Chapter 1 – Setting the Scene

Helen Thomasina Cole was eighteen years old, and she didn't know who her mother was. This had been truth forever.

Her paternal grandparents had never met the woman, and didn't approve much of Helen's existence anyway. But they died before Helen was ten.

Whenever Helen asked her father, his already pale face would grow whiter, and sweat would bead at his temples, running down the sides of his pudgy face.

When she was little he'd tell Helen that her mother (also named Helen) had been a fashion model, who'd left him after a few months and only returned nine months later to drop Helen off. But as Helen got older, Thomas Cole would grow even more agitated when the question came up.

"Y-you kn-know about h-her!" He'd say. "I-I've t-t-told y-you already!"

Helen's father always stuttered when he was really afraid. Mind you, there wasn't a day that something didn't terrify the man, but precious few things frightened him into a speech impediment. One of them was the idea of Helen's mother.

Sometimes that thought made Helen feel like laughing hysterically. She never did, though. It wasn't actually funny.

So her mother was a model, and apparently a heartless bitch who'd named her baby daughter after herself, then foisted her off onto a squeamish father.

Other than that, Helen had nothing. There were no keepsakes, no old clothes or jewelry or anything. Her father liked to keep the two-bedroom apartment squeaky-clean, and free of any clutter.

Helen's retaliation, once she was old enough to rebel, was to coat her floor in clothes and other items. She hung posters haphazardly on her wall, and strung Christmas tree lights across her ceiling. Her father refused to let her burn incense or candles, but he finally stopped calling her room 'the old guest room'. Which was good. Helen's room was not for guests. It was her domain.

It didn't take many years of life for Helen to realize her father was afraid of her. Well, not afraid per se…the man was a spineless worm, but he was also an IRS drone, which gave him an understanding of power. No, Thomas Cole was not petrified of his daughter. But he was distinctly uncomfortable around her. He startled when she spoke, barely looked her in the face, and avoided her as much as possible.

Helen wondered sometimes how she hadn't died from neglect as a baby, bereft of physical affection and subject to a father who was unable to look at dog shit on the streets of New York City, never mind handle diaperfuls of baby poop. Thomas Cole had hired a nanny, a black woman whose round face and giant eyes Helen only vaguely remembered. But the woman was gone by the time Helen was four, and preschools and kindergartens took over. Apparently, Helen's father hadn't liked the nanny very much.

Helen thought for a while that her father might be afraid of all women. But he was easily frightened and intimidated by men, too. The only people he acted superior to were taxpayers being audited…and to Helen, when she did something that disturbed the cleanliness of the apartment.

Otherwise, Thomas Cole tried not to pay attention to his daughter. And Helen gave up trying to get him to notice her early in her life. After seeing one's father bullied by a man half his size at a gas station, your respect for and the need to impress him dwindle somewhat.

The only time Helen interacted with her father was at dinner, when he would tell her about his workday—or rather the files he had gone over. Helen wasn't particularly interested in taxes, but it was a subject that came surprisingly easy to her, and her father got excited when she demonstrated a knack for it. So he'd explain the daily auditing cases, and quiz her on protocol. Doing annual tax returns became more of a holiday in the Cole household than Christmas.

Thomas Cole kept hinting that Helen would make a good auditor, but aside from dinner and a couple days each year, taxes were not the focus of Helen's thoughts. She had been a cynical child, haughty, but sardonic enough to keep from growing a stick up her ass. And when she hit puberty she found the Goth style to be exactly what she wanted.

So Helen dressed herself in black clothes, studded jewelry and fishnet stockings. She wore boots, painted her nails black, and covered her face with makeup. The makeup became a necessity more than just aesthetically pleasing…at age thirteen; she began to break out in bad cases of acne. She tried pills, cleansers, even went to a specialist, but nothing worked. Oddly enough, the zits only appeared on the left side of Helen's face. Eventually Helen gave up, and covered her face with makeup every morning. After every shower, she popped her biggest zits in front of the mirror, watching the pus and blood ooze down her face. She also picked her scabs.

Helen had never had many close friends, but like her father's distance, this grew to suit her. As a child she disturbed her classmates and teachers, even when she hadn't done anything. It made her wonder if it wasn't just her father's spinelessness that made him edgy around her. Maybe she actually was unsettling.

As Helen got older, though, she developed enough of a presence to overcome people's first impressions. She gained a series of acquaintances: friends she was not close with, but whom she could seek favors from, and spend time with if she didn't feel like being solitary. Her high school career was fairly pleasant in this manner. She got good grades, and graduated with honors. Her father wanted her to study economics at his alma mater, but Helen put it off, not really liking the idea.

So Helen grew into a Goth beauty queen…not particularly angsty, but a bit angry, and with fair amount of contempt for most things. She could usually persuade people to see her side of things, and refused to do anything she thought was below her. She wore pretty clothes and jewelry of the gothic persuasion, but her half pock-marked face and her very presence seemed to unsettle people.

She still didn't know who her mother was.

TBC

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