The dark-haired man could hear the faint music pounding from the nightclub. The people in front and behind him were bouncing on their feet in anticipation, eager to enter the dark scene. They chattered and laughed, while some complained about having to wait in line. He stood still, wishing he were somewhere else. He didn’t like nightclubs; they were the worst places for business. Too many people and too much security. A buff security man as tall as the Manhattan skyline stood outside the concrete building, his face painted in a strange purple hue from the fluorescent lights above him. His expression remained stoic as he analysed each identification card, his eyes searching for any discrepancies or spelling errors, any birth dates that seemed too suspicious. The dark-haired man held his breath as he approached the entrance, hoping that the schedule he had been given was correct. He recognised the security man; the white scar that marred his left cheek marked his identity, contrasting greatly against the darkness of his skin. He had caught him doing business before. The clock on his phone read ten-forty-four in big white text. The security guard should be changing in three, two, one…

               He expressed his relief in the slight drop of his shoulders and small wisps of breath that turned white in the chill November air. It was quiet, subtle, and nearly non-existent. It was all he could show. He could not risk any attention. He had two strikes since his release, and a third would guarantee his return to prison. He did not want to go back. His nightmares consisted of dreary grey walls and bright orange jumpsuits. Hours spent alone in a cell longing for company and days wishing he had none. He did not want to go back. He did not want to be at the nightclub, he did not want to be dealing tonight, but business meant money, and money meant survival.

               The music pained his ears as he entered the nightclub, much louder than before. He could not words were intelligible, for they were drowned out by hysteric shrieks and drunken laughter.  The swaying of bodies and the clinks of shot glasses. His eyes roamed the scene for the inconspicuous figure of a person waiting for him, but the strobe lights moved around the room, offering little to no visibility in the dark purple lighting of the room. He checked his phone, squinting his eyes against the bright screen. His client had sent him a message telling him to go to the bathroom. He made his way through the crowd of bodies, the stench of sweat and alcohol assailing his nostrils, the music pounding louder against his ears. It was getting hotter, and he found it slightly harder to breathe. He regretted wearing a dark jacket, he could feel the thick material absorbing the heat of the crowd, but he knew it was the smartest decision.

               He covered his nose as he approached the bathrooms, the foul stench of vomit, urine, and other substances making his eyes water and his stomach lurch. He felt the tightening of his muscles and the acidic bile building up in his throat as he swung the flimsy white door open, entering a dimly lit room with cold white walls and stained floor tiles. The music muffled as the door closed behind him, sealing him and the blond man in the acrid room. His polished black suit read Upper East Side, and his shiny leather shoes spoke in hundred dollar bills. The dark-haired man wondered what a man of this sort was doing in this part of New York, but he asked no questions and conducted his business in his usual, silent manner. Whichever words were spoken, were said in hushed tones and in the subtle exchange of goods; a plastic Ziploc bag of green herbs passed from one hand to the other for a stack of two hundred dollars. The dark haired man left the nightclub without a word, and the blonde-haired man returned to his party of friends, all of whom were surrounding a brown haired man who wore a pink plastic crown that read ‘Bachelor’ in gothic writing.

               The blonde-haired man passed the Ziploc bag to his friend in the plastic crown, who looked up at him with insecure eyes. He was unsure about his friends’ idea, the very thought of it made his heart beat faster, his hands jitter, and his stomach tighten in apprehension. He mumbled a few protests, but they were muted by the beat of the music, and soon his party had convinced him otherwise. With shaking hands, he rolled up a blunt and inhaled the drug. He took another breath, and another one. His mind grew fuzzy, his heart relaxed, and soon everything seemed funnier. He did not know why he had been so worried, he was fine. He grabbed a few drinks and made unsteady steps to the dance floor, where his movements grew wobbly, lazy and strangely dramatic. His plastic crown had been lost on the journey to the dance floor, probably being kicked around by dress shoes and five-inch heels. He did not know what he was doing, but he was enjoying himself. He could feel the bodies pressing up against him, the smell of sweat and alcohol and something else…something fruity. Strawberries? He did not know what it was; all he knew was that a pretty girl in a red dress was holding his hand, leading him out the door, and that his friends were cheering him as he left the stuffy nightclub for the cold New York streets.

