by Gabi Moore
“I’m very well. Just had a nice relaxed day today. Just chilling. I might watch a movie later.”
‘Relaxed’ was code for I’m being obedient and proper and well-behaved and I haven’t used any of your money to party or mess around, promise. In truth I had no intention of watching a movie. I never even watched movies. But I didn’t think aunt Lila cared, really. I knew what was expected of me, she knew I knew, and she didn’t have to say much to get the message across.
“You all right for money, sweetheart?” she asked.
I sunk deeper into the beanbag and gazed outside, watching the tops of people’s heads bob outside as they walked past.
“Yes, auntie, no problems with money.”
“I hear there’s a good crop of students this year and that they’re going to go all out with this new production of yours.”
I stood up and paced the room. A pair of black feathered wings hung menacingly off the bathroom door, waiting to fly me off somewhere I wasn’t quite sure I should go yet. It was still early in the day, but I hadn’t been able to think of anything else for hours. Adam’s party.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been to more outrageous parties in my time than even I can remember. I had lined my eyes black, untied my long brown hair and headed out into the night so often it had felt like a job to me. I had done it all. I could drink a rowdy stag night under the table, I could bet the shoes on my feet in a pool game and win, and I’d done more in the back alleys of London’s exclusive and outlandish clubs than most people could imagine.
And yet …something about Adam’s halfhearted invitation intrigued me. He had an irritating cool-kid vibe that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Everyone else seemed to pussy foot around him, and here I was, a belly full of butterflies all today at just the thought of what I’d wear, what I’d say, whether he’d approve of me or not…
“It’s been tricky, actually,” I said. “It’s such a strange story, and everyone seems to have really strong opinions about even the smallest details.”
“If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times before: theatre people are all a little narcissist, it’s just a fact of life. But nevermind about that kind of thing. You just keep your head down. You’re talented, Nyx. If you could just apply yourself…”
“I know, I know,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about me, I’m fine.”
I did not need to hear another lecture about how it was time for me to man up and make something of my life already. I heard her sigh loudly on the other end of the line.
“You should be glad you have someone to get on your case like this, sweetheart.”
“I know. Thank you, aunt Lila. Thanks for checking in on me.” I wondered darkly whether this was code for you can hang up now, you nosy bitch.
“I suppose I better get going then,” she said, “you’ve got a busy week ahead of you, I’m sure.”
“Yeah.” The black wings stared at me, poised, like they were spring-loaded to take off at any moment.
“What movie did you say you were going to watch?”
“Uh …oh, I’m not really sure yet,” I said. “Just something nice and relaxed.”
The line went quiet. It was probably a bad idea to head out for a big dress-up party on a weeknight. It was something the old Nyx would have done in a heartbeat, but truth be told, it didn’t sit well with the new leaf I had supposedly turned over.
It was no big deal. A bunch of theatre nerds weren’t anything to be scared of. How could it be an irresponsible thing to do? If anyone were going to be a bad influence at such a party, it would likely be me in any case, right? I’d go, have a drink or two and be back before bedtime, no problem.
“Ah, that’s good. A nice relaxed movie. I might have an early night myself.”
“Lovely,” I said.
“Yeah, all right then. Off you go. Let me know if you need a top up or anything.”
“I will. Love you aunt Lila.”
“Love you too, sweetheart.”
The wings gleamed black. I checked my watch. It was still early but I could start getting ready. I peeled off my clothing, then walked over to the full-length mirror, examined my naked body for a few moments and then stepped into the shower.
***
“Are you sure this is where you want to be, love? Doesn’t look like much, does it?”
I had spent the last two hours doing my hair and makeup, and I was now in the back seat of a taxi ride I couldn’t in all honesty afford, and yes, I had to admit he had a point. I had given him the exact postcode and address as Adam had given it to me. But we had arrived and it was nothing but a sooty back alley without any street lights and a Turkish grocer on the far corner.
