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calla RP Tutor 2,121 POSTS Pronouns: she/they last seen Apr 19, 2024 20:57:56 GMT -5 just a litle creacher	calico page. capitol. fin Nov 11, 2019 2:05:11 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by calla on Nov 11, 2019 2:05:11 GMT -5 C a l i c o P a g e twenty-four probably capitolite popstar extraordinaire ~~a household name with a drinking problem~~ surprise surprise calla's back with even more angst
	Last Edit: Nov 23, 2019 18:26:28 GMT -5 by calla ⇀ tracker ↼ ⇀ 2024 upat ↼

calla RP Tutor 2,121 POSTS Pronouns: she/they last seen Apr 19, 2024 20:57:56 GMT -5 just a litle creacher	calico page. capitol. fin Nov 11, 2019 2:29:38 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by calla on Nov 11, 2019 2:29:38 GMT -5 paint your nails in gold to hide the ichor caked beneath them. ( devotion was never meant to be a bloodless art. ) — blood for blood \| m.
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calla
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just a litle creacher

calico page. capitol. fin Nov 21, 2019 23:04:55 GMT -5

Post by calla on Nov 21, 2019 23:04:55 GMT -5

"We're changing things up." Cadmus says at 10:37 am, pulls out half a dozen sketches and lays out his dog-earred collection of concepts.

Meliora actually squeals.

But she's always been a little jittery, the epitome of a publicist, flitting from project to project like she's living off of ipecac and pixie sticks.

She picks up the top sketch and slides it across the table to me, taps the inlaid panel to shuffle through her playlist until the new demo starts playing.

I can practically feel my ears start bleeding.

“It’s perfect,” she sighs and traces a nail over the design, waits for an agreement, but I can barely hear her over the sirens and automated moaning that comes blaring through the speakers.

"What do we think, sweetheart?” She asks all sickly sweet, drawing her vowels out like taffy, "Thoughts?"

She likes to pretend I have a say in this.

The world could end, fire and brimstone and we'd all be the same, standing at an altar, stuck in snapshots of two-four time. I was an hour late to our new album meeting, fell face-first into the conference room because I had to dig myself out of a pile of sin first.

"It's a murder orgy." I tell her flatly, picking up the vision of tangled bloodied limbs and what looks like pieces of bedazzled keeper uniforms.

Cadmus just pats my shoulder reassuringly. "It's pig's blood."

But then the door creaks open and Linus saunters in, our famed producer, our head honcho, our never ending cash flow. The whole team starts gushing again, even though he's a whole twenty minutes later than I was. "Wife thought her water broke," he says, some kind of bullshit excuse, and sits across from us, "you know how it is." Cadmus just nods and tuts to himself, starts debating the price difference of trying to find bagged blood or just buying a live pig and gutting it on his own.

I try not to look at them, focus on Meliora flipping through a book of animal hide swatches instead. She oohs and ahhs and holds the prints up to my face every few seconds, nose eventually scrunching up when she finds a mottled snake skin. It's a designer label that look like someone threw up on it, and for once, I think I agree with her.

The song stopped at some point, or maybe it just faded out, and I can feel the toe of Linus's dress shoe creep it's way up my leg like some kind of crawler vine. My knee jerks up against the table, disrupts the papers laid out, and I can feel him looking at me now, can see Meliora get up and hear "Oh, honey, careful, you'll bruise. Let me see, okay? Should I call someone?”

Except I'm standing so suddenly, chair flying back, that her eyes get wide.

Someone mutters something under their breath, too quiet to be rude, “Is he alright?”, too loud to be a whisper, and that means it's probably Linus.

My throat hurts.

Meliora blinks a few times, smiles gentler now, but it's forced and I can can see the blue lipstick on her teeth, can tell that she's trying not to spook me. “Don’t forget, you’re meeting with that fancy new lyricist tonight.”

And before I can tell her about the appointment I have with pulled curtains and a bed, her finger is across my lips, “I’ll send over an outfit.”

When she lets me go, I leave the room and empty my stomach in one of the fake plants by the front desk.

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calla
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just a litle creacher

calico page. capitol. fin Nov 22, 2019 0:31:04 GMT -5

Post by calla on Nov 22, 2019 0:31:04 GMT -5

The rose petals floating in the lobby pool remind me of my mother, of eccentric old money and grand staircases and a dozen empty rooms.

They remind me of when I helped her dye her hair with tomato juice and vinegar in the galley sink after Patricia Valfierno won the Sixty-Eighth. Or of my first performance, lip syncing against a pole in some crimson club and how she said she’d never been prouder.

