Episode 1
Carla and Clara had been friends since primary school. They practically grew up together and with each other. Carla has always been calm but with very strong opinions whereas Clara was more outspoken yet she never had those strong opinions on issues. She would rather avoid it than get involved in something controversial. She wouldn’t even think of it. Typical example of ‘opposites attract’. You could call them sisters. They had never been separated from when they became friends till now that they had become young business women.
Towards the end of their undergraduate days, Carla had told Clara that she didn’t feel like going for a white collar job after school. At first, Clara went, “what? So what happens to our degree in Law? Carla shrugged and said, “we would probably use it to protect our business legally”. It took a bit of convincing, Carla began to paint a picture of what she had in mind, the future of freedom she envisaged for both of them, and on and on, then suddenly as if awaking from a trance, with eyes lit up, and a rush of excitement, Clara shouted, “let’s get to work!” She had caught on. And that was the beginning of C & C Pastries.
However, despite their closeness, there was a secret that Clara didn’t know about Carla. It had happened before they met, and Carla had been trying to suppress that memory in her head, it wasn’t exactly something she could bring herself to say out loud to anybody. It remained buried inside of her, showing up in unexpected situations. No one, not even Carla’s parents knew, it was that deep. If only she could stop running away from it, she would have been able to say it out and gotten the needed help. It was one reason she initially wanted to be a lawyer along the line. But the struggle to erase that memory from her mind, and pretend it was a dream, made her develop cold feet at some point in the University. That bad memory made her react strongly to certain things (those reactions however, had never been witnessed by her family nor Clara) and it made her feel like she was losing her mind. She just couldn’t find it in her to practice law any longer. Starting a business was not a bad idea, but it was some sort of escape for Carla. The reason she had brought up the idea of starting a business was to run away from the past she wanted gone, she wanted so desperately to pretend that everything was a dream. She was really good at hiding everything whenever she was with Clara or her family, so nobody suspected a thing.
One Friday evening, after the day’s job was done, as was the usual custom, Carla packed up her things and went to get Clara from the adjacent office so they could go home(they lived in the same house). As they stepped out, Carla began to hear muffled sounds, and immediately alerted her friend who turned towards the direction of the sound and before Carla could say anything she was already being dragged by Clara towards that place. Carla had become scared, but Clara was having none of it(quite unusual for the nonconfrontational Clara, but she just couldn’t rest easy otherwise), they had to check what was happening, it was close to their office so they had to find out. They got to the back of the building and hid behind a wall, and what they saw shocked them to the bones. It was the most gruesome thing they’d come across. They gasped, putting their hands to their mouths, so their voices were not heard.