Cynical
Disclaimer: Not a one belongs to me.
Author's note: Boy, was this horrible of me. Read if you dare, and it you do, please review.
Author's second note: This POV has no name given ... so it can be any person you so choose. I happened to choose the psychotic woman with the orange hair and the gold crown who is one of the first people you see.
Enjoy!
Cynics. That's what we all are. Every last one of us. Cynics.
Who do we think we are, trying to cheat Love? Do we find ourselves so superior that love is beneath us? Or do we just value ourselves so lowly that we feel undeserving of it and it's magic.
The rule was simple: Never mix business with pleasure. I remember that now with a grim smile. In our profession, that generally went hand-in-hand, at least for the paying customers.
What it meant was that you were never to fall in love. It was a shock to very few of us. Most of us had no concept of love, others who had experienced it were so bitter and hardened they had no more interest in it, and the ones who were in neither category had to take the job to keep body and soul together, so it didn't matter.
I laugh now at my choice of words. To keep body and soul together. What I meant, of course, was to keep you alive. Souls were scant in the Moulin Rouge. Souls were useless baggage, better thrown out as soon as possible. Out with it went pride, integrity, modesty, and shame.
The only ones who had pride were the ones who could afford it: the pretty ones.
Contrary to popular belief, most of us were not pretty. After a few glasses of Absinthe, anyone is pretty. With face paint and jewels and bright petticoats, everyone is pretty.
There were few. And those who did were allowed to keep their pride. While we woke early to eat gruel and practice our routines, those few got to sleep in and eat buttermilk biscuits. They were the ones who never got sick, they were the ones who never went hungry, they were the ones who never got hurt.
Those who were the prettiest had no heart to hurt. They had sold their soul ages before. They had no qualms about their occupation, as long as they paid well and gave good presents. Their hearts had been replaced with diamonds; their souls with lace and silk and French champagne.
We all thought they had nothing to hurt. The diamond dogs- and trust me, we were not all diamond dogs; that was the title reserved for the whores of the Apocalypse: Nine, Mome, Arabia, and China Doll- certainly didn't. Those three, with perhaps the exception of Mome, had not a kind bone in their bodies.
Satine proved to be different.
She, the most aloof of us all. Fearless, heartless, without weakness. There lay nothing behind that pretty face of vacant eyes and hollow smiles.
She had no fears. While some girls were afraid of thunderstorms or spiders or heights, Satine had nothing.
Satine had no heart. She never bothered to worry over anyone beneath herself, about her customers, about anyone but herself. But for some reason I continually cannot fathom, despite her frigidness, everyone adored her. Almost everyone.
Satine had no weakness. She didn't grow faint at the sight of blue eyes, she didn't get custardy spines at men with an accent, she didn't get weak-in-the-knees at pearly white teeth.
And then one day, the impossible happened.
Satine, the ice queen, our "sparkling diamond" fell in love. And boy, did she ever fall hard.
She made little effort to hide it. There was an unspoken code amongst us girls- don't tattle, don't bother, and help one another. She knew none us would tattle to Ziedler, who wouldn't have listened to us anyway, or to the Duke, who wouldn't have given us a second glance.
And who did she fall for? Ho ho, this was the most unbelievable of it all. She fell for not a Prince or a Lord or someone unthinkably rich old man who would be gone in a year and leave everything to her; but a penniless young writer.
Was she insane?
Whatever soul Satine had had before returned to her quickly. She giggled where she would've rolled her eyes, she smiled where she would have frowned, she complimented where she would've ignored. She started humming all the time, or tapping, or whistling, all the same time. Somewhat annoying, but cute nonetheless. She was changed.
It was obvious to anyone with eyes that they were in love. The googly-eyes, the secret smiles, and the peculiar way that they both seemed to disappear at the same time and reappear red-faced and prone to giggles.
The Duke, the dumb buffoon, did not realize that his prized Diamond had taken to someone else. It took a very blatant remark to point it out to him.
A remark made by one of our own.
She had broken our code. She claimed with was what Satine deserved, but she did not know the chain of events that were to come, or she would've restrained herself. The guilt and torment were too much for us to bear afterwards.
While Satine was humming and giggling and pleasant, she was also growing thinner and paler. She wasn't working more than usual ... she was eating the same ... she was getting enough sleep. We all accredited it to that retched cough she would get sporadically.
She died of that same cough opening night.
How could we've not realized it was consumption? Were we all stupid? Blind? Deaf? Dumb? Why didn't anyone realize?
The funeral was lovely. Flowers galore. A white dress. Many tears. Good-bye, Satine, we'll miss you.
So, what happens now? Where are you going, Satine? Heaven? Hell?
Her little loverboy- Christian? Was that his name?- oh, I have never seen anyone so distraught. Cried his eyes out for three days, and then was stunned into a stupid silence.
When they began to lower her into the ground, he jumped from his seat (where he had been sitting the entire time like a good boy the whole service) and threw himself on to the casket sobbing.
Nini, of all people, was the one to pry him off. Once he saw who it was, he narrowed his eyes and said with a hatred I had never heard before: "Get away from her!"
Ziedler took his arm and lead him back to his seat where, like a child, he docilely sat back down.
I watched him carefully. This man seemed so different from the carefree, happy-go-lucky boy we had come to love/hate.
She had done to this to him. She had destroyed him. The conniving cat who was so sure of herself she did not even bother to sheathe her claws had shredded any hope of him ever marrying and being happy. It was she who (unfortunately for him) held his heart, and now it was six feet under the cold, icy ground. Anyone could tell he might as well had been buried that day as well. He sat slumped by her tombstone for an incredibly long time, a time that could not have done much good for his state of mind.
Did she love him? I wondered. She seemed very happy. But who could believe Satine, the first Lady of Liars, the Duchess of Deception could love anyone but herself, anything but her own reflection?
Whatever the case may have been, he believed that she loved him, and I'm glad he at least has that to hold on to. It may not keep him warm at night, but it certainly keeps him going uncannily well.
Maybe it would've been better if they had never met. If he still had his merry disillusion of love, his naïve outlook on life.
Perhaps we didn't know her as well as he did. Perhaps he didn't know her as well as he thought.
Satine was always was the Mistress of Disguise and Illusion.
Maybe we understood her, we creatures of the Underworld
Maybe he understood her, her lover.
And maybe no one understood her- too beautiful to live; too beautiful to die.
We're all cynics here. It doesn't matter if we live or die. There's always a new pretty piece of flesh that looked remarkably like the one before, waiting to replace us, to bee primped and polished in our image, to be forced to live in the shadows and abandon their souls and loose their hearts.
We're creatures of the underworld. We can't afford to love.