Pretty When You Taste Me

~ BRIELLE ~

“Fuck yes! Just like that, Paul. Please don't stop!”

I halt outside by the bathroom door at the sound of the female voice begging and moaning loudly. These shameless fucking animals are at it again right here in the university’s bathroom doing…. oh well, fucking their brains out.

I don't know who they are, but hell, I don't care. All I know is that I can't use the bathroom with them fucking like starved animals in there.

Also, I need a quiet place to cool my head, and the bathroom has always been my safe haven.

Well, not today perhaps.

I close the bathroom entrance door without even bothering to fully enter inside. I wouldn't want to disturb the fuck party going on in there, and since I needed a quiet place to think and gather my messy thoughts but didn't achieve that, I guess I am going to the Dean's office thinking like a train about to wreck straight into destruction.

Afterall, I am always walking on broken glass every single day of my life, and I have somehow gotten used to the deep pricks and bloody wound slashes.

My name is Brielle Danvers. I am the golden girl of Saint Aldric University. Top of my class. Campus royalty. The only brilliant and beautiful daughter of the University’s Dean with a scholarship that places me on a spotless reputation to maintain. I am a vision of control, a straight-A student, and I am always seen as the perfect academic role model to copy by everyone around me.

However, no one truly knows the real Brielle. No one knows the real ME.

The real Brielle is a trapped girl. She only plays the role assigned to her: a mask of light concealing emotional bruises from a father who traded his love for manipulation. The world sees Saint Aldric's golden girl, but they don't see the real girl that is cracking under pressure like it's a normal way of life.

Like it's MY normal way of life.

Everyday, I wake up like some automated robot, spend the entire day like a robot, and then sleep in like a robot.

Today is Tuesday, and like every other Tuesday for the past three years, I am always walking to the Dean’s office at exactly 2:15pm every Tuesday afternoon.

Not for some prestigious student council meeting. Not to accept another commendation for academic excellence.

It is for a private audience with the architect of my golden prison: my beloved father, Dean Elias Danvers. And each step I take now only brings me closer and closer to his office, making it even more difficult for me to breathe properly.

“Afternoon Miss Danvers,” someone suddenly greets me—a girl who looks like she is probably a freshman, judging from her highschool nerdy appearance and backpack.

She is smiling too much at me like she is swooning all over me. She must have already heard about me. Admirers.

“Good afternoon.” I smile.

As if she has suddenly realized what she is doing, she lowers her face, hiding her smile like a shy lamb as she walks past me with a quick, shy wave. I wave back at her because yeah, this is the default response I always give out to the strangers who are polite to me and love the fake me.

It's not their fault that my life is messy as it is.

I don't look at the girl twice. I continue my dreadful journey down the hall, afraid but still taking every step as my mind also switches back to a possible topic that my father will probably bring up and he will not let me hear the end of it.

The topic of my statistics grade.

The topic of that single, innocuous C+ that stands out on my transcript like an alien existing among the symphony of my other plenty A's.

That C+ was a minor slip on my part, but in my father's world, it is a catastrophic failure. Saint Aldric isn't just a university; it's a legacy, a dynasty, and I am its golden heiress, groomed for perfection since before I could even walk. Everyone knows Brielle Danvers. They know the straight-A student, the scholarship recipient, the president of the Pre-Law Society, the volunteer at the campus outreach program, the girl who never has her golden blonde hair out of place, the girl who never SAYS the wrong thing, the girl who never FEELS the wrong thing.

Whenever they see me, they see the pure definition of control. They see the perfect embodiment of everything Saint Aldric stands for.

However, I always feel the wrong things. The bad things. The horrific things that never allow me sleep every night, and I can't tell anyone because well, the shrinks never helped me, and I don't want to burden anyone with my mess.

Everyone has their own messes too, right? It'd be kind of unfair dumping my own dirt on someone when they already have their own shitty things to deal with.

Also, the less private information people know about the real me, the harder it will be for them to destroy me by using what they know as a weapon against me. They don't see the Brielle who chokes on the tasteless expensive tea my father always insists upon me. They don't see the Brielle whose hands tremble when she is alone, the Brielle who sometimes stares at the walls and ceilings of her dorm room, wondering and wishing that those walls and ceilings could crumble around her and bury her under the ground where no one will ever hurt me ever again.

My perfect reputation is a weapon, a shield, and a heavy suffocation all at once. It is what my father demands. It’s what he IS. Every time his eyes, those same brown eyes like mine, pierce through me, they don't look at me to understand me or love me.

They look to find my flaws. They look to find the imperfections that he can either exploit, reshape, or ultimately, erase.

I am his spineless masterpiece. A flawless sculpture he endlessly chisels, but he is never quite satisfied with the outcome because he is always searching and finding a messy rough edge about my life to destroy or mold into complete PERFECTION.

My life is a real mess. Really.

Finally, I arrive at the door of the Dean’s office. The brass plaque shines with his name: DEAN ELIAS DANVERS. His name is always respected and revered on campus as the man who brought Saint Aldric into the 21st century. The man of order and the guardian of our campus traditions.

But I know better.

He is the man who broke my mother, piece by agonizing piece until she vanished from this world like a ghost who never even mattered in the grand narrative of his success. Those who gossiped about her said she died because she was unable to handle the pressure that came with being married to such a powerful and successful man like my father.

But I remember the real details that no one had to tell me because my eyes saw plenty enough.

I remember the midnight fights and arguments between them, the hushed whispers, the frantic phone calls my mother would always make whenever she felt that her phone was going to be taken away from her at any moment by my father. I remember the way she always fell sick and pushed me away whenever she saw me crying and watching her cough out blood or whenever she was secretly crying as well. I remember the way her lovely blue eyes lost their light long before her body finally gave out, and I never saw her again, only to be informed by my father days later that she died.

I remember everything. She didn’t just vanish; she lost her mind because she was driven to the brink of insanity by the same man everyone applauds like he is some fucking saint.

If I could have my way….

Breathing in deeply, I hold in the air inside my lungs for a long moment before releasing it. There is no use crying over split milk. What is done has already been done.

Lifting my hand, I knock on the door.