AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” she said, followed by a small smile. Long road trips by herself meant that she had the chance to speak her mind to the open air. Rolling down her windows, she pretended someone was with her.
Years ago, that used to be her mom.
Next to the dangling cross was a picture of her mother and herself when she was a teenager. The photo hung at the end of a worn-out brown string, weathered by the years. In the photo, Mickey was smiling wide with a full set of braces covering her teeth. Her mother’s arms wrapped tightly around her.
Her mom was a beautiful woman with a heart of gold. If she needed to take the food out of her mouth to give it to Mickey, she did so with no complaints. How she loved her daughter.
Mickey was the only child her mother ever had. She didn’t know much about her father growing up, only that he was her mother’s lover during a senior trip to France twenty-five years ago.
At first, Mickey grimaced at the fact that she was the product of a passionate one-night stand between her mother and her father, but her mom liked to portray it as a love story that couldn’t grow into the beautiful flower it was. There wasn’t enough time between them, she said. No opportunity.
Thus, when she returned to California once the trip was over, she was eighteen and pregnant, hopelessly enamored with an older French man. She never saw him again, but as a memory of the beautiful and brief coupling, a young Michelle came into the picture, named after the man who sired her.
Ever since she could remember, her mother called her Mickey. She liked the name, but the frequent Disney references and gifts that depicted that little rat nearly drove her up the wall when she was in her teenage years.
Her mother didn’t have much, but she tried to give Mickey the best life possible. If that meant having to think of some creative ways to make dinner or get her hands on some clothes, she did so. Nothing else mattered to her mother other than making Mickey happy.
When she was younger, she took that for granted. She had her rebellious streak, often forgetting the sacrifices her mother went through just to make sure she had a good life. Her mother gave upeverything. Her social life, her relationships, and her youth. It all went down the drain, and yet, she was happy because Mickey was happy.
Mickey vowed that things would be different when she was older. Never again would she have to deal with food shortages and days without electricity when the bills didn’t get paid.
Her grip on the steering wheel tightened, gazing upon the photograph once more. She loved her mother. She missed her as much as the waves missed the moon when the latter was away.
Mickey recalled her current mission as she remembered what her mother sacrificed for her while growing up. The knife in the passenger’s seat gazed at her, reminding her that she needed to get home before someone figured out what she was doing.
There’s no way someone could tail me, she said to herself. At the same time, she kept looking in the rearview mirror and stared long at the cars that seemed to be following her route for a while before making a sudden turn and disappearing.
Paranoia.That’s all it is.I lost the guy back at the building, I’m sure of it.
Animals searching for dinner scurried along the foliage that lined the roads. Michelle drove on, anxious to return home and toss herself into her warm bed.
What a night. Pushing hard on the gas pedal, she thought about how nice it was to live in Europe, where a few hours of driving could get you to an entirely different country.
That wasn’t the case back in California. In times of horrible traffic, a few hours of driving got you to the other side of the same city. Maybe.
She enjoyed the nighttime hum of Barcelona as she pulled the car into its designated parking spot outside the apartment she rented. Nabbing her cross and her photograph from the rearview mirror, she stuck her belongings in her pockets. She took the knife with her, not wanting to leave such an important item in her neighbor’s car to be found in the morning.
He allowed her to use his car during the nights when he wasn’t working, which was a kind deed. Bounding up the stairs of the building, Mickey stopped by his door and leaned her ear against the wood. After hearing no movement inside, she slipped the keys under the door and went on her way.
Her loft on the fifth floor perched nicely above other buildings and gave her an amazing view of the city. It wasn’t a huge space, and it cost a fortune.
Slamming the door behind her, she tossed the knife onto the counter and groaned as she plopped on a bar stool that sat adjacent to her kitchen island.
Then, she realized she was in the dark. Mickey scoffed. All it took was three claps of her hands to make the apartment automatically light up on cue.
Thank God for technology, she thought.
As she stared down at the historic knife, disgust boiled inside her. It was all so meaningless to her, and yet … what the hell was the point of something like that?
She couldn’t sell it since the transaction would easily be traced to her. She couldn’t do anything useful with it; she couldn’t imagine slicing oranges with the same knife that sliced through …
She wrinkled her nose, muffled a burp with her fist, and sighed. “There goes my appetite.”
Something about driving for five hours with no food in her system spelled tragedy for Mickey’s body. Her stomach filled with air instead of a meal, giving her a horrible fit of burps.
Too late. You had your chance to eat. She thought about her quick stop at a local bakery as she had staked out the condominium back in France. Looking over a newspaper with shades on, she gazed at the plastic surgeon’s building and waved off a waitress who offered her café au lait with a side of croissants.
“I’m such a damn idiot,” she whispered, remembering how beautifully the hot coffee glistened while the croissants smelled to die for. “This job will be the end of me. I know that for sure.”
