The Film (Part 1: Curiosity)

in #writing7 years ago (edited)

They called her Mad Jenny.

Not because she was angry, but because she was damned quirky.

A lanky, odd girl, with an obsession for movies, film, and cinema. She wanted to be a director. Not for the money, but for the show. Yet, the economy was rough. Getting through film school was impossible once her mother fell ill, and her strict, cruel father refused to offer even a penny to her cause. Her dreams began to fade.

Her passion crumbled, as poor Jenny began to take odd jobs, slaving away at them, working too hard, too long, and with so little pay.

Seeing for the blind.
Reading to the illiterate.
And worse than any other, the janitor at a local curiosity shop.

Yet, the ember of hope still softly glowed.

Mad Jenny had her eyes set on only one place.

New York City.

The grand gem of a city where her dreams could come true. However, ever since sweeping up so much dust from the curio shop's floor, her arms have been getting sore, preventing good nights sleep. She's had no dreams, and instead, has resigned herself to hard labor, trying to juggle three unpleasant jobs.

Here she is now, trudging to work, wearing heavy, unpleasant boots, and the most unsavory, aesthetically displeasing janitor's uniform. A sick olive brown, with hideous Chartreuse yellow trim. But this was her uniform, and so she continued her journey to the old curiosity shop shack, to begin her one AM shift.

The owner of the store, a strange, unwieldy fellow, with a nose that looked crooked, as if broken more than once, shouted out, "Eh, about time you got here. There's been another mess. A poor fool opened the spider box. They couldn't guess what was in it before they opened it."

Jenny sighed. She really didn't want to clean up spiders.

But the crooked looking man continued, "Well, I've got the spiders cleaned up. But you need to deal with the vomit."

Jenny signed again, not sure if this was worse. She shrugged, feeling suicidal, and entered the store, walking through the odd shelves, all the way to the back, where the mop and suds bucket were held.

Jenny mentioned as she cleaned up the mess, "So any good sales or buys today?"

"Not a thing. Just that idiot who opened the spider box. Otherwise, business is as bad as usual. Speaking of, your paycheck. Here it is. Had to cut a few pennies out though, seeing as sales were bad. Nothing I can do."

Jenny finished her cleaning, and went to get the check. Oh no. It was even less than last time.

She sighed again, and returned to her regular duties. Cleaning the floors, dusting the shelves, sorting the trinkets and items, and making sure the sign was flipped to "open". You'd think it was natural that a curiosity shop be open at night, because it's so mysterious and weird, right? No.

It only had to do that because its income was so low. So now it's open both day and night, and somehow gets incredible dirty, despite the low number of customers. But oh well. Jenny just went with it, cleaning the messes, and flipping the sign.

However, it was quite lucky that she did so at that moment, because just as she flipped the sign, an apparent customer was walking by. He seemed to give a jump as he saw the sign flip, and rushed towards the door. Jenny saw him coming, and backed away.

She backed quite far away, to the furthest wall, and tried to hide among the dust, not wanting to deal with customers. She's only the janitor after all. The door opened, and the customer walked in, and began to inspect the goods. The owner dutifully welcomed him in, "Hello there. Are you looking for anything in particular?"

The man who entered the shop was incredibly decent looking. Almost an oddity, even within a curiosity shop. Yet it mattered little. He spoke with an evil, sinister tone. "I want the sharpest knife, and a roll of film."

The curiosity shop owner blinked, and thought. "Yes. I have those. But the knife? They say it's curs-"

"Just get me the knife. I don't need a story."

"Right, uh, here, under the counter."

The owner opened the counter, and withdrew a long knife, made of what appeared to be shining silver, or some sort of alloy. The hilt was encrusted with green emeralds and a dull, faded ruby, yet still magnificent. The shadowy man grinned upon seeing the sharpness of the blade. "Oh yes, how sharp is it? Let me feel the blade..."

The owner, suspecting a plot, readied his pistol, sitting on his lap.

But the strange man only drew his fingers over the blade, and blood began to run down the blade. He had sliced open all of his fingertips, just to test the sharpness of a knife. Jenny watched from the shadows, terrified at the scene, seeing both the gun, and the knife, as well as the bizarre way to test the sharpness of it. Jenny figured you could just try to cut paper or something with it.

