write RHPS fics. In case you couldn't tell, this story is about Columbia before and during the movie. This first chapter is a little weird. but bear with me, it'll have a point. Please, please, please R&R, I'm desperate to know what I can improve. Flames are fine, but balanced critiques preferred. And if anyone would like to be my beta-reader, then I'd gladly appreciate that.
~*~*~*~
Today. Today was no different than usual, but at the same time it was so different it's hard to explain.
I was walking home from school like I always do; alone and watching the crowds of happy-go-lucky teenagers go about their business. Everything seemed normal. Everything seemed just like it seemed every other day of the week. I would go home, lock myself in my room, try to do my homework like a good little girl, and spend the rest of the night ignoring my mother, trying to shut out everything around me.
I was walking home when this guy in a pick-up truck caught my attention. He didn't look like any normal guy. In fact, at first I didn't even know if it was a guy. He had on the darkest eye-makeup I've ever seen. It gave him a nearly disturbing look, like he was really important and you wouldn't dare stand in his way. So anyway, this guy, he looked me straight on, he smiled, and he winked. What kind of a guy winks at girls they don't even know? Especially a boring girl like me. I'm not even that pretty; I'm sort of plain, brown hair dark eyes skinny frame just average. And the weirdest thing of all is that I sort of felt like, I don't know. I felt something really strange. Something different. I don't know what it was, but it just seemed like, I don't know. it's so hard to explain.
It seemed like at that very moment everything stopped and.
Time meant nothing ever would again.
The shock of the weird meeting nearly tempts me not to go through with my plan. But in the end I decide that I'm going to hate myself if I don't do it. I have to get out of here. I'm not going to hesitate. I've been waiting to get out of here for so long. I have to get away; I have to get out of this place where I don't belong. I'm too different from them. Purity that is anything but self-imposed. Tap-dancing that is all I have to get away from it. Transparent like glass they don't understand at all. Stifling like a summer day in Florida my mother won't let me go. Freedom like a display at a museum all that separates me from it is a thin plastic barricade. I have to get away from here. I have to make something of myself. I have to get away from these people who ignore me shun me reject me despise me before I kill myself.
Tonight, tonight, tonight. Tonight I'm getting out. Tonight I'm packing my things and getting out. No note no nothing. Notes give clues to where you might be notes mean 'come find me'. Notes are like the little tags on the cakes in "Alice in Wonderland". They beg you to do something. No, tonight I'm leaving here, noteless. I'm taking my chances, but I'm getting out. I'm getting out and I'm not looking back.
But the way it turns out, my plan doesn't work that way.
I can tell that it's not gonna be my night when I forget my house-key as I'm leaving for tap class. All I have in my tap bag is my shoes and a change of clothes for after class. Figuring it's going to be a stormy night, I wear my black windbreaker. It doesn't look good at all, but it keeps me from dying of hypothermia. The only reason I'm even bothering going tonight is so I can say a good-bye to the only place I truly feel like I belong. I hate my teacher, but the studio is like a second home to me. It sounds so tacky when I say it like that, but it's true. I don't fit in at school, I don't belong at home. I actually feel wanted at the studio. It's not enough to tether me though. I'm going tonight to say good-bye and wish for happier things.
Well, when I get there they tell me that my teacher has a nasty bug and so lessons have been cancelled. I ask if I can just go in and dance for a minute. Mystified, they unlock the door and let me in. I look at the mirrored walls, the barre the ballet class uses, the tape player in the corner. I put on my tap shoes and staring up at the sea-foam green ceiling I dance all around the studio, letting my cares fall away. I let go of everything just for a minute as I dance, just dancing and dancing and dancing. The receptionist pokes her head in and tells me she has to lock up. I thank her quickly and head out the door into the night. Rain pours on my head the second I set foot on the sidewalk, drenching my exhilarated body. It seems to be an omen but I don't let it get to me. I start walking home, intending to pack some more things in my bag before I get out of here.
