Drop dead gorgeous

   Fur and different types of fabrics covered the floor of the warehouse. At the center, a man with tight clothes threw everything around, apparently looking for something in particular. He stopped for a moment, having a bright yellow patterned fabric on one hand and a bright pink vest in the other, covered in glitter and feathers of many colors. He gave them those to an assistant and then stepped out of the mound of clothes as if nothing had happened. He walked elegantly and steadily towards the warehouse’s exit.

 The rest of the people had to stay there and get everything in order. They had to put everything into the proper bags and boxes and those bags and boxes into very tall shelves where everything was kept in order and very clean. When the last worker left the warehouse, they realized their boss was still there and he seemed to be drawing something on a notebook, against the hood of his car. He didn’t seem to be conscious of his surroundings, only focusing on  the movement of his hand and the trace of the pencil.

 His personal assistant, the young man who had grabbed the selected pieces of clothing, touched his shoulder and whispered in his ear something about a meeting he was late to. The man seemed a bit startled at the beginning, but then he just closed the notebook and entered the car. Later that day, he attended several meetings, having to do with his next collection and with everything that had to do with the financial results achieved by the company. However, he wasn’t really there in any of them.

 Colors flew all over his brain, as well as textures and different kinds of fabrics and so on. He kept drawing in some of those meetings and people knew he had to be left alone while he was being creative. The only thing he had to say in meetings was about the clothes and the line that was about to come out was already in production, so he had not much to say in those last few meetings. They just invited him because they knew he was essential to the success of the company but not because he was actually needed.

 The truth was that some of the people on the board felt that he was losing his touch. People didn’t seem to like his most recent creations, with many critics chiming in saying that it all seemed a little bit too boring and that “it had been seen before”. He was very aware of these criticisms but the had already said, several times, that he thought creativity could not be judged by anyone and that people saying whatever they wanted without context was just an insult to his imagination and his skill as a designer. He thought he should have all the freedoms needed to create and that was it.

 However, the company was secretly against this. They didn’t tell him any of it, but it was clear that if he didn’t deliver results, he would be kicked out without any consideration to his talent of his past results. At the end of the day, the only thing those people considered was money and if he wasn’t the one bringing it into their lives, they would find some other person that could have his vision and theirs, at the same time. It was clearly a possibility and they had in their minds at all times, even if he didn’t realize it.

 In his creative studio, everything was about lights and colors and all the beautiful fabrics that could be brought from every corner in the world. Everyone there was as beautiful as what they used to make dresses and other fashion products and everyone also seemed to be young and always happy, smiling and showing their teeth every step of the way. For an outsider, it was a very strange place to be in, even intimidating because of the attitudes of the people working there, some for years.

 The biggest office there was for him, the top designer, the one that had been the head of the whole creative area for the last two years. And he was a young man but he was already tormented by everything he had done in the past and his present ideas. He felt he was being left behind by his surroundings and that his past work was the result of some silly ideas that had come up from the mind of a naïve young man. And he always felt like that, never really feeling great about any of his work.

 He would spent his days drawing and coloring and checking new products and fabrics, talking to other creative like him and with people creating new things to be used in fashion. His whole life was about being creative and imaginative and sometimes he felt he just didn’t have enough of it. He even felt he had landed his job because of some astronomical mistake, because it was often that he felt like a failure, unable to make what people expected from him. He felt he was not what he was supposed to be.

 As a designer, he was very aware that he had to bring in results in order to have the chance to have such a group working for him, so he had recently visited some stores to check out his success with his own eyes. However, he noticed the latest collection was not working as well as he intended. He had worked so had and his team had put everything on it, all at once if that was possible. But apparently people were not nearly as excited about as they were while making it. That made him feel something he had not experienced before in his very short career filled with success.

 He realized that success could have really disastrous effects in a young man. After all, he had been forced to grow up very fast in order to be the person that was needed in such a competitive world. He remembered the days when he drew several drawings every single day, the days when he would be happy just coloring some nice drawing and then buying his own fabrics to make his creations a reality. He had to make the effort and it was hard and that felt good when he had a final product in his hands.

 The massive appeal of his designs had been his downfall; a crazy idea that had grown inside his head but that was only a lie. They had made him believe he was the only one doing fashion that young and that he was a special little flower growing in some kind of dark moat. But that sure wasn’t the case, and he noticed that from the beginning, with his first fashion show, where he was able to see how talented people was. They were better than what he was lead to believe, beautiful and creative people.

