The Light amid the Darkness - Jay
Jay stepped off the private runway onto the verdant grass before him. He had made it to Atheria. A place that he had been dreaming about for ten years now. As he walked toward his car with his long, casual stride he could see the mansions on the hillside above him. They surrounded him like Olympian gods; huge and ethereal beings. Every one of them was larger and more elaborate than the next. The town was located in the valley and he mused to himself that the area looked just the way he had pictured it. It was quiet and contained. As picturesque as money could buy.
He opened the door to his mint condition 1961 Ferrari and gracefully slid inside. It was exceptionally rare and a red color that stood out amongst the other modest, modern cars parked around him. He started the Ferrari and listened to its purr before beginning the circuitous route up the hill to his newly constructed home.
He had come to Atheria in his private plane from New York where he was known as a successful investor. What he invested in was something that no one person had complete knowledge of other than Jay himself. Jay had always been a private person and having money had not changed that. He knew what he liked and what he didn't like. He knew what he needed and what he didn't need. For him, it wasn't about how he got to where he was headed, but that he got there. He had done what he needed to do in order to achieve his goals, most of which involved being exceedingly rich enough to buy whatever he wanted. The thought of apologizing for any of his actions or of weighing things from a moral standpoint would never have occurred to him. He only considered risk and reward.
As he drove up his hill, he saw the homes become bigger and grander than in the valley town he had just left. He passed the exclusive Atherian Club that he was now the owner of. He found his house entrance at the very top of the hill and drove his car up the driveway looking this way and that at the statuaries and foliage that made up his entrance. Before him stood the home that was built to his exact specifications and he wore a pleased smile as his Ferrari stopped in front of it. He had not been around during the construction of it, but it was exactly the way he had imagined it would be. Four stories of stone magnificence with a large fountain out front and an expansive circular driveway.
He left the car and hurriedly walked toward the side of the house, bypassing the servants waiting for him on the steps in front of the driveway. He started walking on a small path that led to the back of the mansion that looked out onto the valley and beyond. He started stepping quicker now onto the long lawn that drew him toward the slope of the hill and down to the other homes below him. The sun was setting and it was getting harder to see clearly as he made his way to the fence that prevented him from falling down the cliff-like drop. He stood there awhile shielding his eyes from the setting sun, trying to see the colors of the numerous houses on the hill below him and their various shapes. "Which one, which one?" He said to himself as his heart beat quicker and anxiousness started to appear. He had to see it. He had to see it before it all turned black with the night. He knew he would not sleep unless he saw it just once. As the sun set and his hopes started to depart, he remembered that in the pictures of her house that he had seen before coming here there was a rooftop swimming pool. He frantically looked for it and then saw it glowing like a beacon below him. It was a light blue luminescence in the growing darkness. He could vaguely make out the large mansion where she resided around and below the pool's still waters. He stopped breathing for a minute and his heart beat faster with the adrenaline that rushed through him. Like his love for her that he had held onto for all of these years, this rooftop pool now became his touchstone, ridiculous as it may sound. He bowed his head toward it leaning against the iron railing that enclosed his property. The closeness of her touched him.
He stayed that way for a while and then, lifting his head and slowly turning, headed for the tall manse before him. As he walked, he thought of all of the people in those mansions on his hill and the others hills that surrounded the town of Atheria. He imagined them all cozy in their beds with no cares in the world except when the next society event would be in order to display their latest gown or show off their expensive car. He pictured a man, large and powerful, who liked to display his wealth to society in the form of a woman. And he thought about that said woman, curled like an innocent child in her bed, her golden hair spread on the pillow beneath her. He imagined her heart-shaped face with her wide blue eyes and rosebud mouth, her breathless voice. All of this filled him with indescribable feelings of love and hatred, jealousy and longing.
He had patiently waited for the right time to enter this scene of money, class, and entitlement. He had come up from nothing to now be one of the elite that reigned in this small, tony vacation town that everyone of any consequence from New York to Los Angeles aspired to live in for three months out of the year. He had done everything that he could do to prepare for this moment and his plan to become one of them and secure his prize was finally coming into being. His mouth formed a wry smile as he walked back to the front steps of his house, now ready to greet his servants who had been waiting there for the hour since he arrived. "I'm going to pluck the crown jewel of Atheria right out from underneath all of them," he thought as he took his front steps two at a time and reached to shake his English butler's hand.