steady as she goes!, ISO anyone! open to all.

[Isadora Grisham]

steady as she goes !
FRIDAY NIGHT · HOUSE PARTY · OPEN TO ALL

Someone had a hound’s instinct for trouble, some intuitive sniff that lead them leagues off the beaten track of party-places and down into the town, the city intestines, the suburbs, where some would-be highschool hero had thrown a party apparently without parental consent or awareness in one of thirty-three nineties movie tropes that Isadora Grisham knew of. A cellphone call (or a siren song, but twenty-somethings are rarely prone to such mythological means) and thirty more had hit the door, making for a motley mess of college kids crashing about and a few star-struck teenagers sidling along the sidelines, while Mr. Too-Trusting-Parenting himself preened in the kitchen. And our favorite philosophy majorette had plunked herself smack-dab in the center, in the rotary of ripe girls and boys grooving, or at the very least engaging with the back beat of some current chart-topper track, or maybe just bopping about without real rhythmic understandings, or perhaps only catching vague spasms of dance-ibility sown into the chorus and responding accordingly, or maybe nobody was cuttin’ rugs but her; maybe Isadora had swaddled herself in 2/4 time and solipsism, and was now doing a lonely jitterbug in a not yet specified dimension. (Many scientists find this theory lovely but not altogether convincing and, like, utterly out of keeping with physics. In response, Miss Grisham offers a choice middle-finger retort.) During brief blinks, she could pretend that this was so, but every now and then she’d feel the press of some other person, some texture, some warmth, and curl to it -- and she’d have to open her eyes.

Time to get kinetic, ‘Dora dear. There, signs of life: a lick of the lips; a breath; a steadying of inner gravity; an ungainly forward step. Shouldering through the throng, whacked by the odd unattended arm but otherwise unstopped by the boogieing masses, Isa arrived at the outside. “What made her leave?” an eager audience member might demand. “Why’d she stop dancing?” Shall we say a certain psychic click? A cerebral twitch, perchance. A bit of precognition -- or boredom, hooking her behind the knees and edging her onto the next impetus, the next whimsy-way. Surely she had not climbed through a valley of elbows and gyrating girls to clasp a silver-framed photograph! But there she was, greasing it up with fingerprints, eyeing it with a kind of absent intelligence that bordered on art or alcoholism, touching a thumb to each member of the nuclear family portrayed. Embarrassed by the sudden intimacy of viewer and viewed, she retired it, face down, left it leaning against a candybowl. From there she pricked her finger on a nearby busted shotglass -- one of seven or more strewn out along the tabletop -- and nabbed the remaining photograph of a gap-toothed ten-year-old even as she turned away, even as she abandoned the room to more energetic nocturnals, to better bacchanals.

Ah, there it is. Swagger. A confidence of bone and brain that had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your knew where you were going, but took root in small concrete understandings, a blood-pact with your feet to follow whither they lead you off to, a belief that you will not be delivered into fell ends by your own aimless legs, a keen suspicion that she was looking good and ought to act the part. Wearing this wonderfully, Isadora snatched a beer from the fridge without a word to the host, who sat on the counter, and slobbered, and adjusted his sunglasses against fluorescent glare, and had looked like someone should have said something, anything, to the boy so fortunate as to have his house destroyed, the kid who would have one hell of a story monday but was slightly scared and not willing to venture beyond the bounds of his kitchen. “Surely there had been some sympathetic inkling in her,” a bleeding heart should note. No. None. Only the smear of understanding, and a sudden appreciation for heuristic learning.

