Budapest » [Clintasha]

Chapter Twenty-Two: Seduction

As my body and mind matured, so did what I was tasked with. No longer did I play the sobbing child, tugging at the heart strings, I played the femme fatale, toying with hearts. I became temptation embodied, simpering smirks, lacquered lips and lustrous looks. It's a curious thing, power. It comes in many forms. Political, social, economical and sexual. Yet, in this misogynistic world, no one ever suspects power lingers beneath a guise of curves and long flowing hair. 

I saw the way they looked at me in my sheer night gown and lacy lingerie: hungered, savage, lustful. They looked like they wanted to devour me whole. And they looked down on me, objectified me and most importantly underestimated me. Men, so convinced they had the all power in their hands, certain they're the ones using me, when all along it's me using them. They don't suspect the strong, agile and intelligent foe lurking under the demeaned exterior. In their minds their isn't such a thing as a pretty face coupled with the adept mind. 

My body became the battleground and I was almost always unarmed - you understand that it's hard to hide guns or knives stripped down to undergarments. My arsenal became bullets of blood red lipstick, grenades of knock-out perfume and my utility belt became garters. I was armed to seduce. Lust is the down-fall of the human race. 

So often I played the crooning kitten, allured by filthy power barons, acting as their fuck-toy. I'd prowl, coo, flip my hair and giggle. I'd turn on the charm, stalk around them and sway my hips hypnotically. 

I had to build walls, detach myself from the gut-churning things I had to so to get the job done. At night I'd have to try and bury those memories of wrinkly old men with their sagging bodies, crinkled faces and decaying teeth. I'd have memories of their harsh hands groping me, sanding my skin with their rough scaly texture. I'd remember the stench of their breath, the feeling of their craggy slobbery lips. 

But it wasn't as if I had any choice. 

The KGB were the metaphorical gun to the back of my head. Every passing moment I was just dancing in the gallows, feet skating the trapdoor that could open and send me choking to death any second. To the KGB, we weren't human beings, we were statistics; expendable figures on a page. 

At least I finally understood why they removed my womb all that time ago. In a way it was a kindness.

The bar was a dimly lit place, a sort of hellfire club for randy hellions; where escorts loitered at in every corner. Filthy rich Russian power barons and political figureheads of all kinds would go there to grab a drink and grab a girl. It was a given that our communist leaders were corrupt, but when corruption reached a degree of capitalism, it was our duty to intervene.

I felt exposed in the dress, my skin bristling with goosebumps from the draught of the Russian winter. My skin was bared, and I felt like a vulnerable animal; a knife or bullet could carve through me if I lost my wits for a second. The dress was inhibiting, it's length easily making a number of moves in my roster impossible. And beneath the caked face, the pinned and curled hair and the flowing evening gown, I was tangled in restrictive raunchy undergarments.

I had no choice but to put all my faith in the three men escorting me — two of whom I knew nothing of, one who I knew everything about, and mistrusted him accordingly.

Every languid step was accentuated by a swing of my hips; I kept my back straight and my chin raised like a sovereign. I slinked over to the bar and perched myself on a stool, not far from the man I knew to be my target and crossed my legs, so the sheer material was hiked up to bare some of my slender, porcelain, hairless leg.

"A drink for madam?" Asked a young bartender, polishing a cocktail shaker. The dishrag looked tatty in his hand.

"A cocktail..."  I shrugged aloofly, keeping my eyes pinned to my prey.