Drywood Ch. 01

Chapter 1. (Prolog)

(This is a multipart series of stories. This first part with no sex at all - it comes later. Just a presentation of the main caracter and the setting of a scene. I am sorry for my poor skill in english, it is not my first language, and this is the first thing I have ever tried to write in english)

It all started when my wife left me. She found someone with a lot more money and a bigger house and a smarter car. I found myself somewhat lost in the beginning. But soon decided to sort out my life as best I could. At the time, I was pushing on 40 and as they say, of good health, about 1,78 m tall and doing reasonable excercise.

The marriage had been like most, not very rough but on the brink of boring. She was hard to please, and complaining more and more about the lack of funds to do the things she wanted, like travelling first class all over the world, bying a big house in the city and changing the car for a new Mercedes. So she left, and we sold the house, and she kept the Dog. The small house that we had shared for about 10 years, in a suburb to the city were we both worked. The place where our kids had grown up and been to school and so on. We sold the Volvo and everything else and I bought a small former summerhouse in another part of the country, and a small well used Jeep Wrangler for my half of the money. Our two kids had gone away to different universitys, moved out as fast as they could and was not surprised by the divorce.

After a short deliberation I decided to quit the kind of job that I no longer liked. I had been a teacher at college for almost a decade. I hated the political changes in school managing and the amount of nonteaching stuff I had to put up with at all hours and times. I decided to take part time jobs only, extra hours and different kinds of loose jobs until I could sort out what I really wanted to do.

There were no shortage of jobs. I drove a truck for a nearby firm when they needed it, participated In the harvest driving a big tractor during the fall, and worked as a temp at the local college. The free time inbetween jobs I gave in to my lifelong wish to work with photography. In my teens I had trained as a photographer, and learned a lot about photography. The technological change from analog to digital photography made the career possibilities nonexistent, so I gave up and became a teacher instead.

Now I arranged part of the big living room in the house to a studio and started small, just a sort of extended hobby. The house I had bought had once been a summer cottage among some twenty like it on a small peninsula along the coast. Over the years water, plumbing and electricity came to the area and some of the houses was, like the one I bought, refurbished to all year living standard.

The house was a one storey building shaped like a flat U with a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom in the one end -- a rather large livingroom taking up the area of the bottom of the U and two small bedrooms and a shower/bathroom in the other end.

The free space within the U made up a secluded garden facing west, and was a lovely place to sit in the afternoon. I took my time renovating the place, painting and shaping it to my liking. I remade half of the big room nearest the two bedrooms to a studio with one white and one black wall in the corner and the lights and stuff that you need. Buying equipment secondhand at a slow pace and low price. One of the small bedrooms was used as a storage room, and the other was perfect when any of the kids wanted to stay over, wich wasn't very often, they had their own life at uni.

With a lot of free time on my hands, and since it was a in an area with summer houses with less than 100 meters to a secluded beach area and woodland all around, I did a lot of photography around the area. Birds, landscapes, animals, kitchy sunsets and so on. A small advert in the local shop and some hits in social media gave me a few assignments photographing dogs, children, graduating students and business executives. I formed a page in social media and put out more and more pictures. The page stated that I did most things but not weddings. I have never even tried covering a wedding but I can imagine it must be a nightmare and I didnt want that.

When I felt settled and could take the time I treated myself to a rather expensive five day photo gathering/course at a resort. It covered most aspects of photography like landscape, portrait and fashion. Learning a lot, taking a lot of pictures, and getting a lot of nice friends in that trade. So within a year and a half I had settled into a pleasant sort of life far away from the lights of the city.

This is when this story really starts. It is late august. Most of the houses nearby was empty, school term had started and everyone was back at their respective jobs. I had been lazy in the sun this warm august and not been up to much apart from a photo layout in a medium sized companys PR-material. Some dull company CEO, a hefty bunch of striped suits, some happy workers and a few big spreads of factory buildings and paraphenalia. It was a well paid job so I had no big worry at the moment.

Suddenly out of the blue comes a long e-mail from someone called Anette. She and "a friend" were aspiring models and would like me to take photos for their portfolios. At that point in time I had mearly a sketchy idea what a portfolio was, and what kind of pictures they might need, but I might as well try. Said and done, we made an appointment the coming week and I started to scan the internet for information about what I needed to know.

During the course in photography we had covered portraits and fashion photography, members of the course photographing each other, and I had turned out a few very nice pictures so I thought that it would be ok. As always when you search on the net you get a lot of different information and I thought a lot about what kind of pictures they wanted. I also had a few good books about photography, with a lot of helpful information.

Anette and I had agreed that they would supply clothes and makeup themselves and I would sort out the rest. I had promised that they could use the spare room for changing and other things and if needed stay the night, since they traveled for a few hours to get to me. All good so far, I stocked up with food and tried to anticipate what else was needed. I had no inkling of the things to come.