Madeline Hunny

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1

Beautiful wasn’t the word to describe her, though many would if they were lucky enough to find words when they laid eyes on her.

No. Her beauty was one a man wouldn’t dare fall in love with. It was the beauty to tremble before, to bow before, to walk through hell and back for. It was the beauty you wanted to ravage and lust for. It was the beauty that could make a good man crumble to his knees and lose the little dignity he had left. It was the beauty that made all the world melt away until the only thing in existence were those hypnotic, hazel green eyes. Like a forest. And like a forest, you were lost in them.

Lost in the ocean of milk that was her skin, and sun-kissed ruby lips to hunger for. Those lips, whether pouted or smiling, were sharp as daggers and held a power that was lethal as weapons. With each powerful stride of her elegant legs, the world bowed below her feet, with every step her hips swayed like an enchanting dance. A tapered waist, paper thin, and just above, a pair of perky, rounded breasts sitting proud. With every step, her hair bounced, getting caught in the wind, tangled in the air with so slight of a breeze. Strands in the sun were like flames set alight. A gorgeous auburn red.

Through the windows, she is an elegant, sensual seductress, but behind those closed doors she is just a mere humble girl. And yet in her mind, there is an image of a girl whose very smile crumbles knees, whose beauty shatters worlds. Whose naked body, so curved and yet petite, held the will of a thousand men at her feet. And when she looks in the mirror it is who she sees.

She drives to work in an old car, pushing its limits, pushing it to the few miles it has left before she makes it big. Her life had been nothing but poverty in her past. And poverty made living in the world of danger city far more petrifying than it ever should have been. But, for a girl who had the beauty that could be used as a weapon, for a girl whose face was as gorgeous as a knife was sharp, she was a glass slipper to the city. A perfect fit.

In the deepest corner of her mind, she holds a sharp edge, a sharp wit, a sharp tongue. Like a katana ready to strike. And like an arm and a leg. Like her face, like her lips and her ears, this katana was an extension of her. An extension that gave her power, gave her dominance. Just like how a blade can make a man bleed, make a man die, make a man bow, so too can she with the clever words of her lips. She is the perfect woman to live in the city of shadows, the city of darkness, the city of dreams and nightmares. With a smile that stops eyes, halts words and stunts hearts. With a gaze that cuts through you…

She is a temptress to the world, but just a girl in the shadows.

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2

I have always wondered what they see about me. What makes them stop in their tracks, look up from whatever they do or are doing at that moment, and gaze? Gaze with the intensity of a predator watching a prey or, in my case, a prey observing its predator moments before flight. Their life’s purpose forgotten, their business ignored, and now relegated to mine.

Do they see the curves beneath my outfit? Or is it my skin's sheen in the places my outfit can’t cover? Or is it the fiery look in my hazel eyes or the jutting cheekbones that give way for my lips?

Perhaps what they see is not physical at all. Perhaps it is the way that I walk, the determination in my strides. As one of them once said, the aura, that supercilious air around me. The air of dangerousness, another once said.

Perhaps they see the difference between me and the others, women who do their bidding, women who are like the others, regular clones of each other. I doubt if they have a clue that I was once like those others. Nimble, pliable, and always available to any man’s bidding and appetite. But it is that attribute, these attributes, that make one fodder in the world that I live in, in the space that I once existed. Fodder does only one thing, it feeds the other, and when it's not feeding an animal, it becomes fuel for fire. Perhaps I was fuel once, something consumed, something burned beyond description, something changed. Why wouldn’t I change?

When the sounds of gunshots are the alarm that wakes you up late in the night, early in the morning, when magazine casings form the frame beneath your bed, when you grow familiar with the living on the road, sleeping in transit, wiping your mouth with the same rags that you had just cleaned a revolver with or wiped the blood of a dagger. You can never be the same. It changes you, not slightly, completely, forever.

When in the morning you barely survive being riddled with holes from bayonets, and at night the spray of blood takes the place of your red lipstick, and the men that warm your bed are on the most wanted list, violence becomes a way of life. It becomes something that seems as causal as sneezing.

Or do they see the scars, for there are scars, lots of them? each having their significance. The one on my right cheek that today seems like a birthmark is where a bullet nicked me as I ducked beneath a bar stool, my assailant’s wallet clutched in one hand, a broken bottle encased in the other. Or the one beside my ears, which I always cover with my golden hair. I doubt if they see the others, for there are many things that clothes and make-up cover these days. Maybe it is all these and more that they see. I would never know, and I would never ask.