Hi! Herline here!
I came up with the idea for this fanfic when I watched the Who Framed Rogger Rabbit movie, if you haven't seen it, I recommend you watch it, it's very good! Rest assured, Erik will not be Dr. Doom, but I plan to put him in with his touch of a dark villain aura. The idea of Erik's last name, Destler, is the idea of Woland666 in his An Interesting year fanfic, I invite you to read it! I want to say that my native language is not English, but I am working with the help of a good translator and my experience reading and writing in English, so if you find any errors, I will be grateful if you notify me!
Disclamer: The main caracters of WFRR or POTO dont belong to me.
Summary: Christine lives hanging in debt in the late 1940s in New York. She has three jobs to support herself and her father. Tired of her life, she longs for the visit of the angel of death, who embraces her and takes her away. At night she works in the 'ink paint palace', under the mask of Jessica Rabbit. Another masked man appears and manages to break her sensual mask. Who is really masked here?
Hope you enjoy! Thank you very much!
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Picking up the glasses from the tables, Christine was hurrying before eight o'clock at night. She put them all on a small tray deftly handling the weight of the crystals, her hand and her arm were used to the full and empty transfer of it. She went into the kitchen and washed them deftly, used to this mechanical work. From time to time she would replace the thick-paste glasses in her place, which glided smoothly across the bridge of her nose, lubricated by the sweat of her work as a waitress
After the glasses were dried and set, she put down her apron and took her old raincoat, grabbed her small purse hidden behind liquor bottles, and headed for the small booth that served as the manager's office and administration office. Christine rapped with her knuckles on the wooden door, and called behind her
"Richard, it's already half past seven, I'm leaving for today." Accustomed to routine, she started walking toward the exit, heard the creaking of the door hinges, and looked back.
"Christine, please come back at half past nine. Robert called, he's bringing a guest, and they requested to see Jessica. I need you to attend to them." Christine sighed
"Did they pay extra first? Robert knows Jessica doesn't work today."
"No, but he will pay after the show and you will have a small commission for the drinks." That was enough
"I'll be back soon." Christine pushed open the bar door and walked down the sidewalk to her house, her plus-size trench coat protecting her figure at night. She felt her dark circles pulling under her eyes demanding sleep, as well as her eyebrows despite her, as if sore and melted from the burden of her thoughts. Christine didn't want to go home, but she didn't want to go back to the cabaret bar, either.
After about fifteen minutes walking she reached the apartment area of sooty brick, old wood and trash, she climbed the building to the third floor of the complex of six. As she entered the small room, she turned on the night lamp in the middle of the room, the only light in the house that worked. The light illuminated her father in her bed, Christine sat next to him and her father did not flinch. She checked the bandages on his head and filled the jug with new water, which he had already finished. She took off her raincoat and shoes and threw herself on the couch. Her body hit the wood, but she didn't care.
Christine just wanted to rest, she ignored her stomach asking for food, preferring to sleep a little in her place. She unconsciously weighed the idea of skipping the presentation and falling asleep. She was interrupted by the mechanical sound of the Swedish cuckoo clock, saying that she had to get into reality. In her reverie, she sat on the creaky old wooden chair and looked at the clock, finely carved and hand-painted, now the only thing in the house she had brought from Sweden that remained without pawning. Christine no longer felt from here or there, she felt more like an unpalatable mixture of tar and gasoline. Sometimes she just looked at her dying father of hers and she cried for him, secretly asking, deep down, to die, and then she berated herself for it. She was afraid to leave her father alone, but she did not want to continue living on this what they called life.
She couldn't bear the idea of leaving her father alone, but she also couldn't bear the idea that all the other days of her life were the same. And even if she fell in love and married, like most women her age, the idea of marriage sounded no more tempting than the idea of diving into the water and never leaving. Now that her father was not conscious of her, being a sun like he was, she felt there were only gray days in her life.
She leaned back in the chair. At twenty-three, she felt like a forty-something woman, working from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon as a translator and typist at the government immigration office in New York. Then to work from four to eight in a rush of drinks and liquors, a restless walk between the tables where sometimes she barely fit between them, and there was no lack of the daring stupid who brushed her legs under her skirt or who gave her a spanking, escaping among the hubbub, the tables, the tumult of men celebrating and the cloud of cigarette smoke that rose like a miasma between them all. Christine really disliked the idea of sharing the same air with the stench of others, that's why she started smoking, not without a certain revulsion, because she didn't like the taste and it made her lungs feel like two sheets of paper ready to catch fire. But she swallowed the smoke to be certain that it was hers and to fight back in some way. And then there was Jessica's extra work.
With a pencil she crossed out the calendar box for the year printed in a newspaper. May 15, 1948. She no longer wanted to cross out any more days, she only wanted to lie on the grass, look at the sky and sleep forever. She turned to see her father. Two months ago, he had been brutally beaten and his head was fractured. Christine almost fainted when she saw him lying on the sidewalk, bathed in the pool of his blood, due to the gang fight she had with others from the opposite area. It was the immigrants against the natives; the natives believed they had the right to keep their land free of rats-robbers-jobs, while the immigrants defended themselves even with their fists to stay, work and earn their bread in the country in which they had placed their hopes. Her father had become important in that immigrant street movement, ending as it ended.