I grabbed my phone and tried to call Adam.
No answer.
Damn.
I paid the taxi driver and hobbled out of the back seat in my heels.
“You gonna be all right, though?” he called out after me, rolling down his window to peer nervously at me walking into the dark alleyway.
“If I have any trouble, I’ll just fly away!” I said and made wings with my hands and flew them up into the night sky.
He frowned, shook his head, then drove off.
The night air was chill on my forearms, but I had chosen a fitted velvet dress that was surprisingly warm. For a moment, I fancied myself some villain in fantasy movie. A vampire. Or a dark witchy sort, walking down a creepy alleyway with plumes of smoke swirling at her feet.
The truth was that I was more like Cinderella: I probably shouldn’t stay out late, since tomorrow was a super early morning meeting with Tamara, and turning into a pumpkin would make aunt Lila mad and threaten my only lifeline: the weekly direct debit.
I’d just have a few drinks, introduce myself, twirl a little in my fancy wings and then go straight home. I’d return the wings before anyone noticed they had even been taken, and I’d still have time for a quick coffee to start my proper, well-behaved, new-leaf life in the morning. It would all be fine. Perfectly fine.
I took a deep breath and tried to find an entrance or any sign of life.
“Halt, who goes there?”
I spun around to find the source of the voice. The alleyway was empty as ever.
“Hello?”
“Nice wings,” the unfamiliar voice said.
I peered up and saw a shadowy figure sitting on some iron fire escape stairs. I could only make out the glowing tip of a cigarette and the puffs of thin white smoke rising up into the cold air.
“I’m a friend of Adam’s,” I said, waiting for my eyes to adjust.
“Oh you are? Poor girl,” he said and chuckled, then took a long drag on his cigarette, temporarily dimming the orange light in his fingers. “Just kidding, come inside then.”
I spied a door to my left and tried to open it but couldn’t.
“Nah, you’ll have to come up here,” he said.
I made my way to the staircase and he watched with amusement as I tried to climb up without snapping my ankles in half. The stairwell was bigger than my wingspan.
“Fuck me, you are right tarted up aren’t you?” he said and extended his hand to help me as I wobbled to the top platform. He snubbed out his cigarette on the brick wall and opened a narrow, glass paned door, and I turned my wings sideways and stepped inside.
It took me a while to understand what I was seeing. The room was so unnervingly dark. The only light was from candles – a lot of candles – but even they seemed to be struggling to ward of the heavy and all-encompassing blackness that fell like a blanket over the place.
And what a place it was.
The demolished kitchen sink to the left of me told me that the place I was standing in had once been a kitchen, but the interior was so expansive I guessed that all the walls inside had been pulled down at one point. The crumbling edges of those walls still remained, giving an indication of where each of the rooms had once been. Candles were buried into the exposed raw edges of the walls, and weird casc
ades of dripping wax laced over them. It was an old derelict building. A candlelit ruin.
I took a few steps forward and my eyes settled on a group of people sitting in the center of the building, like campers only it was the apocalypse. I heard the guy behind me shut the glass paned door and guide me towards them. The air was heavy with a smell I didn’t recognize, and it hung in a haze around the group. There were seven or eight of them, curled around a small fire made right there on the bare concrete, the fronts of their bodies lit up with an eerie glow.
A cool shiver flicked up the length of my spine.
“Just in time for the ritual sacrifice, love, I bet you’re glad you put on so much mascara for us, yeah?” laughed the guy behind me.
“Mickey, who’s that?”
“I found her outside. And she’s got wings,” he said and gave a playful tug on one of my feathers.
“Oy, leave her alone,” said a friendly voice, and I recognized Adam standing up from the group and coming over to me.
“Adam!” I cried.
“Don’t let this one scare you, being a dickhead is basically Mickey’s life’s calling,” he said, and gingerly hugged me.
“What? She does have wings, doesn’t she?” said the voice behind me.