               A tall brick building stood tall in the heart of Queens. Though it was late, conversations could still be heard from the third floor window, accompanied by the rocking of trains whose constant rhythm gave the city a heartbeat. A mother smiled down at her sleeping children, gazing down at their moonlit faces. She carefully placed another blanket over them, protecting them from the harsh chill of the night. She pushed two strands of hair away from her sons’ eyes, kissed them on the forehead, and closed the creaking door behind her with a click. Quiet knocking against the door halted her soft footsteps against the carpeted floor and, with one eye closed, she looked through the peephole to see the dark-haired man waiting at her door. She greeted him with a worried smile; apprehensive as to what her brother was doing out so late. He ignored her questions and sat down on her sofa, rubbing his hands together to distract from the broken thermostat. With the slight movement of his arm, he gestured for her to sit by him and tell him about her day. He inquired about the wedding preparations and the whereabouts of her fiancé. Her answers grew soft and slow as she was lulled to sleep by the rocking of the trains outside and the rough hand of her brother petting her hair. When he was sure she was asleep, the dark-haired man rose from the sofa and put the two hundred dollars he had made from the sale into her wallet. The New York night held its many secrets, and this was one of them.

Copyright © 2020 guasoni.net

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This is a descriptive essay I wrote to practice my aesthetic writing. I hope you enjoyed it! Tell me what you think in the comments section, as I want to improve my writing.

Diane twiddled her thumbs and picked at her fingers in anticipation, her foot tapping against the hardwood floor and her knee bouncing up and down incessantly. She pressed the home button on her phone for the thirtieth time in the past two minutes to check the time. It was twelve-fourteen. She opened the messaging app to see if she had received any messages. None. She had nothing to do but wait, her stomach fluttering and churning and doing everything but staying still. She checked the time again. Twelve-fifteen, only a minute had passed.

She heard a tinkling at the entrance of the coffee shop and she snapped her head to see if it was Katherine. It wasn’t, only some old woman and her dog. Where was she? Had she decided not to come? Was she stuck in traffic? Had something happened? Diane told herself to calm down, that she was worrying too much. Katherine wasn’t even late; she had five minutes before she was meant to arrive. Five minutes until the moment Diane had been waiting for since she was a child.

Diane remembered when she was eight years old and her parents had told her that she was adopted. She had been utterly devastated at the news, she couldn’t understand why her real mommy and daddy didn’t want her, why she was sent away to have a fake mommy and daddy. They tried to explain to her that her birth parents probably loved her very much, but were unable to take care of her, and that’s why they had given her up. They reassured her that they loved her very much, and that she would be their daughter no matter what, but it didn’t help. She screamed and shouted at her parents, thrown every conceivable tantrum and refused to speak to them for over a month. Why weren’t her parents her real parents? Everybody else at school had real mommies and real daddies, why couldn’t she have them? Was there something wrong with her? Did she not deserve them?

Over time, she grew to understand that parents were not defined by how they got their children, but how they raised them. Her adoptive parents had raised her well, they had provided her with love, care and attention, they’d instilled in her beliefs and morals, and she was grateful for them. She knew she was one of the lucky ones, not everybody ended up with loving parents, whether they were adopted or not. She could have been abandoned, abused, or aborted – but she wasn’t. She was adopted, adored, and alive. She couldn’t ask for more. Yet, despite her happiness, there was a little piece of her that yearned for more. She didn’t want anything physical, nothing she could hold, she just wanted answers. She wanted closure, to understand why she had been given away. Why? She couldn’t answer that question herself, only two other people could: her birth parents.

She had first approached the topic with her parents when she was seventeen years old. They hadn’t been particularly thrilled about it – they wanted to be the only parents in her life – but they understood what it meant to her and the importance of knowing who her birth parents were, so they readily provided her with all the information they had regarding her adoption. It had taken a while to sift through all the files and papers, she hadn’t known how difficult of a process adoption was until then. After weeks of sorting and searching, Diane came across a consent form with her birth mother’s name on it: Katherine Miller. She had called the adoption agency in hopes of finding out more information on Katherine, if they could provide her with an address or a place of employment, but they had none. The only piece of information they had been able to give her was that Katherine Miller was a resident of North Carolina at the time of Diane’s birth, and she hoped that she hadn’t moved. Unable to find help in the adoption agency, Diane moved her search to Facebook, but there were hundreds of Katherine Millers in North Carolina. Eventually, after many surveys, questionnaires and researches, Diane finally found the woman she had been searching for: Her birth mother, Katherine Miller, lived in downtown North Carolina, and worked as a receptionist in a hotel. She had agreed to meet Diane in a coffee shop near her place of work on the tenth of October, where Diane was now.

