Her. Chapter Three

Chapter 3
She wakes up at 9:30am, stretches, and turns on the TV. The local news station is reporting about the murder of a newly released rapist. Allegations are already being investigated into the families of the rapist’s victims.
“Wrong,” she yawns to herself. “That would be too easy.” She pulls her laptop out from under her bed and turns it on. She waits patiently and then checks her bank balance. She smiles at the lovely deposit made at midnight from her client (it really is her boss, but she would never never call the man that). Her cell phone begins to ring and the song “Loser” by Beck enchants the bedroom. After listen to song, bopping her to the hypnotic truth, she unplugs the phone, flips it open, and places it against her ear.
“I hope you had a good night,” says the male voice on the other end. The voice sounds older than hers and has an English accent. It is the accent the devil would have if the devil was well dressed and English.
“I did,” she says. “What do you want?”
“I have another job for you.”
“What is with the jobs all of a sudden?”
“This job is different,” he says. “This job requires your special little talent.”
“Talk to me.”
“Not on the phone. I’ll be there in ten minutes. Make yourself presentable, dear.”
“Fuck you,” she says into the receiver. She closes the phone and greets the morning from her bedroom window. She looks down to the street and sees a black Mercedes parked into front of the building.
“Ten minutes my ass, you son of a bitch,” she says to herself, smiling and waving at the car. She does not care who on the street below or in the building across the street saw her. This is a lie she told herself, of course, she cares about one opinion on the street, but he is either at work at this time or asleep from a night of classes so who fuck cared?
She rummages through her dresser for another pair of sweats and a sweatshirt. She throws both articles of clothing on and sprays herself with some Bath and Body Works perfume hidden in the top drawer. She grabs a wad of bills from the suitcase under her bed, now that she has been paid, slips on her sneakers, and locks the apartment up.
She knocks on the landlady’s door and waits for the landlady to open the door. She does and the female hands her cash.
“Rent,” she says.
“Thank you,” says the landlady to the dirty wall across her room’s door. The female is already down the hall. The landlady quickly closes her door for fear the female might come back to her door to suck her soul or worse, talk to her some more. The female walks down the flights of stairs and pass the passed out drunk sitting on the third floor landing. I am wrong. He is not completely passed up and opens his eyes as the female walks over him.
“Where you going sweet thing?” he asks her. The smell of cheap booze on his breath crawls down the three stairway steps to where she stops and turns around. The drunk looks at her and covers his eyes and lowers his head in fear like he has just seen a ghost. She turns back around and continues walking down the stairs, her face glowing from the satisfied smirk on her face. She walks out of the building and down the front steps to where the black Mercedes still remains parked. A driver walks out of the car and opens the back side door for her. She thanks him briefly and sits in the car.
The devil, I mean a well dressed Englishman sits next to her in the car. He is handsome, dangerously handsome to some but not to her. This not saying she did not enjoy looking at him or observing others who may see them together and wonder what the hell kind of gold digger is she and if the man is blind and deaf. He is old enough to be her father. His brown hair is brushed and neat, and his dark blue suit is well polished. Yes, he is very handsome. She knows this and would never admit it to him or anyone else that she enjoys his company. Amen to that, sister.
“This is presentable?” he asks, giving her body a quick one look over.
“As presentable as the time allowed,” she replies.
“I suppose,” he says, not wishing to argue with her. “I am hungry for some breakfast, aren’t you?”
“I suppose,” she replies, mocking his accent. He smiles at her childish behavior and directs the driver to take them to some fancy restaurant down town that she could not even pronounce or spell. They make small talk on the drive there. He asks about her social life and laughs at her lack of one. She asks about how much he got ripped off for that suit and about any recent events in his life. It has been a couple of months since they have seen each other in person. For the past couple of months, he has been feeding her jobs over the telephone.
