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Title: The Honey-Trap
Part Two: Through The Veil
Rating: PG-13
Author: Alsepang
E-mail: alsepang@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: Except for the names, I will be EXTREMELY
            surprised if there is any resemblance to
            Sailor Moon found here. After all, I wrote
            this. And there are no mentions of short-skirted
            heroines anywhere. Likewise, Daniel Jones,
            Darren Hayes, Savage Garden and I have no connection.
            However, I'd like to butter them up by saying
            that the song I've used is gorgeous. Go, Savage
            Garden!


[She's taking her time making up the reasons

To justify all the hurt inside

Guess she knows from the smiles

And the look in their eyes

Everybody's got a theory about the bitter one]

                      ~~~ 'To The Moon And Back', by
                           Savage Garden



            I know what they say behind my back. I
can hear them, however low they pitch their voices,
and sometimes they don't even have the courtesy to
wait until I have stepped out of the room before
they start their nodding and whispering. I can see
their carefully averted glances when I walk by, and
the way they look at me, even those of my staff who
address me by my first name. They call me a machine,
cold and emotionless, a veritable Everest and even
more formidable than the highest mountain in the
world. I am the old-fashioned boss, the type whose
entrance into the offices invariably causes a sudden
and frantic surge in productivity.

          I admit it. I am cold, frigid even. I am
also emotionless-why, I ask you, should I wear my
heart on my sleeve for others to tear it apart? Oh,
I can show emotion whenever necessary-- I have been
a consummate actress all my life and now I use my
thespian skills to manipulate others when necessary.
You can look askance at me, but that's what we all
do every day-- manipulate people. I simply do it
better than most. My acting abilities have always
allowed me to close business deals with unusual
swiftness. It has also let me walk away with my pride
intact where others would have collapsed.

          I know, more so than others, the prices
that I will have to pay if I were to melt. I can
only imagine how much more I will have to pay, more
so than others. In this world, you cannot be soft.
To be soft is to let your guard down, and to let
your guard down means allowing others to hit you
anywhere, particularly in places you hurt easily
and most.


[They're saying

Mamma never loved her much and

Daddy never keeps in touch

That's why she shies away from human affection]



           I was born Serenity Houghton-West,
almost twenty-seven years ago. My father was
Craig Houghton-West, who would later set up
and helm the international investment bank
named for his family, establishing his reputation
as one of the world's most trusted and powerful
financiers. There was some aristocratic blood
in my father's family-- not much, but enough
to acquire a hyphenated family name. My mother
was  Maria Anna Ashleigh, whose family  owned
Ashleigh Modelling Agency, the byword in the
modelling world before America's Ford and Elite
agencies brought it to the brink of insolvency.

         I don't hold many memories of my parents.

         'Keep away from my dress, please. It's
an original model from Gobbledygook.'

          Maria Anna Ashleigh, my mother, was
the beautiful and exceedingly glamorous owner
of Ashleigh Models, based in the United States.
She frequently flew across the Atlantic to
attend galas, premieres and other assorted
functions where the glitterati came together
to sip martinis and smile for the cameras.
Papers and magazines gloried in the photogenic
Mrs Houghton-West, blessed with looks and
wealth. Oddly enough, they never seemed to notice
that Maria Anna Ashleigh never said much about
her daughter. In fact, for a woman who basked
in the glow of flashbulbs as much as she did,
it was strange that very few people actually
took notice of the fact that she had a daughter.

             Sometimes I wonder if Mother
deliberately kept me out of the spotlight
for selfish reasons of her own. Whatever
it was, I have never known my mother to
be particularly altruistic towards me.
Towards others, yes.

            I was eighteen when Mother suddenly
realised that I was her daughter and needed to
make an important and preferably wealthy match.
For the first time in a long while, she paid me
a great deal of attention, most of it unwelcome.
I was expected to smile prettily, wear glamorous
gowns and accompany her to glittering galas and
debutante balls to charm some hapless-- or perhaps
not so hapless-- millionaire, or member of royalty,
failing which a titled hereditary peer would do.
Discarding the idea of being a trophy wife, and
knowing that I could not buckle down to aristocratic
standards, I went to Cambridge instead and she
never spoke to me again. Sometimes I wonder if
things would have been different if I had married
an important society man or a wealthy and debonair
man of the world. Would she have loved me? I think
not. However, my position would have changed from
good-for-nothing daughter to useful daughter
who brought in even more useful son-in-law.

