Chapter 5-2: Julia's Story

This was a tough one to write. I think the challenge of it is part of the reason I needed to take a break through August. My first few tries at writing it were just dead and dull on the page. Eventually, I rewrote the whole thing, shifting the narrative voice into the "fairy tale" mode you'll read below. I also trimmed out some bits that got moved into 5-1, and also into 5-3. Zooming in for the key moments, like the first meeting with David, is what finally helped me break through the scene. The moonlight swimming scene (shared previously) just sort of popped out of nowhere but fits nicely, I think.

In any case, enjoy and let me know what you think, if you like. Hopefuly, this scene (and the next) goes some way to explaining the motivation for Julia's revenge against David.

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Two: Julia’s Story

Where does a story begin?

            At the beginning, obviously, but when exactly is that? Everything happens because of something that came before, but how far back do we reach? I mean, look at you—how far back do we go to make sense of the chain of events leading to… well, all this: a forty-year-old asshole unwilling transformed into a pretty twenty-year-old girl? Thing is, my story doesn’t start with—you; it doesn’t start with David Saunders, though he’ll serve as antagonist, eventually.

            I suppose in some ways my story is like a fairy tale, because it starts—well. Like all great fairy tales, it starts with a mother’s death.

            But no, that’s not right, either. How about this:

            Once upon a time, there was a girl called Julia Beaumont.

            Her home was a perfectly ordinary suburban home, and it contained everything that mattered in her world. She had a mother who loved her and a father who loved her, too. She was their princess, and they were her King and Queen, especially the fairy-tale and Disney-obsessed mother who loved to dress her daughter in pretty dresses and brush out her long black hair.

            How does the old story go? ‘A child with skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony.’ Julia was her mother’s fairy tale daughter, and it never occurred to either that those stories never end well for the original mother.

            One day the queen, her mother grew ill and weak, and soon couldn’t leave her bed. Life went on, but differently now. There were frequent visits to the hospital, and tests, and often Julia couldn’t see her mother as she was too tired. Sometimes, she was in pain. Face pale and beading with perspiration, the mother tried to hide the pain. But pain like that always makes itself known, one way or another. In distant silences, sometimes, or fingers curling tightly into bedsheets, forehead gleaming with sweat. At first rarely, but increasingly over time, the Queen let slip her pain and it brought angry words that cut so deeply, the princess never forgot nor properly healed.

            Sit by me, the mother would ask. Sometimes, she found comfort in brushing out the girl’s hair. It fell to the middle of her back, black, lustrous and straight. Like a princess’s, she said, you’re my princess. I love your hair, she said. Please don’t cut it. Ever. Grow it long.

            Later, when even the act of picking up the hairbrush became too exhausting or painful, the mother would stroke the hair. Her touch was as tremulous as butterfly wings.

            I love you, the mother said. So much. I’m so sorry.

            But far too often, with the cords of her neck taught and lips thin with pain, she glared in silence at her daughter. There were pictures on the bed, scattered photos of her mother and father together: a mountain peak wreathed in stormy clouds; a foreign sea, sparkling like amethysts; a trendy restaurant under pale lights, cocktails in lurid colours raised high. Young lovers laughing and living in their time before a child, and the mother looked at those photos and then at her daughter, as though blaming her for the photos never taken, the places unvisited.

            It’s not fair, the mother hissed, once, holding her daughter’s hand so tightly it hurt. He was mine. Almost always, this was followed by tears. Then the mother held her close. She whimpered: take care of your father. Do as he says, she said.

            And on the final day she sat at the edge of the bed and felt her mother’s feather-light touch, the fingers that clawed weakly at her hair. She leaned in close, and her mother whispered her final words.

            The Queen died.  Her mother died. The young princess understood instinctively that she was somehow to blame; or if not to blame, that she hadn’t done enough to help. Was there no quest she could have undertaken, as in the stories, a cure to find? No, nothing: and now her mother was gone, and it was her fault that there was a hole in the household, a hole in Julia’s happy suburban kingdom. Where once there had been joy, there was now an absent presence in the room at the front of the house. There was an absence within her, too.

            At first, father and daughter supported each other in their grief. Both were prone to silence. Neither talked about their loss. But they found solace in each others’ company, father and daughter, now a teenager. He would brush the long hair that her mother once loved, now reaching past her waist. But over time, a far too short time, really, she grew to resent him.

