Once I left Sunny's mansion, I headed back home, lost in my thoughts, grappling with the potential fallout of what had just happened. I felt emotionally drained, my mind stuck in a loop, struggling to form coherent thoughts as I stumbled down the street like a drunken junkie.
I wasn't even aware when I reached the security checkpoint.
"Huh, look there, the cunt that tricked us!" remarked one of the security guys.
Was he talking about me? What did I do to trick them?
The tone and the epithet caught me off guard, but what happened next was even more unsettling. I was instructed to follow one of the guys into their small checkpoint barrack, and the moment I entered, he placed his hand on my shoulder, staring directly into my eyes, and as he yelled, some spit hit me in the face.
"Some stray dogs, beggars, and the like never understand until they get told the hard way! Do we need to teach you a hard lesson?" he sneered. "If I ever see you around here again, you'll get a beating to remember! Understand?"
How the hell did they catch on to my situation so quickly? Do they browse the internet all the time? I tilted my head, looking at him, as he continued yelling in my face.
"You don't whore yourself here, keep it in your district, cunt! Say if you understand, cunt!"
As if I did anything wrong? My eyes narrowed as I looked at him.
"Take your hands off me!" I replied slowly.
He pushed me forcefully while another one tripped me, and I fell on my ass. I rolled to the side and got back on my feet, annoyed that I let them take me by surprise like this. He huffed at my gymnastics.
It took a great deal of willpower not to kill them on the spot. They play with their lives and are not even aware of it!
Yeah, and that would get me labeled as enemy number one and get all available police forces and perhaps the feds too on my tail. Too many witnesses, too many cameras around.
Besides that, what was wrong with me? Since when was 'kill them all', my solution?
The third member of the group chimed in, "Huch, she's sporty. I wonder if she does a good job!"
The second guy, the one who tripped me, cackled, while the first one, who seemed to be the boss of the trio, took one step closer to me.
"Not here! Go away and don't come back!" he ordered, looking down at me.
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. The overreaction was absurd, the humiliation burned inside me, and to top it all off, I perfectly knew that several call-girl agencies were actively working in the district. But raising this point would only be self-incrimination, as if that had been my intention!
Fuck it! Maybe this was some kind of gang protecting their turf? How did I get myself into this?
I left without a word.
As I walked down the street in my vampire costume toward home, my brain replayed the scenes from Sunny's residence in a continuous loop, but each time, I failed to find a better solution. In the end, I gave up; I wasn't really capable of analyzing anything, and I just wanted to get home as fast as possible and hide in my room.
This was the end of my dreams, the end of my singing career, the end of everything. Probably, I was going to be thrown out of school. Probably?
I sighed. That was the first thing that would happen this Monday when Mrs. Brooks, the school's principal, learned about it. I was already on her blacklist. This thing alone would be enough, but this on top of Hew's cabin story from a couple of weeks ago? Now, everything got a new shade of gray thrown over it. I was done... What was I going to do?
It was somewhat ironic to realize that my downfall wasn't caused by my altered anatomy and nature or my limited illusion spellcraft to conceal it, but by something as mundane and foolish as a license I acquired for something I didn't actually do. I took a deep breath and sighed. How was I going to explain to my parents that I'd been expelled from school? They were going to be truly disappointed.
I hoped Clara wouldn't be at home to give me the peace to think alone and avoid facing her mean and sneering comments, but there was light in her room. Oh, drats, I certainly didn't want to see her triumphant face. If those people at the checkpoint already knew about me, Clara would certainly know. She must have received at least a message from Lola about it.
As soon as I opened the door of the apartment, I sneaked inside, trying to make as little noise as possible. I heard her chatting with somebody in her room, so I tiptoed towards my room. As I passed by the kitchen, I noticed a mobile phone on the table.
A mobile that I recognized. Was that Joe's mobile? Was he the one in Clara's room? Well, it was possible, as they had been a couple for some time.
