Claire Driscoll was seated on a bus, staring out the window as it sped down the freeway. She had a pair of headphones pulled tight over her ears, and nervously chewed her gum as she watched the landscape pass by at an exhilarating speed. Suddenly she felt the seat beside her shift, and glanced beside her just to see an older woman, probably mid 60s, seating herself and opening a small bag of crackers. The woman smiled at Claire, and Claire smiled politely back, then tugged one of her headphone cups off the ear facing the woman.
"Where are you going?" the woman asked. "Vegas," Claire said. "I was just out of town visiting my daughter," the woman said, smiling as she applied some peanut butter from a small tupperware onto a cracker and handed it to Claire, who happily took it; the woman ate one herself, then continued, "why are you going to Vegas? You look a little young to be traveling alone." "I'm 16," Claire said, nodding as she chewed, "I'm running away." "Running away from your family? Why?" Claire thought about that for a moment, and shook her head slowly. "Because sometimes that's what you have to do," she said, shrugging. "Do you have any other family? Anywhere to stay?" the woman asked, and Claire shook her head; the woman, her eyes so sad, her voice so low and shaky, followed up with, "...then how do you plan on being okay? You're just a child." "I'll be okay," Claire said, shrugging, taking another cracker, "I know how to survive." And that was the most Claire would ever divulge to someone about her past. Not even to her followers, not to the agents, nobody else would ever know about her past. Even now, telling her origins back to Agent Siskel, she didn't explain her childhood. Just her life after coming to Vegas. As Claire looked back out the window, at the empty desert beside the vehicle, she couldn't help but smirk. She'd look back on this day eventually with humor, knowing that she could've probably gone with that woman, been adopted and had a normal life But as Allie Meers also knew all too well, what fun was there in normality? *** Rachel St. Sebastian liked working with the dead. She found some sort of odd serenity in putting makeup on young beautiful dead women, but if there was one thing she liked more than that, it was applying makeup to living girls. Especially when she got to sit in their lap to do it, like she was doing just now. Claire was seated in a chair in front of Rachel's vanity, as Rachel, cigarette limply hanging from her coral painted lips, painted Claire's face with her makeup, applying eyeliner and mild blush. After a bit, Rachel pulled away and held Claire's face between her hands, admiring her work. "You have a fabulous jawline," Rachel said. "That's kind of a terrifying thing to be told by a mortician," Claire said, the both of them laughing. "Well," Rachel said, piercing her cigarette between two fingers and taking a long drag before tapping it on the edge of the ashtray on the table behind her, "a leader has to look good, and it's my job to make that happen. Charisma only gets you so far." Claire had had the compound opened for 3 months now, and had appointed Rachel her right hand man, something Rachel took a lot of pride in. Thusfar, recruitment had gone well. Turns out the ideas Claire had were ideas many others could easily believe in, and, as Rachel had told her, she was charismatic. And to think when she'd first arrived here in Vegas she had nothing to her name, and now she owned property. Course, a lot of that was thanks to the generosity of Rachel St. Sebastian. Rachel and Claire had met because Claire had been in the need of ether for her mental pains, and after meeting Rachel at small get together and finding out she was a mortician and knowing she'd have access to it, had swiftly hit her up about it. Rachel, definitely curious, agreed, and here they were now. Claire had been taking ether to help ease her poor mental health for a while now. She often used it to bring herself down from uncontrollable highs, or rise herself up from seemingly desperate lows. Regardless, she loved it, and Rachel kept her up to date with an endless supply. Partly out of sheer curiosity, and partly out of love, because much as she'd never admit it, Rachel was hopelessly addicted to Claire. Rachel had even put up a good chunk of the funds needed in order to purchase the compound, because she was that dedicated to what Claire believed in, and promised her. As she pulled away from Claire's face, chewing her thumbnail and admiring her work, she could feel her breath catch in her chest from looking at Claire's face under her soft bedroom lighting. "What is it? Are you done?" Claire asked. But Rachel didn't answer her, she just stared at Claire's brisk green eyes and felt herself lost within them. She wanted to put her cigarette down and lean in, push her fingers into Claire's deep orange hair and press her lips to hers. She wanted to tell Claire that they should leave the compound, just