That was a mistake. Remembering I don't have my key with me, I decide the best way to go about things would be to sneak in through my bedroom window and get out as soon as possible. I manage to get myself through the window frame and I start looking for other things to pack. I grab a hundred and fifty dollars out of my bank and take a good, searching look at my room. I am never going to sleep in this room again, I say to myself. I'm grabbing things from my drawers and preparing to stuff them in my bag when my mother enters the room with a crazy look on her face. "Christie, what are you doing?" she asks me. After a split second of contemplation, I decide to lie to her. She won't know the difference once I'm gone.
"I'm going to a friend's house, Mom," I say airily, folding a sweater and stuffing it in my bag. "Christie, that is a fucking goddamn lie and I know it," she replies. I cringe at her language, trying to act like nothing is wrong. I start to head to the door, bag in hand, but she blocks my path. "You're not going anywhere, young lady," she says. I try to shove past her but she pushes me to the ground, screaming things at me about how she has to protect her baby from the world, how I'm not going to leave like my father did. I manage to get up, my bag still in hand, but she keeps screaming and she starts to hit me, slapping me in the face, the arms, anywhere she can reach. I start shrieking, running away from her, but she comes after me, shouting at me and hitting me. I'm able to push her down long enough to give myself some time to get away safely. I've never seen her like this, psychopathically furious. It's scary. I've heard her shout before, when she and my dad were still together, but this is some new side of her. It's like she's been taken over by something, something awful and horrible and crazy and something that looks like it may kill me, intentionally or not.
I frantically try to unlock the door, using the key I grabbed off my dresser, but it doesn't seem to be working. My hands don't want to get this to work. I nearly have the door unlocked when my mother catches up to me. "You're not going to leave, you hear me? You're going to stay right here where you're safe, safe from all the bad things out there." I don't see how I can be safe living in a house with a crazy mother. She keeps hitting me and she screams, not even sentences anymore, just incoherent phrases strung together with curse words. Her eyes gleam like she's being possessed and she keeps hitting and hitting and hitting and I keep shrieking and shrieking and shrieking. She thinks she's protecting me from something. She slaps me hard across the cheek and I cry out in pain, holding one hand to my cheek as I use the other hand to open the door. As I use the door to shove her away from me, my shrieks become sobs. I grab my duffel bag off of the floor where I laid and tear down the driveway. I stand for a quick minute as she sits slumped in the doorframe, stunned and exhausted from her rampage, then crying, I run as fast as I can away from there with my duffel bag still in my hand.
Ignoring the passing cars, I finally collapse at a bus stop, panting and sobbing and trying to think optimistically. What's the use of optimism? Everything I've ever known just evaporated in one evening. A guy wearing makeup winked at me. My dance teacher, my dance teacher who is NEVER sick, was gone. My mother nearly killed me. It seems like a sick dream. I can't believe any of this actually happened. It doesn't seem real at all. I sit at the bus stop for a long time, not caring that I'm getting soaked by the rain. I try to hold myself together but it doesn't work. When the next bus comes I get on, paying with change from my pocket, and take it as far out of town as it goes. It stops and I get off, clutching my bag, trying to figure out what to do next. Street corner, passing cars, nobody cares for the lost girl on the sidewalk. I'm not lost, I'm looking. I start walking away from the small-town happiness, wandering away from the life left behind. Getting farther and farther away from everything I never want to see again. Nobody knows, nobody quite understands. Keep walking till I don't know where I am. I look around and realize that I've wandered into the black hole of oblivion; there's no way to tell where I am.
The frustration has me starting to cry. I sit on the curb stifling tears with my bag scattered forlornly at my side. No-one passing, just me alone in the middle of nowhere and without anywhere to go. I have somewhere to go, away. Maybe my luck will change. I get up, I give up, and I start walking back the way I came. I stop again; realizing I don't know which way is the way I came. Gasping for air through the weeping, I stand perfectly still on the side of the road without a clue what I'm going to do next.
