Linda Clarkson sat on the bare ground in her ranch-style home. She had only just moved in a few weeks ago, but she was bored to her marrow with having to wake up to this insane loneliness. “Why am I just the odd one out?” She commented, flipping over from one page on her Gramsville account to the other.
She admired the pictures that many of her friends uploaded all of the time she spent on her respective social media accounts. I don’t know why life has been so unfair to me? Did I do something wrong? She thought to herself. She had been trying so hard to find a man of her own since her previous relationship with Smith. Smith was Linda’s nursing school sweetheart. Only that she had caught him in bed with a girl whom he claimed was his sister.
“What kind of bastard would treat a girl like me in that manner?” She barked out aloud. This was in her moment of deep thinking and seeing that her friend, Matilda from way back nursing college a few years ago, was already married. She walked over to the mirror in the corridor of her well-furnished home. It was a full-length mirror that showed every detail of her finesse. It was her way of telling herself that she was still as beautiful as she used to be in college.
She used the palms of her hands to rub over her peach-sized burst. Linda turned sideways, and the push of her rears made her think of herself as a body of work that anyone would love. The curve on her rather slim body gave her a rare aura that she would find love again. Her round face with red-looking hair complemented her light skin. She was an epitome of beauty that would always make willing heads sway when she walked by.
While Linda was still busy admiring herself, her Smartphone notified her with the message tone. When she gets messages in that manner, the first thing that comes to Linda’s mind is that she probably has a message from work. “Who could that be again? My shift today is at night. This is just 11:30am, Mr. Kent.” She commented, walking reluctantly towards the center of her sitting room where she had left her cell phone on the ground.
She unlocked her phone and checked in on the message that was sent. It was a message from Katherine Ferguson. Katherine used to be one of Linda's favorite people while in college. They used to be a clique of five beautiful ladies. Linda was the prettiest of them all. Surprisingly, before they all graduated from college, the other four girls separated from Linda because she had the sort of beauty that makes their respective boyfriends leave them- or so they thought.
Of all of the other girls, it hurt Linda that Matilda would let go of the friendship that they shared. While she saw the pop-up of Matilda’s message, fresh memories of how they were once roommates rushed through her memory. She thought about how she shared her secrets with Matilda, and they had a bond that the other girls were jealous of. “Oh well, what does she have to say this time?” Linda said as she shrugged out of her retrospective thoughts.
Hey Linda, it has been a while. I was at Angela’s wedding a few weeks back. The girls miss you. Should you be having issues with love as you have yet to show us any man? I would suggest you try out Mingles. It’s a dating platform, where we all found the love of our lives.
Linda got infuriated with the message that Matilda had shared. For a moment, many reasons for that message roamed around the walls of her mind. “Could it be that the girls have been stalking me all along?” Then, finally, her mind spoke to her body. She smiled, knowing that she still meant something to her friends. This way, the anger in her subsided in a matter of seconds.
“So, what’s this new site these ladies are talking about?” Linda reluctantly recounted. Mingles. Let’s see what’s going on with the site. Who knows, I just might be lucky with my prince charming. If it worked for my girls, then I might just be luckier than them, Linda bragged.
Linda spent the rest of that day creating a profile on the dating website. She didn’t believe in finding love on a dating site, but she was getting really old at 27. “If you keep this same attitude till you are 30 years old, you might never find a man again!” Her mum’s words replayed in her head. She definitely wanted to be married before the age of 30, but her relationship with her last boyfriend had kept her scarred. She recalled how she had wanted to try out a love affair with colleagues at the hospital where she worked as a local nurse. However, most of them didn’t quite work out because she was scared of being hurt again. She wiped off two ripples of tears that garnered around her eyebrows as she thought about her love life. “You can do this, baby girl!” She inspired herself with those words while punching in the website's name on her cellphone’s browser.
