Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 375(@200wpm)___ 300(@250wpm)___ 250(@300wpm)
I knew without knowing that Levee was gone.
Sighing, I turned back to my apartment. My whiteboard had some new additions to it. Namely, the shading I’d told the kid that the coffin needed. I took a second to jot a little note encouraging his progress, then made my way into my apartment.
“Hello, my pretties,” I cooed at the fancy goldfish swimming happily around their tank that was practically the size of my bed.
Goldfish were the first thing that I really mastered drawing when I was a kid and won one at a carnival.
It didn’t occur to me until a few years later how cruel it was to give away live animals as pets to small children who had no idea how to care for them.
I still felt guilty about the four goldfish that died early on my watch before I finally learned how to take care of them.
There was something truly beautiful about them, though. Their colorful scales. Their fanned tails.
It helped, of course, that my first true subjects were rather slow moving and unchanging, giving me a chance to really study and perfect them.
Ever since then, I’d been keeping goldfish in increasingly larger and more ornate tanks.
My current setup featured actual sea grass that I grew myself from seed. There were also fifteen varieties of live aquatic plants in the tank, creating natural hideaways for the fish and helping to keep the water clean.
“Are you hungry?” I asked as I flipped open the lid. It was a rhetorical question. Goldfish were little pigs; they always wanted to eat.
Lunch and laundry handled, I made my way over toward the windows where I had my easel set up.
Keeping a few feet back, I eyed it, trying to figure out what it was about the painting that was bothering me, that didn’t feel quite right.
I was being hypercritical. But I’d been working on it for three weeks now, and I really needed it to sell for a decent amount of money to make up for the time spent on it.
I never put all my eggs in one basket, of course. One thing you learned when you were an artist for a living was to diversify.
I sold it all.
Originals, prints, greeting cards, bookmarks. Print-on-demand items. Everything from sweatshirts and mugs to wallpaper and coffee tables.
I had shops on every single social media site, artist sites, my own website, you name it.
It… paid the bills.
I wasn’t exactly rolling in it, but I was getting closer each passing week to having the hope of moving up in the world. Maybe getting myself a sweet little bungalow close to the beach.
I reached for the canvas, taking it down and putting it against the wall to deal with another day.
I set my phone on the easel with the pictures Mrs. Jackson sent me of her daughters, then picked up my sketchpad to get some rough drawings done.
I got lost in the work, wanting to do something really perfect for Mrs. Jackson. Before I knew it, the sun was setting, and I needed to get up to start flicking on all the lights so I could keep working.
I made a quick dinner and a cup of tea. I was about to finish my preliminary sketches when there was a ruckus in the apartment above mine.
The guy from the dumpster who I’d seen getting his face beat in was a relatively quiet upstairs neighbor. I mostly only heard him swearing at or taunting other players that I assumed he was playing video games with.
There was no loud music.
No sex sounds late at night.
And never any visitors. At least not that I’d ever heard.
That streak was ending tonight, though, it seemed.
Several sets of footsteps charged across the floor, then there was a loud thud. Loud enough to make me jerk, my tea sloshing over the rim of my cup and burning my hand.
My heartbeat tripped into overdrive, pulsating in my chest, wrists, and throat. I stared up at the ceiling, like if I tried hard enough, I could see right through it and know what was going on.
There was more slamming.
Then grunting.
Footsteps.
The slam of the door.
And an eerie silence.
I rushed over toward my window.
I’d lucked out with a view of the front of the building, including the entry itself, letting me always know what was going on.
There’d been three open units when I came to take a tour. The owner expected me to want to take the one with the view of the back of the building that was just an open lot.
Nice and quiet, he’d said.
But I hadn’t wanted quiet.
I’d always liked being in the hub of activity. I felt like it sparked my creativity. And, well, being a woman living alone, it made me feel safer being able to watch the various goings-on.
Just a few moments later, four men emerged from the building.