The driver pulls up to the restaurant and opens the door for the Englishman. The Englishman then walks to the other side of the car and opens the door for her. She could open the damn door very well herself, but it is very hard to resist anything he offers and over the years, she has learned to accept his little and big courtesies (head out of the gutters, please). He escorts her into the restaurant and together they are seated at a table reserved for the beyond platinum card holders. He is big, international money and what he wants, he gets. She likes that about him. He has been good to her, and she considers him family. The kind of family that you brag about to other people and smile in delight over their envious hatred of you and your handsome, smart, and English cousin or uncle or possible boyfriend or sugar daddy or whatever. The relationship of these two is something I cannot divulge now as it relates to her past life before her current career. I promise to indulge you later at another time, after you have bought me that drink I so humbly deserve and want. Who’s leg a girl has to hump ‘round here to get a drink?
“What about the new job?” she finally asks after ordering her breakfast and waiting patiently for her friend to bring the new job into the discussion.
“This job will require much of you, my dear,” he says, looking directly at her.
“You say that with every job,” she replies, which she is right, but her older friend’s eyes are telling her something else, something deeper and darker.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm, well, this time I especially mean it,” he says.
“How so?”
“This job is not so much a job but an opportunity…an opportunity for you to expand your horizons instead of contenting yourself to the decay of Western civilization, but I am—”
“What is it, then?” she asks, becoming a little frustrated at her friend. The Englishman takes a deep breath and takes her hand into his. His hand is warm, soft, and her nails are neat and trim like the rest of him. Looking at his clean, trim hands gives her conscious of how chipped and uneven her nails are and how she may want to paint on another coat or color of nail polish. The bright yellow mail polish she loved so much is fading and on some of her nails, is completely worn off.
“I am afraid of losing you, my dear,” he says, bringing her back from the wonderful world of nail polish colors and back to the restaurant. She opens her mouth to say something, but he places a finger over her lips, silently pleading with her to listen to hi words.
“And I am afraid of you becoming something you are not because of this.”
“Because of what? What has happened, Kin?” she asks, no longer frustrated at her international friend but concerned. Kin is not here to deliver news about a job. He brings bad news. Perhaps I should say a little about the international Englishman know as Kin.
Kin is short for Kinsey, and he is a wealthy business man in his mid forties. He has estates along the east and west coasts of the states and also a lovely estate in London. She fell in love with his London estate when Kin first discovered her in New York and brought her to London.
Kin is deeply involved with her, but as I stated before, he is old enough to be her father and is an utmost gentleman. He loves her as much as any rich father with connections could. The expensive clothes in her closet, for instance, are all from him. He is a widowed man, his wife of ten years died in a car accident. They had no children together and Kin perceives the young female as being the daughter he may have had. He is a gentleman and vowed never to marry again after his wife’s death and has maintained his vow. He will never love another woman like he loved his wife. A terrible lost to any single female desiring an English prince charming.
Kin’s politeness and kindness is nonhuman in today’s world of rudeness, crudeness, everything that rhymes with crudeness, and skinny jeans. The young female is attracted to this unnatural specimen of the male kind and overall human race. Kin, like her, possesses something unnatural and dangerous, but unlike her, Kin is experienced in the world and understands who like them are allies and enemies. There, that should be enough about Kin for now.
“I afraid I am the bearer of bad news,” says Kin. He stops and stares at the young female’s hand he holds in his hands. Why must he be the one to bring her such sadness? The second the words pass through his lips, everything will change and he does know if it will be for the best or worse.
“Your parents are dead,” he says, the words burning and poisoning his lips. He cringes from the sentence. She does not respond to him. She stares blankly past Kin and envisions her home. She envisions her parents’ lifeless bodies in the home that housed and nurtured her for over half her life. Dad is on the couch in the living room, and Mom is in her bed, with a romance novel in her lap.
“How?” she asks, not feeling the squeeze of Kin’s hand on hers.
“Reports are that they died naturally in their sleep.”
“Bull shit. How did they die?”
“Their bodies just stopped working,” replies Kin. “It is as if something, well my dear, stopped their bodies, if that makes sense.”