Light in the distance, don't want to hope. Will my luck change? It isn't likely, considering the way things have been going. Light getting closer, closer, stopping nearly right in front of me. I turn the other way and begin to walk. Motorcycle. Keep walking, keep walking. Bag clutched to chest. Can't trust a guy on a motorcycle you've never seen before in your life. "Hey," says the guy. "Hey, kid, you lost or something?" Split second decision. Turn around so fast my long brown braid nearly whacks me in the head, dripping wet and practically lethal. "So what's it to ya?" I remark bitingly. The guy looks taken aback by my attitude.
"I'm headed over to a party and I was just thinkin', maybe you'd want to come?" says the guy. It's my turn to be taken aback. He continues. "You look like you need somewhere to stay. I know some people that'll help ya." He's a biker, tough guy attitude. Wants some arm candy. Well I'm not gonna be that girl. About to keep walking, but I stop. "Come on, maybe he's telling the truth," the voice in my head says. What's the worst that could happen? I'm already about at the bottom of the bottomless pit. So I turn to him and say, "Sure, I'll come." He hands me a helmet and on I hop, carrying the duffel bag firmly.
I'm desperately wondering what's going to happen next. I hold my bag tightly in my lap. Short ride, don't know where I'm going but I'm going somewhere and that's a start. Why was I chosen? Just a plain, looks-young- for-her-age brown-haired tap-dancing girl wandering down the road, never knew traveling life would be so simplistic. I'm surprised that I got lucky, the way my night was going I didn't think I'd ever be lucky again. I shut my eyes, the ride is freaky, going to a party in the middle of the night with a guy I don't even know the name of. I try to imagine happy things waiting for me but nothing seems to be coming to mind. Bike stops, open my eyes, get off the bike, look at my destination. Huge castle, Gothic style, imposing, weirdly compelling. Keep staring; I still don't know where I am.
Me walking up the pathway of a creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere starting to get scared, my bag just about surgically attached to my hand. The guy, right behind me, knocks on the door. Weird guy opens the door, greets the biker, looks at me skeptically. "Who's this?" asks the weird one. Biker looks to me for an answer. "C-Christie," I stammer. Strange woman materializes next to him, shakes her head. "Eddie, why'd ya bring her?" the woman mutters to the biker. I can tell what they're thinking. Strange girl, me, not cool enough for the party. What else is new, I never belong. Just too boring, all I have is tap dancing, they never want me there. The man and woman whisper to each other. Biker heads into the castle, past them, me standing uncomfortably, ready to go home. Strange woman looks me up and down, grabs my arm, leads me up a flight of stairs, my free arm still clutching the duffel bag. Leads me to a room, shuts the door, sits me down on a gold-colored chair. Look around the room, wonder where I am. Feel a strange sense of attachment to this place already; strange, since I just got here.
"Who're you?" she asks. "Christie, Christie." maybe it's better to keep my last name secret, just for my safety. "Just Christie." She looks unconvinced. "Why are you here, Christie?" The woman has a weird accent, a little European maybe. It matches her slightly slutty French maid's outfit. "Just needed a place to stay." I try to keep my answers brief, it's easier. The woman stands and orders me to take off my clothes and put on a bathrobe I'll find in the closet and she'll be right back. I do as she says, finding it comfortable to get out of my sopping jeans and jacket. In a minute, the woman returns with a man, not the biker nor the man from downstairs. At least, I think he's a man. He seems to like. woman's clothes. And makeup. Lots of makeup. I don't think I've seen some girls wear that much makeup. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. It couldn't. No. It is. It is. It IS.
It's the guy from earlier today. The guy who winked at me. I can't believe it. This is too much of a coincidence. It's not a coincidence. It's fate. It was written into the big DayRunner of life. This is the strangest thing. Suddenly I feel that same way I did earlier, all heart- stopping and oh-my-God-why? He's here, this is his house, and I am in it. Here I am. Here he is. And oh, my, GOD.
