The Nutshell
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The Nutshell

The Nutshell is a creative collective under the government of Holly-Rose and Hannah-Rose with ODD and SPONTANEOUS tamperings by Logie-Bear; made up of writers, musicians, and artists. Here teacups are rife and insanity is always technicoloured.
 
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wretchedkisses
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PostSubject: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeMon 29 Sep 2008 - 12:12

Pretty much the only short story I've ever independently started and finished.
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As I stubbed out my ciggie on the scarred desktop, I looked up at the current figure of authority, and smirked. Flipping her off, I proceeded to pick up my satchel and head to the door. Scanning the primly-dressed room, mouths cleaning the floor in shock, I paused long enough to give them one last pop quiz, a riddle to which their textbooks could never give an answer: “Which is worse? That I’m everything you wish you were, or that I’m everything you know you will never be?”

Three days later, they found my body.

I was dragged, kicking and screaming into this world, January 24th, 1967. My grandma likes to tell this story about how I saved myself from falling off the hospital weighing table by letting go with this blood-curdling scream that caught the nurse’s attention in time for her to catch me. I don’t know if its true or not – Gran’s best friend went by the name Johnny Walker – but if it is, then the only time I was ever able to save myself was when I was less than 10 minutes old.

Gran and her stories were about the only constants I ever had. They got top billing, right above the supporting cast of disappointment, drugs and delusion in the movie of my life. The three Ds. The irony was, that even as much as my life sucked, I still got better marks in living than I ever did from school.

In May 1985, I was walking the knife edge between a future and the endless abyss, just as so many junkies had before me. And, like most of them on the Strip, I was doing it in thigh-high stiletto boots. The only thing that kept me moving forward was the thought that somehow always cut through my haze; what if I truly was the living embodiment of chaos theory? I had heard some bespectacled geek lecture about it once at Berkeley. I was never a student there, I was just fucking a guy who did, and we’d tagged along to a lecture because that’s where our dealer was. We went to get our next fix, so I must’ve been coming down a bit at the time, because I was able to focus on what was being said. Something clicked, and everything this geek explained made sense. It was about the only thing I ever took away from school. That, and why I’d never be like the other girls in the Valley.

I philosophised a lot in my sober hours. And in my high hours. In all my hours, really. My contemplations usually took the form of poetry. Some original, some regurgitated from a faded volume that was the only possession I’d inherited from my grandfather. I wrote it down everywhere, as if I was trying to mark my place in the sands of time with bad rhymes and indelible ink. Toilet stalls, the pavement. Once I even wrote on the pale alabaster leg of a junkie, my words at home amongst the puckered scars of his collapsed veins. They seemed such a stark contrast: my words full of hope and his lifeblood, literally giving up inch by inch.

I wrote on all topics. Love, life. Drugs and destruction. The art of escapism – both literal and figurative. It was something I’d perfected in my short life. A predisposition towards it helped.

I escaped from San Fernando in 1984, in the passenger seat of a Porsche. My hair was jacked up, my eyeshadow blazed in three different colours and my mouth was wrapped around the lap of a lead singer. I was living the high life; literally. His name was Ben, but everybody called him Zeus. It suited him, now that I think about it. He had a god complex to rival Nikki Sixx. Zeus saved and condemned me with the same hand. By leaving the Valley, I found all I thought I could ever want: sex, drugs and rock n’ roll.

But when you make a deal with the Sunset Strip, you forget to read the fine print. I got what I asked for, but I never specified how much. I was never much good at specifics. My failure to quantify is what eventually led to my grandmother finding me, overdosed on the bathroom floor: a need le still in the vein, rubber tubing on the floor and my soul already on its way to make good with the devil.

When I had left with Zeus, I thought he’d take care of me. Then I woke up to the definition of that belief – naïvete .
To him, I was just another piece of ass; part of the rotating groupie smorgasbord that decorated the Strip. So I passed from band to band for a while. Getting drugs and booze, and being used. I threw myself into it with a passion. Why not? I literally had nothing else to do. From time to time, I’d get busted by the cops. Spend a night in a cell and then be shifted back to San Fernando to my grandmother’s place. She’d clean me up, let me live there as long as I chose. She never tried to make me stay. I guess she’d had enough of that sort of grief with my mother.

Betty, my mom, was gorgeous. A total belle; she could have done anything she wanted. Too bad all she wanted was free love and dope. She slept around a lot, and one of those free-spirited affairs resulted in me. She stayed just long enough for them to cut the cord, and then she was off on another adventure. The last time I heard from her was exactly a week before I left with Zeus. A postcard to Gran, signed ‘Fern’. No mention of me, ‘til the postscript: “Say hi to her.” I saw red. All that postcard said to me was that the women knew where I was and nothing more. I decided then and there that that was too much for her to know. That was the first time I left.

