Scarlet Reid

Chapter one

I'd been sat in the café for over an hour and I felt like I should buy another drink. The waitress was scowling at me, and small families crammed around side tables were prowling like snakes waiting to steal the table.

If I moved now I'd have to sit in the creep's corner. Creep's corner was a grungy corner of the café with a broken light and dubious coffee stains on the floor. The arty types tended to hide there,l. You could write in peace and it was deemed acceptable to sit for 4-5 hours without buying a drink, or offering your seat to a newcomer.

I'd have fit in perfectly. But I was a solo artist I didn't want to be put into a crowd I wanted to stand alone. My inner self was crying, begging me to scurry off into the corner. But Scarlet Reid was holding me in my seat. Scarlet Reid, she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. She was an accident, a wild creation I jotted onto the edge of napkin when trying to recover from a cruel breakup speech.

She was born as I had cried in a corner with a glass of complimentary wine. I had poured my heart and soul into this character. She was perfection, and I was determined she was going to be me.

The old me would have bowed down to the commanding stare of the other customers. I would have felt obligated to buy another coffee. But not this time. I stayed seated and looked back to my laptop.

What wonderful adventure were we going to go on today? I'd put my life on hold, spent all my time nurturing Scarlet Reid and concocting her short stories. Writing as her made me feel good about myself, made me feel empowered. But my life was beginning to fall apart. The newspaper company had let me go. My boyfriend had left me and kicked me out of our apartment, and there was only a certain amount of time one could live on the sofa of a kind old lady at the end of the corridor.