 And it was a mosh pit between them, a storm of talented souls that clashed one against the other. It was horrible for them and for the people that worked with them but they mostly never realized how vicious their world could be. They only thought about the imaginative process, about how beautiful it was to combine one thing with the other. They felt it was the best job in the world, the most glamorous and beautiful in all of existence, and that it couldn’t be topped by anything on the world.

 So he just decided to stay in his office for a whole day, working and working, not caring about anything else. He tried to create something that could really make him someone different, that could really tell others that he was a very unique soul and that his creations were much more than just clothes and accessories, more like works of art being carried around by beautiful people that knew how much effort and imagination had gone into their creation. He didn’t stop until his hands hurt.

 They found him the following day, dead on his working area. According to the doctors that examined him afterwards, he had died of a heart attack. It was very uncommon for such a young man to die like that, but his body had been under severe pressure and it was a very obvious conclusion to his story.

 However, others took his drawing and everything he had created that whole day in order to make one last collection. They said it was in his honor but it was only to make money out of his talents and his death. And people did fall into that trap, buying it in large numbers, save the company from its own demise.

In fashion

   Every single night, Maddie Compton would fix every single piece of clothing she had been able to find in the second hand stores she visited that week. Sometimes they weren’t even fashion stores but places where she could buy the fabric she liked the most and modify it enough to create something no one had ever wore before. She had the advantage of having a great eye for design and a great taste in clothing. After all, she read all the magazines she could get her hands on, for free of course.

 Maddie was not a wealthy woman but she pretended to be, going to the most prestigious parties with the elite of the city. Many loved her designs and praised her for it. She even got some friends during those parties but the truth was that she had accepted the fact she couldn’t’ really get too close to anyone. Realizing that she was not who she said she was wouldn’t have been too hard for someone close to her, so she tried hard not to overstay her welcome in such events.

 She had made some mistakes in the past, as going out after with a guy she had met at the party. It would normally be a one-night stand, as she would escape the room as silently as she could and then leave to her life far away from the skyscrapers and lovely apartments those people had. Sometimes it was really hard for her, because she really wanted to be like them. She wanted that life which was certainly much easier than her own. She wanted to feel people cared about who she was.

 Of course, Maddie knew many of the people she met in those parties were not fully honest with her but it wasn’t possible that among so many people there wasn’t at least one person that actually liked what she did. One of her ideas at first had been to find someone willing to give her money to design dresses for some brand, at least as a test. They were certainly the type to do that but it came to be much more difficult than what she had anticipated. Rich people were too in love with themselves.

 To be fair, she was too. Maddie was the kind of woman that always looks at her own reflection on the mirror in the morning and then several more times during the day. She couldn’t avoid taking pictures of herself and it wasn’t even to share with friends or family, it was just to take a look at herself and try to reinforce some weird acceptance of her own being in her brain. She knew she needed people’s approval to feel she had made it and that’s why she had gone after the opinions of people who mattered, the ones that had money and could take decisions.

 The young woman had made several dresses and then she would sell them in the same stores she bought the ones that she modified and turned into sensations. Many store owners were very grateful for what she did because many of her designs sold very well with younger women that wanted something different to wear at an affordable price. It was the only way for her to make some money, besides working some days in a call center, helping with pizza deliveries from around the world.

 Maddies wanted to live of her designs. That or get one of those rich men to make her a rich woman through marriage but that was a lot trickier because she would began their life together by lying at that was never the best way to initiate a new relationship. Luckily, none of the guys she had dated had ever asked too much about her. Most men her age were too focused on themselves and their own achievements to even ask about what she really wanted out of life.

 It wasn’t the life she would have wanted for herself but it was the one she had and the one that made sense. She needed to insist on her only talent and if making clothes were the way to go, she would try it as long as she could. She made a very small amount of money out of it but it was the only activity that clamed her down and made her feel the world is not as awful as one would think it is, at least sometimes. The sound of her machine was the perfect way to distract her brain.

 It was the exact opposite of the parties she attended where most people were vicious and just loved to tear others apart, especially the women. Maybe it was because they had always been under appreciated, even when they were such wealthy people, but the ladies could be savage with newcomers and when the tastes of others didn’t match what was generally accepted. Maddie had to check all that out before going out to one of those events, in order to be praised but never mocked.

