The Director
Callan
I often wonder what most people picture when they hear the word beauty. It’s such a simple word, a base from which many images and meanings can be pulled, but for some there is only one image that comes to mind.
Is a sunset the pinnacle of what beauty can entail? A wash of colors that blankets the sky, an abstraction of nature’s power written against the heat of a dying sun?
Perhaps a newborn child to a mother’s eye is the meaning. Or the rarity of a lone white deer passing through the lush verdant green of a thick forest.
It’s unthinkable, really.
Incalculable.
The amount of different opinions and images that weigh down a word with only six letters.
Despite the impossibility of ever truly defining the word, I saw it then, heard it, two syllables whispering in my mind as I snuck past a door left cracked.
It was a negligent error she always made because she didn’t care to protect herself. What could possibly happen to the baby of the family? Nobody would dare hurt the spoiled brat. Not in the fortress built around her with their family crest on the door.
Steam rolled out of her bathroom, a hot mist that fell against the colder air in her room. Above her, a ceiling fan turned in slow, endless circles, and her pale skin prickled in response. I wanted to think it was my presence that caused the reaction, but she never sees me. Not even when I am the only person standing nearby.
Lisbeth Rebel Rose, you are a monster, but more beautiful for it.
Does she know that I’m always watching?
Sometimes I think she does. Sometimes I believe that those hooded eyes and the puckered, dissatisfied shape of her mouth are intended specifically to lure me in. Ever since we were kids, she had that effect, her ridiculous childhood tantrums slowly transitioning into a cold silence that could chill my body to the bone.
Still, she’d grown into a beautiful woman.
Two years older than me, she had always been one step ahead. While I was the scrawny, worthless boy at her beck and call, she was a creature of habit, her favorite being to torture me.
I existed to serve her. To appease her. To take her abuse, whatever she deemed necessary, so that she didn’t have to wait too long for her demands to be met.
She could sit and I’d be her footstool. She could make a mess, and I’d clean it up. She could cry, and if she demanded I lick her tears, then my tongue would drag against her skin just like the beaten dog I was.
My mother was hired to tend the family estate, but I was allowed to stay because I made a decent servant for the spoiled bitch of a daughter who wanted a servant of her own to play with.
Tonight was her debutant ball. Lisbeth was seventeen and would be formally presented to society. She would have a bevy of adoring admirers, and I would remain the poor maid’s son that fetched her dirty laundry, changed her bed linens and provided her with clean towels.
In her eyes, I was the epitome of nothing.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t watch.
Stepping up to a rack where a single white dress hung from a cushioned hanger, she waited for two women to walk up before dropping her towel.
Back facing me, Lisbeth turned her head to scowl when one of the women spoke. It didn’t matter what the woman said, Lisbeth scowled at everything. She was a petulant brat that wanted for nothing.
The towel fell to her feet. Soft. Damp. Still warm from the water and her body heat. My gaze traced up the shape of her calves, the tight muscle of her thighs, up higher to see the heart-shaped perfection of her -
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Snatched by the ear, I was dragged past Lisbeth’s door down a wide hall and around a corner.
My mother slammed me against the wall. I reached to rub where my skin was left burning. No blood seeped from a wound, but that didn’t make the pain any less. I stared down at my mother where she stood glaring up at me.
“Are you trying to get me fired? You know the rules.”
My jaw clenched at her hissed reminder.
The rules were a set of absolute requirements when dealing with Lisbeth. Only her. No other members of the family expected them of me. But then, the rules also applied to only me. As if I couldn’t be trusted around her for too long.
They were simple enough. I was to tend to her whenever she demanded, was to run to fetch whatever her little heart wanted. I wasn’t allowed to linger in her area for too long, wasn’t allowed to look at her unless absolutely necessary, and most importantly: I was never allowed to talk to her.
It hadn’t always been that way, but she’d pushed me too far when we were younger, and I’d gotten mouthy. She cried, her father yelled, and the rule was made. Never to be broken.
I hated Lisbeth. And Lisbeth hated me.
But still, I watched her.
“Sorry. It won’t happen again.”
My eyes were downcast, shame painting my cheeks with red heat. If not for this job, my mother and I would be on the streets, begging for scraps to eat. The Rose family had been good to us, and my fascination with Lisbeth had threatened their kindness on more than one occasion.
But still, I watched her.
Whether that be for lust or hatred, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was it couldn’t be helped. I was a fifteen year old boy coming to age with the raging hormones that came with it. I was tall, much taller than Lisbeth now, but I was still thin, still had a child’s face. Only time would fill out the strength and weight of my body, and time was a tortuous, slow crawl, a rancid beast that couldn’t shape me fast enough.
“Give me the towels. I’ll take them into her room. You should go down and see what help is needed in the kitchen. Everything must be perfect. Lisbeth won’t accept mistakes for this night.”
I handed over the towels, perfectly white and ridiculously expensive. Lisbeth expected everything to suit her extravagant tastes. Her father was only too happy to oblige her. It surprised me they didn’t have a pedestal upon which to perch their beloved doll of a daughter, or a glass case to enclose her. She was loved that much. Pampered beyond words.
It made me hate her more.
My mother reached up to touch my cheek. She knew what I was thinking, knew that if not for my love of her, I would have left the house years ago. I would have gladly relinquished my role as Lisbeth’s abused pet.
“Go now. Before Franklin comes searching.”
Franklin Rose was the overseer of the family’s estate. Younger brother to Marcus Rose, he was Lisbeth’s uncle and the only man with whom I had more than a cordial relationship.
In many ways, Franklin had raised me. He’d been a strong male figure I could model myself after. But Franklin was never a pushover, and he was never weak. He simply didn’t have the highest standing in the family. Although, at times, I believed he preferred the shadows.
Why take the lead when others could handle whatever businesses the family managed?
It wasn’t like Franklin had to go without. He profited just like the rest of them.
My mother grinned and patted me on the cheek, her anger from a second ago lost to the love she had for me.
“Go. I’ll take care of the brat so you don’t have to for once.”
I’d do anything she asked. If not for her, I’d have no one, and she had been a good parent to me despite the long hours she worked.
Rounding the corner, I walked past Lisbeth’s room without looking through her door again, my long-legged steps carrying me down the hall and to a stairwell tucked in back for the servants to sneak around unseen.