Fall - Prequel

01. A Girl Walks Into a Bar

Look pretty and act dumb.

That's what my mother told me when I was ten. It was easy for her to say that, considering she had an IQ of zero and plenty of bad Botox to go right along with it. She looked more constipated than pretty, but I would never tell her that. I may have killed a handful of people, but I wasn't that mean. I did have a conscience, even if it was guilty most of the time.

My mother was always whispering those five words into my ears whenever she found the opportunity to. Look pretty and act dumb. She thought that was the only way to get ahead in this godforsaken world. If you have a pretty face, you're already one step ahead of everyone else. Unfortunately, no one ever told my mother that there will always be someone prettier and better than you. No one can win forever. We all have to take a loss at some point.

My mother was right about one thing, though. People like looking at nice things, but even more than that, they like feeling like they're superior to the rest of the world. It all comes down to money, intelligence, and appearance. If you're not chasing one thing, it's the other.

Instead of chasing a paycheck, I was blowing the last one I had... at a strip club in New York. I figured that since I was lacking on the intelligence part of the equation, I might as well balance the rest of it out. I was wasting money left and right and ruining my appearance day in and day out.

It started off with a few bad tattoos here and there, but now my hair was drowned out in cheap blue dye. My mother would've had a heart attack if she saw me looking this way. Her perfect, little daughter wasn't so perfect anymore. Not that I ever really was.

The only thing perfect about me was my perfect tendency to screw things up. I wasn't capable of much, but there was one thing I was always capable of. Disappointing people. Disappointing myself.

I guess that's why I ended up in a place like this. A cheap strip joint where the only clientele were old men and drug addicts looking for a quick fix. It was stereotypical really. Druggies looking to snort coke off a stripper's tits. Unfortunately for them, there was a strict no touching policy here. You could look, but you couldn't touch. Unless you paid a lot of money. Everyone knew what was going on behind closed doors. I mean, there were beds in the VIP rooms for a reason...

If I'd been just a little more risque, I would've tried my hand at stripping. My itty bitty titties probably wouldn't have fetched much anyway. Not with every blonde bombshell that had bazooka boobs in this place. They looked like blow up dolls and I was hoping they would pop like a deflated boom. Pop! Goes the weasel...

I couldn't help but think that I looked dumb sitting alone in facility like this. I probably didn't even look pretty anymore. Maybe pretty pathetic, but that's about it really. I felt like Miss Pitiful, throwing myself a pity party. Alas, I was the only guest at this sad little gathering. I couldn't even stand my own company anymore.

After everything that happened, I went on a downward spiral. I dyed my hair blue, got a tramp stamp, picked up a smoking habit, and developed quite the taste for alcohol. I was going down the wrong path, but I never had the guts to stop and turn around. It was easier to drown my sorrows in alcohol then it was to wallow in them sober.

This was the fourth bar I'd been to in one night. I was getting tired of my drunken rendezvous, but thinking about going home made me sicker than the alcohol ever did. Home was hell and I knew that I would get burned if I ever went back. I couldn't handle it then and I sure as hell couldn't handle it now.

People in small towns always have something to say. They always talk and they never stop talking. You could literally put a gag in their mouth and they would learn sign language just so that they could keep talking shit. It was enough to make me stay away, but sometimes I felt guilty for packing up and leaving.