The creepy figure took the knife into his coat, clearly pleased, and then demanded the film. "Now where is the film?"

The owner blinked, unsure of how serious this guy was. But he did have some old film, so he went to the shelf where it was at, and retrieved it. Jenny wondered why the guy didn't just walk over there and get it himself. But then he might have seen her hiding, and Jenny wouldn't really want to be seen. She's not hiding out of fear or anything. She's just shy, and didn't want to deal with a customer. This is in fact Jenny's usual place to hide when a customer enters the store.

However, the strange customer certainly was mysterious, at least. He took the film, 35 mm film, and pocketed it.

He threw a wad of money on the table, and left the store, as if in a hurry. The owner was a bit shocked, and almost looked as if he was going to go after him, but noticed that the large wad of bills was actually quite large. Shrugging, he counted it up, and was pleased that he had actually made a substantial amount of money. He grinned, not minding that the knife was actually worth quite a bit less than the amount received, and the film was nigh worthless. Just buy the stuff on the internet for a few dollars.

Jenny figured if both sides are happy, the trade must be fair. Yet she had a dark feeling about the knife. The curse.

She timidly asked the store owner, "You said the knife was cursed? What sort of curse is it?"

The owner laughed a bit, still counting the money. "I've been over this. I tell my customers nearly all my items are cursed. They like it. They think it's spooky, so they buy it." Jenny had actually only seen people seem annoyed by the curse story, but she still didn't like the Haunted Dust on the floor. It was probably the most cursed of all the things here.

The curse of no customers, and nothing to do. She toiled the rest of the night, cleaning messes, until the sun began to poke through the horizon. Finally morning. Jenny yawned, checking the time. 5:20 AM.

Ten minutes left, and then she could go home. But was that much better? Her cranky mother would want soup made, and her father would play nothing but solitary card games with himself, over and over, cheating sometimes to make sure he won each game.

Sure enough, time went by, and it was time for Jenny to leave. She hung up her mop, and trudged out the door, her boots even dirtier than before. She walked down the sidewalk of the grim town, the most boring, smelly town, and finally reached her house. What a shame. She entered, and it all happened just as she had expected.

Her mother demanded cabbage and onion soup, and her father was hunched over at the kitchen table, playing a solo game. He peeked at the next card in the deck, but seemed to dislike it. So he just stuffed it back into the deck, and drew another. Looking pleased, he played it as Jenny began to prepare the soup.

She cut onions, cut cabbage, dumped in a bag of cow bones, and added a hint of parsley. The soup would most certainly be adequate. But not much more than that. It was a terrible night. Well, not terrible. But not exactly fun or interesting. Not even somewhat pleasant. Just a bunch of boring tenseness, as if a heavy fog lay over the entire town, but focused right on Jenny's house.

So she slept.

But to her disappointment, she woke up the next day.

She went down to eat a biscuit for breakfast, then went out the door to read to the illiterate.

So she did. There's not much story here. She just read to people who can't read, and had a fine time. The stories are quite bland, of course, and the people she was reading to are incredibly stupid, seeing as this is 21st century America here, and it's quite expected to be able to read at least one language. But still, text-speak had weakened the minds of most people, so reading actual books or stories was uncommon and difficult for the majority.

But Jenny could do so, and did, wasting hours of her life reading to morons who could barely even comprehend half the words, despite being spoken to them. Sigh.

Finally, Jenny was done with her work though. She felt so good to be done with it as she sadly trudged down to the old curiosity shop. It was nearing one AM again, and arrived just as the bell tolled.

"Finally you're here. The spider box was opened again."

Jenny signed, not wanting to clean up more vomit.

However, she was in for a surprise.

"No vomit this time. But you have to deal with the spiders."

Jenny internally screamed, but calmly went to get the thickest pair of gloves she could find, to begin cleaning the spiders.

One, two, three, ah, it went up her sleeve. Jenny shuddered, but managed to pull it out before it went too deep into her clothing. Still though, she wasn't pleased at all by this. As she worked, the owner seemed unsure of how to approach.

"Um, someone came by here today. They seemed to be interested in you. And yes, in the most vile, lecherous way. They wanted to buy you. Yes, normally I'd just shoo them away, but they offered an incredibly large amount of money, as well as mentioning that you'd be brought to live in New York City. You wanted to visit there, didn't you?"

