The Moray Eel: The Disaster

The story that follows was my first non interactive story written in english. English is not my maternal language. It was published for the first time on a forum. Constructive comments are welcome.

Paris, the French capital has always been a very busy place. The crowd in the street is most of the time so huge than most people barely even notice the ones they cross. Very few people are noticed and attract to themselves gazes of admiration or envy. Among those few was that lovely blond woman, who looked in her late twenties, wearing a Channel suit. To say lovely was an understatement, she was gorgeous. Even if her outfit was not that revealing you could easily see that her hourglass body was perfect. She was of average size, with a weight that was on the perfect balance to be in a great shape with keeping a very sexy body. Her slightly curly blond hairs falling in the middle of her back were a beautiful addition to her angelic face where her blue eyes were like jewels. The way she walked and the expression on her face were clearly showing that she was someone very confident.

And for sure she was. Madeline was known in her job circle for her confidence, her sharp intelligence, her leadership and her capacity to do anything to succeed with any qualm. Madi was at a high position in a powerful bank, she was a bankster, a shark among sharks. She was conscious of it and that did not bother her. In fact she was not totally a shark, she was a moray eel. It was the nickname that her colleagues gave her early in career because of her hunger for success, the methods she was ready to use to achieve it and her skill to slide out any bad case with ease. No one had ever dared to use the nickname in front of her but she knew about it and it suited her well. Muraenidae have the reputation of dangerous predators after all, they are feared, so it was perfect for her.

When she arrived in the bank luxurious headquarter, she noticed that the atmosphere was not the same than usual. People looked like something really bad happened. One of the secretaries came to her and told her.

• Miss Dumay, mister Renaud wants do see you as soon as possible.

She went directly to her boss office and entered it without knocking. He was watching the news on his computer screen with a worried face

• You want to see me Philippe?

Pointing at the computer screen he answered.

• Yes. Come Madeline. That's ... The North Chemical factory.

Madeline joined her boss to watch the news. According to the journalist the employees of the factory were occupying it for days to protest against the sale of the factory to a Chinese firm. When the police assaulted the place to evacuate the protester things went wrong and there was a huge explosion followed by a fire that spread to the whole factory plant. The number of dead and wounded people was not yet known but there were at least three hundred protesters and about a hundred cops when the explosion happened. Madeline knew very well that factory. Years ago she was one of the main members of a team that tricked the former CEO into subscribing a toxic loan. When the firm was no longer able to pay back, the factory ended being the property of the bank and recently the bank decided to sell it to the Chinese. It was a very good operation for the bank and Madeline was proud of her work. She did not care about the fact it was dishonest. Philippe asked with a bit of fear in his voice.

• Are you sure we are legally safe?

• I'm totally sure. All was totally legal. No one can sue us to court and win.

Perhaps there will be some moralists to criticize us, but we are clean. We never forced anything on to anybody in that deal, and we did not hide anything. You have nothing to fear.

• I had not fear, I just wanted to be sure.

Madeline left her boss to go to her own office where she immediately started to work. She was a hard worker and very efficient worker and that day was no exception.

At the end of the day she left the building almost at the same time than everybody. Except when really needed she did not believe in spending more time at work than needed. To her if you always had to do a lot of extra hours to achieve what you have to do, it meant that you were inefficient. Her flat was in very expensive district of the French capital. Just seeing the building you could tell it was not a place for blue collars and the inside was indeed pretty luxurious. Madi's flat was luxurious too, but in a way it was cold. It was very functional, furbished with costly things but there was not warmth there. It was like one of those show flats you could see in magazines about rich people.

She took off her Channel suit to replace it by a lovely white summer dress that showed more of her magnificent body. If physical perfection existed she was indeed close to it. And she knew it. More than once in the past she had used seduction to achieve her goals and finding a lover had never been an issue. She took a bottle of high quality orange juice in her fridge to have a glass of it. Her fridge was full with food of the best quality. No junk food there and most of the products were organic products from the best producers. She switched on the TV set and had a look at one of the news channel while drinking the orange juice. Of course the main news was what happened at the factory and now there were far more images and details about. Horrible details, more than on hundred people dead, another hundred with serious if not almost deadly wounds, and the last hundred with lesser damages. The horrible details were illustrated by horrifying pictures and videos showing people with awful burns. Men and women of all ages with atrocious wounds were showed again and again. The videos about the carnage where running endlessly and Madeline could not take her eyes out of them. Suddenly the ringing of the phone took her form the almost hypnotic trance she was in. She took the communication without verifying who it was.

• Yes?

• Hey honey, that's me Richard. I thought we could see each other tonight. Your flat or mine?

Richard was her lover or to be more exact her sexual partner. Madeline did not want a love story but she liked sex, so she used to take lovers for relationships that never last more than a year. She chose them handsome, skilled in bed, but not too intelligent or too ambitious and she made sure they know who was leading in that relationship.

