The Actress

Author's note: Just a brief snippet from a sort-of fantasy novel I'm writing - or, well, trying to write. Admittedly much of it doesn't mean much without the surrounding story, but I'm putting it up here primarly to showcase the prose style and narrative and whatnot - which means any sort of critique is enormously welcome.



My shoulders are hunched, my back lazily arched forward, the window pane cold against my forehead. Motionless and mute, I languidly run my gaze along one of the twisted, winding lengths of rooftops stretched out below me. Row upon row of them cramped haphazardly together; long, sharply angled stretches of crumbling, ramshackle tile, jabbed here and there with squat, portly chimneys belching inky smoke. And in the meagre light of the smog-blotted half-moon, the layers of steadily accumulated filth seem to coat it all in jet black...

The tumbler of gin is still dangling from my hand, its acrid, oily stench thick in my nostrils. I lift it up, delicately knead the rim of the glass against my lower lip, and, hesitating a moment, knock it back, quietly gagging as I feel its searing bitterness burn its way down my throat. Courtesy of Maxil’s discerning taste.

I peel my forehead from the pane, aright myself, and turn about. The broad, heavily furnished room is veil in formless shadow, illuminated only by a few dying oil lamps sputtering feebly in odd corners; and the thick, darkly coloured carpeting and drapery that coats the room end to end lends the air a balmy, stifling mustiness.

I turn my eyes toward her; in this poor light, she seems little more than a tangled heap of curly blond tresses and flowing scarlet dress sprawled across the plump settee. Except for her grin. The rest of her face is shrouded in shadow, but her wide, pearly leer continues to shimmer in the half-dark.

‘Where’d you say he went?’ I hear myself murmur thinly, the aftertaste of the gin still stinging my gullet.

‘Maxil? There was a drunken bard doing a number on the square. I slipped off when he started trying to dance.’

I tut absently, shaking my head ever so slightly. Oh, to think of those innocent days when such a thought would have set me reeling with furious indignation.

‘Oh, yes, bless him. And how goes your visit otherwise?’

She delicately giggles – a high, tinny chime. ‘Oh, goodness, it’s boring.’ she hums. ‘All those dead taverns...I tell you, I feel so irrelevant in a place where even the gentry’s deadbeat.’

I snicker, in spite of myself. ‘But...but honestly, why Ridgehaven?’ I ask, my quiet befuddlement audible through my laughter. ‘Theatre owners across the continent are begging you for...’

The settee’s decrepit legs groan quietly as she sits up, her glimmering, disembodied smirk now hovering just below a shadowy tapestry dangling from the wall. ‘Isn’t it obvious? This city’s the last place that does Moreaux productions.’

‘Oh, gods above, those things? They’re pornography, and you know it. Bourgeoisie social revolution centuries too late.’

She giggles again, in that ludicrously delicate little chime of hers. ‘Yes, well, it’s a bit of a change. Bit of spice in this acting life I’m supposed to find so exciting.’ She sighs histrionically. ‘You know what my choice is limited to nowadays? Mind-numbing hagiographies about old kings that drag on for three hours and have half a stable backstage...’ The fabric of her dress rustles softly, and there’s a vague stirring of shadow as she stretches a bare, spindly arm across the back of her neck. ‘...or this pompous minimalist stuff that’s so obviously beneath me.’

I snigger again. Somewhere in the street below, a whip cracks, and the guttural wail of a weary carthorse drifts through the window. Another moment drifts languidly by in dull silence.

I snap my tongue distractedly. ‘Were you, um...I mean, did you maybe notice anyone in my office earlier? Somebody seems to have gone through my desk.’

Her glowing leer delicately widens. ‘Like I said, I’m bored.’

I smirk back. At this hour, and at my age, anger is not nearly worth the effort.

She strains a spindly arm across a nearby tabletop and

My words die in my throat as, quite suddenly, the grating squeal of a rusty latch sounds in my ears, and opposite me, the door swings open, and a shaft of momentarily blinding yellow lamplight spills in from the hallway. And there he is, his silhouette filling the doorway; an immense wall of chunky, bloated flesh wrapped in an ill-fitting, half-fastened suit. And though he is standing on across the room, I can, even from here, discern his distinctive aroma – the bouquet of various sickeningly oily wines and streams of abnormally pungent sweat...

Not so much as glancing in my direction, he extends a meaty, distended paw out toward her and snorts something, his damp, grunting tone too thick with inebriation to be discernible. And her gleaming, disembodied grin hovers still for just long enough for me to notice it growing ever-so-slightly broader – just slightly, but enough for it to become decidedly unnatural. Then, without another word, she is on her feet and out the door in a graceful gust of scarlet fabric, the hulking wall of flesh waddling eagerly after her.

Groping blindly, I clumsily meander my way toward the darkened corner where I vaguely remember the decanter to be. It will, I imagine, be a long night for all of us.