Nevertheless, as she admired the reflection before her she still was satisfied with what she saw. Charlene was a taller woman than most of her friends, measuring in at 5’10. Being mid January, her skin had lost all of its summer glow from tanning but adorned her body tightly, and in tandem with her less than naturally bright red hair and deep sea green eyes, she had the look of the hot Irish women she had heard men discuss fondly, though being a naturally blond woman from the eastern seaboard, nothing could have been further from the truth. Her figure was toned and fit; the product of several years since she had first taken an interest in yoga and jogging at the recommendation of friends and her bottom and sculpted thighs were a tribute to how hard she had worked at both. Charlene prided herself greatly on being able to fit comfortably in jeans that didn’t bear any labels that said relaxed fit. As years had gone by she had become less and less satisfied with her breasts. They had lost some of their youthful firmness and bounce, but nothing that wasn’t fixable with the right bra and excellent posture and where their contour had begun to slack, their size had always caused men to believe that they were less important than her face. It didn’t bother her much and her wardrobe was abundant in low cut tank tops to give notice to her cleavage.
Abandoning her ritual morning vanity at last, Charlene rounded her bed towards her closet to fetch suitable running attire, winding her long hair into a pony tail as she rifled through her shirts. After sliding her shorts up her legs she was about to make her way from her room when a shiny reflection caught her eye. Out of her window and down the lawn, her son David’s car shined brightly in the morning sunlight. Charlene cocked her head, eyeing the car with curiosity. At 18, her son was a social young man and very active to say the least. It was uncommon, even in winter for her to awaken on a Saturday to anything but an empty house, even as early as it was. Be that as it was, the 2003 Trans Am gleamed pearlescent silver in the sunlight. Thinking little more of it, Charlene sat on the edge of her bed, slipped her running shoes on and made her way into the hallway towards the bathroom for morning necessities before she hit the road.
Passing her son’s room she took stock of the fact that the door was open but David was not to be seen. It wasn’t until she approached the bathroom door at the end of the hall nearest the stairs that Charlene paused to the subtlest of foreign sounds. The faintest hint of the electric hum given off by the downstairs television hissed in the air. Charlene paused again; this was uncommon. David wasn’t much of a TV fan. In fact he rarely spent any time in front of it. He was more the outdoorsy sort and was always much happier to get out of the house with friends first thing than waste his time on a couch. Charlene had always attributed this quality to her son’s many successes. Unlike many of the boys his age who would have been happy to spend an entire day with a videogame if left to their own devices, David got out, did well in school and had a booming social life. Everyone in the neighborhood commented on him and praised Charlene for her successes as a single parent. Venturing into the more bizarre, while she was certain the television was on, she couldn’t hear anything coming out of it. Deciding that nothing could really be as strange about the situation as she was building up in her head, Charlene tended to her morning needs in the bathroom and started to make her way down the stairs.