I stopped, looking at the mobile. I knew Joe's code for the mobile; I had watched him read it too many times not to grasp the simple code: zero, six, six, six. Should I? Shouldn't I?
The temptation was too big. Did Lola already send him something about the happening? What were the people at the party saying about it? I knew it was dastardly on my part to do it, but my heart was too conflicted. There were too many uncertainties, and this was a way to eliminate some.
I sneaked into the kitchen and took his mobile in my hand. Yes, he hadn't changed his code, and indeed, she had already sent him several posts from the party.
There were some pictures of her where she looked ravishing. And then, there was also that picture of my license. My prostitute license. Oh, fuck, is this thing spreading fast! I wonder if there would be any pupil in our school who would not have it in the next twenty-four hours! Who the hell hacked the police database to get that? Or was it leaked by a policeman? But why? Who would do that?
Tears came to my eyes when I looked again at the picture. I couldn't help but sob and look at the picture.
It took me some time, but then my hands started to tremble. There was something wrong with this picture. No, not wrong. Different. Was it clearer? Better quality? I took my mobile and looked again at the picture that had been posted at the party, then back at the one from Joe's mobile, and then back at the picture from the party.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Ah, that was the difference—the address had been blurred in the picture from the party!
I looked again at the picture that Lola had sent him. The address was clearly visible on that one. “Look with whom you've been!” - stood in Lola's post to him.
That was a low one, and it did hurt, but that might be just a little nastiness in comparison with what I saw and didn't want to believe.
I looked back at the party's blog and started searching all my license pictures, but there was only one, the same, again and again. There were many comments that entailed my picture, but everywhere, the address was blurred. Where did Lola have the other picture from? I repeated my check with the same result. I could not find the other picture anywhere in the blog.
Now, if I looked more carefully, those were two completely different pictures of the same ID, and then another detail sprang to my eye. The ID stood on a surface, on a plastic surface, and a little bit of it was visible in the picture. The lines from that surface did fit with the lines from the plastic cover of our kitchen table. It was just a little bit visible, but that was enough to see a pattern.
A cold shiver passed over my spine. No! I didn't want to believe it, and yet it was so clearly right in front of my eyes!
Both pictures had been taken here. There had been no leak and no hack on the police's computers. One of the two girls had just found my license in my room; obviously, the place where I hid it inside a book had not been as good as I thought it would be. Because I never thought they would search my room.
My thoughts were a whirlwind, and I was just trying mechanically to fit the picture from Joe's mobile with the underlying lines from the table when I was interrupted.
“What are you doing here!”
Clara stood in the doorway. A scantily clad, red-faced Clara.
“You!” - I said – “You.... and Lola did this to me?”
She huffed. She didn't ask me what I meant.
“Give me that mobile! Joe, she's got your mobile!” she yelled.
I heard movement in the room beside the kitchen.
“You have done this!” - I accused again.
She raised her head and looked at the lower life form that was daring to question her – me.
“Can you imagine that it was Lola's idea?! The singer's unveiling!” - she huffed again with a satisfied grin – “Quite a clean unveiling, isn't it, Joe?”
An almost completely naked Joe appeared behind her. He waved a hand to me.
“Hi!” - he said, seemingly not particularly distressed by the situation.
“Hey, Joe!” - I answered calmly, then returned back to Clara – “Why? Why did you do this? Why did Lola do this?”
She practically exploded at my question: “You barely get marks high enough to pass the year! Everybody knows that you slept with the whole music band to make them take you in! Just because you get a couple of notes right, you think you are something? You are a whore, and your music is shit! Isn't it, Joe?”
The naked sportsman shrugged and spoke hesitatingly. “Ahm, I don't find their music bad...”
Clara turned and yelled at him.
“Go and put on a pair of trousers before speaking!”
My phone started ringing. I placed Joe's phone on the table and left for my room. There was nothing else that I wanted to talk to them about. My ma was calling. Oh, shit!
