Promising student and avid reader, Zahra Calimeris, attends a book club where she meets Romero Vitale; A judicious professor and bibliophilic aesthete.
book 1 | ongoing
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FATIGUE GREETED ME with welcoming arms as I opened the door to my apartment. It was nothing extraordinary. In fact, It was just a plain one bedroom apartment with a decent-sized living area connected to the kitchen.
The heating system never works and there's a small draught that creeps through the bottom of the door. Nevertheless, it's still a roof over my head and I consider myself lucky to have it.
I removed my shoes from my aching feet and lugged my body into my bedroom, deliberately overlooking the large stack of books in the corner of the living room that had started to accumulate into a messy assemblage of broken spines and faded ink.
I'll do it tomorrow.
I sighed as the routine lie I'd been telling myself for the past two months formed in my mind.
Drained from my evening visit with my mother, I needed nothing more than to seek the comfort and serenity only my bed could provide.
With blurry eyes, I slipped out of my black pleated skirt and navy tailored jumper, trading them for my usual night attire that consisted of a pair of old grey sweatpants and an old frayed t-shirt that you could just about make out the two letters 'KC' that were displayed in the top corner.
I went to kick my clothes aimlessly to the corner of my room but my mother's stern voice sounded in my mind.
"Don't make tomorrow harder for yourself before it has even begun, Zahra."
I groaned aloud and allowed the part of my brain that knew my mother was usually right to take control and place the dirty clothes in my overflowing laundry basket.
Another job to add to my list of things to procrastinate.
After slipping into the bathroom to clean my teeth I finally slipped into my bed and cocooned myself with the soft blanket.
As usual, the night was still young for the couple that were renting the apartment above me. Through the thin layer of ceiling between us, I could faintly make out broken parts of their nightly argument that would turn into a very loud makeup session very soon. I looked up to the white ceiling, praying the small crack in the corner wouldn't stretch any further across and crush me to a painful death.
I sighed and reached my hand under my blanket in search of my laptop.
My finger met with a cold surface and I pulled my computer from its hiding place and launched it up. The sharp bright light from the screen made me recoil and had me squinting whilst I loaded up the browser.
Curiosity will be my biggest downfall I thought to myself as my fingers drew to type 'Romero Vitale' into the search bar and pressed enter.
Immediately a few articles boasting of a bestselling published book popped up as one of the top results. I clicked on the link to find that this mysterious Romero Vitale had published a popular dark fiction novel.
