by Lillian Grey
Vanessa Stanton
Chapter 1.0
I had been to enough high school graduations by this point in my life to know that every valedictorian’s speech was the same. I am not surprised that she started with "Though we are leaving high school, it shouldn’t be a sad day...", despite the random girls crying on each other’s shoulders speckled throughout the bruise of 2011. I suffered through the nearly ten minute speech and she ends with "College will be the start of something new, exciting, and life changing. So go forth and make your mark, class of 2011". We politely clapped, she took a small bow, and the principal got up to start calling out names with the help of two teachers.
As I walked the stage, the reality of leaving the safety that home and high school provided was all I could think of. Don't get me wrong, yes there are exciting opportunities out in the big world, but just being bright and eager doesn't cut it. We will all need something to get us through this cold world. Then I remembered on my first day of high school that my first period Calculus teacher told us that, “If you just pull up your bootstraps and dig in, all will be well.” As soon as he said it I thought “He can go fuck himself if he thinks I will believe that”. I knew there would always be someone that is better, faster, or stronger than me; that with the odds being what they are, I will never surpass them.
High school gave us all the chance to create and establish ourselves and if you were on the bottom of the social or economic ladder here, you better do some hard thinking about the next ten years of your life as you flip those burgers and watch your privileged and popular classmates eat. We all only get one life and how we spend it is completely determined by three weighted factors: ten percent is based on what degree you get, thirty percent is based on the name of the school that is on that college diploma, and the last sixty percent is based entirely on who you know. These were the thoughts going through my head while I was shaking the principal’s hand and smiling for the photo. A graduation speech needed to encompass a little bit of the harsh reality we are about to enter because lying to us will only hurt us more when reality gives you that cold slap.
"Hey, Nessa!" my best friend Sam called as she ran towards me. She seemed overly happy about something and it showed even as she squeezed through the families that overran the all too tiny space, adding more discoloration to the bruise.
"We’re done with this place, finally!" I said, trying to match her hype and hide my morbid mood. I failed in the attempt, I was never one to get excited about much of anything.
"I know, right… What are you doing tonight?" she asked, cutting to her real motive for tracking me down.
"You know, the family dinner out and maybe a few gifts. Nothing really special I guess."
"What about after that?"
"Sleep? I don’t know. Did you want to do something?"
"How about we go out? I know this place that’s 18 and up."
"Sam... come on. You know I don’t like clubs." Even asking was stupid.
"Please please pleaseeee? I don’t want to go alone," she groaned, poking out her bottom lip and adding a slight quiver. She blinked her big, bright, brown eyes at me. I sighed.
"Sam, really, the sad puppy face?" She knew I hated this even more.
"Please?! You’re the cutest girl in school; every boy there would be after you. Doesn’t that make you want to look into it at all?" she promptly switched to attacking my vanity with what she called girl logic.
"Okay, fine," I sighed, hating myself.
"Thank you!" she shouted, jumping up and down on the spot. Parents turned to stare and some smiled, misinterpreting Sam's happiness. Some of the boys were listening to figure out where we would be later. "I will be at your place at about six; I will bring the bag, and we can pick out outfits and do each other’s make up and go from there?" The bag being more a suitcase she used to carry around outfit changes and a vast collection of make up.
"Fine," I sighed, trying to show my displeasure at losing this small battle; she ignored me.
“Yay!” Off she went with a stupid spring in her step.
Sam, short for Samantha Marie Castillo, had been my best friend since we were in preschool.
Sam's father, Hector, tried his hardest to make Sam play football and smell of engine oil and while she doesn’t walk around in shoulder pads you couldn't call him a failure on the whole.He might have lost his football player daughter, but he did instill a love for the sport; a love both her mother and I will never understand on the other side he has a daughter that likes to prance around in mini skirts and shop. If you left her alone with your car, she could strip it, clean it, and put it back together and have it running as if it had just come out of the dealer showroom.
Sam was such a strange mix of her father's pride and determination, her brother’s strength of character and charisma, and her mother's grace, beauty, and spirit. She was tall with long brown hair down to her waist with beautiful, bright, brown eyes that seemed to glow even in the dark. Her skin would stay a light creamy brown even in the dead of winter and you couldn’t find silk softer than her skin. All that with a body not even plastic surgery could give.
As for myself, everywhere Sam was rich and colorful, I was fair and slender. I got my long silky black hair from my mother. I remember when I was young, I hoped I would get Grandma Stanton's figure, but I had no luck. Not to say that I didn't have curves where I wanted them, but I was no Sam. Once, a boy who was all flustered as he was trying to tell me he liked me said I was "a demon so sweet that God stole me from hell and kept me in the heavens as an angel.” I said that was stupid and walked away from him at the time. I thought about it later and I could never decide if I should have taken that as a compliment or not. With my father being the whitest guy you would ever meet, color wise, and my mother having not had very much color herself, apart from her dark brown eyes, it's no wonder my skin was a milky white and my eyes a shining silver.
