Hell's Actor-Chapter 244: Metamorphosis

Marianne’s decapitated head stared back at the audience.

Charles held her down as if she could resist even without a body.

With the knife he used to dismember her, he cut into the ends of her lips. Like a violin bow, he handled the knife with care.

As if a miracle had taken place, the solitary piano no longer played alone. A violin accompanied it as he tore into her jaw, widening her sickly grin past her cheeks. Only when it reached her ears did he stop.

With erratic eyes, he opened her mouth before rigor mortis could set in and checked her teeth for cavities.

Lights flashed.

Nana nana nana

Nana nana na

Nana nana nana

Nana nana na

A choir of children rang out energetically through the radio as Charles sat by the lake at the run-down amusement park. Their joyous voices stood in contrast to The Photographer’s solemn expression.

Like a cruel joke, the ceiling sprinklers had been opened.

Even the city without a sky seemed to be experiencing rain, crying for the fiancée that he murdered.

The images of that gruesome event kept flashing by.

An hour had passed, yet he couldn’t get the image of it out of his head.

She wasn’t a woman of little means. No, she was a noble lady. She belonged to the family that ruled this dystopian city.

They would look for her, he knew.

He had killed her on impulse, for self-preservation.

But was it really an impulse?

He had cast aside her imperfection and brought her closer to ’the ideal.’ To be like The Lady, who would renounce such a gift and call it anything but grace?

He closed his eyes.

The images flashed before him and before the audience.

He was calm as he cut open her jaw. Not too strong and not too soft, his strokes were works of art. He left just enough flesh to let her jaw hang from her ears.

He drained her before he started with the real artistry. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

He had begun with pink, purple, and blue—the colors that were the closest representative of The City.

He didn’t use the cheap stuff—no spray paint. She wasn’t graffiti. No, she was far more special, a polished work of flesh. For her, he used nail polish.

Her chauffeur had fallen asleep, and her purse was full of cash.

Thirty-seven different shades he bought. For one woman, no less.

From head to toe, not one inch of hers was left unpainted. Her face, in particular, was systematically painted in four square sections.

The loose jaw did make the task less enviable, but he managed somehow.

Nana nana nana

Nana nana na

Nana nana nana

Nana nana na

In that messy business, with the specks of what was once a human spread about the room like a mechanic’s project, a moment of clarity gripped his fading reasoning.

What was he doing?

Regardless of the motives, why had he done that?

He felt sick, his face paler than the bloodless flesh before him. Holding his mouth, he staggered to the kitchen sink and vomited.

The previous one might have broken, but the new faucet had replaced it flawlessly. Its fancy shape was noticeable, sure. But it worked just as well.

Hell, he was willing to admit that it worked even better.

The thought of stopping this madness briefly flashed before his eyes. But he didn’t entertain that thought for one reason or another.

There was no going back, and he didn’t want to.

The violin and piano gave way to something newer, something strangely out of place—something closer to electro.

The train of flashing images came to a halt. He opened his eyes and looked down.

In his hands was a knife. He held it to the side of his neck.

A shaky breath that seemed to stretch into the eternity passed. As he closed his eyes and the screen turned dark, the scraping of metal against flesh rang out.

When color returned to the screen, blood was flowing down The Photographer’s neck. His eyes were directed at his open palm, where a patch of his skin sat. Embedded within its inner fibers was a tiny chip.

It was like a cancerous growth, and although he had to endure pain, he was glad to be without it.

He threw it to the dachshund licking at his feet. Like the animal that it was, it instantly ate it.

This was the last of the pack. Where had the rest gone?

He knew their numbers had dwindled over the past couple of weeks. But there were too many holes in his memory to make sense of it at all.

And honestly, he didn’t care to make sense of anything.

From the satchel—he had so bravely brought along—he took out a deck of photos and a pipe. He gazed at the former and lit the latter.

The artificial rain was washing away his blood, and it was washing away his worries.

He felt strangely at home, strangely comfortable.

His gaze wandered from one picture to another. They all depicted his fiancée, all cut up and arranged like a scarecrow with the help of wire salvaged from coat hangers.

He turned his head a perfect forty-five degrees. Behind him, on the carousel, sat a woman in a gold-embroidered black dress, her face covered by his cream-colored umbrella.

She was mounted there so delicately that it was hard not to mistake her for a living being.

But she wasn’t... a living being.

She was a doll now. With all her temperament stolen and undesired pieces removed, she had become eternal, almost ethereal.

He threw the pipe into the lake, lifted himself from his seat, kissed Marianne goodbye, and made his way towards the exit. With each step he took, he scattered a picture in his wake.

His stride, although not much different from before, seemed synchronized with his shadow for once. His eyes reflected the neon pink of The City more clearly than ever. His expression was more at ease.

In the search for a single picture, he had crossed countless boundaries.

He smiled, just as well as The Lady did.

A new creature had come into being.

It was his metamorphosis.