Sometimes There Is No Brightside [Edward Masen-Cullen]

Chapter Three

I pulled the silk dress over my head, rejoicing in the feeling of the soft fabric nestled against my skin. The pale blue colour became me well, accentuating my eyes and setting off my complexion nicely. I smiled and leaned forward to get a better look at myself in the mirror.

I opened a drawer and pulled out my red lipstick, drew it onto my lips and then reached for the curling iron. Of course, I already had curly hair naturally, but those were too erratic, so I had to burn them into a proper shape.

I would have to do something about the colour, too. My natural shade of blonde was beginning to show again; shining gold with strawberry blonde streaks. I would have to get it bleached again soon...

Satisfied with the way my hair now looked, I turned my attention to my eye make-up. When I was done, I scrutinized my appearance in the mirror of my dressing table. Frowning, I pulled down my dress a bit farther down so that it revealed more than just the cleavage of my voluptuous breasts.

Then I looked at the mirror image again.

I looked nothing like Beatrice. The girl in the mirror was Joyce.

Joyce, officially a waitress and entertainer at Avalon Hotel, unofficially high-end prostitute. Yes, it had come that far with me. That wasn’t the worst part of it, though; the worst was that I didn’t feel any shame, regret or anything alike. I didn’t care.

At the beginning, which was more than a year ago, I had felt reluctance and sometimes even revulsion. Yet I had forced myself to ignore it, swallowed down my dignity, and after a while, I became numb to those feelings and only thought of my survival and the money I received that would hopefully grant me a better future one day.

Whereby I could not necessarily complain about my present. Of course, I had no dignity, no reputation, no self-determination. But I could pay my bills, I had enough money to buy items for my convenience and even owned a considerably nice and even luxurious flat, which was owned by the hotel and given to me at a reduced price.

I lived.

I didn’t know what I lived for, nor why I should chose to live on, but I lived. Whenever those moments of despair came - though they had gotten more and more rare lately - there was a voice inside of me urging me to hold on.

After a while, I had just accepted my fate and come to terms with it. As good as you can come to terms with being a prostitute.

"Joyce, darling, you’re late." Sally, my co-worker, turned to me as we both reached for the trays displaying cigarettes that we would now try to sell amongst the guests.

"Sorry. Got lost in thoughts."

"What do you have to think about?"

Nothing, really. Only about all that I had lost... my parents, my future, my hope, my dignity...Edward. My brother, my hope, my future, my strength. Edward.

"Everything." With that, I turned away from her, gathered myself and put that flirtatious smile onto my lips that came to me naturally already. Too naturally.

I stepped into the busy saloon and did my nightly rounds, carefully paying attention that my dress didn’t ride up too high as that it would cover my cleavage.

"Put that tray away, lassie, and sit with us!" A gentleman called, and I smiled in reply, set away the tray and gracefully sat down in the empty seat, which happened to be the one on the couch next to the man who had called.

So the other part of my job began.

As if I had known him all my life, I leaned against the gentleman’s shoulder and looked up at him, batting my eyelashes, as if he were the greatest hero.

As if, as if... it was all pretense. It used to make me nauseous. But those times had passed, now I saw it as part of the job, a natural thing.

Beatrice was crumbling away piece by piece, being replaced by Joyce, who should be a stranger to me but wasn’t. I was becoming too much like her as that I noticed how my old self disappeared day by day...

I had nobody who could bring Beatrice back. Just as I had nobody who cared that she faded away.