 She was very successful that way. She even decided to learn a bit more about make up and how to achieve a complete look that would fool anyone. She would imitate looks from magazines or inspire herself from those, with her cheap fabrics and dresses and accessories she practically remade herself. She always laughed alone in her apartment, thinking that if a policeman found her there he would think she was managing the least successful pirating ring ever. She did it all perfectly but always in a very small scale, in order not to attract the wrong attention.

 After a very long time trying to make it, Maddie finally attracted the right person for what she wanted to do. Her name was Emilia Gobstone and she was one of the wealthiest women in the city. She had an amazing apartment where many parties were held, having appeared in numerous occasions in many magazines. She fell in love with Maddie and one of her dresses and asked the young woman to make her and her daughters the same dress for a special party in a country club.

 Maddie did as asked and Mrs. Gobstone could not have been happier. The fabric Maddie had used was one of the best she had ever worked with, spending a very large sum to get it. But she knew she needed the best to be successful with that particular request. She was right. The wealthy woman was so happy, that she paid double what they had agreed on in the first place and asked Maddie to make her clothes for every event in the fall season that was getting nearer by the minute.

 With such a success, she decided to retire from going to parties and such and focus more on her dresses and their quality. From the point of view of her craft, she had made the best choice. However, many people wondered where she had left to and it was then when they found out who she really was. Everyone made fun of her in social media, posting pictures they had with her and telling the most awful stories about her. Some were based on things she had said, but they all twisted her words and some were only lies.

 She finished her work on Mrs. Gobstone’s dresses and wrote her a letter apologizing for everything. She sent her creations and the letter one afternoon and then decided to leave the city for a while, needing some fresh air, something she wouldn’t be able to get in such a city, which felt a little bit too crowded sometimes. She grabbed a suitcase, put some of her clothes and just left, trying not to think too much about everything that had happened in the last few years. 

 To her surprise, Mrs. Gobstone’s personal butler found her in her parent’s home, many kilometers away from the city. He told her his mistress needed her urgently and that it couldn’t wait. Maddie accepted the ride and, a few hours later, she was in the woman’s apartment.

 There, the socialite gave her a check to pay for her dresses and told her she wouldn’t be able to hire her again. However, she could do something else for her, as a personal way to thank her for her work. The following week, an specialized magazine called Maddie, in order to arrange an interview.

The best

   He had always being that person. You know, the kind of man that’s always on top of everything and whom everyone thinks about. Many want to be like him and others want to be with him. But few have ever get close enough to really know him as he has being intelligent enough to keep it all separated, in order to keep up the illusion.

 Yes, an illusion. Because Martin, the perfect man, had always had to act and had always had to do things to stay where he was. Martin wasn’t only an employee, he owned the company and ran it for the last five years, after his father had decide, rather surprisingly, to leave control of his beloved company to his son. This had been a matter of discussion amongst the high class of the city and the commerce guilds but eventually all doubts disappeared when they realized he was much more than what he looked like.

 He had gone to school in Europe and had a keen sense of fashion. He knew every single member of the richest families on both sides of the Atlantic and he had more than one affair with many of them, men or women. Many would have looked over him because of him being a bisexual man but another surprise; people found this a very interesting trait, complemented by his great skills handling money and people. Because his most alluring trait was the fact he could make anyone do anything he wanted. Sometimes, he didn’t even have to ask.

 Some people thought it was all about his physical appearance.  He was tall, tanned but not too much, well dressed, manly but soft features and ideal in every sense. Many magazines had asked him to do photo-shoots and he had accepted gladly to all the offerings. He would even do them for free if it helped the company promote some new article that they wanted to push on people or simply to get everyone to know who he was.

 People love to buy things to get to be like someone. Because people are obsessed to be closer to their idea of perfection, which is actually the idea of the media. And Martin was exactly that. Once he was in every magazine, more than one man was getting their hair cut in the way he had it and stores selling the clothes he liked had their sales rise for a whole month. Of course, his company owned many of those stores so it was all a very round business.

 His father eventually died and his mother went away to leave in France. This left him with free rein, more than ever, over his company and his image. From time to time, he would let paparazzi’s come close enough to get a few shots of him, maybe alone or maybe with a young beautiful model or someone people would hate him to be with. Because his goal was to make people want to be that model, be that person who had the unspeakable honor of going around town with him.

