It was another night. The streets were filled with people wearing jeans and hoods, and the night was shone from the flicker of street lights.
I secretly stared through my window, a small rectangular hole with drape curtains. I felt like a prisoner. I stare at it every night. I like it no matter how many times I do it. It was the only thing where I can look at the outside world.
I have a hobby of looking at people’s faces through this window. Each face-no matter how similar they look-is always different. I just love knowing what kind of person they are just by watching their faces. No matter how many times my boss told me not to look through the window before my shift would begin, I still do it.
“Janilima…?”
I heard my name being called and turned my head directly to my caller. I know her as Jarenice.
“So you’re still there as predicted. You are late again, Janilima, the other girls are waiting for you. You’re just lucky that I am this kind to you, Janilima. The boss would shove your butt out of here this moment if he caught you right in the act again.”
“But the boss isn’t here, is he? So what is the big deal?” I copied her tone.
Jarenice looked at me with suspicion as she blew a puff of smoke from her cigarette. ‘You know that the boss will put cameras in all our rooms, if you still continue it.”
I was loss with words when I heard it. (Sigh), I better stop it. The other girls would seriously blame me that their privacy would be destroyed. What do I care with other people’s privacy anyway?
“Fine …Fine had it your own way then, Jarenice. I stop it okay.” I closed the drape curtains over the window as I went pass Jarenice who was staring at me with such suspicion.
“So Janilima, who are you going to score tonight?” Jarenice grinned.
“It depends…”
“Hmph, suit yourself, Janilima. But don’t blame if you don’t enough money to pay your rent. I know you’ll march back to me and try to ask some money again. Besides do you really have to do that?”
“Don’t worry, Jarenice, I promise not to go marching back to you again and what is wrong with choosing by personality.”
Jarenice stared at me with her dubious stare.
‘Like I said before, suit yourself, Janilima. What do I care. You are a prostitute anyway, you have to make money.” she said as she went downstairs to join with the other girls. I stood there alone in the hallway staring at the blank passage before me.
It is what she said, I am a prostitute. I do not why I have become like this. It is just the way it is. It is not for the money that was the reason or the amount of ecstasy in one night. Rather, it helps me fill the inner emptiness if my own consciousness though it may seem that it is only a temporary one.
I will find someone that may truly fill my inner emptiness. I have suffered since my childhood and i want this to stop. I have longed to be truly complete and that is why I have chosen personalities instead of the money.
I hate money and the way it has became a tool to corrupt one’s own identity. But it cannot be ignored, it is the way of this world and people have let themselves be corrupted. They have become empty shells in which the currency was the only thing that filled the gap.
As I walked the hall towards the noisy world downstairs, I gaze slowly at the covered windows. My life i have madehas become trapped from the outside and I have become a prisoner of my own longing. But no matter how many times, I walked these empty halls, look at the barred windows and see the world crashing around me, I still kept that longing.
Some day, I wonder…I found that perfect person.
Maybe tonight…but that is only in the world of my dreams.
