Christine Zolendz: Brutally Beautiful

“Does she dance here?” I asked.

“No. Neither of them do,” Dylan answered me, but his eyes were still watching her.

“I wasn’t asking about the blonde,” I stated.

“I knew exactly who you were asking about, Kade,” he murmured. “She’s not your classical beauty, yet stunning in her own way, yeah?”

I just nodded. Then…silence.

Shit…I wanted to know more about her. Just keep your damn mouth shut. How do you think getting to know more about her is going to end? Ugly. Fuckin’ ugly…

“They don’t look like the kind of women who would work here. What the hell are they doing here?” I snapped.

“Intriguing situation. They both showed up here about two months ago, beaten to bloody hell. The one you asked about is Lainey and the blonde is Bree. They work here a few nights a week. Both are really sweet. Both are the most intelligent women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, and the blonde is sexy as hell, yeah ? Both of them have tried to change their appearance as if they’re hiding from something. That’s all I know.”

Lainey looked up from where she was standing behind the bar. Her eyes collided with mine for a few gut-twisting moments before she darted them to Dylan. I wondered if he was sleeping with her. It angered me just thinking about it.

On one side of her face, her long hair was pinned back with a soft lilac ribbon that made her look indecently innocent. Shiny waves were cascading down from the little clip and fell around her face framing soft porcelain features. She wore a familiar emotion on her face that I knew all too well, haunted . The plain raw intelligence of her face was utterly breathtaking and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find the correct adjectives to describe something. No mere words would have done her natural beauty justice or could have described the way she moved.

It was like… liquid .

That’s the only word I had for her.

Flowing, fluid, melting into everything with a precision that seemed naturally calculated. I felt like Adam looking at Eve for the first time, having never seen another woman before her.

What the hell did I just let myself think? I just need to drown myself at the bottom of my damn brandy.

Fucking…hell… I caught myself leaning forward, almost falling off my daft chair trying to watch her move around. Brilliant.

“Jesus, Kade. I never saw you look at anybody like that. You want me to tell her to come over here?” he asked.

“Fuck off,” I laughed, angrily. “You know I don’t play well with others.” I forced my fingers to relax their tight grip on my drink before it shattered under all the pressure. I didn’t clearly understand why I was unable to keep my eyes off the woman, or why my body reacted the way it did to her, or why my gut feeling told me she was more than she appeared. I took another pull on my brandy.

My brother’s mouth opened to say something but thought better of it. He raked his hand through his hair and hung his head in his hands. “How have you been, really?” He mumbled into his hands.

I dropped my head from my line of vision of her. That’s it for the next six months , no, year…I was already fed up with people. And talking. Talking with people. Stupid people.

And who the hell cared about a freaking waitress?

Yeah, she was pretty in such a different way, and intriguing, so damn what .

Dealing with thoughts about her would end up like all my thoughts did, in sickening violence . I would need to find more words to match her beauty and somehow mar her fictional existence in my head with the exquisite release of her last breath, or possess her with demons, slaughter her by the hands of a delusional lover, disfigure her in a gruesome accident or something equally horrifying.

That’s how I deal with my issues . That’s how I deal with my anger and my rage. I live in a world of lies, fictitious characters I dream up and breathe life into, just to break, for the enjoyment of horror readers throughout the world. I wondered what lies this woman had told; what her story was, not that it mattered if she had one, I’d gladly make one up for her. Everyone was just a character to me. Each person was just another empty name I would put to paper and control with my whims, develop into people I wanted them to be. Complete and unconditional control.

I glanced my eyes over the waitress again.

For a small second, she looked fragile, a tilt forward of the head, the small slump of her shoulders and I wanted to protect her. But the thought was nonsense in my head. I wiped it away as fast as I thought it. Who would protect her from me?

Guzzling down the rest of my brandy like it was a cheap shot, I left the bar without even saying goodbye to my brother. He was used to my idiosyncrasies. I drove home wondering what color her eyes were, which is the single most asinine thought ever to cross my mind, so I cancelled any more thoughts of the woman. It wasn’t like I would ever see her again.

I stormed into my empty house, slamming the heavy wooden door behind me, locking myself away from the rest of the world and bring new meaning to the word recluse. I won’t lie to myself as others do and pretend I have any control over things. It’s easier to find and gain control if you stay in a very small space and let no one else in.

Yanking off my tie and jacket, I threw them over one of the leather chairs in my den and sat myself in front of my computer. I poured myself another brandy and sat it beside my keyboard, sipping at it slowly every so often to cherish the thick warm burn.

I brought up the screen to my work in progress and the last scene I was working on.

Words had always come easily to me. Violence and hate were in my veins. I was rage personified , and horror and malice were my only friends. We had lived together peacefully since I came to terms with being me . Yet, as I sat before my desk, with a bright white empty screen in front of me, cursor blinking and mocking me, I didn’t see the red of an award winning horror writer. All I saw was silky black liquid hair and pale pink lips.

Temptation.

Damn , this wasn’t going to be good for me.

An unexpected warm rush of heat spread across my chest as soon as I looked up from concentrating on the bottle of whiskey. I was trying to calm the nausea down from that drunken degenerate’s attempt at manhandling me, counting to twenty in my head and taking deep breaths.

Mother-effin’ twenty.

Son-of-a-bitch nineteen.

Eighteen, seventeen… Calmly closing my eyes, my brain was still screeching at the pot-bellied piss infected Neanderthal. My insides wanted to claw his eyes out and dickkick him for touching me.

Three.

Two, just breathe …one.

My eyes fluttered open and all thoughts about drunken men touching me vanished. Actually, all my thoughts completely faded into oblivion when I noticed a strange man watching me. I heard myself gasp when I saw him. The air just sort of sucked itself right out of my lungs. Not only was he devastatingly handsome, he was staring at me .

Me.

Not Natalie, aka Lace , who was up on the stage wearing only her sparkly little thong and humping a pole.

Not Bree, the blonde bombshell who every man drools over.

Me.

I’m just going to put it out there, right now. I’ve never seen a man watch me like that before. It was personal. Intimate. I mean…I was one of those women who got acknowledged for their brains more often than their looks. And I took pride in myself for that. I liked being intelligent and confident, but that look …