Prologue. Lonely.
The first
night he came to me was on New Year’s.
10…
I didn’t
bother with the countdown. I could hear everyone downstairs, their laughing and
cheer. The clock next to me told me that it was nearly midnight. But I didn’t
bother, “Big Ben” was visible outside… that is if you went out to the end of
the road and looked up, not through the window. Of course, I could still hear
the loud clock.
Looking out
the window from my room, you could see the streets lit up. Even at this hour,
but that’s to be expected on New Years, it was the one day of the year where
you could play loud music and run amuck on the streets at this time and not
have the neighbor’s call the cops on you.
9…
I sat in my
room, the lights out because I liked the dark. I turned away from the window
and pulled down the blinds so that no light entered the room. All was quiet,
save the sound from the party downstairs. Mum always loved extravagant parties
and New Years was just another excuse for a party.
That must
be why they say I take after Father. Mother liked flashy things, and Father was
more reserved, simple and quiet… like me. I never did understand why Father and
Mother married, maybe because my father admired mother’s bashful, outgoing
attitude, or maybe it was how pretty she was, but whatever the reason, it
wasn’t enough to keep the two together. Father had left Mother and me with her.
I never understood that, Father was like me, Mother was more outgoing, so
shouldn’t it have been mother to leave father and me?
8…
Nevertheless,
what was done was done. I was stuck with mother, a women who was the polar
opposite of me, who-though I didn’t particularly dislike or despise- was the
reason why my life was the way it was. She didn’t want her daughter, a plain,
simple girl (like her father) to be seen in public as her daughter, no, that would be embarrassing.
So I sat
here, on my bed, listening to the sounds from below and wondering if I might
grow up to be like Mother. Would her way of life not eventually influence me to
be like her? I wondered this… and I wondered if anything would be different if
father was here. Would he have calmed mother down? Would my life be filled with
less of Mother’s parties? Would he look after me better than mother does? Would
he love me?
7…
I pushed
the thoughts from my head as I knew I wouldn’t be able to come up with answers.
Instead, my mind drifted back to reality. Not the reality that I was up here
and there was a party downstairs, but to the reality that I was lonely.
6…
Very
lonely.
5…
I had
realized this fact only the week before and it never really bothered me till
now. Till now, I was shy, quiet, and didn’t care much for anything around me. I
was in a “broken” family with no father and all that… so… that maybe it. Maybe
it was the lack of a male figure in my life while my mother surrounded herself
in the attention and company of men. You can call her a whore, or a slut, it
bothers me not, but there really wasn’t anyone in my life… that paid any
attention to me.
4…
Mother
partied, and kept herself in the company of men.
I had no
father.
Who was
there for me to turn to?
3…
It wasn’t
always like this. There was one time that I didn’t feel alone but that was too
long ago, almost too long for me to remember. I mulled over this thought and felt
the aching in my chest. I was lonely, very lonely, and I didn’t mean that I was
lonely as I was now, sitting alone. I was lonely in life because there was no
one there for me.
2…
I began to
weep and the happiness and laughter that I heard from downstairs made me feel
even lonelier. All those downstairs had someone for themselves, someone to care
and love them and I had no one.
1…
“I… I want
someone for myself,” I whispered to myself, but I couldn’t even hear my own
words, for the clock tower outside this house… “Big Ben” had begun to chime. I
counted it, and it stopped at twelve. It was midnight. It was New Years.
And… it was then that he first appeared to me.