"En chente," he says. "You're Christie." Despite his appearance there's something really. gripping. about him. I don't want to stop looking at him. Ever. "Yes," I murmur. "Well, Christie, I suppose you've come to the right place." I'm too scared to ask what he means by this, so I let him go on. "We're not your everyday crowd here, but Christie, I can tell you already like it." He's right. I like it. I like it a lot. It's compelling. There's just something about it, I can't tell quite what, that makes me love it here. I just got here, and I don't want to leave. "Now, see if you can't tidy her up a bit, Magenta, and show her to the party. I'll be waiting." He exits the room and the woman, Magenta I assume she's called, begins to go through my bag. She takes out the money and puts it in the pocket of the apron of the French maid's uniform she wears. I elicit a squeal. That's my money, back off, I feel like saying. She glares at me, a cold stare, and returns to unpacking my bag. She takes out the clothes next, examining them and tossing them in the trash. I screech again. Normally my voice is screechy enough as it is, so high-pitched, like a little kid. Lastly, she takes out the tap shoes. She smiles, a creepy smile, not a happy smile exactly. It looks almost crazy in a way.
"A dancer, yes?" I nod. "The master has always loved dancers." I guess the man who was in here before is 'the master'. "Well, Christie, you're very lucky. With a bit of shaping up." She leaves the taps on the bed that takes up so much of the room, opens the closet and leaves. I walk up to the closet with a feeling of foreboding and excitement. Maybe tonight will be the end of boring, quiet me, and the beginning of someone new, someone exciting. This isn't so strange. Nobody will wonder where I am. Nobody will miss me at home. No. Not home. What home? I'm starting over, starting new. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. The end of my old life, the beginning of my new life. The end of Christie and the beginning of. Columbia.
By: TheTheatreGroupie (clearly)
Rating: PG-13 for obvious reasons (it's Rocky Horror. Think about it.)
Genre: General
Filter: Rocky Horror
Summary: A naïve girl, barely eighteen years old, looking for something to hold on to, finds herself in a world where anything can happen and anything will happen. (This is a Columbiafic.)
Disclaimer: I don't own RHPS or any of the characters in it. Or anything I may unintentionally reference.
Author's Note: It seems nobody writes RHPS fics anymore. This idea came to me after watching the movie a third time. I know I'm not the first to write a story about Columbia first coming to the castle, but I at least hope it's a little different. It's dark in parts, be warned. But the darkness is often made up for by sparkliness. (Literally and metaphorically.) Mainly I'm just writing this cause I thought it would be fun to take my own personal look into Columbia's head, but to some extent I want to encourage more people to write RHPS fics. In case you couldn't tell, this story is about Columbia before and during the movie. This first chapter is a little weird. but bear with me, it'll have a point. Please, please, please R&R, I'm desperate to know what I can improve. Flames are fine, but balanced critiques preferred. And if anyone would like to be my beta-reader, then I'd gladly appreciate that.
~*~*~*~
Today. Today was no different than usual, but at the same time it was so different it's hard to explain.
I was walking home from school like I always do; alone and watching the crowds of happy-go-lucky teenagers go about their business. Everything seemed normal. Everything seemed just like it seemed every other day of the week. I would go home, lock myself in my room, try to do my homework like a good little girl, and spend the rest of the night ignoring my mother, trying to shut out everything around me.
I was walking home when this guy in a pick-up truck caught my attention. He didn't look like any normal guy. In fact, at first I didn't even know if it was a guy. He had on the darkest eye-makeup I've ever seen. It gave him a nearly disturbing look, like he was really important and you wouldn't dare stand in his way. So anyway, this guy, he looked me straight on, he smiled, and he winked. What kind of a guy winks at girls they don't even know? Especially a boring girl like me. I'm not even that pretty; I'm sort of plain, brown hair dark eyes skinny frame just average. And the weirdest thing of all is that I sort of felt like, I don't know. I felt something really strange. Something different. I don't know what it was, but it just seemed like, I don't know. it's so hard to explain.
It seemed like at that very moment everything stopped and.
Time meant nothing ever would again.
