The child, the Wild and the Morbidly awkward Introvert

Cora-Winning

A tiny mistake had opened up into a ginourmous sinkhole and destroyed everything I had once been. Gone were the days when I could easily grab a book and use it as a shield of ignorance to hide behind and instead, I had forced my hands to curl around pens, mascara wands and black eyeliner to create a new, gaunt stranger to build my future upon.

She was far from perfect but she was happy most of the time and actually enjoyed her life working at a prestigious designer clothing shop called Sparrow's Nest alongside her new best friend of almost two years called Meena.

Home was just as extravagant as my job; a ginourmous penthouse overlooking all of London and split into three seperate floors with two large balconies. The first floor held the smart and sleek, stainless steel kitchen and two, large living rooms with creamy-coffee wallpaper. The rest was laminated wood floors and countless interlinked little wing-like protrustions tucked out of sight, making the whole thing look like a huge burrow. Meena and I shared it with an adorably proper and elegant gay couple called Olie and Alex.

Olie was our age; Alex was in his early fifties, a dashing intellectual with a full head of grey hair that he always said came with the divorce he asked his wife of thirty years for when he realised men were his type and therefore his wife could never feel his love.

I had already forgotten that they had only been a part of my life for a few golden months. It felt more like my new family had been a fixture in my life since the day I had come into existence. In a way they had; Coraline had died. Cora had risen fiercely from the ashes, dusted herself off and sauntered into a vibrant new life.

I was trying to make sense of why there were so many mismatched articles of clothing in the dusty storeroom when my phone started vibrating against my right side. Before I could reach for it, Meena had clickety-clacked over to me in scarily high heels, mushed herself in to me hard enough to make me tense entirely and hold my breath.

I unstuck myself from her cushiony bossom and stuck a lopsided grin onto my face, realising that my phone had stopped viabrating. "Hi Meena-"
"YOU WON!"
My eyes widened and I opened and closed my mouth a few times in a struggle to say something.
"YOU WON THE ART SESSION WITH SPARROW!" She squealed hard enough to almost shove me into a rickety rack behind me.
I blinked at her stupidly and she rolled her eyes in response before shaking her head and sighing.
"Well, as you generally tend to do you have won the competition and now get to draw Sparrow as your subject. In the FLESH!"
"I have no recollection of...of-"
She cut me off with a slight wave. "Of course you don't. The boys and I set you up for this as an early birthday present."
I grimaced as though I had just been stabbed. "Is this really neccessary?"
She nodded just as Wilma; a chubby but adorable woman from another department strode over to us looking flushed and flustered.
"Ladies-" Wilma skidded to a halt before me and almost slipped over a heavily sequinned top that had slipped to the floor.
"Wilma." I bobbed my head once, looking all around me for a hasty escape.
She suddenly grabbed my hand and squeezed it so hard that I felt it grow numb.
I was blinking stupidly even as she thrust me forward so that I almost tripped over my own feet and hers before almost slamming face down onto the floor. "What is-"
She pushed me up to the faux-steel door of the meeting room and waved a hand at me. "It's time for your interview."
I was about to ask for words of advice when she suddenly opened the door behind me and I was forced to stumble in.

The room was covered in snippets of articles and fading glossy photos of Sparrow and the entire company making it look like a huge article that went on for ever. A large, retangular ebony table stretched from one wall to the other with suede-and-leather swivelling chairs pushed up to it and two, stern-looking women with strawberry blonde bob-cuts and cherry coloured horn-rimmed glasses dressed in pastel beige and black suits stood around a corner looking to be in a meaningful discussion. A strong, middle-aged man with closesly curled chestnut hair, stern eyebrows and facial structure sharp enough to slice through steel stood blankly to one side with dark sunglasses covering his eyes. A second woman with steel-grey curls wearing a lavender coloured dress sat at one chair alongside Sparrow.