            As for Father-- my memory of his face
comes mostly from photographs. Say what you will
about my family, we had tons of photo albums. Father
was rarely at home, being too busy jettisoning
from one business deal to another. I don't believe
I saw him more than twice a year and sometimes
not at all. Houghton-West Investments Inc. was
his only child and he was devoted to it-- so
devoted that his human family came a poor second.

            I take after him in both looks and
business acumen, or so I've been told. It might
have been one of the reasons why Mother didn't
seem to like me very much. Well-- that's not
quite true. Perhaps it would be more accurate
to say that where I was concerned, she was simply
indifferent.

         Theirs was not a marriage for love. If it
had been, I saw no evidence of it. I doubt very much
that their lifestyles had anything to do with the
obvious lack of emotion in their union. I was the
result of 'a burst of friendliness', as Harper Lee,
writer of the unsurpassable 'To Kill A Mockingbird',
so concisely puts it. The world could not see it, of
course. My  family were consummate actors, as am I.

        There are many other things I remember.

        Almost six years ago, on graduation day,
I looked out over the crowd of proud parents and
relatives of my schoolmates. I watched as my friends
hugged their whoever and threw their graduation
scrolls and mortar boards in the air a third or
fourth time for cameras. I looked down at the scroll
in my hand and turned away. I was going solo.

       My parents had died within a few days of
each other. Mother had died in a car crash in
California two days before I graduated. She had
been on her way to a Hollywood premiere for a film.
Father had died, also in a car crash, but this
had taken place the week before. His limousine
had gone off a ravine in Europe. With him had been
his secretary and chauffeur.

       I didn't feel much, only a deep regret
that they had to die in that manner. It must
have been very painful for them. I cried a
little at their joint funeral-- the only event
they attended side by side, apart from their
wedding and engagement party-- not because I
was grieved at having lost them, but because
they had never allowed me to somehow find them.
It's funny how, after so long, I still harboured
the hope that I could meet with their approval.
Old habits die hard.

       At twenty-one, I was the sudden and
very rich owner of the failing Ashleigh
Modelling Agency and the internationally
respected Houghton-West Investments Inc.
Ashleigh was suffering massive losses-- why
Mother tried to keep it alive was probably
more out of sentimental reasons than anything
else. After all, the agency bore her family
name. Houghton-West, on the other hand, was
still going strong and had just been named
one of the top five investment banks in the
world, on par with Credit Suisse and Goldman
Sachs.

        I was surprised that Father had left
me Houghton-West Investments in his will. As
a matter of fact, he had left his entire controlling
stake to me-- all sixty-five per cent of it-- despite
the fact that  I had not had word from him since high
school. Like Mother, he had never paid me attention
if he could help it. The investment firm was his only
child.

        Ashleigh Modelling was an unexpected
burden, but I took it on because I had to.
I was Mother's sole heir and again, ownership
came to me after her death. It was foundering
because of a sordid scandal involving the models
and some of the management. Mother, I saw, had
not taken the necessary steps and I immediately
turned the agency upside down as fast as I could,
changing the name to Palais (AN: insert gratuitous
author appearance here) Alse-pang Models Inc. and
re-hauling the entire management. Of course, there
were protests from Mother's family, who didn't like
the name change, but I didn't  care. It was MY business,
not theirs. Houghton-West I left alone, because it
was doing well.


[But somewhere in a private place

She packs her bags for outer space

And now she's waiting for the right kind of pilot to come

Then she'll say to him


I would fly to the moon and back

If you'll be

If you'll be my baby

Got a ticket for a world where we belong

So would you be my baby?]


          I have been alone almost all my life,
starting from the time I first realised that
there was nothing I could do to gain my parents'
attention. I don't know if they ever loved me.
Perhaps they did once, when I was a baby. As I
said, I know nothing of it. When they died, I
went through their personal papers, not so much
because I wanted to remember them, but because
I wanted to know if they had ever loved me. I
think I loved them. They weren't nasty people,
just a little selfish, or thoughtless.

          Believe me, I'm not ungrateful and I'm
not blind. I look back at times and I know that
I'm far luckier in life than many. I have had more
than the proverbial roof over my head and three
satisfying meals. I have never had to yearn for
something money can buy. And I now have power,
influence and all the wealth I can lay my hands on.
I'm not stupid or completely self-pitying to the
extent that I don't know when I 'have it good'.
What right do I have to pity myself when I'm better
off than millions around the world? But there is that
something I've never had, that one element that people
say transforms lives and makes it richer.

