Seduced by Lies

by Stacey Quinn

  Everything had happened so fast that night. During her English literature lecture in College that afternoon, Jack (who just so happened to also be Sienna’s English tutor) had given her the signal to meet up with him after classes ended that day. They had come up with a ingeniously sneaky, subtle and clever way to arrange their secret meetings without the need for verbal or written communication (“Never leave a paper trail.” As he had used to say) - On the days that Jack was able to buy an extra hour or two after College before having to go back to his family, he would place his hand gently and briefly on the edge of Sienna’s desk, just once, as he ambled around the classroom. On those unfortunate days when he had no time, or it was just too risky, he would simply walk past her desk with his hands clasped firmly behind his back.

  On that day Sienna had been in luck - her heart had soared as, out of the corner of her eye, she watched his long, graceful fingers trail slowly and seductively across the edge of her desk, and it had been a struggle to restrain the girlish giggles that, back in those days, had been a regular, natural occurrence.

  And so, at 4:05 pm that day, Sienna had spilled out of the College’s main entrance, just as eager as every other student to be free (though for different reasons), and in the hustle and bustle she broke free of the crowd, snuck around the corner of the engineering block, around to the very back of the College, and began making her way up the overgrown, fence lined mud path that ran along the side of the old tennis courts and emerged half a mile later at a narrow, hedgerow lined tarmac road, just wide enough for one car to drive up comfortably.

  And sure enough, just like every time before, as she was reaching the summit Sienna looked up to be greeted by the sight of a dark maroon Sedan, its engine softly purring as it waited for her. She hurried her pace for the remaining distance between her and the car, allowing herself a girlish giggle this time as she reached towards the handle of the passenger door and slid eagerly into the seat.

  Her wide, stretching grin was met by an equally wide and genuine smile from her beloved Jack in the driver's seat, who paused to reach over lovingly and tuck Sienna's long, windblown hair behind her ear, a trail of electrifying tingles trailing after his fingers as he gently stroked her cheek, before changing gear and silently pulling off.

  They drove straight on along that cramped, winding road that slowly got steeper and steeper, their hands softly entwined, their thumbs gently tracing each other's palms. No words needed to be spoken - the passionate, electrifying tension and excitement that lay tangibly thick in the air said more than any amount of words in the English language ever could. Thankfully, they didn’t encounter any other cars, or people for that matter, on their drive.

  After a little while of meandering slowly up the peaceful, picturesque lane, the hedgerows on either side of them began to thin out, and the road beneath the Sudan's wheels started to become rough, stony and dusty as the soft, green farmers fields gave way to the windblown vista of the majestic downs. Jack had pulled smoothly in to the always empty car park next to the poorly marked viewpoint on their right, the gravel crunching satisfyingly beneath the rubber of the wheels.

  From this vantage point, the world seemed to stretch endlessly out before them. To the east and down the valley a little they could see back to the sprawling buildings of the College, and behind that lay the rest of the small town, the distant houses and shops seeming like a tiny toy town laid out for their amusement. Even further beyond that lay the distant, sparkling ocean, turned into a shimmering blanket of diamonds by the majestically setting sun, whose slowly sinking rays set the entire valley ablaze in a hypnotizing, golden hue.

  Far to the west lay the many other neighboring miniature towns, the furthest of which - the minute little civilizations that lay on the very curve of the horizon, were already out of reach of the waning suns stretching fingertips and were cloaked in darkness. And so while the eastern horizon was aglow with the fierce burn of a sinking star, the western skyline shone with the hundreds of tiny, silver, pinpricks of unnatural light that leaked through the windows of homes and businesses alike. That enthralling panorama, along with the knee weakening effect of Jacks safe, strong arms sliding smoothly around her waist from behind, combined into a moment that Sienna was certain she would never forget.

  “We don’t have much time.” Jack had whispered softly in her ear, tugging gently on her hand and leading her towards the back seat of his parked car.

  The hill top breeze had tickled her skin and raised goose bumps along her arms and across her stomach as he’d unbuttoned her virtually see-through, purple blouse. Laying her down along the back seat, he leaned over and whispered ever so softly and unwaveringly in her ear, as he always did before they made love -

  “I Love You, Sienna Selway.”

  Even now, as she sat on her bed reminiscing, Sienna could still feel the rough scratchiness of the car seats on her bare back, the feel of thick, chocolate brown hair running through her fingers, she could still smell her lovers sweat as he moved back and forth, quicker and quicker on top of her. The sun had long set by the time they had, sweating, shaking and satisfied, collapsed into each other's arms.

  He had dropped her off, as usual, a few streets away from her house, just to be safe, and Sienna had happily made the five minute stroll, practically skipping through the warm evening breeze in her euphoric delight. She couldn’t have possibly predicted the drastic and world altering turn of events that lay just moments ahead of her, even as she pranced her way up the gravel driveway of her home, a fully formed, fabricated excuse as to her lateness ready and waiting on the tip of her tongue.

  But Sienna never got to voice her excuse. She stepped in from the mild, carefree evening air and was instantly confronted by a thick wall of tension and grim anticipation.

