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Painless Love Ch. 01

By: livebeornwulf



His scent...I can still smell it in the coffee. I thought this was over. Done and finished with to be no more once again. But these were his final words to me before I went far away from where he could follow and track me. With a staid and heavily serious expression, he looked into my vigilant and alert damn eyes to tell me the harsh and cruel-like words themselves:

"You think you can succeed to get away from me. The honest truth is that you can barely triumph to do anything like that. I will be there with you wherever it is that you run off to. I will haunt you always and without any slight bit of fail. You will not live to see the joy and happiness of life itself. I swear on this. You will not ever enjoy life and all the goodly qualities that it boasts and possesses!"

I am all alone. Everyone has already gone by this time. I am seated still and fixed frozen and motionless here, typing and resolving out a few things that Turner will want to see finished and carried through by the dawn of tomorrow coming, Tuesday-7 April 2020 that is. Well, I should finish this up quickly and get on going my way. I probably and definitely should. I am not dragging any helplessly tired foot out of this office up till I am through and ended with the present task at hand here.

It is sharply cold and chilly outside here. Midtown Las Vegas, Nevada State. Damn it! I forgot to carry and bring my coat with me here for work. And now I will have to suffer and pay for that silly damn mistake of mine. Crap it straight into the bin. I have no other alternative than to pull through the whole nasty and excruciating ordeal. As I make my way through the restless people, I wonder what it will be like if I were to meet Charles anew. He is the monster...he has always been the monster, who won't rest until he has devoured and consumed me up into nothingness. Oh God! Does it have to turn out like this yet again? Huh?

I expect to find some cabs here at the Trill Manor Junction Square. Rather, I see and sight absolutely nothing at all. What does this have to mean then? It is either I take a tramcar or maybe a public train straight damn to my apartment. Schroeder must be waiting. Hard; restless; like a bee that has not yet come across that valuable and precious something that it is searching and scouring for. I wonder why she still hasn't called me up already...I only wonder...I ring her up instead.

"Hey. You have been expecting me to show up there, haven't you, sweet chocolate babe?"

"No. And I wouldn't miss you if you slept out there in the cold or in whatever damn shack it is that you feel like taking a nap in."

"Sorry to disappoint you. I am actually on my way there."

"Alone?"

"Yes, I am all alone. I got from the office quite a little bit late than normal and acceptable. I thought you were supposed to process and read that on your own, or were not you, sweet babe?"

"No problem, Tori. I will be waiting for you. Safe journey on your part!"

I make it late to the rail station. I am expecting that they have closed by now. I will have no choice but to get on a public bus. Three hours of walking? I can't bear that anymore. I have gone on foot enough already this early morning. It is now night, and somebody with a sick and wicked mind that I don't know might attack and assault me for no any sound or sane reason at all. I have heard enough of such horror stories already. And I don't want to be on another episode of The Tragic Most Things That Might Happen To You At Night Time with Brody Cooper interviewing and interrogating me throughout the whole painful and agonizing recalling-up ordeal of mine. Duh—huh!

It is twenty minutes now since I have been last walking on the street alone there. I am perched and stooled down at some Rail Depot—I forgot to call up and even swat up its name. This shouldn't be terrible though. What matters is that I get home—straight into Courtney's loving and supportive arms and hug and tell her what the hell I've been exactly through and for what purposes precisely. Yeah...yeah! Enough of this silly brain talk for now!

The tramcar is moving slowly and bit by bit. I feel like I should kick and smash its windows up for eating and chewing up my time very slowly and annoyingly before my very own face and eyes. Yeah! Even yell and shout out at the driver like I am the hornet of a big, awful train itself. What is he even thinking? Wait a second! Has not he been drinking too much liquor—huh? 

There is a couple seated right there in front of me, chatting and smiling and laughing to themselves. How do I know they are apparently wed and jingled-the-bell-up? Well, the way the are postured and positioned in the face of the other...it is all so obvious and evident. If that's not truthfully so, maybe one of them is preferably married, possibly the man who looks very much older and senior than the poor girl my own exact age. Hmnnnn. She is going out with my grandpa, right? Bad choice on her part! It is not that I envy and feel jealous for her. I just don't. I solely question if he really and to the fullest brim makes her intensely and incredibly happy.

What about you yourself, Tori? My conscious asks and conjectures me. Me? I am happy and very much free with the way I am presently. Okay. This is my plan for now. First work hard and diligently in life. Then after that find someone worth your whole attention to marry and settle down with. Maybe I should do the actual opposite. Like throw myself into the big pool of love before I get ugly and dispeacable and then seek my life and goals and desires later on? No way. It would be torture to me, I swear. I just what to get what I want to nab first, and then nab and hold on to other things later on. 

Back in the Cape, so many people who knew me were every time wondering why I never became jealous at all if they happened to be paired into strings and groupings of two that romantic and affectionate way. My dreams come first just like my precious damn life itself. I don't want anything to get in my way. Unfortunately and very much sadly, a lot way more things than I thought possible have harassed and badgered me up. But this has not stopped me from fighting and contending to be where I want to get myself to. Love careless sometimes can ruin up your entire building of life and priceless wishes. Better keep it in watch and safeguard than regret it later on. Okay, I could have stayed with Charles or Pearly, and made them both wildly happy and in seventh heaven...all at the expense of risking what I have long worked for and wanted to have in life? Hell no! I was faced with a choice. I had to choose between them and my coming self. And I went on for the later. Like they say, no sacrifice comes without any sort of painful cost. I had to suffer some things just to lose them and thereafter in the end score the ball into the goal post and triumph furiously. I hope I don't have to come to this scenario again. 

Finally, I am a few bearable steps away from home. As I walk in the breezing and fanning cold, I am thinking of what else I have to do with my coming spare time. Yes. I can be sort of a careless and unthinking alcoholic most frequently of the times. But then there are those precise times that a thoroughly tired and to the inch dead beat exhausted lazy me do not do any sort of tad bit mite work. I am thinking. What better way than to fall in love now? Yes, it would be all wonderful and beautifully great indeed. I mean...I am good-looking and socially standard and average in character and deeds. It would be not be that much hard to find love here and any goodly shoulder that I can lean and brace myself on. Stop it, Tori. Don't think about love...it will just come to you on an unexpected moment, and you better just keep your heart open and highly willing to receive it. 

At times I do feel that I am left out and lagging behind in this whole love thing. But then I hardly and barely am not. My heart and instincts tell me so. If I die young and beautiful without ever deeply and heavily falling in love then that will be it. If I do, the excellent and better still! Dying young again? It can easily happen...it has taken place so many times with so many people after all.

When I push the door open, I see Courtney perched and seated down there on the mammoth brown couch where she is typing up and surfing something on the net on her laptop. What? A dating site? She is dating Gavin now and they both met on some dating website online. Of course! Things don't have to end online there. They have met and hanged out with each other a couple row times now. 

"Chatting with Gavin?" I ask her coolly and steadily as I close the door behind me.

"Kind of," she replies calmly and sedately. "He is as of now in some night club with his guy friends. I wonder what manners and mentalities they are etching up into his proud mind. And I hope it doesn't affect and touch me afterwards on, or will it, Tori?"

"You know how guys are like. You can't restrain them from what they want to be—or can you?"

"You are right there, sweet buddy." 

"Good. What is there to eat for supper if I may ask?"

"Am I your cook?" She gives me that go-find-out-in-the-kitchen-for-yourself look that is a bit impolite and bitter to some marginal extent. Fuck her for it! Jeez! This girl and her bossy behavior! It drives me nuts and crackers like I am going to choke and throttle her up direct on the throat. Seriously!

Our kitchen is sizeable but not so big again, neither is it that all inconsiderably and helplessly small either. No, it is perfectly not. It is well and nicely kept. And all so magically and beautifully clean. If you see it, you will be like, "This certainly has to be polished up for some perfect GO-SPOTLESS advert." Courtney and I always like it this trim and immaculate sort of.

What must I eat for tonight, huh? A cup of yoghurt will do, with boiled eggs and Italian Pane Siciliano bread and the Chinese Keanu Reaves chicken salads and a bit slice of Berwick—or is it Bacon sandwich? Whichever name is suitable. This is what I want to gobble and guzzle up for tonight. Seriously; dummy! 

Once in the living room, I seat and entrench myself right next to Courtney. She is there on her laptop, busy typing and scribbling something up. "So what is going on here if I may ask—pardon me, girl, but I have to be snoopy and dowdy with you just this once more time around?" 

Her eyes wander to me and then stray off back to her huge laptop screen. "It is just that...I am telling him not to misbehave and annoy me up. If he does, I won't forgive or let him off for it."

My God! This woman here with her long flowing red hair is extremely beautiful. I, on the contrary, have long cascading chestnut brown hair and dark goldish skin and sparkling amber-like eyes. Yes. I am from Western Cape in South Africa and my name is Tori Wolf. Before I moved my way here, I was back there in the tip and farthest off south of Africa, trifling and messing around with Charles Berlusconi. The only thing I want right now is to have him kicked and booted mercilessly out of my heart and life itself. He has no rightful and deserving place here. Screw him for that!

"And you? You are still thinking about Charles Berlusconi right?"

My God! It is slightly a little bit painful to accept that I would devote my priceless and golden moments over just fantasizing and drooling about him. Well, this is not the actual and verifiable truth. I once loved him. So very much indeed; but not anymore! I can't escape him now. He is part of my history and gone life itself. And I have to live with him in my heart without loving him up till the day that I breathe my last in this small sick little world of ours. It is the same on his part too. The guy is this dazzlingly beautiful, and you don't always get around to see his drop-dead type anyhow, and he has lots and lots more of girls or even less or just one like he wants to. I have literature.com and Hollywood celeb gossip-up life myself. Yes. I am so much interested and absorbed in Hollywood and its glamorous celebrities. I do work for some Paparazzi agency here in Las Vegas part time. I lost Charles. He lost me. We both lost each other, but the beautiful truth is that I would never be more happier than I am now if I were with him. 

He has got another totally different life from mine. He wants to be a Pastor, I dare hear. He wants to be The Ladies' Best Man, I dare unravel. I want to embrace and love Hollywood. There is no way we can fit in together like this. I will want to write and scrawl all latest celebrity articles, and he will be just there, telling me I should rather stop my nonsense and sing for him 'Amazing Grace' continually. I will want to fan and follow my favorite stars, and he will be ever looking upon them and their achievements to be nothing other than the works and master-crack-pieces and organizations of the Great Illuminati itself. I will be a wicked remediless devil before his very eyes and face. I just don't mean to say that I cannot be spiritual and very much godly focused. I can be! But we will and shall evermore be very different in deeds and tastes. I want to eat the Bologna sandwich. He wants hell-names-what inexistent sandwich. 

"I am not thinking about Charles Berlusconi, Courtney. Or maybe you want me to start drooling and falling madly in love with him all over again?"

"No, Tori. I didn't say that."

"Then don't make me think about him another time. Or if you dare do, know that he is not the most important thing that matters to me in my life right now. You hear that, chocolate girl?"

"Sure, candy sexy Tori."

"Thanks by the way. Who told you I am hot damn candy sexy?"

