Messengers

Chapter 2 & 3

Chapter 2 

KENDALL AWOKE WITH A SPLITTING headache. Waking up with a pain in her head was becoming a regular occurrence. Her brother Marcus had suggested she probably needed her eyes checked. Like most brothers, he took loving delight in teasing her—but without him she would have never survived her teenage years. Not after that night almost two decades ago. 

In regards to his jibe about glasses and her age, well… Thanks, but no thanks. She had ignored his advice instead, and continued her habit of swallowing two little codeine numbers from the packet she kept stashed in the drawer next to her desk.The idea her body was aging was not something she wanted to face just yet. When  she looked in the mirror, it was only to enable the necessary maintenance chores of brushing teeth, washing her face, and the application of moisturizer. She didn’t spend much time examining her appearance. Details such as wrinkles, heralding that she was exiting her prime years, were not high on her priority list.

She was attractive, so she was told, but she rarely gave it much thought. Admittedly, she’d been lucky in the hair department, for with just a brush and a flick her shoulder-length, golden-brown hair would curl and bounce into place just below her shoulders as if it’d just been styled for a Pantene commercial.

She didn’t fuss. She didn’t primp. There were more important things with which to concern herself like ensuring she won enough article approvals to pay the rent.

Today, though, she didn’t think she’d be winning any beauty contests. Her eyes felt red-raw, as if she’d weathered a sandstorm, and she knew a headache like this caused her complexion to drain to a tone just above vampire white.

She was probably coming down with a cold, she concluded. It wasn’t eyestrain or old age, and that was that. Seriously, she was only thirty-six!

Last month she’d written an article on fantastic foods for your eyes. Popular wisdom was that eating carrots was good for your eye health, but in her research Kendall had discovered that oranges were better. And kale and black-eyed peas, too. Next time she shopped, she’d stock up on oranges.

Kendall made a mental note, also, to track down a chef to interview for recipes using black-eyed peas. She often did this when she wanted to know something for her own benefit. She’d come up with an article idea then use her research skills to track down the answer. In this way she got paid for asking questions that she wanted answered.

Throwing down the codeine, she swigged from the water bottle she always kept on her bedside table. Then she picked up her partner in crime—her iPhone—which lay beside the bottle.

She lived on that thing. Emails and messaging mainly. While her friends used theirs for Facebook, Twitter, and Candy Crush, hers was her secretary, coach, and timekeeper, all in one.

“What’s happening today, Buddy? What’s on our schedule?”

She opened her mail app and watched as her inbox filled with messages. It took a few seconds to receive all thirty-two of them. Many were junk. That’s what you get for signing up at too many websites in the name of research. The others were from business acquaintances, friends, and daily Google alerts on subjects she was following for possible articles.

This morning, though, she was looking for particular messages, ones with the heading: “Article Needed Urgently” or “Yes—go ahead” or “More Work.” Or just anything that was work with a capital “W.”

Work had been slow lately. She’d pitched dozens of articles in the past few weeks, but this month, being the end of the fiscal year, meant budgets were mostly exhausted. Urgent last minute articles were all she was being sent, which meant her work had dried up to only an article or two a day. This happened every year, and every year Kendall panicked. It was silly of her, really, because by March her inbox would fill with so much work she was up until one or two in the morning for several weeks trying to meet deadlines.

After checking all the emails, she found two article requests in her inbox. One she had pitched months ago and was only for three hundred words, so it would hardly pay anything. Another was from a women’s magazine she only wrote for when she was desperate. They always paid late and their editor had no sense of humor, removing any witty asides in her articles.

“House style, please, Kendall!”

Kendall closed the email app, relieved she at least had some work, but downhearted it wasn’t enough to even cover her expenses for the week. Now she would need to spend the next few hours coming up with pitch ideas. Not as easy as it sounds when you’ve been freelancing for eight years.

She checked the time—7:15am. Fifteen minutes before she needed to get up, even though technically she didn’t have to physically be anywhere. She treated her day as if she had to be at an office by 8:30. She’d learned a long time ago you needed to treat freelancing like a job, and like any job, you needed to turn up.

Her commute was the thirty steps from her bedroom to her study via her small, combined kitchen-dining area.

Kendall threw on her work clothes—casual, thank you—tracksuit in winter with scarf and shorts; tank top and flip-flops in summer.

Her first task was to check the news sites, a necessary business ritual which occasionally supplied her with good material to spin into a story. Having an eye for an angle was her greatest skill.

 “Something interesting, please,” she said as the news site loaded. What she received, though, was more than interesting. It was horrifying.

Chapter 3   

When kendall first read the bolded heading on the “Breaking News” web page, she gasped. When she’d asked for interesting news, she didn’t mean anything like this.

Café Attack in Lygard Street

Seven Dead. Three Critical.

Lygard Street was very nearby her apartment block. As she read the report, she realized it was Café Amaretto, where she occasionally grabbed a coffee. They had the best tiramisu this side of the city. As she read on she suddenly lost her taste for tiramisu; in fact, she suddenly lost her appetite full stop.

A crazed psycho had entered the café through the back door and killed staff having the misfortune to be in the kitchen at the time. Then he had headed into the dining area and attacked patrons there… using an axe.

An axe!

It seemed too barbaric. What was going on in the world when things like this happened in such a peaceful area, inhabited mostly by thirty-something professionals or retired the-kids-are-gone-and-we’ve-downsized people.

She Googled Café Amaretto looking for more information on the killings, but all the links were just copies of the same article with no new information. Involuntarily, her body shivered at the thought of the proximity of the crime.

Kendall got up and walked back into the kitchen to get herself a coffee. She wished she’d stayed in bed instead of waking up to this. Hardly any work and a terrible tragedy in her neighborhood that, if not for fate, she could have been involved in.

What a way to start a day.

Stay tuned for the next episode.

Thank you for reading so far. If you want to continue reading this story on Wattpad, I will add another chapter next week.