  “Mum?!” She called out into the silent house, practically able to smell the astriction in the air. She didn’t receive an answer. Her guts twisting, turning and tightening in fearful apprehension, Sienna slowly made her way down the laminated hall, towards the kitchen and the source of the palpable waves of tension.

  “Mum?” She repeated tentatively as she rounded the doorway into kitchen. Sure enough there her mother was, leaning tipsily against the counter, her eyes red rimmed and puffy, a half empty bottle of cheap, supermarket vodka on the worktop next to her. She rolled her bloodshot, watery eyes up to look at her daughter.

  “Baby. Tell me it isn’t true.” She croaked out, in a tone that sounded as if she were practically pleading with Sienna on bended knee. There was no need for Sienna to reply - the answer was written in capital letters across her burning red face.

  A white hot trickle of fear had slowly run down Sienna’s spine as time seemed to stretch and distort, the next few seconds lasting a seemingly impossible length of time. Much of that night, much of the next few weeks for that matter, were a blur of shock, disbelief, tears and screaming arguments. Her mother - the one person Sienna was supposed to be able to rely on, had been the first to turn on her.

  At some point, after God only knows how many hours of screaming, slurring, crying, and throwing things, Sienna’s mother had tearfully finished the bottle of vodka and had promptly passed out.

  Sienna had felt as if she were in some terrible soap opera. Her racing, terrified mind couldn’t quite process that this was all actually happening to her, and so while her leaden insides pulled her down into the depths of misery, she also felt an odd, floaty kind of detachment, as if this were someone else's life that she was living. Somehow, through the fog and raging confusion in her mind, not to mention through the swelling rivers of tears that refused to stop pouring from her eyelids, she’d managed to tap Jacks mobile number into her phone, which she desperately tried ringing over and over again, her hysteria increasing as, time and time again, she was met with nothing but a flat, beeping tone.

  Jack lived a few towns over, some 30 miles away, and while a part of Sienna longed to head back out into the dark night streets, to pound the pavement and
hitch her way until she found her love, another, more realistic part of her knew that he would already be gone. In a town like this, gossip was a main source of entertainment, and a juicy story like this would be on the tip of everyone’s tongues by the time the sun set the next day. Jack would be ruined. His marriage would be over, his career would be over, and his reputation would be in tatters - of course he’d had to leave, he’d have been a fool not to. Upon this realization, it was Sienna’s turn to pass out, crumpling like a stack of cards to the cold, unyielding parquet.

  Sienna had been broken from that moment, that much was obvious. She remembered very little of the following weeks, other than being enveloped in a surreal bubble that distorted the sounds, images and events of the real world around her, making them seem distant and unconnected. She felt surprisingly little, her feelings numb as if her brain had constructed an impenetrable barrier against her emotions, for fear of what would happen if it did let that endless tidal wave of anguish and loss wash over her. It had been a different, much harder life for Sienna from then on. And still her mother did not relent in her snide, callous digs and comments, as if she got some kind of sick enjoyment out of metaphorically pouring salt and lemon juice into Sienna’s still open, still fresh wounds. Sienna smiled emptily, her face a mask of cold cunning as her plan came fully together in her mind.

  If her mother wanted something to bitch about and dig at, Sienna would give her that something - she was most certainly going to rebel against this cold, cruel, backhanded slap her mother had dealt her. It was a long, tricky and patient game that Sienna would have to play, but it would all be worth it just to see her mother's face when it all came pouring out again - when history was revisited. Sienna was simply going to swap one accomplished, older, intelligent English lecturer for another - She was going to expand on this opportunistic contact with Lewis Stowell, she would take her time and build an online relationship with this likeness of her beloved Jack and at the peak of her heated rebellion, married or not, she would do her best to seduce him over facebook - See how her mother would deal with yet another affair with an older, accomplished man of high reputation.

  While a part of her balked at taking this deceitful and devious road, already feeling automatically guilty at the thought of betraying her love for Jack, the new, calm voice in Sienna's head reasoned with her, explaining that it couldn’t possibly be considered a betrayal if she and Lewis had never actually met. And also that, in a way, her rebellions victorious culmination (a.k.a rubbing it in her bitch of a mothers face), would be a combined triumph for both her and her Jack - a kind of metaphor for the fact that you could tear them away from each other and try to grind them down, but the pure, true love that she and Jack had shared would always conquer.

  Opting for a roll up instead of a joint (best save the little she had left, but out of reach of her mother), Sienna flicked her laptop open, pulling her legs up underneath her on the bed and taking a few moments to centre herself before travelling down a path that, once trodden, she could not turn back from. Her facebook page loaded and Sienna realized that she still had three pending notifications, completely forgotten about in the light of more pressing matters. One was from Melissa Harvey - a podgy woman that Sienna vaguely remembered from her ‘friends’ list, who had ‘liked’ the Rilke quote, and the other two (her stomach gave an excited little flutter) were from none other than Lewis Stowell. He too had ‘liked’ her quote, and had also commented on it, the link to which Sienna clicked furiously in anticipation. His comment was as simple and as captivating as his message had been. He had written only –

  “To write is to create. To create is beauty.”

