Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Rolling my neck, I got up from my desk, clicking off the camera lights that generated so much heat that I actually ran a free-standing air-conditioning unit on my legs under the desk just to keep from getting sweaty during filming.
I made my way from the second bedroom on the sort-of third floor of my townhouse, and down to the kitchen toward the front of the house. It was a wholly unused space, save for the popcorn machine, the microwave, and the very pricey restaurant-grade latte machine I'd bought with my first big check from my videos and podcasts.
Here you might be thinking that I must not have been raised right if I didn't know how to cook. But, alas, you'd be wrong. My mother is an actual saint. And the kind of woman who actually enjoyed slaving over complicated meals because it made her feel good when people enjoyed the food she served them. While I'd inherited her eye shape and her long legs and her voracious reading habit, let's just say that the cooking thing was one instance where this apple fell far, far from that tree.
My mom was why I'd just disrupted several week's worth of scheduled, pre-filmed and recorded content to add in the Shelley Shannon case. Doing what I did for a living, and having the somewhat twisted interests that I clearly did, I lived with a constant low-level of anxiety of anything ever happening to my mother. I remembered that sick stomach sensation in my teens when my mom was later than I expected, or when she didn't answer when I called. I couldn't fully grasp what the Shannon children were going through, but because of my tight relationship with my mom, I could empathize. So I wanted to put a spotlight on her case. Even if literally every other true crime content creator had already started putting out videos on the very topic.
Hell, if I chose not to cover it, my mother would lash into me for it. Because she would relate to Shelley the way I related to her children, even if I was grown.
I made my way toward the espresso machine in my dinosaur feet slippers my mother had bought as a joke because I'd been obsessed with all things prehistoric when I'd been younger. The joke was on her, because my adult heart adored them.
"Hey, Tom Hiddleston, play my music on Spotify," I called to my Google Assistant. The day I learned I could change the call command to anything I wanted was a glorious day. It was the small things in life. I named him Tom Hiddleston because I whole-heartedly believed that if there was a man on this Earth I would be safe in a room with, it was good ol' Tom.
"Okay, You Ravishing Creature," he answered back, making my lips turn up. Okay, the day I realized I could change Tom's nickname for me was an even more glorious one. I mean, there was nothing like waking up and asking for the forecast, and being called a ravishing creature. It was a real mood lifter to my somewhat antisocial, hermit self.
It was only nine in the morning, and my Nu Metal was likely not appreciated by the neighbor I shared a wall with. But I didn't really appreciate his atrocious guitar playing at two a.m. when he was trying to impress the girl he brought home to tour the sheets with, so I figured it all shook out in the grand, karmic scheme of things.
Besides, there was something wrong with you if you couldn't appreciate the utter angsty don't-give-a-fuck-edness of Limp Bizkit.
"Oh, come to mama," I murmured, taking my espresso cup and pouring it into my double-walled plastic travel mug with a lid, then filling it the rest of the way up with some almond milk, ice, then a couple—fine quite a few—drops of chocolate syrup.
See, work was done.
Technically.
But that was just the job that paid the bills.
My other work was just getting started.
Let me forewarn you. This is the part where you might raise your brows, and call me crazy, maybe even worry about my being a general menace to society. You might even be considering how I might look in a straitjacket. Which is fabulous, I will say. I tried one on once at a true crime get-together. I even made up a little story about being a nineteen-fifties housewife who got locked up against her will for hysteria because I dared to tell my no-good husband that I was done being his servant, and that I was leaving him for the mailman I'd been fucking for the past six months.
Swirling my iced latte, I made my way toward the foyer, meeting the three doors there. One lead out onto the small front porch. Another led to the garage. And the third led to the basement. All three doors were heavily locked to keep people out. The first two because you could never be too careful, but the last one was because of the aforementioned worries about people thinking I was crazy.