          I look around me sometimes, when I'm
feeling particularly pensive, or when the sky
is a soft grey with strong breezes stirring up
the leaves on the sidewalks. Inside, there's
something that aches and wants to reach out
for...for what? I feel as if there is an
emptiness inside my soul, and I know it's my
soul calling, because it's rooted far too deeply
and too painfully for anything else. I feel as
if I need someone to help hold me and-- and to
love me. I don't want that! I hate that feeling,
that hollowness I carry sometimes, that knowledge
that I want to belong to someone, to have someone
I can lean on or really talk to, someone who could
hold me-- and I want someone to belong to me. But
I am a woman, and for all the ice and steel I try
to keep on the outside, that is my fatal flaw, a
flaw I don't want anyone to know, because they will
then have an advantage over me, an advantage I can
ill afford.

            I had a dream once, when I was eighteen.
One night, I dreamt that I was in a beautiful green
place, filled with sunlight filtering through the
tall trees and long grass, and a quiet breeze ruffling
the leaves and grass. I wasn't alone. There was someone
with me, a  man I knew very well, a man I knew
inside my heart, and when I looked up at him,
laughing, he smiled down at me, smiled into my
eyes, and then he too laughed with me. In that
one defining moment, I felt myself wrapped in
perfect love and happiness, a warmth so pure
and true that I could not cry, not even for
joy. I could only let him clasp my hand in
his and feel the golden magic of the sunlight
and scene wash over me.

           I awoke abruptly from that dream when
it was still night. I couldn't remember the man.
I didn't know who he was. All I had was that
feeling. I could remember the sunlight and the
joy...and the love, the sweetness and beauty in
that love. I had felt a complete sense of trust
as well, because I had loved the stranger in
my dream and he had loved me back. I had *trusted*
him.

[She can't remember a time

When she felt needed

If love was red then she was colour blind

All her friends they've been tried for treason

And other crimes that were never defined


She says

'Love is like a barren place and

Reaching out for human faith

Is like a journey I just don't have the map for.']



              I was only eighteen then, and young and
naïve enough to have dreams of finding that love-- of
believing that I could find love, because I had seen
it in a dream, and because I thought I could see it
around me. I had seen couples in high school and couples
everywhere on campus at the university. And I thought
then, perhaps my parents had loved each other once,
long ago. But while their love couldn't last, mine could
and would. I would succeed where my parents had failed.

          But I didn't understand love and even
my dream didn't help me. As time slipped by, I
could only remember fleetingly what that dream
had felt like. I knew what it was; I just couldn't
seem to feel it anymore. And I couldn't seem to
find someone who could fill that space. I dated,
but not exclusively; the boys and, later, men
(by virtue of age and little else) I agreed to
go out with were awed by me and my money. It was
either that, or they treated me as if I was some
sort of prize they had won, parading me around
until I felt like a championship trophy on a
mantelpiece.

         Once, I thought I found someone I could
love. I realised later that I wasn't in love
with him, and had never been in love with him, but
I did have a bit of a crush on him, and I was
halfway in love-- only halfway, thank heavens!
I found him easy to talk to, intelligent, and
easy to look at as well. We were an official
couple until the day I found out that he had
been multi-timing me behind my back. I say
multi-timing, because he had been seeing more
than one girl behind my back. He was playing
the field and everyone knew about it. As the betrayed
party, I was, of course, the last to know. One reason
was because he had gone the rounds of the people who
called themselves my friends. They were all trying to
be his One And Only, as soon as they could get him
to dump me.

        So I dumped him-- and them. That was after
I had it out with every single one of them and dragged
them through mud and ice, as the college newspaper put
it the very next day, with a front-page article accompanied
by photographs. It painted me as a control-freak of a
girlfriend who 'couldn't satisfy' him-- and exactly what
did they mean by that? I walked into the editor's office
that very day and coolly gave her the sharpest side of
my tongue, detailing the jerk's misdemeanours as well as
my former friends' warming his bed at every chance they
could get, because his official girlfriend wouldn't warm
it. I detailed it at full pitch of my lungs and collected
an interested and large audience in the hallways. I didn't
spare the editor, who had been trying to snag him as well.


       And that dream I had? I know I'll never find that
stranger. It's a dream, not reality, and I lost my rose-coloured
glasses a long time ago. Some stubborn part of me, one
that I am ashamed of, still keeps hoping that someday,
I won't have to be alone. Still, it's not something I'm
going to announce to the whole world. It's my life. It's
my secret.

      And somehow, he has pierced through the veil.


