Candy, what a name...
She has chosen it, because it makes her think of the sweet strawberry candies that her grandfather, a prestigeous doctor who had money but no sould, used to keep in a polished and dark ceramic bowl on a table top of glass in the middle of his dark living room.
Thus, whenever she introduces herself on a job these days, she starts reminiscing about the time when she was a six-year-old child, whose eyes would grow bigger at the sight of her grandfather´s only recently refilled candy bowl. Then she would stand in the living room door, like frozen, for some time, before she would find the courage to cautiously catfoot towards it and steal a handfull of candies, while her grandtaher was snoring on the, during summers, sticky leather of his worn out couch.
She would try to grab them silently, so he wouldn´t wake up, and if he had woken, she would have gotten a slap for the attempt. That is probably why she enjoyed doing it in the first place. The athmosphere of faint threat that was raising the beat of the heart in her chest, and the excitement when she would get away with it.
She would make her way through the labyrinth of the heavy curtains with flower prints that were covering the patio door, leave behind the stench of old that was present in the living room, and sit down on the stony patio ground outside. In the comfortable shades beneath the patio roof where the summer air, as sticky as tart, would suddenly feel fresher than anywhere she was before, she would rush to gulp the stolen candies down and hide the empty wrappers in the pockets of her jeans bib, relieved and proud of her achievement.
The vivid memory of it is why Candy - actually Hannah Slate - is only Candy nowadays.
Hannah called herself Candy to make herself feel better. Just as much about everything that she has done so far as about the things that she is doing aand will have to do, later on. Only on occasion, the bitter-sweet memory of the candy bowl that she herself associates with her name would fail to restore her strength.
One of those occasions is now, a black cat before her, and next to her a man who she used to be impressed with when she didn´t know him, yet. When she didn´t yet know how he would react, if the world around them ever collapsed. By the shiver that she has been feeling ever since she discovered the note in the black cat´s heart, it might very well start doing so now.
Why is Corey not answering?
Hesistantly, his fingers took the unfolded note from the pendant out of her faintly trembling hand , but his pen stays on top of the notepad before him without a motion, and his face remains without emotion.
Has he even read the scribbled lines on the stained piece of paper?
If he has, then maybe what they say about him is true, Hannah thinks.I might have seen something in him that he has never been. Something passionate and genuine, even though he could really be the terrorist that they consider him. Maybe even worse, a sociopath without a heart, or an utterly well dissimulating psychopath.
Someone who she would never have expected him to be, and that would maybe make them even, because if she is being honest, he has close to no idea who she really is herself, and she hopes that it will stay this way.
As if he heard her thoughts, the pen leaves the notepad all at once. It returns between Corey´s fingers. The current of the flowing river, the silent murmur of Whispering Willie, the squeaking brakes of the trains in the station around a mile from here, and the keowing seagulls in the sky above - suddenly all of it stops.
What is the going to respond?
To the note in a black cat´s pendant that just took Hannah´s world apart, and would there even be a reaction at all that would make her feel better right now if not even the memory of the candy bowl in her granddad´s living room can achieve to do so due to something dark, something heart wrenching in her past that she has, so far, kept further away from Corey that the moon would be?
It is dead silent while Hannahs eyes are following the scribbling up and down with which the scratching pen caves the notepad in. A thud when Corey shakes it off the paper and it falls on the gravel ground. He tilts the note towards her.
Oh, come on , Candy, it reads when Hannah bends forward to decipher it Don´t be so naive! First, you believe things about me on the internet, and now you trust a note that a black cat has brought?
Shaking his head, he crumbles up the rustling piece of paper from the pendant and throws it on Hannah´s lap, so his hand is free again to point at the last sentence he wrote: IT HAS TO BE A SCAM!!!
The sun in the sky is getting warmer; Hannah starts sweating. All at once, to her, the trembling air is fresh cement that´s sticking to her skin.
Get off of me, she thinks.
Leave me the fuck alone!
When she breathes it in, it goes dry and glues her half open lips together. Afterwards, her tongue, and lungs. Her skin starts suffocating underneath it, while she is staring at Corey, the eyes blank, with no emotion, and the eyelids motionless.
How dare he?
She cannot believe it.
Corey, out of all people!How could he do this to her?
She thought that she was, only maybe, growing fond of him.
She thought that she could, in the future, maybe love the man.
How dare he, out of all people, put her back into this place? 6 years back in her life, to be accurate. Into a time when, underneath the dazzling summer sun, and caught up in sticky air that was shivering, the worst of the worst started happening, and even though she ripped her lips apart to speak up, no one was listening.
Plastered with cement, she cannot move, cannot breathe, and cannot think.
It is no scam, she wants to say as if to justify herself.
It is real, it is happening!
But her lips stay sealed, and inside her chest, the cement that she´s caught up in dries out and grows so heavy that it compromises each beat of her heart.
She cannot do it, not again, she needs to get up.
Her eyes still staring at him, she grabs the crumbled up note from the pendant off her lap with hevy hands and funbles it into the pocket of her pants, before she jumps up, turns around and walks off to leave Corey on his own.
She won´t be silenced this time. This is her chance to break the circle. It is her chance to shine.