in love with a (strict machine)

[star studded]

She had an affinity for secrets, which was why she pried herself from bed at an ungodly hour. He was either asleep, or feigning it, but either way she was tiptoe-careful when she was rounding the bed and shuffling through her things. Two identical items were plucked from a mixmatch box of God-knows-what, and she made her great escape from the bedroom to round into the bathroom on the second floor. The one River wouldn't stumble into when getting ready for work.

The light was flicked on, and she went to work like some modern artist, a poet or a lunatic. Any of the above.

When she was finished, it was a frightening masterpiece for him to walk in on. She had covered every washable surface (save for ruining the two white draped towels) with red lipstick scrawled proclamations. She had written across the white walls, the inside and outside of the bathtub, the mirror, the towels, and she had started in the furthest corner and written her way out of the room in long scrawling sweeps of distinctly careless and feminine handwriting, and she had only wasted half a dozen or so tubes of the same color lipstick on alternating phrases of equal length, two things he had told her she didn't say enough. She would show him that she was clearly not afraid. She would cover him in them.

I love you. I need you.

[star studded]

i can?t believe you had a life before me
i can?t believe they let you run around free
just putting your body wherever it seemed like a good idea
what a good idea

So this blonde thing wasn't working for her. The sticky, sandy bleach-paste was a mess to work with anyway, so when she was staring at her reflection in the mirror, it was with content. Each strip of blonde was giving way to a purple color dye that wouldn't be purple when it washed out. It would be a decadent brown, a molasses-streak color with slightest hints of red. Cherry wood. That was what she had decided on, after thumbing through the selections of creative color-titles and little loops of fake hair dyed to show exactly what color it was.

My God. She almost forgot how much of a mess this made the sink. When she had rinsed it all, letting the water run clear, she wrapped it up in one of the white towels, paying attention to the restructuring of her face. It reminded her of the precision she had paid attention to it in high school, when she craned over her bathroom mirror to apply thick layers of eyeliner and lip-liner, or when she smoothed the tone of her skin over with sticky foundations. She had forgotten what it was like to take this much time on her appearance. She had forgotten what it was like to straighten her hair with a round brush so that it didn't wave, but twisted in a slight curl at the bottom.

It was painted perfection. Murky-colored eyes were widened, her hands shifting to smooth over the wisp-lines of perfectly dried hair.

This was her revenge. And she liked it.

imagine me behind your eyes
now what did i see?
i saw hips, i saw thighs
i saw secret positions that we never try
i saw jealousy

[star studded]

four years prior, the first summer of sin.


Bright lights and big city beauty.? It was an electric, buzzing visual representation of the feeling that swarmed inside her head.? Sitting shotgun in David West's convertible in mid-summer was a feeling unlike any other; it was the dizzy swish of wind through tarnished-blonde hair, the swirl of a cocaine rush through blood, the way streetlights were brighter and white lines on the road reminiscent.? Lithe limbs were stretched and crooked, cheap heels strapped to tapping feet.? Greedy fingers were tugging at the hem of a black dress, the halter neck choking as she covered bare thighs with the skirt.

"Where are we going?" A shouted call over the scream of highway traffic as the new home of New York was left behind them, all aglow with the dream-like reflection of the harbor.

"A party."

"What kind of party?" Without her seatbelt, Lucille Hart was free to stretch and shift, a distracting method of attention getting.

"A party you'll enjoy."

"You don't know that." She quipped. David sighed, hands gripping the wheel as he edged along the New York shore. That was terribly correct. Keeping Lucy content and happy was a twenty-four hour task. She was like an overtired child, whining and screeching until she got her way, or was compensated for some slight that had never been really committed.

The house was set back, a shoreside mansion in some shoddy replication of the Hamptons. Lucy turned her nose up to replicas, but it seemed that this one was enough to keep her running. A skinny, cocaine-addled frame stretched from the car when it was parked somewhere along the winding drive. She refused his arm, or his hand when it was extended. The only thing she needed to cling to in times like these, was her purse.

