Round 12 – Fairytale Dabbling
CHASER 3: The Red Shoes
Optional Prompts: 3. (poem) The Crazy Woman, by Gwendolyn Brooks / 11. (word) underhanded / 15. (quote) "God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves." Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Name: High Heels
Summary: AU. Based on the classic fairytale 'The Red Shoes'.
A/N: Red Shoes, Red Shoes, why it has to be 'The Red Shoes'!? [goes to her corner, mumbling angrily] I hadn't even heard of the story before this round…
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May."
She grew up in the big circles, surrounded by important people. Rich people in their prestige mansions, people knowing their place on the top of the food chain, hefty sums of money going around underhanded. Hushed voices in public – who has the right contacts, whose business prospers in the moment of adversity, to sell or not to sell?
Malfoy. Zabini. Nott. Goyle. Greengrass.
Wealthy, capricious families, slithering around, using their assets the ways they found profitable, the ways that will bring them even more money. Money is what matters.
It's the green; it's the green what makes the world go round.
But the red is the colour of a woman.
She might have had everything handed to her on a silver platter that's true enough. She had such a wonderful, easy life. But there was no challenge so she decided to try something different. She was a crazy woman in a way; she left the safety of her home and friends and found a life very unlike from the life she had lived till then. And her new life, oh it was exciting, delicious in a way she hadn't thought it would be. It made the adrenaline rush in her veins. It was addicting like a drug.
She was a woman whose short skirts never fall under her knees. Her full, curled lips were coloured with lipstick, always Red Velvet. How her hips swung, how the red stilettos she wore made a clicking sound with every step she took, and how she gave those knowing, little smiles. She was attracting and she knew it. She was a hunter. Her cat-like eyes scanned the crowds as she was looking for a prey. And she knew the right groups; she knew which ones were willing to pay the price. She knew the desperate ones when she saw them, and they knew where to find her. They were drawn to her like moths are to a flame.
They knew her as a woman in red shoes.
But they called her Pansy.
No one who knew her bothered to question was that her real name or not. After all, it wasn't her name that mattered to them. It didn't matter to her either.
She couldn't stop. She loved their hands on her – how their fingers grazing her thighs and left faint bruises on her hips. How the words they grunted in her ears in the moment of heat sounded so promising she couldn't stop her little habit. She had never had trouble getting what she wanted and she liked it that way, and no matter what people thought about her she walked down the street, holding her head up high, a red scarf covering the love bites on her neck.
She loved the weight of their dirty money in her Louis Vuitton purse.
She had never put her love out on the line but that time came too.
There was this one man who has gained her attention. She always saw him often on the streets, walking around as he owned it, wearing the fur collared jacket of his. He belonged to the same group as her varied acquaintances and so she waited for him to come to her.
He never did but the connection, the hunger, between them was there. The occasional, lingering stares did nothing to hide it. It was magnetizing and so she waited. She waited all the days of the month, and then the days of another, and one more. And the man stayed on his side of the street. He was there, letting her wait for the time when he would come and claim her. Except for the only one day in the each month when he disappeared from the streets completely just to return next day. She wanted to know where he was during those nights. Maybe he had a lover somewhere?
She shook the bitter thought away. It wouldn't be fair. The man had a business of his own, just she like had, and she knew his money was the dirtiest of them all but she wasn't after cash and cheques when it came to him.
She had fallen for him.
And so in a moonlit night, the night she knew he would disappear, she approached the man herself. The man studied her with his eyes and suddenly she felt more naked than ever before. What if he wouldn't want her? What if she wasn't good enough in his eyes? But the man didn't know about those insecurities. He just pulled her deeper in the secluded alleyway.
"I knew you would come here." His voice was low and husky when he whispered into her ear. "You know, a girl like you shouldn't be doing what you're doing now. But I can save you now."
She didn't comprehend his words, and neither was she prepared what was to come. She wasn't prepared to the force of the sudden kiss; such an abuse it was to her poor lips as the man bit hard on her lower lip, drawing blood as he broke the kiss. She was intoxicated and out of breath and by the time the oxygen was returning to her lungs he had already engaged her into another, deeper one. It wasn't a least bit gentler than the first one had been but she accepted it nevertheless, responding to it from the bottom of her heart.
His eyes were dilated, open like the dark blue sky over the streetlights and roofs of the buildings, and when he made an eye contact with her she looked at him like she had never looked before. She was now his and she wouldn't have a word to in that anymore. He grazed her neck with his sharp edged teeth before letting them sink on her shoulder. She cried out in pain and pleasure as the claws tore through her jacket and her dress, leaving red marks on her back. Her breathing came out in shallow puffs of air. She had cried her throat raw, hot tears streaming down her rouged cheeks. She can feel herself breaking under his touch – her joints leaving their original spots, knees giving out under the animalistic, savage power.
She lay on the street. The blood oozed from her the deep gashes and bite marks on her body; she could taste it her mouth, she could feel it pouring from her neck, making the fabric glue to her back and shoulders, trickling down her thighs. She didn't – couldn't – move an inch. She was numbed by the pain, her mind was hazy, and the noise of distant traffic buzzing in her ears. It sounded so bright, so loud. She searched for the man's gaze. The man kneeled down next to her and tenderly let his hand ran through the mess of a hair she had.
He stroked her cheek. "God doesn't need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves. But sometimes all that time isn't enough. I've granted you your freedom."
The man's retreating back as he carried away a pair of red shoes was the last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed her whole.
Red is brilliant. It's passionate and strong. It's relentless.
Red is the ruling colour of the scene.
The officer wrinkles his nose. It's obscene. In a pool of blood lays a body that once could have been identified as a young woman. Her limbs are outstretched in unnatural positions; distorted and broken, like a marionette with no strings. The liquid is sprawling on the asphalt, staining the street with its redness. It glows eerily in the sallow light of the lampposts.
Dishevelled hair, messed lipstick, torn clothes. She must have been in pain, the officer muses. But she wears a serene expression with no sign of the pain she has gone through.
She looks like an angel.
"I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray."
And there is no sign of the red stilettos.
A/N: [comes back from her corner] Now that I have read 'The Red Shoes' I can say I liked it. And after all, this round wasn't half bad. Not my favourite either but I didn't hate it. It was different in a good way. :)
Hoddie out.