There are different kinds of guilt; the kind that drowns you until you feel worthless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose...
...there's also the kind that cuts through your neck until it feels bone, but by then it's too late to feel anythi...
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THE PRESENT
A bright pair of headlights ignited her large front yard- almost like a spotlight- as she drove her red Prius down the long curved driveway.
Natalya Grayson swung her long legs out of the drivers door and fumbled for her keys in her purse whilst balancing her phone between her head and her right shoulder. Multi-tasking, a lost art.
"...I'll be there in, about, fifteen okay...?" her best friend Shannon spoke through the line in a hurried tone. "...and I'll bring some of the strong stuff!".
"You know me so well" Natalya joked as she hung up and tucked her phone back into the side pocket of her gym bag.
She strutted towards the front porch like she was on some kind of cat-walk in Milan. A large, but renovated, Victorian country house covered in wall length windows and wooden porch boards overlooked her as she reached the porch steps. Her confidence soon started to wade, just a little. She looked and examined its colossal form. It was big, but then again, so was every house in this part of town.
The wealthy part of town.
She gulped.
Natalya turned around, expecting someone to jump out at her, but, it was her wild and crazy thoughts.
Again.
She looked around at the rutted folds of harvest cut yellow fields, smelling its fresh scent. That time of year again. It was peaceful, alright. A little too peaceful for Natalya. She hated being so isolated from Ashmore's social scene.
Scratch that, Ashmore didn't really have a social scene. You had to travel one town over to Charleston to come across any sort of retail chains. But it was big enough to have its own high school, football team and a small cluster of stores.
She needed more to do. It was like being locked up in some notorious compound for the mentally insane. But even they would have more to do.
As Natalya wedged her key in through the rusted keyhole, the door pushed open, already unlocked.