"Don't talk as if I don't get around to see you strutting about naked on your way to the Jacuzzi. You have a so hot body just like mine that you should let it be enjoyed and relished by dudes."

"Not for now, silly intelligent girl. Drop the act—please, I add kindly."

"Fine." She has almost given up on me. Wow! This neighborhood is the most perfect and to some dimension not roughly noiseless. I have lived in places before that were noisy and drumming incessantly like a rock musical concert that starts without any sure and distinct ending. At least everyone here seems to be minding their own business. Or if they are not, they are not all that overly snoopy doggy type so as to make a living out of spying on other people's lives and advancements and downfalls. I know what I am describing here. I have met and seen it with my very own eyes before!

"So, girl, what do you think 'bout falling in love this time around again?" Courtney asks me noiselessly and gently calm. I am thinking...Tori falling in love again? It would be wonderfully cool. But whom does this has to be this time 'round? 

"I don't know. What about you?"

"You deserve to be in love, man! Go think it all over again."

I laugh out loud. "I have waited for this moment so long. To be twenty-five, and free, and to fall so deep in love thoughtlessly and without any tad bit of worries about it."

"As in what people will say and talk about you, right?"

"I don't care about that. People unfailingly talk. I see no reason why they should stop talking about me being in love. They must carry on with their truth and lie blended dirty talk, but I do not care or give any slightest mite damn as concerns it. I can be in love with whomever it is that I feel like. I cannot be in love if I don't want to be. This is not a forcing matter; and this is not a people-shying and shrinking away from matter."

"It is good to learn that you have grown this fast already, freaky girl."

"Thank you—I really appreciate it."

"So can I bring him over?"

Holy shit! Who now? Who has been eyeing and thinking of hearts and roses about me? Who is this one? I always feel very much uncomfortable being looked and espied at like...crap! As a matter of fact, I am not able to look people in the eyes and face for that relatively long either. If I do, it will not be me but somebody else. That is just how I am. And some people find this to be seriously and terribly annoying of me. I don't just care. But I can be nagging and a pain in the ass most of the times. It is just that I have to work hard at concealing it. But this one, considering that he has been looking at me without my attention and awareness, I am not bothered or stressed up by it at all. No—I am not shy. I am just very much conscious and overreacting at times. 

"Who is this WHO, Courtney?"

"I won't reveal his name to you, but I just want you to know that somebody has been observing and monitoring you seriously." Oooooh! I didn't know or expect that either. Who could he be? Do I know him or not? I can't tell this too soon. No way possible!

I have studied how I fall in love and came up with this discovery: If I fall in love with someone good and peacefully well at start, we will end up violently and dramatically and scandalously bad and ugly. But if I step into love with hatred and bitterness and non-peacefulness, then we will end up well and beautifully. This was so true with Charles himself. I started hating and despising him, and in the long run, we were both tender and affectionate and dearest and blah...blah...blah. But like they say, not every fairy tale is meant to last happily ever after. I could have been everything that he wanted me to be. I could have tallied and remained long in his presence so he can come and spend wonderful, glorious times with me. At first I was almost all this until it clicked into me from nowhere particularly that falling in love with him would change me and my gleeful visions and whole being and self into someone that I would not have wanted to be in the very first place. And that's what made me become so indifferent and negligent towards him. I deeply want someone that I can relate to and share the same or if not harmonizing then corresponding world with. And that someone is not Charles Berlusconi either.

"So who is this one, Courtney?" I ask eagerly and patiently. I can't wait to hear that valuable name. Not that I am in love with him already. No way possible. I just want to know who it is. I mean is he worth the sacrifice and everything else from me? 

"You shall be meeting him on the rightful good time. That's all I can reveal, Tori. Goodnight for now." And off she goes straight to her bedroom, leaving me wondering and thinking about everything that she has actually said. Someone interested in me? It must be a total joke. I was not looking forward to anything like this, or was I? No way probable.

In my bed, I can't sleep. I close my eyes and truly I see him there. Charles Berlusconi. Why won't he leave me alone? I don't want to think about him or even see him any more. Enough has been enough of us. But he is just there in my reality and imaginary world. Whenever I notice and realize that I am starting to fall for him deeper and more deeper again, I do everything in my power and will to forget and erase him from my priceless feelings and heart. I can't go on like this...I have to be with someone else in order to forget him. Only then will he stop harassing and badgering me up as he will be fully aware that I am no longer his but part and whole parcel of someone else. I find myself thinking back to this particular day. I am at Kaapstad Church with Ally, walking outside when a Charles-Berlusconi age mate says out raucously as if asking someone else, "Hey you, where is my woman, huh? Where is she?" Oh, he is meaning Mirth. Tori's natural rival. I am also wondering where she is too. Where are you, Mirth, please? Your guy man here wants you, dear!?

Before long, Charles appears from that other side. He is with his sibling brother, walking gracefully and assuredly. Then they stand still and begin to click-clack something on their phones. This is not the first time they are playing this kind of game on me! I don't know what their plans and intentions are, but whatever it is that they want from me, they are not going to get or win it eventually. No way will I let that ever happen. I am determined to slip away from his trap and catch on the other hand too. It may be painful; but then it is not any bit painful at all. I have to get away from him. Fast; hurriedly; and assuredly too. Even if they growl and snarl at me like gone-mad-dogs for solely that. I have to do it. I have done it before after all—and I can do it well and excellently again.


Painless Love Ch. 01



Mirth is the most beautiful girl that I have ever met. She lives in me, Tori. She is part of me. We are both different in nature and behavior and characteristics. She is just there inside me—my helpful conscious, the voice that always speaks in my mind and tells me what to do and what not to. She is a being and person of her own, and I know that one soon coming day, she will manifest herself to me in her own full beauty and glory and attractiveness. For now, her beauty is of gentle quietness as if it has never had being at all.

Charles. That is the name that rings in my mind like a bell when I wake up. I can see him. Right there before me. I know what he is. I know what he does, which no one else does not really know and are even not fully conscious of. Mirth made it all clear and apparent to me much to my own shock and mesmerism. Enough of this silly mentality now. Ah-ah! Life does not begin and end with him. I was born and raised up without him after all. I will die without him in the very end. 

No wonder I must be in love any sooner from now. I don't want Charles' name echoing and pealing in my nasty damn quiet mind and his handsomely face bothering and tormenting me up. Some other name must be ringing in my mind like sweet music. My heart and whole naked self must belong to someone else. I have to be in love sooner than possible so that I can forget and be finally and triumphantly over Charles. Yes! Very quickly indeed! Whew! What a relief it shall be for me only then!

Courtney is up early. Las Vegas is a very busy town and place, I am aware. So preoccupied and active just like most towns here in the USA and the overall world itself. DUH-UH!

"Good morning, Tori," she whispers and hisses to me in between a seemingly crucial phone call. Of course! It is obvious that she is talking and shooting the breeze up with Garvin Wright. He is her man and protector after all. He has every right in the world to talk with his girl and learn what she is doing and what she is as well up to. And me myself? I have Hollywood to spare me the die with envy and jealousy phase. Fast to my online world. What's fresh and trending here in TINSELTOWN? Holy shit...some newly celebrity has gotten her first big ever role in a $95 million budget action horror movie about zombies and the undead and I have that opportunity and chance to interview her about it. Yes. I shall work my way into it early this afternoon.

Celebrities are cool, fashionable people. I know. They are human, and not THE ALL SUPREME AND SOVEREIGN GOD. For that we must not worship and idolize them. Too sad this is not the case anymore. Many and so often a time, their fans revere and look up to them like they are really divine and worth the Godly status. I wonder. Are such fans merely jocular and fooling around or are they serious and kill-dame-hater state devoted and attached to them. I can't truly tell. 

And I myself being a celebrity? Have I ever imagined that? Oh yes—we all have, in those relatively silly and unrealistic moments of ours in the blithe and glee of life. But you know what? Reality always has a nasty sweet little surprise for us in store, or does it not? Some of us come to be bigger or smaller celebrities themselves whether we like it or not, we plan it or not, we kill for it or not—and the rest of us will always have something valuably and far much important to do in our lives. That is just life. Don't envy a Hollywood star, Tori, they are much the same just like you, only that they are more loaded in their pockets...and more importantly, famous and well-known than you. This—my most beautiful Mirth advices and counsels me frankly. 

I don't want to be star, mama! I am tempted to wish and dream to be like one every passing minute, but I know that I will not be such either in this life or the one to come if opted-for by me.

Work is the usual. Enjoyable and interesting in the early hours of the morning, and then tedious and unbearably exhausting as the sun goes on. I work at The Young's by morning. Not as a full-time employee. I do part-time work here. They haven't shifted and crossed me over into their full-time category yet. Only after they have seen how good or worse I work and how worthy or not I am for the consummate employee sort of office and assignment. We are into advertising and marketing here. And I handle all the receptionist duties and obligations. 

Mr. Logan Hamilton is my boss. I am under his charge and direction. His office is just a few breaths next to my small comfortable desk that has got a very expensive Mac computer and technological equipment displayed and accommodated on it. The building itself is all high and soaring and thirty-two floored up. But not so is my job title and wage scale itself. I make up to $35,000.00 per year, and I am very much happy and satisfied about it. When toiling in the afternoon at the Graham House of Paparazzi, I make a bit lot much more there depending on how successful and triumphant I have been in my endeavors and achievements. If I do well, I get paid well. If I do badly, even the pay and all the other allowances are bad as well. The highest thing I sold was about $15000.00, and I got a small tiny 1% of that. Seriously!

That is just life on my part, and I have come to learn to accept and embrace it. It be for better, for the worse still: for richer, for poorer: for beautiful, for uglier still. I don't know how 'Great' or 'small' I will be in this life. I just keep going and carrying on with everything that befalls me. I know that I do not have my life and destiny under my wish and control. If I did, I could be all the great-most things that I want to be in this life. But then I am not. Neither am I horribly awfully poor either. I am not high, but then again I am not any low. Thank God for it!

Courtney Schroeder. She comes from an agreeably wealthy and affluent background. Some rumors suppose that her father is a grand multimillionaire himself. On the phone, she is always like, "Hey daddy, you know what? My five old month car just broke up. I really need a new one. Will you do me a favor of getting me it?

Momma, can you believe I saw this beautiful Gucci dress at some shopping mall here in town. Even Tori here with me liked it. I want you to spoil your girl a little bit by buying her it. Will you do that please? It is just two thousand dollars, mother!

Cole. I need you to deposit XXXX dollars into my Barclays Bank account. That's an order from Dad and not me."

For all this, I do not envy or plot to kill her with my own two bloody hands. She is all rich because she is lucky. I wish her well even though I am not entitled to the very same privileges as she is. Yeah! For real...

Keyshawn Gibson is the freshest Hollywood big break trending now. Only time will prove how big she is to become. For now, she has appeared in over eight hit movies as a supporting cast and she is as of presently making her first ever film starring in 'Clawed' as Suey Eastwood, an Irish top most assassin who gets hired to kill the American president. In the movie, she has never ever failed with her former targets, but will she this time around?