She was my date to some red carpet event two years ago. Maybe three. We went to one of the second street clinics the night before and I paid upfront for the rib removal she'd always wanted, the kind of silhouette she said only superstars had.

She had wasted her money on dance lessons and private tutors and voice coaches, let me play dress-up in high collars, just so I could make cheap club songs.

She deserved something nice.

And she was so excited, got to show her new waist off to her book club while barely breathing in eighteen-inch belts, bragged about how her baby boy was out in the limelight singing about blowjobs and bloodlust over a copy of Polyamory in Panem.

She always knew I'd be a star, just like she always knew it was her third husband who’d be the one.

He tried to call me once, her newest fling, he thought that just because he was shacked up with my mother, that he ran some fancy lounge, he could call me his son and I’d play there for free. I remember tossing my transmitter off the balcony before he could even finish asking.

Meliora gave me shit for that one, said she couldn't get ahold of me and showed up at my door all flustered. Some mutt company rep had sent a bejewelled python to the office and it had started squeezing one of the interns. There was a card that smelled like raw meat too, had Ruby xoxo in fancy crimson lettering, but we couldn't tell if it was the name of the snake or the sender. I figured it fit either way.

Meliora thought it'd be real sexy to have her in a show, except I could tell the poor baby had stage fright when the lights went down and she coiled up tight around my waist.

I brought her to lunch with Amorette once, my half-sister from mom’s second marriage, and we both cackled when Ruby's tongue flicked out from under the tablecloth and the waiter passed out right in our pompe à l'huile.

And it felt like old times, because the three of us, Mom, Amorette and I, we still spend Ratmas together in some fifteenth floor restaurant, but it's all a little different, a little out of focus and fuzzy around the edges.

I'd only ever scraped my knees on velvet before I started tripping over storm drains and falling from open windows. Something had slowly twisted, flashed in the dark, and I learnt how to live just under the glitz and glamour, in the rot, making out with polaroids and yearbook photos. I spent too long in too many places, lost track of how to live properly. When early mornings came, I cracked open a bottle and watched something that tasted like youth spill across my skin.

I'd never felt more alive then when I was dying like that.

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calla
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just a litle creacher

calico page. capitol. fin Nov 23, 2019 16:55:16 GMT -5

Post by calla on Nov 23, 2019 16:55:16 GMT -5

I got my first record deal at seventeen.

It was at this karaoke bar, someone's birthday bash I think, where the lights were too low and the floors were too sticky, but the drinks were cheap enough and the music was good. The producer of some fancy label heard me slurring away at the open mic and came up behind the stage.

"Baby," he said, and it echoed, sounded a lot like a thunderstorm in the stale air, "You keep singing like that, I can make you a star."

I laughed and told him to stick his business card up his ass.

That night, I signed fifteen years of my life away and when we went to tour the studio he fucked me in his office.

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calla
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just a litle creacher

calico page. capitol. fin Nov 23, 2019 17:53:09 GMT -5

Post by calla on Nov 23, 2019 17:53:09 GMT -5

There’s a loft I paid someone cash for but I'm hardly ever there anymore.

I know Amorette sneaks in to go through my PR packages, to sift through all the rooms overflowing with miracle pills and botox samples and new experimental serums. She usually leaves with a whole box of my shit.

But she's always been kind of a bitch.

Runs in the family.

There's a magazine on one of the low tables, a subscription I didn't even know I had. Except I know that's my face staring up from the cover, my name in the Pick An 82nd Tribute and We'll Tell You Which Calico Page Song You Are!! quiz, but I can't even remember the shoot.

The one with Ola maybe, where it was two in the afternoon and we were both tipsy on wine coolers when she ripped my shirt in half and threw half a can of neon paint in my face.

She had called it avant garde while I sat there shivering, but I don't think I really minded. She just did her job and gave me free drinks.

I liked that.

Ruby comes slithering around the corner when I kick my shoes off, hissing like an angry cat. There's probably half-digested leftovers all over the carpet, bits of sparkling skin shed in my bedsheets, but that always happens when I leave her for too long.

Which is fair.

I had a pool installed for her last year, when she was fourteen feet and still growing. Even now, someone goes in once a week, edges open the door and lets loose a cage of glow-in-the-dark mice so she can hunt.

She’s a daddy’s girl.

She likes to be spoiled.

So her head bumps against my leg, bobs a few times, before diving into the bag Meliora left in the foyer, full of leather and lace and Ripred knows what else.

I have to stop and breathe in the coat closet, close my eyes and find my bearings because I’ve been sober for two weeks now and it’s kind of shit, kind of terrible. The cavernous thing in my chest gets a little bit bigger, grows like a tumour in the quiet.