The door chimes tinkled again and Diane eagerly looked up. It was her, Katherine Miller, her mother. She looked around the room for a moment until her eyes landed on Diane. They locked eyes, and Katherine slowly made her way to Diane’s table. Diane stood up, her chair scraping against the floor, and she straightened out her clothes as best as she could with her sweaty palms, trying to rid herself of the sweat before she shook hands with Katherine, awkwardly exchanging pleasantries, and invited her to sit down. The pair were quiet, neither knowing what to say once the introductions were over. Diane analysed her mother. She was young, around the age of thirty-seven, but she seemed older. The skin bagged under her tired blue eyes, and her calloused hands flicked away the hair that was in front of her face.

“I suppose I should get straight to the point,” Katherine leaned forward. “I know you want answers, and if you’ll listen I’ll gladly give them to you.”

Diane meekly nodded her head and let her speak.

“I hung out with the wrong crowd when I was sixteen,” she began. “I stuck with people who only got me into trouble and didn’t care. I didn’t realise it at the time, I thought it was the ‘cool’ thing to do. I thought I was cool. One of these people was my boyfriend, Wayne. Piece of advice, never trust a man with the name Wayne, it never turns out good.

“I loved Wayne, and I thought he loved me. We did stupid things together, like smoking cigarettes and staying out in the park after dark even though my momma told me not to. He made me laugh and smile. He made me happy. I remember, I thought ‘This is it. It can’t get any better than this.’ That’s why I stuck with him for so long. We were together all through the end of high school and well into the first few years of college. We were both studying philosophy. I had originally planned to study teaching but I didn’t because he asked me to stay with him.

“He knocked me up after getting me drunk one night. I remember how scared I was when the test came out positive, when I found out I was pregnant with you. I thought he would stay with me, just as I had stayed with him. I thought he loved me, I thought he would stick around. He didn’t. He was out the door the minute I told him. Had the nerve to say that the kid wasn’t his, the bastard, after all the years I’d spent with him. Left me without a thing to hold onto. I couldn’t go back home to my momma, when she found out I was pregnant she shunned me out. My friends told me to get an abortion, but I’m not for that. All I could do was take care of myself. I quit school and got a job waiting tables for a year, while a friend let me stay at her place so I could get back on my feet.

“I tried to take care of you myself after you were born. I really tried, but I couldn’t. I could barely take care of myself. I didn’t earn enough waiting tables, I was still living at my friend’s apartment, and she didn’t want no baby to keep her up at night. It was hard giving you away, I wanted to be your mother so bad, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to do the best thing for you, and the best thing for you was to be away from me. That’s why we’re here now.”

Diane said nothing. She sat quietly on her seat, looking shyly at her lap. What was she supposed to say to this? I’m sorry for your troubles? Thank you for making the right decision? Every sentence she came up with was stupider than the last, so she kept her mouth shut.

Katherine sighed. “Look, I know this is hard for you. It’s hard for me too. I’ve been thinking about you and where you’ve been for the past seventeen years, and I couldn’t contact you myself. The law wouldn’t let me, I signed a contract. I can only imagine what you’ve been doing, what you’ve been feeling these years, but I can’t change that. I don’t want you to think I came here with promises of a happy life together, that I’ll be the momma I should have been. If you need me, I’ll be there, but I can only be a friend to you, not your momma.”

Diane shook her head. “No I – I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort. I just wanted to meet you, get answers. If we can have any sort of relationship, I’ll be happy with that, but I’m not expecting you to be my mother.”

Katherine smiled. “That’s good. So, tell me about yourself. How you been these years? Are your parents treating you right?”

The conversation continued, the two women exchanging stories about their past, their likes and dislikes, what was going on in their lives. Diane smiled to herself: It was strange, the two of them sitting there, talking like acquaintances. She hadn’t imagined it to be like this when she was eight. She had imagined confronting this evil person who didn’t care, giving her a speech on how knowing she was adopted had affected her as a child, and Katherine crying Hollywood tears at the realisation of what she had done. But it wasn’t like that, life was not a movie. Her mother wasn’t evil, and there were no monologues or showdowns – and no need for them. She was happy. She was one of the lucky ones.

Copyright © 2019 guasoni.net

Many years ago, my situation in life was much more than disagreeable. My father had died, leaving me no means of living – neither house nor inheritance – for I was his illegitimate son. His other children had never liked me, and as soon as our only link perished, they were quick to send me away. I was given less than a day to quit the house, and I set about the country on foot, as I could afford no means of transportation, and had to save the little I had for accommodation.

