Secrets

*NOTE FROM ME - Please enjoy my newest edition to my short story works... I believe this had the potential to be a long novel, but I don't know if that will ever happen - it certainly won't soon as I am very busy at the moment! Just wanted to say, please don't copy, re-write etc my work without permission, and thank you for taking the time to read :) Lauren x*

For the fourth hour in a row she stared at the blank screen... he had disappeared from the online IM system they had been chatting on all afternoon and well into the evening. "I hope you're ok, you've probably gone to sleep knowing you! Anyways, I'm off lovely, night." is what he said just before his profile proclaimed that he was 'offline'. It had been hours and hours since she had replied to his messages, each announced with a small electronic beep beep which broke the silence of that room.

It wasn't that she didn't like David, hell, she thought she were falling in love with the man. It was that  statement. That one little conjunction of words which had completely rendered her speechless. They were such simple, harmless words - "I know what you are".

In context, Jamie knew that all he had meant by saying them was to give her some sort of cute, flirty compliment or tease. However, she had never found out whether this notion was the truth, though somehow she knew she was supposed to say "and what is it you think I am David?" and he would say, "Well Jamie, I think you're sweetie" or something of the like. This wasn't an unusual occurrence you see- the two had been flirting continually ever since they had met a mere month ago, and it looked to themselves and everyone who knew them as though their friendship would soon become a lovers relationship.

I know what you are.

But although almost instantly Jamie had realised this was David being charming (in his own way),  for a second her heart had leapt uncomfortably and a cold sweat had come across her entire body. Did he know? She had thought. Could he really find out? She had pondered. And it all became too real. The world which had been soft, warm and rose-tinted returned rapidly into focus, and Jamie found herself unable to reply, unable to move, stunned.

In an instant the joyful glow she had been living in was shattered, the happy calm of the past month replaced with the harsh reality David had suppressed. Her world was not rose-tinted, her world was a grey, hopeless place. Where she sat was the ultimate depiction of dilapidation. The room was bare, a mattress for a bed, a thin threadbare blanket for a cover, the wallpaper hung flaccidly from the walls because of the dreadful damp the flat suffered. Bugs were everywhere, crawling on every surface, buzzing around in the air, creating a continuous, maddening hum. No matter how much Jamie cleaned, she could not deter them.

There was no food in the fridge, and nothing with which food could be cooked on in the kitchen. The chair she was sitting on was the only one in the entire place and it was dreadfully scarred and broken, as was the matching desk. Similar to Jamie herself. Only one thing of material value existed in that place-  the laptop, which had been given to Jamie by the college she attended in order to pull herself excruciatingly slowly out of this mess she had landed in. Not only was Jamie a victim of terrible poverty, holding no money to her name, she held nothing else of a different sort of value - she had no family.

 Jamie stared at her surroundings as though they had only just become clear to her. She felt as though she were in a nightmare, not reality, this could not be the truth. Tears leaked down her face abundantly, until she began to emit dry, hacking sobs which no-one could hear. David messaged her through the computer a few times more, obviously growing concerned, she always answered him usually. "Are you ok Jay?" he said, "have you fallen asleep?" he asked. After that, he grew quiet. Jamie continued to weep alone on that chair, shivering from the icy draughts which swept through the flat often.