Regardless, I am going to interview Key Gib in person this very present day and I must prepare and do my beforehand and earlier-on Internet research and survey about her. Will you come join me, huh?



Painless Love Ch. 02



I feel like my very own heart is bleeding—or is not it? I can't be late for this interview with Keyshawn. No way. This is something big and more important than I have ever done before. Of course! She is not the highest, top-most celebrity that I have ever interviewed. Not certainly! Whoops! I have to make my leave right now—right away, without any slight or tiny tad bit sort of delay. Yep-yuppy! 

It is dark and dreary-like outside here. The sky is all this limitless and boundless. I can feel the cold bite and chew into my flesh as I walk in the early night that is so packed and thronged with so many people huddling and bustling about. I feel kind of bored and very much ill at ease. Thus I fetch my iPod music player, then carefully plug in my earphones, and start playing on some slow but romantic track of music. In this life, can we ever live happily and blissfully without romance? Of course! Easily and painlessly still as a matter of fact. No wonder I have to enjoy being single for this little bit while before I start to belong and be hold in the tender and caring and affectionate arms of someone else. Yuwl!

I am supposed to walk and move faster than I already now am advancing. I hardly and barely don't know why I am going so slowly and unhurriedly. I guess that I am tired. I like my things done fast and brilliantly smart. Before now, I was a tediously slow and laggard person whom someone could hardly yell and snap at—pointing out at how much of a tortoise and less more of a leopard I actually was in getting things done. Oh my! These old, boring, but vigorously exciting memories of mine? I love and cherish them! 

It is more dark and dreary still on this narrow street and alley. I barely even notice it. Up till I look behind and think that I saw a cat meow and then rush down the street after me. I stop and peer at it more closely with due attention this time. And I discover that it is not any cat after all. But instead three darkly-seeming men with weird and scary-like looking hats on their heads and some things grasped and clutched in their hands. Shit! They are running and chasing after me. I have to speed my way quickly. I barely don't know what it is that they wielding in their hands and it might be knives or axes or anything that American Chainsaw crappy scary stuff. These things have happened before, and they can easily happen to me as well. Run, Tori, run—my conscious and instincts guide and steer me. I make haste here and straight away.

I am wearing high heels today. I didn't want to put them on. Courtney poked fun at me back at our apartment that I looked funny and silly in a knee-high blue skirt matched with a turquoise colored-like shirt that has lovely purple and green stripes marked and emblazoned all over it. I had first worn flat shoes with this. "Put on those clack-y, feisty, and taddy bit sort of Teddy Bear looking highs of yours, girl," she had snorted out at me while giggling and sniggering out to herself. I agreed with her, and I did like she told and instructed me to. 

I try my best to move as fast and charily as I can. I pass my way into the following street, and it is here that I gather and hastily pick up my speed all the more high and nippy. Yes. I must toil and endeavor my best until I leave those strange and frightening-looking men behind me. I quickly and instantaneously sneak my way into another quiet and desolate street. At least it is all quiet and calm here. It sure and definitely is. Once I am here—just so I don't attract the attention and awareness of those gruesome men following me behind, I quicken and step up my pace, gracefully mild and chaste-fully considerate on the other hand. What a relief this definitely must be for me! 

Just as I am about to head off into another street; a man, large and muscular-like looking, looms up straight into my view suddenly and abruptly to hit and crash me. I have not seen him or even suspected his presence and being here. What is he looking here at this early hour of the evening? I am thinking this when Mirth, my bothersome and snappy-doggy-sort-of spy-enjoying conscious steps in much to my discomfort and annoyance: What are you also looking for here yourself, Tori, at such an early awful hour of the evening? I don't want to answer her back—or else mine would be angry and disrespectful or even insulting words. I simply tell her: Shut up, you dirty Mirth! If you don't have anything to do, you better seal yourself up in that troubled brain of mine and seek something else better and significant to do. 

Honestly speaking, I am shocked. This man here—he is terribly and wonderfully handsome. He reminds me of Charles. Charles was one of the most wonderful and dazzling ever beautiful creations that I have ever met. And so is this man. Wait a minute...could he be his unquestionable and handsomely brother? I can't tell that for now.

I shrink away from the man. He is holding a small beautiful dog in his hand—a nicely growing up puppy I should rather say clear-cut—and the moment he notices me flinch and recoil away from him, he sets it down carefully and steadily slow so that he walk over to me with his hands thrown high and soaring up into the air. Is this a total surrender from him or what? 

"Sorry to frighten you, miss. I want you to know that I am a very trusted man and there is no hell way on earth I could be capable of injuring and hurting you."

All American psychos overuse that to lure in their victims. How so true are his words? I look and examine him again. Yes. He is neatly and impeccably dressed. In a neat and exquisite black suit even. Is he going for some function? With whom precisely? His girlfriend, of course, you silly girl! That must be Mirth. She better behave herself for he own good and benefit. Seriously! 

"Who are you?" I ask him quietly and with an icky-echoing tone. I gulp down my throat straight just after this. Has he made out already how nervous and fearful I am?

"I am Rhys Ty Jonas. I want you to know that you can always trust and have faith and confidence in me. I mean no any sort of harm to you—honestly speaking."

"I am Tori Wolf. I am just coming from work now, and I am going to take my leave straight off if you don't mind that."

"Wait...wait...please," he begs and entreats me. I stop and turn around to him. At this point in time, a chilly and icing-up breeze of wind gusts past me to hurl and toss away my long, cutely brown hair away from my face. Chestnut brown hair that is! Just so I am concise and spot-on with what I am saying and describing here. "Where are you going please? I would like to take you there personally."

"Don't bother. It isn't all that far even. I will be there in like less than an hour," I say this with an intensely glad and extremely happy smile. Hmmnnnn! That was quite a little bit kind and polite of him. Or should I say very highly generous and angel-hearted? Whatever term it is that you like any better—the man is agreeably kind and compassionate to me. 

"These streets have proved out to be dangerous time and again. I know why you were taking flight when I ran into you and you still have that piss-scared and terribly-awed look on your face."

He must be right. These streets are known to be part of the dreaded Bailey-Way Boulevard. They might be perilous and ticklish like that nearby notorious place itself. I might never know. Just two days ago, a teen aged somewhere between 13 and 15 had his expensive phone and thirty dollars cash snagged and grabbed away from him by violence and menacing threats. Following this, the gone-wild-and-satanic gang that thronged and grouped about him stabbed and jabbed him with a sharply knife to his excruciating death. He was discovered and found dead, with blood having depleted and emptied up from his entire body just by bleeding and oozing out helplessly. Shit! Would I like anything of this awful nature to also happen to me? Hell way no! I wonder if even the poor kid wished himself anything that dangerous and life-threatening. Of course, he possibly and truthfully did not.

"Fine," I tell the handsomely and good-looking man before my on-alert eyes. "I will let you take me where I am going." I wonder. Isn't he even afraid of handing over a lift in his vehicle to total strangers that he does not know? Mirth is quick to snap and bark at me for contemplating this. Better you be appreciative and very much thankful of what the good Samaritan here is doing to you, you thoughtless ingrate. Yeah—yeah! I have heard enough already, Mirth-y! Thank you for that sweet-most notification for your very own piece of information. 

Once settled and entrenched down inside the car, Rhys has me hold and catch his dog for him. I love dogs and animals, but not then all of them. Ever since I was five or six, I played and stayed with a lot of them such that my bond and attachment to them burgeoned so great and fiercely to describe and relate here. It still now is a tiny mite bit. Only that for the moment, I do not stay and dally about with a handful of pets and animals. Maybe when I am finally in my own house and dwelling, I will think twice about raising such up. Courtney? She detests and abhors the raising of any form of pets in our own apartment. And can you imagine what her horror-most class and variety of household pets are—stinking and freaking awful cockroaches. Whenever she is in the kitchen or toilet, and I hear her scream out so loud and alarming like she has actually been paid to do it for some nameless range of horror flick, say 'Scream With All Your Might and Get 10 Bucks For It', I easily and without much trouble or thinking know and even get convinced that she has in all reality and truth seen a freaking horrible and grisly-like cockroach. They are everywhere, I guess. Even in the White House? I don't expect so.

"So where is it that you work, Tori, huh?"

"The Young's! You have ever heard about us?"

"Of course! I stay and reside here in Las Vegas. I am a Software Developer with Qitera."

"Really? I could not have imagined and thought that all up on my own."

"I know The Young's. You are into advertising and marketing there, I presume."

"You presume or you are very confidently and much certain and positive about it? I mean that is what we are really and obviously into."

"Okay. So what do you do there at The Young's?"

"I am just an ordinary receptionist."

"Ordinary?" He laughs out load at that. Of course! Do you expect anyone to admire and envy your very small job title there at that shitty damn structure called a firm? People kill and bewitch each other for Company Managerial chairs and thrones in big, grand mammoth skyscrapers and here you are, Tori, comfortable and happy about being a Z-paid receptionist? Grow up, silly girl. Then he adds, "You are a professional receptionist, Tori, and not just any ordinary place worker there."

"If you think so," it is all I have to let out to him. Seriously! 

"And how do the guys there treat you?" He looks at me as he says this and then quickly glances away from me the instant I scowl and make an astonished face at him. What was that supposed to mean really? I am no V.I.P please...and I get no any special treatment for simply being myself. I enjoy doing my work for the sole love of it and then go back straight home and relax and play some celebrity interview tapes that I have recorded and taped on in a particular day. That is just my life. Boring, then exciting, then lonesome, then full of people and activity, then...then...then...

"Like a human being fellow worker is supposed to be treated and handled. Some people can be really mean and nasty. But they are not worth being on my V.I.P long list either."

"You mean no guy has ever proposed to you there at Young's?" 

Is that the way you talk to a stranger, Rhys? I want to shout and yowl out mad at him like I have gone bananas, but then Mirth is quick to act and restrain me from doing so. Damn her! Rhys here better be taught how to talk to a lady...I mean how to talk to a stranger lady that he doesn't even freaking hell know. If it were not for Mirth being present, I would have exploded and detonated badly fuming like a freaky scary tornado bomb.

"Absolutely; does that surprise you in any way?"

"No. But you are too beautiful to be single and left all on your own just like that. It is like all the men have no eyes to see and sight you. Well, if they don't, you probably have me then." The way he is talking all this to me, he is making it seem like he is merely being playful and jocular with me. I can't tell and decide for sure. Is he really being playful, or is he not being this? I don't know...I don't even wish to know...Right now what probably matters most of all things is that I get my way to Sugar Spray Inn and chat and have a word or two with Keyshawn Gibson. I have not more than an hour to spend and relax with her. After that, she will head off to her hotel and then fly off back to Los Angeles where she stays with her boyfriend and three cats. They must be a perfect and very magnificently wonderful family, I am guessing to myself—are they not? They sure and definitely are!

Rhys and I don't talk much either. We just fool around with our relationship status before he drops me off at Badin Way. The highway isn't all that busy and bustling up. There are a few cars speeding here and there, this direction and that opposite other. The traffic lights are all sparkling and blazing up blindingly and dazzlingly. The scene and spectacle itself is just wonderful and heaven-like to look and stare at. 

