《S.H.E.》CHAPTER ONE
Advertisement
‘I’m going to have to confiscate this.’
Gilly watched as his manager took the radio from his work bench. It hadn’t even been loud.
‘Racks forty-seven to fifty. Finish up. Then you can lock up.’
His manager threw the keys to the factory down beside Gilly’s sewing machine. Then he hitched up his trousers, locked the radio in his second-floor office, and left, though not before turning out all the lights in the factory.
Gilly was left alone surrounded by hundreds of other workbenches, each of them empty. Aside each bench lay racks of garish spandex, of rubber and latex. The only light by which to sew a little lamp at the end of his workbench.
He pulled it closer not daring to look up. He was the only soul left in Seldom’s Factory, a factory made especially for outfitting Seldom’s pimps, for outfitting his prostitutes.
It was then that he caught the shine of yellow-stain teeth smiling there at the edge of the lamplight. He saw a figure there. It sat back within the shadowy darkness of the factory. Gilly watched the figure’s feet kick and dangle like a bored child from one of the empty workbenches.
He put his head down and tried to continue, only to grimace as the figure began to whistle. The silence of Seldom’s Factory came apart like a torn thread. When Gilly tried to ignore it, the figure whistled again.
Slowly Gilly began to raise his head. This time he saw two jaundiced eyes lean forth from the darkness, there above those yellow-stain teeth.
Gilly’s voice came out a whisper, pleading ‘Please leave me alone.’
The Watcher only smiled.
***
Gilly locked up somewhere around midnight. Standing outside the factory he looked like a scarecrow, or a phantom. For a while he stood alone, stooped and smoking. The orange-ember glare bathing his face and showing where his eyes were sunk, and the freckles against his cheeks, and his hair a shade of old carrot left out to mold. Tonight, he just let his cigarette burn down to his lips. Didn’t even smoke it. Then he left by the main gate waving a shy goodbye to Todd the security guard. There was pity in Todd’s eyes. There’d been pity in Todd’s eyes ever since Gilly had arrived. That had been years ago.
Advertisement
Nothing had changed.
***
The city of Paradise Rise had been rotten for a long time now. It had been two decades since Seldom had taken over the city. He owned everything from judges to the police. One of his first acts had been to legalize all forms of prostitution on the streets. Peddling drugs was done openly without fear, and his syndicates owned every part of the city. The police in Paradise Rise were no longer a symbol of protection but puppetry. The legal system was his. The financial system was his. He owned everything. A total monopoly of Paradise Rise and everything in it, right down to the people. In truth Seldom had taken Paradise Rise, bent her over and raped every last shred of dignity from between her legs. Then he’d left the satisfaction of his pleasure dribbling against her thighs.
At this time of night there were gangs on the streets, and the hookers in their brightly coloured materials straight from Seldom’s own factories. Gilly avoided them all, keeping always beneath the streetlights as the rain began to fall. Most of all Gilly avoided the darkness. He avoided alleyways and corners and places where the lights had gone dull or dark or broken. He knew what lay waiting in the darkness.
Yellow-stained eyes. Yellow-stain teeth.
Gilly had once, a long time ago been foolish enough to tell his doctor about what he saw. The doctor had passed him through a series of psych evaluations, the result of which two schizophrenic medications and some anti-depressants to top it off. For a while Gilly had even tried them.
In the end they just left him numb, and still The Watcher was there, smiling as ever. He threw them in the bin after that and decided to close his mind to everything.
To the world. To the factory. To The Watcher.
Advertisement
To everything he knew he closed his mind.
Everything except Little Daisy.
***
He found her asleep on the couch, the rain lashing in through an open window.
There’s was an apartment on the fourth and highest floor, Apartment Two-Six-Nine. It looked out on a cross-section, above which an old, rickety monorail passed between a series of similar four-story apartments. They were all of them run down, just like himself.
Sometimes Daisy would sit there by the window waiting for hours until he returned home. Not tonight. Tonight, she was tired. She said that sometimes her teacher Miss Velasquez would give the kids detention for no reason. He wondered if she’d been given detention tonight.
His bones creaked and popped as he lifted her from the couch. She was only seven-years-old, small too. And yet already she was getting difficult for him to carry. He supposed that was just what happened when you sat around all day stooped over a workbench. You got old. Fast.
She was still in her school clothes when he tucked her in.
‘That bad manager didn’t pick on you today did he…?’ It was half-mumbled. She didn’t even open her eyes.
Gilly smiled, ‘Not today.’
After which Daisy rolled over, and slept.
