------[try to understand me little girl; my twisted passion to be your world]------

For many teens, no matter where they grow up, the first "roadtrip" they take with a herd of friends to another city--a bigger, more exciting city--is a rite of passage. Gina and Adora were no different. They started going to Montr�al on their own at fifteen and fourteen, respectively, and they aimed to go at least once every season from that point on. There was a certain freedom that came with buying a Greyhound or ViaRail ticket on a whim and ending up in what was essentially a different world eight to six hours later, depending on which mode of transportation they settled on. Montr�al was nothing like Toronto; the people weren't as pretentious (yes, you read right, that's the French being unpretentious) and bars weren't as picky about trivialities like the law.

In another city, one could be someone entirely different if they so pleased--and really, who would know the difference, other than companions embroiled in similar fa�ades? Gina and Adora never wasted such opportunities to try out new characters, to explore uncharted parts of their personalities. Upon review of their numerous trips to Montr�al, one could easily deduce that the two had a soft spot for the city's goth scene. One trip to a fantastic little store on east Mont-Royal, Cruella, and they were set for the week with an assortment of new outfits made of PVC, fishnet, pleather and endless other sheer materials. Between the two, they barely owned a whole industrial record, but even the locals could hardly tell they were little more than visitors at club Saphir's EBM nights. In the summers, they spent their days prancing freely around Saint-Laurent and Saint-Denis, hunting for records, rummaging for funky clothes, eating crepes and trying nearly every sushi restaurant they stumbled upon. Needless to say, these trips were not easy on the wallet.

Eventually the trips evolved to include Charlie and Christian Adare. Gina and Adora didn't necessarily want them there, but how trustworthy they were apparently diminished as they matured into beautiful, young women, who were more than aware of their sexuality and how to use it. Christian and Charlie had, after all, taught them the pleasures of the flesh and, in their minds, were left the responsibility of keeping the endlessly curious friends in check. It was downright ridiculous how easy it was for either Gina or Adora to come up with a moronic idea in gest, only to have the other see them both through its completion. In the girls' minds, the presence of their longterm boyfriends only served to cut costs in terms of hotel rooms and food--anything, really: the ability to manipulate had developed right alongside the sexual awareness, and often a simple smile, glance or arch of an eyebrow was enough to convince CC (as they called their boyfriend 'entity') to pay for or buy something. They were, after all, a combined nine to ten years older than their young girlfriends. Regardless of who was there, the idea was always to throw caution, reason and logic to the wind in pursuit of fun and adventure.

"Okay, okay, how about this one," Adora managed to say as her chest heaved and she gasped desperately for air. She'd always had a soft spot for offensive jokes, and in his lighter moods, Charlie always delivered.

"It can't be better than the one I just told you!" he protested. They'd bet on who could tell the best joke and he was certain he'd won with his grilled cheese sandwich, old people sex expos�.

"So, this little girl walks up to her mom and says, 'Mommy, why is my name Lily?' and the mother replies, "Well sweetheart, when you were a baby, a lily petal fell on your head, and so we named you Lily.' The little girl is satisfied and runs off to play again. The next day, the little girl's sister, Rose, goes up to their mother and asks, 'Mommy, why is my name Rose?' The mother answers, "Well, when you were a baby, a rose petal fell on your head, so we named you Rose.' The little girl, also satisfied with the reply, runs off to play. The day after that, the girls' brother goes up to their mother and says, 'flugksngnnngnlkrser,' and basically makes the most horrific, mangled sound imaginable. The mother waves him off and says, 'Shut the fuck up, Brick!' Adora paused for a moment to see Charlie's reaction, then burst into hysterical laughter, nearly toppling off of the hotel's bed as she did so. He only gazed at her with wonder as she rolled around, her amusement growing and growing until he was sure she was laughing as much at her own laughter as she was at the joke. Moments like this made him realize why he clung to her so possessively for twelve years--she never plotted the things she said and did, and she was never as concerned with petty girls things as she probably should have been for her age. The fact that she was effortlessly beautiful like that made her the ideal girl in his eyes.

"Let's get married," he blurted, surprising even himself as he said it. Adora's laughter ceased almost immediately, and she stared at him in shock, her mouth still half-frozen in a leftover grin.

"What? Are you fucking crazy? My mother would destroy me!" she exclaimed, disbelieving that he truly meant what he said.

"Come on! We're in Montr�al! It's perfect!"

"Uh, yeah, Montr�al, not Vegas!" she cried, her brow furrowed in concern.

