Artistikem

Enjoy!

I’ve been a really bad blogger as of late. Twitter friends know I’ve been up to my head in school work and haven’t been able to blog in a while, so I thought it would be nice of me to post something I’ve been working on, since my brain’s too fried right now to come up with something clever enough to put here. So I’ll leave you with the second chapter of a story I finished some months ago and for which I’m writing a sequel during NaNoWriMo (not that it’ll be happening in 30 days but at least I’ve started it).

I want to thank my wonderful friend @showmyface for her support.

Chapter one can be found here: The Caregiver, Chapter 1

Chapter 2

    My first evening in Sayer’s mansion passed quietly and without much trouble. Helga came back with his meds, repeated a hundred times how his doctor, Dr. Hart, mandated to keep him in his bed at all times and showed me how he liked his tea made, for whenever George wasn’t available. Of course Mr. Sayer didn’t comply with the staying in bed part, so I let him be and went to sleep early.
    On my second day I met George, or should I say, saw George’s frown float around the house without having more than a “top of the morning” and an about face. The man with long arms and skinny fingers wouldn’t talk to me, or even look at me. At one point I tried to step in his way so he would have to at least stop one second and acknowledge my presence, however, it didn’t work, nothing did. By nightfall I had given up for the day and when Helga came by and asked me if I had met him I told her we had gotten acquainted quite well. If he didn’t want anything to do with me, I wouldn’t push him. He was only ten years younger than Sayer, so I had no intention of starting and argument with any of them.
    Late on the third day Helga brought a list of errands for me that Mr. Sayer dismissed the moment she was out the door. Finding myself without work in my new workplace, I retired to my room and went through my clothes, uniforms and the little things I had brought… for the hundredth time. This was going to be harder than I thought.
    It was around ten in the evening when I was wandering around the house and saw the lights in the office were on. I walked towards it like a moth to find Mr. Sayer sitting behind his desk talking on the phone. As soon as he saw me I tried to make my escape.
    “Scarlett?”
    He saw me. I froze, then decided that since he had called my name I couldn’t ignore him, so I turned on my heels to see him hang the phone and beckon me into the room.
    “You shouldn’t be walking around the house this late, Mr. Sayer.”
    “What other lies did my sister tell you? What else did she instruct you to prohibit me?”
    “Pretty much everything that isn’t you staying in bed the whole day.”
    He chuckled, finding it funny somehow, while I stood behind an elegant leather chair with my hands clutched to the seam.
    “As much as I love my sister,” he walked around the desk, “I can’t let her do this to me. She’s always been very possessive but this has gone too far,” he leaned back on the edge of the desk with his arms crossed over his chest, “that was why I asked her to find someone that could take care of me apart from George, so I could get her off my back.”
    “Whose instructions should I follow, then?”
    “When Helga is around you act as if hers, but really all I need is someone to be around so she stops harassing me about being ill and sleeping all day. You can do whatever you want, really, I have things to do and I must get back to them as soon as possible.”
    “I understand.”
    “Good to know that you do. Now, would you be nice enough to bring me some tea? I know I shouldn’t be asking you this but George is out and won’t be back until early morning.”
    “Yes, sir. I’ll be right back.”
    I ran quickly down the stairs to the first floor and made the tea as Helga instructed me. I took a lot of care on how I placed everything on the tray so I could keep them that way through the flights of stairs back to Sayer’s office.
    He waved for me to come in the moment I reached the door, all the while keeping an animated conversation with someone on the other side of the phone.
    “Call me if you make arrangements for next Thursday, Max. See you then.”
    “No wonder your sister is so worried about you. Making plans already?” I said as soon as he hung up.
    “You brought only one cup.”
    “The tea is for you, Mr. Sayer.”
    “Don’t you like tea? It’s very soothing, helps me sleep when I’m stressed.”
    “As a matter of fact I do like tea.”
    “Then,” he rummaged inside one of his desk’s drawers and took out another cup, “have it with me, it may be the first of many. How do you like this place so far?”
    “It’s a beautiful house. I like it very much,” I felt so at ease as he poured tea in both cups and slid one to my side of the desk that I was starting to talk to him like I would talk to a friend. I straightened my back in an effort to straighten my demeanor.
    “Are you keeping the job? You know you can walk out whenever you want if you don’t like it.”
    “I’ve been here for only three days and so far so good.”
    “I do hope you stay. This house feels so empty sometimes, it makes me want to get out running like a mad man. Sit down, you don’t want to drink your tea standing up.”
    “Yes, Mr. Sayer.”
    A noise came from a floor below, startling us both.
    “It’s too early for George to be back.” Another noise and Mr. Sayer left his seat and went to a window. “Drunk kids in the street.”
    He walked away from the window and back to the desk when another noise, this time louder and closer than the first, was heard. We exited the office together; I tiptoed while he tried to step very slowly so his shoes wouldn’t make a sound, and searched for the source.
