Hey Foxes!
Real fast, I just want to say thank you for getting this story up to 5k views! I can't tell you how incredible it is to see that it's already gotten to this point, when I feel like it's only just started. There's still plenty more planned for this story, so again, thank you to everyone that is reading. Now, let's get onto the chapter.
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The bright neon lights on the stage make the black and white room glow, even in the dimmer lighting in the sitting area. One by one, I'd see my friends go on stage and dance around the pole. Smitty and I would watch from the bar, making jokes and laughing as we sing along to the songs that came on. Finally, Bryce goes on stage.
He has a big, bright smile on his face as he practically skips out from backstage, excitement oozing out of him and infecting the people around him. His blond hair is bouncing with each step he takes, his clip on cat ears hanging on tightly to his hair, and the tail attached to his somewhat baggy pants swinging from side to side. When he's only a few feet away from the pole, he drops to his knees and crawls over to the edge of the stage. Several men are gather around the stage, reaching out towards him.
With a smirk on his face, he teases the men, slides his hands towards them, only to pull them away before any of the men could touch him. He turns his back away from them and pushes himself off of the floor, grabbing the pole and swirling around it, bending one of his legs so that when he leans away from it, he is in a nice little pose.
He pulls himself up and starts to walk around the pole, the light bouncing off his bell, bringing attention to his neck. He has one hand trace his collar before it slides down his bare chest and goes all the way down to the edge of his pants. In one quick motion, he pulls at the side of his pants, ripping off the velcro and making the pant fall off his body, revealing the black and white booty shorts that were underneath them.
He turns away and jumping on the pole, using his weight to swing his body around it. As he starts to do his favorite tricks on the pole, I can't help but notice how the stage is growing darker. Soon, I'm unable to see the floor or the curtains behind him. He soon stops turning and holds his position on the pole, upside down hands gripping tightly around the pole, and his legs straight up in the air. Then, he starts moving his legs, making it look like he's walking on air as he brings his legs slowly down until he's body is making a perfect 90° angle.
As he was walking, I quickly noticed that he himself was starting to get darker. The edges of his body turning black and slowly crawling across his body. Then, Bryce ends his dance by pulling his legs in and doing a perfect split in the air. Once he does, the darkness swallows the rest of his body. After a second, the lights come back on, and he is gone. All that is left on stage in his bell collar, tied around the pole.
***
I watch from Panda's office as the police interview all of the dancers at each table on the floor. The second someone pulled their phone out to call for help, Panda grabbed me and pulled me up here, telling me not to come out until he said I could. Since then, I've been watching everything play out from up here.
I've seen the officers and paramedics rush into the building. I've seen the paramedics rush out with Bryce on a stretcher. I saw one of them straddling him as the man was pressing on his chest. I've watched as each officer picked a dancer and led them to a table. I watched as Ohm and Smitty broke down into tears as they talked. Out of everyone in the club, they were the closest to Bryce. Even closer to him than I was.
Tears are falling from my face as I hear the door open behind me. I try to wipe them away before I look back and see Panda and Officer Nova walk in. As Panda locks the door and walks over to his desk, Officer Nova walks over to me and puts a hand on my shoulder.
"I'm sorry this happened. I've heard that you two were close." I just nod and look back towards the floor. "I'm going to have to get your statement. From what the guys told me, you found Bryce first." I nod again.
He gently pull me closer to him and leads me over to the couch. Once we both sit down, and pulls out his pen and notepad and ask me to tell him what happened when I first got to work.
"After I got here, I went to my locker, which is backstage, and I changed into my uniform. Then, I started walking to that little hallway that leads to the floor, and then I saw Bryce walk in. He looked a bit off."
"What do you mean?"
"He had his head down, his hands were on his stomach, and he was swaying as he walked. I didn't think much of it, just thought maybe he was sick or something. He walked over to his vanity and put his head down with his arms wrapped around his head. I just said hey before I went to the floor. I talked to the others and they told me they saw him drinking. I was upset because he told me that he would stop drinking this morning."
"Then what happened?"
"After a while, Panda started telling us the schedule of when each dancer would go onstage, and when he got to Bryce, we realized that he was still backstage. I volunteered to go get him, so I went backstage. He was still laying on the vanity, and he wouldn't move when I called out his name. I tried to shake him, but then I saw that he was covered in vomit. It grossed me out, so I left. I told Panda and the others, and Ohm went to try to take him home. Then... Then he screamed... Is Bryce okay? Is he alive or..."
