1: Dolly

The feeling of Dolly's skin was distinct compared to other women I had touched. And this was merely an isolated observation, disconnected from anything sexual. The surface of her skin was soft against my trembling fingertips as I traced them across her cheeks. Her lips, red with smeared lipstick streaked down her chin, twitched open slightly when I touched them, then curved into a small smile. A chuckle escaped from her partly opened mouth, a distorted sound that was muffled in my head.

Gently, she pulled my hand away from her face and interlocked her fingers with mine, resting our handhold on the ruffled sheets, a texture that seemed so stark against my senses, when I had been completely consumed by the sensation of the surface of her skin. Still, the very notion of holding her hand in mine filled me with an amount of euphoria that I had never felt before as we laid side by side.

Dolly's eyes bled a vibrant blue, glowing in the dim light of my bedroom. The color seemed to drip down the side of her face, flowing steadily with the consistency that blood might have. And in that moment, I'd been so focused on her eyes, that I hadn't realized she moved closer to me, her nose almost touching mine. I inhaled her soft breaths, tasting sweet like the artificial flavor of a breath spray. That taste was so enthralling, so delicious, and all I wanted was more. It was here that I wrapped my arm around her waist and pulled her body closer to mine---it felt as though we were floating as I did, the blankets tangled around our limbs. And before I had quite realized, her tongue was in my mouth, her lips pressed against mine, urgent and eager for the taste of me. Her hand grasped my head, pushing her tense fingertips through the tangles in my hair. Her tongue seemed to melt in my mouth, warm and practically oozing down my throat, a thick and sticky syrup, addicting and entrancing.

Eventually, she pulled away, the sweet candy-like substance dripping from her mouth---it was a bright pink, a contrast to her dark clothing. Slowly, she sat up and climbed over me, wrapping her legs around my hips. Leaning down, she kissed me on my nose, then my lips, and then my neck and collarbone. Her fingers curled around the waistline of my pants and---

I awoke a disheveled mess on the edge of my bed, still in my clothes and laying in the pitch black darkness that was my windowless room. The other side was empty---nothing but a cold spot where someone might be. What made the disappointment of the empty bed worse was a dull headache lingering in the front of my skull, paired with unbearable fatigue that made my bones feel heavier than they were.

The door to my room suddenly swung open, casting a sheen of natural light from the rest of the dorm. In the doorway stood Cillian, looking at me expectantly. I could smell the pungent odor of freshly smoked marijuana drifting off of him, stinging the inside of my nose. I squinted slightly at the sudden burst of light, before rolling over to find where I left my phone on my nightstand.

"Dude, you're not even up yet?" he said. "It's almost ten."

"Why the hell do you care?" I glanced over at him, my eyes still adjusting to the sudden burst of light.

"Did you forget we have an exam today? Besides, we've gotta meet Ryan and Elias after class. I'd rather you not bail out on us again because you thought it was a good idea to pass out on the front lawn."

"Would you shut up about that? Look, I'll be there today, promise." I sat up slightly. "Do you know where---" I stopped, figuring that was a question better left unasked. Besides, I doubted that he even knew the answer. "Nevermind, forget it."

Cillian sighed. "Don't tell me you were on acid last night again."

"And you stink of weed. Your point?"

He shook his head. "We'll talk about it later. Just don't be late again." He shut my door before I left, drenching the room in darkness again. If there were any time I'd have preferred that he left it open, it would've definitely been this time.

After I found the switch to my lamp and turned it on, I was able to better see the absolute mess that was my room. I managed to find my phone, sitting on the floor beside my bed, with a meager fifty percent charge. Just as expected, no unanswered messages were waiting for me. I turned my attention to the time, and decided that I ought to make it to the exam today. I was tired of doing makeup tests when I could be using my time for something more important. So I dragged myself up, partially stumbling as a sudden wave of lightheadedness hit me. I pulled up my pants, which had hung loosely around my thighs, and redid the zipper and button. I considered for a moment looking for my belt, but immediately discarded the idea and found my leather jacket lying on the floor. Once I had located my messenger bag, I headed out of my room and left the dorm. Cillian had already gone without me.