Jenny nodded, catching the last spider and enclosing it in the box.

"Yes... I'd like to go there... to do my thing..." Jenny could barely speak.

Not to say she couldn't speak because of the issue at hand, but she is just incredibly shy and bad with words.

The owner nodded. "Yes, well, they seem to want to buy you as a slave. I guess a modern slave, where you sign a form and can probably quit if you wanted to. But I don't think they expect you to, given the amount of money here. Yes, they already gave me the money. I uhhh, sorta signed off on the whole thing. I mean, I'll just return the money if you say no, but I figured you wouldn't, or if you did, I'd try to you know, get you there. Because there are two bags of money. One for you, and one for me.

I suppose they didn't want me dipping into your funds, so they gave you $800,000, and me only a wimpy $100,000, to keep my mouth shut, I guess. "

At that, Jenny actually couldn't speak. That was an absurd amount of money. And then she felt bad. It was just a prank, of course. That sort of prank might be funny if she wasn't in such a desperate, lonely situation, but where she was, cleaning up puke and spiders, it wasn't very funny.

But the owner kept up the prank, pulling out a briefcase. He unlatched the locks, and opened it.

Money.

So much money. Jenny widened her eyes, taking it in. It was the real thing.

A ton of money. Oodles.

800,000 oodles, to be exact.

The owner closed the briefcase carefully, to prevent even a cent from slipping out.

"They say you have to pay for your own transport there. I guess they didn't want to seem involved until the moment you're actually there. But that's what that money is for. I'm sure that's more than enough to get you to New York."

Jenny nodded, having a feeling that this was actually enough money to live off of for the rest of her life.

"Aye, you arrive at the address to meet... the Queen."

Jenny was a bit unsure. The Queen? She wasn't into politics much, beyond hating Emperor Trump and his 16 year empire, so she didn't know New York had a Queen. Perhaps it didn't, though, and it was just a strange title. Still, the curiosity within her burned, as well as a strong desire to get out of this boring town, and enter one place her dreams could come true. New York City.

So she went.

She threw off her janitor's uniform, because screw modesty when you've got $800,000, and skipped back to her house in just a light undershirt and panties. She didn't mind the stares. She was getting out of there.

She went to her room, and got out some suitcases, and began to pack. She threw all her junk in there, and then some more, filling up at least three with her valuables and clothing. She put on more proper jeans, with a simple shirt and simple jacket, and went downstairs.

Her father was cheating at solo poker again, but still looked up in mild surprise. "Leaving, eh? About time."

Jenny smiled, and hugged him. She threw down $10,000 onto the table, to support her parents or whatever, yelled a goodbye to her mother, and left in the greatest hurry. Only a little ways down the street did she realize she should just call for a taxi.

So she went on her her phone and got some decentralized taxi to pick her up.

On she went to New York City. A many hour drive, but she was content to just think inside her head, excited for the adventures and mayhem that might await. This amount of money was great, but still, slavery? She shrugged, assuming she could quit in 4 months or something. Her mind was focused on the possibilities of her dreams coming true.

It was early in the morning when she arrived.

The city gates smelled of madness and chaos.

Exactly what Mad Jenny was after.

Jenny told the driver to go to the address specified on a document enclosed in the briefcase, and so the driver went, street after street, the large city seemingly far too large to ever actually find what you want. But I suppose that's what a skilled taxi driver is for, so at long last, they arrived at the address.

Jenny got out of the car, tipping generously as her bags were lugged out of the trunk. She looked at the address on the house she was at. It matched.

It was a mansion.

Her blood chilled as she looked upon the upper windows.

It was a woman up there, staring down at her. A regal, powerful looking woman, the sort that would make anyone feel weak and useless compared to her.

The Queen.

Jenny walked towards the door, and knocked shyly, suddenly terrified.

The door opened, and Mad Jenny was face to face with her.

The damned Queen.

(To be continued...)

~Kitten

Sort:  

Nice, well written story. Interesting setup. Will be looking for the next part to see where it goes. Upvoted and followed!

This seems like the setup for some pervy lesbian dom/sub stuff. Otherwise very interesting, I can't wait to see where this goes.

To be continued indeed. A good read, thanks. Upvoted and followed.

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