 So what people didn’t know very well about him was that he was very manipulative of everything he did. Most people would never calculate every single movement in their lives as he did but it was not as if he had an option. From a very young age, he had realized it was best to be the one with power and not the one being ruled. And if his family’s fortune was of any help, he wanted to be that guy everyone admires for every reason possible.

 It was him who started, not only doing benefits and helping those in need, but he actually went to the orphanages, hospitals and retirement homes to help in any way he could. Martin knew that he needed people to admire him because it benefited both him and them: if they were in love with him, the earning of his companies will rise but also the amount of money he was able to invest in any charity he would like. So it was great for everyone.

 Once his family left, he was more and more controlling of the company but no one ever said anything because it became one of the best companies in the world in less than three years. Before, it had been an old and respectable company but now it was on top of everything. Besides, working there was seeing as the best that could happen to anyone. The pay was great and employees enjoyed many benefits, all which had been established by Martin. He thought that if they were happy, they would work harder and the company would do even better.

 In time, he started absorbing minor business and it became one of the top companies in the country. It was so powerful, that their endorsement in any way was almost a warranty of success. Martin, however, had never cared for politics thinking those men and women always had underlying intentions. He thought of himself of a more honest person than them and decided to be clear, stating that his company would never serve anyone’s political efforts. He would rather shut it all down before bow to a politician.

This was rather hypocrite from him because Martin had never really being honest about him. He had created a character, a sort of persona, who acted his life. But the real Martin, the one that had existed back when he was only a kid, had been trapped inside his brain and was never allowed to be outside, to be in control. He sometimes had minor breakdowns, suffering from flashes of depression. Martin’s acting had earned him a severe headache problem but people knew and were not surprised: with everything he had on his plate, he was allowed to have a headache from time to time.

 When he reached the age of thirty five, people thought he was finally going to get a wife but that didn’t happen. He was still being photographed with many beautiful men and women but he knew them all too well to have anything more compromising with any of them. The models were always dull and the pretty faces always hid stupid minds. And Martin, handsome as he was, was not as stupid fool at all. He would have wanted to meet someone like him, someone that had fought his way to the top and wasn’t afraid to do or say anything. Because that was another thing he loved about his position: he could have any thought about any subject in current life and people would always support him or, at very least, not even care.

 And, to explain it further, he was a self made man. In spite of his money, he had decided to become much more than he was supposed to be. All his life he had heard it from the media, from his parents, from the society he had been born into. He had heard of perfection and of the rulers and the ones that are ruled. So he decided, at a very young age, to be the one on top. To beat every single other guy or girl in that race and be the one to beat them all. That's who he had always wanted to be. He started learning about everything and finally, he came back from Europe as a new man that would change the world.

 Of course, there were people that did not trust him be he never worried about any of them. As far as he was concerned, they were only jealous of the amount of power he had because, after all, that is what people really look for. When improving ourselves physically, we are only seeking to have power over other, to be better than the rest. Because being better than other means that there is a sense of superiority and that always entails powers. And Martin thought that those that were too mediocre to improve were the ones expending their days criticizing his life and way of doing business.

  Martin acquired a big condominium in the middle of the city, on top of one of the tallest residential buildings of town. From there, he could see his office tower and the lives of many people below. He felt even more powerful than ever but it was then, only then, when he realized there was no one beside him to share everything with. No family, no real friends, no lover. There was no one with whom he could share his visions of the future or his passions. It was only a huge space, filled with riches but with no soul at all.

 When feeling like that, he would disguise himself and walk around the people on the street and he realized what he lacked was love. Not only romantic love but also every single kind there is in the world. Some people that were far from being like him laughed in the street and appeared to have the best time possible. They loved themselves far more than he would ever love himself, because he had no idea who he was anymore. He had renounced to his true self long ago and now that boy was lost forever.

 After a few outings, he decided to cut off all thought of that forever, focusing on the future of his company and how to enjoy life with all the power and money he had. Because, after all, he had made a decision all those years ago: he had decided to be perfect in every sense, to go to the gym and get a perfect body, to handle money correctly to have the most refined luxury items and clothes and teaching himself to be the business man his father had never been.

 He was going to be the best. And, according to him, he already was.