Beautiful Freaks by Katie M John

wicked stepmother.
    “Mama,” I cried , but she ignored my distress and walked out of the room, lifting her chin high as she did.
    All through that year Vince became my mother’s shadow. He was never more than a couple of feet away from her skirt hems. With each visit would come gifts so extravagant and rich that my mother had to undertake several building projects just to house them all .
    All the time he was with her , I saw him watching me. He inspected me as if he were the potential buyer of a piece of art. My mother was happy to arrange these inspections for his pleasure. She’d have me play the harp for hours on end whilst she’d sit in the shadowy corner of the room, sewing or reading . Vince nt would be offered a chair , square in front of me , as if I were part of a private show and he were my only audience. Everything about these situations filled me with feelings of disgust. The way his eyes travel led over my body as I played made me feel as exposed as if I had been instructed to strip naked.
    Once , when my mother left us alone for ten minutes to deal with some household matter, he left his chair and made his way over to the window behind me. My heart skipped in my chest with the same instinct as a stalked animal.  I knew the window was not his true destination . H e stepped up behind me and I felt the warmth of his body, and could smell the musk of male sweat. He leant in, his breath falling on my skin causing me to shudder and strike a series of wrong chords.
    “I have a gift for you,” he whispered.
    I turned my eyes to him and saw him flash a smile of pearl - white teeth. He was so close that I could see the dark black whiskers of his beard growing t hrough the skin over his chisel- cut bone structure. Suddenly his flesh made contact with mine as he swept back my hair. Then the cool dropping of metal slithered down over my collar and into my cleavage. His fingers followed in its track. Lightly, fleetingly, almost as if to give the impression that it was accidental. He moved my hair back into position and spoke close to my ear,
    “It belonged to my mother. A five-carat African diamond.”
    I felt the hard stone nestle in the well of my breasts.
    “Thank you,” I said as politely as I could.
    “My pleasure. It will give me something to focus on when you play.”
    I blushed and shivered all at once. Footsteps echoed before the door and he hastily took his position back in his seat. I played on as my mother instructed.
    It wasn’t that Vincent wasn’t handsome, he was. I could see how easily he might break a woman’s heart, but there was something about him, beneath the exquisite dress and handsome façade that was shadow -like and terrifyingly dark . My every instinct told me to run. Of course it could have been the effect of the rumours and servant gossip that lead me to these unfair fears. Vincent was twenty-eight but had already been married three times. He had been widowed twice and his third wife had been placed into a lunatic asylum. When I had brought the matter up with my mother , she had laughed and told me not to listen to the gossip of serving girls.
    She explained that he had married his first wife at eighteen and she had died in a tragic accident falling from her horse within the first year of their marriage. At twenty it was perfectly reasonable for him to find another wife, which he did. They were married three years before she tragically died in childbirth. Whilst in the depth of grief he had fallen in love with a princess , who rather tragically turned out to be mad. The romance had been so rushed that there had been no time to realise the maladies she suffered until it was too late. In the middle of the night she had gone into a frenzy and tried to stab him. The marriage was annulled on grounds that she was clearly insane.
    When my mother relayed Vince nt’ s story to me , it seemed completely rational and I even scolded myself for having filled my head with silly fancies,