The kind owner of a tavern took pity on me and offered me lodging in exchange for work. I gratefully accepted the offer, for I had no other, and began a modest life. I had food and shelter, which should have been enough for a person in my situation, but I was unsatisfied. I wanted more. My father had been a wealthy man, and offered me every comfort and luxury in life free of charge, and I, of course, spent them extravagantly to irritate my siblings – so I was very much displeased with my new lifestyle, which could not measure up to a fraction of what my previous one had been.

I worked and slept, worked and slept. It was a monotonous routine, the only variation being the customers that came in at night. Such was my life: drab, dreary and dull, a humdrum of drink and orders.

A man came in one night. He slid through the crowd, unnoticed by the other customers. He was dressed well, too well for this part of the country. It was the only detail I could make out of him at the time, for the lighting was dim and I had not been paying much attention. He came to the counter, and instead of giving his order he told me that he could give me whatever I wanted. I was confused, but intrigued, and pressed him to continue. He informed me that his name was Mr X and that he owned a company that granted its members the ability to live lavishly. I asked him the name of this company, for I had never heard of it and it seemed too strange and good to be true, and he told me that the company was too new to be known of, and therefore I need know not its name. He asked me if I was interested in being one of the company’s first customers, and I replied that I would have to think about it. He smiled at this, a handsome, alluring smile that nearly caused me to agree to his request in that moment, and left me a sheet of paper with an address on it before he left.

The next few days I inquired to those surrounding me if they had ever heard of a Mr X or his company, and they responded in the negative. This should have been enough to dissuade me from seeking the address he had given me, but alas, it was not. I longed for my former days of splendour, when I had not a care in the world or responsibilities to keep. I asked my employer for a few days leave, and he reluctantly granted them with perplexity, for I was not in the position to ask for a holiday.

I set out to find the address that the man had given me, which was conveniently located in a nearby city. It took me a while to locate the precise building, for when I showed the address to natives of the city they were confused and stated that such a place did not exist, but I managed to find it – eventually. The building was normal in every sense, indistinguishable from the buildings beside it, but it had something that perturbed me, possibly an eerie premonition that I could not shake off. Everything inside me was telling me to leave, to turn around and never return, but I ignored my instincts and entered the building.

I was immediately greeted by a clerk and was shortly admitted into a large, luxurious office. The walls were painted sinners red, and all the furniture was a dark doomsday black. There was nothing bright in the room. Opposite me sat a man behind a mahogany desk with various piles of sorted papers. The man from the tavern. I could make him out more clearly now. He was stunning: sinister black hair that matched his suit, deathly pale skin, and lips the colour of blood. Again, my conscience told me to turn away, but I sat in the chair across the man’s when he invited me to sit. He encouraged me to speak of my situation, and I agreed, my favourite topic being myself. He reassured me, promising that he could change my predicament easily and provide me with everything I should want or need. He handed me a contract and asked me to sign it. His voice was hypnotising and compelled me to oblige. I skimmed through the text, trusting the man, and signed my name on the dotted line.

The next day I received news that my father’s will had been found and that I was to inherit ten thousand pounds. I immediately left the tavern and purchased myself a large estate opposite that of my siblings, to mock them with my success. I held lavish parties, bought the finest of clothes, ate and drank to excessively, and participated in every sort of debauchery and corruption imaginable. Such was my life, and I took pride in it.

However, my movements became slow after many months of revelry. Despite my many pleasures, I was not yet satisfied. I ordered for more of everything so that it was in surplus. I thought I could buy myself amusement and peace of mind, but I was never to have either. Soon, Mr X appeared at my door. He told me that my time was up, that he expected me to be at the gates the next day. I replied that I knew not what he spoke of and that I did not understand. He said nothing. He handed me my contract and left with a wicked smile across his lips. I looked at the contract and read it anxiously, trying to decipher what he had meant. Much to my horror, I realised what I had signed and what I had given up. I realised who Mr X was and where I was supposed to be tomorrow:

My life, the devil, and hell.

I could not run from it. I tried, but it was of no use. My feet unwillingly walked through the iron gates, no matter how much I willed them to turn away. The rain pounded ferociously against the concrete, soaking me in cold water. I realised that it would have been the last time I felt the cold, but I could not enjoy it. The house in front of me was large, with ash-coloured bricks covered by dead ivy. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn, but I could make out ghostly figures silhouetted by bright fiery flames. The wind, no matter how strong it howled, could not hide the screams of mercy of the condemned souls.

My body brought me to the large oak doors and I took a final breath before I knocked on the doors of hell.

Copyright © 2019 guasoni.net