AN: So begins my second fanfic. Hope you all enjoy it. Please R&R. You guys make this all worthwhile. I do not own any of the characters from Moulin Rouge, although it would be beyond wonderful if I did. Special thanks to Dom Dom for introducing this site to me.
Chapter 1. Her Plans. My Plans.
Uncle Harod had always seemed to frighten me.
As a child I would hide within my room upon entering the Moulin Rouge with my mother, concealed behind her long skirts whenever outside the safety of a dressing room. How his face frightened me so!
Constantly surrounded by drunks and dancers and Lord only knows the other eclectic sorts of people who wandered within the realms of such a place, the Moulin Rouge seemed to have become more of a refuge for rather sick and twisted men, and whores.
Even as a teenager, my mother would persist me to accompany her to visit Harod. How I detested now seeing the people I had grown to hate now gazing at me with this hunger that made bile raise up in my throat so that I was nearly gagging at every face I crossed paths with. Older men who seemed ripe enough to be my grandfather would gaze at me with such lust and longing that an observer would think that they were accustomed to chase after young girls who had yet to enter their womanhood.
Mother was always quite kind, manipulating her words of comfort and affection my way to bid me to follow her every whim. For was it not what every child wished to do at such an age, but to have their parents love them?
"I do not wish to go back to that place again," I had cried upon my fifteenth year. "How the men stare at me, Mother! I cannot bear to see them silently imagining horrid things I dare not even think of. Why would you send me back there?"
"Your father used to go with me to visit my brother," mother wrapped her arms around me and placed her tender kisses upon my forehead. "My dearest little girl, please… you and my brother are all I have in the world. Your presences are the only bits of peace I may have in this world now that your father is dead."
That was three years ago.
At present, I was standing before my mother's grave, dressed in a gown of gray since I did not own a piece of cloth in black, for mother found the color to be too "morbid and depressing" for her taste. My light brown hair, straight as a board and thin as paper, seemed dead and flat in comparison to the ladies who mourned with curls and ornate hairstyles that seemed unnatural yet pleasing to the eye. How drab I must appear in comparison with them.
Where my mother was a beauty, I took claim of the plainness she had lacked. My face was an ordinary one, not a bit of color except for the freckles splattered across the bridge of my nose and cheeks. My hair fell to my elbows, and the plain cut bangs that covered my forehead had me looking like a misplaced schoolgirl who had not hit her teens quite yet.
Upon these crying women's words of condolence and the utterence ofmy age, they had stared at my blankly, as if awaiting me to let out some gregarious laugh and refute my previous statement. A small smile swept over my face upon telling them my birthday and how I had turned eighteen not more than a few weeks ago.
"A pity she could not have another child," I had heard the women conversing later when they considered me out of earshot.
"What a daughter… as dull as a washboard."
"And not an ounce of pride in her appearance!"
"You would think her mother might try to fancy her up a tad bit more."
"Or at least do something to that hair."
"Her face needs a mite of color."
"Her clothes do no justice to her figure."
"That is, if she has one."
Grasping the end of my shawl, I put my hood on to cover up my dullness and walked off only to be approached by Harod.
"My dear child," his overall enthusiasm was false, and seemed far too practiced. "Your mother specified that, upon her death, you were to come live with me."
"I am eighteen, Uncle." I replied monotonously. "I am my own person, and quite capable to live on my own, mind you."
"I do not doubt it, my dear." I could feel my hands going into fists as he continued on. "You are, with no doubt, a very… capable… young lady. But your mother's will says that you shall live with me until your twentieth year. In the Moulin Rouge."
"I would rather die then go back there," I frowned. "No doubt she requested such a thing because she knew I would soon accompany her to death than step foot back there."
"You shall be treated as a queen," Harod promised. "Your mother knows I have the finances to give you the life she could not provide. I have connections with people of high authority."
"Although I am sure the foundations of such connections can surely not be that respectable."
"I could turn you into a lady." He suggested. "Would you not want young men to look at you with longing? To lust after you? To offer you jewels and riches and all your desires?"
"It would not seem such a dreadful thing if the basis of it all was not so derogatory." I replied. "They would only be offering me such trifles for the wrong reasons. No good can come from the Moulin Rouge."
"My child, it was your mother's dying wish!"
"My mother knew quite well I would be unable to accept such a request."
"She had plans for you…"
"Plans she did not share with me. I have plans of my own."
"Plans for marriage!"
"With unruly men who would no doubt continue going to the Moulin Rouge even after we wed."
"Why do you think she persisted in visiting me!" Harod seized my arms and pulled me close, and I knew a dramatization was going to await me. "We have been making plans for years to have you wed to some duke or aristocrat or high ranking official. Whenever we met we would view all your possible choices, and we came down to one."
"It is nice you are both concerned with my future, but as I have already told you, I have my own plans, thank you."
"Your mother wanted you married before your twentieth birthday!"
"I am tired of following mother's wishes. It is my life I am living. Not hers."
"She already had the fellow picked out."
"She wasted her time."
"He has plans to visit the Moulin Rouge during your nineteenth birthday."
"Then you have a year to contact him and cancel the gathering."
"Can you not even consider the proposal?"
"I am quite content living where I am, Harod. I do not need your plans, or my mother's, to secure my future at hand."
"You have nothing!"
"I have more than you think. Where do you think my mother and me went to after every disgraceful visit to the Moulin Rouge? It was not as if we entered the streets all those years."
"Your mother lost everything," Harod informed me. "All you own was because I paid for it. Your home. Your belongings. They are all gone. There is nothing left. If you do not go with me to the Moulin Rouge, you will be living on the streets.
I had plans to be a writer.
All my life, I found refuge within books. I would hide in dark corners and listen in on the tales of ladies' affairs and their dreams to someday leave the Moulin Rouge and amount to something. I would take a pen from Harod's office and scrawl upon pamphlets or menus or any piece of paper I might find. Old envelopes that were once filled with bribes or love letters and empty promises would now be used to write my own stories of leaving Paris to travel the world and write. I would spin elaborate portraits that possessed all the beauty I lacked in myself and the world that surrounded me.
The room Harod gave to me was at the top of the Moulin Rouge, and must have once been a dressing room for some performer that overlooked the stage. A small bed, more of a cot, rested in the corner beside a dilapidated table and chair. The small window that gave view to the stage sat in front of the foot of my bed, and next to that was a bureau and mirror that had a chipped corner. Under my bed, I found a pair of old stockings and a hanger. Opening the bureau, I found only an old stage dress, more dust than fabric.
"It shall be a miracle if I can find inspiration within this room." I sighed and sat on the bed, which dipped in at my weight and let out this enigmatic crunch that had me worried it would soon break in half.
Incapable to discover an ounce of good in the future offered by such a life that Harod presented me, I gave my coat a hitch and headed outdoors.
Even the darkness of the night seemed more promising.