It was four o'clock, Bella noted as she glanced up at the red clock above the shop entrance, four o'clock in the morning. She sighed as she finished wiping down the last grungy table surface. The diner would close in two more hours, Bella often told herself, "Just an hour or two more, then you can go home." It helped her get through the long, 24-hour shifts she had been enduring for the past year.
She went through the usual routine, mopping the dirty tile floor, cleaning the dark windows, and refilling each table's various condiments, just like always, pacing herself to the Oldies station emanating from the diner speakers. Sometimes when she was especially bored, she would swing her hips to the music as she mopped, but not tonight. It seemed the heavy downpour of rain outside the diner seemed to match her mood perfectly. Dark, dreary, and miserable.
Just a few hours prior, Bella spent her twenty-fourth birthday cleaning out the diner's filthy restrooms, with no one to keep her company but the recluse cook, Jim, frying the occasional customer's order behind the swinging wooden door behind her. Jim never spoke to anyone though, being cold and bitter to most, so his silence never bothered her.
It was times like these, when Bella was left alone at the early hours of the morning, when her loneliness would deeply depress her the most. She was just locking up the register for the night when the shrill bell jingled from the entrance, followed by loud high heels clicking on the tiles. Bella immediately looked down at the puddle of water sitting under the stiletto red heels at the door, already reaching for the mop, when she saw the shadow of black fishnet stockings on the woman's unnaturally pale legs.
She had forgotten that the strip club two blocks away closed at four in the morning.
The sight stirred up a memory Bella had long since forgotten. She found herself remembering flying in from New York to visit her cousin during the holidays, Melanie Cooper, during the short ride they took on their way to a lunch gathering in Chicago.
Melanie's eyes left the neon building, her head shaking in disgust and disdain. "It sickens me that the city allowed this establishment to be built so close to the theater, don't you agree?" Her sharp eyes darted at Bella, waiting for a response that Bella was reluctant to give.
"Yes, the location is quite inconvenient for tourists, I'm sure many people agree with you, though," Bella murmured in response, glancing at the brick building as it passed. She was unsure of whether she should contribute to the topic, knowing of Melanie's tendency to overreact and rant.
Melanie was rather unpleasant, even though she was family to Bella. She took a great deal of pride in herself, always admiring her corn-silk blonde hair and her intimidating, beautiful eyes. She was everything Bella was not, completely opposite, but that didn't stop Melanie from insisting Bella visit her from time to time.
As Melanie took out a small compact mirror, Bella turned the pages of the Chicago Sun Tribune in her lap and scanned the daily news, her eyes found the front page story. A story that made her breathing halt, along with her ability to move. There he was, clad in his usual business suit and tie, smiling up at the camera.
'Charlie Swan Dies at 49, police are still investigating murder...'
Bella found that she could no longer read through her distorted vision, and she quickly swiped at her blurred eyes to avoid Melanie's questions. Not even a month ago, Bella had just returned from her hometown in Baltimore, Maryland, to attend her father's funeral, and she had not recovered, to put it lightly. She had been devastated, but did her best to avoid breaking down in front of what seemed to be the entire business world at the service. The cameras' would have loved that. Another great story line to draw in attention to the front page. 'Swan's daughter, Isabella, cries for her father's untimely death!'
Her father's multimillion dollar corporation, including it's associates, attended as well, which roughly translated to thousands of people. It was extremely nerve-racking, and Bella felt miserable the entire trip, but she had to be there for her grieving mother. She had to be strong for her mother, because if she crashed and burned, who would care for Renee? Surely not her distant relatives across the country who never bothered to make any contact with us.
Bella swallowed the growing lump in her throat and shoved the newspaper to the floor of the limousine rather too forcefully, but she diminished the potential of conversation with Melanie by turning to face the tinted windows, finding comfort in the beautiful scenery passing by at blurring speeds. Autumn had painted the city leaves scarlet, burnt amber, and gold with time. Downtown Chicago was a lively, and beautiful part of the city where poverty and crime was lacking-here, the people thrived. Women and men of every kind crowded across the street corners, some with briefcases, others with shopping bags, moving together like a single force.
Her eyes flickered from face to face, seeing a newspaper stand, a young bicyclist, a couple sharing a table at an outdoor restaurant, and then, a mother and her child.
Bella didn't have to know if they were in fact that- mother and daughter. It was painfully obvious to her. The warm, motherly glow the woman radiated as she held her little girl close to her chest, the small girl's hands framing her mother's laughing cheeks as she giggled right back, dimples and all. The sight made her chest tighten and tug, but she couldn't force her gaze away until the very last second.
Bella never could have children. It was physically impossible, unless she adopted, and she simply didn't have time with her education possessing every waking moment of her life.
She was a musician, breezing her way through Julliard's full-ride scholarship. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't difficult either. Bella already had dozens of symphonies and orchestras already lining up careers for her, waiting for her to join them-whether or not she surpassed their expectations at Julliard or not. Her parents expected this of Bella, but it didn't lessen their pride of their gifted, only daughter.