"It's too soon to tell. The paramedics said they found a light pulse, so they were going to try to save him."
I let out a sigh of relief. He then stands up and I see that he's about to say something, but he stops when his phone buzzes loudly in his pocket. He pulls it and takes a look at what was on it. He shakes his head and turns to Panda. "I'm going to need to talk to you again really fast."
Panda tells me to stay here again before he leaves with Officer Nova. I quickly get up, go back to the window, and look out to the floor. A minute after I do, I see Officer Nova and Panda walk onto the floor and it looks like Panda is calling everyone over. They crowd around the two and seconds later, all of them start crying. Panda pats Officer Nova's shoulder and gives him a hug before Nova walks out the front door. He then turns away from the crowd and walks back out through the backstage door. Ohm then pushes Smitty off of him and yells something, but I can't hear him. He then looks up to the office and back to the door before he runs in, with Brock and Smitty trying to run after him, only to be stopped by Marcel and Tyler.
That's when I hear the door open, and when I turn around, I see Panda walking in. "Evan, there's something I need to tell you."
He walks over to the couch and pats the seat next to him. I walk back over to him and sit next to him.
"Bryce is going to be okay; however, due to the fact that he drank as much as he did and he gave everyone as big of a scare as he did, I have no choice. Once he gets out of the hospital, I'm going to have to let him go."
"What?!"
"Evan, we had to call the police here, as well as the paramedics. If anyone were to have seen you, the club would have gotten in so much trouble, you know that. This just has to be how things are now. I'm sorry."
I'm about to say something else, but stop when I hear the door fly open. I look behind Panda and see Ohm standing in the doorway with tears pouring down his face, and anger boiling in his eyes. "What did you tell him," he asks in a cold, harsh tone that I had never heard before.
"I told him the truth," Panda tells him without turning to look at him.
"Evan, tell me exactly what he told you."
I blink in confusion and look between the two. Then, I say, "He told me Bryce is okay, but he's going to get fired."
"Oh did he," he now yells as he starts to walk closer to us. "Because that's not what James told us downstairs!"
"Shut the fuck up, Ohm," Panda growls at him.
"James told us that Bryce didn't even make it to the fucking hospital! He told us that Bryce is dead!"
"Ryan!"
"What," I ask, shaking from both fear and trying to keep myself from crying again.
"He deserves to know the truth," Ohm yells at Panda. "The whole truth! Every little detail that you and I both know!"
The two then glare at each other, and I can feel the heat burning from between them. My heart is pounding in my heart as I just wait in silence to just find out what is going on, what these guys are talking about, and what Ohm means by the whole truth.
Finally, after what feels like hours later, Panda finally says, "Fine." He then turns to me and groans before he starts. "The truth is that Bryce is dead, and we don't need to wait for him to get blood work or whatever to find out what killed him."
"What do you mean?"
"He means there's something we haven't told you, Evan," Ohm jumps in. "Something all of us at the club have been hiding, but we should have told you about sooner."
"The truth is," Panda continues. "Bryce doesn't just have a drinking problem. Or, he didn't. Or, oh god, fuck it! Bryce didn't just drink alcohol by the gallon, okay. He also had a drug problem."
"What?! No, that's a lie!"
"It's not, Evan," Ohm jumps in again. "Bryce have been popping a pill called Xanax. Most of the time, it made him slow, made his words slur, and caused him to act like a zombie half the time. But, when he mixed Xanax with drinking, it gave him energy."
"It also made him extremely angry for no reason," Panda mumbles.
Suddenly, some of the piece of a two day old puzzle fall into place. "Bryce wasn't just drunk the other day.... He mixed pills and liquor again..."
"That's right," Ohm says. "Doing that is extremely dangerous, but he did it anyways. If he only took the pills, he wouldn't even know where he is, and it would have been too dangerous to put him on stage. He easily could have fallen off, and he damn sure couldn't dance in that state. However, by mixing drinking and the pills, he could have done his job with no problem."
"But, why? Why did he start taking Xanax, and why did he mix it with alcohol? He told me he wasn't going to drink anymor-" I stop when I think back to his words from this morning.
No... He didn't say he would stop drinking... He said he was going to get clean... He was going to try to get off Xanax.
