Burn Me

07: Troubled

Mal Bellator

If you met me, you'd say I'm troubled. Fucked up. Indifferent in the mind. Without heart. Cold. Bitter.
Psychopath, player, rich kid, arrogant, rude, a bully. Truth is, I'm all of the above.

And I've got no fucking shame about it.

I'm not loud and I don't try to take up space, I don't demand respect and I don't threaten people with my fists. I don't pick on weak boys or prey on vulnerable girls. I'm a much more... sophisticated troubled individual. I like knowing that I've made someone worry by just being in the same room as them. I like being secretive and silent just for the pure entertainment of watching someone wonder what I'm thinking about. I like knowing I have control, that I'm threatening, without even having to speak.

It's a glorious feeling when no one can read you. When no one knows what lies beyond your surface. You have so much control when your unreadable.

When Ms Terious said our whole life would be on display and that everything would be revealed, I knew she was lying. Kingdoms have the most conniving and calais secrets. There's no way 25 young adults are making it through a year-long competition without a few scandals slipping through. No, the media wouldn't allow it. The kingdom wouldn't.

However, the threat of the truth was real. And me and the others were thinking the same thing while she went on with her speech. Thinking about what secrets we may have locked away that could disqualify us. Our backs that we'd have to watch. How smart we'd have to play. But non of these kids have anything too dark or troubled that they were hiding. We were born on stacks of money, our reputation was created before we existed, and our future was laid out before we knew how to walk. The worst things that could become of us? Mommy and daddy's secrets, not ours.

But, one of us differed from the rest.

One of us looked full of secrets.

I had seen her twice now, and yet, she was still a mystery. An average, blonde, brown-eyed mystery.

She wasn't high born, she was a maid for the Throne. I had seen her during Adrian Shimmeth's first display of leadership. Covered in tight black material, eyes filled with curiosity, skin potent with laundry fumes.

The second time, the complete opposite. Hanging on to Adrian's arms, with a sparkling champagne glass, and heels she could clearly not stand in. That, and her body wrapped in cream pink silk and her neck polished with jewelry. Long curled hair and clean sharp makeup.

I couldn't help but think to myself, who the fuck was she?

I watched her as she crossed the museum floor with him. While others may have been distracted by her exposed tan thighs and magnificent tits, I stared at her eyes. Reading them for what they were. And in tradition to comparison, her eyes were blank. Filled with nothingness.

And now, the third time we cross path's, she's another character.

Dressed in black jeans with a large knitted sweater, wedged laced-up boots and messy unattainable hair.
I wondered if there was a reason she kept falling into my eye-line, if the gods had created something new for me to learn. What lesson was she bringing in to my life? What purpose did she serve to me?

When I looked back at her during the beginning of the orientation, she caught my eyes too. As if she was already staring at me. My arm was extended out on the backs of my friend's chairs, my mind unconsciously telling me to look in control for her. To show her who I was.