For a while he just sat there watching her with the lamp on. Her hair was blonde, except for a thin streak of midnight black that sprang wild from her roots. When she was born the doctors said it would disappear with time. It didn’t. It was one of Gilly’s favourite things about her. That and her size. Daisy after all was smaller than most kids in her year. She made up for this with a healthy dose of sass, a quality that made her size largely irrelevant, especially when shouting in a small place like their apartment. She had eyes like honeyed hazel too. They were just like Gilly’s, only brighter and with all the spark that had long since departed his own.
Once, years ago he’d actually had a wife. She would leave their little apartment every night back when Daisy was still a bairn. He knew where she was going. Down to Seldom’s clubs, dressed in her nighttime best and all so she could lavish her time on other men. Years later she would come home saying she was leaving. She’d found what she wanted. A better man. She wouldn’t be coming back.
When her mother left Daisy had simply slammed the door.
‘Good riddance.’
After that Daisy became Gilly’s rock. His reason for living.
Little Daisy.
It was that same thought that carried him back toward Daisy’s sleeping face, and then again to where shadow pooled in the corner of Daisy’s room. It was there he felt The Watcher smiling. There from where the shadow grew thickest. And, when finally he turned the lamp out on Daisy he saw that same figure standing there. The same that had watched from within the factory.
Those yellow-stain teeth.
Those yellow-stain eyes.
After that he quickly left the room.
As he closed the door he didn’t look back.
Advertisement
- In Serial10 Chapters
Anti-Martial Academy: PRiSMA Saga (LN)
{A crossover based on a Visual Novel still in the works called ‘PRiSMA’, and heavily inspired by the Light Novel called ‘Anti-Magic Academy’. Thus, the plot and events are reminiscent of the latter.} The denizens of the underworld, Anima and long forgotten Martial Artists of the Murim, both allied with each other to fight humanity. Their attacks almost caused the fledgling Magi to become extinct. When heroes appeared to fight off the invading forces, the ‘First World Ender War’ finally came to a conclusion. In the stalemate that followed, the new Magi went through a technological revolution. In the current era of peace, the Anti-Martial Academy was made to fight off those Martial Artists infiltrating the Earthland Domain. In the present, the ‘Red Queen’ was demoted back into the Academy. Forced to join the ‘Support Squad’, a team of outcasts who can’t fight even to save their lives, the one most uncomfortable became Fritz Lazrik, the leader that seemed too much like a pushover. Wielding a MagiPen in hand, he has the small hope of being able to beat the ‘monster’ joining them. The start of their legend begins...————I have posted this on other sites.
8 86 - In Serial15 Chapters
Distorted Light :TFALM
Lord Silvar of the Vampiric & Succubus province in the Demon-Coalition want's to learn all he can about the past and what started the great war between their coalition and the Light-Alliance. However, some spies returned with some dier news causing him to refocus on his duties. Silvar must overcome his tragic past and align himself with new allies, old enemies, and past friends to overcome the new war in the world. Can the usually quick-to-act Lord achieve his goals? While preventing a new war? Will darkness turn to light in this epic tale?
8 92 - In Serial581 Chapters
Star Eater
When a man finds himself in the presence of absolute power, what will he do? Dying has already happened, but he wasn't given permission and the creature responsible finds his tragedy amusing. Forcing him to continue his life in a new world, he is given an unknown task that must be completed if he ever wishes to rest.
8 370 - In Serial43 Chapters
The WORLD of Dungeons
""""DUNGEON CREATIONS"""" after of years playing this game, chris David a 24-year-old man having with out a job and always in his room playing the game. when the company announces that the game will shut down completely after it declares bankruptcy by the bank. he decided to stay in the game until the system will shutdown on its own, but after the allotted time, HE WAS STILL IN HIS THRONE ROOM, when he decided to log out. he opens the system but found out that the icon where the logged out is was not there anymorefind out what happen to him, as he finds the truth behind this event.PS. this story was inspired by the mystery of dungeon and overlord. you will see some similarities about its structure of dungeons, but I will try my very best to keep it as original as possible.
8 308 - In Serial3 Chapters
Kiribaku Oneshot
This is only still here because of the decent amount of reads.I am re-writing everything but the smut.
8 78 - In Serial38 Chapters
Not Anyone | Vernon Chwe
After a heartbreak, she, impulsively, went to a place hours of flight away from home, choosing to deny the pain for as long as her trip would take. Yet, when she decided to be single for an extensive amount of time, this one guy made her think of her decision again. He was nothing like her heartbreaker. He was fine, hot and was a total catch. In the process of her getting as far away from her new-fresh-ex, she found herself questioning about another guy. And when she thought that she was the only one who went there after a heartbreak, she wasn't the only one.
8 121