☕︎Vacancy☕︎

~1~

Isolation...

It wasn't hard getting used to always being alone.

After all of my siblings had finally moved away, my parents gradually stopped coming around. I guess one could say that they no longer even had a reason to keep doing so.

So I grew up spending my days being tutored, or sitting alone in my room. Or I spent them sitting in the gardens at the times that I wasn't allowed to leave the mansion.

People questioned why I hadn't decided to leave much sooner, why I was always on my own. But there was nothing I could tell them that they didn't already know, or at least, figure out on their own. It was as if my parents never even truly wanted me.

Or, they actually didn't. They told me so, that I was a mistake. And most people would be rather hurt hearing something like that from their own parents. But there's a sense of security in actually knowing why they didn't bother to love you or raise you just like your other siblings.

There was no familial bond between my parents and myself because there was never a chance for me to get attached, never a chance for them to get attached. So I was always left to do everything on my own. With the help of the household workers. But that quickly ceased with their infidelity. Appearing in my showers unwarranted, begging me to bed them, attempting to seduce me for my parents' money.

At first, my father never cared so much about it. But then he realized how much it would ruin his reputation if I was ever caught bedding one of his maids, who happened to be daughters and other relatives of the ones he used to secretly bed behind my mother's back.

Not as if my mother didn't know, she was having an affair with our pool cleaner. And then the landscaper. Then the garden keeper, the stable boy we had years back before my parents sold my horses and destroyed my stables, then the chef, my old butler, my old tutor. She liked the different statures they could offer, I had been told.

Not as if I needed to be educated on that aspect of my parents' life, that could have been kept away from my ears as a child and well back into the minds of those who spoke them to me.

It was times like now when I missed having my favorite brother around, the second youngest of the family. He would have been here right now helping me move out of this huge place I've grown to hate over the years. But he had taken his own life when we were younger. I was only twelve at the time and I ran into his room one morning after returning home from a long intervention and he was on the bathroom floor bleeding out.

I was stupid and didn't know who to call until one of the maids came to clean his room and found me holding his cold lifeless body, blood seeping through my clothes.

It was a time that haunted me. Especially when my father came home, looked at my brother's body, and sighed before calling a cleanup crew, then left to go back to his business meeting. Then my mother came home and asked me why I was so stupid as to not call the police because she 'didn't need to deal with this stuff' while she was working.

It was even more haunting when I was the only one at his funeral because I threw one for him. And he was buried at the cemetery with his favorite basketball, favorite shoes, and his favorite CD collection. I put a lot of grass at the foot of his grave because he was allergic to flowers and always complained when the maids were replacing the flowers in the vases around the house.

But that was also just further proof that my parents only cared about my older sister, the only girl of the family, and the firstborn. She married a very successful businessman who merged companies with my family and they together birthed two more boys and a little girl into this disgraceful family.

But it wasn't as if I ever met my own nieces and nephews. Their parents were entitled and so integrated into the family business. They were so far up my parents' asses that I'm surprised no one commented on their greed.

I sighed as I opened the door to my new home.

At least here, I could truly be alone and live the way that I wanted to. Do things for me, but be happy that I'm doing it and not having to worry about house staff spying on me and feeding my average life to the media.

And here, I could live with the only other person that ever mattered to me. And that was my personal butler, Deane, the only other man to show me compassion. To teach me a more humane way to live. To learn how to be more social and open. It was hopeless teaching, seeing as I'm such a recluse now. But I loved him for it nonetheless.

I had someone who was willingly on my side.

For now, that'll have to be all I need.

Speaking of Deane, I watched silently as the man commanded the movers on where to place the furniture. He had them place a majority of the larger boxes into their respective rooms, taking time to put a small sachet over each doorknob in the residence.

When the man was satisfied with their work, he paid them and signed a contract, quickly ushering them out of the home afterwards before he turned to me with his hands clasped together. "Okay G, we have a little more work to do before we get all cozy and comfortable!"

I nodded and pushed off the wall to stand upright, making my way over to the kitchen area. Deane hummed to himself as he went around, opening up the blinds and dusting as he went. I decided on beginning to pull out some cookware from one of the boxes on the floor.

I didn't have a lot of personal belongings to begin with, but Deane had informed me that he went online and went a little crazy while shopping. I had half a mind to scold him when he told me the amount of money he'd spent in doing so, but I quickly changed my mind when he'd shown me all the appliances that he bought.

He splurged a bit on a really nice washer and dryer, we needed a refrigerator and he decided on a dishwasher because neither of us liked doing the dishes. He bought replacements for all the faucets in the home, which I had personally asked him to do, and got a bunch of other things we still needed to furnish our new place.

Deane, of course, had his own room and was allowed to decorate it as he pleased. In fact, I'd let him decorate the entire house, since it certainly wasn't my thing.

We spent hours unboxing and organizing things. Deane was able to get the larger appliances set up himself as he was knowledgeable in a lot of random, useful things. It was one of the sole reasons I had hired him in the first place. Now, he was placing the old and some of the new utensils in the dishwasher to get them clean after he'd finished his test cycle.

"This is gonna run for a few hours. I suggest that, in the meantime, we get our bedrooms together so that we have somewhere to rest later tonight." His voice grew louder as he walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, folding up some of the boxes we'd managed to empty so far. "When those are done, or before, we can have dinner and then call it a night."

I let out a huge yawn as I walked into the living room, pushing strands of my hair out of my face. Deane turned to me with his hands on his hips, shifting his weight to one foot as he scoffed.

"Is something the matter with that, love?" He asked with a deadpanned expression on his face, almost making me chuckle.

"Can we just have dinner now?" I asked sheepishly, scratching at the back of my head with a hopeful expression. I was completely over this whole 'moving' thing already.

Deane just sighed and visibly deflated, all the tiredness suddenly becoming apparent on his face as he turned towards the main entrance, "you're lucky I'm too exhausted to argue about this."

Once I was out of his eye-sight, I punched the air in happiness and practically skipped to the front door. "Thank god, I'm so damn tired!"

Deane rolled his eyes with a small smile, grabbing his car keys as we made our way outdoors, locking the place up behind us as we went for a drive to survey our dining options.

💋

Edited on: 12/02/24