"Who fucking cares?" He threw his arms into the air, his confidence growing each passing moment. "You're eighteen, you can do whatever you want, can't you?" he asked, as if challenging her. She thought for a moment, and from the look on her face, he could tell his phrasing was serving its intended purpose and changing her mind to match his will.

"Charlie... I don't know if this is a good idea," Adora managed, stunned by the sudden request. "We're so young!"

"Fuck that!" he insisted, moving quickly to where Adora stiffly sat. He kneeled before here, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his head in her lap. "I'm twenty three, I'm almost out of university, I could support us, I'll take care of you, baby, I swear." She felt herself grow nauseous as the space around her seemed to shrink, trapping her helplessly into Charlie's fantasy. His face became grim at the sight of the apprehension that blatantly contorted her pretty features.

"Don't you fucking get it? I love you. Why do you think I haven't let you go all these years? I could have sent you out to fuck around with every guy you met, but I already know I'm what you need. I saved you from wasting yourself and your time looking for what you already have. No one loves you like I love you. No one else could love you like I love you. It's not possible," he informed her, his tone refusing to betray his bluff. If she thought he knew this to be fact, perhaps she wouldn't doubt him. "It's not possible," he repeated, his serious eyes boring into her. She stared back into them, his ice blue irises like distant, dying stars in his otherwise dark eyes. Why was he so hard to read? She felt like an a rabbit caught in the clutches of a wolf--why did his love feel like he was about to hold her down and tear chunks of flesh from her throat? She felt an onslaught of unshed tears, which soon pooled in her eyes and blurred vision.

"Baby, don't cry," he insisted as he made her lay back on the bed, forcefully straddling her and pinning her in place. Why was he so turned on by seeing her crumble, by seeing her cry? "Don't cry," he hissed into her ear, as if reading her mind, but triggering another (intentional?) wave of silent tears to flood from within her. She knew he loved her, she just didn't understand why he had to say such cruel things to convince himself that she believed him. Tears trickled down her cheeks, past her jawline and streaked her neck--she wasn't sad as much as she was perplexed by the way his moods changed from lighthearted to selfish and mean so suddenly. She felt his tongue stop a teardrop in its tracks at her throat, tracing its route back up to where it had run over her mouth. "I promise I'll make you happy," he murmured, kissing her softly.

He used his sexuality in manipulation as much as any woman would, and before she knew it, her clothes were torn off and he was under her, thrusting urgently into her as she sat atop him, stunned by the pace of events. Here she was riding him, yet hadn't they just been laughing innocently at crude jokes? How did he always manage to take her from happiness and laughter to sadness and misery, right through to pleasure and ecstacy in mere minutes?

And then it dawned on her: wasn't this what people longed for in a relationship? The ability to draw each emotion out of one another in its purest form? Shouldn't she cling to this dearly, lest it slip away and she wind up in search of it for the rest of her life?

"Yes," she choked out, the word stuck in her throat beneath lingering doubt and hesitation. "Yes!"

"Baby," he moaned, as if incapable of other words, quickening his thrust powerfully, turned on by what he assumed was a sign of her impending climax. "God I fucking love how tight you squeeze me," he practically spat, pulling her down to kiss her.

"Yes," she repeated, nearly out of breath, "Yes! I'll marry you," she told him, her voice low and hoarse as he tightened his grip around her waist, on the verge of his own climax. She cried out in pain as he squeezed her one last time before coming--her ribs would surely bruise there. "A promise is a promise," he panted, his thrusts slow and calm now. "Don't forget that."

------[how did my vanity get such a mess?]------

"Wifey? You feeling okay?" Morgy inquired as she passed her ice pack back and forth from hand to hand, neither providing any resilience against the painful cold.

"Huh?" came Adora's lazy reply. She sat limpy in their dressing room chair, her head cocked to the side lifelessly, a glassy look in her eyes. The two had just finished their SW commercial and were completely devoid of energy--an unhealthy amount of sleep would surely follow.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked, cocking her head similarly in search of eye contact. "Thinking about that silly coot of a husband of yours?"

"Huh?" she replied again, her lips pursed quizzically.

"Please don't let him get to you," Morgy sighed. "I don't think he'd have the nerve to come parading back into your life so suddenly." Adora glanced curiously up at her friend.

"You're kidding, right?" Morgy frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be a downer. I just couldn't help but think about the past while we were in Montr�al. That was like our second home."

"You're just opening up can after can of worms, aren't you?" she marvelled. "And after all that time you spent getting over this shit. You should know better."