have a life somewhere far away from all of this. Just the two of them. She wanted all this...but she knew she could never ask. Suddenly she felt her cigarette ash onto her bare thigh and she winced. "Yeah," she said, "I'm done." *** Origins. Was is it about origins that drive people crazy. They always need a beginning to the story, Claire thought. Always had to have a starting point. Could never be dropped right in the middle of something. Infuriating, she thought, not just the need for closure but also the need for starters. So whenever anyone asked where Claire came from, she reached into her neverending bag of bullshit and pulled just one of her many varied origin stories for them. Sometimes she came from a wealthy family who neglected her for their work. Sometimes she came from a middle class family who had more than one child and decided she was the useless one. Sometimes she came from a poor family, and was so pressured to succeed that she couldn't handle the stress and instead fled. And sometimes she came from a perfectly normal family, with loving parents, and just needed to do something for herself. And the thing is, no matter what story she told them, they all bought it. Because she was just that good a liar. So Claire lied about where she came from, just as she had to that older woman on the bus on her way out here. And she'd continue to lie to anyone who would listen, except for Rachel St. Sebastian and, surprisingly, Allie Meers. Anytime Allie came and asked for advice, or they just chatted, Claire found herself being surprisingly open and honest with her. Perhaps she felt like they were kindred souls of some sort, both so charismatic they couldn't help but have people follow them blindly, even without wanting them to. And the thing was, Claire had read a lot about Allie, and she herself had never given a true origin story. She'd also always made things up in every interview, and Claire admired that. Here they were, two women desperate to escape their past and create a future, a future from which they could control everything around them. Except that was the thing Claire Driscoll was wrong about. Allie didn't want control like she did. Allie just wanted to be ignored outside of her work, and at this point, hell, she'd settle for being ignored entirely. Claire used others to get what she wanted, and Allie did what she did to protect those she cared about. They had their similarities, but they weren't the same. *** Rachel stood in the middle of the empty apartment, nervously smoking a cigarette, her leg shaking furiously, tapping her heel on the old hardwood floor. Claire was sitting on the one singular chair she'd brought in and was staring at the black bag lying between them, covering a body. Rachel knew she should say something, but what does one say in a situation such as this? "Why?" Rachel finally asked, glancing at Claire, her eyes watering. "Because they...they wouldn't listen to me," Claire mumbled, "they wouldn't listen, no matter what I told them, and they had to see it for themselves. See what I was saying. I had to prove to them it was all real." Claire, at this point, had been off her medication for weeks, and while Rachel had been concerned, she'd never once considered she might do something like this. She just didn't seem like she had the capacity for murder within her. Rachel nodded, took a long drag from her cigarette and looked back down at the black bag, shaking her head slowly. "You're a mortician, you can do something," Claire said, "A paupers grave or something. Nobody would ask questions." "They didn't have family, it's true," Rachel replied, "that will make disposing of them infinitely easier." What the actual fuck was she saying? She couldn't even believe the words coming from her lips. But...she looked back over at Claire, crying and burying her face in her hands, and she felt this almost innate need to protect her. To do whatever it took to keep her safe and free. Rachel put her cigarette out and walked across the room, kneeling in front of the chair and putting her hands on Claire's knees, catching her off guard. Claire looked up, their eyes meeting and Rachel smiled warmly to ease her fear. She reached up and petted Claire's face with her palm. "It'll be okay," she said, "We'll take care of it, okay? That's...that's what we do. We take care of it." Claire nodded, turning her head and pushing her cheek into Rachel's palm, making Rachel's heartbeat quicken. Rachel wanted so bad, again, to just kiss her. To prove to her that she'd do whatever it took to keep her safe. To hold her and save her from this cruel world that seemed so determined to destroy women, or make women destroy themselves. But she didn't do any of that. She just looked into Claire's eyes, patted her face and repeated herself. "We take care of it," she whispered. And take care of it she did. First she embalmed them, right there in the apartment, to ensure the stink didn't tip anyone off, and