~If life were a playlist, half the tracks would be unskippable ads.~
Charlotte.
Woohoo, It's just me, Wattpad & Chai, solo ride until I die 'cause I got them for life. Woohoo, I don't need a hand to hold to hold even when the night is cold I got these apps in my phone.
Earnestly, I never actually did fuck with Chai. C.ai was my it but Chai had rhymed.
Personally, I think the creators of Spotify, Wattpad and C.ai deserved a cookie for taking advantage of my hopelessly single life, adding to my incredibly high standards and fueling my delusions, along with Spotify just being fucking amazing.
Well was 'cause 2 out of 3 are dead or at least ruined.
A chocolate chip cookie in fact.
I also think I might be down with a cold. The kind of cold that melded with your bones and borrowed through your insides.
Sweater weather type shii.
I honestly did agree, it was too cold for me here. Sadly, it's wasn't just literally. But I got a coat for a sweater so I think it's a win.
I thought a lot of things.
Physically, it was ultimately impossible not to catch a cold once or twice from a danky room that spotted multiple ceiling leaks and termite infested wooding. Spiders weaving and warping webs around high corners anyone could barely reach, while yellow dust adorned the far edges of the dark room.
And now and then, an occasional paranormal creature would come out to play.
Kidding.
One would take a good look at this luxurious house and question my living in a basement, I would take an equally great look and question their questioning concerning my fortress for an abode.
I was delusional, yes, but it helped.
Except it wasnt a basement. I just liked to call it that. Frankly, i thought it was fitting, compared to the rest of the estate. This vintage manor which was just a fancier way to put old and run down and outdated and covered in dust, but this vintage manor was the basements of all manors.
But I could care less what anyone thought. This place—this basement, as crazy as it seemed, felt more like home than the oversized shiny mansion above.
It felt safe, although it was a cage. Cages werent meant to feel safe but it did. At least i forced myself to believe it did.
And there was just way too many memories here to leave behind.
Some nights, I really did half-expect to see something crawl out of those shadows. Someone, perhaps. Some loving creature born from this very grime that made this place my home.
But believe me, the walls had heard worse things than a few cryptic whispers at night.
The already battered door - an impact from the excessive slamming and violent barging - almost got entirely ripped from its already damaged hinges this time.
The definition of pompous and entitled dashed into my room, sporting wide teary blue eyes and cladded in a wispy cream nightgown that could buy an entire house.
My wonderful sister.
Juliette.
Juliette didn't belong here. She belonged above but she liked to intrude anyways.
I lifted my blanket over my head, blocking the weeping girl from my vision."It's 3 am in the morning, bro. Can't this wait?" I muttered in disinterest to whatever seemed to be her problem, clutching the damp black coat to my equally soaked body.
If Lydia sighted me like this she would raise hell. But i could care more or less of a fever when my skin was purple and my heart had the flu.
"Julian is in trouble!"
Golly gees! Oh no…what ever will we do?
"Charlotte? Charlotte? Wake up, he's in the hospital! He got stabbed!" Her voice cracked, high-pitched, and I could already feel the headache brewing behind my eyes.
Groaning, I placed a hand over my ears. If she continued screeching, I'm certain this place would collapse unto both of us. It didn't exactly look stable.
I failed to gather how disrupting my rest was going to get him unstabbed.
"Don't care."
"Charlotte?" She snapped. "You need to wake up. He's…he's really hurt."
Unsurprisingly though, my blanket is pulled off my body in a swift motion, eliciting a groan as the freezing air bit into my skin.
"Chill. Its not like he's dead or something."
Juliette sent me a sharp glare and I flinched slightly, planting my gaze upon the leak marks that coloured the ceilings. Such a lovely shade of vintage green or was it mold? Meh, i couldnt tell.
"Don't be stupid, Charlotte," she snarled, "Of course he isn't dead." Unfortunately, she forgot to add.
Well, that was the most disheartening thing I've heard all year, asides from the time i heard a spotify ad because my account had switched to free. I still got nightmares from the horror of those things interrupting my beautiful music.
Narrowing her eyes, the girl perched at the edge of my bed, a grimace twisting her features as her eyes darted around the dimly lit room.
"This place is disgusting."
Like your soul. Actually no, I could do better. Like your taste in music.
Rolling my eyes, I questioned again, firmly this time, "What happened to Julian?" Tired as I was, I tried my very best to appear interested so Juliette would leave me and my disgusting room be, and then I could return my well placed concern on reading about a stalker and practicalizing it upon Xavier Gray - some hot guy in my class..
Online, of course.
Julliette rambled on, her voice rising like some opera singer on a bender, all of it about how our father was going to "take care of it" and how " the whole damn bar was under investigation." I could barely care enough to focus.
Well, me personally, would single handedly give said freak a cookie if we ever came in contact.
What kind of idiot went to a bar full of the filthiest of scums and still ended up getting stabbed?
Julian of course.
"Daddy promises to find whoever did this and make them pay. Everyone at that tacky bar is already being contained at the station as we speak," she jabbered on, her head tilted high like she was demanding a beheading.
We're a little bit centuries too late for that.
Imagine having the best time in a club and being detained in a station the next day with no clues whatsoever of whatever had happened just because an entitled family had ordered it.
Welp..