• Not tonight Richard, I had a busy day.

• Come on Madi, I'm sure you need to relax and you know I'm the best for that.

Madi answered with a harsh tone.

• Do yourself a favor Richard and remember what your place is.

• Ok, ok. I was just, you know... I will wait for your phone call. Good night.

Madeline spent a part of the night switching from a channel to another to get more information about the disaster. She finally fell asleep on her sofa. It was like a well programmed machine that she awoke at 07:00 in the morning. She took a shower, ate her breakfast and put on her work outfit like a robot. The day at work started with an informal crisis meeting to ensure that the firm was not at risk in the factory disaster that was becoming a national, if not an international, drama. It was her who gave the most convincing demonstration that the company was safe. Her boss was strangely quiet during the whole meeting. After the meeting she went back to her office to do her usual work.

At the beginning of the afternoon Madeline and her colleagues heard a scream coming from Philippe's office. A long scream that sounded like it was moving down. Madeline ran to her boss office where a window was opened. She looked at the street below from the window and saw Philippe's body in a pool of blood. On the desk there was a note, a suicide note: "I must pay for what I have done to all these poor people. Death is the only way". The police would never see the note since Madeline and her colleagues decided to destroy it to avoid that confession to put them in jeopardy in the factory drama. In the week that followed the firm paid a psychologist to help the employees. Madi went only to one collective session. The message of the shrink was clear "suicide is for cowards and as warriors of the financial world you are not cowards".

Life resumed its course and Madeline continued to work as nothing happened. But she was not really at what she was doing, something was bothering her. No one noticed it since the Moray Eel was good at hiding any sign of weakness. In fact the awful pictures and other details about the disaster and her boss suicide were running in her mind like an endless movie she was forced to watch. If at work nothing looked to have changed it was not the same at home where she was like a zombie just eating and watching TV but nothing else. She stopped to go to the gym twice a week or to read anything about the financial world like she used. She answered to the phone calls of Richard in a very cold and harsh way.

The Sunday morning of the second week after Philippe's suicide she spent some long minutes watching herself in the big mirror of the bathroom. She had the habit to write something with her lipstick on the mirror to fuel her competitive mood. The sentence that had been there for three weeks was "who dares wins". Suddenly she took a towel and erased it with anger, she then ran to the small office she had in her flat. There she took a ring binder from a drawer. In the ring binder was collected some files extracts, letters and even newspaper articles. All was about her greatest success and about what she saw as milestones in her career. One of the first documents was a handwritten letter from someone who was angry at her. She remembered that old woman, she was the first person she found a way to cheat in a very legal way. To her it was the case that showed her how to make her way to the top of her job. In the letter the old woman wrote that Madeline was beautiful but that her soul was the ugliest she had ever known and wished her to lose everything and end as ugly outside than she was inside. After reading several times the letter, Madeline put the ring binder back in the drawer.

During the following two weeks it was obvious that Madi was thinking about something. At work everybody thought that the Moray Eel was planning a new action that would, as usual, bring a lot of money. The rumor was reinforced when she refused to take Philippe place saying that there was too much management and that she wanted to keep spending most of her work time doing business.

During the third week on Friday evening she heard at the radio about the dangers of tobacco and alcohol that were, now, plaguing more women than ever. The whole talk was frightening, it was about cancer, breathing issues, fertility problems and of course about the bad effect on the look. She listened to it all and when it was finished she left her flat to go to tobacconist shop. There she bought a whole box of cigarettes packs and a lighter. After buying the cigarettes she went to another shop to buy a whiskey bottle.

Back at home Madi sat on the sofa, she had put the cigarettes and the bottle on the low table. She spend some minutes thinking before taking the bottle and drinking at it directly. Madeline used to be a very light social drinker. Since alcohol was not good for keeping cognitive skills at their best and not good for health she would have never thought about drinking cheap whiskey at the bottle directly. And it was indeed a cheap one, the taste was anything but good. In fact she just felt like a burn going down her throat directly in her stomach. Almost immediately she felt her body warming and her face went red. She put the bottle back on the table and took a cigarette from on of the pack. She looked at it. To her smoking was a stupid and unhealthy habit that was only for dumb and weak people. She put it between her lips and lighted it. She inhaled the smoke and immediately coughed and grin with disgust.

- So disgusting! How do they do?

Madeline took another sip of whiskey directly at the bottle. She then forces herself to smoke again. She had to go beyond her repulsion to do it. To help she decides to alternate drinking and smoking. She was not used to drink so much alcohol and not used at all to drink something as strong as whiskey. Before finishing her cigarette she was seriously drunk, her movements were clumsy and she was having hard time to think. It was a very unusual experience for her to not be in total control of herself. She soon blacked out.

