Kill The Sunshine

[TheGrind]

François had come into this world so long ago that he no longer remembered the life he left behind. The language, culture and century he had first known when brought into the world had all changed for him. It was a gradual alteration of life as he caroused from principality to country, changing locations and names with the ebbing and flowing cultural tides. Tuscany, Rome, Ravenna were fun for a while until Venice attracted his eye. But Napoleon ended that dream in the early 19th century.

Vienna followed but was short lasting as the empire was showing off its last legs. Time was its enemy and François had no desire to stay in a crumbling society. The dull summers and biting winters of London had never attracted his eye, not even while Shakespeare ousted the Canterbury Tales from their elite status. Madrid was a welcomed home for a while, but that too was falling and Bismark had made Berlin attractive. A few decades were spent in the wondrous city until paranoia and fear won out and a desire to militarize and colonize became an imperial dream.

François had seen it all before and was prepared for yet another change. Aside from the Leaves of Grass there was nothing to attract his attention to the States, and after all, it looked as though the beacon of democracy would remain standing tall for years to come. Time, at least in that respect, was on his side. At last Paris beckoned him in 1910. It was four years shy of the Great War; the war that destroyed Monarchies that had lasted for centuries. Monarchies, names, and families he had known for so long. It was the only stagnant thing he’d come to admire. And it was all about to change.

The hustling of war permitted people to filter through Paris but not before they were either accepted or denied by François’ fangs. While the poor were busy eating cake, dying in the streets and for their country; he took advantage. There was no need to waste a good disaster. The following four years was a feeding frenzy, the likes of which he hadn’t known for centuries. It was almost too easy. The casualness at which he devoured had almost numbed him to the dangers of being found out. Even though vampires had been declared a fairy tale, he had no need to remind people that they did indeed exist. These days only people in small villages believed in such things. It was one of the major reasons he opted for the major cities in the new era.

American and British soldiers went missing as they passed through. They were counted as deserters or having gone AWOL for fear of trading bullets with the Hun. However, his honeymoon with the war ended in 1918 and he had to rediscover the awareness he left behind. Within two years Paris had been declared the cultural capital of the world by bohemians passing through. The artists had become a wash of shit and elitism but at least the writers were there to pick them up. François wasn’t far behind either.

It didn’t take him long before he figured out a lot of the girls around there would put out just for a place to sleep. He found girls with tight lips who’d gladly trade their blood for a midnight fix or a morning meal. It was easy in a place like this, even after the war. And it was easier still to disappear within the eccentricities of the humans. Sometimes he didn't even have to pretend.

This made his visits within La Rotonde more pleasurable than evenings spent at the Moulin Rouge before it burned down but then, the Belle Époque had long ago finished echoing its ring. This was a new age, a new time, and he was welcoming everything it brought. If it meant it was easier to mask what he really was, it was welcomed with a strong embrace and a blood-thirsty maw.

François snubbed out a cigarette while everyone else slew innocence. Or at least the appearance of it. Innocence was fantasy, a word conjured by the moralistic few to describe their safe, penned-in world. As a passing girl nearly walked by, he reached out an arm to stop her. Leaning forward he whispered something in her ear only to lean back with a slight grin. She returned with a drink that would probably loosen his mind, his tongue and probably his trousers before the night let out.

For the moment he took in his solitude. It was something he welcomed. It was a reason he had never married in spite of his several lifetimes and few loves. Those who had found love with him were eventually written off. They could never understand, and even in his youngest years he believed marriage was an outmoded form of containment. Even the liberal western Russians, as early as forty years ago had recognized this believed fact. But François was a true philosopher; he practiced what he believed. So few others, even those sitting in the very room he had acquainted himself with, would ever do the same.

 

[Curious_Muse]

“Don’t be late.”

That’s what Jérome had told her in the afternoon when he had invited Chloe to La Rotonde, and she had no intention of making him wait.

Her heels were clicking over the cobblestones, and she drew her coat tighter around her slender shoulders. Chloe hated Novembers in Paris. The wind blew a cold drizzle in her face, and legs felt like ice in her silken black stockings under her skirt. She did not particularly like Jérome, and if she was honest, she did not really trust him either, but he was a successful painter who knew many people in Paris. He promised that he would help her.

Chloe had come to Paris from a town close to Marseille, and sometimes people still teased her for her southern accent. Her mother and father, both good Catholics who had been somewhat worried about her plans to move to the capital, were both convinced that she had found a job in an accountant’s office, looking after his correspondence and learning the ropes of his trade. She had gotten very good at describing her daily chores in her letters back home. At first she had been timid, merely invented a name for her boss and told her mother that he was a kind, elderly gentleman who was content with her work. Then she had taken to describing her desk, the clothes he was wearing, the street the office was in. From there she had added neighbours, customers, and the meals she preferred to order at lunch.

Neither her mother nor her father suspected that their daughter was posing nude for Parisian artists, and Chloe was pretty sure that they would not survive it if they ever found out. But Chloe did not want to be an accountant’s secretary. She did not want to work just long enough until she found a husband and have a gaggle of kids. She wanted to be a painter. Chloe knew that she had the talent, some of the people she had befriended had told her as much. Her sketches were precise, self-assured. She admired the new, wild styles of the painters that defied the dusty, old rules of art schools. Photography had freed painting from the shackles of realism and allowed artists to play with perceptions, emotions, and the shape of objects.

But all of this cost money. Chloe shared a small room with another girl, an aspiring writer from Spain who was always broke. It had been months since they had been able to afford some wood for their stove, and

Jérome had promised to introduce her to a group of his friends, all of them painters, who were in need of a model every now and then, and, more importantly, who had the means to pay. He had said that they would go to an atelier from La Rotonde, she would sit for a few hours, and make enough to pay the next month’s rent.

She pushed open the door to La Rotonde, and sighed with relief about the sudden wave of warmth washing over her. Her eyes scanned the room for the dark curly head of Jérome, but could not see him anywhere. Had she arrived too late, and missed him? With a sigh, Chloe shook off her coat and took off her hat, shaking the raindrops from her thick, dark brown hair.

“Chloe! Chloe, ma chérie!”

There he was. He sat at a table that she shared with two other men and a young woman, and waved at her to come over. She bit her lip. There was something in the way his friends looked at her that made her wonder if he had promised them more than just a nude model. Chloe took a deep breath, and sighed. One entire month of rent in one night’s sitting. It was too good a chance to let it slip by.