Never Let Them Define You

PUTTING ON A SHOW | ACT 3 |

"I just pretend to know what I'm doing." She laughs weakly while everyone else howls.

"Oh, you devil," says a round man with a cheeky face, "you undersell yourself; you're brilliant!" He laughs and leans in for a kiss and a hug.

She backs up and makes an embarrassed face. "Sorry, we don't do that here."

"Oh, you Americans are no fun, all business; you gotta loosen up."

"I've been told that before; not all Americans are so tight-assed."

He cackles. "Well, you do have a tight ass."

"You wouldn't know a tight ass if it married you." Everybody else laughs as she walks away through the sea of lively businessmen, performers, and athletes. Who would come to an event like this? It's torture, you have to be so snide and cynical, constantly try to get things out of people richer than you, and just be a stain on decency and reason. Then there's always an afterparty where the devilish nature of these half-people comes out and makes a mockery of all the 'good business practices' they're so proud of. As she continues through the crowd, it gets tighter and tighter, making her have to slide through and dance around people woven tighter than a cheesecloth.

She starts shoving people aside as she makes her way further into the mess, with their angry voices following her, and the scornful looks driving deep into her soul.

"Who do you think you are?" shouts a man she pushes.

"Why are you in such a hurry?" asks a woman.

"Where do you think you're going?" asks a suit that grabs her by the arms and yanks her backwards, then stares into her eyes while the pattern of uniformed people shifts rapidly around them.

"I have to get to-"

"That was rhetorical...I know damn well where you're going." He grabs her by the face and shoves her down into the ground, then everything goes black, and she emerges from the bed sheets covered in sweat.

"What the hell?" she mutters, then holds her face for a moment, and glances at the alarm clock. Five A.M....whatever, I'm already awake, and I'm not tired. She pulls herself out of bed and immediately makes her way to the kitchen, where she yanks a mostly empty bottle of whiskey from the fridge, and places it on the counter. She stares blankly at the sink for a moment, looking at the faint reflection of moonlight on the faucet, then shakes her head, and rubs her eyes. She pours a bit too much alcohol into a cup, then starts an unhealthy amount of espresso, and just stands there.

She wavers slightly as she stares into the barely visible brick wall in front of her, not making out the material, and hardly noticing the wall at all. After waves of steam blow into her face, her eyes shoot wide open, and she looks down at the machine. When a few moments have passed, she blinks several times, then pours the drink into the cup, and stumbles over to the couch. I killed someone; not just someone, someone I'd been in love with, and fallen out of love with but not told him. She takes a sip of her catatonic mixture, which she responds to with a reasonably disgusted face, and then takes another swig.

She takes a long whiff of the drink, taking in the woody notes of the aroma, and takes another sip to really process the flavor. Alongside the wood taste, lives a bit of chocolate, and just the slightest hint of citrus. She swishes the liquid around in the cup for a bit, watching it swirl, and the way the moonlight reflects off this catches her eye again. The way the espresso moves around choppily, different sections of it smashing against itself, brings her into the cup in a way. A memory, a feeling, an apparition; something that sits before her looks into her.

"Of course you'd drink that," says dad.

"I am your daughter after all."

He laughs dryly. "So mature of you; used to tell people I was an alien."

She smiles and rolls her eyes. "I was a kid."

"Of course you were...made me mad while you said but I laughed my ass off afterwards. 'My daughter thinks I'm from another planet,' I thought."

"I've always had an imagination."

"That's right." He chuckles, then says in a harsh, worn-out inflection, "How could you do this to me?"

"What?" She gulps.

"What, sweetie?"

"You...I don't know, never mind." She doesn't look up from the drink, just stares deeper into it.

"You didn't care!"

"No, I-"

"Who do you think you are? This is my right! My job! You can't take it from me, I won't let you! You're just a stupid girl, no one cares about you." He lets out a gravelly, booming cackle and coughs harshly. "If you died, no one'd come running."

"How could you say that?" she asks in an exasperated, girly voice as the walls feel like they're closing around her. After a second of trembling with her eyes closed, nothing happens, and she looks up from the drink to see no one else in the room and the walls in their regular places. She takes a long, drawn-out, shaky breath and chugs her cup, then grabs her sketchbook, and begins to draw a scratchy picture of her father. She captures him with chaotic lines that make him seem unreal and more like a memory than a portrait. What a piece of shit...blamed me for everything, took responsibility for nothing, and walked away from it all without hesitation.

Not even ONE admission of guilt or ANYTHING before he died and it's not like I didn't go OUT OF MY WAY to see him, I took care of him at times, and I blamed him for a lot of things but he was responsible for a lot of things! When you become a father, you have certain responsibilities that you don't have as a bachelor, and I can't even begin to list them all. I can list all the responsibilities he actually DID, though, he helped give birth to me for one, he helped give me home and food for a while, and that's it! I wish I could go back in time now and see him as an adult... She puts down her pen and the sketchbook on the table, leaving the drawing half-finished, then gets up and goes to the nightstand by her bed.

She slides open the drawer and grabs out her notepad, then flips through it as she walks back to the couch, and slowly makes her way to the end of it. I can't believe I'm nearly done with this whole thing, or that it's been almost a year since I started. Despite Josephine having her ugly head reared at all times, I still think I've done the best I could, and it's an honest work; that's something, right? Her head drops and she sighs, feeling the weight of the responsibility that's been put upon her. I wish it wasn't so hard, that it made sense, that it just-

She starts sobbing profusely, which she tries fighting to no avail, and falls to her side and curls up weakly.

"It's almost time for the show!" shouts the disembodied voice of an ecstatic man.

"No," she whispers."

"What's that? I can't hear you!" The audience laughs maniacally and cheers her on sadistically. "Come on, Sandy, GET THE HELL UP!"