"He got a letter from the police, that's why," Ohm says loudly, pulling me out of my thoughts.
"What?"
"Ryan is trying to get out of jail, so they had to tell him. This wouldn't have happened though if we had taken him more seriously when the stalking started."
Panda snaps his head to look at Ohm and I see him glare at him. "Ohm-"
"No, don't you dare say anything, Jigglesworth! You know that I'm right!"
"Evan," he growls before looking back to me. "Go wait backstage. I will tell you what is going to happen next when we are done here."
"What?"
"Just go," Panda snaps at me, causing me to jump and run out of the office.
I jump down the stages and do as he told me, going backstage to wait for him. I look toward the back of the large room, where we have a couch for us to relax on, but, it's so close to Bryce's vanity. Shaking my head, I walk to corner by the curtains and the wall. Bringing my knees up to my chest, I rest my head in my arms.
Everything feels like it's moving so fast, it's hard for me to take all of this in. Bryce was addicted to Xanax... How did I not know this? How long has he been using? Why did he start? What is Panda hiding from me?
"Evan?" I look up and see Brock at the door, staring at me in confusion. "What are you doing here?"
I look down and sigh. "Panda told me to wait here.... Brock, did you know that Bryce was addicted to Xanax?"
"Wait, what? Who told you?"
"Panda and Ohm."
"... I wish they told you sooner. Maybe this could have been avoided."
"So, you did know?"
"Everyone in the club knew, Evan. We were just told not to tell you."
"Why," I ask, looking up to him, seeing that he's looking down to the end of the room, where Bryce's vanity is.
He shuts his eyes and turns to his own vanity before he walks over to it, pulling out his chair, but sitting on the vanity itself. He pats the chair, telling me to go over and sit on it. Not knowing what else to do, I get up and walk over, sitting down on his chair.
"We were told not to tell you because it would open everyone else as a target."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, Panda didn't want you to learn about everyone's little kink to help them get through the day. You see, all of the dancers here are addicted to something. Some drink, others do heroin or meth, and the few that don't do those, like me, do cocaine. Even Smitty has his way of going through the day, but his is by locking himself in his apartment all day and playing video games. He says its so he can imagine he's in another world, for just a few hours."
I can feel my body turn cold as I listen to him. Hearing about this just makes me feel sick. "So, everyone does something?"
"I guess that's a lie too. After all, Mini, Chilled, and Ohm don't do anything. However, Chilled and Mini have been throwing back energy drinks like they were water, which actually worries me. They say it's so they can stay up late to study for college. Reason it worries me is because cocaine is known for helping with late nights, and I don't want them to get into this shit. As for Ohm, well, after this blow, I don't know what he's going to do."
My stomach starts knotting, and I have to use my hands to hold up my head. "This is a lot to take in," I groan.
"Which is why you should have learned about this when you started. Panda just didn't want to scare you away."
"Has Bryce been taking Xanax since I started?"
"No, he started a few months back, but he already had a drinking problem, so I wanted to get him off that shit. So did Ohm. I saw him constantly throwing bottles and bags of pills in the dumpster, but Bryce always found a way to get his hands on more."
I look down to the vanity and see small white stains for all the lines of cocaine that was used on there for so many years. "Funny. I ran away from home to get away from drugs and ran to a place full of different kinds... I guess drugs are meant to stay in my life."
"No, you're wrong," Brock tells me as he puts his hands on my shoulders and pushes me back, making me look at him. "Why do you think I've been pushing for you to get a different job? Why do you think I'm talking to my family to create a lie just so you can go back to high school? It's because I know you can do better than this, Evan. I've been working at this club for years, and you have no idea how many kids I've seen come and go that decided to do this because of their parents, or because they had a drug problem coming in. You came in hoping to get away from drugs, and that's what made me stay."
"Stay?"
"When I started working here, I was desperate for money. I had a good paying job, but my wife left me and was getting a large amount taken from me. We had a daughter at the time, and she was really sick. She was in the hospital for a year. My wife and I spent almost all of our money on trying to save her, and we were quickly running out. Out of desperation, I came here and worked every single night I could. Eventually, my daughter made it, and I was able to pay off the hospital bills. And then, my wife found out where the money came from. She told my boss, I lost my job, and she took me to court again so that she could get full custody of my daughter. That was five years ago, and I haven't seen my beautiful little girl since."
"I... I'm so sorry."
