Work on the idea for an hour, then post it somewhere. 

Idea: This part of a dream I had.

She was standing in front of the shaky mirror looking at her poorly applied makeup. What a way to arrive to her graduation, right? She had applied it on the also shaking compartment of the train where, using her cellphone camera as a mirror because train restrooms are gross and she didn’t need to get the bottom of her dress wet. Not today, not today. She had finally decided to go and fix it properly after a sudden stop that had made her squiggly line of winged cat eyeliner go all across her cheek. She really wasn’t good at makeup, but this was high school graduation, and everyone was wearing it. It was only fair for her to try as well.

When she graduated middle school her mom had done all her makeup carefully and beautifully. She had worn fake eyelashes and ruby colored lips, sparkly eyeshadow and a bunch of pink blush that she thought made her look like one of those vintage porcelain dolls, but her mom said she looked gorgeous and so she believed her.

Mom didn’t apply her makeup this time.

Mom could barely brush her hair now. Mom was F. U. C. K. E. D.  U. P. today. Today and always since her brother had passed away.

Brother had overdosed two years ago and she had had to keep everything together since.

Today mom was sober… or so she had claimed that morning, after refusing to eat or drink anything again. She kept swaying back and forth while she struggled to get her into a loose dress that only managed to show how thin she had gotten. Moms are usually chubbier, mom bod and all that jazz, but not hers, this mom was stick thin and all girls envied her. Because they didn’t know of course, not because they wished to have a drug addicted mom and take care of a household secretly.

Back to the wet floor of the shaky moving train restroom. It had those disgusting puddles of some liquid (please let it be water and not pee) all stepped on with traces of toilet paper that hadn’t landed on the bin and made papier-mâché of filth all over, dangerously threatening to get you an infection if you dared to look at it and think about it for too long. She grabbed onto the bottom of her long puffy dress and tucked it into her underwear so she could fix the makeup. She had gotten the dress at a garage sell for $70 pesos and had her friends’ mom tailor it so it would close. It was pale blue with sparkly tulle over the skirt and little star-shaped sequins here and there. It was a steal for that price, and it only took a stretchy fabric she got at a fabric store for almost nothing. Her friends’ mom didn’t charge her because she knew it was for graduation.

She only had to survive this one event and she was done. She would leave. Far far away she would go, she didn’t care anymore. She wasn’t going to. Mom wasn’t her responsibility, if she wanted to kill herself with drugs too, she might as well start as soon as she moved away.

She took a little cotton swab out of her makeup baggie and opened the faucet to wet it a little. She tried to erase the mess of line across her cheek but instead managed to rub it all around. She sighed and put it back into her baggie to throw away later, she then took a beauty blender that her boyfriend had given her for Christmas and applied more makeup on top of the stain; that worked.

She had done a messy base, some highlighter as she could, mascara and tried to apply the winged eyeliner, which now we know how that had ended up. She watched all those youtube videos for nothing.

She opened the door and closed it quickly to remove her dress from her underwear and grabbed it a little so it wouldn’t touch the floor and got out of the restroom to return to the compartment to find her mom asleep with her face against the glass of the window.

“Mommy, wake up,” she asked, “are you sure you didn’t do anything this morning?”

“... n’t be silly…” mom mumbled, “…have to be ‘ere…”.

Yup, she definitely did.

She grabbed her mother’s face delicately with one hand and struggled with the other hand and her mouth to open a tube of peachy lipstick. With the moving train and her mom’s hanging sleepy face she could barely apply it on her lips and not all over. Mom was so pretty. Big blue eyes and long black hair. She looked like a Disney princess back in the day. Of course now she looked more like a homeless Disney princess street performer.

“Mommy, look at the lipstick and tell me if it’s okay please.”

Mom barely opened and eye and tried to sit up straight. She really did try.

“Mmm, mirror, honey?” she was so sweet still.

“I didn’t bring one, mommy,” she took out her phone and opened her front camera to show her, “you can check it with this.”

Mom grabbed it and looked at her face for a second, “jeez, I look like crap, baby… could you help me get to the bathroom mirror?”

“Yeah, sure, grab my arm,” she had been really delicate to mom ever since her brother had died, but it still made her really mad how she had become just the same, “it’s really filthy though.”

“I don’t mind, baby,” she grabbed from her arm and got up making an uncomfortable noise, “I’ve probably seen worse.”

Yeah, at a dealer’s probably.

She led mom to the restroom and got inside with her to hand her the contents of the makeup baggie. It was a small place and she could barely fit in there with her without letting the dress bottom touch the floor. Mom asked for the lipstick, the bronzer (which she didn’t have any, nor blush, so she used the same lipstick as a blush), and the mascara. She applied it skillfully even on whatever she was on, she was a pro. Then she looked over to see her daughter and her makeup and said,

“oh no, baby, let me try to fix yours,” and as she turned something fell from the inside of her own underwear and fell to the floor. It was some toilet paper wrapped around something that fell directly unto the brown disgusting puddle of the floor, “shit!”

She looked incredulous to the brownish weed on the floor and the dark water was absorbed by the toilet paper.

“What the fuck, mom?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry baby, it´s to kill the edge, hon. I swear, it’s nothing but a little weed.”

“Why the fuck are you bringing it to graduation then?!”

“… it was an accident baby, I’m sorry.”

“Weed inside the school isn’t an accident, mom, it’s a crime,”

Mom bent over to try to collect it from the filthy filthy floor.

“Ew! Don’t touch it!”

“It’s all I’ve got, baby, I need it” she said, while putting her hands on the damp toilet paper and grabbing some of the wet weed under it.

“No, you don’t, mom, leave it!”

They could hear a guard walking outside of the restroom.

“Everything okay there?”

She tried to cover mom’s mouth so she didn’t say anything.

“It’s all fine, sir, sorry!”

But she let the dress fall, and it was long and all over the suspicious dirty water. Her perfect dress for graduation.

Oh no.