Their Masks

The Assistant's Mask (Part 1)

It looked like another day of fewer than six hours of sleep at best was waiting for Amelia Ventica's assistant. This was taking the tally for the week to three, and it was only Wednesday.

But that was the job she had signed up for. This was the price she was prepared to pay so that she could be in the limelight. A steep price it was, but her eighteen-year-old self had no problem going for it four years ago. It seemed like a bad dream. For four years now, the assistant had been at the mercy of one of the most spoiled brats in the world.

But that still wasn't enough to make her quit this job. There would never be anything that would get her to quit being Amelia's personal assistant. The consequences were much higher now than when she was eighteen.

But that was the least of her worries as she was racing the car to Amelia's mansion to get the new bathroom installed. She was going to have to bail early and pray to all the stars in the sky that Lorenzo was dependable in fixing the shower and tiles.

Her next stop would find her in Givani's Store. In true Amelia Ventica fashion, the assistant was sure that her employer would be ticked off about the photoshoot mishap and not want to go to her friend's party. Sometimes it did pay to learn the girl's tendencies.

There was still the matter of the exotic dress needing to be delivered to the jet. Getting Mike down to the airstrip was not such an easy task. He was very opposed to making flights he had not been scheduled to do. A few notes had to exchange hands to make that possible.

That gave her only one hour to get both the dress on Amelia's jet and be able to make it to Jasmine's part all the way across town. Sometimes she wondered why she had never hired another assistant under her so they could share this hell. But she remembered it was a bad idea to introduce foreign objects in front of Amelia Ventica. Her reaction to them was not what one would call ideal.

Jasmine had some unprintable words for her as she came to deliver Amelia's birthday gift ten minutes late and not in the company of who was expected. Her excuse for the rich brat was that she had commitments that had already stalled her in Italy and her plane was indisposed.

The assistant wondered if being rich and young meant you had to possess an IQ low enough to accept any kind of bullshit spewed your way as truth. Her lie was received and accepted wholeheartedly, and the birthday girl spent the rest of her party getting intoxicated and talking bad about pilots and cheap aircrafts in the market.

It was well past 4 am in the morning when the Assistant was finally heading to her house, having had to pass by Amelia's mansion to make sure that everything was in order.

Her studio apartment was a stone throw's distance from Amelia's house because she had come to realize the hard way that living far from the girl equated to a stressful life. This was proven when Amelia and Jasmine had that awful fight about some random model from France. The assistant barely slept all that week.

It was not a domicile you would expect of the reality TV winner to own. Everything from the bland grey paint on the walls, the standard television set in the corner, the coffee table stacked with unpaid bills and the sink almost overflowing with dishes screamed 'normal'.

She knew if her boss every got the chance to see her home, she would be fired right there and then. But that was as unlikely to occur as pigs grasping the concept of flight. She was going to have to tackle the mess in the morning... well, the later morning as she was too tired to stand by the sink.

She lumbered into the bedroom and dropped on the bed fully clothed. It would take her close to no time at all for the dark abyss that is sleep to drag her down into its depths.