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Vol. 1, Ep. 01 "Cold Heart" Part One - Transcript

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Do you know who I am? I am the Narrator of this story, and this is how the story goes:

Near the end of pain and strife, you might be one of the luckier ones who find their way to the light at the end of the tunnel. A light like that was not too dissimilar to the hope and splendor Penelope Devout found glistening in her lover's eyes.

We know there is no life here on Earth that does not go without experiencing that all-inclusive pain and suffering. But Penelope thought, "Together, you and I will be able to make it though just about anything. So long as WE have each other."

And THAT was the most disappointing and dishonest thought Penelope had ever had throughout her entire life.

* * *

A needle jab, followed by a guttural inhale. The scent of last night’s mistakes converging with the alcohol staining her clothes and dressing her lips. What of the life of an addict? Wasteful. Distracted. Often tormented, whilst alone forever, while always afraid. What awaits her but another release from what ails her so? She sickens her body in her backwards attempts to restore equilibrium to a once vibrant mind. This girl is without hope, yet, not without pleasure, synthesized. A sad, and misguided stupor she allows herself to fall into night after night.

Penelope. Poor, young, impressionable Penelope. She was sold a dream. She never stood a chance.

Lights were pulsating overhead. Wet, steaming bodies were dancing with passion, and without any cause for restraint, our little, haunted Penelope traded her dead soul for a night ever-most alive. For a doll such as herself, Penelope received an endless flow of kisses to help her feel loved and adored. Religiously, she found herself a new lover, every waking night, all at the small price of her torn netting, a newfound tendency for forgetting, and a submission to the will of intimacy.

How long can a lifestyle like this last?

Tonight, in the most cruel of fashions, her friend, “dusk” would not bring Penelope her usual delights. On the contrary, Penelope’s night would not be as glorious as those before.

We find her cuddled up, cozy, in a luxurious bed called misery. It’s just about time reality came to pay her a visit rather than her typical mistress, ready to seduce her with powdered promises. There, she lay, beside a filthy garbage bag oozing with kitchen grease and last night’s binged booze, curdled and frozen over. Cold, hungry, and alone, just like I said she would be. It is her fate that she should find her life slipping away in the treacherous and disconcerting hours of the night, as if it were a taboo thing that people notoriously die under such circumstances during these times.

Her vision’s doubled, with hardly any wiggle room for hope to be had. How did Penelope get here? She asks herself the same thing. She next does what Penelope does absolutely best: she submits to the mercilessness of her odds. So pretty, a quitter strapped in a corset of bruises wrapped snugly on her thin, deprecated body.

She’s been totally bled dry now of fun to be had with her. Her glamorous escape from what she never wanted to become her life is overwhelmingly ironic tonight.

* * *

Nevertheless, a woman’s luck can turn. Despite being tattered, battered, and left for dead, that does not mean she is not extraordinarily cute.

A plain cheeseburger never tasted so good, as the bun revitalizes her ability to curl the rigid stems of her hands. The pickles, so devilishly sweet. The patty is not even the best part! It’s the way her own drool is soaking the bread well before she finishes the bite. The crunch of the onions, the taste of sweet, sweet ketchup, complimented by the undefeated aroma of yellow mustard. Penelope inhales so deeply, because she knows that taking a deep breath in means she can taste the cheeseburger with heightened enjoyment, fresh and new is the sensation all over again. She eats faster than she can breathe, hungry as a horse. Her bite is too full. There is so much food in her mouth, in fact, that the man sitting across from her can hear her swallow it hard from where he is at the table, where he sits politely. He smiles awkwardly- whilst bewildered and simultaneously impressed – at the sight of this overtly desperate and yet, overly sweet woman. He’s not licking his lips on the outside, not like she is, however…

The man clears his throat and adjusts his tie, to realign his thoughts as to be as proper as his dressing hence forth. “Do not take advantage of this woman in her situation! Like some kind of animal would!” He scolds himself harshly in his mind. ‘At least I can take solace in the fact that she has no possible way of knowing what exactly I would do to her right now, if only she’d ask me to. By God, the way she is sucking the remnants of those leaking, hot condiments off of her fingers right now.’

Meanwhile Penelope is thinking, “How can he be so kind? To take someone like me, a total stranger, into his consideration? He definitely had to go out of his way for me. My God! He doesn’t even KNOW me. Nor the plethora of travesties I have committed against my own body as a terrible daughter and a good slut.”

I would be long dead by now, if not for this benevolent fellow.

PENELOPE.

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