𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐞 | machine gun kelly

⸻ ACT I, PHASE ONE

HE LOOKED AT ME, HIS DARK eyes blurred with the dusk of liquor and weed. He was so high, being next to him felt more dangerous than it had ever did before. He reeked of booze and cologne and dozens of cigarettes. His thick fingers reached under the skirt of my knee high dress and rested on top of my thighs, clenching my skin every few seconds. The lights in the studio were hazy, trippy. The reds mixed with the yellows reflecting off of the walls and the crisp black sound equipment on the wooden floors. We were waiting. 

He had called me that day, asking me to come to his studio in that blunt tone he always had when he was sober, a tone that demanded of the world more than it could give to someone so least deserving. I remember flinching on the phone, a smile plastered onto my face, trying to convince my friends that it was just a love call from my boyfriend, when it was anything but love in my boyfriend's tone. He said he wanted to introduce me to someone, a rapper friend of his with whom he was doing a song. Candy, the song was called. 

The details, the name of the other rapper, they were a blur of anxiety in my mind. A string with multiple knots I could not straighten out. I've had so much of introductions with Trippie Redd's friends that I shiver to hear of more. They were all more or less like him. Their words tainted with snide remarks, their eyes so cruel and their lips always chewing sticks of joints with breaths that reeked of pot. Sitting in this foreign studio, one that belonged to the other rapper since it was his song Trippie was going to collaborate on, my feet softly tapped the floor in silent prayer.

If I could just quicken time, make hours pass by like seconds, life would be so much more bearable. 

We waited, until a sleek car could be seen from the glass windows of the studio, coming to a stop at a small distance from the studio entrance. A shiny black car that looked almost silver in this evening light of Los Angeles. The sun had just set, the sky was bluing, darkening, like ink dropped in water. 

The fingers on my left thigh clenched tightly and I winced, my head turning to look at my boyfriend, the rapper Trippie Redd. The tatted cross of his forehead stuck out at me, my eyes falling to his dreadlock covered dark eyes after. 

"I want you behaving like a valuable gem," He husked slowly, a maniac-esque smile painted on his face, "Impress my friend, yeah?" 

A valuable gem. Impress my friend. 

Everything that meant along the lines of do what you are asked. He took pride in me, I knew that. He thought I was beautiful enough to tempt his friends, and he always wanted to use that. I had heard one or two of them take Trippie to a corner ask to 'borrow' me for a night. He'd refuse, but he'd laugh and laugh.

It was joy to him, this game he played. I was his girlfriend under the guise of his secretary, but he had made me 'his' so much more and I was powerless to stop him. This act I had to perform, please him, serve him, it earned me money. Money that my single mother and the orphan she adopted, were in desperate need of. My needs meant nothing in front of theirs, I would walk the path to hell back and forth for them. 

"Yes," I responded, forcing a smile on my face. 

"Good girl," He leaned in and placed his wet lips on the side of my cheeks, before backing away. No pucker, no sound. A kiss that I had learned to accept. A kiss that meant nothing to me. 

Suddenly, sounds of chatter came closer, punctuated by footfalls of a party of more than two. The door of the studio room we sat in, opened, and in poured four people. It was the fourth we had been waiting for, I could tell. I instantly recognized him from the countless magazine covers and interview snippets I had seen online.