“It doesn’t so keep trying,” she replies, all emotion gone from her voice. There has never been too much emotion behind her words to begin with, and the absolute absence of emotion is terrifying. Kin continues on, trying his best to articulate the situation to her.
“Their blood stopped, their breathing stopped, and eventually, they died. No signs of pain though, they just drifted off into sleep, never to be awoken,” he adds, eyeing the female with every word he spoke. Her head lowered, her eyes staring through the table, the floor, the cement and concrete to the rat infested sewers and finally, deep enough to see Hell. Hell is a river entirely made of mirror glass, reflecting back to the girl her current setting.
“So, this is Hell?” she imagines herself asking the long, winding, mirror river.
“Yes, it is,” answers her mirror twin. “And there is nothing you can do about it.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Guess we will.”
Kin is not aware of who, individually, killed the female’s parents, but he is aware of who had sent him or her. To every person in the world, there is someone else who completes that person. We see our whole selves when we meet our other selves. We see the evil we are capable of, we see the goodness we are capable of, and we must decide whether or not such a person is an adversary or friend. In Kin and her case, these other selves are adversaries.
Her blood is boiling. Another fire is burning inside her and this fire is just as powerful as the previous for mentioned, but this fire is destructive not sweetly addictive. The wait staff and customers at the restaurant begin to lower their heads, memories off all the mistakes and grievances they have caused others flush their minds. Some begin to cry softly, some wept, others scream in fear of the imagined revenge that is being sought against them. One man imagines himself burning in the fires of Hell for the pain he inflicted upon a past wife. One woman imagines being found guilty of poisoning her husband, a crime she has been free from for five years and going. All the hidden horrors of the people at the restaurant are clear to her. She senses all of their wrong doings, and these senses fuel the fire in the body. She despises them, pities them, and takes pleasure in seeing them suffer. This pleasure she feels is not out of some sick, sadist need for it, but out of pure power. She becomes stronger and stronger the more horrible the pains she rises in people.
Kin is unaffected. He glances at the others. He then glances at the female, her eyes unfocused, a sinister smile spread across her lips. She has risen her head slightly, just enough for Kin to see her face. She still stares at the table though. He questions why he has brought her here to give her the terrible news. Perhaps he has humored the thought of the female reacting in a different way. Perhaps she would have displayed her grief differently instead of letting others share her pain. Kin kicks himself for thinking like this. She is still young, and she has lost her parents. What the hell is he expecting otherwise?
“I’m sorry my child,” he thinks, his thoughts drenched in sadness and compassion.
All of sudden the suffering stops. People shake their heads and look around to see if anyone has noticed their bizarre and pitiful behaviors. No one knows quite sure what has just happened. The female lifts her head more, her face fully visible to her older friend. She has sense his thoughts. Kin’s thoughts and feelings are sparkle amongst the others in the restaurant. The female had caught hold of Kin’s diamond encrusted, pure feelings and absorbed their power into her body’s core.
She appears as if having just come out of a trance. A little redness has speckled across her cheeks, her breathing is heavy yet unnoticeable, and her eyes are bloodshot, redness that meant tears but no such tears came or went from her brown eyes. She now feels the tension of Kin’s hand on hers and she grips hi hand equally back to show that she is fully back, no longer feeding on the bystanders.
“It is not these people’s fault, my dear,” he says, something the female already knows. She snuffs at the remark. The waitress brings their plates out to their table but stops before she reaches the table. She asks the hostess where her two customers have gone. The hostess looks at the empty table in confusion too.
“I don’t know,” she says. “There were right there a second ago.” The waitress looks outside to find the black Mercedes the older gentleman had arrived in to be gone. They have vanished, or it would seem.
In actuality, Kin and the female are still at their table. Kin places a large tip on the table for the waitress they are abandoning and places more money on the table for the food they ordered but would not be eating. Kin leads the female out of the restaurant and out to his car, still parked in its same spot. As they pass through the front door of the restaurant, the money Kin has left appears on the table for all to see. Kin and the female are observed by the people outside, but inside the restaurant, they are merely a short memory that would be forgotten in a matter of minutes.
