Unhappily Ever After
Chapter Two- Lara Redd13/06/2008 09:45:00
Geek. It's a label. You either like being labelled as one, or you'd rather hide your inner geekiness. Lara Redd was definitely the proud type. She loved working on the computers at her school and creating things that looked professional. It was probably the only thing that made her different from the other girls at the Academy. The one thing she could do that they were hopeless at.
IT classes were Lara's time to shine. She laughed inwardly as the superficial girls struggled to find the delete key, and kept asking what "PowerPoint" was. Meanwhile, she zoomed ahead in class creating movies and morphs, and in her spare time, logging on to msn.
Instant messaging was something Lara found incredibly addicting. Once she started typing it was hard for her fingers to stop. She had a whole different set of friends online. People who shared the same interests as her, and like-minded geeks who loved being unique, which came from all around the globe. Her real friends suddenly became of second importance as she replaced them with her online ones.
The only thing that ever managed to drag her away from her PC screen for a long period of time was the disappearance of her friend. Snow joined at the Academy quite late, and never truly seemed to understand much of what Lara was saying, but she was lovely. Her, Wendy and Lara were very close in the three years that Snow attended school. But Lara always found her a little weedy. She would never take part in the plots that Wendy and herself were concocting. She wouldn't even light a match when they set the football pitch on fire…
Despite Snow not being much of a rebel, it shocked her to the core when she left. The trio became a double act, and now only Lara was left to console Wendy- the over emotional one. The last few years at the academy for Lara were pretty bleak. She almost depended on msn now. It was like coffee, she needed her fix each day. This made her abandon Wendy, who went and joined a clique of Plastic girls. So, in her anger, She kept her eyes glued to the screen, much to the dismay of her mother
Gwyneth Redd was the very opposite of her daughter. She was dreamy and held bohemian ideals, while her daughter was very technical and believed in science- not the supernatural. Lara got very annoyed with her mother easily. Her head was filled with nothing but air and she was always going on about her glittering aura, and how science was completely incorrect. Half the time she couldn't understand how they were related. How did a computer genius manage to spring from an air headed hippy?
After working hard at school, Lara managed to attain all the necessary A-levels, and got offers from many a university. She had her heart set on Oxford imparticular, and she got in. So, by the time September rolled round, Lara was in ecstasy- at even the notion of leaving her home. Everything was packed, organised and colour coded in her suitcase and her laptop was full of charge and ready to go.
By 8:30 She was ready to leave her house behind forever. Striding out to the taxi with pride, ready to become the innovator of a new computer brand… or the manager of Microsoft (whichever paid most). She was just about to open the doors, when her mother came stumbling after her, tissue box in hand, mascara smeared and eyes leaking as always.
"I'm sorry… I really am darling. It's just, I couldn't bear to let you go…"
"Mum. What do you mean?"
"I.I … withdrewyourapplication"
"What?"
"I. I just thought we could stay at home. You know, just us girls… I had everything planned- we could…"
"Are you kidding me? I am serious mum! Is this some kind of joke?"
"I. Got you a job down at the soup kitchen… You're the new delivery girl!"
At this point Lara realised the seriousness of her mother's words. She wanted her to be a delivery girl. Delivery girl. The words went round and round in her head- tormenting her. Everyone else would become famous and there she would be- delivering soup to some miserable mediums in the London rain. No one would ever dream of asking Einstein to be a delivery boy! And Marie Curie never had to deliver any of her cures to radiation- So Why her?
Lara left her suitcase in the driveway and stormed back up stairs. A plot to torture her mother was already beginning to form in her mind. She didn't know how she could ever forgive her… throwing her future away- to work in some stupid soup kitchen- this was something that no sheer amount of herbal tea could cure…
Lara was sitting at the wifi spot in the soup kitchen, plugged into her ipod and chatting on msn. She had just recently changed her name to "Littlereddpistol123". Everyone used to call her the "Little Redd" at her school because of her height- and from there on she was known as Little Red Riding Hood. Lara always thought that Little Red was possibly the stupidest of the fairytale characters she had come across. Who in their right mind takes directions from a wolf? The names made her cry then, but now, ten years later, she was laughing about the whole thing.
Right now she was having a conversation with one of her online friends who had just finished her degree at university in Japan. He had a boyfriend now and they were settling down soon. It was nice to speak to him, but half the time she couldn't bear to look at his words.
His life had panned out, however hers had taken a nosedive.
He was just about to sign off, when Lara's computer started to bleep. She got nasty glares from the soup kitchen staff, but she found the source of the beeping quickly and turned it off. Someone was requesting to see when she was online. His username was "Clawface". Lara laughed- Clawface? Such a rip off of "Scar face"… She pressed enter in the vein that this person would probably be a pussycat, and carried on saying goodbye to her friend in Japan.
Claw face, however, started IMing her immediately. It didn't look like he had any intention of leaving her alone.
"Where are you going, Little Red?"
He repeated the line again and again and didn't stop. Lara pressed the "block" button, but to no effect. She started panicking. This couldn't be happening- he kept on typing despite the block button. She appealed to her friend but he had signed out.
Lara tried all the buttons, until Claw face's line changed to "Delivering to your Grandma- Why that's nice- why don't I help you?"
This time She tried as hard as she could to stop herself from overreacting. It must be someone from school… Some harmless girl who she had graduated with.
Lara signed out quickly, and grabbing the pot of mushroom soup, got onto her company bike. The fresh London air shocked her to her senses, but still could not make her forget the two lines. She stopped at the traffic lights, red in the face, and took a right to Mrs. Adel's place. She was a regular and Lara knew the way there very well. She was always ordering it because she read somewhere that it cures Arthritis.
She was waiting in the traffic jam, when she heard that deflating sound you get from tyres. Lara swore- she was late as it was, and now this… she didn't even have her pump on her… more swearing...Then she caught sight of the thing that caused her tyre to deflate.
A single pin was fastening the note to her tyre. She could just make out the writing, but then the cars began to move. The car owners banged their fists down on their horns as Lara dragged her bike over to the pavement side- their horns seemed to be in perfect unison, creating a morbid orchestra. Meanwhile, the note was messing with Lara's head- it was another line from the fable that she loathed…
"I have eyes everywhere- all the better to see you with"
Suddenly each CCTV camera seemed like a potential threat to her, but she kept reassuring herself that it was bunches of hoodies targeting another bunch of hoodies- your average London situation.
Hauling her bike behind her, Laura ran as fast as she could. The soup was stone cold as she reached Mrs Adel's dilapidated flat. It looked even more dilapidated than usual now she looked closer. Crimson letters were covering her immaculate white door. Crimson letters spelling out the message
"Remember I can hear your every word, Lara"
This was becoming insane. Lara's brain was working overtime to come up with plausible explanations, but there was nothing that could explain this. She dropped the soup at the gate and ran down an alleyway. It was there that she heard the muffled screams of Mrs Adel. Lara saw her wriggling and trying to resist some invisible force. She had a gag on her face and was trying to escape from something that Lara could not see. Then a clear crisp voice resonated inside her head "Lara, I have a gun, I guess it will be all the better to kill her with.."
The shot was fired from nowhere and Mrs. Adel was dead..
