Hell's Actor-Chapter 233: Obsession

Anselme’s visage greeted Charles with the grace of an artist that his children lacked. It held something unique that intrigued The Photographer.

But he didn’t have the time to figure out what that was.

The Lady wouldn’t allow it. 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

He saw her.

She was there—at the end of the corridor.

As a puppet with its strings cut, she stood motionless.

With uncertainty, he approached her.

But it was just a mirror showing her reflection. He looked back, to the left, and to the right.

Mirrors.

They were everywhere.

As if attached by a rope, his chin was yanked down.

There, he saw her.

Below the glass floor, looking up at him, was The Lady in her wooden umbrella.

She winked at him and moved in circular motions across the piece of canvas on which she stood. It was large enough to cover the entire room.

Rotate. Hop. Stretch.

She danced with grace, drawing black lines with her feet.

The violent deviation from Für Elise boomed in the rooms.

Charles could do nothing but watch in awe.

’She is painting,’ he thought, ’with her feet.’

He couldn’t make sense of it, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

It was like figure skating or ballet.

Averie crossed his legs and interlocked his fingers.

’This is an important scene. It needs to be a convincing juncture.’

He prayed to Lucifer that it wouldn’t be disappointing.

Having finished her prancing and dancing, The Lady looked back at him.

With a gaze of satisfaction, she made a gentle pushing gesture. In his awe, he didn’t notice; he was floating up.

Like a man adrift in space, with his back to the ceiling, he slowly drifted up.

The camera assumed the first-person view, showing what Charles saw.

Beyond the seductive smile of The Lady, the completed painting stared back.

Drawn in grainy, morose colors, it was a baroque of a man watching his pale wife sleep in peace, partly tangled in warm bed hangings.

He wore a white shirt with a black tie hanging from his neck, and she wore a white gown with a low V-neck. They appeared to have fallen asleep right after returning from a formal party.

There was fondness in the eyes of the man standing with both hands in his pockets.

It was a simple piece, the highlight of which was the ethereal sunlight creeping in from the open window, bathing half of the husband’s face in its glow.

Situated cleverly, The Lady seemed like a porcelain doll lying at the foot of the bed next to the wife’s hanging hand.

Her attractive expression was apparent despite the umbrella, as usual, covering most of her head.

Yet the peace of that painting was not made to last.

The simple picture distorted the longer Charles stared into the gaze of The Lady, and the audience experienced it first-hand.

They felt and saw exactly what The Photographer did.

In a flash of brilliant red, the world of the painting caught on fire.

The bed hangings burned. The books scattered, flying with the wings of flames.

Asleep still, the pale figure of the wife singed. Her flesh peeled apart and flew across the room in the shape of cindered butterflies.

The light coming from the window was no more; a starry night stared back.

The husband watched it all with a certain calm, his lips curled into a euphoric pleasure.

The fondness in his gaze had disappeared. All that remained was a deep sensation surfacing.

To him, it was exhilarating.

For the first time since her introduction, The Lady looked sinister. From the foot of the bed, she stared into the souls of its spectators with the unbothered charm of a porcelain doll.

Her charming gaze felt like the hovel of the devil.

While the rest of the painting unfolded within itself, she remained the only thing gauging its effect on the spectator.

It felt like a reminder that she wasn’t a part of the picture, that she had intruded upon its sanctity on a whim.

But that wasn’t so surprising to Charles. Somewhere within the confines of his subconscious, he knew she was dangerous the moment she appeared before him.

That was the very quality that had caught his eye—the danger that made him feel alive, the thrill that kept him wanting more.

It was the liveliness of a subject he craved in his pictures.

The husband in the painting wasn’t so different from himself, after all.

The painting grew distant as The Photographer found himself drifting deeper into the depths of an ocean. The only odd thing was that those depths went up, not down.

Averie liked this scene but hated how many times he had to be thrown back-first into the swimming tank.

Despite the cold, he would have loved to jump himself, but the big, burly Norwegian insisted on carrying him like a princess and throwing him like a bag of garbage.

’Director’s orders,’ he kept insisting.

Averie understood the need for attention to detail. His limbs needed to trail behind as he sank into the depths, and that was hard to replicate if he were to jump himself.

’But why can’t it be that stunning beauty of a swimming instructor?’

He had voiced that question many times, insisting his thin figure wasn’t heavy enough that the ’big mommy over there’ couldn’t handle it.

’Good times,’ Averie thought.

The blurry figure of The Lady became indistinguishable from the swirling colors of the many paintings of the gallery reflected on the water.

With a heavy gasp, Charles emerged from the bathtub filled to the brim, wheezing and desperate for air.

The images from a moment ago disappeared from his list of immediate concerns. Before it could turn ugly, he had woken up from his dangerous underwater nap.

For a long minute, that wasn’t edited out, he caught his breath. His gaze turned to the calendar hanging forlornly from the bathroom door.

Each day was crossed out with black ink. An entire month had gone by without a result to show for it.

But none of it concerned The Photographer.

In his tired eyes was the glimmer of an old friend everyone in the theater was closely acquainted with.

Obsession.