I’ve lost track of her. Did she head over to the dancefloor, again? Or had she snagged a stranger and headed upstairs? No, none of these! How demure, Isa-Dear: lounging on the couch, tipping back your beer but without forgetting the photograph, holding it close, inappropriate intimacy for someone else’s keepsake. Check out the interloper! Tall, but awkwardly so, as if stretched rather than proper grown. Licking her lips, nestling her drink between her knees. Not a glance to the man-boy teen-thing closing in, sitting on the other cushion, leaning close, peeking at her dirty pillows, as exposed by her slipping dress-straps -- or perhaps just her photograph? Yes, hers. At least as long as the present lasted; a drink or two might find it forsaken on the countertop, or tucked under a sofa-pillow for safe keeping. How suddenly she saw him! How abruptly she turned her head and met his eyes and halved his one-liner opening, and gave him a graver look than she offered most anyone, having already stumbled into introspection and therefore scissored away most of those charming mechanisms that Isadora Grisham braided into her body-language, the eyebrow raise and auto-smirk and half-lidded eyes, as if just woken, the things she did unthinking that seemed to fall away into dead-pan drear when she was red-caught in thought. His retreat startled a laugh and a second beersip, her mood already bubbling into... something new. Not thought, undoubtedly. Who could think like that? Legs crossed, an arm behind her head, a beer in hand. That was a pose for a world conqueror, or at the very least a scrabble champion; not for silly Grisham girls with a photograph cooling at her side, feeling miraculously moxie laden and not near drunk enough for being alone.

[Keith Deckerton]

She lives in my lap. Forever my fiancé… Friday night and as was to be expected, the children had come out to play. Bright lights and grimy city streets held their lures, as did lines of white, shot glass in clear and dark and music that carried it all forward and into the middle of everywhere and everything and the party became a haze of colours and voices, blurred faces and vague memories. It was time to shed the small pieces of propriety and control adopted over the course of the week and return to being the bad little souls that existed within each figure, just waiting to be let free and of all places, the streets of this place, this wonderful, dangerous place, was the perfect setting for all kinds of mischief, debauchery and living life without thought or care. And everything that was said and that happened tonight would find their way to the ears of everyone, even the people who were not there and it would become a hot tangle of events and lies that would only be forgotten when the next night arrived where things got out of hand. She lives in my lap. Forever my fiancé… Andre 3000. Solo album and the song was one of the best, perfectly suiting the mood, still relaxed as it was.

It was definitely Friday night.

On and this particular night, as on so many other particular nights, Keith Deckerton was leaving the bar, hand sliding into his pocket and withdrawing a pair of keys attached to a single key ring that happened to be a picture of the Bleeding Heart of Christ wrapped in hard plastic. A curio bought on a whim somewhere and which now served its purpose well and fine. A lazy, elegant saunter took the dark-haired man forward and towards the car parked on the curb like a good pet, sleek lines of dark metallic blue shaping the coupe, which blinked with light and life with a soft beep. Opening the door, Keith considered the message he had just received, invitation desperately given, laughingly and almost cruelly amused accepted by the kind of individual to which a party was always an opportunity for something, whatever it might be. Not only that, true, because the doorways that opened up did so on paths that led to so many different avenues it was a surprise disaster did not strike at any of them. Getting into the car, Keith flung his jacket onto the passenger seat and pulled a cigarette from the packet lingering between the seats, lighting it before the key was stuck into ignition and the car purred to life with a soft hiss and the soft sound of Sweat X in the background playing as he drove off, goal fixed.

The house was almost overflowing when Keith pulled his car up along the curb, beats and rhythms spilling out of the open windows, along with the sounds of people shouting, singing and revelling in a fashion that made his lips quirk in the faintest smile as he switched off, got out of and then locked the car, sliding the keys back into his pocket. Wearing a faded black leather jacket over a white t-shirt, stovepipes tucked into worn, shin high Doc Martens, the door opening immediately and as quickly allowing him in. In his opinion, a party was not a party until he had arrived. And an hour later, the host having been ignored when he approached to greet, Keith Deckerton had been fashioned with a beer. Leaning against the wall, one boot lifted to press against the white surface, a cigarette dangling from his lips and he was bored. It was obvious in his expression, handsome features painted with apathy for this place, the people in it, the drinks, the music… everything. It was all terribly, pathetically boring and certainly exactly what Keith had been expecting when he had arrived. There had been little hope for anything else. For a moment, flinty brown eyes studied the silly third year doing her best to impress him, talking shit and looking like it as a result. “Go away.” he said simply, voice as bored as his expression was, his attention shifting from her entirely and onto the bottle that he lifted to his lips.

