Siren Read Free

ever since, aged eleven, he’d attended a production of Le Malade Imaginaire with his parents. It had been the applause that had grabbed him—such exhilarating praise—and when the opportunity to be the one in the spotlight emerged, he had jumped at it. That it was his new lover who had encouraged him was all the more exciting. She had spotted him waiting tables at Chez Paul, and assured him he had ‘the look’. He was a handsome young man, with wavy blond hair and a classic nose, and was regularly in receipt of compliments on his beauty. The first role she had in mind for him was from the play The Ultimate Torture, where he would have the significant role of D’Hemelin’s colleague Gravier, but not many lines. Despite his dreams of fame, he had no acting experience, but his lover promised he would be eased into bigger parts, eventually taking over the lead roles, currently played by an actor named Michel, right now inhabiting the disfigured and less-than-magnanimous Henri. Michel had been a fixture with Le Théâtre des Horreurs for numerous years. Jean-Baptiste wondered if he and the rest of the troupe would accept his addition.
    And so, with hopes of stardom, Jean-Baptiste waited patiently for his lover to be tortured for the pleasure of the audience, so that he might see her backstage when it was all over.
    ‘Do you honestly think I got you here for a cosy little chat?’ the disfigured Henri shouted. He had removed his bandages to reveal the full horror of his disfigurement to thehorrified audience, and his even more frightened former fiancée. The effect of a simple nylon stocking and painted sponge gave his wounds a lifelike quality, the horror of which was enhanced by sickly-green stage lighting.
    ‘…To say nice things to you? To beg you for a final kiss? You’ve lost all sense of reason if you think I could ever forgive you for what you did to me. I will take my revenge!’ he cried, and with this held Jeanne down, triumphantly pouring the liquid from his vial directly onto her beautiful face while she thrashed violently beneath him like a wounded snake. It was an eye-for-an-eye revenge he could never have enacted had she been incarcerated for life.
    ‘We’ll be the perfect lovers…we’ll be made for each other! You’re like me now…’ he declaimed maniacally.
    ‘Like me! Like me! Like me!’
    Love, it seemed, was not always beautiful.
    It was well past midnight, two hours after the curtain call.
    Tipsy and spent, the aspiring actor Jean-Baptiste was sent out to the streets of Pigalle to make his way home, seen off by his lover with a lingering kiss and the promise of more lovemaking to come.
    ‘Bonne nuit, mon chéri…’
    One foot in front of the other, the young man thought as he slid out the theatre’s stage door into the narrow cobblestone street outside. One foot in front of the other…
    Cool night air shocked his warm cheeks. The crowds for Bijou’s show had long since dispersed, and the little cul-de-sac was still. There was the faint smell of perfume in the air, either hanging around his nostrils after his lover’s final embrace, or wafting down from a nearby open window. He could hear themain strip still buzzing with revellers a few blocks away, near the Moulin Rouge: the rows of sex shops, brothels and the Musée de l’Érotisme. Pigalle would not settle just yet.
    Jean-Baptiste’s feet traced a weaving, wandering path, and it took some measure of concentration for him to stay in motion across the uneven cobblestones. Such was his absorption that when he was approached in the alley beyond the theatre, he took some time to notice he was not alone. His footsteps in his stiff new leather shoes, already irregular, were joined by other, softer soles; a lighter, quicker step. He expected them to pass, but the footsteps stopped with his.
    He turned just in time to see the outline of a figure haloed in a streetlight, thin and cloaked in black.
    ‘ Bonsoir ,’ he managed to say, feeling