Incredibly dark. That's the best way to describe where I am. My house is huge, comfortable, and completely empty. There is a single light on in this house, on the second floor in a small room in the corner of the house. Only one window is in this room, and I can see the street from here.
Occasionally a car passes by.
The house smells of cigarettes and dust. The furniture, mostly untouched, has gathered a quarter-inch layer of gray. It's clear that only the single room is in use.
The pale girl in that room hunches over a computer sitting atop a circular metal desk. There's no bed in the room, just the desk. She sleeps on the floor. She is smoking a cigarette; she holds it with trembling fingers. For the first time in several weeks, she drinks whiskey straight from a bottle in her right hand. Putting the bottle on the table, she types out desperate words in an attempt to justify her existence to people who have never known her.
The phone rings. The pale girl looks at it as if it were dripping with ooze. The caller I.D. says it's her best friend. She takes another swig from the bottle and ignores it.
Love, she says, conquers hate. She is completely unqualified to make such a statement. All she has ever experienced was hate of one form or another. She stubs out her cigarette and immediately lights another one.
Struggling against the hopelessness that seeks to consume her, she assures herself once more of the sureness that good will overcome evil. She walks over to her bookcase and stares at the multitudinous titles. Her gaze rests upon Candide, but she skips it and moves on to Les Miserables.
She treasures this book. Although her parents always shamed her for her fascination with Christian literature and figures, she draws inspiration no less from this. A tale of a man whose show of greatness is not unrealistic. A man who was once a criminal, who once despised humanity for what it had done to him, who became the most admirable character ever written into being. He clashes with a police officer- strict, unchanging belief in the idea that evil is deeply ingrained in the hearts of men. The girl likes to think of herself as being like Jean Valjean, but knows she is better compared to Eponine.
Singing softly, the pale, unkempt girl finishes writing, and cries.