            In later years she would come to understand the nature of his own suffering: his loneliness, and how at times he drank too much, and the challenge of raising a teenage daughter on his own. Working long hours to maintain their home, he often wasn’t there for her when she needed him. He wasn’t even aware of his absence, for communication between the two faltered and failed. Too often, when they talked it devolved into arguments, into shouting and swearing and slammed doors.

            Her teenage self also resented those times when she had to take on the adult role she saw as his: when he slipped into dark periods of silence or lassitude, when dinner wasn’t cooked or the house cleaned or the laundry done, when he sat on the sofa slowly drinking himself into oblivion, staring into the blank space of the television screen.

            He would recover, but the times that followed seemed worse, somehow: days, even weeks of enforced cheerfulness and activity, whether Julia wanted it or not. He’d drag her out camping, when she wanted to be with friends; or to see a movie at the cinema she’d long outgrown.

            No surprise then that the princess went off the rails. Yet even to her, her rebellion felt pathetic. She hung out with other damaged or angry kids, drank too much at house parties, and experimented lightly with drugs, and it all felt very unsatisfying. Very bourgeois, very tame; and something inside of her yearned to tear free and scream and lash out and hurt someone, herself, revenge herself against a world that had inflicted such loss on her for no reason. She kissed a girl once in an act of defiance at a time and place where no one would have cared, underage in the bathroom stall of a terrible bar when very drunk, over-the-bra fumbling and a memory of strawberry gloss. She slept with precisely three different boys and went down on one of them in a movie theatre. Her grades slipped and her father—didn’t know what to do—and then—

            And then, if this really was a fairy tale, a prince would appear around now, right? Some tall and dashing man with penetrating eyes, great hair and a sharp smile, to whisk her away to a better life. Maybe in the stories, but no. The last thing the princess needed at that time was a prince. After all, those princes are all degenerates, the kind of entitled pricks who, stumbling across a beautiful dead girl in the forest locked away in a glass coffin, takes her home and has servants drag the body around the house so he can indulge his necrophiliac fetish.

            Those old story-tellers knew something about the truth of men: that princes are fucking perverts, privileged control-freaks; and other men are wolves, lurking in the forests, or dead-beat dads, or losers.

            So instead of relying on some asshole, Julia saved herself. She got her shit together. Or rather, she scraped a solid enough grade to get into a half-decent college. She studied, loaded up on student debt and picked up a software degree with a minor in feminist studies because—because it seemed important, especially coming after the tail-end of a two-term female president, with women’s rights peaking—past—already under attack in the inevitable backlash that followed. The fact they cut her feminist studies degree a few years after she finished—deemed too polemical, too anti-establishment, too hostile—made it feel radical and relevant rather than theoretical and simply angry.

            So. Julia graduated and the only work she could find was some shitty agency temp work. It sucked, but it kept her away from home and her dad and that terribly empty and silent room at the front of the house. For six months she worked insecure zero-hour contract jobs doing whatever she could find: data entry, cold calling, a few times as an attendant at a museum, and far too often—and worst of all—as a receptionist. God, she hated that last one, the dress code already regressing to some feminist nightmare, the compulsory smile, the mandated flirting and creepy men who leered. But there were bills, and student loan payments, and eating every now and then seemed like a good idea, too.

            Even the passage of time and nostalgia failed to gloss those early months. From the luxury of future comfort, she could look back at those days and think: dear God, those days sucked.

            She’d been “free”, but there wasn’t much freedom in working insecure, 60-hour weeks. She was on her own—and terribly lonely. A pretty young girl under the dazzling lights of the city, but mostly she felt resentment for all the things she couldn’t afford. She’d walk past a restaurant casting its golden glow on the pavement and see the happy, well-fed patrons, all those men and women eating—together—drinking and full of cheer, embracing in their every day lives everything the city had to offer; and she hated them, and herself.

            But the last thing she wanted was to prove her dad right, that she couldn’t hack it on her own, even if he had never said any such thing, at least directly to her. But the implication was there, and to return home would be to admit herself a failure.

            When the chance came for something better, she took it. It was a desperate gamble. Hungry, tired and depressed, Julia was this close to giving up and heading home when she landed her first real job. It popped up on her employment app, red flagged for being unreliable, a coding job for a tech startup. Even with her limited experience she could tell this company was barely getting by on a wing and a prayer. In all likelihood, it’d go under within a few months. But—the office was close to the house she shared with a half-dozen other girls, she could save some cash on commuting, and it was either that or more receptionist work for a local government office where the management frankly creeped her out.