The little chit’s face fell slightly but she did harrumph him and then flounce away, Keith’s amusement at the childish behaviour following in her wake. Didn’t matter how she shook her ass. He didn’t fuck stupid women. Bored even with his own thoughts, how beautifully indecent of me, Keith pulled his gaze away from the foolish child and scanned the surroundings in the hope for something… more. Of course, he saw her. There was simply no concept of missing the presence and the boredom receded somewhat. Not completely gone, it was never completely gone, but it had moved back to make space for vague curiosity and a natural basic attraction that had nothing to do with anything but it was just life. Pushing away from the wall to walk her way, leaving a black boot print on painted white. Something extra so that parents can really blow their top. He paused in his approach, enough time for her to make some gangly idiot scared of hitting on another girl for months, enough time for him to mock the youngster when he passed, not a specific reaction perhaps but because Keith just radiated better. Better at everything. I’ve grown into my motherfucking boots, was the thought whilst he continued forward, enough to fling his lean frame to fill the empty space on the couch, not leering because he did not need and once again, he was better than that.

Instead, he said nothing, sipped his beer, lit a cigarette and waited. For what? Well, Keith had seen the tray of small glasses filled with bright green liquid being passed around and was waiting for the moment it was handed to him, like he knew it would be, like everyone knew it would be. He was Keith Deckerton. Of course it would be. And that’s when glass would thud against wood, the beer set down on the side table, Keith accepting the tray on which only half the little cups of split second warmth had been drained, sitting forward slightly, balancing the tray adeptly. It was then and only then that he turned to the girl next to him, clutching a photograph in a way the Keith did not find real at all. One vessel was swept off the tray and emptied, discarded before eyes that were not warm, but glinted wickedly, landed on her. “Shot.” he murmured around the butt of his cigarette, the trailing wreaths of smoke wrapping themselves around him, only making the air seem heavier and hotter than it truly was. Party air. Take a big whiff.

[Seraph Dylan]

it was friday night, and for a while it looked as though sera dylan was going to be spending it on her own. the school week felt extended, as though it had lasted seven days, rather then five. a wave of sleepiness washed over her a few hours earlier, and she had napped accordingly, but now she was wide awake and depressed that she had nothing to do for the remaining hours of the night. her desk lamp was on, and it cast a warm glow over her dorm room. the walls were plastered with various posters of bands, movies, magazine articles and lyrics to her favorite songs. only small sections of the white washed wall could be seen now, as almost every space was covered. as for the rest of her room, it was really clean, except for a pair of pants and a shirt on the floor. on the desk, her journal lay open with a few scribbles on a mostly blank page - the feeling to write had long past at this point.

rolling onto her back, bright blue eyes scanned the ceiling, which was also covered in posters (thanks to aj, who was a lot taller then she.) the white chords from her headphones could be seen cutting a path down the black tank top she was wearing, and the iPod itself was clipped to a pair of red, spandex short shorts. closing her eyes, sera bopped away to goldfrapp when she felt her cellphone's vibrations through her mattress. reaching behind her, she tried to find it without looking, but was unsuccessful. finally, she turned back onto her stomach and managed to wrap her nimble fingers around it. apparently, there was a house party going on in town. it didn't take long for her to decided that it was probably worth going to. there was nothing else to do anyways.