As I stepped into the carpeted hallway, glancing over at the wooden staircase, part of me had hoped to see Dolly sitting on the bench near the landing. Of course she wasn't. I chided myself for having hoped for something so ridiculous. Maybe it was worth it to be a little less self centered that way. If she'd left before I woke up, it clearly meant she had more important things to worry about.

The buildings on campus were incredibly reminiscent of a medieval castle, and if I was right, were a couple hundred years old. Sometimes I wondered what the point of even coming here was. It kept me busy, at the very least, while I looked for something to do with myself when I graduated. Or if I even did graduate---I had no major, and I'd been toying around with the idea of dropping out entirely. I didn't really believe in the idea that joining a band would be the best idea for me financially, so I was probably better off just dropping off the face of the earth. I was already pretty much on my way.

I hardly felt like myself, coming down from an acid trip. It was a weird limbo between my sobriety and being completely out of it. A limbo where everything felt so far away, one with a dull ache in my head and being hardly aware of my surroundings. And with it, another feeling: something that I experienced every day, an odd sensation that I found difficult to describe, seemed enhanced by a thousand percent during these weird limbo periods. It was almost like there was something living inside of me. Some days it felt as though this creature was squirming around inside my chest, coiling itself around my heart and rib cage, and on other days it felt as though it was behind my eyes, restless and irritable, and even sometimes it felt like it was in my mouth, sitting in place of my tongue and binding my teeth with whatever it was made of. The acid made this feeling go away. The come down made it worse.

I hadn't realized I was alone in the empty classroom until Professor Moss tapped her hand on the table I was sitting at. The exam book sat in front of me, unopened and spotless, a single freshly sharpened pencil in my trembling hand. I must've been so far away I hadn't even gotten started on the test. Everyone else had clearly already left, so I missed Cillian, no question about that.

"Are you feeling alright?" she asked me.

I looked up at her, her face somewhat unfocused in my vision. "Oh. I..." An excuse couldn't come to my tongue in time, my voice merely trailing off.

She sighed. "You look like you could use some rest. Look, come to my office during office hours, and I'll let you take the test then. Just get going, alright?"

"Sure," I managed. "Fine." I picked up my bag and walked out into the carpeted hallways, lit with fluorescents, and tried to remember how I even got to the classroom in the first place. After a few minutes of aimless wandering, my phone vibrated in my hand. Reflexively, I checked it, and on the lock screen, there was a message from Cillian displayed in full view:

"In case you forgot, you bloody moron, we're meeting in the courtyard outside of the theater and visual arts center."

"Of course," I muttered to myself. Turning around, remembering to read the signs, I headed the correct direction that I had completely missed beforehand. Sometimes I wondered what the point even was.

I found the exit at the base of the stairs and returned to the dark, overcast outdoors, the petrichor scent hanging heavy in the air. Almost automatically, I made my way across campus to find the visual arts center. It was where the guys liked to meet, since it was just convenient for Ryan, who had a nearly three hour drama class in the morning, for us to meet him right outside. I could hardly understand how dedicated he was to all of this theater.

I found the three of them sitting at a circular stone picnic table underneath a stone pavilion. As I approached, all of their attention turned to me. I didn't say anything at first, simply taking a seat beside Cillian and taking a quick look around the table.

"Look who decided to show up," Ryan remarked with a smile. "I wasn't even sure that we'd see you today." In front of him was an open binder full of class assignments. I didn't really know why he still bothered with them---the binders---it wasn't like we were in high school anymore, and forever something felt so childish about going out and buying school supplies every fall.

"You shoulda seen him in class," Cillian said, lighting Elias's cigarette. "Looked like he was going to vomit on his test and then pass out."

"Wouldn't be out of the ordinary," Elias commented, his voice just as flat as ever.

I rested my elbows on the table and just sighed. "Have any of you seen Dolly around today?" I asked absentmindedly, and then immediately regretted asking. In times like these, I would have to constantly repeat to myself to not say anything while I was so out of it like this, but my mouth seemed to move on its own.

