Chapter 3: away from this

PRESENT DAY.

AUBREY SLUGGISHLY WALKS through the small hallway in her black baggy shorts, grey top along with fluffy pink slippers. Even her hair speaks her current emotional state—Messy.

Brown strands of hair fall out of the bun on top of her head, making her look like a homeless kid with no one to run to but that is how she feels. Her life -at this point- is messy.

She stops in front of the mirror at the end of the hallway, examining herself. She groans, seeing how unkempt she looks. Her face looks pale and her lips are dried like she rose from the dead a second ago. Her hair sets the final touches to making her look like a zombie straight out of a movie.

Frustrated, she pulls her long, brown hair out of the bun, brushing her hands through it to make it look decent. Seeing her efforts are in vain as the hair still looks unkempt, she pouts her lips and resumes walking.

"Darn it. Nothing is going my way at all." She curses under her breath.

Taking a sharp left turn, she enters into the cold kitchen. She kicks her slippers off to make direct contact with the cold floors. Shrugging off the cold because that is the least of her problems, she proceeds to the light switch and turns off the kitchen lights along with the hallway's, making everywhere pitch-black.

Despite the possible dangers that can be laying in the dark, Aubrey doesn't have a change of mind in leaving the lights off. After all, it is the right atmosphere for her damaged soul.

In the dark, she slowly drags her feet to the mini fridge, opening it up and immediately getting irritated by the light.

She pulls out a big bowl of chocolate flavored ice cream and places it on the kitchen counter, pulling a bench out to sit beside it, not without closing up the fridge. She always gets scolded by her mum to do that, so now whenever she opens up the fridge, she can memorably hear her mum screaming to shut it when she is done.

She stays still for a few seconds, thinking about her family.

Small but happy. She is satisfied with the love and courage she gets from them, but sometimes she can't help but feel like the outsider, it also doesn't help when people say she looks nothing like her parents.

Back home before she became a university student, the landlady would always come up to their floor, yelling to her parents about their unpaid rents.

The children have always been aware of the money problems they encounter ever since their dad lost his job but their parents make it look like nothing happened; acting like there is nothing to worry about and providing as much as they need to make life comfortable.

It still makes Aubrey sad that they both have to work countless hours just to put food on the table. Still, her block-headed seventeen-year-old brother is oblivious to these things and keeps on eating and asking for more like he has a legion in his belly.

She is currently in college and their financial status isn't any better, but they are always there for her; however, her family isn't here at the moment to help with her messy state so she is all alone in her dark apartment.

Lights in the bathroom are turned off. Lights in the bedroom are also turned off. The security lights are turned off too, which shouldn't be so but she wants to be unreasonable and make unhealthy decisions for once after working sedulously all her life.

She sighs heavily, taking a spoon and putting a large amount of ice cream into her mouth as tears fill her eyes.

School life is a pain in the buttock.

Endless classes and project assignments.

And on top of that, she just got dumped by her boyfriend exactly 4 hours ago.

"Why?" She sniffs, then starts crying non-stop the next minute. "Why did you do this Daniel?" She whispers to herself, with a mouth filled with ice-cream. "Is she prettier than me?" She stabs the bowl with her spoon. "Her name doesn't even sound nice." She sulks. "But why? Why?" She wails like a baby.

She is nineteen now and has fully known and experienced the horrible nature of the world, which is why she wants to cry her heart out.

She is all alone which gives her plenty of room to cry out her feelings to the empty, dark apartment. It is a Friday after all— she can finally let go of the horrible, stressful week as she cries her heart out whilst muffling the sound by shoving sweet ice cream into her mouth.

It is the only way she can console her broken heart.

Yet, staying alone in the dark has its own cons and she is about to find out in a couple of minutes.