Synesthesia

prologue: Black Dahlia

Listen to Black Dahlia by Hollywood Undead
*trigger warning: abuse and self harm mentions

Azalea Jackson wasn't a girl with her life planned out. There were plenty of things she wanted to do. It was just that most of them weren't easily achieved when you have a boyfriend, no, ex now, that gets off on beating the living shit out of you, selling you to other men, and then buying you expensive gifts that were somehow supposed to make up for it. But those days were done. For good. Marcus was in jail for the next 20 years. By then, Azalea could be across the country. Or dead. She couldn't really care less. As long as she was away from Marcus. But for now, until she had a little more money, her tiny studio apartment in Los Angeles was gonna have to do. She was her own person now, she didn't belong to him. She wasn't an object anymore. Three months ago, when she was finally freed from Marcus controlling everything she did, she decided to look like her own person. She got a tattoo, several silhouettes of crows dancing around her wrist. She found it funny how similar the tattoo needle felt to the razor that used to kiss her wrists every night, the memories she was trying to hide. She got her nose pierced. She got a job as a waitress at a fancy restaurant . It wasn't much, but it paid the bills. She spent her weeknights waiting tables and her weekends drinking and smoking until she couldn't see and making out with strangers whose names she didn't even bother to learn. She liked the thrill of it all, living the way she wanted to live, and feeling like a twenty two year old again. Until she met Josh Tanner.