On the inside, jealous-tinted eyes were staring around at the hum of it all. It was like some seventies porno-party with a disco twist. The music thudded, the laughter was like a background soundtrack, the people packed in wall-to-wall with barely room to breathe.

"Go on.." A nudge towards the center of the room from David, and she turned to glare before she started to make her way through the swamp of barely-clothed brunettes. Something bumped her shoulder and she turned to curl her lip at the back of someone's head, a lanky, looming, casually dressed man who looked terribly out of place.

"Fucker." Mumbled with irritation before she was plodding past. "Where are we going?"

"To meet the host!" David called, leaning to speak to her ear over the roar.

"Who the fuck is the host?"

When she saw the creature, a decadent devil dressed to the nines, she knew. And for the briefest of moments, Lucille Hart had fallen in love.

<font color="#7F8190" size="1">[ June 06, 2004 04:26 AM: Message edited by: selfless cold and composed ]</font>

[star studded]

A switch was flipped, the hard-shelled ice queen converted to the delicate fawn-flower with one look. Her intentions were clearly read on her face by anyone who cared to look, but right now, the rest of the room had darkened. There was a spotlight, and she was being dragged into it.

"When David told me that he was bringing me a gift, I hardly expected something like this." Marco's voice was a foreign crush of something overseas. Harsh consonants were softened and soft ones blended together to form something plush. It was unrefined music to the suburban girl's ears. She had all but forgotten about David, and that was preferred. He was transporation. A conduit. A link.

"I do believe you're the first blonde I've seen all night. Refreshing, I must say. All these brunettes are terribly boring after the first few meetings."

Lucy's shoulders dipped as her hand was snagged, her voice not yet leaking. For the first time in forever, she was hypnotized and compelled to stay silent while the devil introduced himself.

"Marco Juarez. And you, princessa?"

"Lucy Hart." Her own voice startled her. It was no longer the pitchy squeal she had once forced it to be, the girlish streak of glaring femininity. She had dipped it to the gravel smash of its depths, forcing herself to speak in the low, feline growl that she used on only choice occasions.

"Lucy. Lovely Lucy." One hand folded under her own, the other wrapping over it, her fingers caught in a Venus fly trap of smooth skin and well-manicured fingers. "David has told me much about you.." His hands pulled her arm closer, forcing her to pivot her on heel as he danced her into a strange side-by-side walk, a hand pressed between bare shoulderblades. He guided her like an escort would, slowly shuffling through the maze of bodies and over to a selected circle of people hunched around a table, giddy with deception and white lines. She followed, her over excited manner of strutting turning into a languid stretch of alabaster legs and the muffled clicks of her heels. David was left behind.

"Like what?" Green eyes tinted slightly, her attentions zooming in as he guided her to sit beside him.

"We share the same interests, it seems." A mirror was handed her way, pristine and laced with a fine layer of something distinctly Columbian. Dual fingers twitched something at her, a glint of metal, and she snatched it from him, dividing the pile of dust into two ample lines. Without words exchanged, Lucy placed the mirror on the table before her, hair held back and one nostril plugged while cocaine was distributed through lungs and blood. The mirror was nudged Marco's way when she sat up, a gasp of air taken in like she had emerged from drowning. He leaned down, watching her all the while as he justified himself to indulge.

In a swift sweep, Lucy reached out, fingers planting themselves on the edge of the mirror to drag it back towards her before he could enjoy the second one. In an act of girlish greed, the heartless green-eyed girl was leaning to steal line number two away from the gift-giver himself.

"Oh yes, princessa. I think we're going to get along just fine."

[star studded]

"We have a problem, princessa.." He treated her like a Persian cat, sprawled out on the red plush of his mattress. Her skin was cocaine white with a heroin haze that dripped in the dull swarm of her usually absinthe bright eyes. She was sheet-wrapped in Egyptian cotton, the bone-driven blonde crawling on hands and knees towards him. Marco was the sun, and she was drawn to him like a starving flower.