"What was Julian even doing in that peasantry infested building in the first place?" Juliette muttered to herself quietly, picking at her red acrylic nails.
Acrylics scared me. I had seen accidents.
It was a little baffling how Juliette had the sudden capacity to place her concern beyond something other than skin care, implants and outfits.
The last time she had shed actual tears had been because she couldn't get her iPhone customized for her and to her name.
Blud! It literally had a personalisation setting, did it? I wouldn't know, I'm more of an android person, more to say, I didn't actually have a choice.
"Juliette, please just…leave," I said, starting to feel the dull ache in my head again. "Go cry somewhere else, will you?"
She wasn't having any of it. She slammed her hand on my bedframe, rattling the few things I still cared about in this ruin of a room. "Anyways, Charly," she began after a bout of silence, her voice suddenly filling with sickly sweetness, "Did you finish up my summer assignments?"
"No Julie," I uttered dryly. I was so tired of this. So tired of her. So tired of everything. And now I couldn't even sleep it away in peace without being disturbed by one of my obnoxious siblings. Mehn, really should've offed myself when i had the chance.
Her smile twitched just for a second. Then her voice went sickly sweet again, the way it always did before she pulled bullshit. "Well, where are you? You are aware we resume next week, right?"
"Yes of course I'm aware," I nodded. If anyone had been counting the days to finally relive a small escape from this toxic household, it would be me and a thousand other people... but still, mainly me.
"Then why haven't you finished, Charlotte," she questioned, her voice rising in sickening octaves.
Fun fact; Juliette thinks herself scary because she's been consuming too many horror movies and her voice was capable of producing that insanely high whistling note thingy.
"What do you mean 'haven't finished' ?" I asked, "I haven't started," I concluded earnestly.
My sisters flushed face deepened three shades darker. It almost matched her naiils. "Then you better start and have it finished before next week," she demanded, her jaw clenching tightly. Like she had the right to demand anything from me. As if she had the right to order me around. I wasn't one of the household's staff.
"No," I responded, resting back on my bed.
"No?"
"Yes Juliette, I simply will not," I shut my eyes, the sound of her teeth gritting resounding across the room.
I had been watching Bridgerton - the Queen Charlotte one - I thought my vocabulary at the moment could get me a one way pass to Harvard.
"Y'know Juliette... maybe if you spent more time actually studying and doing your own assignments instead of, I don't know, enhancing your lips and implanting asses and noses, Father wouldn't have to lower his pride paying off the teachers to higher your grades so you could maintain the fake reputation of being the perfect daughter."
I was unaware if it was the sleep deprivation that strengthens my sudden spring of bravado but I speak back.
Regrettable mistake.
But when had I ever been a woman of regrets?
"Oh and I actually don't give a fuck about that asshole for a brother."
Another wave of silence.
Suddenly, fists curled into my tangled hair, I was pulled upright, and a sharp sound resonated across the room, my head snapped to the side, an explosion of pain erupted upon my left cheek.
I held my cheek in pain, stunned.
"You don't talk to me like that," she said slowly, her hands tugging my hair and landing another slap that rattled my skull.
"You never talk to me like that."
I'm barely given any time to react before both her fists clenched my curls and slammed my head into the wall.
I would say my vision turned red but the impact of that collision turned my already impaired eyesight black.
The optician would be mad.
I snapped. I shouldn't have but I didn't care. Me and Juliette never got violent because I just sat down there and took it. But I wasn't weak and I had told that handsome stranger I wasn't.
So I wasn't. And I wouldn't sit here and be the opposite.
A knee to her stomach, shoving her off me, and we were on the floor. Hair in hands, faces slamming into the ground, bodies tangled in a fight that didn't stop until we were both covered in bruises.
I lunged for Juliette. We both trashed on the ground, struggling and fingers tugging hard at each other's hair until she's pinned underneath me.
I learnt Karate for this. Frankly, I never learnt karate. But we learnt from watching so I supposed watching karate kid counted.
Fear struck her features, a foreign expression that planted a feeling of triumph. Juliette had never seen me retaliate but just like she had done, I didn't give her a single second to react either before fisting her luscious blonde hair and bashing her head into the ground like she had done.
Juliette screamed, fueling my infuriation further and I slammed her head into the concrete again. It does nothing to quench my anger so I do it again.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Until my hands were wet, until Father boomed into my room - all cladded in his suit - and pulled both of us apart.
Julliette cried and screamed like she was the victim, pointing at me and yelling unintelligible words.
She trashed violently, kicking and struggling and trying to lunge for me. Father held both of us at arms length, his bruising grip tightening around my arm. He was seething. My heart was pounding.
"Your brother is currently in the hospital and this is all the both of you can do?"
"Go up to your room, Emily." The words were stern, uttering room for no other options. Julliette protested. "Now!" His voice thundered, almost shaking the walls.
She wrenched her arm away, scoffing and retreating quietly, a limp to her gait.
"And you." He turned his searing green gaze at me and I shrunk back. I couldn't help but notice and hate how they were so familiar to mine. He paused, eyes darting around the room as if now realizing where he was, his gaze lingered at a particular framed picture on my bedside table. His jaw tightened in a subtle movement.
"You're soaking."
"I was gardening."
A step back. A sharp breath. A regretful look.
He left.