After the events of the film ' Cruel Intentions ' . Just when you think it's over , it's begun.
Quid Pro Quo
Katryn Merteuil has never believed in nothing but herself, but now, exactly one year after the death of her stepbrother Sebastian Valmont, even this last, thin belief can be faltering.
It's been one whole year spent in stifling confinement : the first half inside the Methadone Clinic , and in this hellhole of catholic Swiss boarding school after that .
Her sweet Mother wouldn't let coming back to Manhattan so soon after the scandal and, of course, if it was for purely selfless reasons Tiffany had forced her to exchange a prison for another.
Poor unstable Kathryn couldn't afford to undermine her recovery with precocious exposure to temptations, isn't?
Katherine has hated and hates every minute, every fucking second of her permanence there.
Other girls don't talk her and at the refectory she eats by herself.
She remembers very clearly her first day, when the nuns had informed the other students about her vicious habits, inviting them publicly to report in any her wrong step and to not get familiar with her.
When she walks alone in the Hallways , Katryn ignores the whispers behind her back , silently meditating revenge.
When she isn't studying, she prays in Chapel under the nuns' watchful eyes.
And when she looks at herself in the mirror, there's no trace of graceful and angelic character she has consumed herself building.
In her place stands a stranger with empty hazel eyes and spent skin. No form of make up or simple vanity is allowed to her there.
She 's more lucid now than she's never been : no sniff of coke will numb the sensation of encompassing cold invading her, helping her to forget that she loves nobody and nobody loves her.
She has not the money necessary to corrupt anybody: her dearest mother hardly pays her monthly expensive rent.
All what she can do to bring herself pleasure is imagining ways to pay Annette Hardgrove back .
She hates Annette with a vehemence surprising the rational part of her mind, enough to find even only her name worthy of spite . It's , after all, because of Annette if Katherine has lost everything.
But there's something else worrying the young Merteuil lately: it's been only one year and she can't remember the sound of the Sebastian 's voice .
Recalling it to mind used to be an exercise of memory, but now she can't anymore hear it in her head like once. The memory of his death has never abandoned her, supposedly because she has not had any distractions to help .
Sebastian Valmont is possibly the only creature, male or female, she has never loved in her life. In him she has seen an equal and a rival, recognizing in his smile , in his gestures something of herself.
Humorous, how she has never been able to feel tenderness toward anybody else, not even herself.
She has always lived with the impulse to burn and twist anything was around her to enough time, and often when she showered , the impulse to scratch her too soft flesh until her manicured nails drew blood was almost too strong.
Beauty angered her because it was a disguise of monsters and nightmares.
Yet Sebastian had never disgusted Katryn quite in the way most of things and people did. Rather, he possessed and emanated a vital energy that she envied.
She has wanted punish him for abandoning her, has manipulated him to degrade his power over her, yet without him she's finally alone.
Sebastian was her private toy, one all more enjoyable for his utter unpredictability.
But he is gone now and soon she will not able to remember correctly the features of his face.
The eventuality scares her on a subconscious level, and it's difficult for her knowing him extinguished from this world. She favours imaging him as he laughs of her misery, appreciating the irony of his victory from the grave.
Kathryn does not compare her love for Sebastian with the Annette's one. Give her enough time and the other girl will turn him into idol, an idealized memento of a first lover, painting again and again his image until it will become too delicate and heroic to be real .
For Kathryn it will be been different , because he has tainted more than the volatile thing commonly called heart . She'll remember him as the devious bastard he was and yet nobody else will quite measure up to his shadow.
Today, miss Merteuil is smoothly pretending to read the Bible to linger half-hour more in the inner cortile of the convent . Her eyes stay focused on the page as she hears light steps coming closer from behind . She ignores the rumour until they stop right at her shoulders . Slowly, she turns and bestows a submissive, sickly sweet smile on the nun, inwardly cursing her with names that would make pale the devil himself and taking great pleasure from it.
" Good morning, Sister Marie "
The older woman doesn't smile back or return the greeting, but simply urges to receive a visitor.
Her first visitor of the year. A peculiar event.
After, Sister Agnes escorts Katryn until the convent's gate - which it's located in open campaign - and opens it for her, indicating a car outside.
Kathryn Merteuil has seen too times that Jaguar to not recognizing it instantly as her step-brother's more valued possession. And there's only a person who could be driving it now: Miss Seventeen. The damned Kansas goldilocks Annette.
But when the heavy gate is closed behind her, the calm , suadent voice calling her doesn't belong to Annette.
" Hello Kat "
She turns like if she has just received a punch in the gut. With his back leaning on the wall and a smug grin on his face, is Sebastian Valmont.
Kathryn can literally feel the blood draining from her face and her feet growing cold.
She blinks, but the apparition doesn't vanish .
It can't be.
" You look horrible "
The apparition says, looking her appreciatively up and down .
" You are dead "- she protests, almost like if the futile affirmation could force the world to make sense again.
Cold sweat prickles her spine and she wants scream the absurdity of all this. She doesn't believe in vengeful souls coming back from Hell or Heaven more than she does in her madness.
But she can't move or talk while her wide open eyes take in the sight of a boy deceased one year ago. Dressed in a black Trussardi suit.
She used to admire the Sebastian's natural elegance and his bearing.
She liked how ornamental he looked at her side when they walked together .
Her hallucination sneers and its lips sear a pleased smile " Apparently that rumour is been greatly exaggerated "