Holidays, huh …

well, if ya need a drink and a voice to listen to, y’all can find me at The Cache tonight, as always . no cover charge, holiday specials at the bar, and I'm takin’ song requests all evening .

come say hi … a lonely gal like myself could use the support .

… Merry Christmas . 🎄❄️

My stars, ya look like you’re expectin’ a wolf to jump out any second, sugar,

[ she coos, drifting over to the booth with a gentle, disarming smile to ease the poor girl's nerves . ]

First time down 'ere ? Don' think I've seen ya 'round before!

Gotta get to decorating around here I ‘spose … don’t know why that’s my job now .

That's fine . Jus' need a good drink! It'll perk me right up .

Workin' late t'night . Club's might busy on the weekends .

... Mm .

// that was me and my gang

𝚂𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎, 𝚃𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚒𝚜 𝙰𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐.
𝚂𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚎 𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚒𝚝'𝚜 𝚋𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐.

( SOLO END )

.

"Great," she muttered, turning away from the mutilated picture of the Big Shot. "Gotta put darts on the shopping list."

She left the little man with the red suit pinned to the wall and went to find a bottle that didn't require her to smile before she opened it.

joining the cluster of others that had been thrown on nights just like this one.

Dollie stared at it for a long moment, her chest heaving in the silence of the empty room.

"Bullseye," she whispered to the dark.

...That was it. She was out of ammo.

mimicking the hallucination’s voice, spitting the words out like poison. She pulled her arm back.

"I'll show you dead weight."

𝘛𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘤𝘬.

The dart hit the board with a satisfying, solid sound. It buried itself deep, right between the eyes of the man in the picture,

No, wait. Her fingers closed around cold metal. One. There was only one left.

She picked it up, weighing it in her palm. It was heavy, brass-tipped, sharp.

She narrowed her eyes, the exhaustion hardening into something cold and hateful.

"Dead weight," she whispered,

Dollie stared at the picture. In the dark, his grin looked even wider. Even from a piece of paper, he seemed to be mocking her.

𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘥 𝘸𝘦𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵, the memory of his voice hissed in her ear. 𝘛𝘸𝘰-𝘣𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘳.

She reached onto the small shelf below the board, her fingers groping for a weapon.

Empty.

It was an advertisement for some car dealership or garbage-tier product, featuring a young, Addison with a smug expression. He had slick black hair, white skin, and a grin that looked like it could sell ice to a freezer. He was wearing that damn red suit.

𝙎𝙥𝙖𝙢𝙩𝙤𝙣.

She walked over to the far wall, where a cork dartboard hung crookedly between a calendar from three years ago and a cracked mirror.

There was a picture pinned to the center of the bullseye.
It was a torn page from an old magazine, crinkled and yellowing with age.

She stripped off the shimmer dress, leaving her in her slip. She wiped the lipstick off with the back of her hand, smearing it across her cheek like a bruise. She wasn't Lottie Lamb anymore. She wasn't the cute, ditsy thing that men wanted to protect. She was just Dollie.

And she was angry.

She kicked the door shut with her heel and locked it. Then, the deconstruction began.

Off went the trench coat, tossed onto a chair. Off went the shoes.

"Oh, 𝘨𝘰𝘥," she groaned, the sound raw and guttural as her hooves hit the cool linoleum. God, she hated wearing shoes.

It wasn't a home. It was a storage unit for a living person. The furniture was mismatched, scavenged from secondhand shops. The only thing of value was a vintage record player in the corner.

Dollie didn't turn on the lights. She didn't need to. She knew the layout by heart.

She fumbled with her keys, her hands shaking not from the cold, but from the crash. The adrenaline was gone. The alcohol was wearing off. All that was left was the ache in her feet and the noise in her head.

𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘬.

She pushed the door open and stepped into the dark.

a twenty-minute rattle in a metal tube filled with the smell of ozone and damp wool. Lottie sat in the corner, staring at her reflection in the dark window, watching the lights of the city streak by like data streams.

By the time she reached her apartment complex, she was shivering.

"Night, Gigs. Try not to miss me too much."

"Get out of here."

She turned her collar up and pushed through the heavy steel door.

...

The walk to the subway was a blur of neon puddles and the hiss of tires on wet pavement. The ride itself was worse—

"Go home, Dollie," he said. He was the only one in the place who ever used that name, and he only whispered it. "Get some sleep. You're off the clock."

She stared at the mint for a second, then snatched it up, flashing him a tired, genuine half-smile—the first real expression she’d worn all night.

She patted the lump of cash hidden in her dress. "They paid for the privilege of feeling smart. Same old story."

Gigs stopped wiping. He looked at her, his obsidian face unreadable but his eyes soft. He reached under the bar and tossed a small, foil-wrapped mint onto the coaster.

She just picked up the water and downed it in one long, desperate gulp. She set the glass down with a heavy 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘥.

"Those suits?" Gigs asked, nodding toward the empty booth where the whales had been. "They give you any trouble?"

"Nothing I couldn't handle," she rasped, her voice devoid of sugar.

Gigs was there, wiping down the mahogany with rhythmic, heavy strokes. He didn't look up as she approached, but he slid a glass of water across the counter.

"Hydrate," he urged. "You look like you're about to pass out."

Lottie didn't put on the voice. She didn't flutter her lashes.

"Buddy, I was reading teleprompters before you knew how to talk.”

She shoved the money into her bodice.

...

Before she made her escape, she swung by the bar one last time. The crowd was thinning out, the jazz band winding down into a slow, lazy outro.