The Light to my Darkness

The Search

Victoria walks down the dangerous streets of Mistygan, the hood she's called home for the past two years. Where she's lived with her boyfriend Shawn... ex-boyfriend now because she broke up with him after finding him with another woman- not that it was the first time- it always goes down like this, she finds him fucking a random girl in their bed, she yells at him, he beats her up, she cries, he apologizes, says it will never happen again, she believes him and it repeats.

This time though, Victoria's had enough. Enough of cheating, enough of beating, enough of being treated like shit. She doesn't have any friends of her own who could let her stay the night at their place. The only people she knows are the junkies and drunk friends of Shawn's and that is not an option so she opts for sleeping on the streets.

It's not the first time she has to do that. After her father's death, the streets where her home due to her broken mother who started using drugs, lost her job as a doctor because she stole pills from work. She started blaming Victoria for her husband's death from time to time and spent the nights with different men. Susan, her mother, stopped paying for her private school so Victoria had to enroll in a public one and get a job so that she could have food in her stomach.

As Victoria settles under a bridge, she makes plans for the upcoming day, she gets payed tomorrow from one of her jobs so she'll go collect the check and search for an apartment she can afford.

She uses her bag of clothes as a pillow and holds her pocket knife in her hands like she used to do back when she was a teenager in case someone came to bother her... she remembers having to use that knife a few times before... she pushes those horrible memories out of her head, pulls her sweater tight to her body and goes to sleep.

~

She woke up a few times during the night because she heard a few noises that put her in alert mode, but nothing really happened and she was glad for it.

She walks inside the coffee shop Blake's Cafe where she's been working for a year now. It's located in the beautiful city of Triusa, the atmosphere in here is nice and it always makes Victoria forget about her shitty life.

"Hey, Tori!" Nadia greets her with a smile.

Nadia is the only true friend she has. They have fooled around a few times before, but Victoria decided to stop doing it when the bruises on her body couldn't be hidden with make-up anymore. They have remained good friends, but Victoria wasn't going to abuse of that friendship and ask her if she could stay at her place while she got to her feet. She knew Nadia wouldn't hesitate to say yes, but she doesn't want to explain the reason for asking.

"Hey, Nadia." She returns the smile. "Busy morning?"

Nadia sighs. "It's Friday so it's very busy."

"I won't keep you long then, I just came for my paycheck."

"Ah, yes, Mr. Blake came by earlier and left them in the office."

"Okay, thanks." Victoria walks to the back of the café and into the employees office. As expected Mr. Blake is nowhere in sight, to be honest she's only seen him five times during the year she's been working here and from those few times, she can tell he's a nice guy, very friendly and cares about his employees.

The first time she met him he introduced himself as Miles Blake the owner of the café and asked her what her name was and when she told him he said, "It's nice to meet you Victoria. I'm glad you are working here if you need anything don't hesitate to let me know." He smiled, greeted the others and left.

She grabs her check and goes back to the front of the coffee shop. "See you tomorrow, Nadia." She hugs her friend.

"Take care, beautiful." Her friend tells her.