            The interview was dodgy as fuck. IndigoTech had some good ideas behind it, but the job threw up all sorts of red flags.  She’d been warned about just this kind of thing during the tail end of her degree. Dozens of these things popped up and went under every day. But—it paid well enough to cover the rent, at least for a little longer. They offered her the job, and she took it.

            For the first time in years, she began to feel… happy; hope glimmered in the light of each new day. Which is why, a few weeks into the new job, she joined one of her new colleagues for a few drinks after work on a Friday.

            She felt—excited—awed, almost. Her earlier resentment at the big city faded as she felt herself for the first time able to embrace some of what it had to offer. Here she was—Julia, this girl from some distant suburban hick-town, walking under big city lights past the kind of places you saw in the background of movies. She wore her nicest dress and only pair of heels and at her side strode the kind of guy you’d see on the big screen, too, that chiseled jaw and those wolfish eyes.

            Admittedly, their pokey little back-alley office wasn’t the kind of thing you’d find in glossy cinema—IndigoTech’s offices were far more Scandi-murder noir than Hollywood shine—with their flickering florescent lights, and temperature set by the landlord to something that always felt just this or that side of comfortable. Trains rumbled past every fifteen minutes and shook the desks. It was a shithole, and yet it was her shithole, the sort of humble start from which great things sprang. These memories, these first few weeks, she would look back on with fondness, but at the time the young Julia had no way of knowing, just how pleasant, how precious those early days would come to feel for her.

            Meanwhile, the pub—the King and Crown—wasn’t really Julia’s kind of place but her colleague, Tom picked the place. It’s alright, he said, and smiled with his hand at the small of her back. Not really my kind of place either, but we’re meeting a friend, it’s his favourite.

            Julia enjoyed the feeling of Tom’s hand at her back, the presumption of his touch. She knew Tom had a thing for her. He’d flirted since day one. Then again, Tom flirted with just about anything female that entered the office, from temp workers to delivery girls, with a clear preference for big boobs and short skirts. At the time, Julia figured he hit on her by default and didn’t think much of it. After all, there was only one other woman at IndigoTech, Meridy and she was very clearly a lesbian and didn’t have time for Tom’s shit.

            And besides… well, he was hot, even if a bit of a meathead. Clearly a total frat-boy player and not at all her type—if she even had a type, and she keenly felt her lack of experience—but she felt flattered by the attention, and thought maybe, why the fuck not, she’d sleep with him even though work-place hookups were such a bad idea because, frankly, a girl’s got needs and she hadn’t gotten laid in ages. Sitting in their booth at the King and Crown, heavy wood frame and threadbare red cushions, she twirled her long hair and already felt a delightful warmth spreading through her limbs at the idea of her own audacity, that this guy wanted to fuck her and that she’d let him do it. It was with a little nervousness that she waited for Tom to come back from the bar with their drinks, except that when he returned, there was this other guy with him….

            And the thing is, despite everything she believed about fairy tales and princes—and it would’ve killed her to ever admit it, back then—deep down inside and even in the full knowledge that they’re all bastards—back then, Julia still dreamed of a strong man to come along and sweep her off her feet.

            She wanted a prince. And when Tom came back from the bar with a drink in either hand, this other guy trailing behind, hands in pocket, well, she….

            She met her Prince.

            His name was David, and though these days he’s far more princess than Prince Charming, the moment she saw him—sat next to him—smelled him, even, she felt….

            What she felt in that moment was unlike anything she’d ever known, an attraction so immediate, so intense that the experience of it penetrated her to the bone. It manifested as an ache that wouldn’t ease, a heat beneath the skin, like a fever. It had to be something chemical, an evolutionary impulse that confounded rationality, but all she knew in the instant was that she could barely string coherent words together, that night, as she sat next to this new colleague. The simmering warmth she carried that night spread, nipples tingling and what she felt was entirely new to her, dangerous and exciting. Julia felt stupid with it, scared and terribly turned on.

