Put Your Paws Up

“Don’t look at me like that.”

It was a warning that Juliet had to voice on a regular basis. Despite often craving the attention of those clamouring around her, sometimes the eyes of the prying men were filled with a dangerous hunger: a look that shot straight through her and scared her. It was a destroying hunger, in an attempt to make sense of a girl so disarmingly beautiful that she herself was a threat.

Jostling to get past the apparently clean cut, if slightly intoxicated, middle aged business man Juliet wormed her way to the bar, dreading having to expose herself in the light. But if she were to survive this evening she would need a drink. Searching for her friend in comfort Juliet spotted the tall redhead at the bar. Ryder was flirting up a storm at the bar and in the end was rewarded for her efforts with two double vodka and lime’s, one of which was royally presented to Juliet.

Without saying a word to each other they smiled, but yet it did not reach their eyes. Choosing to remain in silence for a little while their eyes returned to scan their environment; to take in all the wolves that were on the prowl. All the men appeared confidant, rich and kind. But Juliet knew better than to trust this instinct.

Most people, or specifically men, weren’t what they said they were. They were only wolves in disguise. Nobody was ever who they said they were under the misleading bright lights. The light was selective and only ever showed someone the way they wanted to be seen.

Most of the men in the bar were vultures. Cruel men who wanted nothing permanent. They wanted beauty but only fleetingly and only in the face of a young woman. They didn’t want beauty in love or a relationship and that was fine with Juliet. They were horrible and mean spirited who ate a girl up and spat her back out again, worthless and crushed.

“Look at him,” Ryder said over the top of the thin and lean cocktail glass, but her eyes were casually looking to her right.

Juliet followed her sight line and her own steel eyes landed on possibly the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He was the male equivalent of her, without a doubt. Ryder knew it, and Juliet knew it.

“Have you seen him here before?” Juliet asked taking a sip of her drink, but keeping her eyes on the prize.

“No, and if you’d have fucked him you would have remembered,” Ryder replied crudely, not being able to say one beautiful thing that matched her glorious face.

“I want him.”

As with everything and anything in her young and reckless life, Juliet always got what she wanted and she wanted the bad boys. She knew that they weren’t what she needed in life, but what she wanted and what was necessary were two very different things and Juliet wasn’t capable of thinking in the long run. All that mattered right now was the present.

The thing about monsters is that they come in unusual forms and mostly unexpected. Fear and despair take on the forms that you least expect and they tackle you in corners so there is no escaping. It was clear from the minute that Juliet laid eyes on the tall, tanned and dark haired man that he wasn’t good for her, but she couldn’t stop staring into those eyes which held something so evil and yet so alluring at the same time.

He had caught her staring, and with three steps of easy and arrogant confidence he was standing in front of her.

“Don’t you just look good enough to eat?” He said with a grin and the glint in his sharp eyes grew as he eyed her up carefully, taking in the perfect cheekbones, the confidant eyes and the perfect make up.

He reached out and grabbed a hold of her tiny wrist, meaning to drag her onto the dance floor, but Juliet knew that she at least had to attempt playing hard to get.

“You should probably get your paws right off me.” Her eyes were shining and the corners of her mouth were lined with assertive arrogance.

“We both know you’re going home with me at the end of the night so you might as well not bother attempting to play hard to get,” he said with the lines around his mouth hard and yet still so appealing.

That was the beginning of the end.

The night passed in a blur of drinks and white powders that were passed secretly between guests. In Juliet’s mind the faces of the guests became blurred and warped. Their teeth seemed to elongate and grow thinner, their eyes became slits of red and little of their humanity could be seen. She was surrounded by monsters that all wanted to prey on her for their means. She felt frightened but somehow she didn’t want to leave. People needed to see her face, she needed to be seen by everyone and admired by everyone; even if it was just by the monsters.

She wanted to just dance until the sun came out, but her man had other ideas. Without so much as a word to her he had dragged her out of the club and began walking down the street to the subway. The loud booming of the music following them until they had taken the stairs underground and the silence was overwhelming.

“Where are we going?”

There were no nerves or worries in her voice; she was quite thrilled by this adventure. In the harsh strip lighting of the subway she could finally confirm what she had know all along: that he was as equally beautiful as her. She let herself toy with the idea of trying to keep this one around for longer. They would work together well and could be the envy of every other normal person in all of New York. They could be the ultimate couple.

“To mine,” was all he said before leading her to the right platform and shoving her into the subway that had just arrived.

He handled her rough, even more so when he pushed her against the wall, pinning her hands to her sides and showing her just who was in control as he forced his lips onto hers. She gave little protest, in fact she let everything take over and as the subway suddenly leapt forward into the dark where she felt most at home, she let herself wonder if she could love him.

They only broke apart from each other to leave the subway and to open the door of his fancy penthouse flat in Manhattan.

The lights in his apartment were dimmed and so as so many times before she could finally feel free in her own body, she let her own monster loose and let the thoughts of him growing to love her consume her.

What she didn’t know was that he didn’t care for her, he only cared about her: about her face, her body and what she could do to please him. His greed was overwhelming and even though she tried to ignore this fact she knew it wouldn’t bode well for the morning. Essentially he was her own monster. He was everything that was bad for her, which created fear and brought up the old, apparently buried, insecurities.

She woke up the next day perfectly alone in a huge apartment.

Her clothes had been folded at the edge of the bed and a note left on top of them.

You can find your own way out.

She stared at the crisp white note in her hand for a long time before the words finally sank in and the reality became clear to her. She had been used, she had let her thoughts run away with her and he had eaten her heart along the way. Her brain couldn’t comprehend the sheer impossibility of this. This never happened to her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

As she put her clothes back on, she realized where she had seen him before. She had seen him in all those other countless men and their evil eyes as they devoured her from a distance. She had seen the monster in each of them, but this time his beauty had blinded her in the same way that she blinded all those other monsters with hers.

She was surrounded by evil monsters and all she could do was hold onto her beauty and pray to god that no one would ever again take control of her brain or eat her heart.