Jill Lockhart’s Neighborhood

Billy Jean Holidae

What happens in me will happen without attention.

I can't help but feel as if I'm not doing this right.

I'm on the beach in my yoga pants and my John Lennon "Love is Real" tee shirt, and my fingers are buried in the sand like I'm this hermit crab trying to burrow in to hide, and this has to be the worst period that I have ever had in my entire life. The doctor at the ER said that I needed to wear pads instead of tampons to avoid the risk of an infection, and today, I have been changing them every two and a half, three hours which is better than yesterday but I still feel as if I'm anchored to this horrible, bloody, gross thing collecting up against me. It smells like death.

A death is happening in me. A death is occurring in my body right now while I stare out over the ocean, while the wind winds through the palms and Beatle plays with our volleyball in the shallows. A death is happening in me and it's not me, but it's as if I'm sharing it with the baby; like I don't have a choice.

I am a funeral pyre—this twenty-two year old body, this moment—and there is nothing I can do. There is nothing I can do except sit here and cradle the baby inside a body that has the audacity to be otherwise healthy, and put my hand over my stomach through a mild cramp or two as they come as if to say, "It's okay, baby, it's okay," even if the doctors said it wouldn't be in pain, not to cry, there there now.

I didn't even like being pregnant. It would not be a lie to say that an underlying part of me, a big one, was relieved by how things ended up (and that makes it worse when I'm having a bad moment and I can't help but cry a little.) The last thing in the world I want to do is complain, but—

A death is happening in me.

That's all.

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Billy Jean Holidae

Hollywoodian

She's got a smile that it seems to me
reminds me of childhood memories
where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky.
Now and then when I see her face,
she takes me away to that special place
and if I stared too long, I'd probably break down and cry.

Ooh, sweet child o' mine.
Whoa oh oh, sweet love of mine.

She's got eyes of the bluest skies
as if they thought of rain—
I hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain.
Her hair reminds of a warm, safe place
where as a child I'd hide
and pray for the thunder and the rain
to quietly pass me by.

Ooh, sweet child o' mine.
Oh oh oh, sweet love o' mine.
Oh oh oh, sweet child o' mine.
Ooh, sweet love o' mine.

Where do we go?
Where do we go now?
Where do we go?

Where do we go?
Where do we go now?
Where do we go?

Where do we go, sweet child, where do we go now?
Where do we go? Where do we go, sweet child?
Where do we go now? Where do we go, where do we go now?
Where do we go? Where do we go now?

Sweet child, sweet child of mine.

— Guns 'n Roses


Billy Jean Holidae
Billy Jean Holidae

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Jezebel

take my hand

 

It was a Friday night when she shot her husband, right there on the dirty city street, outside a bar bustling with oblivious warmth and holiday cheer. She shot him to keep him from making the same foolhardy sacrifice twice-- her fists had been for lying with, and impregnating some faceless whore and calling it for Them.

Maxwell might not have looked back, but Jezebel did. She watched her wounded scarecrow bend like a paper crane, plant and bury his ring in the dirty city-snow like the seed of some exotic plant that may sprout, bear more productive fruit come spring. She waited, until the curtain of snow closed behind his too tall frame, the last act in a tragedy that was supposed to have been a romance. Star crossed, snow blinded lovers. Going to her knees, she unearthed his ring, where drops of his blood stained the snow oddly black instead of red where he'd scraped it away with chilled fingers. The metal didn't warm in her palm, not even when she brushed the snow and detritus away, pocketed the wedding band. It was too close to dawn for her to follow, the snow was coming down harder now, obliterating the bread crumb trail of his foot prints through the snow.
 