            “Julia, this short bastard’s David Saunders. He’s our sales rep, and a complete asshole.” Tom grinned and slapped the far shorter, wiry man across the back, hard and gripped his shoulder.  The shorter man took the hit nonchalantly, without flinching despite the heaviness of the blow. He grinned and swept back a lock of dark hair and slid into the booth next to her. “This is Julia. Don’t scare her off, Dave. She’s the hot-shot new hire I told you about.”

            This colleague she’d just met was back from a few weeks travelling for IndigoTech, laying on the charm and drawing in investors. The guy had charisma in spades, an easy smile and good-looks, though there was something—unsettling—about his attention, the way he looked at people, especially women. Under his eye she felt… no, not judged so much as assessed, for value, as a threat, or as prey. He made her feel uncomfortable and to Julia’s surprise, this excited her.

            Julia sat there as David explained with as few details possible how he managed to lure in some big-name investors, charming idiots into throwing cash at the dodgy little startup… and that turned out to be the turnaround, the point at which IndigoTech stopped being this moonlight shimmer on water, and something real and concrete. Later, she’d learn just how bad the startup’s finances had been. They were weeks away from insolvency, but David Saunders sold the dream and saved them all.

            And what struck Julia that night—and later, when she realised that the guy she dated and fucked basically saved their collective asses from unemployment—was how he clearly didn’t give a shit. He didn’t care. In fact, he seemed almost angry, as though his success had been some kind of personal failure, a betrayal of an ideal he carried close to his heart.

            After that first introduction, Julia stammered and squeaked ‘hi’ and went red, and David largely ignored her. He seemed far more interested in catching up with Tom. After watching the two men drink and banter for an hour, she started to wonder if they might be gay.

            There was an enviable ease to their comradery, a physical familiarity that took her by surprise. It occurred to Julia she’d never known that—a friend, a good friend, around whom she felt so comfortable. She’d known friendships, obviously, but few and none that really lasted. Later, she’d be shocked to learn they’d only known each other for less than a year. At the time, they seemed like life-long buddies.

            At some point, pint glasses empty, Tom went to stand. He hesitated, eyes glancing between her and David. His smile slipped, and he sighed.

            “Another?” he asked, almost wearily.

            David nodded. “Yeah.” He lifted his empty glass, rim still white with beer froth. “Same again.”

            Shaking his head, Tom stepped away. David watched him go and almost immediately turned on her. The shift from complete disinterest to the full weight of his attention was both intimidating and exhilarating. Green eyes glittered with predatorial intensity, and thin lips curled in a lopsided grin that exuded ridiculous confidence. She could barely meet his gaze.

            “He likes you, you know.”

            She blushed and then, impudently nodded.

            “So do I,” he said and then—even though this intense and dangerous man barely even knew her name—reached out and stroked her hair with surprising tenderness. “Jesus, what a mess,” he said, though not unkindly. “Somebody needs to take a firm hand to this.” He gently pulled his fingers through her long, dark hair and his knuckles skimmed her cheek.

            Julia sighed at his touch, and felt something warm unfurl inside of her.

            He wasn’t wrong; her hair was a disaster. She’d had a love-hate relationship with her hair ever since leaving home, wanting to cut it off but unable to bring herself to do it. The problem was work. The hours were long and intense, and just as with makeup and fashion, she simply didn’t have time to care for it properly. But she couldn’t afford a salon, either. Normally, she wore it in a long, messy ponytail or in a tight braid, stray hairs poking out here and there. But that night, for some reason—she’d let her hair down, a long ebony cascade over her shoulder bent out of shape where it’d been tied down.

            Julia bit her lip, leaning a little into the hand that stroked the side of her head. “Is that what you’d do?” She reddened a little at her own flirtation. “Take a firm hand?”

            “Yes,” he said, with such sudden seriousness it stole her breath away. “I’d like that.”

            When Tom returned, David no longer hid his obvious interest in her. He stroked the side of her face, her shoulder, and held her hand. The taller man smiled ruefully and shook his head. The three talked and drank, with David’s hand resting on her knee. She’d worn her nicest dress that night and wished it was prettier, and pantyhose, and his finger slid in smooth, silent circles across her thigh.

            At one point, when Tom went to the bathroom, he continued to stare at her intently, a grin dancing along his lips.

            “What?” she said, self consciously. She tucked an errant bang behind her ear. “What?”

            He grinned. “You don’t want to know.”