I was led to the circle and I sat down, wing tips grazing the floor. Quiet music played somewhere far off, but nobody seemed to care much about it. The fire felt warm and I huddled round it, trying to understand what the hell kind of ‘party’ this was. Mortified, I discovered I was badly overdressed.
Adam settled down next to me and opened his broad hands to the fire. With something like irritation, I realized he wasn’t even wearing the sailor hat he has made such a big deal out of ‘borrowing’.
“So, who have we here, Adam? One of your conquests?” said a small girl sitting opposite us, the light catching on the hollows of her eyes and giving her the look of a prop in a haunted house ride.
“Enough with you lot. This mesmerizing young lady is Nyx Westling, and she’s the set designer for my play, but she’s actually an actress in disguise.”
Everyone nodded and looked me over.
“And she has wings,” giggled Mickey. Adam playfully flicked a burnt piece of wood in his direction and he ducked just in time.
“Nyx. That’s an interesting name,” said another girl.
“She’s the ancient Greek goddess of night,” I said.
The group was silent.
“Isn’t there a makeup brand with that name as well?” the same girl asked.
Adam flung another dead ember at her and she laughed cheekily.
“Let’s just agree that she can be the goddess of night and the goddess of heavy make up at the same time,” said Mickey.
The group was chatting loudly now, ignoring me and the temporary distraction my overdone makeup and black wings had brought. I tentatively cast a glance over to Adam and to my surprise found him staring right back at me.
“Is it… OK that I’m here?” I whispered.
“What? Are you joking? They mean no harm, don’t you worry. Sometimes our little get togethers can get out of hand…” he said, and something naughty twinkled in his eyes.
“I’m not worried!” I said, and shrugged. And I wasn’t. Sort of. I was certainly no stranger to wild nights myself, and took a little offense that everyone assumed I was …innocent? I couldn’t tell, but everything in here was very strange.
The evening wore on a little and the fire warmed us all. Our conversation was fragmented and strange, but flowed easily somehow, chunks of conversation starting up and stalling seemingly of their own accord. Soon, I had put away two beers and felt a pleasant buzz in my head. I wasn’t ‘innocent’ exactly …I had just made a deal with the devil in the form of my aunt Lila: my soul in exchange for a full ride at one of the country’s most prestigious theatre schools. Was it a fair deal or not? I hadn’t yet decided.
Adam cast sideways glances at me throughout, but I pretended not to notice. In this light, he looked almost painfully handsome. There was that same depth in his eyes I had seen the first time we met, but it seemed more at home tonight, warmer somehow. He was wearing a dark navy shirt rolled up at the sleeves, revealing forearms that looked veined as a thoroughbred racehorse’s.
All of a sudden, everyone jumped as a great clatter interrupted the conversation. We all turned to see a series of stones being thrown at the same window I had come through.
“Oh God, that’ll be your girlfriend, Adam,” said the small girl opposite us.
A hard lump formed in my throat. It was probably time for me to go home anyway.
Adam shot her a fierce look and then walked over to the door, opened it and released a woman who came blustering in with so much fury and noise it nearly took my breath away.
She was tall and blonde and buxom, great beaded necklaces and shawls struggling to keep up with her frantic movements as she ascended the stairs and stumbled inelegantly inside, laughing.
“Ah shit! I think I’ve dropped me …oh hello Adam, darling, is that you? You’re looking lovely tonight aren’t you?” she said in a loud, husky voice.
She seemed to take up all the space in the building, all at once, and she smelled like the outside air and of heavy, old fashioned perfume. And of cigarettes.
“Well, I know I keep saying, but sweet Christ, Andrew, you need to get a proper house one of these days, yeah? Make your guests climb up those shitty stairs, I swear one of these days it’ll be my death,” she said and wafted over, sitting herself down in the circle as two of the group obediently shifted place to open the circle up for her.