once she was dressed and ready to go, sera headed to the parking lot to grab her car. it probably wouldn't be the smartest thing to drive to a party where she was going to be drinking, but there was no way in hell that walking was an option. her keys were tucked in the back pocket of the light blue jeans. they were tight fitting and tapered off at the ankle, and if one was looking in the general direction of the ground, they could see a black pair of lace flats donned on her feet. as for her top, it was a dark blue, loose fitting tank top that hung off her small frame. were she not wearing a black tube top bra underneath; her chest would be completely exposed. to top it all off, sera was wearing a brown leather jacket so the cold didn't effect her as much as it would were she not wearing it. never the less, goosebumps had risen on her flesh and a sharp chill rocketed through her body.

with a click of a button, sera was seated behind the wheel of her blue camaro. it had been a present when she was hit her college years. before long, sera pulled out of the parking spot, blasted a little johnny cash and before long she was in front of what could only be the house. people seemed to be oozing out of every orifice. the smell of stale cigarettes and body sweat could be smelled from even where she was standing. after locking her car, sera made her way in through the front door. it was really bumping, music blared and dozens of writhing bodies could be seen dry humping each other. (as that was what dancing had become these days.) eventually, she made her way to the kitchen and stole a beer from... someone. she didn't know who but, pretty much everyone was inebriated to the point where they probably wouldn't even notice.

after fighting her way back through the crowd, she stopped dead when her eyes fell on the face of keith, who was sitting beside another woman who looked familiar. had sera seen her around school before? wasn't her name like.. isabella or something like that? for a moment, her heart fluttered, before she decided to head over, grab a shot without taking her eyes off of keith and then oozed back into the party - ready to dance.

[Isadora Grisham]

Tendril was the right word, exactly the right word. Smoky spirals? It falls whole meters short of that curling, shifting shape, ash-in-air: cigarette aesthetics: delight in the vice. Tendrils it is. Extract from her fecund imagination -- or some other brain-site with good enough rainfall for roses and reveries -- a tiny bit of what-if, a smidgeon of let’s-play-pretend, and these tendrils contribute to a dragon-cake recipe. Sans the cake. Might it be, reader? Could not something mighty magical be sitting on the other seat cushion, hidden beneath (“Curses! Always hidden!” quoth the cryptozoologist) a smokescreen? ‘Dora doubts it, too. Not enough scales, though this particular animal -- a species of friend, rare, endangered, one of a kind! -- might likewise be cool to the touch, and in second similitude may also be packing the same fiery breath. Best be cautious, Isa-Dear. Basiliscus Deckerton warrants some of your scarce tip-toe circumspection, I should think.

And so of course she loosened up them bones into easy-peasy skeletal sprawl, staring forward as he stared forward, looking for all the world like they were two peas in a degenerate pod.

Moments later, Keith was the man with the shots and Isadora became the girl with the decision, looking over the green glassfuls indolently, smilingly, but thoughtfully, and with a whole heap of other adverbs pared out for their lack of internal continuant consonants and thus a minimality of supine syllables as well. It was receding already, that jelly-knee feeling of Friday-brand fancy-free. You know what I mean. A shot, a sip, a beer or three and you arrive there, too, the magic sense of ‘doesn’t matter’ politics for dealing with the opposite (or the same, if your tastes run the same course as Dora-delight’s), heralded by stumbling, fluffed by backbeat thuds and short hemlines, kiddish half-assed kamikaze. In it’s wake? Sour mouthed sobriety, enough mental charge to catch bad grammar and stuffed braziers alike and with a double dosage of the resulting cynicism. But she could get it back. Isadora seized one at last and downed it without much inspection; she grabbed a second and had a double round of down-the-hatch, deadpan but for the self-sadistic smile afterward. “What’s in it?” she asked, too late, if late meant too tardy to stop it, but damn, those gears had been set in motion long ago, when some would-be sybarite girlchild had sawed at her heartstrings with kitchen butterknives until untethered. Perhaps there is a moment, just one, a fork in the garden of life, in which the path is picked. Did she have hers? Yes, I think, but neither she nor I can remember it anymore; it doesn’t matter a whit now anyways. Here she is, girls and singular boy, Mister Deckerton, a world and a couch-cushion away.

