She’s beautiful, but no one sees the darkness hidden behind smoky eyes. A pair of full lips accented by a lushes red, a symbol of quaking passion. Barely a woman but curvy all the same with an elegance beyond her short lived years. It’s a performance to conceal the raw truth of reality—the ugliness lurking within an angel.

I knew her well—I know her. The princess whom would become a conquer, a youthful beauty grown into a twisted grace. A timeless example of humanity’s depravity, refined by the extravagance of cruel experience, and wrapped in lavish fabrics with raven locks born of inner turmoil. She’s nothing more than a beast sleeping in a walking corpse, waiting for the chance to feast. No one sees the danger. No one suspects the chaos slumbering beneath a still surface. Unknowing abusers fueling a sleeping carnage, they ravaged and molded a creature within a fire they could not control.

This is a girl, beautiful and refined, growing into a woman with calamity in her heart. They don’t see the sinner in the saint, nor the beast within the beauty. They don’t see the devil they created. . . they don’t see the real me.

© J.N. Sheats