Layla's Pride: Black Bliss, #5

By Fallen Kittie

Layla Black’s reality is becoming too real for her liking. 

Life isn’t fair, there was no Santa Claus, and the myth of Prince Charming was outdated and outshone by his crude contemporaries. All these realities and more were duly driven home. Her life is augmented by ailing ambitions—and reality hits home hardest through a spike in her prescriptions’ price tags. 

Madden Kadivar rues a reality of his own. 

Fashioning his future as a pharmacist, his life lacks resonance and revelation. He is a man maligned by misgivings. The brood and bustle of his family’s business fails to brighten his days.

Until Layla blackens his nights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fallen Kittie
• Release date: May 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781533491459

Fallen Kittie

ABOUT FALLEN KITTIE Fallen Kittie is a freelance writer and sociologist currently studying existentialism and supernatural folklore. Her characters are avenues in which she collates her own realities and musings upon sexuality within fiction. Midway into her academic career, she started to consider writing as a means to escape the miscellaneous monotonies of her syllabi. Her escape became story bound illicit intimacies and other imaginings. As she continues writing, she cultivates a preference for erotica over the emptiness of the empirical.   Follow her on Facebook: http://www.fallenkittie.com  

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

LAYLA'S PRIDE

First edition. May 25, 2017.

Copyright © 2017 Fallen Kittie.

ISBN: 978-1533491459

Written by Fallen Kittie.

For Layla

Layla’s Pride

By Fallen Kittie

LAYLA’S PRIDE

by Fallen Kittie

Copyright 2016 Fallen Kittie

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.  If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

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Epilogue

1

Layla Black was tired. She could’ve downed a dose of her sleeping pills, but she also could’ve expected to awaken to aches in her temples because she hadn’t adjusted well to this latest roster of medication. And she had to adjust. She couldn’t afford any alternatives.

Hell, what could she afford? For everyone who’d told her she’d been a dime in a dozen, she had less than a hundred dollars to her name. Last summer, she’d outgrown the coverage of her mother’s insurance and maxed out her own. And God only knew how much longer she could sway other creditors; especially since her cousin, Giselle, was bound for a honeymoon and could no longer barter baked goods on her behalf.

Layla lacked in every way imaginable. She was too poor to be healthy, but she couldn’t afford to be sick.

The sty of rejection letters that cluttered her coffee table weren’t exactly uplifting either. Despite the mediocrity that had muscled its way into bestseller ranks, she had yet to attain acclaim going indie. That was the worst part of this: knowing she could write, struggling to reach out and knowing she could touch whoever reached back. But everyone was too busy clawing to clamour for conventions, convictions, and the tired trends.

Layla lacked the drive to network. She couldn’t strive for a sense of community when the desirous, deluded demographics let her down. They flushed funds into a cesspool of sanctimonious sensualists. Every bestseller she tore into at the waiting room or lugged from the library nauseated her. The only depth of these authors was their bank accounts. Layla knew children who could pen better prose.

But she knew the pang of hunger better. Almost as well as she knew the anger and anguish that curdled her insides when she found another rejection in her email. Her stagnant sales rank was just another testament to her failure.

People liked to say the world needed vision, that everyone itched for innovation. Layla believed that once, until she found out the hard way that consumers were creatures of habit. They were sheep herded, humored, and sheared by talking heads only to be groomed by grimy graces. She hated them. Prospective readers weren’t people she could relate to. They were fanatic fangirls whose blush coloured in banal bodice rippers.

Obnoxious sheep.

Lambs for the slaughter.

Layla didn’t know who she was, just what she wasn’t.

She wasn’t an artist. She might’ve been creative, but she craved assurance. Her work didn’t flow. It meant nothing if it wasn’t sold. Right now, she could’ve cared less if it was liked or hated. All that mattered was leaving an impression.

They said there was no such thing as bad press, as if you could profit from any and every proclivity. Layla couldn’t stand presses. They lied. There was no truth in replication, especially mass replication.

Which is what people were. They copied. They were imbued by the ideologies of their institutions. Whether it was a matter of martyrs or miscreants, people mimicked. There was no one person true to their values. Hubris was harbored in their heart of hearts. Layla wasn’t sure why that was. She strove for sales, not acceptance. Even though going along to get along underwrote every successful sales pitch.

Layla wasn’t affective, maybe abjective. Either way, she was an anomaly. She relied upon rationality, not chance. She hated chance. She hated its flaws. There were no guarantees no matter how safe or sound. Most of the time, she’d end up shorthanded even when she stuck to seemingly sure bets. She didn’t play the game, she just followed the rules.

And, where had that gotten her?

As she drudged past her desk, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in its polished albeit scuffled top. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but she wasn’t that bad to look at. She sure as hell wasn’t rich and for now, she wasn’t hungry or homeless. She wasn’t mean. She wasn’t not noble or nice. She wasn’t spontaneous either. As much as she hated things, she liked the life she lived because it was bearable. It was fiscal.

But finite.

And it didn’t sell.

After all the rules, obliging the orders and honorifics, Layla had nothing to show. She couldn’t consider a life for herself. She deferred to duty and decorum—and got jack shit. She had invested her entire existence in errant expectations.

Make nice. Make do. Make up. And, for what?

For fucking what?

She poured herself into her pages. Every book she wrote was potent with intimacy. She’d never written for peace of mind, but she paged off a piece of her soul.