    We kept looking down from the third floor to the second but saw nothing. Then I went into one of the bedrooms and saw a shadow by the window. Mr. Sayer tried to pull me back but I didn’t yield. What I did was pull a 22 mm gun from my pocket and quietly sidestepped close to the wall towards the window.
    The silhouette of a man came to view and I pointed my gun at it, ready to confront whoever was outside the glass and crawling on the walls of the house. I could feel my own panting as if the whole room was beating along with my heart, as if it knew that my finger was tightening its grip on the trigger little by little.
    “Don’t shoot the glass, it’s bulletproof,” Sayer whispered to my ear.
    Then the shadow disappeared and we both thought it was gone. When I turned around Sayer was right behind me, his whole body stiff and his hands making fists.
    “The drunken kids, I believe,” I commented sarcastically as I lowered my gun.
    “Where did you get that gun?”
    Then came the bang on a back door and I rushed into my room, pulled my luggage from under the bed and took out another gun, my handy 9 mm. When I came out of the room Sayer was emerging from his office with a 40 mm and was shocked to see me holding a different gun next to my face.
    The noise went off again and all shock was left behind as I hastened down the stairs. He stayed behind. Not that I cared, I had to check on whatever was happening before him.
    I strode across a hall into the kitchen and saw another silhouette through the glass on the back door. It froze, as if it was looking at me, before turning to run away. I shot once and the bullet bounced right off it, hitting a wall, a lamp.
    “Fuck!” I ducked until it stopped. The whole house was bulletproof.
    I unlocked the door and sped through the grass into the backyard while the silhouette kept running in zigzags, dodging my bullets. Then a second silhouette appeared out of nowhere and I could see the shiny metal gun glinting under the lampposts. Before I could shoot it, it was dead on the floor. I instinctively looked up and saw Sayer shutting a window on the second floor. This was my cue to go after the other one, the one that had stopped to see the fall of his companion.
    I ran towards it and managed to close the distance between us before it realized I was near. With its eyes still on the corpse, it pointed another shiny gun at me and squeezed the trigger once, missing me by inches. Not that it cared, because it was still standing in the same spot when I got dangerously near.
    “Who are you? What are you doing here?” It didn’t answer, so I pressed my gun to its temple, “answer me!”
    It dropped the gun, took off the black mask that covered its face and his white skin contrasted the black of his suit. It was a young man, probably in his twenties, the point of his nose was red and tears were rolling down his cheeks.
    “I’m new to this.”
    “Who sent you?”
    “I can’t tell.”
    “For fuck’s sake, just answer the fucking question!”
    “I can’t! They’ll kill my family.”
    I cackled like I hadn’t in a very long time, “they must be dead by now, and you’ll be dead also if you don’t answer me.”
    We both heard the steps of the limping Sayer as he slowly approached us.
    “Scarlett, go back inside!”
    “I’ve got it Mr. Sayer,” I turned to speak to him, “don’t worry,” and was startled by him shooting the guy before I did. The kid had picked up his gun and was about to shoot my flank without me noticing.
    “Get in!” Sayer roared, grabbing me by an arm and pulling me back into the house.
    His face was flushed, his brows furrowed and his eyes didn’t meet mine until we were in a study on the first floor where he pushed me to a chair, took my gun and his, placed them on a table and pulled out his mobile.
    “George, we have two dead squirrels in the backyard,” he said before hanging and turning back to me, “who are you?”
    His enraged eyes were peering into mine and I could feel the trembling creeping up from my feet, through my legs, my torso, down my arms and to my hands.
    He took his gun back from the table, cocked it and pointed it to my head.
    “My name is Scarlett Lang.”
    “Who sent you?”
    “I was recommended by Rafael Cisneros when your sister went to him searching for a caregiver,” I gulped before proceeding, “my grandfather owns the shooting range Cisneros uses to train his men.”
    “Cisneros? You know Cisneros?”
    “Yes. Adrian Lang is his name, my grandfather’s I mean.”
    The canon of his gun cut through the thickness of the air between us, dispersing it and redistributing it around the room as he pulled it away from me.
    “Helga,” he said to himself, “she means good but in her effort she has exposed me. There is no doubt someone sent those kids because she’s being followed.”
    My mouth felt dry, my heart was racing so fast I thought it would drill its way out of my chest.
    “She knows that you handle guns, doesn’t she?”
    “It was one of the requirements for hiring me, that I could help protect you. After the attack on you and your family she’s worried you’ll suffer another one.”
    “That is why I stayed here, to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now tell me, are you even a real nurse?”
    “Yes, sir, I am.”
    “Well,” his face relaxed and with it my trembling disappeared, “those two were young and inexperienced, it won’t do much to see what the security cameras recorded, we stopped them on time,” he said as he looked round, then turned to me, “and our teas must’ve gone cold. If you ask me,” he gave me my gun back, “it’s time for bed,” and limped out of the room.
    “Night, sir.”
    “You can keep the job, Scarlett,” his voiced traveled through the hallway, “couldn’t have found a better match for this myself.”