The first page that she saw on the website got her really interested. She saw pictures of some handsome-looking young men that gave her instant thrills about the site. Most of them had muscles and abs that they displayed. She wondered how she would end up with one of them at the end of the day. Her first dilemma on that day was what sort of picture would attract her dream man to her. She instantly began to scamper through her cell phone’s gallery. Linda had so many appealing pictures. Most of them were the revealing type. Quite funnily, those she worked with at the local hospital in Houston thought that she was the Churchillian sort because she was mostly guarded in clothing and words. If only they had the time to skim through her gallery.
“Oh! There. After many minutes of checking in on her gallery, I would use this one as my profile picture,” she finally confirmed. The picture that she chose was a red-looking skimpy bandage dress. She was wearing heavy makeup while in that dress. In a way, the fact that the picture displayed a little more than her normal cleavage made her feel that she would end up attracting numerous handsome men, and she could select one for herself.
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At 6 pm on that day, when Linda had retired from creating an account on Mingles, she went into her bedroom to prepare for her night shift at the hospital. While she was busy, messages kept pouring in on her account. There was no way she could see at the time, but she definitely was thinking about snapping more pictures for her account.
She finally decided to check in on her messages when she was stepping out of her home, and she saw that all of the messages she was getting from Mingles were from her friends. “I see you have been busy setting up an account here. Go girl!” Katherine commented. At first, Linda didn’t know that her friend was chatting her up. She was a little bothered about the sudden message, but on a second look at the pictures on the account. She couldn’t help the giggle.
Linda repeatedly sighed while driving to work. For some strange reason, she felt fulfilled with all that she did for most of that day. She also thought it awkward that the first few messages from the dating account were from her crazy college friends. Phew! She sighed, finally retiring from her overthought, and the silence within her car sunk in as she accelerated at full speed.
Everything was happening so fast for Booker. He wondered how Toby got involved in the shootout. For minutes he began to replay the conversation between Toby and himself on that morning while he sat at the waiting segment of the Emergency Unit. The palpitation of his heart increased by seconds. It was as though a part of him was dying on the inside, and he couldn’t help being stable at that point. Every minute that he spent in the waiting room, he shuffled between sitting and peeping into the window blinds of the operation room. God, please, save him, please. Please! His mind stated as he worried every second. The sighs of worries would not let be too. “If only someone could talk to me about something, If onl…” He uttered aloud. There was so much emotion evident in the tone of his voice. There were just a few other people in the waiting room, but their unease was nothing compared with that of Booker. The two people in the waiting room looked at him like he was some sort of pitiable
It had been exactly three weeks and two days ever since Linda Clarkson opened up her account on Mingles. With the sultry pictures that she had on her profile, it didn’t come as a surprise that there were so many men and women who were interested in having an affair with her. As a matter of fact, she became accustomed to blocking off random contacts on her Mingles account because of the unsolicited pictures and comments that they passed at her. All the same, she was still having the time of her life as she went on numerous dates with random men and had a swell time out with her acquaintances. The downside to it all was that, although the men that she had dates with were handsome. There was always a put-off with them. If it wasn’t their dressing preference, it was their eating mannerism. Linda began to feel like she was the one with the problem. At a point, she felt like giving up on those dates, but she had already mapped out her goals when she decided to open an account on the dating
The next couple of days after Toby had arrived home were a transitional one for him. He couldn’t bring himself to go back to college. He also could not bring himself to stop using the crutches that were prescribed for him by the hospital. Deep down, Toby really wanted to go out to frolic with his friends around the Miami beach. But he was caught in between his fear of being a victim once more and him looking like a shadow of himself. He got bored while staying at home by himself, but he was a little worried about his brother. “What could Booker be doing right now?” He would most times ask himself. He knew Booker too well to be the violent sort. Being the leader of a notorious gang in Florida meant that you had to be deadly. He knew Booker would not want to see someone else hurt him and get away with it. For umpteen times, he would call his brother over his cell phone, wondering if he was safe wherever it was that he was. Most of the time, Booker always told Toby that he was safe. On