"Tell me your problems, mi amor.." Her kittenesque purrs didn't help much to differentiate her from the Persian cat metaphors he always associated with her. She was to be stroked and lavished, and when ignored, had a terrible bite.

"Someone has hurt me. Deeply, princessa. And it is our turn to hurt them back." Marco had hollowed out over time. His hair was grown long to cover the sliced scar on his face, something he rarely talked about, never mind explained. Lucy's hand reached up to brush across it as if to ask, and his hand snagged her wrist before it could push his hair out of the way. She winced, her hand dragged away as she scurried to the opposite side of the bed with her sheets dragged along for the ride.

"And what does this have to do with me, hn?"

"You are going to play a game with me. You are going to act as the darling little decoy." He reached over to stroke at her cheek with the reverse of his fingers, sweeping them down her jaw and across the dip of her collarbone. She simply turned her attention back to him.

"And?"

"Make him fall in love with you, princessa.. you're oh so good at doing things like that." His voice dipped in that sincere way, as if to indicate himself, to make the impressionable girl's spirits lift, and her insides melt. "You're going to go to him for help. You're going to play the poor beaten darling, and you're going to make him want you.. and then, you are going to deliver him to me.."

"And what are you going to do with him?"

"I'm going to kill him, princessa. What else would I do with him?"

Her shoulders shrugged, hand still gripping the sheet to hold it around her. Legs shifted, and blonde hair was tossed over her shoulder. "I'll play your game. What's his name?"

"Charlie."

"And what's in it for me?"

"Oh, love. Just the satisfaction of crushing a weak boy's heart."

That was enough to convince Lucy.

[star studded]

"Are you fucking Marco?"

The words rang through her ears like a chord with one note off, not enough to bother you too badly, but enough to make you notice that something was wrong. The newly emaciated girl turned to David in the midst of the bustling party, her hands dangling a mixed drink (to go with the cocktail of downers and cocaine lines she took at a deathdefying speed.) He stood there, a helpless deer in headlights, brown eyes wider than she would have liked. In that moment, she was disgusted with him.

"Of course I am."

He seemed shocked at her answer, so she simply set green eyes to roll in distaste and shot back at him. "What the fuck do you care?" The drink was lifted to her mouth, and as she swallowed a sip of it, she felt the rest of it being flung at her. David had lifted his hand to nudge the bottom of her glass, sending it to spill all down the front of a dress that was worth more than his life at the time. "You fucking.."

"You're a whore. You know that, Lucy? A real high class fucking whore."

Before he could open his mouth to spit out any other insults, the girl was lobbing her glass at him in a violent burst. David winced as it crashed against the hands that lifted to deflect it, falling to the ground and bursting into shattered pieces.

"You ruined my dress, you waste of fucking space! Do you know what dresses like this cost? Do you have any idea?" A hand reached out to sock him less than gracefully across the face, the heel of her hand digging into a cheekbone that protruded rather elegantly from his face. "No! You don't! You don't have any idea, David, you fucking miserable.."

"Princessa.." Marco's voice chimed in from behind her, a hand reaching to smooth over her shoulder. He guided her from David, and when she wouldn't budge, he dragged. "Now now. No need for scenes."

"Fuck scenes, Marco, he ruined my dress."

"Well then, we'll just have to take care of him, won't we?"

David stared between the two of them with a half amused, frustrated smile. "You're both fucking priceless, you know that? A bunch of classy fucks, here, the whole mess of you. Junkies and whores, that's what you are. Every last fucking one of you!"

David would from then on be known as the one of them that got out in time.

<font color="#7F8190" size="1">[ June 06, 2004 12:24 AM: Message edited by: selfless cold and composed ]</font>

[star studded]

<center>I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you?</center>

Messages left on the Donovan/Stanton's machine:

"Hi. Change of plans. We're leaving for Los Angeles in.. ah.. about an hour. Instead of next week, and all. So.. um. Yeah. It's a long.. a long story, but it'll.. it'll just be good for us. So, you have Liliana's number, just.. call us when you guys leave, and we'll come get you from the airport. Have a.. have a nice flight and we'll see you in a few days. Bye bye, guys."

