People are not born equal.

This is how I came to understand the world. I want to say, 'but then'. But then something happened, and it changed me. But then I realized the errors in my ways and now I haven't been the same again.

But then I realized that this is the end of my story and I haven't even scraped at the beginning.

2006. College. Fun times, when you think you know everything, equipped with knowledge from the world vastly superior to high school. I didn't have a problem with high school, and my grades kept my parents quiet. I was their princess, their prodigy and precocious child, I was everything they wanted and of course because of it I got everything. I was a princess, I was a queen.

"You can do anything you want, as long as you work hard," they said, over and over, cultivating the result of my effort.

Spiteful words, cold and empty. If you place your fingers where they don't belong, it doesn't matter how wonderful or capable or beautiful or smart you think you are. They'll get chopped off, your wings clipped. It only takes one fall before you see that side of humanity, the one you see in movies through a hooded eye, and then again elevated so easily in television shows and books. Magazines. They're not me so it doesn't matter. They're just fictional characters. Their experiences are fabricated, mine are real. I matter.

It only takes one.

It was Christmas, 2006, two months post college graduation. I was living in a four-hundred dollar a month apartment shared between two other roommates and their questionable friends, plural. On an easy day there were six of us crammed into this incomprehensible excuse of a living space. The fridge ripened. The dishes continuously overflowed. I slept on the floor at night and heard the small footprints of mice, could feel them moving around me, seeking warmth and whatever crumbs clung to my sad existence of a body. Even worse were the shadows, but you didn't talk about the shadows. Noone did because noone was crazy. It was fun and cute when you were five, but the world inexplicably changes even when you don't want it to. For me, they never stopped being terrifying.

The door slammed open. One of my roommate's more questionable friends, he had brought another girl. They began yelling. He hit her. They kissed. Drunk maybe, or worse. The smell of their rancour, of sweat and alcohol and drugs pervaded my consciousness even as my mind told me to sleep. More yelling. More figures piling in. The fridge door opens. Rot and stench. The shower turns on. Screaming. Of course the hot water isn't working, it never did. I close my eyes and methodically use the same exercises to ignore everything, they were just shadows too. Maybe everything was just a shadow.

In 2007 I would land my first job opening. The connections were already questionable but I was desperate, in mind perhaps and in spirit. I refused to give up and some part of me still believed. If I could make this all work, if this one chance paid through, it would redeem everything that happened to me the past few months. I would prove I was that precious daughter my parents fawned over. I could do anything I want because I worked for it.

It was my fault for choosing a difficult field. I was young, I was precocious, I felt like I could do anything. Theatre major, at first when you graduate you really do feel so empowered with the world, naive and spun up in lies fed by college tuitions and teachers that graded you a little more generously because it was as much a business as an education. Theatre major. I was going to go Broadway. I didn't know how or why or even when but I was. Our graduating class made a promise, when we were famous we would see each other again. I never did see any of them ever, no phone, text, cell, e-mail.

This is a world built of lies, and the ones caught in them all are the ones who fall first.

I came in for the interview. One room, one person. Slums, next to downtown, not in downtown as the job listing suggested. The posters on the wall were faded. Maybe some part of me already knew, it probably did, but I made a promise to myself to see it through. That with hard work and persistence, anything could happen.

We talked, he breathed, heavily, I ignored it. I could protect myself, I got this far, hard work. He knew connections, could get me a good word. He needed someone like me who was passionate in their job, who was still young, who had potential. Words. Lies. I believed them. I had no reason not to.

2009. Roommates were out, partying. I sat in my room. Waitress uniform, torn, dangling off a three-legged chair next to me. I needed to be sewn back or boss fire me this time for good. I needed to look presentable for tips. I needed-

- I closed my eyes. Too many shadows. Too many people, until the shadows didn't matter because the people were the shadows and the shadows had all but slowed and crawled to an easing comfort. They didn't hurt, they didn't do anything but crawl, and skim around the corners of my imagination. Everything else did.

November 2009.

I looked at the business card. I flipped it over then handed it back to them. Why they felt a need to cover themselves up so obscurely when the greatest perpetrators were the ones in plain sight I did not know. It was almost a laughable comic relief sort of comfort, to see someone so wound up in a stereotype.

"Are you sure?" they said, and they seemed almost surprised. The second time something told me how different this was from everything else. "You said you see shadows and-"

-" Who doesn't," I quipped back. I gestured. "What, haven't seen the world around you. Smoke, mirrors, and shadows everywhere. The greater you are, the deeper your shadow is. That's it."

A pause. "Well. That's a relief. You already knew then."

"What?" I don't even know why I bothered. Maybe because they were so laughably odd and disjointed with the rest of the world, maybe because they hadn't figured out the system and how genuinely strange it was compared to the normality of everyday life consuming you whole and leaving more monsters, shadows behind. "That people are not equal? That, what, I have potential? That dreams, hopes, the whole nine yards are all there and all I have to do is chase them and believe in them and maybe magic will do the rest? This, this is real. All of this. This garbage can, this alleyway, this shitty fire hazard staircase, this clothesline because god forbid, someone wants to dry their laundry in pouring rain. "

"You are real," they suggested-

-"Fake." I laughed really hard. It was that easy to say. That's all there really was to it.

"Then I am real."

"Fake." That was easy too. Everything was.

"Then the shadows are fake."

I hesitated. No they were real, they were the reason I was here, they were everything, they created and caused this, not shadows like imaginary shadows but people, people were real, but fake, and then they created fakes- my head was spinning- I struggled for an answer because- because why- why did it even matter-

"And this is also fake."

They just had to stand next to it. It was abstract. It made no sense. My mind was already screaming. I couldn't make sense of it. I scanned around everything but what they had created in plain sight. Alleyway. Check. Trashcan. Clothesline. Fire exit.

"What the hell is that?" I blurted it out anyway. God. I never learned. A part of me stirred and I hated myself a little more because I knew all those childhood beliefs I had squashed were still there and stabbing into me like knives. It hurt to breathe.

"An exit." they replied so simply, with no reason to lie. They could have said anything else and it would have been easier for me to deal with. Any of the usual words. You have potential. I see talent in you. You can do anything if you put your mind to it. You really don't deserve any of it. You are so fortunate to have me. But they didn't. They simply stuck one arm into a space that should have never existed and taunted me. "Are you coming or not?"

No. Of course not. I was going to die. I would get- first and then- they would- and then- I would-

- because it already happened. Because, I was already long dead, again and again, again, and still convincing myself that if I worked hard enough I could accomplish something, reanimated then, a corpse, no, just leftovers, maybe this wasn't even me maybe-

-"I already told you what's at the other side," they shrugged. "You have to make the choice yourself."

"I'm dead." And then I laughed a little, maybe even a lot. "I'm really ******** dead this time. That's it then. Goodbye Adrienne."

The corner of their mouth twitched a little, under that odd cloaked hood. "It was an overrated name anyway. People with fancy names always expect to be special themselves."

I took a step. Another. I felt giddy. I could literally taste what I saw in front of me, seagulls and sea water and sand and everything so fake and real until I didn't know what was what and realized in a spur of the moment that the child I grew up as and the adult I lived as both didn't care and were just ready to move on-

- I took their hand. "Then how about .... Sam?"