The shock of the weird meeting nearly tempts me not to go through with my plan. But in the end I decide that I'm going to hate myself if I don't do it. I have to get out of here. I'm not going to hesitate. I've been waiting to get out of here for so long. I have to get away; I have to get out of this place where I don't belong. I'm too different from them. Purity that is anything but self-imposed. Tap-dancing that is all I have to get away from it. Transparent like glass they don't understand at all. Stifling like a summer day in Florida my mother won't let me go. Freedom like a display at a museum all that separates me from it is a thin plastic barricade. I have to get away from here. I have to make something of myself. I have to get away from these people who ignore me shun me reject me despise me before I kill myself.
Tonight, tonight, tonight. Tonight I'm getting out. Tonight I'm packing my things and getting out. No note no nothing. Notes give clues to where you might be notes mean 'come find me'. Notes are like the little tags on the cakes in "Alice in Wonderland". They beg you to do something. No, tonight I'm leaving here, noteless. I'm taking my chances, but I'm getting out. I'm getting out and I'm not looking back.
But the way it turns out, my plan doesn't work that way.
I can tell that it's not gonna be my night when I forget my house-key as I'm leaving for tap class. All I have in my tap bag is my shoes and a change of clothes for after class. Figuring it's going to be a stormy night, I wear my black windbreaker. It doesn't look good at all, but it keeps me from dying of hypothermia. The only reason I'm even bothering going tonight is so I can say a good-bye to the only place I truly feel like I belong. I hate my teacher, but the studio is like a second home to me. It sounds so tacky when I say it like that, but it's true. I don't fit in at school, I don't belong at home. I actually feel wanted at the studio. It's not enough to tether me though. I'm going tonight to say good-bye and wish for happier things.
Well, when I get there they tell me that my teacher has a nasty bug and so lessons have been cancelled. I ask if I can just go in and dance for a minute. Mystified, they unlock the door and let me in. I look at the mirrored walls, the barre the ballet class uses, the tape player in the corner. I put on my tap shoes and staring up at the sea-foam green ceiling I dance all around the studio, letting my cares fall away. I let go of everything just for a minute as I dance, just dancing and dancing and dancing. The receptionist pokes her head in and tells me she has to lock up. I thank her quickly and head out the door into the night. Rain pours on my head the second I set foot on the sidewalk, drenching my exhilarated body. It seems to be an omen but I don't let it get to me. I start walking home, intending to pack some more things in my bag before I get out of here.
That was a mistake. Remembering I don't have my key with me, I decide the best way to go about things would be to sneak in through my bedroom window and get out as soon as possible. I manage to get myself through the window frame and I start looking for other things to pack. I grab a hundred and fifty dollars out of my bank and take a good, searching look at my room. I am never going to sleep in this room again, I say to myself. I'm grabbing things from my drawers and preparing to stuff them in my bag when my mother enters the room with a crazy look on her face. "Christie, what are you doing?" she asks me. After a split second of contemplation, I decide to lie to her. She won't know the difference once I'm gone.
"I'm going to a friend's house, Mom," I say airily, folding a sweater and stuffing it in my bag. "Christie, that is a fucking goddamn lie and I know it," she replies. I cringe at her language, trying to act like nothing is wrong. I start to head to the door, bag in hand, but she blocks my path. "You're not going anywhere, young lady," she says. I try to shove past her but she pushes me to the ground, screaming things at me about how she has to protect her baby from the world, how I'm not going to leave like my father did. I manage to get up, my bag still in hand, but she keeps screaming and she starts to hit me, slapping me in the face, the arms, anywhere she can reach. I start shrieking, running away from her, but she comes after me, shouting at me and hitting me. I'm able to push her down long enough to give myself some time to get away safely. I've never seen her like this, psychopathically furious. It's scary. I've heard her shout before, when she and my dad were still together, but this is some new side of her. It's like she's been taken over by something, something awful and horrible and crazy and something that looks like it may kill me, intentionally or not.
