Outcasts

Heartache -Part One-

She prefers a spraycan to a brush, but that doesn't mean she doesn't know how to use one.

Corin bites down on her tongue, staring with an intensity that you would be forgiven for thinking she was in serious pain. You would comment, rather indirectly and politely on it, and Corin would tell you to say it like it is. That she looks constipated. Yeah, go ahead. Laugh.

And then leave her alone. Never get in her way. She has no time for fake people and fake smiles. She opened her heart to a select few, and to those few, she would give her everything. And that is what she is doing now. Giving her everything.

Call it a housewarming gift. It might even be free promotion. Not that she was advertising. Extra money on the side isn't too bad. But no. Two amazing dudes just bought their own place, and she could think of no better thanks for all they'd done for her.

It wasn't that she hated men. Nothing so crass and final. It's just all the men in her life had let her down, even the one she let in her heart. They hadn't even shared a snog. And he was a bit of a self-conceited ass a lot of the time. But he was good people. And besides, she couldn't help that her heart beat faster, her breaths drew short and her usually indifferent, snarky exterior melted away in the presence of a killer-looking girl. Like seriously, there were some real lookers.

Not that mum and dad would ever approve. So no love, not even when she moved out. When she landed the role at Adamas Savings and Co. she thought it was the kind of spicy atmosphere to brew some real drama. Sure, ask her a few years ago and an office job would have her rolling her eyes, but gossip was fun when it involved someone else.

Corin thought she'd hit it off with the young faces like her, and it wouldn't go very far. They would burn bright, and burn fast.

Or maybe it would. She couldn't say no to someone who would love her in the long run. Yeah, that would be pretty lush, actually.

She can hear Lorde now, and not that that's a bad thing, but that was background dressing. The kind of thing you put on to drown out the silence. But not too loud. The video she'd put on had stopped playing, the screen now a fuzzy grey. She hmphed.

Stepping away from the canvas, she remembered to step over her coffee mug this time—not cause a horrific disaster of the stained carpet and coffee-smelling phone variety. The sky was cloudy, but the kind of cloudy where the sun seeps through it, a blinding glare. A sky that glowed and pulsed, and you couldn't help but squint.

She adjusted her sunnies and gave a proverbial middle finger to the world. The blinds were up, darling, but only cause she needed the natural light to work. She was a creature of darkness at all other times. The sun was bad for her skin. Or something like that. Did she need a scientific reason? Some people just don't mesh with sunlight.

She stepped out onto her balcony at the sound of a commotion on the street below. A pit bull getting rather intimate with the postman's leg. The owner was fighting for control. There was a lot of screaming. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Corin stepped away and retreated back inside. She had made her own castle and declared herself emperor. Not queen. Not empress. Emperor. That's just the way of things. Don't second guess it. Don't. She'll have to bite you otherwise. Or give you a good kick to the groin. It works on everyone.

She was momentarily dazed. Then she remembered what had snapped her out of her reverie. Her art. It was the tape. Of course it was the tape. Her muse.

She bent down in front of the VHS player and ejected the tape, holding it almost reverentially in both hands, staring longingly at the label.

Charlie's first day @ beach.

She didn't need the tape to remember that day, clear as crystal. It was all burned into the back of her eyelids. But the tapes were one of the only things she took from home, and even then, not all of them. Even dear old mum gets sentimental, wouldn't you know?