The next morning she awakened on the floor in a pool of her own vomit that was smelling alcohol. It was with difficulties that she stood and went to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. What a mess she was! She had the face of someone very tired, there were dark circles around her eyes. Her lovely face was half covered with vomit and her beautiful blond hair were full of it. She took a lipstick and wrote on the mirror "you look like shit". It was with difficulties that Madi took a shower and went to bed. She was so ill that she spend the whole Saturday in bed. On Sunday, she decided to clean the mess, the smell was totally disgusting. It was not an easy task, several time she was about to vomit.

- Disgusting, but you deserve it, you idiot. A good lesson!

It took her time but she cleaned it so well that no one could thing she vomited alcohol there. After she had a shower and then headed to the computer to write an Email to the cleaning firm she was employing.

- I no longer need your services.

She spend the whole day wandering on Internet reading about alcohol and tobacco addiction and did nothing else. The week was not different than the previous one except that every evening Madeline smoked a cigarette and had a glace of whiskey and that she did not go at the gym at all. She really had to force herself especially for smoking but at the end of the week she could do it without coughing. In the second week it was a routine, every evening before the meal she had the glace of whiskey and after it a cigarette. At the end of the third week she was surprised to enjoy that routine and to not miss the gym at all.

After a month of that regimen, Madeline looked at herself nude in the mirror of the bathroom. She looked the same as usual, stunning, beautiful. The lack of sport, smoking and drinking seemed to have no effect on her. The only little flaw was her legs and pussy that were hairier than usual since she neglected to go to the beauty salon. Since it was blond hair it was not that visible. She looked unsatisfied.

- Madi, either you were born to be hot for ever or you lack method.

She looked at the sentence on the mirror and then modified it, "you look like shit" became "you will look like shit". She went to her fridge and looked at the food in it for a minute and then slammed the door close before leaving her flat. Madi went into a hard discount shop, there she bought a large amount of junk food. For diner she put on the table a cheese burger with fries, that she only had to warm in the oven, and a bottle of a cheap cola. The smell of her whole meal was really disgusting and to her it did not looked good at all. To help herself she drank two glaces of whiskey before trying to eat anything. When she took a first mouthful of the cheese burger she really had to control herself to not puke it. The think was greasy, the bread was bad, the meat did not taste like real meat and the cheese was so awful that it was impossible to describe. The fries were beyond greasy and salty and the cola was so full of sugar that it was disgusting. It took a whole hour to Madeline to eat her diner. After that awful meal she was happy to have a cigarette, very happy. In fact she had never been so happy to smoke one. When she realized it she told to herself.

- A matter of method and work.

It was Friday evening so Madi did not go to sleep early. She wandered on the Internet reading about junk food effect and a bit about alcohol and tobacco too. Progressively her search lead her to porn sites. She had not had sex for more than a month, whereas usually she used to have it at least twice a week. Tired of receiving harsh answers Richard no longer tried to contact her. She ended with a hand in her panties touching herself. While she was touching herself she watched video after video. It was almost midnight when she went to bed without showering herself, she was smelling sex since she had made herself orgasm several times. When she waked up the morning she ate something healthy since eating junk food for breakfast was beyond her capacities. After her meal she sat in front of her computer. The chair was smelly, it smelt intimate juices. In fact she was smelly too since she had not yet had a shower.

- Madi you are fucking pathetic. You can have any guy and you do that.

She shivered and then touched her pussy, she was wet.

- Can't believe it excites me. Well...

She sat on the smelly chair and resumed surfing on sex sites to watch video of hard porn. Soon she was masturbating herself in the most obscene way. She was wearing only her bathrobe, that was wide opened, and her legs were spread wide with her feet on the computer table. After pleasuring herself for almost an hour she surfed on sex shop sites and ordered dildos. The ones she ordered were very basic and very cheap. The dildos were delivered fast. The week that followed the evening routine of Madeline was always the same: she changed from her work outfit to her bath robe, had a glace of whiskey, ate junk food, smoked a cigarette and masturbated herself with a dildo while looking at porn. It took about two weeks to no longer be disgusted by the greasy, salty food. Before that she forced herself and she did like a good pupil doing her home work in the most serious way. During these evening there was nothing classy about her, she was just vulgar and dirty. At work things did not really changed, no one saw anything except that Madi was now wearing pants instead of dress. In fact her legs had become so hairy that stockings would not have been enough to hide it.

Two months after starting her new way of life, during a week end, Madeline decided to check herself closely. First she weighted herself, she looked surprised when she saw the result.

- Only five kilos?!

She looked at herself in the mirror, she was in fact hotter than even since the added weight was mostly in her breasts and ass with a distribution on her whole body that was rather harmonious. She checked her face, mouth and teeth. There were no evidence that she had been smoking a cigarette every evening for almost three months. She looked at her reflect eyes in the mirror with an angry look. She read the sentence written on it loud.

- You will look like shit. Not if you don't work hard and methodically. Are you afraid. You prefer to do like Philippe? Or you think you can escape from what you have done?!