dragged... (Part 7)

                    Flip Flop

          When the DJ started playing my anthem, I made a last minute tit fit adjustment to ensure that all of my loveliness was in place because I needed my entrance to be as electric as always.  My adoring public expected no less than perfection from their Diva and I didn’t plan on letting them down ever. To update my music, I chose to use the current sampled version of the original song, as sampled by Faith Evans entitled “Love Like This Before”. 

          As the curtain parted like the Red Sea in the Ten Commandments, I emerged from my Drag Capsule to reveal the butterfly I was, and when I opened my eyes to take in what I had always been given, I was horrified to see that everybody had their attention focused on Missouri Meadows and her copper hand-me-down ensemble.  On her arms was Nick Harper, my man’s best friend and they were cheesing like they were a Hollywood couple on the red carpet. 

          A few of the devoted were trying their best to get my attention, but there weren’t enough of them to even matter.  I couldn’t believe what my eyes were witnessing; my former ankle biter was now standing in my limelight with a man who was, perhaps, just as handsome as my man, Maddox.  With that thought, my heart began to race as I searched the crowd to find my own arm piece and when I spotted him cuddled up with Sunny Skies, my head started swimming and I thought I was going to faint.    

          For the first time in my long career, I was an outsider, sitting on the side lines watching the birth of a new shinning Diva, who had  mesmerized Lilly’s patrons and I was sick with envy and jealousy.  I wished I could wake up from this nightmare that I was surly having, but the more I pinched my arms the more things really began to sink in.  As I shifted my focus from Missouri’s newfound fame circle, back towards Sunny and Maddox, I was met with two victorious eyes; Sunny lifted her glass in success, and laid a deep kiss on the lips of my man. 

          If life really dictated art, then my splattered heart would coat the canvass with red, because I was bleeding inside, for not only had I been dethroned by a hand-me-down clown, I had also been stripped of my eye candy, and it was not sitting well with me.  It felt like somebody had taken a knife and stabbed me in the center of my back, and a sharp pain riddled my chest with such pressure that I thought I was about to lose my breath.

          My demise was dramatic because I stood there up on the stage, looking about the room, and was standing in the center of my demise.  I just knew that I looked like a defeated Diva and though it happened a little bit at a time, the crowd shifted their focus to where I was standing on stage, and all I heard were hisses and boos being hurled at me like rotten tomatoes.  Even though nothing was actually thrown, an overwhelming feeling of humility covered me and I actually felt the displeasure dripping off of me. 

          Then, I did something that I never thought I’d do, I picked up the bottom of my gown, turned around, and dashed off stage toward the safety of my dressing room.  Once I made it behind the doors, I shut them quickly, snatched of my wig, and slung it across the room.  I popped off all ten of my press on nails, and tore the gray, sequined, gown from my body.  I didn’t care that I was ruining an $800 purchase, because all that I lived for had been taken away from me in the twinkling of an eye. 

          All I wanted to do was find the nearest bed and sleep through this crisis, like Rip Van winkle.  The thing that really hammered the nail in the coffin is that I had been in that room for about fifteen minutes and I hadn’t heard knock the first.  Everyone had abandoned me.  Nobody even cared that I was in there alone without a shoulder to cry on and it was one of the emptiest feelings that I had ever felt. 

          I had fallen from Grace like a battered Eagle, plummeting towards the earth with the speed of a bullet and on impact I shattered into a thousand pieces.  Oblivion tasted fowl and as hard as I tried spitting it out, it enveloped my being and infected my confidence unlike any past sadness had done.  I was no longer their Diva…I was no longer their tasty treat; I was yesterdays news and the wind blew me down the street, depositing me in the gutter to be trampled on and forgotten.  

          Elixir Calhoun was no more.

          Damn you Sunny Skies, I’ll get even with you if it’s the last thing I ever do.  As God is my witness I vowed to rise back up from the ashes and when I did, I would reclaim what had been stolen from me because it was my destiny. 

          I'll kill you dead before I let you beat me...

          This is Elixir, signing out…

          For now..