Betrayal Of The Innocent - Part 1

Betrayal of the Innocent - Part 1

Jennifer is tapping with her fingers on the cars steering wheel to the rhythm of the music, waiting for the robot to turn green. ‘Bed of roses, by Bon Jovi’ is blasting away, on the sound system. “I want to lay you down on a bed of roses, for tonight I sleep on a bed on nails…..’. She pretend to be looking for something in her car, to avoid the newspaper guy, irritating her with his, dance-wave-bob-like, ‘thingamajig ala fanatics’, trying to force a newspaper on her.
There is some ‘brood’ also standing there; begging for money. She watch him through her sunglasses, pretending to look somewhere else. He has a poster, made out of cardboard box around his neck saying: ‘3 kids, no food, no job, any donasion, pleaze, God blez’. Her guess, no education, from the way he spells, obviously. His jagged feet filthy, with his pants in tatters, and a t-shirts saying, ‘I bought this in Italy’. She cannot help but grimace at the irony, as if he had ever been in Italy.
His face is rugged, more from alcohol, than from the sun. His blond hair, a curly uncut, mess. His eyes, almost seem a colourless blue, it shows years of agony, misery, hope, where to tomorrow....? She see some of her own feelings in his eyes, sadness, anticipation…… ‘Where to, tomorrow?’
She sighs disheartened: ‘it’s just not worth bothering giving him money. He will just spend it, on booze or drugs anyway, poor mud.’ At least the thingamabob-happy, newspaper seller ran off, to some thoughtless chap, blocking the traffic who wants a newspaper.
It is still early, but the summer heat already turns everything outside looking like yesterday’s shoddy lettuce. It doesn’t matter, she loves the heat, the sun; feeling like it curls itself around you, caressing you with its warmth, like someone’s touch, burning your skin, just gently, calming you into a sleepy daze, to a world where love touch your heart….
Jennifer is startled back to reality by the car behind her, the light turned green. She speed away in her sports car, looking in her rear view mirror at the other people. It seems as though they hardly started moving. She loves her new little ‘speed-crazy’ sports car. She loves the exhilaration. The feeling of the adrenalin pumping through you, the feeling of that entire horsepower under you.
Exhilaration; is that the feeling she has, playing mayhem with her emotions? Her eyes turn a darker green, as it always does when she feels troubled. Deep down she knows that is not true, it is more a restless, irritable, ‘break me out of here’ feeling. Thoughts open in Jennifer’s mind, painstaking emotions, like a river raging, tumbling down waterfalls into a daze of ravines, to unknown places….
‘She want to be free…..’ she mutters to herself. She shrugs, trying to concentrate on the road in front of her. She knows the road by heart, driving it almost every day. Winding up and down the hills, with expensive double story houses, luscious green gardens, flowers blooming, and the smell of summer in the air. The fancy driveways, with their security cameras. The high walls and electric fences. Everyone living for himself or herself, not even noticing the next-door neighbours. Unless they buy a new or more expensive car, “keeping up with the Jones’s.” Is that her, she’s thinking about?
She closed her eyes for a second. She feels emotionally worn-out, from that uneasy frazzled energy inside her. That is why she takes this autopilot route almost every day; to feed numbness back to a state of perturbed energy…it needs to eat.
She parks at her favourite spot. If she has to park at a different place, it makes her uneasy. It is like a written law to her, guess that is due to her being obsessive compulsive.
She looks at herself in the mirror, at her green-blue eyes; it is difficult to look into her own eyes…… She has beautiful big eyes, which turn a variation of blue or green and deepens in colour when her emotions change. Around her pupils - if you look very closely, you will notice - and few people do - brown little speckles and the patterns they make, like a tiny little puzzle.
She opens her handbag, take out lipstick, to touch up her lips. They are thin, she does not have nice Jay-Lo lips, but that does not bother her. She pulls a face at herself, she might be 36 and have way too much of that so called ‘laugh lines’ for her liking, but she is very petite and a very, sexy woman for her age. The problem is Jennifer knows that and she knows how to use it to her advantage…….