[star studded]

Cold on my narrow cot I lie
and in sorrow look
through my window-square of black;

figured in the midnight sky,
a mosaic of stars
diagrams the falling years,

while from the moon, my lover's eye
chills me to death
with radiance of his frozen faith.


Once I wounded him with so
small a thorn
I never thought his flesh would burn

or that the heat within would grow
until he stood
incandescent as a god;

now there is nowhere I can go
to hide from him:
moon and sun reflect his flame.


In the morning all shall be
the same again:
stars pale before the angry dawn;

the gilded clock will turn for me
the rack of time
until the peak of noon has come

and by that glare, my love will see
how I am still
blazing in my golden hell.

--Sylvia Plath 'To A Jilted Lover'

Teetering on the edges of dream and awake was far from uncommon. Her sleep came in ribboned wisps of smoke, easily disturbed by the creak of a bedspring or the shift of another planet on its axis beside her. He had left her in an unfamiliar bed under the impression that she wouldn't wake with his leaving, but he had to know. Every time he moved, her eye followed him and stared at the space he left until he filled it again.

The buzz of doubled coversation rang outside, the soft voice of the witch-woman she had come to know as a friend, and the barely there gravel baritone of a voice she had heard closer to her ear than anyone else would know. They were no more than a lulling pitch that made her almost want to close her eyes and drift to somewhere other-worldly. If she could remember dreams, she would paint herself a new world in sparkling colors and sharp sensations, where no one existed save a select few. A sharp contrast to the dark, naked world she stumbled into every morning, blurry eyed and furious.

His presence was always noted: absent or attendant, and every return or farewell was marked with a sharp sting of her tongue, a thorn prick or two that didn't exactly dig into his side the way she would have liked to watch it. He was a mixture of steel in some places and straw in the other, her very own combination of Scarecrow and Tin-Man with no hint of cowardice. Every morning brought a rehash of the routine, the very same touch down and lift off, fading from color to black and white and back again. This was her reality. A buzzing, suspicious mind and a dent in her bed where a lover should live.

<font color="#A7A49B" size="1">[ July 16, 2004 02:19 AM: Message edited by: a firestarter ]</font>

[star studded]

"Hullo."

The noise startled Lucy so much that she actually jumped. It wasn't the sound itself that made her flinch, but the brash insertion of it in the midst of the comfortable silence she was enjoying. Sprawled on Liliana's porch, soaking up the California sun, she had been using Lilana's copy of America: The Beautiful as a sort of canopy of shade over her face. Lowering the book to flatten across her stomach, she eyed the intruder with a squinting look, trying to discern his shape against the blaze of afternoon sun.

"Hey, Asher." Leaning back on elbows, she shifted herself, bones creaking against the harsh wood beneath her. She watched as he moved to prop himself beside her, staring out at the street and the California sky, eyes taking on that same sunny mid-afternoon squint.

"How are yew doing? Yew looked like yew were having fun last night."

"Fine. Yeah, I guess I had a good time. You were certainly tearing it up."

Asher's cheeks took on a rose flush, something that Lucy prided herself on being able to instigate in grown men. He shrugged a shoulder and said nothing in reference to his dance floor antics, leaning back beside Lucy. They were a lopsided Frankie and Annette sort of sunbathers, stretching out and intercepting rays graciously. Asher's skin was already turning a suede sort of color, the fair-skinned blonde absolutely jealous of the Brit's uncanny ability to roast without burning first.

"Charlie isn't much of a dancer, is he?"

"He's not much of an anything, really." She paused a moment, shaking her head. "That came out wrong.. I just meant.. you know, he doesn't do the whole socializing and dancing and being outgoing sort of thing. He doesn't take to it too well. He likes to be behind the scenes. He'd rather just watch. Or maybe he'd rather not be there at all, I don't really know."

