Chapter 1
Ugh, how did I get here? I thought I was a good person. But here I am, aiding and abetting a murderer and I look almost as gorgeous as she does.
It's as if nothing has any semblance of the way that it used to be. It's like the world has changed, or maybe I've changed, that's what she says; that I've learned to view the world though an entirely different lens. It's like I took the blue pill in the Matrix and now I can see outside of everything that is.
Not so much so that the world isn't real, and we're all living in some fake simulation created by some huge corporate evil. It's just not as black and white as they teach us.
I remember it so clearly. Kindergarten rules: "If you are good you will become beautiful," our teacher would say. She would gesture to the board at lovely princesses and doctors, and everyone in between, then look back at us and ask why they were so beautiful, "Because they were good." She'd have us chant: "Do good, be good, and you will be beautiful. Do good, be good, and you will be happy. Do good, be good, and you will be successful."
I know everyone believes that most of the things you learn in kindergarten are a lie. And, for the most part it's true, no one shares; some people get things that you don't have; very few people will ever actually care about your birthday. But that was always different. It was the one true thing because that was part of our nature. People who were good, law abiding and productive citizens were always breathtaking, and subsequently more successful.
Those that weren't...well, the nature of their crime would always reflect somewhere physically. I remember in high-school there was a news story of a man who was divorcing his wife. He lied about having an affair and apparently everything below the belt developed these crazy open sores that were so awful no doctor could treat it.
My mother loved telling us this story when we started dating. I think somehow she figured that it would keep us from 'shacking up' with anyone before we were married. "No one shacks up anymore mom," I would say with a hefty sigh, but at that point I wasn't interested. I didn't want anyone to kiss, let alone to sleep with. And for the first 22 years of my life that philosophy did me good.
I was pretty after all, minus the occasional zit that came when I told little white lies, I wasn't overtly good, I never saved anyone from a burning building or anything but I also wasn't terrible. Delightfully average with a sprinkle of goodness, I liked to call it.
So how did I end up here squatting in an abandoned building with a wanted fugitive, and, as I spied myself in the mirror on the wall, looking radiant, almost goddess like. Well that is the story I have to tell you...whomever you are that may come along and read this. Just incase we die in some spectacular fashion, I want someone to know the truth about how I came to be here.
This is the story of how I met Victoria Bloom.