  Followed by his own choice of quote from the bewitching Rainer Maria Rilke, which proved to be a rather optimistic contrast to her somewhat gloomy post -

  “See how in their veins all becomes spirit:

  into each other they mature and grow.

  Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,

  round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.

  Thirsters, and they receive drink,

  watchers, and see: they receive sight.

  Let them into one another sink

  so as to endure each other outright.”

  Sienna was thrown by the beauty of her favorite poets words, finding herself a little breathless from the resounding effect they had on her - despite her only real life encounter with love ending in a sudden, terrible disaster, the words still managed to instill some kind of hope in Sienna's mostly cold heart. Perhaps this plan of hers was an even better idea than she’d initially thought - whoever he was, Lewis Stowell was not only deep in an emotionally mature sense, but also clearly deeply intelligent, so how could getting closer she such a remarkable seeming man be a bad idea? Sienna grew more and more smug and pleased with herself with each moment that passed, but her fingers still shook slightly as they ‘liked’ his comment. And now the moment had come - the moment she’d been nervously avoiding (though Sienna preferred to call it ‘preparing for’) for the entire day - the point of no return. Not allowing herself to think too much about what she was doing, for fear that her trepidations mind would throw up some reason or other to not go through with her plan, Sienna opened up her inbox and set her fingers to quickly and robotically typing the reply she had been practicing and developing in her head since that morning.

  “Dear Mr. Stowell,

  Thank you for your kind message, and please do fret over being a little bold - for what is the written word but love? And what is love but boldness? I was very happy to learn of the enjoyment my simple little quote brought to your day, and am always glad to make acquaintance with fellow Rainer Maria Rilke fans (as you said yourself - we are few and far between in this day and age)! I am also glad that you have discovered the joys of the British Poetry Centre page, and hope to see more of you on there in the future.

  As for Rilke’s book ‘Letters to a Young Poet’, I’m afraid that I have not experienced the joys within its pages, but I will be sure to pursue them just as soon as I can - thank you for the recommendation.

  I hope we cross paths again soon, but in the meantime -

  ‘All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. - Salvador Dali.’

  Best Wishes

  Sienna.”

  She toyed with idea of placing a few small x’s, as kisses after her name. She had, after all, just been talking of the necessity of boldness. But she figured that there would be plenty of time for that later, it was still early days yet and she was worried that, in the eyes of this mature, intelligent man, her kisses might seem like the pathetic, flirtatious attempts of an adolescent. And the last thing she wanted to do was to ruin this game before it had even begun. She quickly and firmly clicked send, laying back on her bed and smiling - her lips a triumphantly smug red curve that stretched along the bottom of her face. “And so it begins...” She whispered softly to herself, a tingle of earnest anticipation running satisfyingly down her spine.

  CHAPTER 7 - A GOLDEN TICKET

  Sam felt triumphant. No, he felt better than that - He felt glorious! It had been a tough week - he had forced himself to stay completely away from Sienna, to focus his efforts and energies on getting Lewis Stowell’s facebook page up to scratch, while trying his best to keep up appearances with his friends (it would all be ruined if anyone found out what he was up to). Patience wasn’t exactly one of Sam's fortes, but this was one situation that was worth the effort, and as he read Sienna's reply for what must have been the twentieth time, he knew he would do it all again a thousand times over if he had to.

  It had been a week since this brilliant plan of his had seeded in his mind, and it had been a week of meticulous thought and attention to detail as he’d constructed Lewis Stowell's fool proof fake profile. It had taken more time than he’d expected, having to come up with a flawless back story, trawl through all the pages and groups that his character would likely be involved with or interested in, send out hopeful friend request
s to people who were linked to or members of those pages (he needed at least a few names on his ‘friends’ list for the profile to be at all credible), and so on and so forth. The photos and pictures had been a particularly tricky part of the process - again an essential element towards the credibility of the profile and of Lewis Stowell himself, Sam struggled over what images would best represent this fictitious, mature, intellectual mask that he had created for himself. After all, it would be unadvisable for Sam to use images of real people to portray Lewis - that was far too risky and would have practically been a giant neon sign pointing out Sam's deceit, begging for him to get caught. And so, after attentive though, he chose to use the same tactic as Sienna - to hide his appearance behind poignant, artsy photographs.

  Sam was no photographer himself, not by a long shot, but his father had dabbled, picking it up as a hobby every now and then and (just like most things his father had tried his hand at) he had been a pretty sterling photographer. As much as he hated to dredge up memories of his father, Sam was fully committed to this path he was on, and so, shutting off any thoughts and feelings about his father as firmly as he could, Sam then spent the best part of a day rummaging through the dusty, damp, molding old boxes of his father's belongings (which, despite the betrayal and swift abandonment, his drunken mother simply refused to get rid of), in search of some suitable snapshots to upload. After all, this ‘Lewis Stowell’ character was, in a way, loosely based around his father - the only ‘accomplished’, ‘mature’, ‘intellectual’ adult that Sam really knew, which had been the type of company Sienna had stated she preferred.