Confidence Case

"I am hell on heels say what you will I done made the devil a deal. He made me pretty he made me smart and I'm gonna break me a million hearts, I'm hell on heals and baby I'm coming for you".

Cattleya's hand forcefully hit her snooze button as she tossed her pillow over to its cold side and closed her eyes. There was no way she was going to make it to her 7 A.M. flight back to Duke. It was the first day of her second semester of junior year. The previous semester she studied abroad in Italy hoping that she would become fluent in the Romance language, as well as experience a new world. Coming in as a freshman, she was 5 feet 6 inches, the average height of a young woman. The only problem was that she was nearly two hundred pounds. She was self-conscious and had little experience with men, but this did not detract from her personality. As a sophomore she began to lose a lot of weight and men began to pay her more attention. When sophomore year came to an end, most of her close friends planned to study abroad the next year. Cattleya began to fear her new life abroad but held many expectations.

From the time she started dieting until the day she left for Italy, she lost a total of 65 pounds. She had eyes as sharp as green emeralds, and they accentuated her olive skin tone that she was blessed to get from her Mother's side of the family. The auburn in her hair shone when the sun hit it just right. Her features were fine, small, and angular. The beauty she exuded was a classic beauty; a Sophia Loren meets Raquel Welch kind of appearance. Cattleya could not see her "new" self the way every man who laid their eyes upon her did. She never noticed the people stopping and staring at her or the looks and the whispers among the men.

Finally she arrived in Rome, La Città Etterna, set up her new room, and went out and about in the city. She spotted a café named of Antico Caffe della Pace where she grabbed a coffee and a gelato. Men in Italy are much different than in America. Their eyes roamed her body as their tongues hung out of their mouths. Men of all ages seemed to be drawn to her. It was not here that she realized the power she held over men, but when she ruined Emanuele Filiberto do Savoia, the grandson of the last King of Italy, commonly known as the Prince of Venice and Piedmont. Little did she know, "she was born to destroy men" (Manion, "The Femme Fatale Is Silenced in the U.S.: The Rise of the International Femme Fatale," Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies, 182).

"The Femme Fatale is a sleek and sensuous creature, dangerous either physically or emotionally to her victims." (Manion, "Introduction," Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies, 2). In the Introduction of my short story I fabricated, I used the lyrics from the song Hell on Heels by the Pistol Annie's to foreshadow the