I learn that Rhys is single in the long run. I don't know how true that is. If I were staying that long enough in his presence, I would have checked and verified it myself. Not so just I can become his date and truest love. I just want to know how far he would go on lying if I were with him and for what exact purposes and motives exactly. Duh! Men and their sweetie pie form of white lies! Even women and olden people lie too—are you not aware, Tori? It is Mirth, you are right. Always listening and paying attention to whatever thing it is that I am doing. 

Before I drop out of his car, Rhys gives me this long and absorbed-like look that I can't easily explain and tell up. It is just there. Exquisite, friendly, and desirous and deliriously-achy too on the other hand. I don't know what it is exactly...but I feel like there is more truth and aim to his words and moves. I don't really care. A celebrity is waiting somewhere, or is not she, huh? Keyshawn Gibson.

The way she seats on her chair in the packed and busy inn. It is almost like she is a princess of beauty and loveliness itself. No. She isn't that proud or pompous type. She is just amazingly and achingly beautiful. Ash! I wish I looked just like her. Huh—huh! I am not any serious with all of this stuff, guys. I love who I am and what I am, and I wouldn't change it for anything else in this world. What I mean to symbolize is that each person is lovely and magnificent in a way of their own that can relate well to the others, or badly worse still. That is just life. It is not all about similarity and distinctness alone. But also variance and indistinctness on the other face of the wide, broad mirror. 

I sit down before her and stretch out my hand to shake hers. I have sent her my picture and bio before. I trust that she remembers and knows me. Her hand is slightly warm but snugly comfortable to touch and stroke about. Eish! Her palms are enjoyably soft and smooth just like mine, meaning that we rarely do that very hard laborious but enjoyable grade of work. Work in any form is enjoyable—and I love, love, love it.

"What drink would you like to take?" Keyshawn asks me. 

I don't know which one to choose. There are so many wonderful and beautiful bottles to choose here. From the quietly and ever fizzing Glen Ellen type to the bubbly, sweetly-mantic Vendange, and also the darkly and roseate-like La Terre, to the loved and adored Stone Cellars and Ecco Domani and Chateau Ste. Michelle—I don't one which particular brand it is that I should opt for here. "I will take Blackstone," I finally and at long last mouth out to Key. She smiles kindly and gestures me to proceed ahead and serve myself. Even the small cup-cake scones served with chocolate and fried eggs are delicious and luscious to taste and gobble. Hmmnnnnnnn! I am not going to miss Courtney Schroeder's talkative kitchen tonight. Not in any way thinkable. 

"So tell me, Keyshawn, how did you get started here in Hollywood? You have grown this big and popular. Was working in the movies something that you have long wanted to do all your life? Or it was life and its unpredictable chain and series of events that got you tossed and started in this whole movie deal thing?"

"It is quite funny and unbelievable to look back and see how long I have come in all of this thing. As you are aware of, I am only 23. And I began acting in small TV serials and films as way back as 10 years far past. It was something I did because my mom and family thought that I had great acting talent. It turned out truthfully so. And following my first three years of specializing only in TV, I switched on to movies. That was not in fact how I planned it out to be. The TV company I acted for shut down and I had to look for other acting work somewhere. By this point in time, I was addicted and drugged on into acting. I didn't want spending a week not being captured and filmed on camera. If there is anything that I am heavily addicted to in this wide whole world of ours, it is the dearest camera itself."

"Fine then! I will fetch out mine so that I can relieve and loosen up your obsession and mania," I am saying this merely as a way of joking and we both snigger and laugh out madly at it. 

"The Paparazzi don't drag bags and bunches of cameras with them for movie filming, Tori. They only use them to do the snap-dap, snap-dip, and snap-captcha exclusive sort of thing. You should get a filming license. Only then will I authorize you to film me for this interview."

We laugh again and I add this time around, "Well heard and understood, Keyshawn. So how did you get to snub up this latest movie role of yours?"

"It was tough competition honestly speaking. There were about 13 well-known actresses contending for this Suey Eastwood role, and I kept on thinking each time, 'I am going to miss it...I am going to lose it.' I was totally shocked and horrified when the producer phoned me in person to tell me that I had been picked up to play nasty Miss Eastwood. At the 'Clawed' auditioning, there were about a hundred and thirty unknown aspiring actresses who all wanted to land this big role too, and a handful of them eventually snubbed roles in the movie as third and fourth class characters."

"What inspired you to especially go for this movie?"

She giggles out happily and excitedly, "I have never done an action movie blended with horror and science-fiction pieces before, and I was like, this is my perfect and most rightful opportunity to go for this. It turned out I had been stirred by that mentality right and appropriately."

"What else are you filming besides this?"

"Lilith: Bride of the Devil. In this one, I play Lilith, the demon queen of the Succubus. This is a horror movie releasing next month by Farrell Pictures. I have only just finished filming it along with 'Goose Camp' a cartoon movie done for some Baltimore-based television station. They are 'Kids' Fun' by name and title."

"How has been enormously famous in the last six years changed your whole life and acting career?"

"To be honest with you, I was not really that popular until about four years ago with the release of 'Queen on The King's Throne.' But my life hasn't changed that much frankly. Maybe only that I have not much time to hang out with my friends and family, and I don't get to kiss my boyfriend out in the public anymore. He only goes out with me on private dates and the like. He is allergic to fame and popularity, especially all those negatives things that can come from sleepless haters. I am all used to it now and I perfectly know how to handle it very well indeed."




Painless Love Ch. 02



"Last month, there was a rumor that you are secretly lesbian and that you had behind shut doors married fellow Lilith co-star, Jeanie Campbell. Well, those spreading the rumor mentioned that your being with your two-year boyfriend, Adrian, was to cover and conceal things up about your gay orientation. How did that affect you and your reputation and even your work much more importantly?"

"I was shocked and terrified at first to learn that it was what people were talking and preaching about. I was like, 'That is what everyone is thinking of me? Fine! I will take no notice of it and concentrate on tackling a few couple projects that I presently have at hand.' You know what? Those rumors are now dying all out of nowhere. I don't have to prove how true or false everything is that God-knows-exactly-wh-ch-exact-person brought and hatched up to do me and my influence bitter harm. I just leave rumors and without fail they sort themselves out with a brand new one. I have fans to cheer up and not let down, or have not I?"

"What was the best ever movie role in all your big screen career?"

"Playing a young beautiful Queen Elizabeth in the crisis-time 1900s in 'Queen on The King's Throne.' I love Queen Elizabeth and I really and deeply valued playing her. It was like the most beautiful thing ever."

"Are you expecting?" I question her whilst laughing and giggling out.

She first looks at me angrily and rudely first and then suddenly softens her expression to laugh and snigger out as well. "That is how rumors begin, Tori. I hope that you are not bent and intent on starting another newest one about me being pregnant. For goodness' sake, I am not expecting, Madame Wolf."

"I know...I know...this was merely a joke from me, for this night especially."

"Where do you see yourself five years from now if God gives you that blessing and privilege to live that long enough? Don't get me wrong here. It is not like I am saying that you are not meant to last that long on Earth either. We all know that we live by the will and power of God, right?"

"That's very true, Tori." At least she is not that tad bit provoked or angered by any of this statement. "In five years if I were to live more by God's grace and wish, I will probably be an actress-turned-mother of two or three who has for the time settled down to raise and look after her kids with her loving and adoring boyfriend. I hope we would have tied the knot by then. But I shall still be returning and appearing on the big silver screen. Only time is sacred and the accurate most seer to tell all that." 

"Are there any surefire signs that your man, Adrian Spencer, is as of late willing and very much eager to tie the knot with you? This is my final question for you."

"I should give him a little bit more of time for the moment, I think. My poor buddy is kind of stuck and spent up trying to complete his Art and Humanities course at Wotton University back there in our beloved Los Angeles city. Maybe after he has completed school we are going to marry and settle down. For the moment, he is occupied in entertaining his books and lecturers. For the nonce, I am playing and having great fun with my audience and the entirety of Tinsel-town at large."

Whew! This is a great relief and pleasure on my part. Following our meal and interview, I go on to take ten or eleven photos of Keyshawn here at the Sugar Spray Inn. She is wearing blue jeans, a pink top, a long furry white jacket that everyone seems to be admiring and ogling at. On her feet are black and sturdy-looking-like ankle-high boots. Her light blond hair, today dyed a lovely and precious black for Divinity-knows-what specific purpose, is curled and frizzled and twisted up nicely. Celebrities and their glamour!

As I step my way out of Sugar Spray Inn, I notice Rhys hovering outside there on his car as he waits and keeps looking out for me. Wait a second, Tori! Who told you that he is waiting for you here? He is probably in a patient wait for his most ever beautiful girlfriend. And not some cheeky, naughty, and Paparazzi sliced-time worker like you! Yah! Mirth is always good at cheering and annoying me at the same time—duh!

I wave at him kindly and then proceed to walk my way down the street. It will probably take me twenty minutes to reach the Four Pizzas Junction and then hire a cab there to take me to my apartment. While walking and strolling down the street quietly, I hear a vehicle humming and buzzing loud after me. I swerve around quickly just in time for the darkly window to wind down and Rhys himself to peek direct at me from the other farthest-off seat, from where he directs and bids me, "Get in quickly, will you?"

I do like he tells me to. It is enjoyable and comfortable inside here. I bet that it is high time I get a car of my own and stop bothering Courtney about how I have to go to some place all in the flattery and deceit of her own lavish car made to look in the eyes of the scrutinizing public like it is a very expensive automobile of my own ownership and possession. When I glance at Rhys, he at length last tells me: 

"You haven't let me know that you work for the Paparazzi?"

Oh. So he was spying and keeping a watchful eye on me right back there in the Sugar Spray Inn. I should have known. Alternatively, I tell him, "This is something that I do part-time and not on a full time basis, mind you. Are you really surprised and bothered by it?"

"I was stunned to see you with that celebrity—Keyshawn Gibson."

The windows all over Spray Sugar Inn are all made of clear and apparent glass. It is so obvious that Rhys had been monitoring my activity with Keyshawn all along. Hmmnnnnnn...who could have thoughtlessly foresaw or forethought that happen? Not I myself in any way thinkable!

"What time do you usually get home? I mean it is late already, and I will be responsible for it if you arrive home late. Do you want to get in trouble with your—"

"My what? My wife, you want to say?"

I am shocked, dead-faced even. "No. That is not what I was going to say to you."

"Then what word did you mean to place just there?"

"The poor dog! It hasn't eaten anything, and you have kept it locked and shut up in this automobile of yours for so many hours. I only feel sorry and pity for it. That is only what I wanted to say, and nothing about your whatever-her-name-is special wife."

He looks guilty and conscious-punched. I am not to blame for that, or am I? I AM NOT, TORI! That must be Mirth without denial. "I will take care of little Bruce, don't worry about him, Tori. He is such a nice and loving dog of mine. Only that he has gone missing and strayed for the last few days and I wasn't willing to chill out and take things easy without ever finding him. He means the entire world to me. If he were a woman, he would be the only wife that I would have in my possession."

How's that ever possible? I am wondering to myself...quietly and soundlessly still indeed. 

