His scent...I can still smell it in the coffee. I thought this was over. Done and finished with to be no more again. But these were his final words to me before I went far away from where he could follow me to. With a staid and heavily serious expression, he looked into my vigilant and alert damn eyes to tell me the harsh and cruel-like words themselves:
"You think you can succeed to get away from me. The honest truth is that you can barely triumph to do anything like that. I will be there with you wherever it is that you run to. I will haunt you always and without any fail. You will not live to see the joy and happiness of life itself. I swear on this. You will not ever!"
I am all alone. Everyone has already gone by now. I am still seated and fixed still here, typing and resolving out a few things that Turner will want to see finished and carried through by the dawn of the coming day, Thursday that is. Well, I should finish this up quickly and get on going my way. I probably and definitely should. I am not dragging any helplessly tired foot out of this office up till I am through and finished with the present task at hand.
It is cold and chilly outside here. Midtown Las Vegas. Damn it! I forgot to carry and bring my coat with me here for work. And now I will have to suffer and pay for that silly damn mistake of mine. Crap it straight into the bin. I have no alternative than to pull through the whole nasty and excruciating ordeal. As I make my way through the restless people, I wonder what it will be like if I were to meet Charles anew. He is the monster...he has always been the monster, who won't rest until he has devoured and consumed me up into nothingness. Oh God! Does it have to turn out like this again? Huh?
I expected to find some cabs here at the Trill Manor Junction Square. Rather, I see and sight absolutely nothing at all. What does this have to mean? I take a tramcar or maybe a public train straight damn to my apartment. Schroeder must be waiting. Hard; restless like a bee that has not yet come across that valuable and precious something. I wonder why she hasn't called me already...I only wonder...I call her up instead.
"Hey. You have expecting me to come there?"
"No. And I wouldn't miss you if you slept out there in the cold or whatever damn shack you feel like napping your head on."
"Sorry to disappoint you. I am actually on my way there."
"Alone?"
"Alone. I got from the office quite a little bit late. I thought you were supposed to process and read that on your own, or were not you, sweet babe?"
"No problem, Tori. I will be waiting though. Safe journey on your part!"
I make it late to the rail station. I am expecting that they have closed by now. I will have no choice but to get on a public bus. Three hours of walking? I can't bear it anymore. I have gone on foot enough already this early morning. It is now night, and somebody with a sick and wicked mind that you don't know might attack and assault you for no even sound reason. I have heard enough of such horror stories already. And I don't want to be on another episode of The Tragic Most Things That Might Happen To You with Brody Cooper interviewing and interrogating me through the whole painful memory memorial phase. Duh—huh!
It is twenty minutes now since I have been last walking on the street alone there. I am perched and stooled down at some Rail Depot—I forgot to call up and even swot up its name. This shouldn't be terrible though. What matters is that I get home—straight into Courtney's arms and tell her what the hell I've been through and for what purposes exactly. Yeah...yeah! Enough of this silly brain talk now.
The tramcar is moving slowly and bit by bit. I feel like I should kick and smash its windows up for eating and chewing up my time very slowly and annoyingly before my very face and eyes. Yeah! Even yell and shout at the driver like the hornet of a big, awful train itself. What is he thinking? Wait a second! Has not he been drinking too much liquor—huh?
There is a couple seated right there in front of me, chatting and smiling and laughing to themselves. How do I know they are wed and jingled-the-bell-up. Well, the way the are postured and positioned in the face of the other...it is all so obvious and evident. If that's not truthfully so, maybe one of them is preferably married, possibly the man who looks very much older and senior than the poor girl my age. Hmnnnn. She is going out with grandpa, right? Bad choice! It is not that I envy and feel jealous for her. I don't. I just question if he really and to the fill makes her intensely and incredibly happy.
What about you yourself, Tori? My conscious asks and conjectures me. Me? I am happy and very much free with the way I am myself. Okay. This is my plan for now. First work hard and diligently in life. Then after that find someone worth your attention to marry and settle down with. Maybe I should do the actual opposite. Like throw myself into the big pool of love and then seek my life and goals and desires later on? No way. It would be torture to me, I swear. I just what to get what I want to nab first, and then nab and hold on to other things later on.
