Chapter Text
Lucy Morris adjusted her makeup in the mirror, fixing a crooked edge of eyeliner before checking one final time for any other mistakes. Seeing none, she rose off her stool and walked to the door between the communal dressing rooms and the backstage area of the Red Rat. She maneuvers around the crowds of her fellow working girls at the Red Rat, awaiting their cues to enter the stage.
Lucy straightens her skirts in anticipation of the only part of her work here she actually enjoys doing. She will get to sing tonight, not anything she would have chosen to sing for herself, but she still gets to sing. That’s what she focuses on, the joy she has always derived for that simple activity. It serves to fill her with the hope to carry through the rest of the night.
She stays aware of the sights and sounds of the backstage area, who is entering and leaving, the sounds of the girls who would be performing tonight being introduced to the crowd by Spider, and the responses of the audience. Soon enough, it is her turn to go onstage. She makes her way to the opening in the stage curtains, and upon taking a deep breath, steps through.
Lucy takes her starting position for tonight’s performance, front facing upstage, her head turned towards the audience, and lips forming a sly smile. As soon as the last strains of the song’s opening fade away, she starts to sing. Her full, clear voice carries over the audience as she makes her way through the song. They hoot at the countless bawdy puns in the lyrics and leer at her body. She could frankly do without the latter all the time, but she finds the performances of sexuality upon the stage of the Red Rat are much preferable to those she must do in its many cramped, private rooms.
As she reaches the climax of the song, and some of the other girls' voices come in behind her own, she feels all of those things begin to fade away, the bawdiness of the song, the hungry gaze of the audience, and finds her heart being borne up on wings of hope. Lucy’s mind returns to her hopes of getting out of here, away from her abusive boss, her odious customers, and finally having the opportunity to spread her wings, to discover for herself what she wants to do.
All too soon, however, the song ends and she must depart backstage. She heads through the backstage area and into the attached dressing room, still with thoughts of her dreams on her mind. The remains of her reverie are swept away at last by the sight of the hall leading away from the dressing room. Now she must prepare to see clients.
Lucy stumbled down the narrow hallway of the Red Rat, left eye ringed in dark bruising that was swiftly beginning to swell, a shoulder seam of her dress torn, as well as bruises ringing her neck. In retrospect, she considered, this client's reluctance to communicate with her should have tipped her off that he was going to be trouble. Working as a prostitute, she had learned that some men seek out prostitutes less for sex and more for the opportunity to mistreat a woman for a few hours. This was even worse than that, however. Never had she been in the position of fearing for her life as she had been when her client reached for her neck.
Lucy continued to careen down the hall, vision impaired by her swiftly swelling black eye, heart racing from pain and fear. She did not notice the presence of Spider in the hallway until she had nearly walked right into him.
“What are you doing out here?” he said, glaring at her.
“The last client you sent in. He tried to strangle me!” she replied, in between shuddering breaths, “Do you know where he went?”
“Do I know where he went? He went and complained to me. Tried to get a refund out of me too.” he said, “Get back to work, and don’t annoy a client like that again.”
“But…”, she tries to reply, only to be interrupted by Spider saying “Get back to work,” turning around and walking away.
Lucy makes her way back to her room in the Red Rat, feet steadier, tread quieter now. She needs to get something for the pain at least, and try to cover up the bruising so she can get back to work.
She opens the door and enters the small room, making her way around the bed to reach the chest where she keeps her work things. Her hand scrabbles around the chest, searching for something to take for the pain. Her mind is so preoccupied with pain and fear that she does not notice that the liquid in the vial she withdraws from the chest is not the right color. It is a vibrant, clear red.
She uncaps the vial and tips its crimson contents down her throat. Not waiting a moment to monitor the medicine’s effectiveness, she reaches back into the chest, searching for a container of makeup that she could paint over the bruises. The ones on her neck, she considers, will probably be the easy part, although she revises her assessment upon checking her reflection in her hand mirror. Thankfully, the swelling around her eye appears to be going down.
She notes that her pain has lessened greatly after having consumed the medicine, replaced by a warm sensation in her body. Her mind drifts to thoughts of hope. Maybe she will be able to get out of here eventually. She just has to keep enduring until then. Her hopes raised, she begins to remove the top of the makeup container, when suddenly her grip slackens and the container falls to the ground.
Where before there was a sense of spreading warmth, Lucy now only experiences blinding pain. It surges through her body, deeper in than any flesh wound could inflict. Her entire body aches like a bruise, and a scream rips itself from her throat. She struggles to breathe through the pain. She lies there on the floor, paralyzed, until she stops being Lucy and someone else takes hold.
The woman who is not Lucy Morris rises from the floor, in so doing almost tripping over a too-long skirt hem. She takes a breath. Noises from the surrounding rooms filter in; the sounds of lovemaking, the sounds of drunkenness, the sounds of music. She raises her hand to her face, only recently noticing the hand mirror clasped within.
