Ann

Contentment derived from a sense of utter relief; it colored her once-dark world with clouds of pink. 
          
          She felt elated… almost safe. 
          
          Pure enjoyment enveloped the present moment, it was like balm administered to her raw, bleeding soul.  
          
          She felt like a newborn fawn learning how to walk, only for her it wasn’t the first time around anymore; wonderment delighted her mind as imagined grass caressed the soles of her feet, again. 
          
          To be grounded and yet so very, very elusively light, like a feather caught in the wind, destined to land… 
          
          ..somewhere, perhaps even some time soon; she didn’t want to land, at all. 
          
          She felt good. 
          
          She WAS good. 
          
          Couldn’t she just stay that way, good? 
          
          Wicked was the double-edged sword, nothing lasts forever, not the bad, and as such, neither its counterpart, good. 
          
          Touché. 

Her drawings were crocked, lines all over the place. Still, it was the most enchanting portrait he’d ever seen; the man’s eyes stayed glued to the slightly crumpled piece of paper he held ever so gently in his hands, simply put, he was transfixed. 
          
          He couldn’t quite make out what it was, but that didn’t matter; it still managed to take his breath away regardless of that fact. 
          
          “Well…?”
          
          The three-year-old’s prompt for an appraisal was gifted in turn with a toothy grin as the man’s heart swelled several sizes more than his chest was capable of accommodating, it hurt; a pleasurable pain. 
          
          His eyes became level with hers as he crouched down, voice as soft as a gentle breeze as he replied with a question of his own rather than the expectant praise she so eagerly sought. 
          
          “How do you feel about what you made?”
          
          The inquiry made the squirming girl pause, stillness conquered her flesh whilst her mind and eyes ran rampant over her own work, she surveyed the cat depicted on the slightly crumpled paper. 
          
          “I… well.. It’s purple. Purple is pretty. I think it’s pretty.”
          
          The child pointed at a squiggly line of purple located somewhere near the center of the paper as she spoke, her voice going from a drawn-out uncertain lilt to embodying the strongest of convictions by the time she had finished the assessment of her own craft. 
          
          The man nodded, agreeing. 
          
          “Purple is a fine color indeed, sweetheart. Shall we add it to the refrigerator collection then and archive one of the older ones?”
          
          Pure unfiltered joy, the kind only a child’s innocent mind could summon forth, lit up the young girl face as she nodded in earnest. 
          
          And thus a purple portrait of the neighbors cat, Mr Fish, took the place of last week’s blue dragon; both masterpieces in their own right. 
          
          And the girl.. unbeknownst to herself, learned a valuable lesson that day. 
          
          

Hi there! Finished reading My killer yesterday and my mind is still in a haze after reading it. It's one of the best books I've read. I can't think about starting another book now cause I haven't recovered from Sophia and Michael. I just don't think any other book can top this. I didn't realise picking a book randomly to get over my wattpad block would end up in me clutching my pearls. I finished it in literally one day. I was wondering if My killer will have a sequel? That would be so nice

          It had started as a slight tightening of her jaw, so subtle was the tightening of the masseter muscle that she payed it no heed until the tension had long-since melted downwards, through her oesophagus and into the pit of her stomach where it ever-so-slowly drowned her from the inside-out. 
          
          Dread; she was drowning, it had literally reached her lungs. 
          
          Her breathing changed; it became shallow, erratic, much like the panicked flapping of a birds wings as it attempted and failed to stay afloat on a lake whose surface had become contaminated by fatty layer of sticky oil. 
          
          Useless; the mechanisms of her own flesh, organs designed to keep her alive, had become the very obstacle determined to end her... well, perhaps not outright end her, though it felt like it at that very moment. 
          
          Musings of the grand irony this situation contained might have entertained her had her mind been focused and not scattered about like pearls of a broken necklace; she was everywhere and yet nowhere all at once. 
          
          There and not there… like a kitten trapped in a box, a conundrum.  
          
          
          
          

A tremendous bouquet of questions lay at her feet; blooming snippets from their once rose-tinted past blended together with a handful of forget-me-not’s, and a future she had yet to unravel. 
          
          Her eyes strayed, nearly examining part of the discarded mess, the past… painfully-sweet, it made her heart ache and yearn, so she looked away before she could truly take it in, to make sense of it; she found that action painful too. 
          
          Everything hurt; the cost of love, it robbed her blind. 
          
          And yet, the sight was still there… 
          

Hey Ann,
          
          Firstly, I looove your book My Killer. I read it more than three times. you are very talented! 
          