My mother was a Korean singer and musician who, at the time of meeting my father, was trying to make her way into American jazz music. My father was a small time scout for an upcoming recording company until they met. He got her a small deal and a single that spread through the few jazz lounges not only in New York but anywhere Jazz was played. I'd still hear her singles on the radio from time to time on some of those oldies stations. Now my father is a producer and is considered a great judge of talent after finding my mother, who was the most booked jazz singer in the greater New York area for a time.
Getting back to Sam’s club fixation. This singular topic had become a dark cloud cast over both her mother and myself. This blight in history hit hardest when she turned eighteen last December. Her mother had been trying so hard to hold on to her little girl so much that she stuck to the traditional cake, ice cream, candle blowing, and tried pin the tail on the donkey at her birthday. I stepped in and stopped that, literally having to burn the box it came in halfway through the hour long conversation to convince her to cancel the bouncy house she wanted on the front lawn as well. Afterwards, I went with Sam and our friends to her first eighteen and up club, and she has been clubbing in and around the city with our other friends ever since. They all have tried to get me to go again, but I had not broken my resolve until graduation. So I convinced myself that this might actually be fun for a brief moment. Then the lights started to fade and the streets were becoming darker and darker; the amount of people around began to thin and my brief thought of fun vanished completely.
"Sam, where are we going?" I asked, trying to hide my concern.
"It's this really cool place I’ve wanted to go to, but it’s hidden out here. Just relax," she said, I could hear the excitement in her voice and didn’t want to ruin this for her. Still, I felt uneasy about this.
We got to an area of the city that your parents would tell you to stay out of on the edge of the East River. It looked like an abandoned shipping dock with its large stone buildings and tall cranes. As we moved further, cargo containers began to close around us, growing taller, as Sam navigated through them. The car began to rattle along as the roads faded and soon, streets no longer seemed to exist. It felt like the large walls would fall - trapping us here at the mercy of whoever happened to come along - until the path began to widen to a large clearing in the middle of a sea of cars. In the middle of that sea, something that resembled a circus tent was pitched. However, this tent had a little sophistication behind it. It was about two stories tall with three crests that rose even farther into the air; the blood colored cloth walls swayed in the wind and rattled to the music from within. Three bright flags topped each crest. Colored letters spelled out “Masteria” in a strange looping script. The city lights had been replaced by stars and what little light that would escape the folds in the fabric. As we stepped out of the car, I could now feel the loud house music vibrating my clothes. I could sense Sam’s excitement as the pulse of the music became louder and faster. The other parked cars, a great example of organized chaos, scattered the path to the front opening. Sam took my hand and pulled me to the front door.
Alyon Alik
Chapter 02.0
There has always been something about the night that you can’t put a finger on. It’s just a feeling you get and nothing else can make you feel the same. Some will have a touch of fear seasoned to the taste of the unknown. Very scary monsters will play across their thoughts as they imagine what salvation the even darker shadows of the night brings to their fears. Others are caressed by excitement: the night emboldens them to go farther, love harder, fuck harder, unable to be seen by every eye in the light of day. As I thought this, I felt nothing as I walked the streets of New York’s Time Square well past midnight. The people around me looked and thought they were excited, but they were idiots. I would, and had to change that.
I wouldn’t buy a prime location in some upscale part of New York. The bastardization of Christmas lights and big speakers already infested the areas of any real value. To create an atmosphere to invoke the passions of the blood, I would need privacy for myself and my guest. For that, I looked to the lesser traveled areas of New York. Many of the abandoned docks and industrial areas were cheap; clearing and keeping out the squatters would be easy.
The structure itself could not be new, however I did not wish to go through the classic of gutting and reworking one of the old warehouses. Instead, I came across a failed circus selling off all of its assets, including their big top. I gladly bought it and found a company to do some alterations and dye it the colors I needed. At this point, my sister June was the only one I had told of my plans. Therefore, my mother knew everything...
“Alik,” my mother called across the room one evening as we both sat reading in silence.
“I felt this coming,” I said, marking my page mentally and putting the book down.
“Felt what?” my mother feigned innocence.
“Just what has June told you, or did you force it out of her?” I asked. Her fake expression of shock annoyed me to no end.
“Okay, you caught me,” her voice got very cold and calculating. “You don’t feel guilty about opening a competing business to your own mother, your own blood?”
“We would not be competing, you cater to a far more exclusive clientele. Where I would be dealing with…”
“Everyone else. Yes, a far larger scope than myself.”
