Eleven: Such a Mess

It had all gone down as Bianca predicted, the lecture from Elmer, and her offering her the couch. She was still yet to talk to the landlord She wasn't sure she even wanted the appointment anymore. She had lost her source of validation and confirmation that she still had it and could use her charm to get whatever she wanted. She was mostly just trying to see if it would work on him.

Staying back at Elmer's house through the day, blinding her eyes to the millions of chores needing to be done was just a new low she wasn't willing to hit. And sure she would have atleast washed the untensils, but she kept having flashes of trauma hit her each time she stepped into a kitchen or did any acts of service, a scar left by her old job. It felt great to think of it as such an old job. She felt lighter, less crankier, she had had a good cry and a full seven hours of sleep the previous night, so she wasn't in one of her moods.

Laying by the couch, drinking milk right from the bottle she scrolled down her phone, mostly trying to find any videos or lessons of any information about stripping. If she could get most of it online that would be perfect, it would be value for her money. After all she believed she was sexy enough to have bills flying her direction while she figured it out on the pole and she planned to milk everything out of that. The stripping thing had been on her mind for so long she could tolerate the idea without her skin crawling. That's when she came about, an audition.

Her eyes quickly skimmed through looking for a description that would fit her and there it was,_ Helena, a late twenties pretty lady, must be slim and tall and devious. Sparks of joy burst inside her heart. She wouldn't be the starring if the role did go through. she would be the antagonist, from what she had picked up reading through the other characters. Her heart was slamming so hard against her rib cage and her veins pulsed with the feeling of joy which jas become unfamiliar to Bianca.

It would be a very interesting turn of events to quit her annoying job the previous day and get booked for a role in the next With no time to rehearse, she got off her sleeping shirt and pulled on a tank top with sweats and heels and was out on her way, she would do her make up and add some jewelry depending on what vine the character had judging from the script in the venue's bathroom as she rehearsed the lines. It was always better for her to get into the character of she saw herself performing it, which wasn't a common case for most actresses. Her reflection always made everything better. And she sure hoped her image would come through for her in the audition.

The queue of actors was already looking eternal, but she had no where else to be. And even if she did, she would rather have been out cooking in the midnight sun, fueled by the hope of changing her life for the better. As soon as she got the script and registered her name she was down to business. Her skills were pretty rusty from lack of recent experience. It had been years since she acted and something about the excitement of the moment had her convinced that she could somehow make up for all of that in the one and a half our she'd be in the waiting area before she got called in.

She didn't care about networking and making friends and introducing herself. infact, she wanted to remain mysterious to them, she'd catch her fellow actors pointing and staring her direction and whispering at each other. She knew what it wsys about, acting was a tight knit community they could spot a newbie from miles.

Rather than just behaving like one, she'd decided carrying herself like a celebrity worked best for her. She figured if she could make her fellow actors believe it, she would too by the time she got in to audition. She'd made two fake phonecalls to her manager, and one fake one to her publicist , Thomas. Ofcourse Thomas knew no one by the name Bianca Matthews. But Thomas and Barry were sort of close, so his name had come up a few times in the novels and she knew what he was about. She wore a black face mask, her eyes never left the script, trying to seem as non chalant as possible and it was working for a while....till she got called in.

She had spent so much time taking the script apart, trying to read for subtext, trying to analyse it , understand it so much she hadn't had the time to actually do the work. She had to let two people go in before her, while she rushed to the bathroom to violate her face with make up that looked like a kindergarten child's drawing and done by a left hand because of how shaky her hands were. She added clips to her hair and put on some necklaces to seem fancier and like she actually put effort into her look. She couldn't decide whether to hold her hair up or down, so she opted for a half up half down, not villany at all, but it worked for her look. And it always looked great on her face.

She didn't have the exact lines, but she could swing it. She could impress the panel of directors with her ability to adlib. They would see that she was real performer who could keep the show going. The temperature in the room was chill, perhaps it was the fixed no non sense gazes, or the camera lenses that peered right through her three to five years of no acting experience cramped up in an hour. Goosebumps formed along her arms and her tongue cracked with dryness, her lines in turn rearrange themselves as random incoherent words.

" We're waiting for you Ms." the cameraperson said, poking through the pin drop silence that had engulfed the room in the last five minutes. The casting director had stared at the face of her designer watch two times since she'd entered the room and she'd already scribbled some notes on her performance sheet.The scowl on her face while she did it told Bianca that could not be a good sign.

Squaring her shoulders, she threw a gaze at the camera and proceeded with her introduction, fully aware that they had lost hope in her, she could not even tell if they were recording her or not. At that point they just wanted her out. Suddenly, her alarm that she normaly used in her waiting job to remind her to take a small mental health break for ten minutes went off and she decided to play it as a phonecall, to her manager. The idea was that if she seemed booked and busy she might be appealing.

" I can't right now I'm working. " referring to audition as work was supposed to earn her points. " Just tell them I am not available for that role right now. I have series coming up and am playing something close to that...talk later."

She put her phone back, making an uncomfortable rectangular dent in her sweats and making them sag to the one side. Then she went for the monologue. She started off slow as she was unsure but was hoping it read as grace to her very intimidating audience. After the first paragraph was over she hit a bump. Her mind grew foggy and she suddenly had nothing. She tried not to show it but she'd been silent for a few seconds and shell shocked. Adlibing was never her thing but she went for it, feeling the tension in her muscles squeezing her so that she could barely breathe let alone talk.

" Okay, we have everything we need thank you for your time, next!" The casting director rubbed her eyes under her round glasses, almost as of she wanted to soak her eyeballs in detergent from whatever mess that had been.

Bianca was screwed! She stormed out of the audition room, seething with an array of negative emotions she couldn't place. She walked right through the actors who were flooding around her hoping to get a feel of the audition from someone who'd been inside. But if they wanted to know what it was like they would have to enter and find out. It felt like a different bone in her body broke as she walked further away from the venue of the audition, pulling back her face mask on which was supposed to be a disguise, to save her from the shame that she was beginning to think had permanently inhabited her body so that shame would only be am exclusive emotion to her. What a freaking mess.