"He is the only family you have—is that what you are trying to mean?"

"Kind of. Animal family that is, and not my human one." We have already arrived at my place. Rhys stops the car and I look at him quietly to tell him finally, "Thank you for everything that you have done for me. I hope that you take the good most and best most ever care of your little Bruce. He deserves all things good and so much more to this."

"You are welcome, Tori Wolf." Rhys says with a very big and truly handsomely and hypnotizing smile.

"Good bye, Rhys. Journey well." I am out in the cold again. I hurry my way straight into the house and find Courtney already sleeping in her bed. I wish I could give her just a good night kiss, but then I will have to spare and reserve it for tomorrow. I love her. Sweet dreams, Schroeder! It is also my turn to fall asleep as well, right? Definitely so! I don't know what tomorrow will bring...I wonder...I only wonder what will come off next after all this...



Painless Love Ch. 03



I don't want to wake up. I know that I mustn't. Oh yes—I was the heck tired yesterday doing an interview with a top most celebrity and today there would be an opulent and grand Marie de Pierre Gala going on at Riesman Hotel here in Las Vegas. Marie de Pierre is a celebrated and well-known star all over America with a rumored whooping net worth of breathtakingly $600 million. Well, you might be guessing how she made all that huge amount in her whatever efforts and labors. She just happens to be a 31 year old woman who is into designing and furnishing people's living rooms and most importantly their kitchens, and her own self-incorporated company, The Marie de Pierre Furnishers, are just equally exactly into the same furnishing and making up people's homes and their kitchenettes thing. 

"We are going to see Marie de Pierre this evening?" Courtney asks me as we eat and polish up our breakfast in our enormous and large living room.

"Well, who else do you want to see yourself tonight? Gavin—right? Come on, girl. We are going to enjoy ourselves at this gala, all you solely have to do is follow me and let us enjoy and please ourselves as we feel like. I hear that it is absolutely and definitely going to be super fantastic and brilliant awesome. What do you think about it?"

"Since you have insisted so much on it, I am not going to say 'no' at all." Hmmnnnn! I am wondering and thinking quietly to myself: Should I tell her about the cutely gentleman that handed me a lift yesterday, or must I just keep quiet and unspeaking about it. I can't really and actually tell. No, don't let her know about it for now. An appropriate time will be coming for you to let her know as concerns it. Of course—that is my beautiful and plain damn bothersome sneaky snoopy subconscious, Mirth. She is always listening and paying due attention to whatever it is that I am saying up there in my private head. 

I am now at work. Today is Thursday, 9 April 2020. Oh my goodness. I feel like I am so dead beat and exhausted to the extreme point and extent that I cannot do any little bit of thing without catching myself yawning and yowling out helplessly. But then again I have to keep myself up on my toes and not be downright helpless. This is what life requires and demands of me, not to be lazy and seated perfectly still doing no any form of work. 

"I have got your latest research done and handed over to you. Did it reach your desk?" I ask Logan Hamilton, my tall, sturdy-built like, good-looking boss. Hmmnnnn! Most men his age? You find them more than standard average overweight with bent and almost tumbling-off swellings and puffing-outs of their bellies to the extent that even their walk and activity itself is not all that healthy and inspiring. How does he do it? He is forty-four, and yet he is so strong and powerful and robust. If it were not for his graying hair, I swear that he would blamelessly and cleanly look to be in his late twenties. 

"Oh yes I got it, Tori. It came to my attention and review as a matter of fact. I wanted to say I appreciate your sincerest and tender most hard work on it. I didn't trust that you could clear it up for me." This, he says with a relatively big and heartily kind of inspirational smile. Wow. He is quite terribly handsome even if he is getting old. He reminds me of Charles Berlusconi and...Rhys Ty Jonas! Do they know each other?

It is freaking lunch time now. I hate lunch. I wish I could work without almost any sort of break. Why exactly do I say this? Because look, by the hour it comes that I have to just sit still and do almost nothing other than chewing and dozing about, I find that once the two-hour rest time is over and done with, I stir up back to my perfect senses and realism only to realize that I should rest more and slouch and loll down on my rolling chair until it is yet time again to knock off from work. I get all lazy and dozing about when it comes to lunch duration, and getting myself out of this state after lunch is finished with is the worst of torture and punishment than hell itself. Certainly!

There is this latest gossip making rounds and rounds today at the office. And guess who it is aiming the shameless dart at? My boss himself—Logan Hamilton.! Oh yeah! I have no time to listen and entertain gossip. But it is not every moment and every occasion that it finds us too strong and impenetrable to resist it. At times we are just all too weak and remediless and invulnerable to almost any sort of thing out there. 

Darcy Winooski is so big and puffed up she hardly breathes when she seats and sinks herself down into her chair. Even her voice itself—it is always moderately tired and pooped-up to speak out any louder and inaudibly. But don't underestimate or even undervalue her for solely that! She can speak GREAT thing, tell GREAT stories about people you live and stay with right next door. I find her in the cafeteria up on the sixteenth floor with six other women workers assembled about in plastic-made and blue-colored chairs. They are all stooped and inclined down towards her, obviously meaning that what she is preaching and proclaiming to them is quietly very interesting than the latest title on BREAKING NEWS (the big giant TV is in the very same cafeteria where we all are inside), telling how a leading wife of a famous politician, 38 years of age, has recently been involved in a sex scandal with a 15 year old boy—her very own stepson as a matter of fact!

I take a seat down on an empty chair sited among the silenty eavesdropping grouping and then flash everyone present here a warm and greeting smile. Darcy is busy chirping out lowly but piercingly sharp to some slight degree, "I saw them with my own two eyes. He is having an affair with that new assistant for sure. Every guy working around here has at least confessed up to having something in his heart or pants for her, and to my own horrible shock, I also overheard the Big Man himself 'fessing up to his friend that he would like to fuck and spank up the poor girl in his own bedroom once his wife is off to visit her parents with their growing up kids."

Shit! Just what the hell is exactly going on here, huh? 

"I am a little bit left behind. Would anyone of you here mind to pull me ahead to the same pace and track that you are all moving at?" I ask fearlessly and boldly calm after taking a sip of my canned coke.

Henrietta is the one who affords to look me straight into the eyes. "It turns out that your big boss, Mr. Hamilton, is having an affair with the newest assistant around here. Darcy herself here saw them make out in the toilet—or is it not so, Darcy?"

She merely frowns and then rolls her eyes furiously. "Just think about that, girl. Huh!"

Holy hell! Logan...with that beautiful ebony-haired girl? I have talked to her before, and even spent a little bit of time with her. She was kind, polite, and likeable even...and to now think that she is whoring about with my boss himself? What a total shock and discovery this definitely must be for me!

"Are you so sure about what you are saying, Darcy?"

"Listen, I am not telling untruths here, Tori. I followed the pair to the toilets where they were passionately and impatiently heading off, and what I saw and heard there, it was total horror and abomination on my part...I mean I have it all here recorded and taped up here on my phone. Would you like to see it? All the girls here have watched it already."

Laic laughs out loud at this and comments, "Logan has such a nice, big shapely butt. You should see how the desirous girl was grabbing and stroking and slapping it so hard while moaning out sweetly and happily. She on the other hand has the worst shriveled up form of nipples. They almost made me puke."

I can't watch it, and that is what I precisely tell Darcy. I don't want to think that Logan could be this cheap and reckless and have this infamously lewd behavior. Intimacy and adultery with employees...it only ruins and messes up things for the company as a whole. I just warn Darcy, "Don't you upload it on YouTube please. I don't ever want to come across it there. Not if you want the two of us to be on good terms and expressions."

She just keeps her fingers crossed about it. "But don't be surprised that I have cashed in a few bucks on this." Screw her for it! Following this, I don't think that I can be able to look Logan in the face again. He seems already suspicious, and that assistant in the talk too. As he is talking to me on my desk and a passing group of clean service workers stare and glance straight at him, I see how nervous and shaky that makes him to become. Could he be scared that his wife will take notice and learn the truth about it? I bet so! What will his kids even think of their sweet precious daddy? S—h—a—m—e on him!

By three in the afternoon, I am back home, tossed and hurled straight down onto my bed. Courtney is still occupied there at her work. She is a journalist at the Las Vegas Sun, have I already mentioned this? I have to sleep now...better good for two damn hours before I wake up to do a little bit of things and then prepare myself up for that upcoming grand celebrity gala fête itself. I lie my head down on the pillow and then straight and without any form of delay drift off into deeply sleep. 

I am awake and fully retrieved back into consciousness by six. I am just finishing putting the last touches to my preparation, just like Courtney there in her own room. We are both talking to each other through shouting and yelling out from open doors. I don't know what she has chosen to wear this night especially. But since I am all done and through as of now, I have to go and check it out myself. Let's hope that she has been all creative and even mesmerizing without any embarrassing me this time around.  

Wonderful! She looks just like a fairy tale princess. He-hey! Has she dyed her hair brown? For what purposes exactly? I like it naturally dark red and flowingly beautiful. Now it is brown, but she looks prettier still. Hmmnnnn! I guess that I have to dye mine too... darkish red? Without fail! I quickly tell her, "Give me a couple minutes, will you, Courtney?"

"Sure, my sweet babe, Tori."

We are finally in her wonderfully expensive car, speeding and tearing fast like we are rushing our way to heaven off to Riesman Hotel. The road is all this busy and filled-up, but then not that terribly bad either. Whoops! I relax and lodge my head down on the seat headrest, listening to some piece of music that is magically and beautifully like playing straight into my pricked-up ears. 

"How do I look in your hair?" I ask Courtney without glancing or taking a snub peek at her. She glances and gazes at me straight away. 

"Fantastic," it is her sweet-sounding and from-heaven-chiming-like reply. "And me too—how do I look in your own hair?"

It is now my turn to gaze and glance direct on her head. "Beautiful, I must admit!"

"Thank you for that, I must kindly acknowledge."

Riesman is the biggest and soaring most building here on Harpy Street. Sixty floors, all wonderfully and beautifully covered with glittering steel and glass. It is polished and burnished up even. In this early night, the lights are all wonderfully and exquisitely twinkling and shimmering up. I think this is my first time being here in person. I have only seen the place on TV and in a few couple movies as well, much especially in that 2018 popular horror flick 'Siege.' I can't restrain or stop myself from admiring and ogling the entire place up once we have stepped our way inside it. 

"How long is this gala going to last?" Courtney asks me in a low-sounding whisper. She is ravishing and divine-looking in a cream white dress that is bedecked with pearly crystals that are all glistening and glimmering blindingly. Her hair is so straight and smoothly-arranged just like mine and we are both putting on high heels that are clacking and clicking shrilly on the posh hotel floor itself. My dress is deep black in color, with flashy-like and sparkly designations of blue and yellow decking and adorning it up. We are also carrying sealed and light-weight purses. 

"I don't really know, but I want you to know that it will close up no sooner than midnight slips by." 

Huh? Way up till midnight? So what, Mirth-y! Keep your shitty mouth shut! Up even! I am a tad bit angry and furious all because of her. 