Long ago, even at the age of eleven, she had mastered nearly twelve instruments, spending her childhood days inside the bright music room, a tudor instructing her over her shoulder as she played to her utmost potential. Her fingers would ache and blister, her shoulders would tire, her spirits would waver and her frustration would burst forth, but she never gave up. Because even as a child, she knew it was her purpose, what she was born to do.
Each single instrument was special to her; having some specific place in her, but she was most favorable of the piano. It was her fiery passion, never seeming to bore her like other instruments would occasionally. It was certain that her fingers were designed to glide up and down the ivory keys, like they had a mind of their own, moving in a frenzied, all consuming path across white and black.
She had been preparing for Julliard her whole life, growing up with the best possible education, tudors, and specialists to push her to her fullest potential.
Isabella Swan would be the best musician in the world. Everyone in the music world knew this, they expected this, to them, like it was as certain as the sun rising.
But that was four years ago.
Bella was pulled from her memory by the sound of someone clearing their throat. She snapped her head up at the girl and her ears got hot as she saw her roll her eyes. The girl must have only been in her early twenties, she wore blood-red lipstick, slightly smeared, her black eye makeup as well, which made her all the more intimidating, as it made her look harsher, more angry. Her short hair was dark from being soaked, but it was pitch black and tangled in a disarray on top of her head. She wore a long, black trench coat that was still dripping with rain water, and Bella didn't have to look to know what she was wearing underneath.
She was a stripper.
The girl ran her fingers through her dripping, tangled hair while she took a seat on a barstool to the left of the register, then began tapping her long red nails noisily against the counter.
"What can I get you to drink?" Bella forced out as politely as she could at four o'clock in the morning, pulling out her notepad and pencil from her apron.
"Yeah, coffee. Black." The girl's voice carried out hypnotically, and Bella felt the words vibrating in the back of her throat as her sharp eyes connecting to Bella's own.
Bella's feet inched back almost interperceptably, it was a natural response she didn't even understand, but was too stunned to consider. There was an unspoken instict that told Bella that this girl's eyes were clearly a warning sign, a signal that had Bella thinking nothing but running out the goddamn door. Not a single trace of humanity was found in her fridgid stare. Her eyes weren't just looking up at her, they were searing, uncomfortably wide and unblinking...and hungry. It was raw and black as Hell's depths, and so animalistic that Bella's heart beat picked up into a chaotic hammer, a hammer that had the girl's dialated, wide animal eyes trained to her neck, her full crimson lips pulling back just enough for Bella to see the unnaturally sharp white of her teeth.
A chocked sound nearly escaped, but Bella smothered it with a shaky inhale and sealed her lips. "Alright," She managed, barely able to speak through terrified jumbled thoughts.
She turned and with shaking legs, took her order, noticing Jim no longer working with a worried glance at the empty kitchen through the circular window, and returned a minute later with the girl's coffee, chanting soothing words of comfort the whole way back. It didn't help––but another sight did ease the panic raging through her body. When she came in sight of the girl, she found that her face was no longer intimidating. On the contrary, it was a soft, wistful expression, focused on the ugly tabletop. Her eyes had shifted to a slightly human light, and she noticed with astonished eyes that she no longer saw pitch black under her dark purple eyelids, but rather...butterscotch gold that was startlingly visible even across the diner.
Her shoulders that had once held high had folded on herself, caving in slightly, and her lips were softly singing to the scratchy song emanating from the speakers. The difference was drastic. A new, powerful, maternal feeling rose in Bella. She wanted to do something for her, but didn't know what at the time. She still remembered the empty black stare from earlier, but it wasn't near as terrifying. Bella felt like she could relate to this girl––that same expression plagued her own face nearly every day.
Once the song ended, Bella sighed and walked over to the girl, coffee mug in hand. As she neared, the girl's eyes once again filled with ink black, her leather trench coat shuddering noticably. Hesitance filled Bella and she swallowed her fear and set the mug down. A single drop of sweat gathered at her brow. "A-Anything else?" She studdered, watching the alarmingly rapid rate at which the humanity drained from her face.
"Nothing," she snapped in a single short breath. Bella waited for the expected intake of breath––she watched her so intensely, as if it would be her neck if she blinked or even turned her gaze––and her heart picked up speed at the realization. She doesn't breathe.
"T-that'll be a dollar-fifty, Miss." Bella didn't know what to say as she watched the girl pull a couple of dollars from inside her corset under the trench coat, not showing a trace of shame. She seemed as comfortable as someone checking a wristwatch, with the exception of her annoyed, unsatisfied expression. Instead of handing Bella the change, she smacked it down on the dingy brown table, making the condiment holder rattle and jerk noisily, and pushed past her as she shoved her way out of the booth, nearly sending Bella tumbling to the ground, striding to the door. Bella wordlessly watched with furrowed brows as her black trench coat blended and disappeared into the night, the downpour of rain drowning out the click of her red stiletto heels.
She looked down at the coffee mug at the table where she sat. The coffee was untouched and cold.