When she started to write, she had this stupid idea that writing came from the soul. She thought if she dedicated herself that sales—or at least some sort of reception—would be duly dealt back. Turned out she was a stickler for soul only to go unnoticed.

It was a lot like the rest of her life’s letdowns. She devoted herself to a dream replaced by reality once she awakened. But this, this bustle of these bodice rippers and banal bestsellers, wasn’t her reality.

For Layla, the twinge of disappointment was the only thing that was really real. Then, that twinge became a twang that strummed her subconscious. Her back buckled under its baseline. Her limbs were no longer lucid. She started to fidget, but she wasn’t just fidgeting: she was reaching for something. She reached out and nothing, no one, reached back.

Layla wasn’t much of a people person either. She wasn’t a fan of conversation. Shit got real when you had no one to talk to. It got even realer when nobody listened. You realized how meaningless you were, how meaningless life was.

Or you just realized how mediocrity made meanings. People were so eager to swallow shit and make like it was chocolate. Then, they found themselves at an utter loss when they felt sick. Layla could handle the sickness. She just couldn’t stand being the one who could see the sickness that ate them from the inside out. She couldn’t abide when she could amend the ailment.

Or create a cure.

That wasn’t as noble or heroic as it sounded. The tolerance of tripe was terminal. Layla wasn’t a hero. Not much of a villain either, but she wouldn’t lose sleep if these people—the shit eaters whom stank of stagnance and sanctimonious platitudes—dropped dead. What she couldn’t stand was that they paid for poison. That money should be hers.

She hated these people. They were all rich, but couldn’t afford to be critical. They had money to burn for utter shit.

As Layla replaced her thermometer, she figured they deserved to burn too.

They said money was the root of all evil.

Madden Kadivar couldn’t argue with that. Even if he could, he wouldn’t. He never cared to argue. There was no such thing as win or lose. People just conceded when practicum pervaded the performance. A lesson was lost, not learned. The message was lost in translation because everyone played down their perspective.

We were human, we were humble, and we were so half-ass. We were only hot shit when we had back-up and not many of us did. As much as we liked to think we did, we couldn’t honestly vouch for our friends. If anything, we could only be certain of our enemies. Everyone was out for number one, even your closest confidante.

Even you. You were no special snowflake either.

Madden knew that. That knowledge proved pessimistic, but his father had to admit it had its use. Like when the cagier of their customers cried at the cash, or when the paltry patients would purport to peddle for prescriptions they couldn’t afford. They all sought to bend to rules. Whereas, he strove for the straight and narrow. So, he’d practically memorized every means and manual when it came time for brass tacks.

There was a fine albeit solid line between help and hand-outs. Kadivar’s Pharmacy wasn’t in the business of the latter. But his parents had conceded to consideration before he’d started his shifts and word had gotten around amongst the languid locals. The drugstore would’ve gone broke if Madden hadn’t stepped in to figuratively and literally take charge. His frigid precision and intelligent intolerance didn’t sit too well with some customers, but his parents sat comfortably and slept easy knowing they’d met their margins.

Originally, his heart set upon the prospect of going onto a speciality and opening his own practice. Back then, he’d had a heart to be giving and even fancied volunteering abroad in goodwill clinics. But time ticked by to suck him dry. He’d grown cautious, then caustic. Med school made him meticulous while summers with his uncles built his brawn. He stood tall and strong, but stayed stagnant. Callosity had corroded his convictions.

Once or twice, he’d stolen out of his soul only to stew within. He’d bathed in the sea of life only to drown. Then, he’d been torn through the tides.

Madden still wondered how he’d ever become this man. A man defined by his proclivity for propriety and perspective, even as he pined for pleasure. He found power in procedure. He was never one to compromise. Any askance was refused and referred to the regulations. Whether it was a bum brimming with tears or some bilk gushing under the guise of hard times, it was always a no. These people were errant and entitled. Besides, Fate had probably duly dealt them their deserved hands. Hard times would soften their superiority, their snide self-reference.

At the market, he overheard them. They effaced his ethics, pouted at his prestige, and complained of his composure. Only to turn up right back at his register with a begrudging bustle by his till. His cold shoulder proved just as well because every so often, the nudge of a newcomer would catch his eye. But their voice would inevitably comprise the critical cacophony.

So, he wasn’t inclined to smile upon the voice that ventured to his counter just then.

It belonged to a short woman who sulked each step. She moved as if she were in mourning, as if each motion were a task more than a need. The edge in her eye seemed entitled as much as evocative. All dressed in black, she really did look like a mourner. Her face was defined by a funerary frown. It reminded him of the impassive impartments and wiles of a wake, obliging onlookers with the monotonous musings of a void that would never again be filled.

That was the worst kind of chaos, the quiet kind. It tore through the heart. Its silence stole into the soul.

Which was why the way she used that voice unnerved him. Because Madden hardly heard it at all.

I’ve got a prescription, she said. I need it to be filled.

No helloes. No feigned formalities. Just what she had and what she needed.

And a look at the scrunched scrape of paper told him she’d had quite a lot. There was a generous helping of the pills as well as their dosage. Madden would’ve suspected the note was forged if it weren’t for the distinct handwriting of a local doctor he recognized.

A quick click through their system substantiated her truth as well. This woman had been here before. Not anytime recently, but she’d been here before, ages ago. She’d been plied with similar pills.

And there were many pills.

She started to rummage through her purse. "I’ve got new