And it's like some kind of consequence, the bass in my blood getting louder, cotton shoved in my ears until I can't hear anything else.

That's the thing about living here, living like this.

Just the third breakdown of the week, I guess.

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calla
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calico page. capitol. fin Nov 23, 2019 18:15:41 GMT -5

Post by calla on Nov 23, 2019 18:15:41 GMT -5

Capitol parties are always interesting.

But so are musicians, a dozen different artists looking for a quick fix, so maybe it's a good match.

There are people trying to climb the walls, digging inch long nails into the plaster and getting stuck on curtain rods and abstract paintings and loose threads. They sew themselves into the upholstery and stitch floral tattoos into their skin, try to blend in with the crowd just so they can stand out. My lyricist is here somewhere, along with fifty other wannabes, and I just hope he isn't the person lying face down, naked, on the billiards table.

There’s a girl at the bar who I remember doing a duet with last year at some downtown charity gala. She crooned her part into my ear and when the song ended we stumbled off the stage together, ended up in the statue garden outside. I hiked her skirt up against a bust of Snow and tried not to think about anything else.

Except it didn't really work.

I wonder if she'd be willing to try again.

But there's something playing that sounds like knives sharpening and makes my head hurt. The tempo feels three beats too fast, melodies running into each other, but it might just be me because when I finally find the man of the hour, he's sitting at one of the bay windows, tapping his foot to the screeching in the air.

I really hope this isn't one of his.

Except I still count the steps it takes to walk over, introduce myself, "Calico," and try not to shake too much.

But he knows. Everyone knows.

"I know." and I figured, but his eyebrow quirks in a way that makes my knees weak. "I saw you sing last week," He says, and when he smiles, I think I see fangs, "Requiem, quite the performance."

Except I know he's lying because I haven't done a show in over a month, four weeks of boredom and bad decisions, something about budget cuts masked as building public anticipation.

And Requiem is a shit song anyways. We recorded it after a New Year's Eve party, when everyone was still agitated and hungover, testy in the way all addicts are. The chorus took three hours to get right until I gave up and just started screaming in the soundbooth. The technician gave me a thumbs up and that was that.

I decide to ignore his slip-up, do what I'm good at instead and pull a few heartstrings, quicken a pulse, make the audience feel some kind of false high.

"Heard you wrote me a song" I tell him over the sound of synth beats.

He puts a poppy coloured pill on his tongue and touches the tattoo on the back of my hand, scribbles half a verse on a stray napkin.

And it's awful, makes my skin crawl, but Meliora usually knows her stuff so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

But she also said that her niece has my poster up on her bedroom wall, that it was a tenth birthday present and she wants to be like me when she grows up.

I had always wanted to make music as a kid, wanted to inspire people and get some kind of devotion in return, because even though money can buy a lot of things, it can't buy that special kind of feeling, that adrenaline rush of being in front of a crowd.

I wanted be a star. But not this kind, not one of the red ones, something at the end of its life cycle, ready to explode into nothing.

"This sounds like a masturbation metaphor."

"It's subtle. Tasteful."

So is a brick to the head, I think.

But I don't tell him that.

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calla RP Tutor 2,121 POSTS Pronouns: she/they last seen Apr 19, 2024 20:57:56 GMT -5 just a litle creacher	calico page. capitol. fin Nov 23, 2019 18:17:19 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by calla on Nov 23, 2019 18:17:19 GMT -5 "Maybe I don't want to do this anymore." I tell Meliora when she comes over one night, when it's just the two of us sitting on the floor and watching the city, pretending to be friends. She laughs.
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calla RP Tutor 2,121 POSTS Pronouns: she/they last seen Apr 19, 2024 20:57:56 GMT -5 just a litle creacher	calico page. capitol. fin Nov 23, 2019 18:27:00 GMT -5 Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by calla on Nov 23, 2019 18:27:00 GMT -5 ripred_bot omg haha done what x
	Last Edit: Nov 23, 2019 18:29:10 GMT -5 by calla ⇀ tracker ↼ ⇀ 2024 upat ↼

[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨
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bloomtodeath

calico page. capitol. fin Nov 23, 2019 18:37:31 GMT -5

Post by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ on Nov 23, 2019 18:37:31 GMT -5

"She always knew I'd be a star, just like she always knew it was her third husband who’d be the one."

----

""It's subtle. Tasteful."

So is a brick to the head, I think.

But I don't tell him that."

lord, calla, this was so, so good that i didn't want to stop reading. but now that i have i want to give him a hug and tell him he's doing his best. you didn't skip a damn beat, what a marvelous read.

accepted! <3