Hell's Actor

Months ago.

"I spoke with the crew."

It was a beautiful garden where they sat, and a lovely day for this conversation.

"They all saw it—the illusion."

Director Groux turned to Averie.

"How did you manage it?"

The actor was sitting next to him, but he wasn't himself. These days, he barely ever was.

His saliva was dripping, and his eyes were lost in a fantasy he couldn't peer into. His fingers twitched, but only ever slightly.

"Do you…" Averie began with great difficulty, fighting away the pull of the unknown within. "Do you know how a person can be influenced?"

His gaze was still just as lost, but his lips now moved.

The good director shifted his entire body to face him. "No."

He didn't give the question a proper thought, as if his own answer didn't matter.

"Tell me."

He only cared for his answer.

"It's not difficult."

Like dew on grass or a steed on steroids, Averie's eyelashes were drenched.

"If you were to wink at a lady, she wouldn't think your eyelids are spasming. No, she would think you are trying to flirt."

As unrelated to the point as it sounded, the good director remained silent.

"The world isn't so nice anymore. You could end up being accused of sexual harassment," Averie continued. "You should be careful of what you do, Director."

He had a lovely wife and a happy life, so the director doubted the prospects of that particular sequence of events ever becoming reality.

He waited.

For a moment.

Then, two.

But no words flowed through his actor's mouth.

Once half a minute had passed, he broached the subject once again.

"You were saying?"

"Huh? Tea? No thanks."

"Influencing the mind, Mr. Auclair. Influencing the mind."

"Ah," he exclaimed. "Right…"

With delicate movement and a precarious grip, he took out a handkerchief and wiped saliva off his lips.

"Words, my happy director, actions and words. We—or rather—our brain attaches meaning to these things. It stores information through sensory aid."

He picked up a tiny piece of rock and threw it high in the air.

"What came to your mind just now?"

The director looked back at his actor. "Someone getting hurt."

"Be exact." His eyes were once again lost in his own little world. "What image flashed before your eyes?"

"A man holding his head in pain."

"Was the man bald?"

"Sorry?" The good director ran a hand through his thinning batch of hair. "Yes…"

"Why do you think that is?"

"I don't know."

"But I do. A rock falling to the earth would hurt a scalp without hair more than it would hurt one with enough to cushion the impact. Of course, in reality, the difference would be negligible. But our imagination—a cesspool of curiosity—doesn't know it."

He took a cube of sugar and held it over his lukewarm cup of tea. His fingers slightly relaxed, and the cube slid a few millimeters.

In that short length of time, the director almost heard a pleasant splash.

"Imagination is a gift upon humanity. It is helpful beyond constructing fairytales for offspring."

Averie placed the sugar cube back.

"With certain motions and signs, you can indicate your thoughts. You can get the point across. Why? Because we are formed only by our experiences."

Careful not to scald himself, he poured more tea into his half-empty cup. He brought it to his lips, blew on it, and splashed the nearby trees.

It surprised the director.

"You weren't expecting that, were you? But my actions had already formed a future in your mind—an immediate future where I sip tea."

Averie wondered if he was coherent enough, but hearing no complaints, he continued.

"What I am doing… is far more sophisticated, but it follows the same principle."

He was so thin that he felt like he could fall off the chair at any moment.

"To make a collective of varied individuals dream is no small task. To make that dream even more vivid is an even harder task. And to do it with limited movement? It should be deemed—without my intervention—very much impossible."

How much of it was the truth and how much of it was nonsense, the director could not determine.

But that was Averie in a nutshell. He was a full-of-shit, brilliant actor.

The director sighed.

Never before, yet in that moment, he pitied himself. Even though he couldn't, he very much wanted to share the view this eccentric actor saw.

Looking at that slavering figure, certain words came to his mind.

'Beyond human senses, the figure was grace itself.'

He had written them.

'And he couldn't admire more.'

It was the meeting of two roles played by the same man. It was how The Photographer felt while looking at The Lady.

It was also how the director felt while looking at Averie.

Yet that feeling never went away. It even accompanied him to the screening in Berlin.

Looking up at the big screen, watching the two most interesting characters he ever wrote, his admiration for the actor once again flared up.

'Brilliance personified.'

If the audience knew who the actress on the screen was, he thought they too would share in his sentiments.

It was a shame. But for the occasion, he had to keep quiet.

While Director Thomas Corsini didn't know as much as Director Groux did, he certainly didn't hide his feelings.

The creases on his face had grown lax in wonder.

The illusion of rain had subsided, yet he didn't see any woman prancing about the stage.

What he saw was a frame.

A lonely painting on a black wall under a dim bulb. Nothing else in his vision was lighted.

It was a portrait in the Art Nouveau style.

Bathed in the sun's warm embrace, the woman it depicted wore a mysterious little smile.

She reminded him of an angel and the devil.

Was she holy? Or was she a monstrosity?

If he had an answer, he would have leapt to embrace her.

But without the ability to distinguish, it was dangerous to approach.

As a fellow purveyor of art, he understood how The Photographer felt while looking at her.

It was a blatant one-man act—or rather, a one-woman act.

Even though everyone was lost in varied images and illusions of her, The Lady kept up her act, glancing at the galleries now and then.

Charles believed, rightly and unwisely, that it was on him that her gaze lingered.