OS - She's His Favorite

she's his favorite

(and that will be her undoing)

She isn't anything special. His plan is to make others believe she is.

She thinks she is lucky to have gotten the break that would change her life. He supposes she is right to think so in a way. But more than that he believes himself to be luckier. He found her, before others could. He sees girls like her everyday – they are around a dime a dozen. Walking to colleges, running to catch buses, looking towards his car with envy and childish fantasies in their eyes as he drives by. He sees them everywhere, around every street corner, standing in every balcony he passes. There is nothing special about her, and that is what will make her special.

She is the poster child for mediocre dreams. He, the maker of them.

He works in an industry that thrives on dreams and she is a treasure trove of them. Not just her dreams, the little, hilariously short sighted ones, but of others too. She could be no one, another face in the crowd, another girl at the bus stop and that is why she will become everyone. When he sees her struggle against those street rats, he sees a sea of faces rooting for her, silently staring at their TV screen on the edge of their seats, hoping against hope she would get her pass back. He sees them sit back, relaxed and secretly glad that those two nice boys came at the right time. The voice of reason still exists in the world, there is courage and there is fairness still. Men pat their savior complexes while women fan their shining knights' fantasies. If there is a slight prickle of irritation he feels at the entire intrusion, he knows its because he hadn't orchestrated the rescue and someone else had improvised his well set play.

She is a mold of clay and he, a refined sculptor.

She is so responsive, so transparent, so easy to work with. She makes all his finely crafted skills appear like science experiments and nuclear research. It surprises him, albeit slightly, how easily she reacts the way he wants her to. How intensely she does it. Innocence, he believes, is a blind reckless thing and combined with a driving ambition and the belief he is slowly instilling in her - he knows he has his most effective discovery yet. She will do as he pleases, reacts as he wants; all she needs a little push and he has been pushing all his life.

He is her mentor. She, his muse.

When he was on the look out for the next prodigy, he wasn't looking for talent. Talent he saw plenty of. He was looking for a challenge, and that is what she was – in unconventional ways. She wasn't a mystery to him, nor a riddle. There was no intriguing factor there, nothing that fascinated him or captured his imagination. She was just an ordinary girl, like any other ordinary girl. But she also a demographic, also a society, also a culture. A bundle of morals and cultures wrapped up in ambition and dreams of success and tied up with a bow of hope. She was the masses he was talking to, she was the people he wished to reign over. She was his key to their living rooms, their minds, their hearts. And she was his to play with as he chose, and he would definitely play and play well.

She's merely a pawn and he, a world-class player.

He would rule her. Her every action would be on his command, he would make sure of it. He had a plan, a genius plan. He would make her an example. He would fan her ambitions and feed her dreams but above her, he would raise her above the mediocre, the norm and put her on a pedestal. He would turn her into an icon. A role model for aspirations and if in the process, he had to cage her, chain her and rip her away from the very world she loved, well it was a small price to pay for the glory he would bestow upon her.

He would turn into her shadow and engulf her whole.

He would be her first, her only. He would introduce her to power, to rivalry, to fraud and cheating, to seduction and manipulation. He would corrupt her slowly, lift her blinds gently and show her the real face of fame, the ugly side of showbiz. She would rise if she was above them, but they would trample her when they realize she's changed. That was the way the world turned and he would turn her against them. She was his prototype and once he excelled, he would set her free. But by then, she would be too dependent to leave, too broken to heal. She would be his flawed masterpiece, and his most favorite puppet piece. But above all, she would be his, forever.

His favouritism is a slow poison she'll be hooked on.

It's already affecting her edges, fraying them. He knows, he always knows. Like a toxin, it is spreading in her mind and soon, she would crave it to survive. That was the plan all along. She was the face of the world he wanted to own.

Then, he would unmask her and watch her turn to ash.

Keep your friends close, they said, and your enemies closer. But she was neither. She was his muse, his protg, his discovery. He would teach her everything she would need to know and in the process burn away all her illusions. He would pull her down and rebuild her. She would dazzle like a phoenix and captivate like a minx. He would introduce her to the real world, bit by bit, slowly, gently and so quietly – she would never even know when she would begin to morph. He would raise her high, align her to the stars and alight her dreams. And then when her success story would become a manifesto for the mundane, he would play his final card and she would shoot off like a blazing star, lost in the world of glamour and fame.

 -.-

Thanks for reading.

c.d.