I stand still and freeze all of a sudden and abruptly. I think I have seen him. What is he supposed to be doing here? Oh, he is the man who is with Marie de Pierre instead. But he looks like Charles Berlusconi? I hate thinking that after all that we have been through he would still bother to come around and annoy here. Doesn't he think that we have trashed each other up already enough. Trashed, Tori? Yes. Trashed straight into the bin! Like some piece of shit...or rubbish! This is how it was like: 

Right from the start, I loved the boy by then blended into a man quietly and calmly still. Not right from our very first ncounter. But I was always like, "This one would go perfect with me." Then what made me change my mind, huh? First, I saw the conduct and behavior of his friends at that point in time. I just didn't match and harmonize with it. They were...kind of sort of grossly uncivilized and abhorrently barbaric in some way that even nature had not in any way thinkable ordained. Then I guessed that I was to surely expect that from him also. And was I kind of wrong about that? Sort of...but then yes, I really and truthfully was. They were all much the same...I couldn't stand or tolerate it. What better way than to distance myself and undo all that love and feelings that I had fastened immovable before myself and him. 

Then Charles went on seeking every way and means possible to make me jealous and helpless so that I could...I don't know. I would see him with A, then with B, then with C...until there was D whom he proposed to and strictly began dating. Oh yes! She saw me as her potential and un-resting rival and enemy, kind of that way. I simply didn't care about her and her spiteful attitude flaunted at me—I accepted whatever mean nasty damn things she chucked straight at my table. I really was helpless and horrible in those days and times. I was woefully hurt and bleeding heavily too. I wasn't filled with jealous really...but that I had allowed something of this menacing nature to happen and befall me in the first place. So what did I do?

Mirth came along. She kicked in into my life and being at this particular point in time. We then merged and unified as two alive and pushing in one. I was perishing. Both Charles wanted to see that I was done to nothingness with, and Mr. Pearl Genius (just his ridiculous nickname) was playing his game of doom and helplessness at me. He is a whiz man-kid genius really, the next Great Albert Einstein of our coming Newest Age in Science and Inventions. He was like, "Don't think I am dumb, Tori...I am just playing it smart...smarter than you played it on me yourself." He stroked at me, and I tumbled down dead at those excruciating lashes and scourges of his. If it were not for Mirth, I would not have resurrected anew. I would not have been back from the dead, to die not once more this time around. Mirth took me, Mirth lives in me, Mirth fights for me...

What do you feel, Tori? 

Pain! Deep and cureless pain!

You are wrong. That thing which you are calling pain can actually be cured. I will cure it for you...all in promise of one thing. 

Which is? 

You let me fight for you. Charles thinks he will tramp and stamp you as he feels like. He won't anymore. I will change you into something that he puzzles at and doesn't even understand without encountering a headache or total incomprehension to resolve. You will become unpredictable. He will not know what to expect and also not expect from you. You will be all things mysterious and unreadable. You will sting them—them? Yes them, Tori, but not all of them—tremendously, but in a very not-direct and bothersome way. He will not tramp on Mirth!

So I let Mirth take control. What about Pearl Genius? 

That is not your problem, Tori. I know how to sort things out for the two of us. Just trust me, will you please? 

Charles might be seated there with her. I don't care anymore. I have a life of my own and achievements of my own far much important. They are in love? I still don't care. I didn't know that I would come to be this...from just being a piece of trash transformed into something exceedingly glorious and resplendent. This is what I did. I took my broken, shattered pieces and swore never to give them back to him once polished and perfected up. I have for all eternity lost him and he has for time without an ending lost me too. We won't ever belong to each other—we will always be in this dystopia and ugly state of ours...only destiny shall reveal what the fate of each one of us is rightfully going to be. 

This is what Mirth told him (Charles especially): Spit at me. Strike your deadliest curse at me. It shall not ever prevail. I will not always be this filthy and despicable. You broke and shattered me, but see how quickly resolving and mending up I am coming to be. You are going to look at me all over again and say that that is not what you in the past broke and shattered—or is it exactly? No. It can't be this cleanly beautiful and sparkling-up anymore. It shall be mine yet again. But then it will not—ever. Now it already belongs to someone else somewhere, somewhere you can't have or take it back. Mirth won't ever let you wield and possess it again. You will at that time realize that it now is all too beautiful and deep down in the heart desirable all thanks to you. If you hadn't broke and shattered me, I would not have been this put back together and patched quickly up so amazingly breathless and beautifully. Thank you for making Mirth to be what Tori is just about now to be!

"She looks like she has it all, doesn't she?" Courtney asks me in another quietly and soundless whisper. I hear it and make out the precise words that she has said without any bit form of trouble. Hollywood and its sparkling stars! This one doesn't fit into Hollywood precisely. Okay. She has done good, big, and an undeniable great lot deal job for some Hollywood sensational names. But she hasn't acted in any one movie or ever got featured in any kind of popular music. The truth is that she is simply so rich and famous. That is what makes a Paparazzi like me crawl all the way straight here just to photograph and photo-snap her. Doop-sie!

"I don't know. I can't look or even survey deep into her heart. If I could, I would tell the whole and exact truth then." I am thinking to myself: Is she really happy with what she is in life? At other times you could be there in the centre and focus and attention of everyone else, seeming like you have been blessed with the eagle-speedy wings of a golden angel, but deep down your heart you wish that you could write a very different story of your life than all this and be to the last full happy and satisfied with yourself. 

I remember the other time I interviewed another particular celebrity. Her weeping? "I am already famous as a night club stripper, ain't I? I mean yes, I get hired to play all these nasty and indecent bitchy roles. It is not what I want to every time do deep down my heart and soul. Most producers only care about I stripping totally naked and then acting out some feisty nasty smiling and dancing thing all in the face of the camera while the bottles are being hit and shattered with numberless bullets all about me. I love acting—but then not this type of acting, Tori."

I asked her this, emotionally moved and stirred, "Then why don't you just stop this whole thing?"

"I earn and make big money from this, Tori. Once I stop, I am done; and I fear that I can find myself back in the very same homeless condition as before. It is too hard and excruciating to be cast at ground zero once anew, you know?"




Painless Love Ch. 03



"Excuse me for a while, Tori." This is my best pal, Courtney Schroeder speaking. "Gavin has just called me, and I can't take his call inside here. I mean it is all too noisy and bustling in here. I will be outside if you don't take offence at that."

"Go ahead, Courtney please. I will be waiting for you right here. Or if you don't find me right at this spot, I won't be that hard and difficult to spot if you easily and a little bit look around."

"Okay, girlfriend." She kisses me gently on the cheek and then walks away freely and gracefully. She and Gavin! When are they exactly going to marry? I wonder...

What about you yourself, Tori? That is Mirth without a second thought. Screw her for those words! 

Later on...I feel like he is watching me from my behind. Who exactly? Charles Berlusconi? Not him. I turn around and immediately see Rhys Ty Jonas there. Not again. He is so handsome and cutely I just want to make that clear and revealed to him. But then I don't do it. I guess that he already knows...or he can simply read that from my surprised and awed-looking facial expression. 

"Mr. Jonas," these are my first ever words to him tonight.

"Miss Wolf."

"It is my pleasure to meet you."

"And mine too."

"Do you also deal with the Paparazzi, if I may kindly ask you?"

"No. You see that guy there with Marie." Oh. The one I thought to be my old helpless Charles Berlusconi. "He is a very good and respectable friend of mine. He invited me to accompany him here."

"And how is he related to the Lady of This Special Night Herself? Or her grand Majesty I should rather say?" No. Marie is no any sort of cheap or expensive bitch! A Lady of the Night? She is a Special Lady of This Night simply! 

Rhys frowns and scowls a bit at me. "They are dating—though that is a secret from me that you must not ever tell anyone else. Not even your best friend that you were hanging out with a couple minutes ago." 

Oh. I am surprised and perplexed. I thought that Marie is married. Hang on a minute. When was it that I did my last research on her? About five months or so ago and she might by now be already divorced and a present property and asset of the Single Women's club. Oh yeah. That's the norm and standard of Hollywood European stars, right? Not so. What of Hollywood India, baby? 

"So you just came with him...and no one else besides him and Marie?"

"I have brought my girlfriend here too. Isn't she so beautiful?" I look behind him where he is pointing to and there is his cutely and handsome-looking dog. Bruce! I quickly rush over to pick him up and then pat him gently and carefully steady on his back and nice brown fur. He gulps saliva down his throat and then looks up at me with teary-like and pitiable-expressing eyes. The poor thing...it must be so glad and happy to be here with Marie, right?

Rhys is smiling at me. In that sneaky and crooked sort of way. I glare at him for an instant while until he glances away from me all in perplexion and mystification. "So he is your boyfriend? Are you gay even?"

"And if I said yes—are you going to peel off my testicles into skinless-ness for solely that?"

"I will peel his instead," I laugh out loud and merrily, peeking down at Bruce. 

Rhys then snorts and ruffs out at me. "I would have fed you to the Almighty Leviathan before you would have triumphed and succeeded in doing all that."

"You don't get to have him share your underwear panties, do you? Heck! What a wicked, compassionless master he must awfully have. It is all cold here, and you have him dressed and march about naked. Strip off your clothes so that we clothe him instead." 

Rhys frowns and ruffs at me once more. What is it with him always frowning and snorting out at me? Is that what gay dog lords do? Their icon and pictogram of their autonomy and last word over the entire human race as a whole? *******I am just poking bad fun, please! I am not slamming and scorning any gay-ish behavior here*********** 

"Would you mind if I kissed your girlfriend, Rhys. She is too cute to be a seductress, don't you agree so?"

"Do whatever it is that you feel like wanting to do with her. She is all yours for the night—while it lasts."

"Thank you so very much for the wonderful offer and opportunity to be Queen of lesbianism and crankiness in its very dirtiest nature and bestiality form, for the night that is. I kiss girls, and I love it so way much for your very own piece of information I should inform you what's more."

"Then go ahead and do it. I want to watch you do it."

"I won't proceed with it until you close your sneaky damn frightening eyes."

"Really?"

"Sure."

"There you have it at breadth last."

Rhys is nice and fascinating to hang out with. I think I should consider falling in love with him. What the heck is all this, Tori? Of course, Mirth! Rhys is all things that I want. What more else do I have to look for? He has a good sense of humor, he knows how to perfectly and brilliantly treat a lady in very good and bad way as well, he knows how to give that drop-dead and see-heaven smile that I can only admire and leer at, he is caring and considerate to me and my needs and wants, he doesn't mind what the crowd out there thinks and say about us, he knows what he exactly wants and then strictly and rigorously goes ahead to get it, he has his own despicable and likable flaws too, he doesn't ever pretend to be what he is not, he likes and wants me too in some good and apparent way, I respect him and he respects me in turn, I show interest in him and he will flaunt and hit it back straight at me, he just gets too close to me and I don't ever slip away from his reach and grasp. Is this not the kind of guy that you also deeply would want, Mirth! Who told you I want any guy, but yes—yes—I can see that you want him too, but it all has to be on your own terms and conditions, and I know that he will only embrace you on his own stipulations and provisions too. So—you simply have to negotiate here. I am starting to like him already even if I don't love him this too soon, Mirth.