            She braced herself for the inevitable pick-up line, the cheesy lie in which he tried to secure her interest for the night, just as he’d done with the investors. Julia might have lacked experience but like any woman her age, she was more than familiar with the unwanted attention of men and the shit they spoke. Would he compliment her eyes? Or crack a bad joke? He seemed the type for a terrible pun; and she braced herself for disappointment.

            “Tell me,” she said warily.

            “Lips. Red, like blood,” he said. “I want to put my cock in your mouth,” he said. He spoke with utter seriousness. “I’ve been thinking about it all night.” Then he took a long pull on his pint, eyes glinting over the rim of his glass.

            Much to Julia’s embarrassment, she felt her mouth water at his words. She imagined kneeling in front of this man she’d only just met, unbuckling his belt, tugging down his trousers, and reaching into his boxers. Julia flushed hot at the thought. “Stop it,” she hissed, but when she put her hand against his chest as though to push him away, she left it there and enjoyed the feeling of firm muscle beneath the crisp white dress shirt.

            Tom left soon after. Another drink, and then David went home with her. He followed her back to the large house she shared with the other girls, and the airless little room on the top floor that was hers alone. The journey home was punctuated by surreptitious touches to her thigh, her bum and breast, a stroke of the neck, a thumb brushing against her lips. Once, as they waited for a light to change, he suddenly shoved her hard up against a wall and kissed her, tongue pressing insistently into her mouth, hands at her waist pinning her in place. And she loved it, the suddenness and breathlessness of the act, how easily he dominated her, the wickedness of her own thoughts as she anticipated what was to come.

            In the privacy of her crowded little room, he slowly undressed her. His touch was confident but gentle, as he unbuttoned her blouse, reached behind and tugged down the zipper of her dress. She twirled easily in his grip and suddenly found herself naked but for her bra, panties and hose under the hands of this man she’d only just met.

            He led her over to the bed and sat her down. She felt hot as he sat behind her and felt his masculine presence. His fingers at her shoulder were electric. Tenderly, he swept her long hair back over one shoulder. He kissed her bare shoulder. Then, David brushed out her hair with exquisite care and tenderness. With each stroke of the brush, she felt something growing inside of her, the heat she’d carried with her all night kindled into something brighter and more fierce, stronger than she’d ever felt. No surprise then that when he finished, and gently but insistently turned her around, she didn’t resist, and when he places his hands on her shoulders and guided her to her knees, she went eagerly, licking her lips in anticipation.

            For only the second time in her life she took a man into her mouth, and unlike that horrible time in the theatre, candies crunching under her knee, cramped between the seats, embarrassed and uncomfortable, feeling as though she was enacting something shameful but expected, she found going down on David—enjoyable, erotic, even, as he stroked her hair and whispered gentle obscenities to her. In picturing herself—kneeling, gently guided by his strong hands, head bobbing up and down along his cock—she turned herself on. This, despite being painfully aware of her lack of experience. If he noticed, he did not seem to care. Instead, he patiently directed her towards his pleasure and her own.

            Then, he gently pulled her off his dick before he came. “Easy,” he hissed. “Not yet,” and she looked up at him in surprise to find him staring down at her with intently dark eyes, enigmatic but also somehow angry, and for a moment she wondered whether she’d done something wrong. His engorged cock bobbed and stood hard and ready as he stripped out of his clothes. She had only a short moment to admire his physique—Julia had never seen a man, naked in such peak physical condition—and in the dim light, a glimpse of scars across his abdomen, side, back and left thigh—before he pulled her to her feet.

            With a single, swift yank he pulled her pantyhose down around her ankle. They ripped, but before she could voice a protest, she found herself shoved back on her bed. Suddenly he was between her legs. His tongue darted out and lapped at her labia—his breath hot on her mound—and his hands were at her waist, holding her fast. She hissed with surprise. He resumed licking, up and down her folds, and she was wet—God, she was so wet—she’d never had anyone go down on her before—didn’t think she was ready for it—but then his tongue drew little circles around her clitoris and then she wasn’t thinking at all….

            And when he effortlessly picked her up and bent her over the side of her bed, she would’ve laughed had she the breath for it.

            Lying there, she heard the rustle of a condom packet torn open. She felt the slickness of her own cunt and the tightness in her nipples and she bit her lip in eager expectation and more than a little fear. He entered her swiftly, smoothly from behind and then fucked her. He fucked her with animalistic brutality, wordlessly, fiercely, quick savage thrusts that went deep, as he curled his fingers into her long hair and pulled tight; the loud, rhythmic slap of flesh against flesh; her squeaks and disbelieving yips growing louder as he relentless pounded her.