“When would this crazy brother of mine get out of this house today?!” Toby interrogated with a blunt tone. Anytime that he spoke in that manner, Booker knew that he was up to no good. Booker was busy trying to select the best fit for his outing on that day. He had been engrossed with the dresser for no less than twenty-five minutes since they woke up. “Okay, I know that tone. Toby, now, what are you up to?” Booker inquired, racing over to the direction of his room. Peeping through the slightly opened door of Toby’s room while he expected an answer from his brother, who was still very much engrossed with his cell phone. “You know. Sometimes, I wonder why a fine-looking young man like you would spend the most of his days on his cell phone, skimming through his social media pages. Yet, with no woman to call his own,” Booker added. “So, you are trying to get at me this morning, right?” Toby raised a brow, staring at his brother with a sarcastic countenance. “Maybe I should remind some
Three months, two days, and fifty seconds had passed since Toby began chatting with Linda. His penchant began to vary, and for some reason, his brother became wary of him. Every morning, before Booker stepped out of their home, he went to Toby’s room to check on how he was faring. Surprisingly, he always found his brother on his cellphone, speaking to a lady and using a different tone from the sort that he used while they chatted. At first, he didn’t intend to speak about it. He wanted Toby to be the first to speak to him about it, but nothing came from him. The days rolled by, and it became uncomfortable for Booker in light of all that they had been through in a while. Morning came on the last day of the third month. Booker hadn’t gone out early because he was beginning to get tired of making his findings about the gang that came for his brother’s life. Whenever he thought about vengeance, the image of his brother being at the hospital rolled through his mind, and this sort of took
Hours ran into days, and soon enough, a full week was already over. While Toby feared that Booker was going to end up doing something irrational, his major dilemma through the rest of that week was about how he was going to inform Booker about his little theatrics with Linda. Throughout most of that week, so many thoughts ran through Toby’s mind. Most of his thoughts were positive, but a small portion of his mind wondered about what would happen if things didn’t go according to his plans. The first on Toby’s worry list was how he was going to bring Booker into the context of his chat with Linda. He was also scared about how Linda would take things when she realized that he had been the one chatting up with her. All through the most of that week, Toby didn’t communicate much with his brother. Most of what filled his mind were how he was going to detail Booker about Linda. Booker had noticed that Toby was avoiding him. He chose not to talk about it until during the weekend. It was on
The week that followed Linda’s proposition was a busy one for Toby. One thing that made him immensely happy was that he had been able to free up his mind with his brother about the presence of Linda. He ideally ought to be overly worried about his reaction to Linda about the whole set-up, but quite surprisingly, he found peace with an old school line that says, when we get to that bridge, we will cross it. A noticeable fact that Toby realized about Booker ever since he came back from his outing with his friends was that he was cold towards him. He knew Booker to be a choleric person on some days, so he didn’t bug him too much about his taciturn nature. Rather, he kept on planning toward the arrival of Linda. For a while now, prior to the incident that led to Toby’s shooting, Booker had been off of his job. He was formerly working with a company in Florida that dealt with construction jobs. After a while, most of the workers were laid off from the job. Ever since then, it had been ha
It was a calm but very sunny day in Clear Water, Florida. Hamilton drive seemed to experience an unusual type of silence, far from what was typical every other day. On any other day, one would find a ton of corporately dressed people driving through the single-lane road. But on that Friday morning, only about three people could be seen walking down the road as honking cars sped off in a bid to avoid the morning lateness. Somewhere on the far right-hand side of the close that ushered the pathway into Hamilton drive was a group of six fierce-looking young men. It was not uncommon to find people loitering about the place, but this wasn’t the usual meeting point for the Kluber Klan Fraternity. “Today, we strike at exactly 12:30pm,” Johnson Baldwen, a notorious drug kingpin, commented. He was the Lodge Master of the Kluber Klan fraternity. He is never the sort to grace most of his fraternal meetings, but there was always a reason for the occasion whenever he was around. “I need seven he