The glasses drizzled with champagne clinked together as the McCord Cosmetics gala took place on the island. Night gowns and tuxedos swarmed the ballroom of the Estate, making Portia McCord instantly feel like a princess. With her glimmering dress draped over her frail body and choppy black layers constrained into a chignon, it was almost possible to ignore her enemy Gemma Cutler as everyone enviously gawked at her.

“Ugh. I hate this place.” Portia lied, fleetingly glancing at her date Landon Rivers.

“Yep. Have you seen your father yet?” Landon asked anxiously. Portia rolled her eyes. Ever since the oil empire’s heir approached Portia, all he could talk or even utter about was her wealthy father Henry McCord. Of course, nobody in the family were in the position to blame him or even strike at him since his father was a donator to McCord. The more Portia thought about (which was rare, since she was a firm believer that deep thinking leads to wrinkles) it the more it was clear that he was in love with the fortune and not her.

“Portia!” Gemma called in a sinister manner. Portia glanced away.

“Everyone, please take a seat! We will begin our presentation.” Henry McCord bellowed, his pudgy cheeks wiggling as his arm was around Portia’s mother and cofounder, Cynthia McCord. Once everyone calmed, Henry pressed next, which right on the page, in big letters, lay a document of thousands of cases that recorded the victims whose feautures were damaged due to the makeup. Then a picture of a shorthaired chihuahua who was constrained in a laboratory, a collar that was glossed with the McCord emblem. And then, probably the most damaging picture of all, Catarina Wilkinson and Henry McCord, leaving a hotel with Catarina looking a bit frazzled but incredibly smug and content and her father smirking, his hand on the border of her back and bottom.

Then another picture that was much more unbelievable.

Everyone stared at the photos, then whipped out their cell phones, informing their bosses of the new headlines. Beads of sweat gathered on Henry’s eyebrow, visibly under pressure with the heavy glare that Cynthia had locked on her face. Henry turned towards her, desparate. But Cynthia wouldn’t hear it. She stormed off, with Henry coming after her. Worried, Portia took off, and Landon went along.

The pace of Portia was too unbearable for Landon, but he continued to jog along her like a pitiful loser. And that was when she saw it.

A black Porsche zoomed in their mile long driveway, two men and one woman jumping at them. When the trio met Portia and Landon, Landon stuffed her into the bushes, thrusting himself over. “Portia, call Observing Wretches. Dad told me about them.” Landon gruffly instructed. She gazed out, and a shiny emblem was stuck to the bumper. It was tiny, no doubt about it, but it wasn’t tiny enough to escape Portia.

The initials EA.



The Daily Commoner


MCCORD COSMETICS DOUBLE WHAMMY!

By Geraldo Santiago


McCord Cosmetics, the only brand that actually slaps you in the face and points out your flaws, may have been stricken by karma from its greed.

Monday evening, a McCord gala took place in the lavish mansion of Henry McCord with his beautiful wife, Cynthia McCord, and their gorgeous daughter and burly son, Portia and Zachary-Phillips. The champagne glasses clinked together as the McCord technicians set up the PowerPoint. Once they finished up their work, Henry calmed down the crowd, urging them to sit in their arranged seats to be blown away by his PowerPoint. The McCord Cosmetics, who usually get what they want through PowerPoints, had been clobbered with a PowerPoint presentation that instead revealed their new budget and success of the year, showed pictures of the victims who were mercilessly whammed with instead of wonderful results like the McCord family had sworn to be true, had such face infections that CEO Henry and Cynthia whipped out their Blackberries with such speed, I could myself couldn’t believe it.

And when their personal hell couldn’t be more hurtful, it did. The pictures dissolved into pictures with Henry and the young and talented Jarcadian singer, Catalina Wilkinson, so suggestive that I can’t even describe it and that The Daily Commoner editor wouldn’t be too pleased with that.

It’s been a week since CEOs Henry and Cynthia McCord being last seen being drove off in the night with a black Porsche.

More details of the scandalous affair and products to be revealed.



Charlotte Kieffer stared at the article for approximately fifteen minutes. Ideas swirled around her head. Where could they be? Giving up hope, she sighed and plopped the newspaper on her desk in her wondrous office.

The whole day agents had been calling her, overwhelmed by the amount of duties they must fulfill. One of them who went by the name of Eva Montgomery, the Kieffers family friend, whined about how she could be attending a Bolt Jenkins concert and not be in a confidential country protecting another confidential sheik’s daughter. By what Eva had described her, this daughter wasn’t the shy type.

After filing papers and approving which spies to be admitted to Observing Wretches, she peered at the emblem that was positioned proudly onto her door, glimmering O.W.

Observing Wretches was a world-class agency that only admitted mature and skilled children and teenagers. The agency’s branches sprawled from rural Scotland to urbanized Tokyo. Sometimes, if you were that good, your country would export you to the American wing. When agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency failed, the Observing Wretches stepped in, taking at most a month to solve a case. Of course, your family would get suspicious that you didn’t come home, which, was the case for Violet except she never worried or even cared about Charlotte.

Ugh…Violet, Charlotte thought to herself, revolted by the name of her party girl of a sister. Violet was the exact opposite of Charlotte. While Charlotte was studious and behaved, Violet claimed to be studying while really shopping and then acting like a spoiled brat afterwards when she was caught. When someone acted like Violet, they would find themselves in a juvenile detention facility, but Violet usually squirmed out of it with her beauty.

Knocking materialized, causing Charlotte to jump. Curious of who could possibly be at the office at four A.M in the morning, she pushed a few keys and realized that the one and only spy was at her doorstep.

“The door’s open, Lennon.” Charlotte gnashed her teeth, slamming the photograph of Violet. The last thing she needed was to be compared to her elegant, charming but yet dimwitted Violet.

Jude Lennon glided in, his brown hair falling over his eyes. Jude was a top-notch spy for Observing Wretches as well. Just years ago, he was being groomed for the MI6 through O.W until Observing Wretches grasped the idea of how proficient he was. Now, rumor has it that he will become the next chief of O.W, succeeding Snippety Doodad. Another rumor was that he fancied Violet. That wasn’t gossip actually.

“Hello, hello, hello.” Jude grinned, his large emerald green eyes narrowing mischievously. Charlotte groaned.

“What did you do?” She demanding, straightening up her desk a bit. Jude shrugged and made his way to the plush white couch. Charlotte’s jaw clenched as she saw Jude extending his arm for a piece of gum casually laid out on the coffee table. The gum was exported from Australia.

“Don’t get your underwear in a wad, but I somehow misplaced the file you put on my desk this morning.” He smirked, hinting that the little error was purely intentional. Charlotte closed her eyes as irritation ran through her veins, calming herself down by imagining him being whacked by her baseball bat.

“I’ll print it out.” She muttered, clicking on the file that was labeled ‘JUDE LENNON.’ Jude’s grin faltered. He strolled to the mahogany desk and apologized for his failure to remember. Jude Lennon could never come off as a jerk to almost anyone. It was against his nature.

“You can go now.” She glowered at him as he made his way out. Before he, however, disembarked the office, he mentioned about how Violet wasn’t stupid. Charlotte hauled a vase and chucked it at his direction. It shattered into a million shards, inside the vase a picture of Violet sticking out her pink tongue.