Page 31 of My Favourite Muse

Nicole moved on to the next spot; the computer. After hitting the switch, she went to the kitchen to get a drink. Damn thirsty she was.

  The kitchen was dusty. Three days gone by since Maggie was rushed to the hospital on the heart attack that killed her and no one came over to keep the house. An empty house could give certain privileges to crawling creatures hiding deep in dark nooks of the house. Nicole was greeted by a half dozen family of cockroaches casually going up and down.

  "Jesus"

  She drew back, pressing her back on the wall and looked away. A moment passed and she looked back again, slowly. They've scattered, she saw; her intrusion seemed to be a peace breaker. She sighed, walked gently to the drawers and opened one, found a bottle of wine inside. Maggie and wines; she chuckled.

  She poured herself a shot just when she heard a beep from the computer in the living room. She hurried back and sat before it. She noticed it wasn't coded; thank God for that. The home screen had Maggie's smiling face as screen saver. Nicole looked at it for some seconds, smiled and got to work. She clicked Documents icon and an array of folders appeared. One after the other, Nicole opened them; all the files had no information relevant to her purpose. The last of them was coded and that was the moment she put Maggie's last word to the test. She never felt so hopeful. With a pounding heart; she typed PABLO into the text field and hit Enter. To her dismay, nothing happened; it was a wrong code. She buried her face in her palms; disappointed.

  It felt like hitting a dead-end where everything stops and no way to advance further. She looked at the screen again and couldn’t think of what next to do. She gave out a long sigh, poured more wine and gulped it in a swig.

  She took a breather; poured more wine. Frustration was beginning to reveal itself by the way she poured the liquor; she felt terrible already. The job is becoming harder than it seemed.

 
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