"Why does he come, then? I mean, whenever we drag yew two out to do something outrageous, he always comes without a fight."

"I don't know." Shoulders deceptively lifted and fell. She knew. She knew perfectly well, but it was a secret she preferred to keep to herself.

"I just find it strange. How people who are so completely different are drawn to each other."

"Just look at you and Lani." Lucy mused with a loose-fitting grin, something she could wipe easily away when the conversation called for it.

"Yeh, like that. I wouldn't dream of going out on Saturday nights and dancing the night away if it weren't for her." The Brit's hand smoothed over his t-shirt, ironing out the folds that fell when he propped himself up on his elbows. "I don't think Charlie would be hanging out with war veterans either."

"Oh, I don't know about that. He may look twenty-three, but sometimes you'd swear he's sixty-five." She smirked to herself, while Asher's dry and contained laughter rose from a clear throat. She had always thought he looked, sounded, felt so much cleaner than the rest of their trio. "I heard you two had a bit of a.."

"Yeah."

"You know, I'm sorry if he said anything that was over the top. Sometimes he just gets really defensive, and if you strike a bad chord with him, he doesn't know how to handle--"

"Oh no. No no." Asher shook his head, the simple motion silencing her and tossing away all thoughts. "Actually, I was the one who should have just kept my mouth shut. I said some cruel things that I shouldn't have."

"I don't think that's necessarily true. I mean. It couldn't have been that bad." Her brain began filing back all of the nasty things she could remember saying to him, pressing stop on the playback loop when she simply couldn't take it anymore. "I just.. if he ever says something really awful, something that you find really offensive, he doesn't mean it. He has a short fuse sometimes. If you know the right places to hit."

"Yew don't have to defend him, Lucy." Asher was still staring out at the sparkle of cars driving past them. It was childlike, really, sitting on the porch in the middle of summer, having nothing to do, watching the glimmer of traffic like shooting stars in the middle of the day.

"I know. I just do it sometimes. It becomes habit. He'd do the same for me." There was a hopeful, questioning lilt at the end of her voice that reminded Asher of those childish questions you asked your parents. Why is the sky blue? Where do babies come from? Why don't I ever see Santa Claus?

Silence lingered, the rush of traffic actually soothing to both sets of ears. Lucy crooked a knee skyward with the thought that the closer she got her skin to the sun, the more of a tan she could acquire.

"So what did you guys talk about, then? He wouldn't tell me."

"Yew think I will?"

"Yes." She smiled with a crooked brow, waiting for the Brit to answer.

"Things. Loosening up. Gathering faith. God. The fact that all those who wander are not lost."

She nodded slowly, piecing together a patchwork of conversation, well aware of where the threads came loose and could tear into hostility on either side. Her head turned towards him again, looking over the profile of the man's face, a lazy sigh given.

"How are yew, really?"

"What?"

"I mean.. really."

"I'm.. fine?"

"Are yew sure?" The tone of the Brit's voice was so authentic and concerned that she began to question herself, beyond the surface of the white lie she fed Asher to keep him from worrying too much about affairs that were clearly not his own.

"Yeah, positive. Do you know something I don't?" She sat up completely, legs folded, arms resting on her thighs. The notches of a thin spine showed through, the stretch of her ribs thankfully less visible than it had been just months before.

Asher's hesitation to answer was unnerving, but he always had a sort of marked sincerity in his voice that made it impossible to be a flat lie. "No, of course not."

The silence that lingered between them was just another affirmation that Asher and Lucy both knew more than they cared to speak aloud.

[star studded]

<center>I know the story's getting old,
I know the time it takes to fall.</center>

California sun was high again, and they had all shipped themselves to the beach in hopes of making happy memories to take home with them.? Asher's eyes darted back and forth, watching Lani and River jump over waves before they crashed on shore, watching the rise and fall of Lucy's stomach as she feigned some sort of sleep on the other side of him, watching Charlie mull around in line for a lemonade he had heard Lucy ask for in a tone of voice that would not be denied.?

