Chapter 1 Prologue
Maeve Strum couldn't feel her feet.
She felt pain all over her body, like she was going to fall anytime soon. It amazed her slightly how she wasn’t even already dead from all of this.
Or from seeing her boyfriend of seven years humping away at the so-called co-worker that he had sworn was only ‘just a friend’.
She never liked him anyway, really. At first, she did. He was nice, he smelled good, and he wasn’t constantly telling her she needed to look good or stop working as hard as she did— which she was by the way. 9-9. But she had to. She was overflowing in debt. So much debt she was sure the only way out of it was her dying.
No, it wasn’t a joke.
And yes, she was going to do that tonight.
Her apartment smelt like piss and mold— no matter how hard she cleaned it, it never seemed to go away. There wasn’t any electricity, she had gotten them cut ages ago. She was also dripping wet from standing under the rain for hours since she couldn’t get any bus from where her boyfriend lived.
Ex. Ex boyfriend. She needed to grasp that.
Her entire body ached as her work bag fell to the ground, steam pouring out of her lips as the cold from outside bit into her skin. She took out her phone from her pocket that she had placed in a cellophane bag. The screen was terribly cracked, and her phone was almost about to die.
She shook as she typed in her siblings' names, trying to call each of them. The first one didn’t go through. The second, she didn’t try to call because she knew she was blocked. The third, she knew would only pick to yell at her. The fifth was her last option. “Hey, Johnny—”
“I really don’t have any more money to lend to you,”
She could hear the revulsion in his voice. The way he made it clear that her presence was pointless and useless— and she knew he wished she was dead. “I’m not calling for money, silly. I just… I just thought that maybe we should sit together, you know? Maybe have a drink once in a while?”
“Don’t you have like a million dollar debt to settle?” She heard him snort and scoff at the same tone. Her chest began to hurt as she clenched her phone tighter while he continued, “God, you really are so pathetic. Look, you sold our family house, and could barely do what you needed to do as the oldest sister. You disgust me. And Jesus Christ, can’t you take more care of yourself? I don’t even know how your boyfriend stands you. You’re ugly, you’re stupid too, and you genuinely bring nothing but bad luck. That’s why the rest of us don’t talk to you. This is the last time we’re talking. Are we clear?”
And then he hung up.
Maeve stared at her screen, watching it till her phone died before a small sigh left her lips, “Ah. You too, huh?”
She let her phone fall to the floor, the pain in her chest burning so hard she thought she would die. She dragged her feet across her room, ready to take out the lighter she had placed on the table so she could burn the entire apartment down— and the second she picked it, watched the screen of her laptop come up, reflecting a message.
\[File Name: Every Man Wants Me\]
She stopped, her eyes staring at her screen. She didn’t understand how the laptop was even still working, or how this particular file still existed in it.
Slowly, she moved to the chair and sat, clicking on the file as a story she had written many years ago when she was sixteen, filled with the idea that the notion of love was real, and hoped on signing out the story away to make some money.
“This…” She clicked lower, her face growing more lines. “Is even more disgusting to read now.”
Every Man Wants Me was a story about a girl called Isabella ____. She was the only child of a high class noble who was known for her beauty, grace and purity. She was clumsy and naive and very much annoying with how stupid she was, but all the men clearly wanted her. And there was barely any character development, or conflict. Or twists. Just a Duke, a Prince and a Stablemaster fawning over a girl who clearly didn’t know her left from her right.
Her eyes burned and she felt disgusted but Maeve pushed through to the end, her brain hurting as she sighed and muttered under her breath, “That was torture. I really was stupid,”
Then without thinking twice about it, deleted the entire file.
“Done and dusted,”
Surprisingly, the story was so terrible that she had momentarily lost her need to die. It was gone. Just like that.
So Maeve, leaving the lighter back on the table, walked to her dusty creaky bed with her wet clothes and fell asleep.
The second she did, her laptop flashed and static filled the air before a new sentence flashed across the screen, “WELCOME, AUTHOR,”
There was static again before the last sentence that would ever come up on the computer showed, “AND GOODBYE.”