"Two years ago, I had more than enough money to leave this job, and start my life over. Get a better job and start fighting to get my daughter back in my life. But then, you came in. I knew that you needed help, and I felt like I had to stay. That I had to do something to try to help you."
And I was so cold to you in return...
"Well," I start. "Why don't you leave now? I'm sure your daughter misses you."
"Because I made a promise to myself to make sure you got out of here. That's why I jumped at the chance to help you go back to high school."
Guilty starts to drip into me as I think of all the times I threw away all of those applications for random jobs. "Evan," he says, pulling me out of my head and making me look over to him. "Now that you've seen a bit more of what really goes on here, will you let me help you."
I look down to the stains on the vanity and really start trying to take in everything that I learned today. None of it really makes sense though. Why would everyone have their own little addiction? What is it about this job that makes them all do that?
The only thing I can think of, is the fact that they have to bend the rules and law so much for me. I'm the reason for a lot of the stress around here. But I wasn't really a problem for Bryce... Could it have been him?
Bryce didn't start drinking until the day after Ryan was taken to jail, and he mixed Xanax and liquor tonight because he heard Ryan was trying to get out. Ohm said that he wasn't taken seriously before... How bad did the stalking get? Could something have been done earlier to make it end sooner?
Maybe there's something I can do to help change things around here.
"Evan?"
I look back up to Brock and quickly come up with a plan to tell him. "Let's make a deal," I quickly say. "I'm planning on going to college for Business after I'm done with high school, and I don't want you to be away from your daughter for longer than you already have been. So let's make a deal. Once I'm done with high school and I've been enrolled in college, I want you to quit here and try to find a better job. Get your life back together, and fight to get your daughter back."
"Evan-"
"Moo, you've gotten no where with me over the past two years. I'm just now deciding to get my life together, and it isn't right that your daughter is going to grow up not knowing you. Please, make this deal with me."
He sighs, but gives me a small smile before he nods. "Oka-"
Before he can finish his sentence, we hear the door violently swing open, causing us to jump out of our seats. We look over and I gasp when I see Marcel and Tyler pushing Ohm. When Ohm sees me, he looks away, tears built up in his eyes, before Tyler pushes him again.
"Keep moving," he yells as he starts pushing him towards the back.
"What's going on," Brock yells, looking to Marcel.
Marcel sighs before he tells us, "Ohm just quit."
"What," I yell out, looking back towards him.
"It was in the heat of the moment," he says softly, but loud enough for me to hear him. "I didn't mean to say it... Not yet."
"But you did," Tyler growls. "And that's the problem. You know the rules, now get out of here!"
I start to feel what little pieces of my heart start to break even more. The rule... Once you leave the club, you are banned from the property. You are to leave immediately, and you are not to connect anyone that currently works at the club. If you do, they will be fired immediately.
I just lost Bryce... And now I'm about to lose Ohm.
I start shaking my head as I try to hold back my tears, however, they win out. Tears start to stream down my face as I watch Tyler push my friend, the person who saved me, closer to the door. However, Ohm turns around and he runs over to me, causing Tyler to chase after him.
I stiffen up as Ohm crashes into me and wraps his arms around me, and I prepare myself to see Tyler pull him off of me or something, but he stops when Marcel steps in between us. "What the fuck, man! You know the rules!"
"I do," Marcel tells him in a cold voice. "But I think it wouldn't hurt to give him a minute," he then says, looking over his shoulder to us. He then nods his head, telling me to go ahead.
I don't waste another second after that. The second I get the okay, I wrap my arms around him and bury my face into his shoulder, crying harder than I ever thought I would after hearing about someone quitting. Ohm holds me tightly in his arms, crying as well since he and I both know this will be the last time we'll ever get to see each other.
"I'm sorry," he whispers into my ear. "I didn't mean to say it. I didn't want to leave."
He then pulls away and kisses my forehead before pulling me back in for another hug.
Then, he whispers something else in my ear that makes my eyes widen. When he pulls away after that, he tries to wipe away his tears and he follows Tyler and Marcel out of the club. The last time I'm ever going to see him is now, as he looks back to me seconds before the door shuts on him.
Brock pulls me over and hugs me, telling me he's sorry for everything that's happened today. However, I'm hardly listening. Ohm's voice just keeps replaying in my head, with the last words I'm ever going hear him tell me.
"The second you can, get the hell out of here."