Framework

It's about 1 pm and I am walking aimlessly through the town. It's autumn and the cold is creeping behind my senses. I keep my hands warm in the coat's pockets feeling the worn money roll that I found on my nightstand in the morning.

Lately that's all I get. My heart's residence next to his is paid in a few hundred dollars. Even though we've been together a few years by now, lately we only talk on our way to the fridge or on the phone on our birthdays.

There's a mass of people gathered around, in the centre of the plaza and I stop and peak behind their shoulders to understand what the commotion is all about. Some people push me in the middle of it because they're curious too. There's so much noise and screams that I lost my interest in finding out what's happening and I want to get out. I feel a tap on my shoulder and I see a girl, younger than me trying to tell me something, but I can't make a word from all she's saying. My eardrums are hurting from all the noise. She grabs me by the arm and signs me to follow her as she found a path through the crowd.

Finally we're out and I get from her blabbering that she wants me to be their photo model for her and her friends who are art students. I question her sanity. Maybe when I was young like her I would be interested, but now it's not tempting me one bit. Still, she insists, she pleads and like a drop of a pin in a hay stack, an idea that I could be doing something different with my day, crosses my mind and I agree with the absurdity of it. Surely, once they see me, they'll send me back from where I come from.

I don't see myself beautiful in any special way and in no way I am a model on a catwalk or fashion magazine. My red hair lost its bright colour, there are dark circles around my eyes from all the crying and lost nights in clubs, my lips lost their rosiness in the freaking cold from outside and even the dark, sober clothes make me look different from the people around me. Maybe my eyes, blue, the colour of it might be the only pure, untainted thing in me.

On our way to the studio I find a little bit more about her. She's nineteen and her name is Anna. Her hair is light blonde, straight and long and she keeps it in a loose ponytail, her skin is pale like white chalk, her lips are thin, her mouth is small and her eyes are blue... like mine.

We end up on a dark back street, and I find myself entering a courtyard where a ruined two story house sits in the middle of it. It's rendered in light blue colour that it's cracking in all places from moisture and harsh weather. We walk up to the attic, kept hidden from the rest of the house through a ram shackled door kept in place with about four padlocks.

Anna unlocks the door and she invites me in. The room I enter is dark and massive, with tall ceilings, windows covered with cardboard and sticked with  brown sticky tape. On one side of the room there are some improvised lamps, scattered around an old timber chair and all I can now feel is sheer fear. I can't see the handcuffs or chains, but they're probably hidden behind the mattress from the other side of the room. Or maybe they're in the cardboard boxes near the little desk where there's an old computer and a mess of tangled wires that come from it and are attached to a plug in the wall.

Anna motions me to get comfortable, but I'm scared I might give in and drop my shield. I also feel awkward in a place like this, even if it might not be a crime scene. Anna starts looking through the cardboard boxes for something that she can't seem to find and without notice she disappears through another door from the other side of the room.

After a few minutes of silence I find myself pacing around the space, calculating its length in the steps I'm making. There are noises coming from the other side of the door and I can feel that there's an argument starting to burst up between whoever is there.

I realize that I should be here and I make my way to the main entrance. As I open the door, there's a hard, male's toned chest welcoming me. He's wearing only a pair of dark blue sweats and he is barefoot. I look up and meet the brown eyes looking past me.