#(does jazz even have any friends? is she one of those lonely gifted kids?) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

parabellum-rpg-archive · 4 years

Photo

Congratulations, Kaylin! You’ve been accepted to play Avery Mercer. Please make your page and send it in within 24 hours.

Admin note: Wow. You’re a flawless writer! I enjoyed reading every part of this audition. You have such a clear grasp on Avery, and it really shines in the way that you write her. I’m so excited to have you in the group - welcome! - Admin V

IC INFORMATION:

Character Desired:

Avery Mercer

Describe the character in your own words:

Avery is devastatingly complex. Whereas it’s often difficult to believe someone can change so drastically from a brat of a party girl to a person who leads a quiet life, that’s not the case with Avery. Her transformation is so incredibly believable. Having one parent kill the other is traumatic. Knowing that same parent had every intent on coming for you next is beyond that. And though Avery’s trying to put her past behind her, that’s clearly something that stays with her. Because of this, I’d say she’s hesitant to trust people or let them in. Who can blame her considering her father, a man who’s supposed to love and protect her unconditionally, is the one who caused her greatest pain?

And yes, Avery leads a quiet life now, but there’s still a small aspect of her that misses the high life she once lived. Why else would she involve herself with the likes of the Sinclairs, especially as something so seemingly glamorous as being a burlesque dancer? Not to mention she’s the best burlesque dancer at The Black Cat. That in itself comes with a few perks. Young Avery once craved attention, and who’s to say the same doesn’t apply to Avery as a grown woman? She’s able to get the validation she still craves, but she is no longer addicted to it. The attention gives her a small high, but then she’s able to leave it at the club and go back to her apartment, where she knows peace and quiet.

But it goes without saying that there in Chicago, Avery really gets her first sense of home and normalcy. Sure, it isn’t easy at first. Change rarely ever is easy. But Avery is grateful for that city, for her aunt, for the Sinclairs. They all saved her life, even if she didn’t originally see it that way. She realizes it now. Avery was angry for a long time, but now she’s too tired to be angry. She accepts her life for what it is, and it’s a life that’s entirely her own. She wouldn’t trade it for the world. Her past almost feels like another life. Almost.

Writing Sample:

Large windows took up the entire back of their Miami mansion, touching from the floor to the ceiling. Only in the day did the light beam through those very windows and the particles of dust would become visible, idly floating by. The house with its many rooms, large and excessive, felt less than home with more space than occupants. It was easy to notice things like dust particles in the air that, under normal circumstances would normally go unnoticed. And these weren’t normal circumstances. But to Avery Mercer, the house with the big windows, the foreign and imported chandelier in the grand foyer, and the square feet with a number much larger than her little brain could fathom, this was the only thing she’d ever known. It was impossible to imagine life any other way.

This was her normal.

When she ran across the marble floors, her hair whipping behind her, no footfalls accompanied hers. The stern voice telling her to walk didn’t come from her mother or her father, but rather it was the voice of a nanny, the only thing she could clearly point out as any sort of parental figure. But still she loved her mommy and daddy very much. David Mercer was too busy building an empire for his family to pay any substantial attention to his doe eyed daughter who would grow into the spitting image of her mother. Diane Mercer spent her days shopping with other glamorous housewives she knew. Not that Avery ever minded. She loved her parents very much, and she knew they loved her too. They’d make up for frequent absences with gifts with the hopes they’d fill the void. In most ways, it did.

Love was a dollar amount. That was how little Avery came to see it, therefore there was nothing a gift couldn’t fix. Before she knew it, the empty, lonely corners of the Miami mansion became filled with stuff, her stuff, just enough to keep her entertained and satisfied. And when those things lost its lush, they were replaced with new, shinier things until it turned into dangerous cycle.

II.

Avery was a beautiful girl, and she knew it. She’d grown into her looks, still looking every bit of her gorgeous, model mother. She knew she was beautiful, and it showed in the way people gawked at her or the way her father’s colleagues hugged her a little too tight for a little too long and told her how grown up she’d gotten.

And grown up she was.

With barely a foot in high school, Avery had a palate for the finest of champagnes.

The cater waiters at the Mercer’s frequent house soirees knew better than to tell the youngest Mercer no, so when they waltzed around the parties with trays overflowing with bubbly, they could only watch in contempt as Avery grabbed a champagne flute for herself. But the seeming innocence of sipping champagne in the comfort of her parents’ functions turned to hard liquor with her rich kids friends, drinking whatever they could get their juvenile hands on.

