Hell's Actor-Chapter 249: Love me

"He is cool, isn’t he?" Min-Ha whispered.

Hyerin looked up from the steam wafting from her cup of coffee. "Averie?"

"Uh-huh."

The busy café they occupied was full of chatter. Everywhere one looked, someone was talking about the movie.

"I knew he was good, but..."

"Yeah..."

It was magical to see him on such a grand stage.

"Just being here is a big deal, but look at this." Min-Ha sighed. "How did he do it? How does he act like that?"

Hyerin also wanted to know. This went beyond the natural genius she attributed to her friend’s spectacular acting ability.

’Maybe...’

A thought crossed her mind.

’Has he been learning how to act in secret?’

She would have noticed if that were the case. But nothing else made sense.

She sighed.

"He was just born to act, I guess."

A moment passed in utter silence.

"What did you see The Lady as, by the way?" Hyerin asked.

Min-Ha stared at her plate of dessert—a piece of brownie in hot chocolate sauce.

"Myself."

She was afraid of sounding self-obsessed. But it was the truth. She had caught glimpses of her likeness looking haughtily down at her.

"What did you see?"

Hyerin didn’t answer.

She had seen Averie—not the confident actor that he had begun, but the depressed one who only existed in her memories.

"I..."

He looked so small, compared to how he was now.

She saw him wrap himself in blankets and ingest a mouthful of sleeping pills.

She could almost feel how cold and lonely he was.

She wanted to help him, but she couldn’t.

It was her regret, and it left her sad.

’At least, he is fine now,’ she told herself, begging her inner self to forget about it.

After all, it was just an illusion.

Something like that had never happened, and it would never happen in the future.

Because now, she would be around.

***

While he was being showered with praises, Averie retained a friendly smile outside. But inside, his thoughts weren’t dedicated to himself.

He thought about Jacquet de Roschillian and the actor who portrayed him.

’Am I upset?’

He liked Olivier Claude, not as a person but as an actor.

He hadn’t known about the man before it all began, but he liked his portrayal. It was strong, with a scent of its own.

It was one of those rare performances that he enjoyed.

In no sense was it superior to his portrayals. And if someone else present at the theater were to be asked in confidence, they would admit that Olivier was an inferior actor to Averie.

It was not even a competition.

By the end, Averie Quinn Auclair had become the film.

Everything else paled in comparison.

So overwhelming had he been that it was unfair to compare his co-stars to him.

’It’s all the same...’

He had crossed a line that dictated what was possible and what wasn’t.

’Will I ever be able to appreciate my own acting?’

It was impossible to make progress over perfection, yet he had done it.

’Nothing I do feels impressive anymore.’

He had felt that long ago.

Even his portrayal as The Lady was starting to seem only natural. It was a level of mastery he expected of himself.

He took himself for granted.

’Still, I can enjoy the work of others.’

That, at least, was a saving grace.

Averie looked around.

No one had left the hall.

Although those around him had congratulated him, none had dared to hold a conversation.

Standing by the exit, Averie glanced at his co-stars before stepping outside.

***

"They are keeping it hush-hush, huh?" Satan commented, reading the latest news articles on Kara’s smartphone. "That’s kind of lame."

"What did you expect?" Lucifer asked, inspecting the skin peeling off his palm. "They won’t openly admit that their nuclear submarines were utterly destroyed, especially since they don’t know who did it. It would be a disaster."

Having stuffed Kara in the trunk of the car, the pair was dangling from a cell phone tower, observing the excited crowd.

"If these bodies weren’t disintegrating so fast, I would’ve loved to pull a couple of pranks on those vain idiots."

"Last time you did that, they began committing war crimes in the Middle East."

Satan broke into a hearty laughter. "Love me some war crimes."

Unlike his subordinate, Lucifer looked solemn.

"They like to pretend otherwise, but humans are nothing more than animals," he whispered, his eyes narrowed. "’Crueller than Lucifer, pretentious than Gabriel. Such is being human,’ so told once a friend."

Words he had heard a long time ago came back to him like an echo.

"Tell me something," Satan said, breaking the tension.

Lucifer nodded, giving the go-ahead to the evil lifeform.

"Who was it that wrote Binsfeld’s Seven Princes of Hell?"

Lucifer pulled himself up to meet the man’s gaze.

"Why the sudden curiosity?"

Satan flashed his teeth. "I know part of it was that dead girl writer’s doing. But whose idea was it really?"

Lucifer took one of his hands off the metal skeleton of the tower. "Our friend suspects Goethe."

"Oh, I know it’s not him. He burns everything as soon as it’s written. Whatever scraps he keeps are unintelligible scribbles."

Like a flag, Lucifer waved his leg in the air. "It wasn’t him."

"Then—"

"I compensated the real author well."

The two stared at each other as heavy winds ruffled their clothes and scattered their hair.

Satan imitated Lucifer’s stance. "You must have been preparing for it for a while. Why did you involve yourself, then?"

"He needed a push, our friend."

"You interfered in his life."

"It was a gift." Every word out of his mouth felt heavy and deliberate. "And he liked it."

He took off his remaining leg, holding onto the tower with one hand. Satan followed suit.

"Then, everything—the dice throw, at least—was preplanned." A very ungentlemanly grin graced his lips. "Not very fair gambling."

"He knows every gamble with me is bound to be skewed."

The Warden of Hell closed his eyes.

"He couldn’t care less about how we bet and what we bet on."

Averie found such fair gambles too lifeless.

"He only cares about gambles when there is a good chance that the result is already decided. He likes to gamble on that—on the possibility of a rigged bout."

With that, he let go.

Satan, too.

As their disintegrating bodies fell towards the earth below, Satan asked once again:

"Who was it? Who wrote it?"

Lucifer closed his eyes, preparing for the impact. The image of an obsessed man flashed before his eyes.

He was a sickly man, coughing and dying in his cold home. But even as life threatened to escape his body, his gaze on the devil didn’t falter.

As if he were expecting this devilish guest, he had destroyed all his previous works, intent on taking his everything to the grave.

But there sat a manuscript yet intact.

’A gift?’ Lucifer remembered asking. ’Why?’

’It’s incomplete.’ His voice was barely audible. ’My toll to the underworld.’

’I rarely receive tolls.’

He flicked his fingers, and the walls of the room inexplicably caught on fire.

’As a thanks, I will distribute your only film. What did you call it again?’

The man coughed, reading the calendar that displayed the year 1976. ’Culture and Collapse.’

The flames raged, and the fire swallowed them both, incinerating everything in the vicinity.

’Goodbye, Gene Conti.’

Of this world.