Hey, at least I tried to get over it; you've done nothing of the sort in terms of Scarlett," Adora shot back hotly. Morgy sighed again. "Sorry," she relented, "I don't know why I'm being so antagonistic today."

"I understand why we're both like this: we're physically fucked from stupid Eternity, our personal lives are spiralling into madness and chaos, and half of it is probably in our heads."

"Let's not forget work," Adora reminded, "work has been one swift kick in the ass after another. Well, to a total of two swift kicks in the ass, anyway," she muttered. "My retard opponents have thus far declined to use those big, swollen balls they pretend to have. I mean, could Kyphael have fought any more like a girl than he did? I have more of a penis than he does at this point. God, he may as well have not shown up at all!" she scoffed. "It's like something made him realize how violently he pales in comparison to me, and he ran for the hills with his teeny peeny tucked between his steroid-inflated legs! Ha, see? I can use every trite insult in the book too! Or maybe, as is the popular consesus, www.thesaurus.com was down, and since looking up words to throw my way in a hard copy would be too overwhelming for him, he opted to fight like pussy instead of being the man he claims to be."

"So true!" Morgy agreed, obviously appalled on her friend's behalf. "These fucking people these days," she shook her head from side to side, "so much hot fucking air. All they do is talk through their asses, but ultimately it's big words--well, four to five letters big--and no following through. On the bright side, you can say you ended Kyphael's SW winning streak. I'm sure he'll try to trivialize your victory when he decides to show his cowardly face again, but everyone knows you would have beat him regardless of how hard either of you tried."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence, Mucky," Adora grinned at her wifey, "we were soooOoOOooOOOOo sure it was going to be 'a tough one!'" She threw her head back dramatically, a throaty cackle bursting from her lips. "Backtracking for a moment, though, while we were on the topic of people being full of tasty shit, I guess I'm going to have to tone down my trash talk this week."

"What could possibly make you want to do that?!" Morgy looked taken aback.

"My hopelessly dull opponent next week, Dan Black. I've been reading up on him, and he's supposedly heel, but I can't imagine him evoking any emotion in anyone other than mind-numbing boredom. 'Brain Stew' starts playing in my head each time I think of him."

"I KNOW!" Morgy's eyes widened. "He's got the personality of like, a cracker!"

"And not even a saltine cracker!" Adora mused. "He's like a run-on sentence without any punctuation or exclamation points, and he doesn't even lead to something meaningful at the end. He's monotony personified. I can't stand people like that who act like doing everything by the book, without variation or imagination, is some sort of virtue. In his biography, he basically writes off the essence of our business--trash talk--as meaningless. Sure, it often is a load of shit, because most people have nothing even remotely valuable to say, but if you can do it right... well then trash talk makes aaaall the difference."

"Now Adora," Morgy began in a generic male voice, "I can't guarantee a victory for myself, but that doesn't mean you're going to win either. But golly gee, I'm going to give it my darndest and hopefully you will do the same, and we'll have a nice, level, bland match!" she imitated 'The Bulldozer's' apparent philosophy.

"Don't be patting yourself on the back prematurely now!" Adora warned, prompting a round of cackles. "Seriously though, I do feel kind of bad ragging on the guy. You know, never having met him and such, and going solely off of his biography. I'm sure he could read mine and say lots of stuff about me too. I guess I'm developing one of them guilt-trippy things with age," she frowned, "yaknow...conscience? Is that the one?"

"Yeah, sure, why not," Morgy waved the topic away, as if unwilling to acknowledge that she, too, was developing such a fault. "Who knows, maybe he'll be the first to give you a challenge in SW."

"Uh huh. We'll see." Adora's skeptical eyes stared into the distance; she was clearly still preoccupied. Here she was, twenty three years old, wondering if something her childhood sweetheart had told her years ago were true. Was she wasting her time fighting him off in her heart and mind? She couldn't deny that 95% of the people surrounding her did little to stir her emotions, yet the scantest of memories of Charlie raked her repeatedly over the spectrum of ugly and beautiful emotions and back.

"Dor?" Morgy peered cautiously over at Adora, her faraway expression back. "Seriously--are you feeling okay?"

------[my place was beneath you but now i am above]------

"Jesus fucking Christ, woman!" Gina yelled, her eyes wide with disbelief as she watched her best friend rummage through both of their suitcases, flinging rejected items of clothing in all directions. "Are you maaaad?!"

"Of course not! This makes more sense than I could possibly explain. Please, don't question, just help me piece a wedding dress together!" she begged, holding a '60s inspired micro minidress against her body. She stood up and positioned herself before a long mirror, assessing herself from all angles.

