Where Is Aimée? | ✓

prologue

NORMALCY CAN be quite deceiving sometimes. It can hide a hideous typhoon with delightful sunshine. Birds twitter, clouds float, cycle bell rings, vendor shouts, neighbours bargain with price and succeed eventually. No sign of abnormality can be noticed when things are as 'perfect' as this. No child playing with a ball, no lady watering her plants, no man flicking the newspaper can notice the small, thundering, dark cloud, screaming 'danger', in the farthest corner of the sky. No one can apprehend until the small purr turns into a ginormous roar and echoes through the city. The lights flash in the sky, outside every house. The pretentious normal is forgotten. The abnormal, unexpected 'truth' is revealed.

The 'perfect' tiles in the 'perfect' room were brightly lit up with blissful sunlight. The velvet curtains waved. The bedsheet, the cushion, the classics on the shelves, the pens on the table, the alarm clock and the violin in the corner - all were soothed by the serene morning with a cacophony of crows and sparrows and euphoric sunshine. The ecstasy beguiled them into forgetting the mystifying absence of the usual, 'true' jovial perfume that was still faintly lingering among the books, pillows, duvet and violin. However, it was not as strong as it used to be; it was defeated by a 'flawless' odour.

The door creaked open, revealing a middle aged woman in a sweatshirt and wide trousers. Her fuzzy, shoulder length hair swayed as her eyes scanned the room. They fell on the bed and narrowed, observing the bedcover. It was new, so was the pillow covering. The bathroom, as she saw, was unoccupied. The study table was astonishingly tidy. All the books, files and notebooks were kept in their right places. The pens poised in the pen stand gracefully. The violin was safe inside its bag. Freakishly clean the room was. Never ever in her dreams could Coralie Moulin imagine the room's messy owner to keep things neat. It was an exquisite view, left alone for the lady to enjoy it all by herself. Although, in this case, 'enjoy' would have been inappropriate. She was rather shocked.

The surprise lasted for a moment when a sudden, scary realisation hit her. The room lacked disorder. It also lacked Aimée.

Coralie's daughter Aimée Monet, the exuberant existence who was supposed to lie on the bed wrapped within her covers, was gone. Her black brown hair, chocolatey and carefree fragrance were nowhere in sight. The silence was disrupted by the beeping alarm clock set for 7:30 a.m. Coralie switched it off and took out her phone in an instant. She was about to write a message to her daughter when a notification popped up on the screen. It was a text. A text from Aimée.

Made some pancakes. je t'aime :)

★

a/n

and here it starts ;)