Winged: Chapter 1

Scrap from the unfinished story Winged.

Chapter 1
Dumah put down the empty coffee cup on the messy counter, which was now covered in kitchen paper soaking with coffee. It almost seemed like those kinds of things only happen when she would be in a rush, she thought while swiping the once so clean and white kitchen paper into the bin. She hoped Oliver, the owner, wouldn’t notice the coffee stains if he would come and check how the apartment was doing - apart from not having been tidied up for about three months.

At least her formal dress was still clean. Apart from the dress, she only had simple shorts, t-shirts, sweaters - something you wouldn’t exactly want to wear to a job interview your current lifestyle depended on. The loose fabric conveniently covered the stumps on her back that were once majestic wings. She never wore anything tight or with an open back, afraid to show the stumps.

Dumah never really remembered what it was like to have wings, though she knew when she lost them - in the same accident she lost her parents, three years ago. Anything she had experienced before it seemed so distant, so vague. She’d always assumed it must’ve been slight brain damage.

She studied her hair in front of the mirror. The bun was still in place. The combination of black and white-blonde hair made a bun look like some kind of weird hair mixture. Dumah wasn’t bothered to fix it - ever since the accident, her once so shiny light blonde hair started turning black from the roots. Dyeing her hair wasn’t exactly her thing, and not really affordable either for an uneducated 22-year old. She had considered cutting it, but that was something she actually had never done before, or at least not at such an extreme rate. Besides, ombré hair or dip dye wasn’t necessarily something rare, especially not in Ancynea’s capital, Dumah thought as she closed the door behind her. The city of Deredon was so full of all kinds of people that nothing you did or wore ever made people intensely stare at you as if there was something terribly wrong with you. Nothing - except for two things.

Using magic, and wings.

Now, the first thing was something Dumah had some experience with, and would gladly keep her hands off. The second thing was a little more… complicated.

 

The train station was extremely crowded - it was Tuesday afternoon, after all. She held tightly onto her bag. The first time she had come here, her bag was stolen - actually ripped out of her arms. Ever since then, she always had become… a little paranoid about her belongings.

Her seat was next to a teenage boy with headphones on - who immediately moved as far to the right as he could as soon as she sat down. Sometimes it irritated her, but she definitely understood it. Some people just didn’t want to get involved with other people. She used to be that kind of person as well, actually.

But as you get older… things change.

She chuckled at the thought of the 14-year old Dumah, who would regularly miss her stop on purpose so she didn’t have to ask the person on the aisle seat to stand up. Yeah, that was something she had left behind a long time ago.

Of course, her stop changed every time she changed jobs - which was quite often, seeing as she never had a binding contract. What else was expected of, well, someone who never even had the chance to finish her education?

Every new job interview was another challenge that approached her, another place where she had to defend her own worth. Dumah usually had her way with words - which was good in the short term, but the moment it became clear she wasn’t exactly as good as she usually claims to be in interviews, she would be fired. It was a cycle she had been in for the past seven years, despite her various attempts to break out of it. However, all of her previous attempts were intentional, by trying her best to maintain her current jobs, as the current one - being turned down so many times that applying again seemed almost like a hopeless option - wasn’t.

‘Next stop: Meldon Avenue’

She sighed as she stood up and flung her backpack onto her shoulder, making her way to the doors, shoving aside various people on the way. Younger Dumah would have apologized to every single person she’d touch, and just the thought of it made current Dumah tired and extremely awkward. Maybe it was rude, but it was efficient. Efficiency and friendliness were usually not things that went together. Shoving people aside in the metro was the usual business, especially if you wanted to get off on time.

Besides, she had an interview to attend to, after all. Being late would definitely cost her the job, which meant sitting around for another few weeks with cup noodles, the same pair of jogging pants, and begging Emma for a little more money while continually feeling absolutely terrible for doing so.

Emma was too good of a friend. Dumah would go as far as saying she was too good of a human being, even. She looked up to her at all times, on how she could be so talented at singing, drawing, playing the piano, and yet have enough time to maintain both a stable job and relationship. She did so many things at once, and yet, whenever Dumah would need to talk, she’d be available. Dumah had held a rant yesterday about her job, about how stressed she was, about what if she would fuck it up, what if this, what if-

And Emma had just simply answered with: “You won’t, Dumah. I believe in you, you’re gonna be fine.”