Hint: Could he be any better than Charles? I can't exactly tell, Tori. Charles was just Charles with his own flaws and perfections too. Simple as that! He fetches me a drink. Rhys this is. It is a bottle and a glass of White Zinfandel, which he takes and sips too on the other hand. Hmmnnnn! I hope he doesn't drink too much like Pearl Genius does. I had no idea that Pearl Genius devoured and sipped up the bottle to completion until I found it out on his private Face-book wall. Is it a bad or good thing though? I just can't decide which is which here. But I wouldn't shrink away from him for solely that...this would make me all curious and restless to know him all the more deeper and fuller. It would make him very interesting and exciting perhaps...in some way I am just imagining possible. Yeah—really!

Alcohol in my blood...I hope this is not alcohol or any beer kind of drink moving in my flesh to drive me all the worse nuts and crackers. I just don't take alcohol. No way possible!



Painless Love Ch. 04



There is this certain look existing and shining up in his eyes. I just cannot easily describe it, but that does not mean that it is not there at all or in any way feasible. It is just there. Tender; attached and seemingly devoted ; and jubilant and loving and affectionate too. Here we stand smiling and beaming up at each other, words failing us to utterly express and make out any emotions that we are undergoing deep down, but the feelings that we are darting and leveling at each other—they are the undeniable and sure feelings of being truly happy with each other and concluding that a greater and more serious bond and friendship ought to be built and framed up between the both of us. I don't know why I should feel this way regarding him, but he truly is special and wonderful indeed. Please don't stir up and awaken any doubts in your minds as concerns all this. I am just telling the whole truth and not making anything here up. 

"Would you mind if we go out for a much cleaner breath of air and I tell you a particular story?" This, Rhys says and declares to me with a humanely mind and likable expression. I can't turn his offer down. I just have to go out there with him. Sure-fire do-ooohhhh!

"Of course, Rhys! You can surely take me anywhere it is that you feel like wanting to take me," the words are already out of my mouth in that bubbly thrilled and galvanized sort of way than I cannot control or oversee. Anywhere that you feel like wanting to take me to? Sure! That is Mirth teasing and jeering me up. Damn her for it! She has the guts, doesn't freaking she?

He stretches out his hand towards me so that he can grab hold of it and then lead and steer me out to the cleanly and wonderful breeze of air out there. What about Courtney—my best ever friend and chum? Am I not supposed to let her know where it is that I am heading off to with Rhys here? Using a voice-to-text application converter on my Blackberry Smartphone once Rhys is standing there talking and having a word up or maybe three with this particular dishy-looking gentleman that he came with in the companionship of Marie de Pierre, I grab myself aside to some quiet and not-so crowded corner where I speak out to my touch-pad phone: "I am going out for a walk with some guy, Schroeder. He is just a latest friend of mine—nothing more other than this. I will catch up with you later on. Enjoy yourself please, my sweetest babe!"

Speedily and with a pace quicker than the strike of lightning, the application has perfectly understood all my words—and automatically and 100% accurate faultlessly transcribed them all into a one-paged text, which I quickly and without wasting any bit of time post over and forward straight into Courtney's mailbox. Of course! Her email programmer will quickly notify her about my newest message for her. 

Rhys is now by my side, walking with me gracefully and beautifully out here. I look at him. Hmmnnnnn! He is so incredibly and wonderfully beautiful and gorgeous. Just like Charles was, and I even feel that he still is (Charles I mean, dummy). He (Rhys) feels like a hard and sharply stinging slap to my senses and rationale all abruptly and unexpectedly. I have felt this electrifying and galvanizing way with Charles before. I still am feeling it right now with this man here. What could this mean? That I am starting to get infatuated and insanely obsessed with him? It is normal to happen and occur anyways. 

He also looks up at me here and then. I straight off and without prompt hesitation glance off away from him. Is it because I am all shy and awkward? Hell simply no! Then why do I have to do this? He doesn't have to know that I have been looking heavily at him like this. Come on. Stop fooling and cheating yourself, Tori! He by now knows it...he must have obviously felt it. That is so true and rightful besides—I am fully aware and conscious of this. What is he going to say now next, huh?

"You have a nice wrist watch," I observe and pass comment to him. It is fastened and secured right there on his hand, hugging and clasping on to his skin dearly and lovingly. I wish I could do the same to him too. Ha—ha! I am just cracking jokes here, don't mind me. The watch is as brand new and expensive as ever before. I think that it is the most expensive thing that he is wearing right at this particular moment. I love it. Not because it costs $$$. No way! Its make and design and model...it is just damn too gorgeous and magnificent and eye catching and flattering to some soaring high degree. It seems like he has a good eye at seeing and picking up things, or doesn't he?

Again his watch reminds me of Charles'. Yes! Charles loved and adored watches like mad. He even told me in person that he has so many of them stored and piled up there at his house and that he would without fail give me one too. "A promise is a promise," I quote and say out his very own sweet-echoing words. But then again he was all poorly nervous and shaky and trembling as he was making this exact promise to me. Like he was afraid of failing to meet up its expectations in the very end and then let me down as a result. I just didn't clearly get it. The poor thing! When was he ever going to stop being all this nervous and shaky and terrified when it came to me being in his presence? At least for the nonce, there emerged and cropped into sight and reality some improvement later onwards. 

"Oh—my watch," Rhys almost seems to forget that he is wearing it. He glances straight down at it. It is a Shinola make and model and a deep shining black in color and appearance too. I just simply love it for what it nicely and coincidentally is. "I am glad that you like it. But you know one thing? Even though it might look all this expensive and luxurious, it was not priced that really much high. Not at all! I think it is the best and fast functioning watch I have ever bought."

Yeah. It might turn out so. And I wouldn't be all any helplessly surprised and shocked either. 

"You said that you are going to tell me this particular story," I mention. He looks at me angrily and furiously for a bit while like he is going to frown and make a nasty bitter face at me for daring to ask him this. Oh no! He better dare not scowl again. I have already had enough of this sort. Seriously! 

"I have not forgotten what I promised you, Tori."

Oh...oh...sorry mister. That is my entire fault, I am guessing now? Tori, learn how to be patient and good-minded, will you please, my sweetest love? Yes, Mirth-y! I have clearly heard you, beloved one. I am wondering...what story is he going to tell me this time around? Is it a love story? I love romantic based and pieced up tales. They make my heart warm and gladly kick and beat up. I guess that we are all fans and lovers of romance, or are we really not?

"Once upon a time, there was a prince who lived in a land very, very far away. This prince, just like all boys, had a name. His name was Loci, and he was an extremely handsome boy and young man too. His father was a wealthy and good-natured king who gave him everything that he wished to have in this entire world. His full happiness and pleasure lied in providing for his son and seeing that he was intensely pleased and happy with everything coming to him. The boy, just like a normal boy is supposed to be, grew up to be a terribly good-looking young man whom all girls desired and deep down their desirous hearts ached for. Each girl around him kept on saying and flattering himself with these sugary words: "He shall notice and marry me one soon coming day." But yes, he did notice and went out with so many of them. Even as far as sleeping and lying down with them. And no, he did not marry any of them like they wanted him to do.

"The prince knew that he must now marry. The king expected him to get wed by now and already start considering giving him grandchildren for his own dignified pride and swagger—"

I cut Rhys short straight right here. "Wait a second, Rhys. Is 'swagger' the rightful and appropriate word to place and lay there where you have thrown it?"

He clears his throat before my very attentive face and eyes. The moon is shining and glimmering all about us on the wide and vast balcony out here, making us look in the eyes of the other like we are flawed yet wonderfully beings enshroud and covered up with a smooth, wavering and effulgently flickering light. Our eyes twinkle and glitter at each other's. 

"Well, I am sorry for that word, Tori. All I meant to say was to describe the king's pride and sense of authoritativeness. He would give up just about anything in the world to become a father to a son, and almost any little bit of thing left after all this just to be a grandfather to beautiful and amazing kids."

"Go on." 

"The prince wanted to marry—that which his heart and soul had not given forth unto him." As Rhys says and speaks this out, his facial expression darkens and embitters up to that awful and frightening state that I can neither help but shudder and quiver at. It seems like there is a more deeper meaning and symbol to this statement and description here. It is like he is seeing the things that he is actually talking about here. Is he really? That is what it definitely seems. 

"What do you mean by saying: 'The prince wanted to marry—that which his heart and soul had not given forth unto him'?" I ask him nervously and shakily. Let's hope that no horror monster crops up and issues fearfully here where the particular story seems headed. 

"Well, the prince happened to be in love with this lady here—Ellery was her name. She was blond, bubbly, well-formed up, and extremely beautiful too. But she was already married to the Dragon of Ischia." Here again, Rhys' eyes flare and widen and also darken in expression and appearance. I think he can see the Dragon of Ischia? But what is it really? A human being? A spirit thing? What exactly?"

"Who was this Dragon of Ischia, Rhys?" 

"He was a prince—made of flesh and blood just like all of us. He had for all these years waited to watch and see Ellery grow and had what's more vowed to let no other man take or wrench his special rose away from him. He would do just about any deed to make certain that he did not ever lose it from his strongly clutch and grasp—even it meant tinting and dipping his hands in a bitingly sharp cold bitter pool of damnable blood."

"Well, this is quite more of a dark story, Rhys. You are starting to frighten me." Oh yes, I know that this might sound like the most insane thing ever. I am someone who is used to watching the worst kind of horror action and gore. Blood, wounds, scars, the undead—anything that you can feel like mentioning and pointing it out here! I feast and devour it with my own eyes deliriously. How come such things dodn't scare the shit hell out of it? Well it is not because I am now transformed into a demon, but that that stuff is just all too fictitious and unreal. In this world of storytelling, not all things are invented and forged up. Some are real—they have doubtlessly happened before, and they might still take place now and see the light of the day in our very present day and age

"A dark story it might be, Tori. But it did happen as a matter of fact. Long, long, long way back in I have forgotten what exactly kind of very olden place." There we go! Another one of those scary but real stories! I hate this kind. 

"So what happened to the prince and this blond-haired woman?" 

"He fought with the dragon of Ischia. And only one of them was supposed to live through the battle so as to triumph and win over the woman to himself. It was such a fiercely and agonizing battle. One that was filled with deadliest wounds which the survivor would have to carry and bear with him for the rest of his remaining life."

"Why didn't he just quit on her and go on marrying any of those numberless women in his kingdom? Why her especially?"

"Because he loved her so very much...and she loved him too intensely bad. They both loved each other like the world itself was coming to a closing with their legend and pain-filled tale. He could not get to make himself forget and overlook her from his notice and awareness just like that. In fact, he tried all those gimmicks and stuff. But his mind kept on wandering and straying back toward her. Every woman whom he was with did small, insignificant things that cast his memory and reflection back unswerving to her. He saw her in every side and facet of his life."

"Had she bewitched him or what precisely?"

"She also thought that he had done the exact same with her."

"How did their story end then?"

"That is not yet known. It is either Loci or the Dragon of Ischia won the battle for...Ellery. Loci had ventured on forbidden and dreaded ground, and there was no turning back until he had finished the doomed course that he had taken."

