The Afterlife Chronicles

Chapter 1: Hazel Is Absolutely Fine

A/N: Hello! If anyone here has read my story Swimming Ducks, just know that this story is substantially... darker. I've been sitting on this plot for years now, and I'd like to try writing it and see where it goes.

Mild TW for mentions of eating and ab*se.

The day started like any other.
Grey.
There were no photo shoots or runways to do, just a Halloween party that evening that seemingly every model within the range of 100 miles or so had been invited to. I almost gagged at the idea- standing around with hundreds of other plastic Barbies, drinking overly-priced champagne and avoiding cameras and pretending to be happy. I wasn't sure what was worse: that, or walking along a plastic-lines runway in a garish little dress as men yelled all sorts of filth at me from every direction.
Ugh.
And yet again, I was just another pawn on a colossal board, my every move scrutinised, as if I were ever actually any use. As if I were ever actually going to amount to anything but just another name on a list. Just another face in your magazine. Just another plastic beauty. Because I wasn't going to amount to anything. One wrong move, one wrong look, and nobody would even question throwing me out of the game.
It seemed that even in sleep I was dreading the day, as I awoke with a clattering in my head loud enough that I could barely hear my alarm, and a sense of dread pooling deep in my stomach. I swallowed against it, brushing Raven-black hair from my face as teasingly inviting rays of sun tore through the curtains. But I couldn't go outside. I couldn't risk being seen without my armour.

I forced my tired eyes open against the exhaustion from another awful night's sleep, turning with a reluctant grunt to silence the dreadful beeping of my alarm. Grabbing the glass of water by my bed, I took grateful gulps, groaning again as my phone began to ring, it's ear-splitting noise, causing a wave of dread to wash over me. The name on the phone made my already-anxious brain threaten to consume me, and I gulped heavily as I braced for a conversation with my manager.

"Hazel! Morning, how are you?". I opened my mouth to answer but my manager, Emma, continued to talk before I could reply. "So today of course you have the Halloween party at Mulberry Manor, no costume, you've been sent some dresses to try on, those are your only options, I'm afraid. A stylist will pop over later to sort out your hair and makeup- I wouldn't be surprised if you need it. Any questions?". I bit my lip to refrain from cursing at her down the phone. I could hardly keep up with the rapid assault of words she was throwing at me. Taking a large breath in, I but my lip against the awful words I was tempted to yell at her.

"No, thanks, I'm all set."
"Okay then," she resumed, speaking so fast I was beginning to feel a headache nag at the sides of my head. "Oh, and Hazel?".

"Yeah?"

"Make sure you're not bloated later."

Before I could reply she'd hung up. I shook my head, rubbing my eyes and gulping the rest of my water. As if I weren't already dreading tonight, she somehow managed to make it worse. I ran my hands through my hair again, which was possibly the only thing I liked about myself, and the only thing that wasn't fake. I felt it slip down my back abs stroke the small of my back between my shoulder blades. It was long and dark, so dark it almost looked blue, and it ran halfway down my back. I'd been asked to bleach it many times, but I refused. I'd been told it made me look pale, too pale. But I refused to give up the one beauty I held onto. The one thing that wasn't plastic. It was the only thing in a fake world that I adored any more, and it became my strongest armour, but somehow my biggest weakness.

***
And this is how life went.
I would wake up and immediately be told I wasn't enough. As if I didn't already think it, it was forced at me from the moment I opened my eyes. I'd go about my days, do various photo shoots, avoiding cameras and smiling sadly at fans, poor young girls who were too young to be comparing their bodies to mine. I'd try on beautiful clothes that really just masked an ugly industry, and hide my face with layers of makeup so thick I looked like a doll.

It went like this since I first started modelling. I was forced into it, a sorry excuse for a teenager. I was shaky and anxious and a total wreck, but I still had life left in me. If you could even call it that. My father pushed me, told me that my good grades were worth nothing, that it was the only job I'd ever get. And I believed him. My writing, the one thing I cared about, was all destroyed. No room for makeup when your room is full of books. But I was rejected right away, and despite my almost total apathy for the industry, I was crushed. And as I tried out for more and more agencies, got told again and again I wasn't good enough, I lost what life I did have. And it was replaced by something much colder, much harder.

And I went through life life a robot. I let life pass me by, I waited for the next chance to cover myself in makeup and flaunt a body I wasn't proud of, my life and soul spilling out of me more and more with every pay check I earned. Before I knew it I had a house, a huge house. A huge lonely house with gorgeous marble floors and huge windows and nobody else in it. So then I had a boyfriend. Some guy I'd met at a celebrity party I couldn't possibly tell you the date of. I didn't love him, but he did the job in making the place a little less empty. And all the while I was earning more, and all the while each little sap of happiness was dripping out from me, squeezed out of me as my dresses got tighter and tighter and my soul got smaller and smaller.

That's when the numbness began to creep in, and suddenly I was alone, even with another face in the house. Every evening I would tell him lies, tell him I loved him and pretend to feel safe and secure whilst really trembling and trying not to cry. And every time he hit me I got more and more numb, and only when he got a job miles away did he leave. He met another plastic woman like me, and left me numb and alone again. And as ever bruised healed, as every wound closed, I almost felt worse.

So yes. Hazel was completely fine. Because I couldn't feel, so I suppose I couldn't be sad. Plus, behind all of the makeup and the lies and the covering up, it was near on impossible to tell that I was even human at all. Plus, I wasn't allowed to be anything but fine. It wasn't ladylike to cry. It wasn't ladylike to moan. It was ladylike to suck it up, put on a tighter dress and become one of the reasons teenage me lost her life.

Little did I know that I would lose life entirely that evening, and that it would make the the most alive I'd ever felt.