A Drug-Fueled Modern Day Cinderella-like Fairy Tale

I walk by the same house on my way to the beach every day. Your average Jersey shore McMansion — needlessly large, expensive and nondescript. But it overlooks the ocean. And here, that means everything.

Last week, I noticed several cars parked in the driveway. Expensive cars. Black tinted windows. The kind for diplomats or rock stars. Strange. Hmm…maybe it’s just a realtor or a homeowner checking in on things. But why so many them?

As the days passed, the cars remained, as if some secret affair was being held there. My curiosity increasingly piqued and my imagination began to roam a little far.

On one fateful afternoon last week, only a half of me went for a run. The other half split from my body and walked right up to that faceless house, knocked on the door and experienced a strange and surreal adventure that she wouldn’t soon forget.

She knocked hard, with conviction.

A tall man opened the door, dressed in a shimmering blue tux. A servant of some sort. Young and shockingly handsome. Tousled blonde hair and plate-sized blue eyes. Or green. Or pale purple. Like a prism in the sunlight, they seemed to change a little every second. His voice, deep and resonant spoke:

 “May I help you?”

 “Is there a party or something here?”

 “May I ask you the password, madam?”

 Strange words fell from my mouth. Apparently, the right words.

 He gestured grandly. “Miss Beth, enter. We’ve been waiting just for you.”

 Me? I thought. No one waits just for me.

Bion lead me upstairs. (He whispered his name when I entered the house. I shuddered with pleasure; whispering is a lost sensual art.) Strangely I didn’t hear any party sounds. Dead quiet. Just the thud of our footsteps, in perfect sync with one another, up a stairway that never seemed to end. We just kept climbing and climbing, beautiful Bion in the lead.

 Finally, at the top of the stairs, he stopped and turned around.

“Are you ready, Miss Beth?”

“Yes, very much so. I’ve been dying of curiosity. What goes on here?”

“Ah…what doesn’t?” he laughed.

 He opened a large white door and boom! A cacophony of sounds and sights hit me. Exotic looking people, strange music, glasses clinking, corks popping, flirtatious laughter and voices, voices, voices…so many of them, like a sweet and strange choir.

What a grand room. Made entirely of glass, it looked as if we were standing right over the ocean. And while it was cloudless and sunny when I arrived, the sky now looked threatening, roiling, with shades of silver, violet and gray.

Everyone looked at the natural wonder performing for us, oohing and ahhing as the storm rolled toward us. Some of the spectators were clothed, some naked. No one really seemed to care. 

“Beth, my love. You are here, you are finally here!”

I turned around slowly. A tall, striking man with long, dark hair suddenly approached me, as if he had entered with this storm. Impeccably dressed, I knew him from…somewhere. He had the same piercing, ever-changing eyes as Bion. Yet this man possessed a look of madness to him, gently simmering underneath. He frightened and enticed me. 

He planted a kiss on my lips and I pulled back, unaccustomed to such forwardness. This did not deter him. He touched the back of my neck and pulled me forward again.

“Relax, Beth. Now.”

And I did as I was commanded. He kissed me again, for what seemed like forever, our tongues entwined like dangerous vines. I remember falling into a dream state at one point during the kiss — that’s how long it lasted.

When we stopped, he was gone. I was kissing the air. Embarrassingly, I pulled myself together and took a better look around.

Drugs were everywhere. White powder, blue powder, red pills, green pills. Bion appeared next to me, with a drink “made especially for you, you most divine creature” He handed me this massive wide-mouthed glass, almost the size of a fish bowl, full of pink and gold effervescence. I took a sip without question.

“Bion, who is the host? What is his name?”

“I call him Sir. But you can call him whatever you please. He doesn’t have a name, per se.”

As Bion spoke, his ever-changing eyes pulled me into a deeper state of consciousness than I had ever known. Did he drug my drink? I could only hope so.

Dazed, I wandered back to the window with the other party-goers and looked out. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There I was, running on the beach! I knocked on the glass, hoping she could hear me. But she just kept running, red-faced and determined.