She gazes into the mirror. The person that stares back at her is different, but from what she cannot tell. Her skin, instead of having a healthy flush, is as pale as death. Her hair is wild and red, but not the kind of red that naturally occurs in hair. Instead it is the red of spilled blood. The irises of her eyes are red as well, brighter in color than her hair. She smiles at herself, and notices that her teeth have become pointed, like those of a wild animal. Running her tongue along the tips of her teeth reveals that they are sharp as well, catching on the tip of her tongue and drawing blood. She gasps in pain, and notices that the sound of her voice is lower-pitched, raspier than she’s used to. Why is the difference so strange? She does not know.
The woman who is not Lucy sets the mirror down in the chest and walks to the door, lifting her skirt so as not to trip. She opens the door and steps out into the dark, narrow hall. She takes a deep breath in and smells the sweet scent of perfume, the acrid smell of alcohol, and the stink of sweat beneath it all. She walks down the hall to where the exit to the outside is, although how she knows the exit’s location she does not register at the moment.
She comes up to the door and pushes it open. The chill of the night wind is the first thing she feels upon opening the door. She shivers, for the first time noting the degree to which her dress exposes her skin to the air. She also notices that one of the shoulder seams of the dress is torn, threads gone long and slack over the gap where the seam once was. The sight sparks a memory; grasping fingers seizing upon the shoulder of her gown and yanking violently. But as soon as it had come, the memory vanished.
Upon stepping over the threshold and out into the alleyway, her attention is captured by the sights. Dense fog clouds the streets, turning figures far from her sight into fuzzy black silhouettes. The only light to pierce the fog is the yellow glow of streetlights and the silver light of the moon, high above in the velvet black sky. Sounds of revelry, of drunken people wandering the streets drift through the fog. The dark of night turns the densely packed buildings surrounding the streets and alleys to darkened silhouettes.
As she walks down the alley and out into the street, she takes note of all these things. Everything feels so much more real, and vivid than it did before, even if she cannot clearly remember what before was at the moment. She walks along the side of the street, taking in the appearances of the drunken revelers passing by.
The woman who is not Lucy is just starting to consider what she will do in this fresh, new existence she has found herself in when she recognizes one of the passing revelers. The thing that makes her notice him, out of all the drunken men crowding the streets at this late hour is his bottle-green coat. As her eyes travel from the man’s coat tails upward, she registers the presence of purple clothes peeking out from beneath the coat, an unraveling necktie, and a face flushed with drunkenness.
And all of a sudden, the memory surfaces, the man in the bottle-green coat’s voice harsh and demanding, the stinging pain as the skin around her eye bruised from a sharp shove against the corner of the bed, and finally, the breathless terror of his hands reaching for her neck and squeezing tight. Stopped in her tracks by the memory, she does not notice when the man in the bottle-green coat almost walks into her.
“Hey pretty lady…” the man says, voice slurred with drunkenness. He reaches for her shoulder, but before his hand gets there, the woman who is not Lucy is able to grab his wrist and hold it in place.
She notes how it feels, that even as he struggles more and more to move his arm towards her, she is able to keep his wrist in the same spot with what feels like no effort at all. He then reaches for her shoulder with her other hand, and something in her mind snaps into place. He tried to kill me, she thinks, remembering the incident with complete clarity instead of in flashes. I was just trying to do my job and he tried to kill me, she thinks again.
The dazed haze in her mind that accompanied this revelation is abruptly shattered by a wave of overwhelming fury. She catches the man’s other hand with her own, and begins to twist. She does not have to apply too much more force before the wet crack of his wrist bones can be heard. The man in the bottle-green coat wails in pain.
She can scarcely note how good it feels to use violence to sate her fury before she notices that she is on the street. The dense fog is probably masking her actions somewhat from any curious onlookers, but the man’s scream would not be similarly obscured. She releases her grip on one of the man’s hands, and uses her free hand to reach for his mouth. Her hand clamps down over his mouth, but this merely muffles his wails. She needs him to be silent, and as he continues to make noise she only grows more irate.
Breaking the bones in the man’s second wrist with a swift twisting motion, she frees up her second hand. She reaches out towards the man’s neck. Once she grasps hold of it, the wails mercifully quiet, replaced by the low sounds of choking. She releases her hand from around his mouth to exert more pressure on his neck. There’s something immensely satisfying about seeing the fear of death, of her, in his eyes. Rage flows through her like electricity through a wire.
Before she registers it, the choking sounds quiet, and the man in the bottle-green coat goes limp in her hands. The woman who is not Lucy releases her grip, and his body falls onto the street with a thump. She breathes deep and fast, exhilarated, before moving away from the man’s body and down the street.
Gazing up at the moon, she recalls now that people have names but she does not, and that she should probably pick one for herself. She is definitely not Lucy Morris, after all, so she does not wish to use that name. She considers this for a moment, before deciding that she will figure out names later. Despite having just killed someone, she continues down the street with a newfound spring in her step and a battle-song in her heart.