            Julia felt a frenzied pleasure she’d never known grow until it threatened to overwhelm her, and when the dam broke, it dislodged something from deep within her, like a stone, cold, hard and sharp, torn from bedrock. Incoherent images of her mother flashed across her mind, as well as her dad, accompanied by profound grief.  She came, again and again, her ecstatic wails reverberating across the tiny, rented room. In the intensity of the experience, she was only dimly aware of him finishing inside of her, too, grunting with satisfaction.

            Then, Julia cried. Cradled in his arms, head pressed up against his firm chest, fingernails curling into the tight muscles of his stomach, she couldn’t find words to explain why she cried, or what he’d done to her. In part, it was because it was her first time: not with a man, obviously, but David Saunders was the first to make her cum. Within the warm afterglow of release, she felt once again that she could be loved, because how could someone make her feel so good without there being genuine intimacy, and unspoken promise of something more?

            Meanwhile, he simply held her in silence, seeming unsurprised by her tears, as though what she felt was utterly normal and expected. David held Julia and smoothed down her hair, and she happily cried some more and—

            A couple months later she cried again, alone after he persuaded her to take it up the ass. And not long after, she cried as David and Tom fucked her, one at each end.

            She cried even more after David abandoned her there, and kept crying after he texted to dump her, and sometimes she felt as though it took years before the tears stopped, and still wonders whether the pain ever went away, or whether she simply ran out of tears.

            The year that followed was very difficult. She returned home; Julia went home and lived with her dad for a year. Standing outside the door to her home, she trembled with the sense of her own of failure and shame at the words she’d flung at her father when she left. She couldn’t bring herself to knock or open the door. Her arms remained at her side as though paralyzed, growing tired from the weight of her two cases. An autumn breeze tugged at her sleeve, urging her back towards the bus stop.

            Then, the door opened. Her father’s face was stubbled and scored with new wrinkles, looking thin and wan and far older than she remembered.

            “Dad,” she said.

            Releasing something like a groan, he stepped forward and gathered her into his arms.

            Later that night, she sat at the foot of her bed. The bedroom of her younger self remained unchanged from the day she left. A cluster of photos stuck to the mirror with yellowing tape recalled friends she hadn’t seen outside of social media updates in years. There was a cookbook on her desk, still open to the same page she’d left it two years ago: cod fillet bake, with cherry tomatoes and mozzarella. She’d planned on cooking it for a date—what was his name?—Macey?

            It hadn’t worked out, like everything else in her life.

            What would happen if she simply—disappeared? She sat at her desk and closed the cookbook. If she died, would anyone notice?  She couldn’t think of a single way in which her absence from the world would made a difference. Nor her presence in it. Opening the second drawer down, her fingers scrabbled at the bottom of the drawer above and found what she was looking for taped there. She couldn’t suppress a little smile, and withdrew the joints a younger, rebellious Julia had so carefully hidden.

            A tentative knock at the door: she started guiltily, like a teenager and grimaced. Less than a day back home, and she could feel herself regressing. Then again, why not? Look where so-called ‘progress’ had gotten her. She’d failed as an adult; why not try being a kid again?

            “Can I come in?” His voice was tentative, weaker than she wanted.

            Julia slipped the spliffs into her pocket. “Yeah. Come in.”

            He stood in the doorway, an awkward silhouette framed by the light of the corridor. “Are you okay?”

            “Yeah,” she answered. Then, the ridiculousness of her answer overwhelmed her, her whole body shuddered with the extremity of the lie, and she sobbed and laughed: “No.”

            He took her hand and led her out of the bedroom. She followed. In silence, they walked downstairs, to the room at the front of the house. In happier times she could scarcely remember, the room had been a fancy sitting room, the kind with sofas that never get sat on, filled with relics from foreign holidays and aspirational art bought in times of largess. Then, when it became too difficult to climb stairs, the room was repurposed as her mother’s. She lived out her final years there, until those dreadful last days in the antiseptic florescent white of a hospital room accompanied by the hum and wheeze and beep of machinery.

            “Dad,” Julia said, mustering as much resistance as she could. “No.”

            He nodded, as though he understood.

