The Underbelly
It wasn’t always easy, keeping the two lives separate. By day, Felicity toiled in the spreadsheet mines of the accounts receivable department of a major multinational, excavating debt holes and hopefully striking money seams with which to fill them. It was a day job that wasn’t exactly the most exciting in the world but Felicity was good at it and it gave her a level of security that she was comfortable with.
The night, though…. The night was a different story. It was nighttime when Felicity became Flick, accountant no more but hard-bitten frontwoman of Flick And The Pick-Its, South East London’s finest retro neo future post-punk outfit. It was a time spent growling, spitting and screaming into the mic, lost in the fog of booze fumes, slick floors and sweaty walls, a heaving throbbing mass of humanity moving to her tune. This was her real life, this was what she lived for.
It wasn’t without its tensions though. The rest of the band could be fractious at times. Guitarist Vic (real name: Rodney; real job: landscape gardener) had an ego nearly as big as Flick’s and they tended to clash a lot. They’d dated once in the dim and distant past before realising that they didn't particularly fancy each other and would much rather just be in the band. Bassist Cousin Itt (real name: Steve; real job: investment banker) was pretty chilled out most of the time but then he earned enough money to not really have to worry about anything so that came as no surprise. Drummer Mike (oddly enough, his real name; real job: drummer in about five other bands as well) hadn’t been with them long enough for Flick to form much of an opinion about him; this was their sixth drummer and Flick was finding it hard to get attached to any of them.
Their venue of choice was The Underbelly and they always headlined. It was just the way it had always been and, as far as Flick was concerned, always would be. The crowd there seemed to like them. OK, sure, they threw stuff (one time someone had thrown a whole cooked chicken at them which the band had been suitably impressed by) but Flick encouraged that sort of thing anyway. It was part of the whole retro neo future post-punk vibe.
So it was with some sense of surprise when Flick turned up at The Underbelly on the Saturday afternoon for sound check to find that it was not their name gracing the top of the board written in the finest chalk. There was another name there. A name that was not theirs.
Flick stormed into the venue and strode straight up to Big Tim, the manager. All thoughts of accounts receivable were gone from her mind and a dark fury had settled in its place. She squared up to Big Tim. Given the disproportionate gap in both height and width between the two of them, this was no mean feat.
“What in the name of fuck is going on here, Tim?” Furious she might have been but she wasn’t about to call him Big Tim to his face. No one did that. Not anyone that wanted their limbs to stay in the same configuration, that is.
Big Tim raised an inquisitive eyebrow. He was a man of few words.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. Why are we not at the top of the bill and who the fucking...fuck are these… these Daffodils?”
Big Tim gave her a long contemplative look and shrugged. A shrug that seemed to say that times change, tastes change, this is a business and new stuff must be tried, new punters brought into the fold. It seemed to say all that, just without using any actual words.
“Fine. Fine,’ said Flick, and then, “Fine,” once more just for emphasis. It was very much clear that fine was the opposite of what she meant but she could see Big Tim was implacable. She stormed off.
Flick did something that she didn't normally do pre-gig:- she hit the bar. She continued hitting it throughout the sound check. She continued even more to hit it during the opening act. The band made vain attempts to stop her before they took to the stage but she would not be deterred by then. The drinks continued during their set. By this point, Flick’s recollection of events could best be described as “spotty”.
A last few shots before the main event of The Daffodils took to the stage and that was game over for Flick. Her last recollection was of someone shouting, “For the love of God, step away from The Daffodils,” and then a merciful blankness descended. The sweet embrace of drunken nothingness.
Flick awakened on the Sunday to discover that The Pick-Its were now Flick-less and she was barred for life from The Underbelly. She didn't even know what The Daffodils sounded like (assuming they’d played at all; that last shout that echoed through her memory made her suspect that she might have done something, possibly fairly horrendous, to prevent that even happening).
It was Felicity who returned to work on Monday, a little sheepish, a little chastened. She knew one thing, though. The night was Flick’s time and Flick would rise again. Once these accounts had been received, of course.
The Prompt
Here’s what I had to work with courtesy of Sarah
Tile: The Underbelly
Character: Felicity
Object: A cooked chicken
Line Of Dialogue: "For the love of God, step away from the Daffodils"
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