Etched

Chapter 9

Sometimes, some words, surprise you, leave you stumped. Stumped in a way that you aren't able to analyze and sort the cobweb you're trapped in. You wish to untangle yourself from all their strings. To resolve all the threads holding you back, pushing you to anonymity, inhibiting your escape.

You stagger back but reassure yourself that all you've heard is infact right and you're not lost in some type of hallucination, some kind of delusion, better yet, it is a reality. A harsh one, that is.

Nomatter how unrealistic a few facts appear to be, they end up being the truth. Gruesome, hard to swallow but a sad tint of reality. A reality in the form chains, chains that clamp your growth when you reach for the release. Chains which suffocate you, challenging you to not give up and sink in the realization of incapability.

Certain words leave you baffled, utterly so, to a point where you cannot connect the scenarios with each other, trying to link information just to make sense of something, anything.

Like the reality that had unfurled and penetrated my ears in the moment. A 'reality', so unnerving and so confusing.

I keep stepping back, wishing to unhear all that I've been able to collect. Hoping that somehow I'd misunderstood the Name. Hoping against hope, that all the words and phrases discussed with different people, from previous conversations, associated with that 'name', don't haunt me, don't play on auto tune on the mention of the name. My head fills with all the stories I've heard, closing my eyes on its accord.

But, No! They had to come rushing back, breaking the dam clouding around the name 'Mr. White'

Mr. White.

MR. WHITE?

Emily was talking to Mr. White. The 'Mr. White' my friends have strictly said, not to be with. A big taboo. The infamous Mr. White, notorious not only for his massive businesses but also for his wrong doings. A supposed playboy, human trafficker, the devil. The Mr. White, about whom Cassie had warned me and reprimanded me to be near. Not that I am scared of him, but safety is a must. Okay I might be freaked out but don't I deserve to be, knowing that I'm in a partly unknown town under the roof of the 'disaster'. Yeah, that is totally normal. Isn't it? Crap no!

This is definitely not how I had thought my meeting with him would go. I'd never thought that my curiosity of seeing him would mock me by throwing my being in the Lion's mouth. With my imagined figure of his, his fat arms would easily spin me in easy circles, spinning my body and shoving it against a wall. I may not be skinny but I am definitely incapable of holding my own in a fight, how would I escape if something gets tried on me?

Leave aside being near him, heck, I'm somehow here in his house, getting treated like royalty by his staff. Is this his way of nurturing his prey? Giving them good and satisfactory impressions, luring them in the coziness of the mesmerizing environment and then attacking them at the most unusual times, in their most unguarded stance.

I shake my head at the thought. No, no, no. I won't be a victim of his brutality. I'll have to escape. I always have, I always will.

I even my breathing and slip back in the room. Closing the door behind me softly, I permit my eyes to look around carefully, only now realizing that this room had been so manly. From up close I can see sleeve cuffs on the dresser and a few men perfumes. The décor uttering a masculine tale of presence, bearing a familiar scent of something, someone. Someone I've had a privilege to be with, in a close contact. A specific odour I can't put my fingers upon. A faded scent that I can't pinpoint, but washing me over with a sense of blanket, wrapping me up in the fumes. As though it belonged, as if it was meant to engulf me.