Vanity Heights

Champagne, chardonnay and second-rate vodka. The descent into Vanity Heights was a perfect contradiction. Darcy’s den was full of promises. The promises of allure, freedom, revelry. The promises of power and powder, regret, addiction. But the promise that Vanity Heights fulfilled best was not Darcy’s own. It was the promise flashed upon the television, upon the computer screen, canonised on the glossed pages of magazines. The expectations of how teenager life should be; the expectations, up until this night, crushed by education and responsibility. This was the promise that led Darcy’s guests down the stairs. Down the stairs into Vanity Heights. 

The house had transformed into a delinquent ballroom. The girls dropped as low as their heels would allow; their men watched through the haze. Darcy was a dragon. A pink dragon, breathing about the toxic smoke of his habit. He was perched upon his barstool throne, positioned strategically in the centre of the room, when she arrived. 
“Celeste!” he exclaimed, prancing over to her, a stick of addiction in one hand and a glass of hobby in the other. She gave a long hug, a short conversation and an expected question. With a customary smile, Darcy gave to her an expected bottle of answer. 

The party raved on, yet the revelry was muted by the brick wall that barricaded Celeste from the action. The rhythmic dripping of the basin tap was the only music Celeste had, yet she chose to reapply her face instead of dancing. She wanted to dance, though, and she knew Darcy would be waiting for her, so she rushed through her routine. She clasped onto her 50mL glass friend, already thrice-used, even though she had been in the bathroom only five minutes. 
        The drink was downed within seconds of being poured; the liquid sunk to her stomach. She could feel the warm tendrils, cooing words of friendship, branching through her chest, her stomach and finally, finally, back up to drown her mind; pulling her further from the world and closer to her weekend friends. 
        Six doses later, to finish the bottle, and she was ready to join them. 

No one ever really knew why she was there. Good school, great grades, aspirations of business and law. Nevertheless, she was soon jiving and twisting and dropping on the floor, with Darcy and other men: around them and in their laps; their hands hoping to get in hers.  Her beholder lay seemingly dormant in her stomach; though its dark tendrils were tightening, strengthening their grip on Celeste, controlling her like a puppet with tangled strings. She thought the overseer a friend, a protector, but her body knew better.

Celeste mapped her escape as soon as she felt it. Up the stairs, out of Vanity Heights, past the kitchen, into the garden bed just by the backdoor. She pushed through the crowd. Darcy saw her leave; he knew why, but he didn’t follow.  He never did. By the time she reached the stairs, the beast had revealed itself. A kraken, furious as red, limbs thrashing about inside of her, fighting desperately for an escape. Tentacles of fear, doubt, regret, disappointment. 
‘No,’ she thought once more, ‘I shouldn’t be disappointed.’ She knew she wasn't wasting her life; she was just having a little to drink. She wasn’t reckless and irresponsible; she was just a normal teenager. She was just having fun, she has earned it, she would stop after tonight, leave her alone. Her stomach was having none of that, though. She made a mistake by trying to fly the stairs two at a time. Her feet tangled and she fell, the first wave of expel surging from her, onto the steps above.

Whilst the beast had once been considered friend, it had no more. It escaped her again, covering her hair, clothes, face. She tried to pull herself further up the stairs, but the sickly purple tentacles constricted about her and dragged her down; down, down, down, back into Vanity Heights.  
‘Vile guardian’, she cried, ‘noxious saviour, foul beast, nefarious raper; first friend, now foe. Always, foe’. 
The stench accompanying her disgrace engulfed her wholly, yet the contents of her stomach continued to emerge, again and again, onto the step where her head now resigned to lay. 
‘Never again,’ she sobbed, she promised to herself, her parents, her schoolwork. 
‘Never again,’ she promised, but Celeste’s promises were made to be broken and it was already too late. She lay shattered upon the stair case, empress turned peasant; her knight in glass armour had left her and once more she had nothing. The world around her spun, and sank, and faded to black.