‘Am I really thinking about determinism right now?’ she inquired of her spinning-tire neurons (no sparks to speak of) while peering into one of the shotglasses, before abandoning it and any further introspective exercises to the the table-top, to sit it out with her near-empty beer until such time as hedonist Isa felt the need for half-empty philosophies and all-empty tumblers. Ah. Finally. It was kicking in. First, the belly-burn warmth. Soon it’d be upon her. Potentially. Assuming a certain sense of causality. (Hume would have a wagging finger for that.) Should the mystery liquid be something liquor-like, and not poison in fine crystal, or plant-blood, or some other equally mysterious alchemical substance that might mix badly with her heat-seeker sensibilities. Any minute now, barring those unhappy hazards, she’d be buzzin’ with spirituous good times.

Maybe she already was.

“How are you, Deckerton?” She liked it -- calling him by his surname. It seemed apropos, like his stance, and his serene acceptance of the tray covered in shots, a little distant but equally accurate as the alternative, like saying ‘mother’ over ‘mom.’ Did he call her Gisham in return? Maybe he did. Isadora was the obvious choice. Isa was gaining votes, though that habit had started with a certain midnight-eyed accomplice, I think, a bister-iris boy after her own heart. And no one called her ‘Dora but certain internal forces -- yours truly -- but perhaps he did, perhaps he found it a nice double appellation for certain children’s show protagonists, a Miss The-Explorer, and the villainess in residence at Cedar Creek: what-me-worry Grisham. She couldn’t recall at moment; she lounged against the sofa, feeling the coarse-warm fabric at her back, one hand curled beside her head and that head tilted to the side, a pose well-documented in Western art but unhelpful to certain non-grip dress-straps, smiling idly with odalisque’s pleasure-leisure repose. From this vantage, she noted the the slip of the blondette in and out of the scene with coy consideration, eyeing up any female desirability and not finding the subject wanting, but somehow unconcerned, and unmotivated to quit her seat just yet. Perhaps ... soon? That foot-tapping energy that always accompanied refueling for her was at her back, starting to press into her indolence, butting heads with her drunkard’s laze and prodding towards dance-floors, second-story adventures, anything more than the inevitable ‘good night’ that came on the heels of such lush lethargy when compounded with a sliver of contemplation. Briefly she considered herself, her little olive dress, the odd rectangle pressing into her hip that might have been, may yet be, a silver-framed photograph, the burgeoning glib in the back of her throat. (A rare moment of reflection, appropriately abrupt.) Turning her head towards Keith, grinning in auto-companionship, she fixed her dress straps in an unwonted turn of propriety, and removed herself somewhat from local male attentions. But there! In those otherwise dark and dull and near-black eyes: a tiny vandal’s sparkle in the corner of her iris: a growing paint-the-town-red sheen.

[Keith Deckerton]

Isadora Grisham could drape herself across him just about any time she wanted. One could not blame Keith for the way his mind worked but best get the slightly riskier theories and conclusions out of the way so that if sense were to follow, if sense was required, then sense would be spoken and not half jumbled words that were tinged with unplanned lust. No. Keith was older and a whole lot smoother than that. True, he was good-looking and most would admit he held a kind of charm that was appealing, a dark glamour that attracted and repelled pretty much in equal measures but he was also smarted than most people about people in particular. It was not all instinct, as much as going on instinct could be fun and he was hardly the type to dismiss that. But when it came to this kind of setting, where one had to navigate the currents of a party, which were dangerous and thrilling all in the same back stroke. But to get things out of the way…. Isadora Grisham was hot and Keith Deckerton would be more than willing to drag her fabulous little self into a bed somewhere and have his evil way with her. He was, at least, honest about his intention with himself, even if she could only guess about what thoughts went on behind the dark eyes that glinted at her from over a tray of shots. It was not romantic and not magical and hell, it was certainly not worth some author deciding it was perfect. But it was real and if Keith did grin slightly when the girl leaned over, appearing through the smoke to swipe first one, then two shots off the tray, their acidicly coloured contents vanishing down her throat with nary a flicker of a dark eyelash in reaction to what only be called a slow burn. And her question? Her question just made him smile slightly.