She rose at mid afternoon, clutching her belly like someone had opened her up and loaded her abdominal cavity with hot coals, sewed her pretty skin back up. Gritting her teeth, she rode the pain, accepted it, welcomed it. After a moment she was able to stand. She had more than one place in town to go to ground in, just as rabbit warrens had many exits. Well aware that despite the heavy blanket of angry steel gray clouds bleeding a blizzard over the city, the sun was still high in the sky, it was hours yet until twilight. Like all creatures better suited for darkness than light, she could move about during the day; at a cost. Daylight disoriented her, it took longer than usual to bathe, dress herself in antique white lace like a vintage bride. The small, black and red present she withdrew from her bedside table was meant as a Christmas present, but she didn't know that her husband would survive that long.
 
Tucking the tiny parcel into her coat, she put his coat on over her own; it hung too long, the sleeves swallowed her hands. Donning over sized, heavily tinted sunglasses, she put a hand over the silky, dark waves of her hair to shield it from sun and snow. Bracing herself, she opened the brownstone's front door, and stepped out into the light.
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Jezebel

All around the mulberry bush--

Jezebel had been a narcissist long before Maxwell Eldricht came along, but his continued presence made her wardrobe shape-shift in all new ways. Items were chosen because she knew they would please him, others shuffled to the back of the closet as she learned his tastes. Moonwashed skin and glossy dark hair, wide green eyes and a bee stung mouth, she looked like a porcelain doll; her humanity simmered down and distilled like potent alcohol. This was what a monster thought humans should look like, it was the skin of civility and mannerisms not necessarily indigenous to her, that she adopted to walk among them.
 
 Rolling sheer silk stockings up her legs, she adjusted her garters, sinking their tiny teeth into the filmy material. Her dress was straight out of Hollywood's golden age depiction of mafia molls; from the vintage wave of her hair, pinned back with a full blown hothouse flower in brilliant red to match the lush curve of her mouth. The bodice of her dress was glossy black satin, gathered in snug before flaring in a white skirt made full with a crinoline lining underneath. Her heels were as red as her mouth, as the flower in her hair. The furs she wore were snowy white; chinchilla and ermine, she thought.
 
Keys in hand, she stepped out of the Morgue and paused. A shaggy black dog, vaguely wolfish, sat not ten paces from her car, watching her with sleepy gray eyes. Things were not always what they seemed, especially in this town.
 
"Do I know you?" She asked politely, willing to give the beast the benefit of the doubt if it was more than it seemed. The dog seemed to grin, tongue hanging gamely from one side of its mouth as it watched her. Jezebel watched the dog a moment later, before striding confidently to her car, a mechanical chirrup sounding as she unlocked the doors, sliding behind the wheel, and pulled the door shut behind her. It was only smart that she lock the doors, keeping an eye on the dog, who stood and stretched fore and aft shaking his body out before sitting back down, angling himself to watch as she backed out of the space, pulled out of the bar's parking lot.
 
Max was frequently gone when she rose; in truth, Jezebel preferred this for two reasons. It gave her time to dress without his scrutiny; just as the whole was frequently more than the sum of the parts, she liked her husband to appreciate her as a whole-- he could always disrobe her at his leisure to see the process in reverse if they liked. Also, Max's covetousness could well be a hindrance; though his was the only mouth she kissed, the only man between her legs or in her bed, she didn't know how well he would suffer watching her work her victims. She didn't always kill, after all. More often than not, her victims woke with a headache and nothing but vague memories of the serpent-charm of green eyes and a wet, red mouth. In some nondescript bar on the other side of town, she breezed through like a slumming debutante, a whiff of Chanel No. 5 in a bar room brawl of ruffians and rogues. It wasn't hard here, a trip to the bathroom, and in ten, twenty minutes tops Jezebel walked back out, straightened her dress and wiped her chin lest she bloody her party dress. Touch up her lipstick, and on her way. There were paw prints almost as big as her hand in the dirty, snowy slush around her car.
 