She loved her friends, because they gave her the one thing she’d always been craving. They felt like home. Sneaking out, stealing cars, staying on Miami beaches until the morning sun peeked over the horizon. They were wild and reckless, the kind of kids people warned her about. They were nothing like the perfect, soulless walls of the Mercer Mansion. Forbidden fruit never tasted so sweet, and Avery devoured it until her friends’ culture and behavior became her own.

It explained why she was too hungover in her Honors Literature class, a class she had no business being in in the first place. She was no scholar, but her transcript need not show it if she was going to apply to and get into an Ivy League university in the years to come. It explained why when the wheels of the Mercer’s private plane would touch down again in America after another quick, lavish, ultimatum of a trip to Europe, Avery would find herself sitting in the company of another therapist whose name she didn’t know or cared to know. As the person sitting across from her tried to psychoanalyze her, Avery would only smile with a mischievous glint. It would only be a matter of time before that therapist would get tired of her difficult ways. It explained why she would get angry and throw things, expensive things, and yell, and slam the door in the face of her mother.

Her mother.

The only source of light came creeping up from underneath the closet door. Avery sat in the dark, alone and shell shocked, with her knees pulled up to her chest. It was quiet there, with the exception of her hollowed, shaking breath. She felt a terror so deeply rooted inside of her that the fear itself restricted her lungs and made it hard to breathe. And for the first time in her life, Avery Mercer’s life was at a standstill.

She waited. Waited to live. Waited to die. It felt as if she’d been waiting for an eternity, not certain if it had been two minutes or two days. Months shy of her eighteenth birthday, she finally felt how young she truly was. She had so many more decades and lives left to live, but it took the firing of a gun for her to see it. Avery Mercer didn’t want to die, but it’s not like she really had the choice. So she held herself and cried as softly as she could, mourning the loss of everything she’d never be. She mumbled something like a prayer to herself, and she waited.

When the closet door opened, Avery ducked her head and raised her hands high, defenseless to what was coming.

“Please don’t kill me,” She begged, flinching with her eyes shut tight. This was it.

But as the officers escorted her out of her home, past the pool of blood and her mothers legs, motionless and lifeless, poking out from behind a wall, past her father sitting in the back of the police car, Avery realized as she looked back to her beautiful home that it would be the last time she’d see the large windows she loved so much.

III.

Make believe. That’s all it was. But wasn’t it so nice sometimes to pretend?

The pearls draped around her neck, the lingerie clinging to her skin, the silk robe hanging off of her shoulders, none of it belonged to her. It all belonged to a character she created long ago.

The Avery looking back at her in the vanity mirror was an Avery she built from scratch. This Avery was Chicago, through and through. She was a workingwoman who understood the power of a dollar. She was in love with who she’d become.

The jazz music flooded into her dressing room, muffled by the four walls cornering her. It was just another day at the Black Cat, and Avery was busy trying to clear her mind before delivering the grand finale of performances later in the evening. Normally, she’d walk around the venue and bat her pretty eyes, or she’d entertain patrons at the bar before disappearing and reappearing front and center stage. But right now, she reveled in the peace and near quiet.

Avery sighed and leaned up in her chair, reaching for a picture she had resting against the mirror. She ran her fingers gingerly against the old photograph, a soft smile touching her still gorgeous features. She was so young then. Couldn’t have been any older than nineteen. She stood with her arms around her Aunt Stephanie out in front of the small house they shared on the outskirts of Chicago. They couldn’t look any happier. Avery couldn’t have been any happier.

She hadn’t talked to Aunt Stephanie this week, so she made a mental reminder to give her a call in the morning when Avery’s shift at the Black Cat was long behind her and the new quiet world she built for herself would return to normal.

But for the time being, she was there, at work. And as she applied her signature, red lipstick, it wouldn’t be much longer until she’d hit the stage, until she captivated the attentions and hearts of her audience as she stripped, artfully losing one article of clothing at a time. And in no time, she’d be able to return to her quiet Chicago apartment in her otherwise quiet life.

But the Sinclairs were the company she kept, and Avery was smart enough to know that quiet would only last so long before its stillness rippled.

In the meantime, all she could do was wait.

#accepted

5 notes · View notes