          Secondly, I’m Nawshin, a Media student at the University of Malaya, and I’m currently working on a research paper about the publishing journey in the digital age. As someone who's also planning to self-publish my own book, I wanted to reach out and ask if you’d be interested in participating in my research. I will just ask about the process, and your unique challenges. If you want, I can give you the questions and you just write the answers even
          (less than 10 min).
          
          The study is all about uncovering the real stories, challenges, and triumphs of independent authors like yourself. Again, I really liked your book and I usually always check your library to see if you are recommending something new. 
          
          The interview can be done via email, text or video call, depending on what works best for you. 
          
          My ig: faria.nawshin
          My gmail: farianawshinpromi@gmail.com. I really am looking forward to hearing from you!

It wasn’t so much the flowers in her hair that had owned his attention as of late; his mind kept replaying the unapologetic no that she had gifted him earlier that day, a dismissal that went beyond mere words. 
          
          ..it lingered, slowly eating away at him like a festering wound might have. 
          
          It stung. 
          
          His eyes haunted her soft form as she went about the office, paying him no more heed now than she had before they’d had their little exchange; he was about twice her size, boasting more muscle and prowess than the average guy, yet somehow he was the one that was left battered and bruised. 
          
          ..and she, she… she was… he couldn’t quite unravel what she was. 
          
          All he knew was that she looked just fine, her plump form swaying about as she hummed some nonsensical tune, and that right there, her being just fine when he was not, that made his lip curl in a display of quiet disgust before he turned on his heel and left the shared office-space behind. 
          
          He needed air, lots and lots of air. 
          
          ..if not his fist might just connect with a wall or even worse, someone’s nose, neither option acceptable. 
          
          That little twat had made him lose his composure; he never lost his composure. 
          
          Never. 
          
          
          
          
          
          
          

His whispers were a blur, a swift yet intricate brushstroke against the pale expanse of her canvas; the gentle caress of the headily-breathed promise the man had delivered against the shell of the young woman’s ear left a lingering impression on her mind. 
          
          A wicked promise that, in turn, drenched the fingers he had slipped into the depths of her core with the tangible evidence of her excitement, a true testament to the effect that his words definitely had on the female he held firmly in his arms. 
          
          A promise he delivered on; she found that she couldn’t sit properly the next morning. 
          
          
          
          

She stilled in her seat, giving no obvious reaction to the crude joke he’d told one too many times, more often than not, at her expense, though this time it was told to her at someone else’s expense, like some sort of nasty private joke; silent disapproval was all she found herself able to offer up. 
          
          She wanted nothing more than to bite his bloated head clean off, to tell the grown-ass man to fuck off and leave her alone; the semi-crowded space they currently occupied wasn’t the right place nor did it contain the correct company for such harsh words to be exchanged, though in her mind the timing couldn’t have been more ripe, it was long overdue. 
          
          Instead, she bit her tongue, again. 
          
          If it was to let the man save face amongst his peers, her own cowardice when it came to direct confrontations, or perhaps the undeniable knowledge that lashing out because of one such event would make her seem crazed in the face of people that had not been privy to the prior ones that had occurred over the span of several weeks, she herself couldn’t quite discern which one it was, if it was due to one reason or the other, or perhaps if it was a mix of them all. 
          
          Regardless of the fact, she hated her own choice as much as an innate part of her understood the necessity of it; the man had continued to tether on the line of the what was considered appropriate, never really crossing that boundary which would justify a reaction from her. 
          
          So she didn’t react; she curbed her own highly-reactive nature much like a squad of trained professionals might have had to cooperate together to be able to pin down a rabid animal without the use of tranquilizers, in other words, one mishap and the entire operation would go to hell. 
          
          No flames were left in her wake this time around, no carnage, no proper destruction…
          
          ..but she couldn’t help but question, what about the next time? 
          
          What about then? 
          
          

In that singular moment, when his eyes met hers, when his dark pools wrapped her blue orbs up in a tight squeeze, she found herself drowning in an ocean of questions; none of which came even close to slipping off of her tongue. 
          
          No, they rested there, right at the very tip; unsaid words bowing before a much, much older ritual. 
          
          He never even blinked, neither did she. Not even once. 
          
          The silent exchange lasted several heartbeats too long, and yet not nearly long enough…
          
          *click*
          
          ..the sound of someone opening the door at her back slaughtered the silence along with whatever might have been. 
          
          And just like that it was over, the moment come and gone, a moment of shared silent-understanding, of quiet exchange ended just as abruptly as it had come to be.