Creative Writing Sample

The arid heat hit her in the face as she stepped out into the desert air. Straightening herself and smoothing her hair, she hailed a Taxi. The cab drove up slowly and a man stepped out and took her bags.
"How long you in town for"? The cab driver was a friendly looking older man, probably a local. Madison eyed him, uninterested in conversation.
"Don’t know." She sighed and sat back in her seat, watching the scenery glide by effortlessly. It had been years since she’d been home. Home. What a foreign word. It was hardly home anymore. With Chelsea gone now, there was nothing left to come home to. After the accident, Madison had moved to the East coast for a new start, leaving her sister behind to pick up the pieces of the decaying life her parents had left behind. She shouldn’t have gone. She told herself a million times that she’d come home eventually, mend the damage, keep her sister company...but now it was too late. She stifled another sigh and closed her eyes.
Madison awoke to the faint buzzing of the hotel television. The blue light flickered across the room, casting eerie shadows. She flipped on the light and grabbed her half empty glass of now watered down vodka. The clear liquid provided that familiar pleasant burn as she sucked the last of it down. Vodka was her drink. It was clear, straight to the point, got the job done. She was a no- nonsense drunk, always had been. Raising herself up, Madison leaned over and reached for the curtains, revealing a sparkling view of the Las Vegas Strip. There had always been something comforting to her about all of those twinkling, vibrant lights. They were alive, full of impending surprises...they held that glimmer of hope that drew in fools from all corners of the earth, all hoping to catch a bit of that glory, that shimmer. Idiots. She sat back again, rubbing her temples.
A shitty impressionist painting hung on the pepto bismol pink wall in front of her. The decorator should have been shot, she thought, no one could have gotten a restful night in a stink hole like this. It was a moderately priced casino hotel that boasted one of the Strip’s best buffets. Madison hated buffets, they were a cess pool of germs and depression. As if she needed more reasons to kill herself.
She pulled out a pack of cigarettes. What she really needed was some good coke. Maybe then she could do something with herself, go out and find the first hopeless moron she saw and sleep with him. Madison had a string of devoted admirers, but the word "Love" had never really been in her vocabulary. She didn’t trust it, it wasn’t real. Men were all the same stinking, breast obsessed cretins. Women were emotionally unstable head-cases. There was no point. Sex at least didn’t pretend to be something that it wasn’t. Sex was her friend, and it worked fine. Chelsea had been a born romantic. The sisters were polar opposites. Sweet, optimistic little Chelsea. Clearly, she had been everyone’s favorite. Why the hell wouldn’t she have been? She just hadn’t seen the world’s dirty laundry like Madison had. She was innocent, untouched by the filth of society. Her suicide had been hard to swallow. Madison didn’t understand how a creature so seemingly bright could have been as tortured as she. It pissed her off, frankly. She had checked out without even an inkling of a goodbye, the little shit. Madison inhaled the smoke greedily, sucking the life out of the cigarette, as if it would save her own. Maybe at least it’d give her cancer and end it all.
Madison truthfully didn’t really want to die. She didn’t know why, her life was shit. She had no real friends aside from Tom, her neurotic and very much gay roommate. She didn’t like living alone, and that was probably the only reason she hadn’t strangled him. He was the kind of fag who never stopped talking. At times Madison could be equally loquacious. If she’d had a few glasses of wine she’d strip off her shoes and dance barefoot in her living room, Tom giggling like a maniac, swaying alongside her. Deep down, Madison wasn’t as bitter as she tried to be, but her negativity was the only thing that kept her alive, as far as she was concerned. She reasoned that if she stopped feeling, then she wouldn’t ever have to be sad, angry...hurt...she could just glide through her existence, devil may care, and things would be just fine. It wasn’t working out.