The car drives off with Kin and the female sitting in silence. The driver does not need to ask where his employer wishes to go: they are returning the female home. The silence in the car is overpowering. Even the noises of the waking city do not penetrate the silence between the two unique individuals.
“What do I do, Kin?” she asks, unable to handle the silence. She is also embarrassed by her reaction at the restaurant and her question serves as more or an apology than anything else.
“You go home,” replies Kin, receiving the female’ apology and understanding her reaction back at the restaurant. “Grieve for your parents, find out anything you can, and move on. Do want you can to move on. Destroy, conquer, in this case, revenge has my blessing.”
“What about my brother?” she asks. “Is he alright?” The female has a younger brother who is attending college back in home.
“Yes.”
“Who did this?”
“Someone with a nasty little power like yours, I suppose,” says Kin. I know, Kin’s words sound cruel and heartless, but he means the best. By “nasty little power” Kin is referring to female’s powers being unique, one of a kind, and whoever is responsible for her parents’ deaths also has a “nasty little power.”
“Are you coming with me?” she asks. Half of her wishes for him to go with him, though her other half knows it would go no good, and there was no way Kin could survive a suburb tour.
“I am afraid I have business here to take care, but you will do your friend Kin a favor and keep in contact with him, won’t you?” he asks, leaning over to the female. The female can smell the subtle, expensive cologne on her Englishman and damn, it did smell good.
“Like I could keep anything from you if I tried,” she says, staring out the car’s window at the ordinary, not so good smelling people outside. They are no longer ordinary people to her. Any one of those people could be after her. The car stops in front of her apartment building, and she steps out of the car before Kin has a chance to open the door for her. She storms up the first couple of steps and stops.
“What do I do, Kin?” she asks again, her back still turned to man who has followed her out of the car. Kin places his hands on her shoulders. She turns around the face him. The aroma of the man again fills her nostrils.
“Go home, grieve, investigate, make sure your brother is alright, and come back,” he whispers to her, his mouth hovering over her forehead.
“Why come back? Why not find this person and destroy him?”
“He has made the first move, and now we must make ours and wait.”
“How do I know going home isn’t a trap?”
“It’s very unlikely our target is still there. Would you stay at the scene?”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Then go home. I will be staying in New York for some time. After you come back, we’ll go the London. We should be safer there.” Kin is right. Besides from being a jump across the pond, London houses many friends of Kin, and Kin anticipates he will have to start making tighter arrangements with them. Word is out on his valuable little daughter, and whoever placed the hit on her parents wants her as the final prize. Kin has known this fight would eventually happen. This is why Kin had prepared her with numerous righteous jobs so she would naturally feel obligated to stand up for injustice and use her hurtful powers for the benefit of others, not their suffering.
“Be careful, my dear,” he whispers to her before kissing her on the forehead. His lips are firm but soft at the same time, and they create a mixture of warmth and coolness that comforts her. Is it strange that she has not shed a tear for the deaths of her parents?
“I’m not the one you should be worrying about,” she replies. “You look after yourself too.” Kin smiles and leaves her. She watches his car drive off down the street. No one else notices the expensive car drive away. No one has seen the suited man that stood upon the steps a few moments ago. Kin is more or less a ghost to people who do not know him or people he does not want to know him. Maybe this is why his is such a persuasive business man; the not knowing of where he is all the time must make others paranoid. He appears without warning and leaves just as mysteriously.
Kin’s car moves out of sight, and she notices him looking at her from across the street on his own apartment building’s steps. They both do not quickly turn away from each other this time. The sadness from the lost of her beloved parents has disabled her normal reactions. Well, normal reactions for her. He looks at her with deliberate interest. Her face is expressionless like always, but her eyes are heartbreaking to him. He walks off the steps and his foot touches the street as if he meant to cross it. She awakes from her depressed state and runs into the apartment building, paranoid she might hurt him if he got any closer to her. Her paranoia is well placed as he does slightly feel a chill in his chest and head, like when you awake to a cold bedroom because you left the window open and your first breath of morning air paralyzes you. He feels a watered down version of this as he left his building’s steps. She could and would never hurt him. If this meant never getting too close to anyone besides Kin, she would deal with it—she had to.
