Page 17 - The Houseguest

RACHEL
Rachel Spence had just turned 22. She worked as a barista at Roasters, a popular coffee house in Tribeca, a gentrified neighborhood of lower Manhattan. She loved the location and the origin of the town’s clever name: TriBeCa – TRIangle BElow CAnal Street. It felt trendy every time she told someone where she was employed. She had grown up the entitled daughter of a successful stockbroker. Her stepmother, Mrs. April Spence, was a self-indulgent cold-hearted middle-aged woman. Her third marriage to Rachel’s father was the result of successfully refining the deceitful and conniving techniques that had served her so well in her youth. She didn’t love him, but she loved his money. It was about two years into the marriage when he figured that out, and it was too late. April was the type of person who thought the world should conform to how she believed things should be. When someone crossed her, even slightly, she would use the Internet as a tool of destruction to affect their reputation and business. Her obsession would begin the minute she deemed someone her adversary. If a person didn’t allow her to merge in traffic, she would get their license plate number and begin a mission of reputation annihilation against them, their business and even their family. The keyboard was her weapon because with it, she could do more damage to someone’s life than had she stabbed them with a sharp dagger, all in the name of the first amendment. And she didn’t care.
April Spence was an attractive woman in her youth, but despite numerous cosmetic procedures and expensive skin care products, time had not been kind to her. She’d been accustomed to relying on her
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The Houseguest by Linda Ellis www.LindaEllis.life