The VIRGIN STRIPPER

01

The bus ride took me three hours to get home. I must have slept the better part of it because I hardly remembered most of it.

Digging the key that I'd always carried around with me ever since my mom gave me spare, I unlocked the door and stepped inside.

I sighed. I was finally here after so long!

Immediately, frigid and almost foul yet somehow familiar air filled my nostrils as my eyes scanned around the room.

'Can't believe she's gone!'  was the first thought that rushed to my mind as my eyes fell on the picture of my mom hanging on the entry corridor.

"You begin work tomorrow."

Reading the text, I shoved the phone back into my pocket and dragged my suitcase into the living room.

This was definitely going to be a long year- if not the longest I'd had in ages!

To keep my mind from wandering to places it wasn't meant to, I busied myself with cleaning around the house and tried to make it a little bit more hospitable.

After cleaning much of what I could, I moved to my former room and made room on the bed just enough for me to curl up in.

I decided to pass on dinner since I had a hard time working up an appetite in the recent days before my visit. All I ever seemed to do was either stare at the food or pick at it and let it go to waste later.

Closing my eyes I tried to bring back the memories I had of my mom and I. There were not a lot of them but the ones I had were precious.

Despite the fact that she was rarely ever home, I never quite got myself around to hating or complaining about her absence. If anything I was sort of proud of her and how she made sure things were right around the house. Besides, she was sort of my best friend. Especially  since I didn't have any at school or the church I tried to attend once or twice at grade school!

An image of watching her get covered in mountains of soil and being forced to lay a few flowers on the grave a few weeks ago played on my mind at the escape of another sigh as I tossed around the bed a little, trying to find a good spot. It certainly took its toll on me. I was still trying to decide whether it was for the best or for the worst.

Any normal person would know the answer to that.

As much as everything felt the same without her, deep down I knew I missed her. So much to a point it became physically painful.

Or maybe it was from the panic of knowing I was going to take her place in the club that made my head spin with the same painful intensity.

I'd seen all the skimpy outfits she wore. The laces, fishnets, barebacks and even though I was an out there girl (without all the parting and an active social life) I felt cautious when it came to such clothes!

Sighing, I buried my head under the pillow to ward off all the possible scenarios that played in my mind about the work.

The old scent of my highschool perfume wafting  from the pillow put a little rest to my wayward thoughts and I smiled a little to myself as I allowed my nerves to calm.

Maybe I'd get lucky and have an eventful first day at work, I thought calmly as I tried to close my eyes once again.

Not wanting to jinx my frustratingly minimal amount of luck, I willed my mind to forcefully shut down.

This time, I slowly took a small breathe in before letting it out and tightened the comforter around me.

If she was watching from somewhere either above or below, I knew she would make sure I was fine. And with that thought, I let myself drift to a dreamless sleep.

**** ☆☆☆☆
I wasn't supposed to start work till nine but my boss had sent me a text earlier in the morning asking me to be at work by seven.

I'd dragged myself out of bed a quarter to twelve- not because I was lazy but because my body was nothing close to re-energized when morning came after last night's raucous of trying to get a pint of sleep.

After taking a bath and slipping myself into a pair of black leggings paired with a blue tank top, I rushed to grab coffee at a nearby coffee shop.

My neighborhood wasn't quite the bustle and hustle of a small town a few miles away from the main city. It was the complete opposite. - serene, quiet, normal and a little bit lively.

It was also sectioned up into different economic and residential zones.

Where we lived was the main residential home with both modern townhouses and old castle-like structures at the farthest end towards the woods.

People from my neighborhood set up businesses at the centre of town which was like ten blocks away. I'd gotten used to getting a bus to school five blocks away from home and walking two blocks to the library everyday after school.

The coffee shop I went to this morning was an exception though. It was barely a block away from my place and hardly had to wait since not all people take coffee at one in the afternoon.

Thanking the old lady behind the counter I stepped outside and skimmed through the quiet neighborhood. It was always like this with the people in this town. Nobody talked unless they had to and if not, people barely talked in front of me.

I was already used to it. The stares and discomforting looks just made me realize that people had already judged me and my mom way long before they actually knew us.

It wasn't even that hard to pretend it didn't bother us because mom made it seem normal for me not to have friends at school or a good neighbor to share her cookies with us.

People acted like they didn't know us or as if we didn't even exist in the small town and we did the same. Funny thing was that I knew most of our neighbors' names by heart.

Just pretended I didn't know in order to have a normal life with my mom.

Walking back to my house, I sat on the front steps as I watched the neighborhood go about it's duties as if nothing had changed. As if they hadn't all attended my mother's funeral and told me a bunch of sorties and other stuff about counting on them.

As if I wasn't the girl next door with a slut for a mother.

The thought of it almost stung me to tears but I held back. Ever since mom walked into my room when I was twelve and told me that I wasn't liable to people's thoughts about me, I always held back every tear that came stinging in the eye.

Looking at my wrist watch I decided to do a few chores before leaving to go to work in about five and a half hours.

****
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❤, Eline