Only after she has locked herself in her apartment that she realizes he has made the first move. He has made the attempt to see her. The thoughts of him possibly sharing her feelings of lust finally penetrate her mind. She immediately brushes the thoughts away. She has to go home immediately.
“He seems like a nice boy,” she imagines her mother saying. “Why don’t you wear something that actually fits you so he can see you?”
“I thought you were supposed to be dead, mom?” she asks.
“Dead or not, I’m still your mother.”
“Yeah well, I’m trying to come see you and Dad as fast as I can.”
“No rush, not like we’re going anywhere. Who’s that man who just dropped you off?”
“No one.”
“He is very good looking. You know, he reminds me a lot of—”
“Mom, trying to pack here.”
“Right, well you be sure to be careful on your way here. People can be real idiots and—”
“Alright Mom,” she says. Even in death, her mother is going to make sure her rebellious daughter is kept in check.
“Hmm…now where did I put my books…” Her mother’s voice trails off and the female could just imagine her mother in heaven right now surrounded by mounds and mounds of books. The other book-collecting Moms in heaven are staring at her with such envy. Dad is either still sleeping or is enjoying an all you can eat hamburger and sub buffet.
She packs only the things she needs, leaving most of her clothes in their drawers and hanging in the closet. She finds a purse in the closet to throw her belongings into and is done packing in a matter of minutes. The bag is small enough to be carry on but big enough to hold her essentials. She is prepared for this.
She keeps telling herself this on the cab ride to the airport, through the pointless security measures at the airport, and when she is finally on a plane home. She sits motionless in her seat. The little girl sitting across the aisle constantly looks at the drained female. The female is aware of the looks she is getting from the little children on the plane. Fact of life: little children are weird. They can sense things adults cannot, and they can act upon these senses in ways adults wished they could. The female is aware of this too and instead of returning the glances to the youth, she keeps looking forward into the back of the seat in front of her. She remembers why she hates airplanes.
The female is displaying more maturity than from earlier in the day. She could make every single person on this plane feel her pain. She could make the children experience the anguish of losing not one but both parents. She could do all of this, but she doesn’t. She keeps everything bottled inside for the safety of the passengers. She holds everything so when she finds whoever is responsible for her parents’ deaths; he or she will feel her wrath. And whoever sent the orders down to kill her parents will feel her wrath too. She is sick of the damn society she belongs to. People like her are dying every day or their loved ones are paying the price. She thinks that is why Kin told her directly. Kin wants to see just how pissed off she’d have to get before she’d consider taken on a big fish.
“Congratulations,” she mumbles to herself. “Now I’m pissed and everyone is going to suffer.”
The plane finally touches ground near her hometown. She has about fifty miles to cover before actually being home. She walks the city where she has landed, searching for an opportunity. She spots a car stopped on the street, its engine still running. The driver has made an emergency stop for a pack of smokes. The driver walks out of the Seven Eleven to find his car gone, long gone. The female’s ideology about driving is very simple: fast drivers are too slow, slow drivers are to be shot on sight, and the police could bite her.
A short drive later, she is home. Home is where the disheveled heart of one’s youth can be found, and instead of reminiscing about how healthy this heard used to be, she runs it over with her stolen car. She passes subdivision after subdivision with a disgusted eye. She isn’t sure whether she dislikes being actually home versus the people she would have to pass while going home. She pulls over on a street in the front of her subdivision. She dials a number in her cell phone that hasn’t been dialed since never. The phone rings and rings and finally a male voice answers on the other end phone.
“Hello?” he asks. She doesn’t know what to say to him.
“Hello? Anybody there?” he asks again.
“Where are you?” she finally asks. A fine way to start a conversation, but she’s rusty.
“Sis?”