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SadChantal 20.06
I’ll say... And what about you? Married?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.07
That’s touched a nerve right here too… :-(
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.07
Wow. Love is definitely NOT in the air around here!
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.07
You're not wrong, SadChantal. Is that why you’re sad? Did your last relationship go tits up?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.08
Maybe...But love’s not the only reason. What about you anyway? What’s the deal with your name?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.09
Just paying a little tribute to my 2 favourite directors: Alfred Hitchcock and Dario Argento.
OK, so apart from love, what's making you sad, gorgeous?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.09
I’m just going through a rough time...I’d rather not talk about it.
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.10
Understood. We’ll talk about something else shall we?
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.10
:-)
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.10
Hmmm...we need something a bit more fun and light-hearted...
03/02/2016
SadChantal 20.11
Anything would be more fun and light-hearted than the last year of my life.
Go on, fire away...
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.12
It might not be the most fun and light-hearted topic for most people,
but it is for me: What do you do? For work, I mean.
Chantal sat motionless in front of her PC. It was unbelievable how this guy had managed to hit her where it hurt. He’d started with family, then moved on to love, and finally, in an attempt to talk about something more “fun and light-hearted”, he'd delivered the coup de grace.
Work had been a sore point for a while now.
She began to tap away at the keyboard, and her words appeared on the screen.
“Fuck off,” she muttered, burying her head in her hands.
She deleted what she had just typed, reducing the message window to nothing but a flashing cursor.
The thirty-three-going-on-twenty-five-year-old girl got up from her swivel chair and headed into the kitchen.
“Where the fuck are they?” she asked herself, scanning the table she hadn’t cleared from earlier.
Nothing. They weren’t there.
She cast her eyes over to the shelf by the sink.
They weren’t there either.
She puffed out her cheeks in frustration and headed for the living room hoping for better luck. She raised a finger to her mouth and began to bite nervously on her nail. Her eyes were darting around the room: the glass coffee table, the shelving unit on the wall, the old writing desk...
“There you are!”
She walked over to the antique piece of furniture and grabbed the packet of Philip Morris. She took a cigarette from the pack and lit it, hoping that the nicotine would somehow inspire her to create a cover story that could mask what she had really, shamefully, done for a living.
By the time she had returned to the bedroom, the cigarette was already half smoked, and a couple of pieces of ash fell to the tiled floor.
“Dammit!” she admonished her own carelessness.
She was about to go back in the kitchen to fetch an ashtray, and a damp sponge to clean up the fallen ash, when her PC emitted a familiar ping.
She peered at the screen. There were four new messages.
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.16
Hello?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.17
Don’t tell me I’ve touched another nerve with work!
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.20
You still there?
03/02/2016
AlfreDario77 20.23
What’s going on?
Don’t tell me I’ve touched another nerve with work!
Well, kind of.
You still there?
If truth be told, she didn’t know if she was still there or not. It was probably about a year ago that she started not really being there. And it had got worse ever since as she was beset by one problem after another, slamming into her like a high-speed train.
What’s going on?
She had no clue what was going on, only that she’d lost her mind in some corner of this godforsaken earth. No, there was definitely no happy ending to the last year of her life.
She took another drag and realised the cigarette had burned down to the filter.
“Fuck’s sake!”
She flicked the butt out of the window and turned back to the screen. He could wait, for now.
She moved the cursor up and to the right, and clicked on the X. The chat window disappeared to be replaced by a giant winking emoji.
Her computer had been her virtual world for days, but she switched it off and returned to the real world.
CHAPTER 2
Until this time last year, her life had been completely different.
Mamma and Papà had raised her lovingly. When she left high school, she had wanted to start working so she could contribute to the household income, but her parents had insisted she apply to university.
“Choose whatever course you like,” her father had said, more serious than she had ever seen him. “We’ll find a way of paying your boarding costs.”
She chose Economics, and she already knew enough about that particular subject to know that she didn’t want to be a burden on her parents for years to come. She'd found herself a part-time job at Lilly's Snack Bar so she could at least contribute to some of her uni-related expenses: train fares, books, lunches away from home.
She worked at the bar, just a couple of miles from the family home, for the first two years of her course, doing the 5.30pm-10pm shift three nights a week. The money she earned eased the pressure on her folks, at least until the country was rocked by the financial crisis. On one horrible autumn day, Chantal had received a phone call from Signor Ferruccio, who told her (sensitively at least) that he could no longer afford to keep her on. The bar just wasn't generating enough business.
And so Chantal found herself out of a job, and her parents were forced to tighten the purse strings so they could cover all her uni expenses. Then, one day, she responded to an advert:
WANTED: NIGHT CLUB DANCER
The night club turned out to be more of a strip club, requiring topless dancers to strut their stuff in front of sleazy, drooling old men stroking themselves through the inside of their trouser pockets.
But the pay was good and she needed the money, so she had agreed to get up on stage and take her kit off, surrounded by a pack of horny wolves.
When Chantal awoke from her daydream, she found herself standing in the middle of the kitchen. She took a deep breath and pulled yet another cigarette from the rapidly emptying packet.
She had tried to quit so many times but succumbed whenever life got tough.
It was more than just life getting tough though; it was a deep, dark depression that had pervaded every fibre of her being.
She took three long drags on her cigarette, glanced over at the dirty dishes piled up in the sink and shook the tablecloth over the balcony. The sparrows would be grateful for the breadcrumbs.
Taking another couple of drags, she headed back indoors and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. She wandered into the bathroom and took all her clothes off, glancing at herself in the mirror but not stopping to admire what she saw. That same body, lusted after by dozens of randy old gits at the club, had been traded in for a younger model by the man she'd thought was the love of her life.
Pushing those painful memories to the back of her mind, she reached inside the shower and turned it on. She put her hands under the jet until it reached the right temperature, stepped into the shower and waited for the water to succeed where yet another cigarette had failed, by calming her thoughts.
CHAPTER 3
He opens his eyes.
He feels drowsy, or perhaps it's the after-effects of the stuff he is forced to take.
Must be some sort of tranquiliser. But he says nothing. He doesn't moan. All that matters is that he gets what he wants. And so far, he always has.
He looks over to the opposite corner of the room.
Still there.
