SHE

1. prologue

The page remains blank as Adelaide stares at it. It's been what now--30 minutes? She bounced her leg, her loud music drowning out the music in the Starbucks. This was definitely her most hellish of writer's blocks that she had to deal with. She bit her lip, glancing up at the baristas. She was pretty sure that she had made coffee about an hour ago and they were so backed up that they hadn't made it yet. She felt bad, seeing the rush, but she really needed that caffeine. Maybe it would kickstart her brain and actually get her to do what she needed to.

Adelaide Demas was a young writer with a highly anticipated book that she had marketed over social media. It was basically a lesbian coming of age novel that involved a lot of murder, some vigilanteism, and some good old flowery prose that  literary agents were always suckers for. There was a problem though, her publisher had said that they loved the book but they needed a different ending.

She had a month before the deadline.

There was no other feedback besides that.

She was left wishing that she could blow her brains out, because there was no way that she would be able to write a whole different ending in a month and have it be good.

She had thought that the ending that she had originally given it was pretty good, but apparently it wasn't. What about it wasn't good? She had sent it around to so many people, asking, pleading for help, but they had all given her different answers about how they just thought that the main character should have a different ending than the one she did. Adelaide had wanted to claw her eyes out.

Her protagonist, Helena, killed quite a few people in the book. But, they were all people that she had thought deserved that. Perhaps it was too alienating to men and that was what her publisher was afraid of. Maybe they wanted her to be brought to justice for what she had done? But where was the fun in that?

The book was a female power fantasy, it was supposed to end with Helena getting away with everything that she had done. Adelaide groaned and thumped her head against the coffee table. No one noticed, there were multiple people equally as pretentious as her working on their 'manuscript' here.

Everyone was in a similar mood.

Miserable.

...*...

If Katerina had to paint another still life, she was going to stab her art professor. Her hands were aching and she smelled like linseed oil and her clothes were a mess and one of the kids in her class was crying in the corner. She was going to die if she kept this up. She was certain of that.

She waited for a break until her professor left the room. Taking out her phone and staring down at the ten Tinder matches she had made on her phone. One made this class worth it.

Adelaide Demas.