(c)Copyright 2001 original storyline by Alsepang

****THE SINGING CLOSET****

Look at the two songs. Then think...hmmmm...


--THE (DOGGONE) GIRL IS MINE--

(Michael Jackson)
Every night she walks right in my dreams
Since I met her from the start
I'm so proud I am the only one
Who is special in her heart

The girl is mine
The doggone girl is mine
I know she's mine
Because the doggone girl is mine

(Paul McCartney)
I don't understand the way you think
Saying that she's yours not mine
Sending roses and your silly dreams
Really just a waste of time

Because she's mine
The doggone girl is mine
Don't waste your time
Because the doggone girl is mine

(Paul)
I love you more than he
(Take you anywhere)

(Michael)
But I love you endlessly
(Loving we will share)

(Michael & Paul)
So come and go with me
Two on the time

(Michael)
But we both cannot have her
So it's one or the other
And one day you'll discover
That she's my girl forever and ever

(Paul)
Don't build your hopes to be let down
'Cause I really feel it's time

(Michael)
I know she'll tell you I'm the one for her
'Cause she said I blow her mind

(Michael)
The girl is mine
The doggone girl is mine
Don't waste your time
Because the doggone girl is mine

(Michael & Paul)
She's mine, she's mine
No, no, no, she's mine
The girl is mine, the girl is mine
The girl is mine, the girl is mine

(Paul)
The girl is mine, (yep) she's mine
The girl is mine, (yep) she's mine

(Michael)
Don't waste your time
Because the doggone girl is mine
The girl is mine, the girl is mine

(Paul speaks)
Michael, we're not going to fight about this, okay

(Michael answers)
Paul, I think I told you, I'm a lover not a fighter

(Paul says)
I've heard it all before, Michael, she told me that I'm her forever
lover, you know, don't you remember

(Michael answers)
Well, after loving me, she said she couldn't love another

(Paul, surprised)
Is that what she said

(Michael, confidently)
Yes, she said it, you keep dreaming

(Paul sings)
I don't believe it

(Michael & Paul)
The girl is mine (mine, mine, mine)

(Fade-Out/Repeat)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

--THE BOY IS MINE--

Brandy- Excuse me, can I please talk to you for a minute

Monica- uh huh, sure, you know you look kinda familiar

Brandy- Yeah, you do too but, umm,
I just wanted to know do you know
somebody named you,
you know his name.

Monica - Oh, yeah definitely I know his name.

Brandy - I just wanted to let you know he's mine.

Monica - Huh..no no, he's mine.

Chorus 1:
You need to give it up.
Had about enough.
It's not hard to see,
the boy is mine.

Brandy - I think it's time we got this straight,
let's sit and talk face to face.
There is no way you could mistake him for your man,
Are you insane?

Monica - See I know that you may be
just a bit jealous of me.
Cause' you're blind if you can't see
that his love is all in me.

Brandy - See I tried to hesitate,
I didn't want to say what he told me.
He said without me
he couldn't make it through the day,
ain't that a shame.

Monica - And maybe you misunderstood,
Plus I can't see how he could
wanna take his time and that's all good.
All of my love was all it took

Chorus 2:
The boy is mine.
You need to give it up.
Had about enough.
It's not hard to see,
the boy is mine.
I'm sorry that you
seem to be confused.
He belongs to me
the boy is mine.

Monica - Must you do the things you do
Keep on acting like a fool
You need to know it's me not you
And if you didn't know it girl it's true.

Brandy - I think that you should realize,
And try to understand why
He is a part of my life
I know it's killing you inside.

Monica - You can say what you wanna say.
What we have you can't take.
From the truth you can't escape.
I can tell the real from the fake.

Brandy - When will you get the picture.
You're the past, I'm the future
Get away it's my time to shine
if you didn't know the boy is mine.

Chorus 2

Monica - You can't destroy this love I've found
Your silly games I won't allow
The boy is mine without a doubt
You might as well throw in the towel

Brandy - What makes you think that he wants you,
when I'm the one that brought him to
The special place that's in my heart,
he was my love right from the start

Chorus 2

Brandy: He belongs to me (sang in chorus)
Monica: The boy is mine, not yours (after chorus)
Brandy: But mine!
Monica: Not yours!
Brandy: But mine!
Monica: Not yours!
Brandy: But mine!

I'm sorry that you
seem to be confused.
He belongs to me
the boy is mine.


ALSE SPEAKS: Ahhh...Nice counterparts, yes?