"I certainly hope you don't plan on wearing something that white, when his jizz is still practically oozing down your tighs!" she scolded, perhaps feeling obliged to speak for Adora's absent mother, though Mrs. Reed would never phrase something quite like that.

"That's fucking disgusting," Adora snapped, "don't be so melodramatic."

"I'm sorry, but I just don't understand why you're doing this," she replied, tears glistening in her eyes. "I don't want to see you get hurt."

"What about this?" Adora ignored Gina's display of emotion, more for her own sanity than anything else. She held up a long, skin tight, black tube dress. The hems down the sides were sewn shorter than the full length of the dress, in such a manner so as to give the appearance of scrunchy wrinkles. The dress tapered almost dangerously at the ankles--it could have been made for a mermaid, it seemed--and if it hadn't been plucked straight out of the early nineties, and thereby made of stretchy material, the frock may just have been frightening to walk in. Adora gazed lovingly at the dress, obviously having decided on it regardless of what Gina thought. A pair of detached, full length sleeves and pointy, jet black pumps completed the ensemble. Gina knew full well that Adora had fashioned the dress herself, shamelessly and admittedly stealing the design from Stephanie Seymour's outfit in Guns n' Roses's November Rain video.

"You'll look so fucking beautiful," Gina sighed, relenting wearily, helping the bride-to-be slip into the narrow garment. Adora applied a light coat of berry coloured lip crayon across her lips--there she was, dressed for a funeral on her wedding day, and she was worried that red lipstick would be too overpowering. Adora's then long, blonde hair was pulled up in a loose yet elegant ponytail, with wisps of hair framing her face.

"What about you?" Adora asked, her voice tinged with worry. Obviously the wifeys were not the types to force one another into hideous bridesmaids gowns. "Oooh! This is perfect!" Adora squealed, tossing something to Gina. It was a form-fitting leopard print dress with black spaghetti straps, hemmed just above the knee and trimmed with black lace. Ever prepared, Adora fished matching pumps from her suitcase.

"Perfect," mumbled happily to herself.

The two readied themselves quickly, their minds a flurry of jumbled thoughts. When asked to recall the night in the future, neither would be able to provide a concrete sequence of events; it seemed to them that they literally had materialized from their hotel bathroom to the chapel...

"Before we begin, I'd like to remind you both that this is not a legally binding ceremony until you obtain the proper licence," warned the seedy chapel's priest, 'Lumi�re,' in his quebecois accent. No one was sure if he was really a priest at all--perhaps more of an evangelist--but no one cared. He could have applied for ordination online and printed out his certificate himself for all they cared. Charlie was a law student, he would take care of the formalities later on.

"That's fine," Charlie urged Lumi�re, flashing him an insincere smile, baring what Adora had come to lovingly call his 'fangs.' The two stood before the altar, Gina and Christian slightly behind them and to their sides. The aisle's guady red carpet glared into everyone's eyes, even when their gazes were set straight in front of them. White pews lined each side of the aisle, their paint chipping and revealing a rainbow of previous paint colours. The air was stale and dank, and Adora and Gina regretted having tried to look nice for the occasion. Charlie and Christian had been smart and dressed casually; they both wore jeans that rode loosely at their hips and similar black t-shirts. Adora was almost certain that Charlie was wearing the same clothes as the night they spent in 'The Tower,' but it was hard to tell. Man clothes were so impossibly uninteresting! Regardless, she felt a chill slick down her spine at the potential symbolic gesture on Charlie's part. It was like he was proving a point--but to who? Adora gazed at each of her friends one last time before they exchanged vows... Gina looked somber, Christian seemed indifferent and Charlie appeared quite satisfied. A slight grin rested on his lips, the corners of his mouth twitching with what she gathered to be contained excitement.

And then it hit her: Charlie was hers forever. He belonged to her and she to him. The limitless possibilities of their future were overwhelming--they could be anything and do anything, and they'd always have each other to lean on. He could smother her with possessiveness and moodiness sometimes, but she was sure that would change now. Now that they were inextricably entwined, he wouldn't have to worry about her youthful curiosity taking her away from him. His ownership of her was almost like a security blanket; she could be safe, warm, loved and taken care of forevermore. All she had to do was bask in his adoration from that day forth.

She snapped from her reverie to see Charlie admiring her from the corner of her eye. His dark eyes finally seemed bright and he'd allowed his smile to break free and play freely on his full lips. She felt all of his favourite spots to kiss on her body grow hot and being to throb, longing for his touch once more.

"Mrs. Adora Adare," she thought to herself. How charmingly ridiculous.