Hell's Actor-Chapter 238: On Display

With taps of his feet, the hard leather resounded against the stone floor. The camera’s lens sounded a familiar click.

It was a symphony of clinking and tapping.

Like dust, the pictures had collected on the ground.

But it wasn’t working.

It wasn’t perfect.

A scream pierced through the neon-lit darkness.

Charles’s head turned an exact forty-five degrees.

It was ghastly and off-putting.

Especially the eyes—those lifeless, large eyes.

He dropped the camera in his satchel, grabbed the umbrella in one hand and the pictures in the other. As he darted in the opposite direction, the bystander screamed murder.

He was discovered and misunderstood.

He needed to run, which he enduringly did.

His throat burned, and his breath smelled of bile. His feet hurt, and his arm felt heavy in the cold.

No matter how much he ran, it wasn’t enough.

’What was I doing?’

’Why was I doing it?’

’Have I lost it?’

Such thoughts crossed his mind.

He couldn’t quite comprehend the things going through his head these days. Strange thoughts had started popping up in his idleness.

Pink light flashed across his face. That heaving breath soon turned into a less frenzied one. Although they waved in the air behind him before, his hair now rested tranquilly on his forehead.

He took a breath and closed his eyes.

When he opened them, the glow on his face had gone from pink to a very dark purple. On the pupils of his eyes, the flickering signboard of a woman who was rapidly and seductively folding and unfolding her leg in the air was reflected.

The kitchen faucet was leaking.

Twelve drops per second.

The picture attached to the fridge door attracted his gaze. It seemed to taunt him every time he looked. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The leak became fiercer, and the flickering turned frequent as he stared at the picture with a stiff face.

And at the exact moment it looked like he would frown, the neon tubes shattered, plunging the room into darkness. A cracking sound echoed as the faucet broke and water spewed out with enormous pressure.

What little light leaked into the room barely highlighted the facial features of Charles. Yet nobody could tell what expression he was making, or whether he was making one at all.

Only the serpentine sound of the gushing water pierced the eternal night of The City.

***

The theater was full of friends, couples, and the occasional loner. With enough buckets of popcorn to feed a sweatshop full of children, not a single crunching sound was heard.

It was quiet enough that one could almost vividly imagine being in the room with The Photographer.

Someone wanted to cough, but they held it in. Someone wanted to sneeze, but they held it in. Someone wanted to masturbate, but they held it in.

Indeed, they were being good sports.

Just like their cinephile friends, Ingrid and Kate watched the scene with eyes wide open.

The artistry, music, and acting on display felt something special, something novel, and something unique.

Without understanding the minute details of filmmaking, they felt instinctively that the film had incorporated a style that was too raw and brave not to be original.

The beauty of the camerawork and set was what originally pulled their attention. But at some point, they had begun to appreciate the characters far more.

The infatuation had begun with Jacquet de Roschillian’s incredible performance.

While others did a great job, it was The Lady that truly felt like a shock. She was, in the simplest words, ethereal.

Although they hadn’t thought highly of The Photographer at first, those sentiments no longer held true.

It was a revelation, such a film. It had left even their cinephile friends greatly infatuated.

In the entire room, Richard was the only one who didn’t find much interest in the film. To be fair to him, no one knew how he felt as he had fallen asleep sometime after the film began.

The ginger could do nothing but snore.

At least, he did it as quietly as possible.

***

In the pub The Mistress, the proprietor, Les Vigne, was busy wiping the glasses.

Charles had visited today and was busy partaking in a light meal. For whatever reason, he didn’t seem to be terribly inclined to chat.

Well, he was always so, but Les Vigne felt it more so today.

There weren’t many customers and none that sat by the counter, which was unfortunate for Charles, as Les was in a dire habit of keeping conversation even while the other party was suffering a stroke.

"Did you hear?" the good man began in a low voice, as if he were about to spout heresy or spread scandals. "About the sick killer?"

Charles snapped back to reality. "What?"

"Some guy—don’t know who; certainly not one of the regulars—killed one of the girls, nailed her to the wall, and photographed her."

By ’one of the girls,’ he meant a prostitute.

"That’s—what?"

Charles was shocked.

He hadn’t killed the girl, nor had he nailed her. He had propped her up, nothing more.

"Some sick bastard, huh? Photographing her like that."

That was what he found an issue with—not the killing, nor the supposed nailing. But that was to be expected; murders weren’t uncommon on the lower floors. Girls were the most common victims.

"Yeah," Charles nodded.

"And you don’t know anything about this?"

Their eyes met; the contact didn’t break for an entire three seconds, which was entirely too long for two straight men.

"What do you insinuate?"

"Oh, nothing." The bartender vehemently shook his head. "I just thought you’d have some friends in the photographer community, you know? Wondered if someone had told you something."

Charles opened his mouth to say something akin to ’There aren’t many photographers around to be acquainted with,’ but he quickly thought better of it.

It wasn’t prudent to mention how few of them there actually were. It felt almost like a suicide.

All he could do was chew his food while perusing the newspaper.

In a small column, on an insignificant page, he found the picture of the girl. Or rather, he found the picture of the pictures he had taken of the girl.

For the first time since he began photographing, his work was on display.