JUST BECAUSE YOU DON'T SEE IT.

PROLOGUE.

I guess George Bernard Shaw was in his right state of mind when he came to the conclusion that 'lack of money is the root of all evil'. This is one very debatable quote, and for years I never really understood the meaning behind it. What exactly don't I understand, you ask? Well I'll tell ya. See, I always thought that love of money is the root cause- I always thought that money itself was a musical tune calling out to people, showing them how versatile it is; telling them that having money puts them in the driving seat, it gets them whatever they want and shows them the world in a different light- and like the fools they are, they all respond to the lure of darkness that comes with having money. I always wondered how an inanimate object like money could turn the world upside down, turning petty squabbles into deadly situations; murder, arson, fraud and all kinds of crime you could possibly think of.

But having experienced what I have in the past- I don't know- year, I have changed my mind. It isn't just the love of money that's the cause, and it's not just the lack of money that's the cause either. The two factors work together, in the same way your heart and blood work together, in the same way strawberry and cream go together. The
lack of money makes the love of money even more potent to end up in some evil. I'll be a fool if I told you that money corrupts because it really doesn't. Money reveals what's hidden deep inside people's souls; peeling away at their flimsy façades until the bulb of the onion is finally exposed. Usually people's characters are revealed for better or for worse; for the positive or for the negative. But my advise to you, dear reader, is that you read the story of my life and pay close attention to detail. I wish I had taken that advise. If I had, I wouldn't be sitting in an interrogation room with handcuffs cutting into my wrists and my legs chained to an electric chair. Heavily armed men with AK 43's wouldn't be surrounding me; threatening to feed me my eyeballs, asking me to tell them the location of $94,000,000,000. That's right, ninety-four BILLION dollars. What on earth would a seventeen year old be doing with
that kind of money?!

You would also have, by now, caught up on the fact that this isn't a Police interrogation room. In fact, this place is out of law's bounds. A place where you could be shot right in the street in front of hundreds of people and no questions would be asked. What is law anyway? It's just a mere idea. Here, the law is 'don't be an idiot, keep your mouth shut and tit for tat is a fair game'. Fuck knows how I got here. But then again, this could be the price I have to pay for doing the right thing. The price to pay for seeking victory, but in
the right way. I still remember my father's words when he told me not
to go digging into the past, when he told me to let it all go.

"Some secrets best remain covered, go digging too deep and you lose
yourself. Opportunities come by once or twice in your life if you're
lucky; the worst part is that they have no tails, so once they're
gone, you can't catch them and take them back. Take this chance and
go. Don't dig deeper than you already have or you'll soon be digging
your grave. Mind that,” he said tapping his nose. “You wouldn't
want to lose it.”

When someone gives you those words of wisdom, heed them unless of course if your body is bullet proof. Because once you're in the game, there's no way out. Bullets will be flying around in the air, you'll have corpses on your hands, you'll find hazardous booby traps in your apartment, a gun will constantly be pointed to your head and the scariest part is that you'll have no one to turn to. You'll probably end up numb beyond sense in an electric chair like me, unable to utter a word because your brain is still in shock. The funny thing is
that even despite the fact that a sharp knife is sat on my neck, I feel no need to speak for I have nothing to say. I'm only wishing that this pain would go away and that I am back home in my cheap two-bedroom house apartment, eating French food with my flatmate, gossiping about the posh ones about town while sipping cheap wine and plotting the next time we would turn my mother's life into a catastrophe by trashing my parents' 17,000 square foot manor. I guess you never really know what you're missing till you don't have it.

Beads of sweat trickled down my face and when I asked these crack heads to turn on the air conditioning or at least open a window, a heavy smack would be sent to the back of my head; making me drift in and out of consciousness. My pale hands lay still on the grey table on a paper, some kind of contract. I could hear the ticking of the clock but I was so tired, between the electrocuting and the energy sapping summer heat, I was dead. I couldn't think straight, my vision constantly went blurry and the one time I could see clearly, I could make out grey walls and a disgusting shade of blue on the ceiling which made me feel sick. I could tell my captors were getting impatient from the way the four of them paced the room, constantly threatening to pull the trigger or rupture my arteries. They even went to the extent of threatening to inject a cocktail of drugs into my system; to see if that'll get me talking. Seriously? I mean any fool would know I was already dead, just stuck in FUBAR; Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. The last time I bothered to look in a mirror, I could make out blisters and cuts on my face and I could almost swear I'd lost all my premolars. Maybe a few molars too. This whole rendezvous really wasn't my idea of finding out what the past entailed. I just wanted some scoop on what kind of drama happened back in the day and make a few people have nightmares. I'm an avid fan of horror movies, but not when they happen to me.

“So? Are you ready to speak?” asked the 'Alpha', who apparently went with the name Willie. Not William; just silly, sissy fucking Willie. I could see sparks of adrenaline in his deep blue eyes as he held my chin firmly, making me look him straight in the eye. He was actually
having a blast out of this, electrocuting, punching and pulling a girl's hair. What a way to treat a lady.

“Am....Am I ready to speak?” I asked with stammers after mastering enough energy to say those few words, and even throw in an ironic laughter which made me sound like a smoker whose lungs were in the process of failing. I knew what would be failing within a fraction of a second; my heart, that's what.