“What’s in it?”

His smile was slow to dawn, but the faint curl of his lip was certainly there when his shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Nothing. Everything. I don’t know.” Just drink it. The unspoken part of the sentence, echoed when the tray drifted closer to him and he swiftly made work of the contents of several of the shot glasses – this is the owners of the house’s finest speaking to you from the bottom of a shot glass. Have another. Keith did and did not hesitate with it either, catching a wayward drop from his lip with the tip of his tongue before he leaned back with every appearance of satisfaction, cigarette left to burn itself out between his lips. It was as harsh a taste as neat alcohol and one he enjoyed as much, nicotine sliding over his tongue. Beautiful and deadly and with more than enough warning to take away the risk of it and turn it into something else he did every day. And her next question? Oh, it was heard by the lean man whose frame now occupied more space than originally, long legs stretched out and as relaxed as his couch-mate (something that should not be overlooked for the depth of understanding afforded). The words just sunk through the warm haze, temporary and all the more elusive for it, that had been created by alcohol.

He would have answered. Was going to answer. Make no mistake about that. It was not in his best interests to ignore Isadora Grisham. However, the words stalled in his throat when a familiar blonde form appeared and his smile, so far faint and pleased, tilted and warped to become somewhat… other. He didn’t doubt that she had seen him as much as he had seen her and was proved correct when her little sway (and he did love the way she moved) took her in his direction. Keith would have loved that moment, and probably did in an unconscious way. To tell the truth, he had not laid a hand on Sera Dylan. He’d probably lose his nuts in a heartbeat if he tried. She’d probably enjoy it for the time it took her to come to her senses and realise just who she was doing what with. Sera, in his opinion, cared too much for reputations and it was with deep amusement in his gaze that he watched her flounce over. He did adore Sera Dylan, if Keith Deckerton could be said to have any feelings for anyone or anything. In his own, twisted little way, she had managed to evoke more than tolerant amusement from him. Did not stop amusement from being a dominant emotion in all of this. Hardly. Keith looked like the mirthful type especially when Sera locked eyes with him and took a shot off the proffered tray.

“I’m swell, love.” he answered, pulling his gaze off Sera (who was playing a game with rules he had yet to break) and letting it linger on her movements as straps were lifted over dusky skin and restored something of wholesomeness to her image. Not that in any way dissipated his thoughts regarding Isadora, nor did he miss the way her gaze brightened and dulled reflexively, and then the spark that took residence in her gaze was enough, he supposed. Actually more than enough. “Just plain swell. How is my lady companion, then?” he asked in turn with the casual tones of someone who would be pleased to have an answer, but not displeased to have none where in fact, the general amount of Keith’s attention was wondering about whether tracing the line of skin that had been grazed by silk straps and wondering if there was a difference in sensation. An odd thought, too detailed to be a plan, but rather just the beginnings of an observation. An observation that was surprisingly devoid of intent to fulfil, only that Keith just did that. He just watched and plotted in the depths of his mind and even if the plots never came to fruition, it did not detract from the pleasure of them in any way. And somewhere, out there in the heaving mass of people, Sera Dylan danced. Or perhaps she didn’t. Maybe she was speaking to some complete stranger whose tongue would be down her throat in an hour? He didn’t know but he did like predicting. And in his predictions, the tray was taken up by another set of willing hands but not before two more shots were snagged, one of which slid over his lips and down his throat and the other offered smoothly to Isadora Grisham, suddenly closer in his lean, a drop of liquid escaping the confines and falling in heady abandon to dash itself against her skin. “Trouble?” It wasn’t a request.

It was an invitation.