            They both stood outside the door and the empty space beyond it. The paint was faded and chipped, and the bronze-painted handle tarnished with age.

            “After your mother died, I didn’t know what to do,” he said. Julia hated how his voice sounded, almost whiny, but his grip on her hand remained firm. “Even knowing it was coming, and with how bad things were in the end, I was lost. I was… angry.”

            “Angry?”

            “At her. At you.” His eyes flicked over to her, then back to the door. “At myself. I was terribly sad, obviously, but more than anything I was angry.” He shuffled a step closer to the door. “It was a stupid anger, because what could I do with it? She was gone.” Her dad rested his hand against the door, finger spread wide. “She was gone. And it wasn’t her fault, and being angry with her made me angry with myself, with you, with the world. But it wasn’t my fault, either.” He faced her. “And it wasn’t yours.”

            Julia willed herself to believe him but couldn’t.

            “And whatever brought you back home? Its not your fault, either.”

            “Have you been in?” She nodded towards her dead mother’s room. “When was the last time you went in there?”

            “No.” He shook his head. “Years.”

            “Coward,” she muttered, yanking the door open.

            Later that night, she fled the lonely silence of her house to walk alone along the gravel path leading down to the lakeshore. As a child, she remembered riding her bike down to the tiny cove. It was a popular local spot for swimming, other than those years of algae bloom closing the lake, but she had pleasant memories of youthful splashing, jumping from the high rocks, shrieking as she plunged into icy waters whose depths only warmed on the hottest of summer weeks.

            Julia sat on one of the many rough stone stabs lining the shore. She leaned back against a tree, the bark rough to her skin. She stared out across a lake shimmering with moonlight. Lighting the first of those old joints, she inhaled and coughed, then eased into both the habit and the melancholy buzz that followed. Mulling over her father’s words, she listened as water lapped gently against the shore.

            A gaggle of surreptitious giggles interrupted. A pair of girls, and then a single boy darted through dappled patches of moonlight. The was a flurry of shadowy undressing, laughs and a tumble as bikini top and swim trunks were cast aside, and hurried splashes as the three dashed naked into the water. Teenagers, by the sound of their voices, and from her silent seat she watched in interrupted flashes of light as water sparkled like diamonds off their youthful skin.

            They laughed and splashed, then went silent. A few whispered words, slow wet sounds, and another giggle. Soon after, the boy left the water. Then a glimpse of the two girls, their youthful bodies pressed together in an embrace, midnight curves and silhouettes twirling slowly in the lake, long hair drawing dark lines in the water. Eventually, they pulled apart and not long after, softly padded out onto the rocky lakeside, wringing out their hair. They went to retrieve their bikinis, then shrieked in outrage as they realised the boy had taken them. A distant laugh, and the girls ran after it.

            Silence resumed. Julia stubbed out the last of her joint. She remained alone, suffused with dull resentment and heavy sickness twisting her stomach.

            Never before or since had she felt like such an absolute failure. The night faded to a dull gray, the sun rose, and she rose with it and returned home.

            The year that followed was an intense and dark year, from which she emerged—angry. With everything but especially with the man who used her up and discarded her like  fruit peel whose meat has been consumed. Julia saw as little of her father as was feasible, the two floating around the large family home like two corks in a bucket of water, occasionally bumping into each other but mostly keeping apart. He made tentative efforts to get her to talk, to let go of her anger; but he was always too… gentle, too soft; she despised his weakness and lack of persistence.

            Eventually, she moved beyond the pain and bitterness and reassembled her life. She left home, started over, began a new career, made new friends, took new lovers, and rediscover who she was and what she could be. It was all built on a foundation of anger and hurt and loss, because she never forgot and though it seemed impossible, Julia knew—even if she eventually learned to not admit it to herself—that more than anything she wanted revenge on the man who hurt her so deeply.

            She wanted justice. She needed to believe that such a thing as fairness existed in the world even if her life had taught her that is didn’t. She wanted to know that a man like David Saunders could be punished for his cruelty.

            The years passed swiftly. One windy June evening after work, she found herself standing in a bathroom stall at a bar called Noir, looking down in disbelief at a girl called Cindy. This girl was drunk and desperate. Inexplicably, she also seemed to be the same man who hurt her so badly long ago. Younger, blonde—female!—with tits and full lips and wearing a short pleated skirt but gazing up at her with beautiful green eyes that seemed impossibly recognizable, the curve of the lips and audacious arrogance of the girl’s expression briefly so achingly familiar it stole Julia’s breath away. She—he?—slurred her name, called her ‘Little Caesar’, giggled, pushed a finger to her lips and shushed theatrically.

