The Outsider [CntDestyr & YellowSmoke]

[YellowSmoke]

Alissa White (21)


It had been almost four years to the day since Alissa had moved to Seattle to pursue her dream, a determined, free-spirited seventeen year-old with a voice to die for and the looks to match. She felt destined for success, and when Taras Vulva began to make waves in the local music scene, it seemed that all her aspirations were just a hair's breadth away. The day the band signed with Sub Pop Records, her and her bandmates partied so hard that she almost died. That was the first time she dabbled with heroin.

Since then, disputes with the label and a general increase in turmoil within the group had derailed them, and though they still maintained a solid local fan base, Alissa's dreams had never quite materialised. Their second full length album had not been met with half as much enthusiasm as their début effort, and over the past three months they had lost half their original members; only herself and guitarist Kim remained from what had begun so promisingly.

The more the band stagnated, the more Alissa felt the financial strain of living in a big city, and the money she'd been left by her deceased father had by now dwindled to the point that she was living solely off of what the band could earn. It was ironic: that had been one of her 'along-the-way' goals, but being able to survive on her music was not an easy feat to maintain. Some weeks she was fine; on others she would eat meagrely, and lately, it was not uncommon for her to forego food for an entire day. Of course, her habit played a role in that.

Golden brown was far too easy to come by in Seattle, and once she had acquired a taste for it, it seemed to present itself everywhere, as though the drug itself knew that she was hooked and would not refuse to dance once more. Rick - one of her few real friends in the city, if not her only one - knew that things had gotten bad once he realised that her dealer had become the person she saw most frequently outside of her bandmates, though Alissa maintained that it wasn't all about the smack and that the two had struck up a good friendship. Two weeks ago, she'd even moved in with two men she'd met through dealing with Julio. She'd needed a cheaper place, and they had need of a new housemate.

The area she'd moved into was not exactly one of the nicer parts of the city, but it was cheap and close to ideal for organising more regular rehearsals. Unfortunately, her disposition towards rehearsal was not what it used to be. Just today she'd spurned the opportunity to do so because she needed to score. A foolish decision, she realised, as neither of her housemates had returned yet. Where they were, she didn't know. Rick was due to arrive late in the afternoon, and it seemed that he'd be here before either of them.

 

[CntDestyr]

From an outsider's perspective looking in, Rick knew that the band was doomed to fail. It wasn't just that their music sounded terrible, it was the personalities to heir band. The beautiful Alissa was the singer, and the guitarist Kim was great too, but after their first album went live, the sweater truly started to unravel. Things were fine, or at least they seemed that way. The band was signed by Sub Pop Records and it was a joyous occasion, but since then, the quality of their music had gone way downhill and the members in the band just stopped caring. The big nail in the coffin was when George Miner died. George was their drummer, and a damn fine one at that. He was like a music prodigy, able to play anything that he heard, able to string together seemingly random notes from the drum and make it sound amazing. Hell, even his stage presence was something that the most casual fan noticed. Before their second album was released, George unfortunately was involved in a head on car crash and died instantly.

After George's death, the band began the disputes with the label companies and Rick saw his friend Alissa fall in with the wrong crowd to say the least. It was all so sad, it really really was. He had a good job, was a social drinking, and was dating the love of his life. She was living in what seemed like the slums - halfway houses, graffiti, and the highest crime rate in the city to boot. In Seattle, every part of the city was mostly habitable, though with most cities there were some areas that were more rundown than the others. Of course, she chose one of those areas. It hurt Rick's heart to see the deterioration on his friend, but he couldn't afford to jeopardize his career or his life by hanging around her. From the start, he was there. More recently however, he was starting to fade back into the hustle and bustle of the city, only checking on Alissa every now and then, doing what he could to try and break her out of this little funk. The catalyst to the whole thing, was when Alissa started hanging around that Julio character, that lead to her moving in with Hayden and Gregory. Two characters that were unsavory to say the least, Hayden in particular.

Today was one of the days that Rick had arranged time off to go and meet with her. He was unsure what was going on in the tiny apartment with the three of them all living there, and he was fairly sure that his friend was being taken advantage of. Today was like any other meeting day. He would take her out to lunch, pay for an expensive meal, then plead her to consider changing her habits. His pleas would undoubtedly fall on deaf ears, but as he drove his brand new BMW X5, he could only hope that she would come out of the apartment quickly and get in the car.

Getting out of his car, he paid a homeless man twenty dollars to watch over his car and make sure no one broke out the windows or did anything, with the promise of another twenty dollars when he made his way back down. It was literally the easiest forty dollars he would make, probably in his life. Trotting up the stairs, he knocked on the door, finding that it was already cracked open. Whoever was in there didn't latch the door shut. Pushing it open, he poked his head in and glanced around, wondering where Alissa was, but also wondering where Hayden and George were. Those were the two that creeped him out the most.

The apartment complex was dirty and rundown. On his way up the flights of stairs, he saw a dead rat. A fucking dead rat just in the corner of the stairwell. It stank like it had been there for a few days, and the fucking thing was huge. He almost puked walking by the thing. He was wearing a suit, a nice suit to come to this little area. The walls were brown with creeping mildew, which brought an entirely new odor and a few of the stairs looked like they were ready to give out. Whatever Alissa was paying for this place was too much,

"Alissa!"