For a split second, I made eye contact with her, but she immediately snapped away her gaze and began giving people luxurious and extended hello kisses and hugs, her bangles and earrings clattering.
Suddenly, my black wings felt silly. Too small. Too …dare I say it… Disney. I cleared my throat and though of introducing myself but to my astonishment she slapped both flat palms down onto the concrete and took a deep, theatrical breath, closing her eyes.
“People, my lovely people, I do believe it’s time for a game.”
There were muted moans from the crowd. Adam leaned slightly over to me and whispered under his breath, “Laura likes ‘games’ …don’t freak out, just go with it,” and then he leaned away again.
“It’s a holy game, good people of Andrew’s shitty house. And here are the rules. Would you like to hear the rules?”
The small girl giggled. “Tell us the rules, Laura!”
“Very well! Then still your hearts and hear me well, for here come the rules!” she said, and now raised her hands up high. In the darkness, in the shadows and weirdness of the room, she suddenly became a mad priestess, a witch doctor, or at least a very convincing fake. I couldn’t help but smile. I looked over to Adam but he was watching her intently. Were they…? Was she…?
“This game is called Truth or Truth. Into the fire we’re committing our secrets. Tonight, we’ll take out all our lies and burn them in the fire until they become truths,” she said in a voice like a witch over a cauldron.
She had barely caught her breath from her ordeal with the iron staircase. What the hell was she doing? I had never seen anything like it in my life. “Don’t you think there’s altogether too much bullshit in the world, hm? Don’t you?” she said, hands still held high.
The people in the group nodded along. Was this just …a regular thing these people did?
I watched, enthralled.
“Too much bullshit altogether, that’s what I say. And friends, I am guilty of it too, God knows. That’s why we need to purge the bullshit every once in a while, get it out, am I right?”
“You’re right, Laura!”
“Of course I’m right! And what better place to cleanse our bullshit-weary souls than Andrew’s godawful house?”
“Shut up, Laura,” said Andrew, and everyone laughed good-naturedly.
“Ah, but sweet Andrew… I shan’t shut up! Oh no, th
e truth will out dear Andrew, we’ll sit here and rid ourselves of the bullshit, one by one, till we are purified by this fire in the middle of your shitty living room, so help me, I’ve had enough” she said and slapped her hands down onto the concrete again.
Her eyes were wild and serious but there was the most glorious little smile playing on her lips that I couldn’t quite tell if she was for real or not.
“Here’s me, my friends, look closely because I’m about to show you who I really am. This is my real self, are you ready?” She began to strip off her many scarves and shawls and fling them aside.
“Show us!”
She jumped to her haunches, a wild thing, her blonde hair swinging down from her head like ropes, and her eyes were fiery and pulsing with mischief. She took a deep, jagged breath, so deep it looked like it pained her to draw in that much air, and then she spoke quietly, directly to the fire, as it flickered on her face and made her skin glow.
“I’m terrified that even now, it’s already too late for me,” she said, dropping her voice right down to a sad whisper. The room went silent. The girl next to her nodded quietly in sympathy.
“I’m worried that I am already so far down the wrong path that I can never come back again. In short, I am afraid,” she breathed.
The atmosphere in the room suddenly fell, the temperature almost dropping a few degrees as her teasing expression disappeared and she spoke her serious confession. Then she reached for her shawls and put them back on again, came close to the fire, and spat into it.
I watched, wide eyed.
The girl next to her was already crouching down close to the fire. Her voice was nowhere near as strong and commanding as Laura’s had been, but it was clear and earnest.
“I hate being the fucking ugly girl all the time,” she said and spat in the fire. “I pretend like it doesn’t bother me. But it bothers me. A lot. Some days, it’s the only thing I can think about. I wish I could just take a knife and peel off all my skin and grow it back again, and start new”
She sat back again and looked satisfied.
“I don’t think incest is wrong,” the guy next to her said.
Everyone turned to look at him.