Wrong End of the Cigarette

prelude. the disappearance of julienne young

As a child you could get away with the little fits of anger.

You could get away with throwing a book at your brother's head. You could even get away with punching another girl for calling you a slur--a gook, even.

But as you get older you learn to adapt. Which meant that hiding that anger will have to suffice--will need to suffice or else you'll end up destroying anyone who crosses your path, and ultimately: yourself.

Thus, shove all that lightning in a bottle and hope that no one breaks it, let alone find it for it would break Julienne Young completely.

And then learn how to live with the shell of the person you imaged yourself to be as a child--watching the as the world continues to turn with or without you.

It's tedious, redundant. But you do it until you learn how to march to the beat of your own drum while you inner child stares helplessly from the sidelines.

That's how Julienne decided to live in order to own herself completely.

Nevertheless, she could never truly unchain herself from the confines of unwritten societal rules. So, at the very core of her Russian doll, the smooth wooden surface donned the paint of a people pleaser: rosy cheeks and bright-eyed with a wide smile. No matter how loud she banged her drum and marched forward with head up high, like Orpheus, she couldn't help but to keep a permanent peer over her shoulder for Eurydice to trip her up--reducing her back to nothing.

Just keep marching until you become the urban legend parents whispers into the hair of their children while they hold onto them tightly at bedtime. Keep marching until you become the women in white that comes and goes between the whispers and gossip of everyone who once knew you.

Julienne kept marching until she disappeared into the fog one peculiar evening.

Only George Campos truly knows what happened that night as he was the last person to ever see the girl alive in the flesh.