I felt badly for her. She works so hard to be good. Stays at home, cooks her sad little dinners, watches her dull TV shows, talks to girlfriends about boyfriends that will never really matter. She takes baths, makes tea and cleans dust off things. She’s dutiful. And boring.

I, on the other hand, was living. I took a drag from a long cigarette that suddenly appeared between my fingers. The smoke came out a crimson red, then purple, then green. I felt dangerous and deeply content.

 Sir was suddenly standing behind me, watching me run on the beach.

“Good thing we didn’t invite her” he laughed. He pulled my hair back and gently kissed my neck. “Now go meet your friends. They’re waiting to feel you.”

I proceeded to mingle with the beautiful people. They looked so crisp and perfect, as if they walked out of a magazine. Normally I might feel inferior, “less than”, but I looked amazing too, donning a crimson red dress made of a fabric that felt like kittens and smelled of fresh raspberries. Glass heels on my feet and shimmering gold dust falling from me, with each movement I made. I was alight.

And these people couldn’t keep their hands off me! Women, men, (and some, a strange and captivating in-between) were attracted to me like bees to honey and I to them. We kissed, we hugged, we dipped and danced, we molded lovingly into one another. We were one. I couldn’t imagine better friends. They knew all of my darkest thoughts and liked me, in spite of them…no, because of them.

Things got blurry after the second drink. Bion brought me powders and pills that instantly cleared my head. Then I’d drink more, sink again and come back to life, over and over. We all danced this dance for days it seemed. Our thorny, perverted sickness was so gorgeous, I couldn’t dislodge myself if I tried. The high was staggering.

Sir and I would occasionally sneak off to his pitch-black bedroom and do the most unspeakable things to one another. It was so splendid and dark that I can’t remember it now; my mind won’t let me. At one point, the energy we created raised us off his bed. This went beyond fucking into a state of pure transcendence.

Afterwards in the warmth of our bed, we whispered warm and wicked things to one another, cleansed from the shamelessness of our wanton acts. These words I can no longer remember either. It was an eternal, strange language created from the most profane place in our souls. Even when we fell asleep, we continued to speak via our dreams. We were living and dying, over and over again, and it was absolutely perfect.

Then Bion opened the door and ruined everything. Everything.

“She’s here to pick you up, Miss Beth.”

“Who?”

“The one who runs on the beach. She’s here for you.”

My heart sank. My time here was over. Looking at Sir, his head hung down and I could hear him crying.

“I can’t live without you. It’s been too long. You must stay,” he whispered.

“You’ll be fine, I’m sure. There are so many pretty women who long to be close to you. They’re all waiting for you.”

And truly, they were. I looked around the bed and we were surrounded by the most stunning women I’d ever seen, naked and in wait. They began petting and pawing Sir, knowing my departure was near. Gorgeous vultures. Was I that replaceable?

As I climbed out of our bed, Sir grabbed me, his hand squeezing mine so tight, I began to bleed.

“Come back. Please. You know that woman on the beach will just ruin you. She’ll bore you to death!”

“I know but she’s all I have.” And I began crying too.

After our final kiss, the vultures attacked him. He screamed in pleasure at first, then in agony. Looking back, I could no longer see him, just bodies writhing, biting, eating, melting.

Bion showed me to the door, where the woman on the beach stood, drenched in sweat and rain. She had that dumb look of pleading in her eyes. I hated her.

“Why can’t you let me have this? I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!”

She just held out her hand, like a knowing mother.

I begrudgingly reached for it. The loss of Sir suddenly hit me, like a thunderbolt in my soul.

 “I loved him. I really did.”

 “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s not going anywhere. He waits.”

She led me home in silence. I looked down and my dress was gone. I was ugly again, old, worn clothes, drenched. The party was indeed over. I had books to read, clothes to clean, gardens to tend, vitamins to swallow, checks to write, problems to solve, help to offer, blood to bleed.