Tina once again change her position in bed, she’s been tossing and turning all night trying to find the right one that would make her fall asleep but, nothing happened. She scratched her forehead in frustration ‘what the hell?’ she think she had already counted over two thousand sheep’s in the field jumping across the fence.

She looked over t the automatic clock in her bedside table, it say 4.44 am. She sighed

‘fuck!’ all her friends and co-workers are either horrified if not worried at how she look now, those black circles from sleepless nights around her eyes and her already pale complexion even paler made her look like a zombie.

“OH MY GOD! Tina?! I didn’t realize that your one of those extras in that horrifying move Dawn of the Dead!” Alice dramatically told her before Tina could even took her seat, she spotted them sitting in their table and decided to join and chat with her friends for a while before she head to work that day.

Tina just look at her friend with her tired eyes, she doesn’t have enough energy in her to argue with the ever hyperactive Alice Pieszecki and even if she does, Tina’s wise enough to use them in a much better purpose.

“Yeah tee.. I thought you went on your beach house to relax?” she heard Dana asked and saw the worry and confusion reflected in the brunettes eyes.

“Yeah. i thought so too.” Was all that she manage to answer, even she is confused at the outcome of her last visit there.

*tick*

Tina was drag from memory lane back to reality when she heard her clock announcing that it’s now 5.00 am. She blankly stared at the ceiling. Something have been bothering her, no, SOMEONE is bothering her and this certain person occupied her thoughts 24/7 haunting her awake or not.

She closed her eyes again desperate to get some sleep even for just a few hours and this time Tina was successfully drifted to sleep, only to be greeted with the same dream that keeps coming back.

Paris, present time..

“Here you go.” She said handling to the couple the sketched portrait that she drew, it was a picture of two people in love and this lovely couple in front of her are the subject.

“Oh, thank you” she heard him say while paying her for the drawing. She watched as this man lovingly touch his woman’s back.

“You like it?” he ask her girlfriend

“..Yeah” the girl softly answered

“Well, I hope you two enjoy your visit here. Paris is a lovely place for people in love to be.” She said smiling

“Yeah.. thankz again” he said grinning, showing all his perfectly white teeth, before they started to leave

She took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, she looked over at the couple she was with now vanish in the busy street of Paris.

He must have been too happily in love to have notice the slight doubt in his girlfriends answer when he asked her about the drawing, but not her. She knew well enough that there’s something wrong about that portrait, the same thing like all the other couples’s portrait that she had drew before.

It’s been like this for almost five years now, since she discovered that she has talent in drawing and decided to hang around in this busy street of Paris and wait for people to approach and have their portrait done. Her customers are usually lovers who desperately wanted to capture the feelings they have that show in their smiling faces while in Paris, stored in a piece of paper.

She’s quite popular there and none of her customers to complain when she give them the finished product, and she was grateful for that. Because if one of them dare to ask her a question about it, she wouldn’t know how to answer, for even she ask herself why

Why is it that in every portrait that she draw, even if the subject is happily smiling, their eyes are always sad.

TBC?