Film Noir
She's walking to the centre of the huge party room. She's pretty, in a rather dramatic, obvious way, with smoky grey eyes, exaggeratedly pale skin, and a black dress in the cut of fifty years ago.
Like a fool, she's lingering, enjoying the click-clack of her heels on the parquet floor, the swish-swish of folds of lace rustling. She's revelling in her own sense of prettiness, letting self satisfaction seep through her skin and enfold her like an aura, until she's impossible to ignore.
What she doesn't know is that this is a movie. Trouble's coming and her part is the foolish little girl caught in the middle. She didn't choose this role, but she's playing it to perfection and the soon-to-be audience will ooh and ahh and laugh and cry at her "make-believe" naiveté.
She's the one with the reputation. The one all the mothers warn their good sons against. But the matrons never thought that to build walls is to encourage a clandestine tunnel underneath, and that prohibition spawns curiosity.
As a result, she's the temptress; the snake that whispered to Eve, the challenge that no one can resist chasing. And chase they do; and finally there's something she knows. She was created to be the unattainable; the princess locked in the highest tower. But she never thought that temptation might not take no for an answer.
She's used to being watched; after all, she's everything anyone could ever want, and more. Maybe if she was a little shier of the spotlight she's pushed into, she wouldn't have ignored that prickling feeling at the nape of her neck that's she's been feeling lately. It's like unearthly fingers are playing her spine like a xylophone, but she shakes it off as another price of perfection.
She doesn't know that this time the roles are reversed; now she's the forbidden fruit that Eve had wanted and Eve had taken, the Temptation that might be too hard to resist.
Because there's a shadow following her with his eyes as she click-clacks and swish swishes and lingers on the ballroom floor, and he can't stop. He's hooked, like so many others she had tempted before, but she missed the glint in his eye as they watched her walk away, and she didn't know that affection is a dangerous tool, and that obsession is not to be toyed with. He wanted her, like so many others, but the idea of not getting what he wanted was new to him. He was going out to attain the unattainable.
There's the prickling again, and she doesn't stop. She thinks she knows who and what she is, who and what she represents, and maybe she's not quite the fool she's portrayed as. But there's narcissm in her nature, egotism deeply ingrained, and perhaps that's justified, considering her life. But the sense of being observed is back, and she subconsciously preens herself under the gaze, a straightened back, a flick of the hair; because perhaps it's another toy boy in love? Or another follower, desperately hoping that perfection is contagious?
She doesn't know, and will never know, because he meant to have her, and have her he did, because she's the apple that Eve plucked, the temptation that someone actually gained, the prize that someone actually won.
She was an unwitting actress, and she played the part to perfection.
Just like a movie...
THE END.
If you want.
