Dragging her heels was hard. But she managed stretched and thin, stormed and sorrowed to walk. To walk along the beach with the wind blowing through her matted hair. The night creeping upon her and the ocean at the same pace, swallowing her. Swallowing it. She looked like she had traveled forever, but only been gone a day. She managed to keep her head up, her petty pride sticking in her gut as she made the walk of shame. Every walk she made these days was a walk of shame. She had ended up fucked. She had ended up alone. She had ended up just like she had always thought she would but never believed she would actually. Night. It crept in slowly, and time was running out. She knew if she spent this night after this day on the streets that little grain of pride she carried around her neck would be gone completely. And she didn't know if she was ready to give that up. So she walked. And walked.

Blue lights and pink neon signs blazing against her face, reflecting in her eyes. Freckling across her skin, and traveling up her arms. They were so garish and bright. She would have been annoyed if she weren't so tired, and so unexplainably numb. The street was full of people, laughing and living. Teenager boys with sweaty palms and giddy expectations and girls with short skirts and giggly hopes. People holding hands, a couple kissing hard against a brick alley wall oblivious to the world around them, a group of kids baggy pants and stocking caps gathered around a black truck with the base blasting. Everything around her was so loud, everything around her was so alive.

She liked to surround herself with this, it is in these ways she remembered what it was like not to be how she was now. She remembered little times and little memories. She remembered the taste of happiness. She pushed on the doors and the room invited her in. Neon lights splashed, and smoked billowed through the air. Music pounded and she saw them. Low lifes, grunged out men with worn leather jackets and girls dancing slow in bright pink shorts. Greedy eyed men and lost looking girls. Lowlifes and grunges. These were her people now.

"Marcie!" Eduardo called at her from behind the bar. "Where you been girl, damn, we haven't seen you for a couple of days!" She looked at him with mild interest, usually she could pretend a little but they all knew she was different.

"Just out doing my shit." Her eyes gave a twinge of a sarcastic smile as she accepted the drink he slid her way.

"You know AJ's been looking for you for the last few days. He has a few ideas in mind for you chicky." She drowned herself and half listened. Focusing on his greasy black hair. Everything in here was slime. But then again so we she now. She just nodded her head and ran her finger across the rim of the glass. She licked her lips. They tasted like salt and blood. She felt her hair. It felt like grunge and matted dirt. She smelled like smoke and she didn't even want to imagine what she looked like. Like washed out beautiful. Like hollow beauty. Not that she even considered herself beautiful anymore, not like she even cared. Her eyes flickered back to the black grease and tan hands motioning at her. He was still talking but she didn't really want to be reminded of what.

She knew what she was about to go do. It wasn't like she had to acknowledge it, or even admit it, quite yet. Only when the desperation would creep around her would she throw herself all away.
"So baby, AJ says you gotta go meet him in the back room in like an hour. If you want the money that is." Black grease nodded at her. She tugged at her frayed shorts and itched at her t-shirt, the sweat sticking to the faded pink cloth and her stringy hair.

"Your clothes are upstairs. Where they usually are for you if you decide you want to take that." He motioned to the stairs. If she took it? He knew there wasn't an if. He knew she had no other way. They all did. They had all trapped her in her useless reality. After awhile of tracing the glass's outlines and scratching at the wooden bar she knew it was time. She moved through the crowd and went upstairs to the small apartment. Taking the extra key from underneath the small fake looking potted cactus next to the door. The apartment was tiny and smelled like TV dinners, sweat, and unwashed clothes. Make that unwashed everything. She made her way into the spare bedroom. All there was, was the bare mattress. Empty and full of miscellaneous stains. She opened the brown door to the closet and tugged on the string. The light flickered for the next five minutes as she rummaged through the array of costumes. Bright pinks, and purples. Yellows and greens, sequins and faded stars. She picked up the turquoise fake leather boots and sat down on the naked mattress. She slid off her shirt and unbutton her shorts shimmying them to the floor. Leaving them in a lonely pile on the floor, and leaving her half naked in the lonely room. Half naked in the bitter heat. She threw a leather skirt on the mattress and slid a red polyester and fake silk looking corset next to the mound of her new identity piling up on the stained mattress.