I frantically try to unlock the door, using the key I grabbed off my dresser, but it doesn't seem to be working. My hands don't want to get this to work. I nearly have the door unlocked when my mother catches up to me. "You're not going to leave, you hear me? You're going to stay right here where you're safe, safe from all the bad things out there." I don't see how I can be safe living in a house with a crazy mother. She keeps hitting me and she screams, not even sentences anymore, just incoherent phrases strung together with curse words. Her eyes gleam like she's being possessed and she keeps hitting and hitting and hitting and I keep shrieking and shrieking and shrieking. She thinks she's protecting me from something. She slaps me hard across the cheek and I cry out in pain, holding one hand to my cheek as I use the other hand to open the door. As I use the door to shove her away from me, my shrieks become sobs. I grab my duffel bag off of the floor where I laid and tear down the driveway. I stand for a quick minute as she sits slumped in the doorframe, stunned and exhausted from her rampage, then crying, I run as fast as I can away from there with my duffel bag still in my hand.
Ignoring the passing cars, I finally collapse at a bus stop, panting and sobbing and trying to think optimistically. What's the use of optimism? Everything I've ever known just evaporated in one evening. A guy wearing makeup winked at me. My dance teacher, my dance teacher who is NEVER sick, was gone. My mother nearly killed me. It seems like a sick dream. I can't believe any of this actually happened. It doesn't seem real at all. I sit at the bus stop for a long time, not caring that I'm getting soaked by the rain. I try to hold myself together but it doesn't work. When the next bus comes I get on, paying with change from my pocket, and take it as far out of town as it goes. It stops and I get off, clutching my bag, trying to figure out what to do next. Street corner, passing cars, nobody cares for the lost girl on the sidewalk. I'm not lost, I'm looking. I start walking away from the small-town happiness, wandering away from the life left behind. Getting farther and farther away from everything I never want to see again. Nobody knows, nobody quite understands. Keep walking till I don't know where I am. I look around and realize that I've wandered into the black hole of oblivion; there's no way to tell where I am.
The frustration has me starting to cry. I sit on the curb stifling tears with my bag scattered forlornly at my side. No-one passing, just me alone in the middle of nowhere and without anywhere to go. I have somewhere to go, away. Maybe my luck will change. I get up, I give up, and I start walking back the way I came. I stop again; realizing I don't know which way is the way I came. Gasping for air through the weeping, I stand perfectly still on the side of the road without a clue what I'm going to do next.
Light in the distance, don't want to hope. Will my luck change? It isn't likely, considering the way things have been going. Light getting closer, closer, stopping nearly right in front of me. I turn the other way and begin to walk. Motorcycle. Keep walking, keep walking. Bag clutched to chest. Can't trust a guy on a motorcycle you've never seen before in your life. "Hey," says the guy. "Hey, kid, you lost or something?" Split second decision. Turn around so fast my long brown braid nearly whacks me in the head, dripping wet and practically lethal. "So what's it to ya?" I remark bitingly. The guy looks taken aback by my attitude.
"I'm headed over to a party and I was just thinkin', maybe you'd want to come?" says the guy. It's my turn to be taken aback. He continues. "You look like you need somewhere to stay. I know some people that'll help ya." He's a biker, tough guy attitude. Wants some arm candy. Well I'm not gonna be that girl. About to keep walking, but I stop. "Come on, maybe he's telling the truth," the voice in my head says. What's the worst that could happen? I'm already about at the bottom of the bottomless pit. So I turn to him and say, "Sure, I'll come." He hands me a helmet and on I hop, carrying the duffel bag firmly.
I'm desperately wondering what's going to happen next. I hold my bag tightly in my lap. Short ride, don't know where I'm going but I'm going somewhere and that's a start. Why was I chosen? Just a plain, looks-young- for-her-age brown-haired tap-dancing girl wandering down the road, never knew traveling life would be so simplistic. I'm surprised that I got lucky, the way my night was going I didn't think I'd ever be lucky again. I shut my eyes, the ride is freaky, going to a party in the middle of the night with a guy I don't even know the name of. I try to imagine happy things waiting for me but nothing seems to be coming to mind. Bike stops, open my eyes, get off the bike, look at my destination. Huge castle, Gothic style, imposing, weirdly compelling. Keep staring; I still don't know where I am.