Before seeking Max out, she went back to the Morgue. It had been something of a little while lie when she'd told Danny, and insinuated to Max, that she was completely clueless to the dark arts. She'd spent years trawling the swamps of Louisiana where the slaves' earth magic was steeped into the land as darkly as southern sweet tea you could stand a spoon up in. The mysticism of the Gullah folk through the Carolinas. There were dimmer memories of parlor show conjurations in Paris, people that read scrolls, the bones, and the stars in the far east. The root-magic the Africans had brought with them to the Americas was freshest in her mind. From the stores in the basement she'd had one of her employees haul a sack of salt and chalk upstairs, sprinkle it liberally around the perimeter of the building to keep out lesser haunts. A few more private instructions were left with Russ, before she went a'searching for her husband.
 
Parking a block curbside from the bar they frequented, she hitched her furs a little higher. Had she not been looking for it, the black rump and shaggy tail disappearing down the alley infront of her wouldn't have raised any alarm. As it was she eyed it warily, before slipping into McEvoy's like a woman with a purpose.
 
 


 

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Jezebel

How 'bout a little fire, scarecrow?

 

 

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Jezebel

To set the scene:

The warehouse district consisted mostly of long abandoned buildings now littered with vermin and squatters trying to avoid the death-bite of winter. A few hulking factories belched towers of smoke against the sky, where the street lamps that had yet to be shot out or burnt out reflected their sickly light in an oily, tepid orange smear against ominously low-hanging clouds. Flanking the entire district in a long, sickled curve was the Brighton River, winding like an inky black serpent around the western portion of the city.

1679 River Road. The Morgue. It was a sprawling monstrosity of a building, but even it managed to look dwarfed by the carcasses of decaying buildings that shared the neighborhood, brick slowly crumbling with age and abuse. Rotting as surely as did Gods without worshippers. The stiff push of the breeze fitfully swayed the antiquated barbershop style sign hung beside the thick metal door, hinges protesting with a shrieking metallic whine. Copperplate lettering spelled out simply: The Morgue.

Inside, a narrow hallway ran the length of the building, the red glimmer of an exit sign barely discernible on the far wall. A tired looking elevator on the left side of the hallway marked the only interruption of the wall's pale gray finish, as far down as the eye cared to travel. On the right side of the hallway, music poured from the entrance into the club proper. The arched double doorway was an easy six feet across, the burnish of some dark wood belying the building's shabby outward appearance. Inside the lights were softened to a smoky glow. The sprawling main room was flanked on either wall by elegant teak bars, the nearly flawless lacquer dully reflecting the black lights illuminating tiers of bottles and glassware.  The far left was was occupied by an elevated stage and sound booth. Corners were reserved for raised platforms and cages alternately, all of them occupied by performers three nights a week; snake charmers, dancers, fire eaters. Here and there were scattered low tables and surprisingly elegant wing-backed chairs. Deep black leather couches and matched chrome and glass end tables clustered in intimate knots. Shock-art liberally decorated walls that were, at first glance, a pale gray. Upon closer inspection, it had the faint shimmer finish of something akin to mother-of-pearl, the inside of abalone shells, or an unpolished geode.

The club lived up to its name, attracting in large part disaffected social debutantes and the scandalously wealthy with a penchant for the dark, and dangerous. They were resplendent in Prada and Gucci, artfully worn ratty fishnet and vintage lace, leather and all its trappings and accoutrements. Their eyes and bloodstreams were a cocktail of street drugs and top shelf liquor, over-sexed and frantic for something to take them just a little higher. A critic would say the clove smoke is a little too redolent, the FDA approved wormwood free Pernod Absinthe a little too cliche, the number of heroin-chic, waif-eyed men and women too trite. A half-step up from any other underground goth club, they would say. But there was a subtle urgency permeating both civilized conversation and the insistently writhing bodies on the sprawling dance floor. The Morgue drew the fatalists, those that fancied they wished for something edgier, something dangerous. Unfortunately for the thrill seekers, it also drew the creatures that could give them everything they thought they wanted, and then some.
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