Back in the Cape, so many people who knew me were every time wondering why I never became jealous at all if they happened to be paired into strings and groupings of two that romantic and affectionate way. My dreams come first just like my precious damn life itself. I don't want anything to get in my way. Unfortunately and very much sadly, a lot more way things than I thought possible have harassed and badgered me up. But that has not stopped me from fighting to be where I want to get myself to. Love careless sometimes can ruin up your entire building. Better keep it in watch and safeguard than regret it later on. Okay, I could have stayed with Charles or Sadie, made them both wildly happy and in seventh heaven...all at the expense of risking what I have long worked for and wanted to have in life? Hell no! I was faced with a choice. I had to choose between them and my coming self. And I went for the later. Like they say, no sacrifice comes without a cost. I had to suffer some things just to lose them and thereafter in the end score the ball into the goal post and triumph furiously. I hope I don't have to come to this scenario again.
Finally, I am a few bearable steps away from home. As I walk in the breezing and fanning cold, I am thinking of what else I have to do with my coming spare time. Yes. I can be sort of a careless and unthinking alcoholic most frequently of the times. But then there are times that a thoroughly tired and to the inch beat exhausted lazy me do not do any sort of work. I am thinking. What better way than to fall in love. Yes, it would be wonderful and beautifully great indeed. I mean...I am good-looking and socially standard and average in character and deeds. It would be not be that much hard to find love here and any goodly shoulder that I can lean and brace myself on. Stop it, Tori. Don't think about love...it will just come to you on an unexpected moment, and you better just keep your heart open and highly willing to receive it.
At times I do feel that I am left out and lagging behind in this love thing. But then I hardly and barely am not. My heart and instincts tell me so. If I die young and beautiful without ever deeply and heavily falling in love then that will be it. If I do, the excellent and better still. Dying young again? It can easily happen...it has taken place so many times with so many people after all.
When I push open the door, I see Courtney perched and seated down there on the mammoth brown couch where she is typing up and surfing something on the net on her laptop. What? A dating site? She is dating Gavin now and they both met on some dating website online. Of course! Things don't have to end online there. They have met and hanged out with each other a couple times now.
"Chatting with Gavin?" I ask her coolly and steadily as I close the door behind me.
"Kind of," she replies calmly and sedately. "He is in some night club right now with his guy friends. I wonder what manners and mentalities they are etching up into him. I hope it doesn't affect and touch me, or will it, Tori?"
"You know how guys are like. You can't restrain them from what they want to be—or can you?"
"You are right there, sweet buddy."
"Good. What is there to eat for supper if I may ask?"
"Am I your cook?" She gives me that go-find-out-in-the-kitchen-yourself look that is a bit impolite and bitter to some marginal extent. Fuck her for it! Jeez! This girl and her bossy behavior! It drives me nuts and crackers like I am going to choke and throttle her up on the throat. Seriously!
Our kitchen is sizeable but not so big again, neither is it that inconsiderably and helplessly small either. No, it is not. It is well and nicely kept. All so magically and beautifully clean. If you see it, you will be like, "This certainly has to be polished up for some perfect GO-SPOTLESS advert." Courtney and I always like it this trim and immaculate way.
What must I eat for tonight, huh? A cup of yoghurt will do, with boiled eggs and Italian Pane Siciliano bread and the Chinese Keanu Reaves chicken salads and a bit slice of Berwick—or is it Bacon sandwich? Whichever name is suitable. That is what I want to gobble and guzzle up for tonight. Seriously; dummy!
Once in the living room, I seat and entrench myself right next to Courtney. She is there on her laptop, busy typing and scribbling up. "So what is going on here if I may ask—pardon me, girl, but I have to be snoopy and dowdy with you just this time around alone?"
Her eyes wander to me and then stray back to her laptop screen. "It is just that...I am telling him not to misbehave and annoy me up. If he does, I won't forgive or let him off for it."