The man called out into the apartment, hoping to make things quick. He needed to get back to his car, and he wanted to be gone by the time Hayden and George showed up. Besides, he only had an hour or so for lunch.

(Hope the post is alright)

 

[YellowSmoke]

"Rick?" Alissa's voice sounded before she appeared, poking her head out of her bedroom door and smiling at the sight of her old friend. "Hey, come on in."

She emerged to greet him and hug him customarily. Around her, the apartment was a mess of magazines and coffee cups, though she didn't seem to mind. A disparity of values was clearly evident between the suited young man and the girl who hadn't even bothered to change out of her night wear, clad as she was in an old Guns 'n' Roses t-shirt so faded that the logo was barely recognisable, her bare feet sticking out of the ends of cotton pyjama bottoms bearing a red tartan print. Her black-and-red hair was unwashed and uncombed, though she always had the ability to make the bed head look undeniably sexy.

"What's up? How's work and all that? Come, sit down."

A short, squat table sat in the midst of the carnage, littered with cups, and though the deep leather couch looked inviting enough, its surroundings brought one to questioning just how clean it was. Collapsing into it, the young singer crossed her ankles before her, feet up on the seat, her knees splayed wide, and let her hands rest in the crook of her lap. She seemed upbeat enough, though as ever of late, she lacked that liveliness which she had brought with her as a teenager, that playful twinkle in her gray-blue eyes. Rick probably knew when that star had faded; he'd known her long enough.

Even when things had been tough for the band she had kept her lively charm about her, but when George had died she'd taken it hard and turned to drugs for an escape. That was when she'd fallen, and only the needle and the spoon had been there to brace her fall. It had brought her too much comfort - more than anything or anyone else could - and in time she had grown dependent on it. She was far from careless, but even she would not be so bold as to state that she could quit whenever she wanted to. The truth of the matter was that she didn't want to, though. Not until her life began to look up again would she consider kicking the habit, and the more time that passed numbly, the more it seemed she was waiting for her life to change instead of getting up and making the change herself.

 

[CntDestyr]

The man forged into her apartment, shutting the door behind him and looking around the place. It was a pigsty. This was how she was living now? Before he could wrap his mind around the deplorable state of the apartment, she made her way out. Giving her a half assed hug before giving her a once over. She was wearing her pajamas still, she wasn't even ready for their arrangement. The more time that they wasted here, the more time it gave that bastard Hayden and George to walk through the door. He watched as she plopped down on the couch, and the man just put his hand in his pocket and kept standing. He had some idea of what went on on that couch, though he still wouldn't chance it. This was an expensive suit, he couldn't afford to get any dirt or any bodily fluid on it.

"That's alright. You almost ready to go?"

The man asked out. The problem was that she seemed too comfortable with the habit. While it was great for her to be on the drug, which honestly he questioned if she was on it at the very moment, she was just being lethargic. She wasn't doing anything to kick the habit, to better her life, to do anything for the band. Missing practice was clearly not the way that she would get out of this shit hole and into the everyday world. He had offered her to come live with him in his posh house up on Queen Anne Hill, but she declined and clearly that was a mistake. Outside, he could hear two sets of heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, and Rick knew who those footsteps likely belonged to.

Not a moment later, two men barged into the apartment, seeing Rick standing there and her sitting on the couch. One man, was wearing an old and ratty black beanie, aviator sunglasses, a collared shirt that was open revealing some band shirt underneath and jeans that stuck to his form. This was Hayden. The man behind him was wearing a black jacket with a little bit of a white undershirt showing and baggier jeans than the man before him. Hayden took his sunglasses off, and turned to George.

"I told you I saw that faggot's car outside."

The man said before heading over to Alissa and planting a passionate kiss on her lips, his tongue invading her mouth for just a moment before he broke it off and plopped down next to her. Hayden didn't like Rick, not one bit. He felt that Rick was just lying to them all, and that he tried to ride in on some shining white unicorn to try and save her. No one coaxed Alissa to live like she did, and as far as he was concerned, she enjoyed it. George on the other hand was a little quieter, a little more reserved. He took part in all of it, but he didn't have as much confidence or arrogance as Hayden had, clearly. Lighting up a cigarette, Hayden draped his arm around Alissa, flicking the ash willy nilly to the floor like he didn't even care about his living space. He didn't of course, he was only there a few hours per day.

"So, you guys gonna go do your thing. . or whatever?"

He asked Alissa not even bothering to acknowledge that Rick was in the room. George had disappeared back into his room, clearly uncomfortable about the situation that was unfolding. Rick watched as he just came in and acted like he owned the place, and owned Alissa. He knew they weren't dating, but he knew they were doing other stuff. When he asked the question though, Rick looked at her, waiting for her answer. He was getting more and more impatient the longer she waited. He wouldn't take her out like she was though, no way. She knew the rules about going out and having a meal with him. She had to look at least semi-respectable, not look like a woman who had just given up.