 

The Meldon Tower, Ancynea’s governance building, and all of its one hundred and fifty-four floors stared down on her as she approached the two glass doors forming the entrance. She could feel her heart pulsating in her throat as she headed down the halls as was instructed in the letter. And though she knew she was only here for the position behind the bar in the downstairs café - she wouldn’t impact anything, she wouldn’t change the future of the land - the idea of working in the Meldon Tower was so surreal and intimidating to her. She’d be working in the same building as the president. The president!

The concept of wanting and needing this job so badly hit her at once and made her freeze in the middle of the hallway. She couldn’t lose this chance. She’d been unemployed for so long, and she’d been on the look for almost a year. She’d almost given up, almost decided to just accept the offer from the dickbag that’d been hitting her up since three years ago and scrub toilets for the rest of her life in his house. She was almost out of money, and the rent was due in less than a month. And all of a sudden this chance appeared right in front of her. She couldn’t mess up this interview. It was the last hope.

But what if she did?

She had messed up all of her seven previous interviews. Why would this one be any different?

''You won’t, Dumah. I’m sure you won’t. I believe in you, you’re gonna be fine.''

Dumah heard Emma’s soft voice in her head, and repeated the words over and over again, though she was starting to think that Emma believed more in her than she believed in herself.

 

No…

She looked into the distance, trying to understand what was just said, phone to her ear. Maybe she misunderstood? But the sudden click seemed to tell her something else.

It couldn’t be…

“We’ll contact you later, but you seem like a fine candidate,” they had said. In her head, it all went so well. She couldn’t think of a single thing she could’ve done better. And yet…

She couldn’t believe it, but the words kept ringing in her head to convince her that it had happened.

“We’re sorry to inform you that you are not the candidate we are looking for.”

She sighed as she held up her hand to call the bartender. “One hot chocolate milk, please. With whipped cream.”

The bartender nodded and made their way to get her a cup. As tempting as it seemed to get a pint of beer or at least some alcohol into her body to loosen up, she knew she made Emma - and herself - a promise.

She wouldn’t touch the bottle again. Not after last time, she thought, as she picked up the cup that was set down in front of her and brought the hot chocolate milk to her mouth. She took a sip straight away - a mistake.

“Ow!” she softly squealed as she downed the cup. Awful, it was awful. The drink was so hot she couldn’t even taste the chocolate. She got turned down for a job interview, for the opportunity that could’ve finally got her out of this mess she called her current life.

She looked at the bottles stacked against the wall and imagined how every one of the beverages would taste. The burning flavor of vodka, that weird sensation of gin mixed with tonic. And as she slowly sipped away her chocolate milk, she quietly wished she was holding one of those bottles to her lips.

One drink wouldn’t hurt, right?

One drink…

 

Dumah blankly stared at the six empty glasses in front of her. ''No, this was the last one. I won’t order another pint.''

She knew that sentence, that thought, too well. And as it repeated in her head, she knew she shouldn’t have started.

But she couldn’t fight the sense. She held up her hand to call the bartender, and the words had already left her lips before she could stop the other side of herself.

''Please. You’ve been feeling better since you started. Just take another sip, and you’ll be fine.''

“The same again, please.”

The same again…

As the words left her lips, suddenly something snapped. She wasn’t gonna take herself down this road again. In a final attempt to take back control, she grabbed her phone and called the only person she could think of who could stop her.

“Hi, this is Emilia Evans.”

“I’m sorry, Emma. I started again. I should’ve called you straight-”

''“I’m not available right now, so please leave a message. I’ll try to get back-”''

Her finger still dangled above the red button as the call popup disappeared.

Fuck.

She slammed down the phone onto the counter and grabbed the glass with two hands as she brought it to her mouth and downed it in one go. Before she could get ahold of herself, she had already put up her hand again.

She looked at the glasses next to her. This won’t cut it. And she just stood back, she watched herself say it.

“A shot of absinthe, please.”