#attrpcontest

BODYACHE ♡ a cyril syed playlist

[AMAR PATEL] with sunshine in his eyes

your character got an unusual marking or scar.

Katherina had been working at the club since she was 18. She was legally an adult and fresh out of the foster care system, she had needed a job and she got one as a waitress at the club. Taking patrons their drinks and cleaning up the empty glasses. But Katherina’s dream was to dance. She saved and pinched, two months of tips and whatever else she could manage to get together. Finally, she had enough to buy a pole, she had her roommate help her set it up in her room. After that whenever she was not working she was teaching herself, watching videos on youtube, and building a routine for herself to perform one day. 

She couldn’t believe it. Things like this were not supposed to happen, especially whilst she was at work. “There’s a call for you, it’s pretty urgent”. At the word urgent, her stomach began churning, tying itself in knots. It could only be about Sophie, surely. Christ, what had happened? As fast as her legs would carry her, she made her way back to the nurse’s station and picked up the phone.

“Ma’am, this is Officer Bennett with the LAPD, I’m calling on behaf of your daughter, Sophie.”

They were words no parent should ever hear, and her thoughts raced. Usually, she was calm in a crisis, it was her job to be calm, to calm others, but for now, she couldn’t manage it.

“Oh my God, is she okay? Where is she, what’s the matter, she’s with her Grandmother and her Father, has something happened?” The words spilled out. She was nauseous.

Ten minutes later, she was in the park, with her four year old, who had broken her arm, falling out of a tree she shouldn’t have been climbing, and her father had let her down again, by failing to catch her. By failing even to supervise her. The churning in Stella’s stomach didn’t disappear, but increased, an anger building in her so fast, and furious, she hadn’t ever felt  the like of it.

God she was stupid. Darcy had promised, and promised he would get his act together, for Sophie. Their relationship, if you could call it that, was long over, if it had ever even existed, but she’d never before been tempted to stop him having one with his daughter. Not when he’d forgotten to pick her up because he was drunk. Not because he spent money for her birthday present on drugs. No, she’d been the fool who had tried to pick up the pieces and believed his lies and empty promises. Instead, she’d given him trust enough that if supervised by one of his family members, and promise to be clean and sober in her presence, that he deserved a relationship with his daughter.

He’d lost that right though, by lying to Stella, telling her she’d be with him and his mother, even sent her to collect their child. Then he’d gone a step further, and left her alone, and unattended, to do God knows what. Forgot he was with her, apparently. Forgot his Mother had to leave. Left his four year old child, in a public park, a broken arm “wasn’ the worst” that could have happened. But it was enough.

Lying is what addicts do best. The voice of a colleague. They saw enough of that on the wards. Why hadn’t she seen it closer to home? Like always, she had been naive. This time, he wouldn’t get away with it. No this time, her daughter’s cast was a visible reminder of a mistake she had made, a mistake she wouldn’t make again.