Business Arrangement

Part 10

Author's Note:

Thank you so much to all those voting and commenting! That means a lot to me. Here is yet another new chapter, I am also dedicating this one to @riagrov.

CHAPTER 10:

THE MONSTER OF a story doesn't always wear black long coats, black slacks and a black button-down with the first two buttons undone for mere attraction and utter desire. Only-it's not your desire so much as the desire he wants exerted from other women to make him feel like he wrote the book on chivalry, and the way into a woman's panties.

A monster is not always the most obvious fanged, pointed-eared, red-eyed creature that lurks in the shadows and transforms into wolves or bats or something much scarier, a monster is your next door neighbour. The average citizen driving to work with a coffee in one hand, keys twirled like a basketball in the other. A monster is the girl that cried when she wasn't really hurt and got another kid in trouble for theatrics and attention. A monster is...well, why don't you try to define it?

There's no one type of monster.

Some kids are scared of spiders, some aren't.

Some are scared of speeches and some aren't.

Monsters are everywhere, everything in our every daily lives.

Every time you walked to school, you looked both ways before crossing, the monster that turns too fast on the wheel, screeching fuming tyres in a car that didn't mean to crash into you. The monster inside will blame it on the vehicle. That the broken neck wasn't the fault of the driver, or the child, or even the road.

The car becomes the scapegoat, the unfixable, damaged scapegoat that is left with injuries insurance can't cover up. Or, it could be backwards, it could be that the driver did blame themselves for not looking twice like the kid crossing the road to school did.

A monster is not just an object or a person, or a place.

It's everything in routine, you become so predictable, so reliable on the same damn thing...like walking to school, like crossing a road, like reading a novel and choking on your saliva at a plot twisting scene and unable to get your breath back, so you choke until you're dead.

Who's the monster there?

Is it you?

Is it fate?

Is it your saliva that didn't roll down your throat in the correct orientation so you don't lose breath?

Or was it the book you chose to read? Heck-blame the author. They did it. Or he or she did it. They caused that scene, they wrote about it, they enticed you to read it. They manipulated you into reading it.

The exact same way you were enticed into Instagram. Facebook. Twitter. Snapchat. WhatsApp. TikTok. Instagram made you post the picture of a past holiday just to see your crush like it and see you and that attention you really want. Facebook is the same. As is Twitter. Blame them-you were watching them when you crossed that road and when that car turned too fast and when the snap of your neck occurs and...that's just it. That's fate closing in on you, and that was the choking scene you read about and that was how the story ends. Only it's not the author who's the scapegoat-not anymore. It's not the road or the driver...now it's you.

Now you're the one to blame for staring at your phone, or your book, or your silver or gold rings on your fingers used to stop picking at your nails. Could you blame those rings? Or the blare of the sun in your eyes blocking you? Maybe it was the rain instead? Could you blame Mother Nature too?

I'm sorry, but the scapegoat falls on you.

That's a monster.