            “It’s me,” the girl, somehow her ex-boyfriend, hissed drunkenly, “David,” before slumping into Julia’s arms. “Shh—don’t tell anyone!”

            Nonplussed, she got the blonde on their feet, and into a cab, and home, and in the dark and privacy of Cindy’s tiny suburban apartment unzipped the skirt, tugged down panties and verified for herself that this was, indeed, the man she once knew.

            She left him there, half-naked on his bed, and went home. Her mind blazed with—with too much, potentiality, disbelief, wonder and—yes, burgeoning after its long slumber, that same, old and familiar anger. An instinct for vengeance long suppressed rekindled in her soul. She barely slept that night for contemplation of the possibilities stretching out in front of her.

            But first, she had to verify whether this young girl, the new hire at Volumina International was truly David Saunders, her bastard fucker of an ex-boyfriend. It beggared belief.

            That morning, she sent him a text arranging a meeting. Then, over a series of cups of tea brewed and left to go cold and grim untasted, she spent a few hours looking up her ex-boyfriend online. His personal online activity was minimal, his social media presence nearly non-existent. But he cropped up elsewhere, frequently tagged in the digital photographs of young women—so many pretty girls—arms at their waist, or the small of their back as they stepped in close for their drunken snapshot of a night out with this intense, charismatic man they’d just met. Date stamps suggested few repeats; clearly, he flitted between girls often. But still—the visual evidence of his promiscuity over the years set the angry flame within her to ever higher burning.

            The strange nature of his disappearance from December onwards doused her anger, like a bucket of ice thrown over coals. Something happened, and David Saunders disappeared. The very lack of any kind of police report or news coverage was itself inexplicable. One day, there was some internal comms attached to his name, an extension of the Neopharm brand into an emerging foreign market. A few days later, a job listing went up for David’s position. Not long after, some low-key fanfare at the replacement hire—his job was high profile enough to make industry-specific news—and Julia raised an eyebrow when she saw who got the job. But the report made no mention of the man whose job was filled, or why he’d stepped out of post.

            Retired? Mental breakdown? Accident or change of careers or a step down in responsibility: whatever the reason, one day David Saunders existed, and the next he simply disappeared from work, social media and the company of pretty, young women.

            There was some media commotion at the same time about the company’s CEO, Jeremiah Steele, and some NDA bullshit concerning trouble with which he may or may not have been involved. There were closed-door deliberations and indeterminate criminal investigations (still ongoing), all very ambiguous, though not necessarily unusual for such a powerful man. All the noise might have drowned out the mystery of David Saunders’ disappearance.

            And yet…. Nothing she read even hinted at the chain of events that led from then to now; from the smirking thirty-nine-year-old man, green eyes glinting under short-cropped dark hair, to pretty blonde chick bawling her eyes out, mascara streaked, eyeliner running, lipstick smeared, and pleated skirt, heels and nylons, tight top and push-up bra.

            For some time, Julia deliberated over sending out some feelers. She could reach out to some contacts she had at NeoPharm. Some of her contacts reached all the way back to her IndigoTech days. She sat there staring into the middle distance for some time, fingers tapping at her chin. Eventually, those same fingers danced across her phone, tapping out a quick message.

            “Hey Tom,” she wrote, hesitated and then continued. “Congratulations on the promotion—saw the piece in Trendscape. I had no idea you were in line for -his- job.” Another pause, and then she added. “I know we’ve got this unspoken rule about not talking about him, but what happened? Did he get fired? Fuck the boss’s daughter?” She grinned. “I’m sure he had it coming, whatever it was.”

            The response came later that day, as Julia rode a taxi into town towards Café d’Eon. The day was hot and bright. Shops blurred by and sunlight glared painfully off storefront windows, early morning heat already shimmering the air. The thin fabric of her t-shirt stuck to her skin from the brief wait outside for the taxi.

            Her phone dinged.  “Thanks,” Tom wrote. “No idea where that bastard ran off to. Just disappeared.” The app indicated he was typing something else. She waited. It seemed to take an inordinately long time for him to type out the follow-up.

            “Why?” Tom asked. “Why do you want to know?”