1920s Present-Meets-1800s Past

[Her Royal Highness]

ooc: here goes...

BIC:
Jacqueline Adams stalked her way gracefully down the boardwalk towards the house where she boarded, her black pumps beating out a steady rhythm to which the length of her feminine form swayed.

She looked up at the house’s façade as she made her way up the front steps. At five thirty, the sun was just beginning to dip lower in the sky behind Jacqueline, casting a glare on the rows of windows that gazed inquiringly upon her.

It was scenes like this that always reminded her of her old home in San Francisco. Oh how she had loved that city. She indulged in old memories as she unlocked the front door and ran lightly up the stairs, pulling of her gloves finger by finger as she went.

Once inside her own room, Jacqueline locked her door. Not that she was worried for her safety at all. no. the house was quite safe. It was just that Penny, the girl boarding across the hall often walked in unannounced to pay her visits or to ask to borrow this item or another. And while Jacqueline usually welcomed such visits, she just wasn’t interested in being interrupted quite at that moment.

Having removed her hat and tossed it, along with her gloves, upon the small table by the door, she took of her coat and draped it across the back of a small navy blue arm chair.
Then, sitting down at a small vanity cluttered with glittering crystal bottles and glass flasks of different shapes and sizes, she rested her elbows on the glass top and with her temples between her fingertips.

She smiled slightly to herself when she felt a cool, still presence settle within the tiny room. Gazing past the reflection of her pale face, dark crimson painted lips, and short black bob hair cut, she said out loud,

“Well, it’s always nice to be welcomed home and know you were missed.”

[glamorousgnome]

(i love your post, chika.
ok.
im sorry that this post is kind of...uh...explicit or dirty but.....im lightening up on that after this post. andy wont be like this the whole time
so heres my intro, for two characters.
andy, the girl. and my other character is the unnamed mystery man).



Pocketing the bills into her heavy sweater’s pocket, she sort of slumped away from the apartment, the cold air seeping around her lightly clad body. The sweater hunt about her shoulders, down to her shins as glimmers of glitzy black fabric peered out from beneath the unbuttoned yarn.
She was rather numb, the cold night air of the thick New York City causing her pain. It was rather dark on that street, but the lights shown perpetually overhead from the skyscrapers and the theaters and whatever else loomed in reign over culture. Taking a turn down a corner toward a lengthy alley, she sighed.
And she reflected on what had just occurred. There was that man, the usual, with the rather dusty brown hat, and with the even dustier overcoat. They usually had no ring, just a few extra bucks to spare on a bit of pleasure in this dry era. He’d picked her up in the speakeasy, and then they’d gone up to some dingy apartment or hourly hotel room, and she’d gotten paid for making him feel like he wasn’t so lonely, like he wasn’t the lowest of the dregs of society.
But he wasn’t the usual type. This one had no ring on his finger, but when he’d opened his wallet to see her out of the room, she’d caught a glimpse of a picture of a wife and kids, but it was old, and bent up, and she wondered if he were divorced. Yet, that picture, it looked so loved…
A tear leaked from her eyes as she strode along, shamed by her profession, even if no one judged. She hadn’t wanted this for herself, but here, where the lights were so bright, it was so easy to be blinded. New York. Now she could never leave. Taking the bills and kissing them, leaving a trademark lipstick stain, she tucked them back into her pocket. But no worship of it could make her really believe in it. These bills would pay her rent, and that was it. Then tomorrow she’d meet another guy, and he’d get himself some illegal gin and he’d take her home…
Swallowing a tear, Andy hiccupped rather sharply, and hugged the sweater about herself tighter. The gin and sheets couldn’t keep her warm enough, especially on these winter nights.
She’d always wanted one of those nice fireplaces, pretty fireplaces, roaring with old time flames and chestnuts and whatever else it could collect in it. Something warm and comfortable. At least then, she’d have a home. Maybe she’d belong.
Pausing on the steps of a speakeasy, she heard a foot shift behind her, and the rustle of a bill. Oh well. Wiping the tears and the escaping liner from her eyes, she tossed the sweater off her shoulders and let the newcomer do as he pleased.

The newcomer (although only new to that night) that put his hands on her just happened to be a crook by the name of Harry. No surname. Just Harry, and he had that special criminal look to him, such a gruff, unshaven face, and such shaggy, dirty hair, so mangled that the color was practically indistinguishable. A tint of red, dirt brown? The hat on his head was rather dusty, and his coat was even dustier, the usual. Harry was such a smalltime crook. He was the type of crook that felt a squirm of adrenaline in his cowardly heart when he stole a woman’s purse or robbed a butcher shop with his rusty old handgun. He wasn’t a very smart crook either. He’d gotten his sketch in the papers more than once- in fact, every time. The trick was, no one cared much about catching him. Yet…there was something odd about him tonight. He was so unwise, in fact, that he’d gotten himself mixed up in something bigger than he could handle- a narcotics deal, perhaps?
Whatever it was, he got real scared when he was running his hands along Andy. By the time he had gotten the top half of her dress down to her waist, he was starting to sweat really hard, and not from his current actions. It was from…well, his eyes were darting around so fast, he was afraid of something. When Andy was slipped the money, she sort of backed away, readjusted her dress, and turned her back to him to wipe away all signs that she had been crying again. Then…a shot rang out, a gunshot, but not from Harry’s rusty old handgun. No…this was from a rather fanciful rifle, well polished, meant to cleanly kill. And it did.
Shaking in fear, Andy swung around again, just in time to see, in absolute astonishment, her first customer of the night that had intrigued her so darting away from the scene. She gazed at him until he was gone, and she gazed back down again at Harry, a bullet through his brain. His skull was currently crunched apart, and blood and fluid began to leak out.
Then she screamed. And several people ran out of nearby buildings to see what was the matter- gunshots and screams…? But she found that she was so intrigued by the culprit that when they asked her where the murderer had gone, she pointed the opposite direction from where he had gone.

Andy returned to her apartment shortly afterward, freezing to her bones, having somehow lost the sweater in all of the commotion. As she approached her bed, she felt a sudden pang of sorrow. And with a swift toss of the dress onto the bed, she faced herself, completely naked in the mirror.
“I quit,” she whispered, and at this, she turned away with angry tears. And she promised herself that she’d rather starve than face another man like Harry again.
As she fell asleep in her little pajamas, curling her pillow against her, all she could think of was that she really would starve. And after this thought, she could only picture the murderer’s face, and how brilliantly conflicted it had seemed. What could this man have wanted with Harry?
Oh well.
With one last sigh, she drifted off into her first dreamless sleep in many a month.