Elias shot a weird look at me. "'Dolly'?"

Cillian shook his head. "He's talking about Alaya. Don't mind it, he just calls her that sometimes like a weirdo."

Ryan chuckled. "Alaya's that weird girl you hooked up with at Samantha Cooke's party last month, right? The one who dresses like a creepy goth barbie?" He took a sip from the water bottle sitting to the right of him.

"Is that why you call her 'Dolly'?" Elias asked. "Is that some weird kink thing you're into?"

I rolled my eyes. "Shut up already. I just need to know if any of you have seen her around today." All three of them collectively shrugged and shook their heads without saying anything else. "Alright, whatever."

"Anyway," Elias said, sighing smoke that curled loosely around his face, "Did you write any new lyrics?"

"No," I replied flatly.

Cillian looked at me. "Seriously, man? What else could you possibly be doing?"

I shrugged. "It's hard to focus on much of anything when I can feel a parasitic creature crawling around my insides and spending days sitting in my skull pressing against my eyes." That sentence spurred a moment of silence, each one of them staring at me with a bewildered expression of their own. Again, I quietly wished I had just gotten myself to shut up.

The quiet seemed to last an eternity before Ryan finally said, "Then just write lyrics about that! That sounds metal as fuck, man." He kept smiling, like he always did, but that smile didn't do a good job of hiding how uncomfortable he was by what I said. The other two didn't even try to hide their discomfort.

"No, that sounds schizo as fuck," Elias said. "'Oooh, they're in the walls, ooh they're watching me', type shit. 'The voices are telling me to rip out my veins'..."

I looked at Cillian to see his reaction, but he maintained his silence and seemed to avoid looking at me. "Whatever. Why do we need a new song so soon anyway?"

Elias took another long drag of his cigarette. "It's getting quite boring whenever we go to practice at Ryan's place and we play the same song over and over for hours. And if we're gonna go anywhere with this, we're gonna need more than one song at the very least." Years of doing cover band shit had grown stale, and once the guys realized my talent for shitty dramatic poetry, they wanted to go all in on the originality, to make us a "real band", god, guess there's no respect for cover bands, then.

Ryan dug a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and set it on the table, unfolding it. "Also, more importantly, Jessie asked us to perform at this local metal event she's hosting at the club she works at. We're already on the list to perform, and she said we'll have time for two or three songs. We should have something else to perform, or else it's just gonna be too short."

I sighed. "When is it?"

"Next week on Friday."

I glared at him. "Seriously? We're supposed to write and finish a whole new song in a week? Not even a full week."

"What the hell else have you got going on?" Cillian retorted. "Besides, if we meet up every day after class, we'll have plenty of time to get a good demo before Friday."

I glanced at him for a moment before drawing my gaze away. "I hope you all will actually contribute some fucking lyrics this time. You know you're allowed to, right?"

Elias rolled his eyes. "You know we're ratshit at writing."

"Then get better at it." I looked at Ryan. "Surely you must know something about poetry, right? You're doing Shakespeare and whatever the fuck in drama every day."

Ryan smiled nervously. "Come on, man. You know that's not the same."

"I mean what I said."

He sighed. "I guess I'll try to come up with something."

"That makes it way easier on me," I replied, standing up.

Cillian looked at me. "Where are you going?"

"To see if I can find Alaya." I stepped over the bench seat and readjusted my nearly empty messenger bag over my shoulder. "Unless one of you wants to help me, you can just keep doing whatever it was you were doing before I got here."

Elias parked his cigarette in between his lips, and slightly muffled, he said, "Do you even know where her classes are?"

"No, but I'll look around until I do."

When I turned to leave, Ryan suddenly spoke up again. "Look, when I was leaving class, I heard some people talking about her in the hallways. I don't see her anywhere around the theater, so you might find her by the art studio or something on the west side of the building."

"Thanks."

And like always, I felt a thousand times worse after talking to them.