~False Desires~

1

"Natalie! Come here at once!" The sound of an old woman's shook the thin hotel walls. A wall away and in the bathroom, Natalie sighed. "I'm coming!" She screamed back. She pulled her long strawberry blonde hair into a high ponytail and shut the bathroom door behind her.

"How long does it take a nineteen year old to walk twenty feet!?" Her grandmother yelled from the bed. Natalie ignored her rude ancestor and fished through her backpack for medicines.

Taking out a bottle of sleeping pills, she handed two round tablets to the old bickering lady.

She gave the poor girl a menacing look before she gulped it down.

"You shouldn't drink so much, you know." Natalie quietly whispered. "What did you just say!?" The woman thundered.

Even at sixty, Sasha Arron managed to have a booming voice and a matching attitude. She had six kids. None of them stayed with her. Her second son's offspring was unlucky enough to lose her parents and land in the care of her horrible grandmother.

"How dare you tell me what to do!? After all I've done for you." She continued spitting the words out.

Natalie waited for her long speech which she had been hearing for the past sixteen unfortunate years of her life.

"I made sure that you went to that stupid school of yours! I give you bread to fill that stomach..." The sleeping pills worked their magic and within a few seconds, the woman was snoring. 

Natalie fiddled with an empty water bottle as she recalled her past.

Her parents died in a tragic fire when she was three. Her grandmother reluctantly signed papers that made her a new guardian. She wanted to stay with her godmother, Vivian. But the law didn't agree. Vivian had been her mother's best friend ever since they were in elementary school. The two were inseparable. But in time, Vivian had shifted to Florida due to work demands.

Ever since, life had been hell.

Her grandmother never seemed to care about Natalie except when she gave her chores and back breaking tasks. Natalie's escape had been school. She wasn't very popular, but had a few good friends who were like torches in her bleak life.

After she had graduated, her grandmother didn't allow her to attend a university. Instead, she was forced to take up a job in a café.

Natalie wanted to study further. It would be her only escape from her miserable life and would give her the chance of a better future.

Shaking her head and swimming out of her thoughts, she put on her work uniform. It was a white t-shirt with "Beth's Cafe" printed on it in the colour brown.

She put on her pointy brown kitten heels and picked up her backpack.

Glancing at the sleeping terror one last time, she slipped out of the room.