WHEN: August 26, 2022; Friday evening WHERE: Agora Ballroom, Upper St. Vlad’s WHO: @henrylovell AVAILIBILITY: CLOSED
Sylvia looked around the crowded ballroom feeling nothing other than out of place. Her new partnership with Heartbeats Headphones afforded her the ticket in to this ‘release party’, nothing else, but it would cost her more not to attend than it cost to buy the costume she now donned. A dress, floor length in green with black muslin overlay. The pattern reminded her of a spider’s web, which she found fitting as it was in the corners of the room that she hung now, as if stuck in a web herself. Only this morning had she remembered to look at the dress code, realizing in a panic that the trendy shit which arrived to her doorstep in droves wasn’t going to cut it. The formal gown squeezed her in uncomfortable places, and next to the vampires with their eternal grace she felt wholly ridiculous.
Usually these things were teeming with others like ‘Silver’, and she could feel at ease in (if not bored by) the charade of it all. Tonight was different. She realized only after handing her invitation over at the door that her ticket had been but a formality. They didn’t need her posts or her audience, they just needed an excuse to throw a lavish party. Still, she needed this. Content, novelty, exclusivity. The three buzzwords of a young girl selling her individuality for coin on the internet.
Now that all the photos and videos had been captured on her phone, the angles and filters perfected, she floundered and wondered if she shouldn’t just go home before one of these vamps thought she’d make a better dessert than she did a guest. Yet, just as she decided to make her escape she found herself no longer alone, and it would have been devastatingly rude to walk away immediately, having held the wall up for the better part of an hour until now.
“Taking a break?” she asked the newcomer, nodding to the dance floor. “I wish I had the grace for it.” The best Sylvia could manage was a twenty second routine that millions of others had done first, better, just with worse lighting. It was amazing what you could convince people to think they liked—envied, even—if you lit the stage right. Idiots.