then together they put them in the wall. And then when it happened again, they did it again. And it continued to repeat, until Rachel finally couldn't take it anymore, and though she continued to help, after it was over, she'd go home and she'd sit at her kitchen table and she'd drink coffee and just stare at the wall. What the hell did she get herself involved in? She'd listened to Claire because she'd sounded so sure about the answers to eternally unanswerable questions, and now here she was just killing people who didn't understand her. She wasn't a martyr. She was a monster. And Rachel St. Sebastian loved her more than anything in the world. *** "Nobody else has come," Claire said into the phone, sitting on the other side of the plexiglass window; she took a long inhale and then followed up with, "unsurprisingly, given what I did. I don't think anyone will ever want anything to do with me again. Except maybe you...you came." "Of course I came," Rachel said, sitting there in her hawaiian shirt, the top two buttons undone and the necklace Claire had given her for her birthday dangling between her collarbones, she added, "you know I'd always come. How are they treating you?" "I mean, it could be worse," Claire said, "I'm being given nicer treatment than one would expect. How are you doing?" Rachel stared through the window for a long minute, just looking into Claire's eyes, and finally exhaled. "I'm scared," she finally said. "I'm scared too," Claire replied, "this whole situation is-" "No, not of the situation, of you," Rachel said, catching Claire by surprise; Rachel continued, no longer looking her in the face, smirking out of sheer uncomfortableness as she spoke, "you terrify me. You send chills through me. I...I didn't know you were willing to do these sorts of things, and now that you have...and involved me in them...I feel so...gross. Like you used me. And I wanted you to like me so much that I let you." "I'd never just use you, Rachel," Claire said, sounding the most sincere Rachel had ever heard, "Never ever. You're the...the only person I've ever really trusted in my whole life. You're everything. I hated bringing you into that mess, but you were the only one who'd ever been there for me, and I-" "How can I believe that? I don't know anything about your past. You won't even tell me the truth, Claire. You could have rich parents who could spring you from this in a matter of seconds, and I'd never know. So how do I know I'm the only one who's ever been there for you?" Claire took a long deep breath, leaned back and lowered her voice. "...I never told you because you never asked," she said softly, "but if you want to know...if that's what it would take..." Rachel's eyes widened in sheer surprise. She hadn't expected Claire to genuinely offer up her origins, and she was right. Rachel had never asked. She'd just...sort of listened to all the variations Claire had come up with and known they were all bullshit, but she'd never broached the subject herself, likely out of sheer respect for Claire's privacy. But they were far past the point of privacy now. "...you don't have to tell me," Rachel said, smiling, "the mere fact you were willing to proves what we have is real." Claire smiled back and nodded slowly. Rachel put her hand on the plexiglass window, as did Claire, and they smiled at one another. No more words had to be said. They were in this to the bitter end together. But that didn't mean Rachel was entirely thrilled about it. There's a big gap between admiration and obligation. The day Claire was arrested, Rachel was watching it on the TV, standing in her mortuary backroom, smoking. She couldn't believe her eyes. It was over. It was all over. Claire would maybe get the help she needed, and she knew Claire wouldn't turn Rachel over, so she had nothing to fear for herself. Amazing how love and fear go hand in hand sometimes. Rachel now finally understood all those articles she read while waiting for embalmings to be finished about women trapped in toxic relationships. Still...she couldn't help but feel responsible. But hell, for the moment, for this one brief moment of respite... ...she felt relief. *** "So," Claire said, "you wanted to know what brought me here, how I did it, all that, and I feel as though I've thoroughly provided that information now. You intend to do anything with it, or?" "I think you can help me," Agent Siskel said, "Claire..." Claire and Agent Siskel locked eyes, and Agent Siskel smirked. "...how would you like to be out of here?"
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Allie Meers is what she dreamed of being since she was a little girl...a successful Vegas magician. The only problem now is she can't make all her problems disappear; Allie grapples with her strained relationship, crippling addictions and FBI agents on her tail, all while trying to stay at the top of her career. Archives
December 2023
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