Me walking up the pathway of a creepy mansion in the middle of nowhere starting to get scared, my bag just about surgically attached to my hand. The guy, right behind me, knocks on the door. Weird guy opens the door, greets the biker, looks at me skeptically. "Who's this?" asks the weird one. Biker looks to me for an answer. "C-Christie," I stammer. Strange woman materializes next to him, shakes her head. "Eddie, why'd ya bring her?" the woman mutters to the biker. I can tell what they're thinking. Strange girl, me, not cool enough for the party. What else is new, I never belong. Just too boring, all I have is tap dancing, they never want me there. The man and woman whisper to each other. Biker heads into the castle, past them, me standing uncomfortably, ready to go home. Strange woman looks me up and down, grabs my arm, leads me up a flight of stairs, my free arm still clutching the duffel bag. Leads me to a room, shuts the door, sits me down on a gold-colored chair. Look around the room, wonder where I am. Feel a strange sense of attachment to this place already; strange, since I just got here.
"Who're you?" she asks. "Christie, Christie." maybe it's better to keep my last name secret, just for my safety. "Just Christie." She looks unconvinced. "Why are you here, Christie?" The woman has a weird accent, a little European maybe. It matches her slightly slutty French maid's outfit. "Just needed a place to stay." I try to keep my answers brief, it's easier. The woman stands and orders me to take off my clothes and put on a bathrobe I'll find in the closet and she'll be right back. I do as she says, finding it comfortable to get out of my sopping jeans and jacket. In a minute, the woman returns with a man, not the biker nor the man from downstairs. At least, I think he's a man. He seems to like. woman's clothes. And makeup. Lots of makeup. I don't think I've seen some girls wear that much makeup. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. It couldn't. No. It is. It is. It IS.
It's the guy from earlier today. The guy who winked at me. I can't believe it. This is too much of a coincidence. It's not a coincidence. It's fate. It was written into the big DayRunner of life. This is the strangest thing. Suddenly I feel that same way I did earlier, all heart- stopping and oh-my-God-why? He's here, this is his house, and I am in it. Here I am. Here he is. And oh, my, GOD.
"En chente," he says. "You're Christie." Despite his appearance there's something really. gripping. about him. I don't want to stop looking at him. Ever. "Yes," I murmur. "Well, Christie, I suppose you've come to the right place." I'm too scared to ask what he means by this, so I let him go on. "We're not your everyday crowd here, but Christie, I can tell you already like it." He's right. I like it. I like it a lot. It's compelling. There's just something about it, I can't tell quite what, that makes me love it here. I just got here, and I don't want to leave. "Now, see if you can't tidy her up a bit, Magenta, and show her to the party. I'll be waiting." He exits the room and the woman, Magenta I assume she's called, begins to go through my bag. She takes out the money and puts it in the pocket of the apron of the French maid's uniform she wears. I elicit a squeal. That's my money, back off, I feel like saying. She glares at me, a cold stare, and returns to unpacking my bag. She takes out the clothes next, examining them and tossing them in the trash. I screech again. Normally my voice is screechy enough as it is, so high-pitched, like a little kid. Lastly, she takes out the tap shoes. She smiles, a creepy smile, not a happy smile exactly. It looks almost crazy in a way.
"A dancer, yes?" I nod. "The master has always loved dancers." I guess the man who was in here before is 'the master'. "Well, Christie, you're very lucky. With a bit of shaping up." She leaves the taps on the bed that takes up so much of the room, opens the closet and leaves. I walk up to the closet with a feeling of foreboding and excitement. Maybe tonight will be the end of boring, quiet me, and the beginning of someone new, someone exciting. This isn't so strange. Nobody will wonder where I am. Nobody will miss me at home. No. Not home. What home? I'm starting over, starting new. Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. The end of my old life, the beginning of my new life. The end of Christie and the beginning of. Columbia.