“I swear to the gods,” Willie said in a low growl while pointing a firm finger at me. “If you answer one more of my questions with a question, I am going to go all Tyson and bite your damned ear off!”

Even in this life threatening situation, I managed to laugh at that. I laughed so loud despite my soar throat and swollen mouth that I sounded manic. I could see Willie send sign signals using his hand to another guy in the corner of the room, and with a thumbs up, the flip was switched on again and my once still body was sent into a frenzy. A series of fits engulfed my body and my heart beat was faint. Most people would be moaning in pain to satisfy the 2450 volts of electricity being sent up from the chair through my spine. My teeth
were chattering, my eyes thrown in the back of my head. The fact that sweat covered every inch of my body made the pain a thousand times worse. There was once a time when I thought period pains were bad, but this? This is indescribable, I tell ya. I always imagined my death would be of natural courses. Natural my ass.

My mind was drifting off to 'the better place'. My heart beat was almost completely gone and I couldn't breathe right. I could here voices in the air, loud and clear. Yelling at me, yelling amongst each other. Something along the lines of “Turn that switch off! For fuck's sake, you're gonna fucking kill her ya cunt!” “What did you call me mother fucker?” “Here
we go again. Let's just get the money then shoot her brains out!” “I like your thinking mate.”
“Shut up you idiots just turn it off, I mean look at this anorexic bitch. She's already dead anyway.” Damn right I am.

My mind was trapped in a complex web of confusion, pulling me between two decisions; begging to die, just letting go and remembering what would be on the other side. I have already lost anyone who mattered to me, not to death, but to the materiality of the earth and the people in it. People who lacked thinking, substance and are basically parasites. Suddenly my whole body went still and I started convulsing. The switch was turned off and my whole body wouldn't stop twitching. A warm liquid trickled from my nose and ears; any fool would know it was blood. At first my whole body jumped about the chair like a roasted piece of turkey still fighting to save it's life; an effort proved absolutely futile for the turkey. Thick eerie silence poured over the room and I could make out the four figures looking down at me. This time I could hear something along the lines  of “You fuckwit! Fucking dickhead, you just killed her! We're fucking screwed here mate. Literally! Oh fuck! Do you think she's dead?” All the lines of paranoia from one voice were followed by a firm “Shut up OJ, fucking retard!”

My wild outbursts had now reduced to low convulsions, my heart beat grew a wee bit stronger, giving me the assurance of life. I wished my whole body would remain still so that these jokers would freak out thinking they'd just killed a $94,000,000,000 worth 'anorexic bitch'. But the odds weren't working in my favour. My eyes suddenly had a will of their own as they opened up and looked straight at Willie's worried face. You should've have seen his face; looked like a geezer who'd just had an overdose of cocaine and it was making his veins ecstatic. His face wouldn't stop twitching either, like he had some kind of disease; very ironic considering the fact that I was the one in the electric chair.

“Are you done harming me? I suddenly prefer the option of having drugs in my system to this,” I said in a low, sickly voice. At least my voice box was working again. The taste of blood in my mouth surprisingly felt okay. The metal like taste revived my taste buds. I had eaten nothing for days, except some sushi which was forced down my throat before I had a chance to taste its rawness.

“I mean you acres of harm,” Willie growled, bits of his spit landing on my face. Usually I'd be angered and my skin would be pained by this, but I'm sure it had just experienced worse. “I mean you untold quantities of harm. I would visit a whole continent of harm upon you before we're through!”

“Well that's nice,”I said through gritted teeth when a sharp pain flew up my spine. “I'm still not saying anything, so you can go ahead and pour those 2450 volts of electricity through my body. I really don't mind, in fact, it's excellent exercise for my body. The kind I'll never find in a gym anywhere.....”

“Shut it you bitch!” I heard the only other female in the room yell in my left ear. The fact that she was now holding a gun to my head should've been scary, but these idiots knew they couldn't just kill me. Their superiors would ruin them if they did. They'd probably die deaths a thousand times worse than mine. So what exactly did I have to be scared of? Nada!

“Tell Will here what he needs to know,” she said calmly while loading her gun.

“Or what?” I asked proposing a challenge. “Let me guess, you'll render me biologically unable to maintain life... I've heard it all before.”

“I will dislocate your vagina within a matter of nanoseconds!” She whispered in my left ear, and for some reason that puzzled me. I don't know if it was because of fear or because I was trapped in pensive mood; wondering whether that was physically possible. She got her satisfaction, a wicked smile spread on her face making her eyes grow wide and exposing her mouth full of not-so-white teeth. Sweet lord! what was the world turning into?

“Listen, as much as I would love to sit here and entertain you with stories about the whereabouts of that kinda money, I can't. I don't know where it is!” I emphasised for the millionth time. “And just for the record, you jerks really need to work on your threats. I can't
tell if you're threatening me or inviting me for a cup of tea.”

The last thing I remember is Willie's fist meeting my cheek again, all in a flash. Quicker than light. Silence and blackness poured over me, and for the first time since my father's wise words, I really regretted not listening. How the fuck was I going to get my ass out
of this mess? I had nowhere to go, no one to turn to, ninety-four billion dollars trashed away some place I can't remember and four crack heads ready to kill me. Just another day in paradise, eh?