Deus Ex Machina Ch. 01: Vincenza

Chapter 1: Vincenza

Stifling a yawn, Vincenza leaned back from the dull glow of her computer monitor and stretched over the back of the leather swivel chair, her arms extended and hands clasped. Editing this piece for the paper was murder. She couldn't comprehend why it was anyone would hire a writer who didn't use proper spelling, punctuation, tenses or grammar. This internship had failed her expectations as not only a writer but as an aspiring journalist. She thought a job with the Sentinel Times would be a welcome relief from her last internship at The Daily Star. Sadly, though, she found very little difference between the two save for the obvious political backing and who was being paid off by whom. Most of her duties for the Sentinel were editing for the editor so he could bang one of the other interns.

She was severely unimpressed.

Jamming a rewritable CD into the drive of her computer, she burned the files to the disc to take home instead of staying in the dark, empty office. There was something about the place that just creeped her out after the sun went down. Although she was sure it was just her imagination, the shadows seemed to come alive and walk down the halls, sometimes banging and clanking and sometimes slipping so silently it was more of a distraction than quiet. Mentally prodding the disc to burn faster, Vincenza pushed the steady rise of paranoia back to her subconscious. 'There is nothing in the shadows,' she reminded herself. 'There weren't any scary shadow people when you were a baby, there aren't any scary shadow people now.' The argument raging since she was five was popular to bring up at family dinners when she actually made it home but it definitely wasn't a welcome one as far as she was concerned. Her mother loved to chastise her in front of the elder members of her southern family who all laughed politely and, she was sure, talked about over dessert after she left, never staying that long in the stagnant atmosphere of false politeness and snide undertones infecting her family since they had come to the United States from France hundreds of years ago.

"Vincenza Freniere, you take the local stories and just run rampant with them, don't you?" the sweet Southern lilt taking its sweet time floating from her lips like the scent of the magnolia blossoms breezing through the windows. Unfortunately for Vincenza, she often thought she caught the scent of rotting flesh along with them. She had stopped telling her mother about it by the time she was seven, buying into the insistence the others put forward in denial of the tales but even now the scent didn't escape her. "Some day, child, you'll grow out of these silly fantasies and you'll thank me for it once you're older."

She always hated that speech. Clicking the disc into the plastic protector, she gathered her belongings and tucked them into her briefcase. Brushing a long spiral of chocolate brown hair out of equally dark eyes, she collected the stack of printed final edits from her printer and tucked them inside the collapsible binder before tucking it inside the soft cloth carrier. With one final look around the deserted computer room, she exited the office, locking the door behind her.

Stepping outside of the office was almost depressing for her. Coming from lush countryside where there were grass and trees and flowers that grew wild along the roads she had been woefully unprepared for New York. The cities of Lousiana had flavor and texture and color. New York had flavor, too, but it was something completely different than what she was used to. New Orleans was sweet, rich bourbon and rich creamy pastry, a city that reveled in its life and history. New York was a breakfast of cheap whiskey and stale cigarettes that loved to spit on whatever heritage they couldn't trace.

Completely different environment and one she wouldn't trade for the world. When she had moved, she had wanted something worlds apart from her childhood home. This was most definitely it.

She jaunted across the street and to the parking lot behind the street corner coffee shop. She preferred to park in their brightly lit lot as opposed to the black hole the lot behind the Sentinel's building provided. While she didn't fear for her life, she didn't want to lose her purse and part of her skin to some mugger since the police really didn't care much about what happened to the people outside of murder and even then they were scant to come out from behind their desks to do anything about it. Most of the time things were ruled a murder, sat on someone's desk for a month and then put into the cold case files. Rarely was anything followed up on, even when the trail was hot. Vincenza had found this out first hand when a friend of hers had been put into the hospital by some guy she and a coworker had seen and the police did nothing. Even after Vincenza had done some amateur investigation on her own, found the guy and taken it to the officer on her friend's case they did nothing. If the police didn't have her back, she had to get her own. She packed a taser and carried her keys between her fingers as gouging weapons when she went to her car. She could wound them long enough to get somewhere with witnesses and that was all that mattered.

As she keyed the lock on the door, a shift in her peripheral vision caught her attention. Unlatching the lock, she tugged at the door handle and pulled it open, gazing around for the disturbance. It shifted again as she got into her car and she leaned out the door to see what it had been. Whatever it was, it looked about ten feet tall. Nothing around her could make a shadow that tall. She pulled herself into the car with a shake of her head and turned the engine over, chastising herself for her immaturity. She exited the lot and made her way home.