She sat down sliding the boots up her legs. Sliding the skirt onto her bony hips. Pulling the corset onto her gaunt ribs. She left the room turning off the light and made her way to the bathroom. Filthy as usual she pulled open the first drawer. Finding the worn out makeup she smudged red lipstick on her lips, and dark shadow around her eyes. It was makeup that was dirty. Cheap. It had been there forever. It had been used by everyone. Once she was done she glanced in the mirror. She almost laughed at the girl starring back at her. Ridiculously made up and awkward, much too skinny for her own good. But she knew she needed the makeup, and everything. It was all part of her charade. All part of her costume. That way she couldn't blame herself for what she was about to do. She never could, because maybe then she could blame it on that ridiculously desperate looking girl in the mirror.

Letting the heat swallow her she quickly turned off the lights leaving everything dark and still smelling of sweat. She made her way down the stairs and into the bar. Into the back room. Doing exactly what she was told. It was dark in the back. People trying to have a good time. She saw the sweet exchange of happiness as the swallowed out lucky few escaped to pure happiness. Back here was where the true members of the rock bottom club got to escape to. Back here was the trap that controlled them all.

"Hey baby, it's nice to see you again. You look beauuuuuuutiful." She felt a hot and half drunk face kiss her cheek. Itching it with his unshaved face.

"I got you a good one tonight. Baby you and I are gunna be so rich tonight." AJ. The utter definition of low. Of digusting. His eyes were full of pure sin, and his teeth were rotted. His eyes sunk in, and he had the face of man who used to be attractive but he had melted it away with years of hard drugs. He looked 10 years older than he was, and acted like he was 30 years older than he was. She guessed he was only about 25 but she never really knew about anyone anymore, nor did she really care. He was the man who pulled on her puppet strings. He was the man who controlled this girl in the leather skirt and red lips. He had never seen her without it. She didn't want him to. She didn't want him to ever to. It would mean this was all a reality. She wasn't ready to accept that yet.

"Baby, damn you always look so fucking worried. So serious, fuck, relax Marcie, you look so….jaded."

She tried to feed him a little forced smile. She could never relax around him. She was too busy acting.

"Where do I need to go?" She had to be direct, to the point, even still.

"Third door next door. Room 108. I already talked to him. Big time guy. Rich as hell too! I don't know why he thinks he's gotta pay for a good fuck! Marcie baby, after this one you and me, baby we're gunna be rolling in it for months. " His eyes shifted greedily. They were all victims of their own desires. Even AJ, leading them all, was prisoner in his own cell of desire. Of wanting. That was what chained them all. It was the drive that all junkies had.

She nodded, making her way out of there. She just couldn't wait to get out of there. Leaving sin, she headed out into the night air. For a few seconds she could be alone, before she had to start acting again. She needed these few minutes. Room 108 wasn't very far. Wasn't nearly as far as she had hoped. It was a motel called The Palm Shore Motel. It's lights flickered and the parking lot was nearly empty. Vaction season was nearly over, but she doubted in the late August night that any family would ever stay in a place like this. The fake leather clung to her legs, and they were already full of sweat. Her makeup was no doubt starting to smear as she knocked on the worn purplish door of room 108.

"Come in." A nervous voice responded. She cleared her face, ready to become numb for the next 3 hours. Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw sitting on the bed. Nothing. A boy, hands in his lap, staring at her with nervous eyes.

"Marissa?" He said looking up with every single emotion tied into one flooding the room. No one even called her that anymore.

She breathed into the empty space. Into the door she had just opened that she though she had shut forever.

"Ryan…"