Her palms were turned face up, and it was because of this that he had a good look at the small, silver scars that ran from her wrist to the inside of her elbow.? They were veritable constellations of an addiction, past, he hoped.? For all of them.? Lazily, they both seemed to shift together, Lucy into a seated position, and Asher into prone, hands folded over his stomach, eyes closed to an overbearing sun.

"Do you ever wonder what it would be like to drown?"

Asher's eyes flickered open, his head lolling to the side.? "Wot?"

"You know.? If you just swam and swam and swam and then stopped swimming."

Sitting up, he drew his knees up, not quite to his chest and laced arms loosely around them, staring out at the ocean.? It was a clear blue/green color, much different from the murky color of the oceans he had seen.? He could have told her no.? He didn't worry about that sort of thing considering he already knew what it felt like to drown.? He already knew what it felt like to die.

"Not particularly.? Should I?"

"I don't know.? Sometimes I wonder what it would be like, you know?? To breathe in water."

"Not fun, I can tell yew that."? For some reason, this conversation was disturbing him, severely.? He didn't want to talk about this and he didn't want to listen to her talk about it.? He didn't want to stumble over explanations and reasoning, and he didn't want her to look at him like he was insane.

"Or jumping out of a window or something, or jumping off of a bridge.? Like.. what do people think about when they're doing that?? What are people thinking as they're falling?"

"I don't know."

"Or what it feels like to suffocate, I just.."

"Did yew and Charlie have a fight last night?"? He scrounged for anything to get her concentration on something other than this discussion.? Needing to avoid a conversation like that was something new -- he had always thought that he could talk about nearly everything.? Lucy gave him a sideways sort of glance, confused.? No one had been in the house, and she had been sure to act all sorts of normal the second anyone walked in.

"No.? Why?"? She replied, turning to stare back out at the waters, littered with bodies in eccentric colors.? They splashed and swam, submerged and reemerged like little bobbing toys in a bath.? She wanted to pull the plug.? That would be magnificent, draining the ocean and leaving everything stranded.

Asher refused to call her on her lie, simply because that would require him to explain why he knew the truth.? He'd have to ramble on about the way that static in his brain could be associated with certain people, the way that certain emotions were triggered when lines crossed and conflicts arose.? The way he was astutely sensitive to how people who were close to him (physically and emotionally) were feeling at all times.

"You didn't speak much to him all that night."

"We don't really speak much when it's not .. necessary."? It was like she was realizing this herself, a slow unravelling of details that she hadn't thought much about before.? Asher was running on a strange mix of static ticks and interference.. the tough thing about being in places like this was that everyone was so happy and carefree, and he despreately wanted to have a normal conversation.

He didn't quite understand the lack of communication between people.? Asher was a talkative person, he didn't quite see how you were content to just sit in silence with the person you were in love with, or the person you were spending the rest of your life with.? He would have rather talked about the decline of banana trees in the tropics than about nothing.? He didn't see how he and Lani would survive without conversations about nothing and everything.? Lucy shifted on the sand again, straightening out the corner of her towel, satisfied that her skin was no longer paper-white, but starting to roast to a satisfactory tan.

"Maybe yew should start?"? It was a tentative suggestion.? Whenever he spoke to Lucy he felt like he was feeding a lion through the bars of its cage, and if he didn't duck and cover quickly enough he'd lose a limb.

Maybe you should mind your own business.? "Yeah."

Asher could read both answers on her face.? He cleared his throat in an attempt to alleviate the settled tension, to ruffle the dust that he allowed to fall all around them in one brazen comment.?

"Why did yew ask me all those questions?? About like.. drowning and all that nonsense."

Her shoulders shrugged lightly, palms digging into the sand. "No reason."

"Yew aren't.."

"God, Asher no. Don't be stupid." She let out a dry laugh to the point where Asher actually expected sand to start billowing from her mouth. It was an eerie sort of mental image that he wished he could erase, choosing instead to focus out on the water again.

All the jumbled static made him unsure which parts were lies, and which parts were truths.