“Hello, ma?”
“Dolores!”
When I heard the acerbic voice, I knew that she knew. Ma has her moments of crisis, those moments that I dislike about her. It does not happen often, but it happens from time to time. She can be incredibly cool sometimes, and sometimes... well, when she gets angry, she can be a real terror.
“Dolores, tell me that this is not true!” - she said, obviously assuming I knew what she was talking about.
“What, ma?” - I asked, not sure of what she had heard.
She tsked.
“Don't play the fool with me. Are you a prostitute? Is this clear enough?”
“No, ma, not really!” – I tried to protest.
“Not really? Is that your license, or was that some kind of a prank? This is all I want to know!” - she continued in her acerbic tone.
“Ma, it is not like this. Please let me explain...”
She sighed. “So it is true! Say it; why don't you have the courage to say it? You did it, but typically you do not have the courage to say it!”
I have managed to avoid discussions with her for more than a year. I thought we were done with them, and now I have to go through one again.
I tried to explain the situation to her, and I hated having to do it on the phone.
“Ma, it is true, that is my license, but it is not how you think it is. I do not use it, I do not do it, it was an... accident... and when the police took me... ah... I should have stayed for days in the arrest room until I was proven innocent... and... they pushed it on me, ma!”
“They pushed it on you because you were just selling flowers! That was all I wanted to hear, darling.” - she said, but the tone in which she said it sent shivers down my spine- “It is always somebody else's fault! Never your fault! When Robert had told me that you drink, I didn't want to believe it. You told me that you don't, but now I believe him. How did it come to this?”
There was disappointment, sadness, and cold determination in her tone.
“Ma...”
“Dear, you do what you want...”
“Ma...”
“Don't explain it; I don't need to hear your lies. For weeks, you continue to lose your phone, you miss hours in class, you do not sleep at home, and the girls try to lie for you. This here is too much, Dolores. It is just too much. I cannot ignore it anymore. I shouldn't have let you leave home; I knew you were too weak, but now it's too late. Now, we all have to pay for it; we need to face the consequences. You chose your way, or rather you fell onto it.”
She sighed. “Just to let you know, I am changing my will; Clarence will inherit everything!”
What does that have to do with it? Clarence was my cousin, the daughter of ma's sister.
“Clarence?” I wondered, still dumbfounded. Was my ma throwing me out like this?
“Yes, Clarence. You'll have to take care of yourself, dear; you chose your path, and that is not with us! Goodbye, dear!”
“Ma? MA, I WANT TO COME HOME AND TALK TO YOU!”
She answered with a surprisingly calm voice before closing her phone. As if she was glad to have stirred me enough to yell at her. It was the first time in my life that I yelled at her.
“You can come and cry, but I'm not going to change my will; some things remain definitive. You went too far astray. I knew it from the beginning when I saw those signs on your skin, but I tried to ignore them, and now I am paying for it.”
An ice-cold shower with liquid nitrogen would not have frozen me more than those words.
The absurdity of it all was dumbfounding. My heart was pounding in my chest as I looked at my trembling hand holding the mobile. I would have expected anything from anybody else but not this and not from my parents. It's not that damn inheritance that bothered me, but the cold rejection.
Why was ma doing this? I knew that she was very religious, but she did not raise me like that. I was always a bit of a rebel, and she accepted it from me. I know that she sometimes spoke about people marked by God, as was about that dictator of a giant state that had some birthmarks on his forehead: he'll bring his country down, and he did it.
Well, okay, and now was she talking about the birthmark I had on my back? What did that have to do with anything? What did she mean by that? Besides, where was my father? Why did he not even talk to me?
Things have escalated in a grotesque way, or were they always like this, and I was blind and did not see?
Tears started running down my cheeks, and I fell to my knees. No, this couldn't be possible; I must have landed in some alternate universe where I was a demon probing the hell's depth.