ONE: The fall from grace.

Ophelia

Coffee shop, wet evening.

“It’s 6 pm in Los Angeles and there have been reported cases of bodies found in dark alleys across several parts of the city…”

The reporter on the TV hanging on the wall adjacent to me blares out the news report for the day.

Something I couldn't even be bothered about when I had my own life crisis currently rolling out like a nightmare before my very eyes.

I leaned back into the table, fingers fiddling with the documents, about ten of them stapled together at the left edge. The more I flipped through each script the more my whole world blurred from the tears pooling in my eyes.

Alopecia. The word hung thick, heavy, and branded like a cursed logo on every single document, each letter coming alive to mock me with the devil's horn. This one word had my company trending in the worst ways for three days in a row.

I’d spent four years building ‘Veline Cosmetics’ into a multi-billion-dollar cosmetic and hair line company, famous and globally rising to New York’s top three fashion bulletin boards and the women's top three cosmetic choices only to watch it all crumble like a sick joke in less than twenty-four hours.

Potential brand investors were pulling out, my company’s shares had fallen by fifty percent overnight, customers were filing medical lawsuits, and people I owed PR money were clawing my throat for a refund.

Everything was crumbling to dust and pathetic me couldn’t do anything to save my dying company.

What's worse is that I’d fled to a local town hours away from the usual metropolitan city I lived in just to lay low and not risk getting detained by the police.

A bead of tears dropped from my eyes onto the paper when I blinked, forming a dark wet patch.

My phone chimed in my bag loudly and pulling myself together, I reached for the device.

A text from my father’s lawyer.

My stomach knotted unbearably and air clogged my chest. With stiff fingers, I opened the text without an idea of what I was really expecting—maybe a solution? Had he granted mercy on his child and paid my debts? I clung to false hope either way, anything but ‘Assets frozen until further investigation’

“No…” my voice came out distorted, my throat caught in a wracking sob.

My palms turned sweaty with instant paranoia and tears rolled down my cheeks like a dam, messing up my makeup. The first dial to my PA, she picked up almost immediately as though she’d been expecting my call.

Being used to control, my palm hit the desk harshly before I could stop myself, the tea cup clattered and heads turned to my direction, all weirdly eyeing me at the abrupt disturbance.

Grabbing my bag, heels tapping cruelly like nails on gravel, I stormed out of there, ready to catch the next flight back home.

“It’s only temporary ma’am Ophelia” she’d said over the phone, voice firm and pleading.

But ‘temporary’ sounded like doom, more like the day this ends and I would be back to my normal life might never come. Ever.

“I'm coming home,” I blatantly said into the phone, hailing a cab.

“You can't. Every corner has the press on the lookout” she advised. “Your father swears he’ll turn you in himself if this affects his company likewise and it's not impossible to see that it’s already happening”

Once I was seated in the torn and itchy leather of the cab, eyes bulging from crying, makeup wiped off from my face, and nose running endlessly, reality began to set in.

I'd lost everything.

From a proud, highly praised heiress to a castaway whose company hangs on the brink of bankruptcy and is wanted by the police.

I’d become a laughing stock now and if none of this got resolved I might never be able to walk with my head held high in high-class societies anymore.

High-class societies my ass when I could be facing up to a decade in prison. If only I’d listened to my PA when these deadly chemicals were first detected in our newest products. If only I'd lowered my ego and read through her several emails about the suspicious agents who’d shipped in those products at a ridiculously discounted rate. If only I'd listened to my PR team who begged for a batch recall.

If only…

My pride had gone before my pathetic fall, I might as well just give in to my fate and wallow in its consequences sooner or later.

The cab pulled up at the suite I stayed in. I dropped a stained cash I’d gotten from a local atm into the man’s outstretched palm and sauntered out of the cab with the ghost of my past mistakes glorifying my essence like a rotten halo.

“Ma’am your stay here expires in twenty-four hours and the cards you left at the desk this morning have been declining”

The receptionist behind the counter greeted me as soon as I walked into the hotel lobby.

“I’ll check out before then,” I said wearily, having lost the willpower to banter words with anyone.

Each step I took forward left an imprint of my muddy shoe trails on the pristine floor as a reminder of the dirt that would never leave me.

Once at my room’s door, my key card clicked against the lock panel and I stumbled into the dark room, kicking off my heels to God knows where. Turning on the switch bulbs, I moved into the bathroom and splashed cold water from the faucet onto my face, the chill liquid biting my skin.

Then a low static crack bounced off in the bedroom, the lights flickering on and off exactly the way my sanity was blinking in and out of existence.

Even the fucking lights couldn't decide if they wanted to keep on living or maybe this was their own way of taunting me.

Once I stepped back into the bedroom, the flat screen TV hanging on the wall switched on and I jumped in fright, almost caught off guard.

It was the same reporter from earlier at the cafe, same location, same news.

“It’s 6 pm in Los Angeles and there have been reported cases of bodies found in dark alleys across several parts of the city…”

I scrambled for the remote as the woman’s voice droned out behind me. I froze when I finally found the TV remote but it was without batteries.

I couldn't stand horror stories and especially not when it's close to nightfall and I was all alone in a dark bedroom in an unfamiliar town.

But the woman’s crisp voice kept going.

“There’s some strange news tagged as ‘the resurrection trials’ where the government promises to grant immunity or the revival of a loved one and lots of people have been reported missing or found unconscious in strange places after applying”

The remote slipped from my fingers, clacking to the ground and I shrieked even more loudly this time, tremors soaking through my veins as a cold eerie chill ran through me.

The resurrection trials? That was a first and there was nothing like that ever heard from the government.

This was probably fake news from a scamming news station.

But why was no one calling them out yet?

Still lost in the goddamn whirl that was my mind, the patio glass slid open.