Love can at times be the most saddest story of our lives. Why do we always like tampering with the forbidden and seemingly preternatural? Love is always there...but so is that dreaded and feared Dragon of Ischia too. He is also in love, or is not he? The Dragon I mean to say?

I feel cold. I start to shake and tremble. As soon as Rhys notices this, he immediately removes his jacket and kindly and with compassion hands it over to me. I don't know how to thank him gratefully enough. A slightly mumbled, "Thank you," is not enough I am guessing and conjecturing up. He is such a kind and caring man, or is not he? I like him for that. Hmmnnnnn! His jacket is the most comfortable and enjoyable that I have ever worn. After I have dolled it up, I notice his scent trickle up from it straight into my flaring and widening nostrils. I love his scent. Of course! It is not the most beautiful one in the world...but definitely and probably it is the best ever likable. He smells fantastic. 

I stare at him. He is smiling and grinning at me happily and gleefully. I grin and smile back endlessly and happily too. We are both simply...friendly and caring with each other. After he has taken off his shirt, I observe and see how nicely and wonderfully patterned up his muscles and chest are. Wow! He is so nice-looking there. I am not supposed to be staring and thinking all of this up. But to be brutally and recklessly honest and truthful with you, I just can't simply help it. I am starting to become infatuated with him...kind of. Stop all this senseless damn nonsense of yours, Tori! Okay, Mirth. 

"Would you mind if we went back in for a drink or two?" 

What is he? An alcoholic? I don't mind still. "No problem, Rhys."

I make haste first and proceed my way before him. Too bad! Because that is a terrible and regretful mistake on my part! I don't know how I misstep, but I just do it, and just before any little bit of time elapses, I see and catch myself falling down the air straight towards the unseeing and almost inexistent floor. Down the thin, thickly air I fare my way down—my now dark red hair hastily and skimpily winging its way up as opposed to the floor. I think I am going to crush right on the floor. I can feel and oversee it. But then...Rhys takes and snatches hold of me all too fast and supernaturally-like quick. 

"Rhys, my goodness," I say weakly and helplessly, held and embraced there in his own hands and clutch. Shit! What I have done? All this...it is all my fault, or is not it? 

He lets me go straight off and without any further delay. "I am truly sorry for that, Tori."

"I am the one who is supposed to say sorry to you—" 

"Whichever way is whichever!" He has cut me short abruptly. Okay. I agree with him seriously. 

His phone pings and dings here and then. He fetches it out from his trousers' hind pocket and quickly answers and responds to it. "Hey, Matt! Are you about to leave?" There is a moment of silence. Then, "You mean you are in the car right now. Fine, I will be on my way there for sure."

"Is that him? Marie's boyfriend whom you were just talking to?" That's me—Tori—for sure! 

"Yeah. They are about to leave now."

"So soon?" 

"Marie confessed that she is not feeling any well. They are taking her straight home where her doctor will meet up with her." 

Poor her! "What is suddenly wrong with her?"

"I don't exactly know. I have to go anyway. Goodbye, Tori."

"Goodbye, Rhys." Shit! I had almost forgotten. I yell out to him as he is trotting away. "Hey, Ty! What about your jacket you left here with me?" 

He stops for a little bit while and turns over to me to say this before he quickly swerves around to jog off his way. "I can't afford to take even a step back towards you and risk having those guys leave me behind. This is an emergency case, Tori. Until later, my friend!"

My friend? He just called me ' my friend'? We are good friends then, I guess. Wait a minute! Isn't that what I fucking damn told Courtney in my email text to her? Sure! I hurry my way speedily too back to the function room where the lush gala is taking place. At least this is some news to take back to the Graham House of Paparazzi. Suez Kuntz, our Senior Sales Woman there, will definitely love and adore this. We are going to make a few pretty good bucks off this, right? You can assuredly have your fingers crossed on it!

I know. Courtney must have by now tired in waiting for me to show up and I just don't show myself up. Well, I just reveal my face to her frankly now. And she is standing there in a group of six ladies, speaking and conversing something merrily with them. The instant she sees me, she quickly excuses herself from their company and rushes over to meet up with me. 

"Just who the hell did you go out for that damned walk, huh?" This is her first question and query to me. I know. She must be freaking puzzled and perplexed up with all this happening. Wait a second! Did she say 'damned walk'?

"He has already left. You will be meeting him anyway."

"Hmmnnnn...so you are taking on things with him that far, or am I not just in the clueless state here?"

I laugh at this. "We are only friends, Courtney. And friends meet and have fun with each other. It is as simple as that."

"Okay. So what shall I do with this other guy that I told you that he happens to be so very much interested in you? He really wants to take you two out for dates and some loving, and here you are, spoiling and ruining up things and chances for the both of you." My goodness! I just can't believe it. She actually and truly is indeed angry and pissed off with me? Damn her for it! What is she thinking? That she is my All Girl Guide to Dating? Well, she is regrettably wrong this time around!

"Perhaps tell him that I am already seeing someone else." Who is inexistent, mind you! There is more Hollywood and celebrity following-up and receptionist work to do here. I am pretty nasty damn busy, Courtney buys into it—or she doesn't. If she wants me to seriously and strictly get into the whole dating of hers, then she better pay my bills up and also provide everything that I need and want in this life and what's more the one to come. That way I will only have to search up and entertain men like no other women is able and capable of doing here on Earth. Up until that happens, I am not going to be dating anyone at all. I don't even know if I will be able to date Rhys. I am simply friends with him. Hang on there. Where did he leave his dog—Bruce? I am so worried and apprehensive for the poor thing! Oh! I now remember. He left a little young cutely him in the watch-care and safeguard of Matt. Matt who? Demure? I can't tell...or even correctly guess for now. It is too soon for all that, or isn't it?

"You don't know how bad you are messing up things for yourself," Courtney tells me with a sorry and pitying expression. Damn her! I don't even need her pity and compassion. I can be what I want to be in life. I can be a nun or a mum, a whore or a bitch, a saint or a sorceress—just anything that I feel like wanting to be. And it will be me that would suffer for it and never her!




Painless Love Ch. 04



We are at long last in her very expensive car, heading our way back to our spacious apartment. I miss home already, and work, and sleep too! I miss everything. I miss the Cape and all the good and wonderful things that come from being there. I miss Cape Town especially. And Charles? Hell way no! He has got a whole life of his, and I have got mine own running here too. 

I review the pictures that I have snubbed of Marie de Pierre on my very expensive camera. Priced at $7000, it is the most expensive item that I have ever bought thus far. And for work solely! If I were to get rid of it, I would sell it for around $5000. I mean it is all brand super new—just four months old—and very 100% faultless functional and likable and fashionable too. Courtney warned me to be always careful and possessive with it. Because once I lose it, the odds are high that I might lose my glamorous job too—she every day reminds me. 

I am wondering quietly. Should I tell her this little rumor thing? That Matt and Marie de Pierre are dating. I moreover took photos of Matt and Rhys. These three—with Marie—were close together and very much friendly and fiddling about. Especially after Rhys introduced me to Marie herself in person. "Meet my chocolate friend here, Marie—she is Tori Wolf and she stays here in Vegas."

Marie was like wholly perplexed and surprised with my being and presence here. Had she met me some place and I did something in her memory that she found a little heavy bit laughable and funny? "So she is your actual girlfriend, right?"

"Not her. She is just a mere friend." 

Not her? I am glad that he specified that clearly. I didn't have to be mistaken for his little sneaky snaky snoopy mistress with a very big but see-ably expensive camera strapped on to her to bother and annoy this happy celebrity enjoying herself here before us. I am still in the Single Club since my split up with Charles. But then I know that I won't rent here for any much long time either. 

We are finally and at eventual last back at our apartment. Courtney and I really and absolutely haven't talked that much since our journey started off from Riesman Hotel to our place here. Perhaps she is still bitterly disappointed and let down with me; perhaps I feel like I should consider giving this man a chance into my life whom she wants me to meet up with. What if he is not my actual type, huh? Maybe he is all this strangely and worlds-apart different altogether from me. We might possibly not suit and fit in with each other—there are odds and probabilities for that. 

At least no one is going to do any cooking here for tonight. We have eaten enough already like mad. Yes, we did eat and devour and gobble up anything that we could get ourselves to grab hold of. What else is remaining to do perchance? Chat briefly, and then maybe go off to sleep. But in this terribly bad and bitterly sour mood of ours? What are we going to do here, huh? What exactly?

"Courtney—I feel like I should sleep now. I might have a busy day awaiting tomorrow and it is better and best if I take my rest in advance now. It shall all depend on the circumstance and nature of things nevertheless," I tell her in a flatly and subdued-like tone of voice. I don't want us to argue and quarrel anymore. I have already had enough for now! 

She looks at me quietly and calmly at first and then tells me straightly, "Come sit down next to me, will you please?"

I have already stood up by now, but I do like she says in any case. 

"I just want what is truly and positively best for you, Tori. I don't want you picking any guy out there that might hurt and torment you in the long run. I don't wish that to happen to you. Listen, dearest friend, this man I am talking about here...he is such a nice and wonderful gentleman. Please do consider giving him a chance into your life. I am certain and positive that he won't frustrate and disconcert you awfully in the very end."

"Are you so sure about what you are saying? I know that I have waited so long for this point in time, but I just want to be sure that this is the best ever moment to handle anything of this kind and sort."

She smiles at me happily and blissfully. "Your feelings are quite very much right, Tori. This is the best time in your life to find love and be happily and truly in love. You are now twenty-five years old. This is the perfect age for any kind of woman to be reproductive and give birth to cutely, adorable children. Go on for it. Don't let your fears and horrors of the unknown disturb and shatter your whole being up."

Of course! It is not like I have to be making babies now and straight away. But she is right indeed. It is about time...it in fact is that time already. I hug and embrace her lovingly and dearly to myself. I love her. I adore her. She is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I thank her for everything...everything that I have in this world and also the glorious one to come. 

Once inside my room, I sit down on my bed to weight and think things over again. There is good chance of me taking my friendship status with Rhys to another high and reservedly special level. Then Courtney here on the other hand wants me to see this certain man of hers and well...the object of our meeting is all too obvious and apparent in this case. We both want love and what better place to find it than in the hearts of each other. I have to sleep for now anyway. 

With a lazy and careless hand, I take off Rhys' jacket which I am at this precise moment wearing and then accidentally drop something out of his pocket. It is his CONTACT card; it is like an Identity Card even. There is his face, also his name beneath it, then his residential address, his work of place, his position there, his cell number, his email, his whatever. What am I supposed to do with it honestly speaking? Toss it without any second thought straight into the bin nearby that ever blazing fireplace of mine. That does not seem like a good idea at all. Probably not so! It must belong with me now. His scent? I inhale and breathe it in. My goodness! That gentleman smells so wonderfully great. Is this how he also smells in his bed and after taking on a steamy shower in his bathroom? I cannot keep in check my wild side and behavior itself. Damn me for purposely being this way and allowing myself to think and reason and act madly like this. I must sleep now...I am really and gruesomely tired...and tomorrow—it will just be another day where life is all too enjoyable and what's more depressing at the very same time...ohh yeah!