Each time I got dragged back to Gran’s, I’d be in worse shape than before. I don’t really know for sure what drove me, what made me so hell-bent on my own demise, though I thought about it often enough. Perhaps I saw too much of her when I looked in the mirror. Gran always said I had her eyes. Or maybe her absence had just left such a big hole in my life that I needed something, either to fill it or blow it wide open.

I filled it with men, for a while. They were only a temporary fix, but the real detractor that eventually moved me on was the ego trip. The men of the LA underbelly required way more attention than I was prepared or equipped to dole out. Next on my list of sinful explosives was the liquid warmth of booze. I preferred vodka, but the amount of he-men around meant that the only option (in any sort of oblivion-inducing quantity) was Jack Daniels. I learned the easiest ways to steal a fifth, not all of them pretty and not all of them easily conducive to walking, but they all worked. I’d drink myself into a stupor and pass out praying to whoever deigned to listen that I never wake up.

I’d tried all manner of drugs on my quest for the final fix-it, but when I tied off and sunk my first hit of Persian heroin, I stopped looking. The mellow feeling was better than sex. I made the decision right there and then that I’d keep doing it ‘til it killed me. After all, that was my end goal, and if it was going to take a while then I might as well feel fan-fucking-tastic during the process.

Whenever I turned back up at the Valley, Gran would make me go to school. I worked out that if I stayed for homeroom, I could get marked present and then ditch for the rest of the day. So that’s what I did on my last day of school. After mouthing off at the teacher, I escaped school and hit the Dime store. The Dime store was really just the carpark of a 7-11, where punked-up kids sold dime bags of pot. I’d buy a couple with my lunch money, then head a couple of blocks south where I could trade said goodies for a brick of tar. If I was feeling good and the punk boys were feeling generous I could usually score a couple of ‘ludes in exchange for a lapdance. On this day, they didn’t just give me the pills – I scored an eightball too. I’d never injected the mixture of heroin and cocaine myself, but I’d seen plenty on the Strip do it. Better than sex, Tommy Lee called it. He’d know.

I tied off and shot up in the parking lot and then tore off home on the first rush of euphoria. Back home, I glammed up. The whole nine yards.Leather boots, matching skirt. Hair that Axlwould’ve died for. Nails blood red, sapphire eyeshadow. I wanted to look my best. Right before I was about to leave for the bus back home to the Insatiable Circus, I hit up the eightball.

Pleasure fizzed along my nerves as the high and the mellow battled it out for control over my senses. My eyes danced – I’d never felt this good. Shivery anticipation wrapped itself around my skeletal frame and my sunken eyes found sparkling reflections in the mirror. I wanted more, but all I had was smack. It’d have to do.

I tied off and sunk another 200ccs into the only open vein my arm had to offer. Even for a hardcore junkie like me, it was too much.

Under within seconds, my eyes rolled back in my head.

Heart beat rapidly increased before the adrenaline strangled my pulse.

Time of death: 18 years old.
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wretchedkisses
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PostSubject: Re: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeSat 11 Oct 2008 - 12:03

Crit my story, dangit!!
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Logiebear
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PostSubject: Re: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeSat 11 Oct 2008 - 22:00

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Very VERY good.

I like the gritty nature and sheer determination of the character to end herself. The fact that she is only 18 makes it more shocking and increases the grittiness of the whole piece.

Nice use of slang and druggie jargon too.

Ooh just noticed one thing: 3rd to last line "under within seconds, my eyes rolled back into my head"

apart from that though, well done!
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wretchedkisses
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PostSubject: Re: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeSat 11 Oct 2008 - 22:55

Thanks! What do you mean about the under line?
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Logiebear
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PostSubject: Re: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeSun 12 Oct 2008 - 0:05

"under within seconds"

Doesn't make sense. Could be just me though.
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wretchedkisses
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PostSubject: Re: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeSun 12 Oct 2008 - 1:01

As in under the infuence within seconds..?
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Logiebear
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PostSubject: Re: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeSun 12 Oct 2008 - 1:32

ohhhhhhhhhhhh k got it. Sorry bout that
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wretchedkisses
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PostSubject: Re: Untitled   Untitled Icon_minitimeMon 13 Oct 2008 - 0:17

All good - I want it to be understandable, haha!
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