“No, not everyone, those who would be responsive to our way. I’m looking to redefine the night club.”
“About that... I did get a name out of June. Masteria is a dangerous name, Alik.”
“They are part of our history.”
“How do you manage to be so selective with our past and not feel the hypocrite?”
“Do we have to get into that now?” I asked her, not wanting to argue about what I did and did not like about who I was. Instead, I did want to know if she would allow me to raise a new Masteria.
“No, you’re right. The real thing here is the name, Masteria. The old Masteria were places of lust, sex, bloodletting, and death. Is this what you intend to create in the middle of the city?”
“Not at all. The old Masteria were the way they were as that is how they were rum. Just walking into the smoke filled rooms was enough put you in a sexual high. Every emotion in the room screamed sex from the looks on the women’s faces to the slacked jawed smiles of the men. I will change the flavor of the emotion to inspire creativity and passion for one's art, now only in music and performance, but the natural fear of the night will come alive and drive everything forward.”
“You risk so much when death might be the only outcome for what you propose if someone were to... lose themselves in a room of such passion the body count.”
“Some of my guest will be heavily screened,” I said icily. “Still if other measures need to be taken, in the atmosphere I wish to create, well the young can lose themselves on both sides, its been known to happen officer.” I and she caught on.
“Well, a few overdosing teens isn’t out of the ordinary for illegal nightclubs, any loose guest of yours can be contained. Still, the risk of fail is high.”
“I don’t fail, mother,” I said offended.
“The only reason I will allow this is because I know you won't fail at it. Just don't presume that you don't fail, you do in many ways,” she said going back to her book. I ignored her last comment to get a fight out of me. I wouldn’t rise to her bait. “Also, you can’t have Alison, she is mine.” She smiled as if the afterthought was amusing. I had planned to go to Alison in the morning.
“How did it go?” was the first thing my sister asked me in the morning as I got out of my car.
“As well as to be expected,” I sighed as I watched the skeleton of the tent start to rise.
“Lying to her is almost useless,” she said in her defense.
“I know, she had her fun at my expense. It would have had to to happen eventually.” I sat down on the hood of my car and looked up. “Has the canvas come yet?
“Yes, it’s in the container over there,” she pointed, “also everyone on your list except for..”
“Alison, I know. Mother wouldn't give her up.”
“That was more for your peace of mind, not her ability.”
“Please don't remind me its why I alluded to it.” That got a laugh out of June. “You really should just pick one.”
“I could say the same to you.”
“Some on your list are older,” she said, changing the subject.
“I want them to remember the essence of Masteria and bring it alive. Also, I have worked with them in the past, they have seen me deal with the failure of others and what they are allowed to do in the event, they know what’s at stake if the safety of my guest is ever placed in danger.”
Excitement like I had not felt in a long time kept me at Masteria day and night as soon as the canvas was up. Modifications to the interior left much of the main space opened to hold the dance floor: all audio equipment was held in the skeleton of the structure, hidden by folds in the canvas just as my office was. As I looked down on everyone moving about the interior, my excitement was laced with worry. As my mother said, the old Masteria were places of sex, lust, and death. The new Masteria would embody the thrill of the night and the lights and sounds of music. “It had to,” I told myself.
“What do you think?” June asked me a week before opening as we walked the interior of the structure.
“It’s what I imagined,” I said looking around.
The single original crest of the tent had been altered into three more graceful curves. The original height of almost three stories, not including the crest, was shortened to two, allowing the canvas to be moved around and let the tent sit lower and wider than before. Inside, a lattice of metal work created a bar;
office spaces and elevated dance and performance platforms were linked by bridges of metal chain and rope. I couldn't help but smile as I looked around as my creation came to life. I could already sense the excitement of everyone finishing up the last touches before we opened in two days.
“Have you given the sound system a test run yet?” I asked.
“Just for levels,” June explained.
“Mix something, I want to hear what we have created.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she smiled.
The instant June moved to her turntables, the sounds of work died. Whenever June put those headphones on, she became a different being. Before I could hear anything, she started to sway to a rhythm that I soon heard as a low click that was clear and crisp over the speakers. I closed my eyes and felt the music and the bass begin to fill in the spectrum. I felt the hand of a woman slide around my waist as she circled me. I changed direction and she followed quickly taking my lead as her everything. I heard her moan as I moved her around the floor my hand and movements testing just how far I could push her. The house music came in full force and we were all, having paired off on the dance floor, the room, the city was coming alive again. It was the first time in months I had felt anything close to this and I wasn't in mid hunt. As the bass dropped all my worries faded. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like for a human, I didn't think I could take it if I was a human.