The doctor told Christine that her father was almost unable to make it out alive, and that the process of recovering from the wounds on his skull would be slow and painful, and put two choices in Christine's hands: or buy sedatives and painkillers so that his father did not suffer pain, with a slower recovery and spending most of the time as a vegetable, or the partial absence of them due to their high cost, and giving him constant care. Christine chose the first option, as much as it hurt to leave her father unconscious, she could not bear the idea of letting him suffer in his pain and with her absence, because even so, she would have to continue working for both.
Most of her salary was in pills for her father, and in paying for the few things that kept them living, the services and food of Mrs. Valerius who lived on the first floor, an old woman who from time to time went upstairs to clean, check and feed her father and leave food ready for Christine. Sometimes she didn't even want to eat, she would leave the food on the table, sit in front of an empty chair, and start crying.
From time to time she would fantasize that her death would come to visit her, or to eat with her, and she would enjoy her food even if she knew what was coming after her. She sighed at the thought of her own death taking her in his arms, and giving her a cold kiss as goodbye. Some day. And she held back.
She got dressed, left a soft kiss on her father's bandages and arranged her blanket over his sleeping body and left the apartment. Arriving at the bar she notified her arrival through the manager's door. By the kitchen mirror she arranged her worn brown hat (twenties style, one of the few things she had left from her mother when she was young and rich) she tucked her blond hair tightly under her hat and tried unsuccessfully to beautify the false flowers of the same, that covered the holes and the spots obtained with time. She adjusted her glasses again on the bridge of her nose, and the right leg of it complained of breaking, being joined by a few turns of thread that she tried to camouflage with the color of the frame. With her apron she went to the bar and behind her began to put the remaining liquor bottles in lockable drawers, since no more than ten people would be coming tonight. She took a thin, half-empty bottle and a dirty, neglected crystal glass.
She turned back and looked over the counter at a tall man, dressed impeccably in black, with a coat with a black feather stole falling over his chest and shoulders, making him look imposing, like a black raven. His black hair was streaked with white neatly slicked back, and his face - oh his face! It was white as paper, cadaverous and outlined by luscious edges, no eyebrows or paint, only with holes in the eyes and in the slot of the mouth; no matter how much illumination she had, she saw nothing between them. His hands on the counter were as pale as his face, long and bony.
Christine dropped the glasses and heard them scream, smashing to pieces on the floor. The figure was unfazed. A mixture of joy and fear cut her heart in two before she took one last beat. She thought, relieved, Death has come for me! She went into ecstasy: she had been visited by the angel of death!
Stepping on the glass under the puddle of liquor, she almost climbed onto the counter
"Are!" Christine kneeled up onto the drinks shelf.
"You are!" Putting her hands on the counter, she was almost level with him and a few inches away. She reached out her hand to touch him, very afraid that once she reached him he would vanish, she wanted to hug him and vanish herself too! She barely touched her fingertip to his cold, expressionless face; she realized it was a mask. Looking at the lifeless gaps, Christine sighed close to his mouth "I never imagined the Angel of Death to be so beautiful" and saw how a fire grew under the hollow of the eyes and two yellow lights peeked out. Are they the flames of hell?.Her Angel turned his head to her left, questioning
A hand on the collar of Christine's suit pulled her out of her reverie, out of her ecstasy and back into her miserable reality.
What the hell are you doing Christine?!" Richard, her boss, had pulled her away from the sinister figure and brought her back to the counter. Christine felt like a baby being taken away from the security of being inside her mother. "It's Mr. Destler, Robert's guest! What are you thinking about?!" She saw Richard as not wanting to believe his words, as if he spoke to her in another language.
The black figure scooped his hands up from the counter and giving her one last look left. Christine was sure a stab to her chest would hurt less than that. Richard shook her shoulder.
"He was just coming for coffee! Clean up this mess!" Richard said, releasing her from her grasp and following in the figure's footsteps. Christine hid under the counter in shock not knowing what to feel; she was glad that she could continue living, sad that she had not died and ashamed of the humiliation that she did to herself for the man.
As she picked up the crystals and tossed the cloth to dry the floor, she saw that her heels were bleeding. She weak at the sight of blood as she was almost fainted, she cleaned up as she could and ran through the passage from the kitchen to the hallway that led to dressing rooms. She dipped her feet into a bowl that she filled with water, and prayed that the water didn't turn redder than it was getting. After a while, she pulled one of her feet out; it was clean but swollen, she began to towel it dry when Richard entered.
He began to tell her that Mr. Destler was furious about the touch of his mask, that he is an eccentric, a rich man with a lot of money, explosive and blablablah. And that was worth a damn to Christine, just as Richard didn't give a damn that Christine had cut herself by the glasses, it seemed like a fair trade to her.
"Jessica will be out in an hour, tell her to make an effort to impress Mr. Destler so that he does not leave with a bad impression of the likes of his partner Robert. I offered him some time with Jessica and he refused" Richard looked at her with his hands on the hip.
"Without consulting me?"
"You didn't consulting me anything either"
Christine snorted. Jazz musicians began doing their music warm-ups on the saxophone, piano, bass, and drums. Richard told her to put on her red dress. The conversation was getting nowhere and he left. Christine began to do the ritual of calling Jessica.
Jessica was her stage name for a cabaret singer. Three years ago, Simone, the former singer, had resigned with Robert, since she was going to marry one of her clients with whom she had already been in a relationship for five years. Richard was extremely annoyed at the lack of the sensual cabaret show with which he made some extra sales by leaving men dry-mouthed, watching Simone sing and dance. Simone was a tall, slim and shapely woman, she had the charm of Vivien Leigh and the face of Josephine Baker. She had no family and on certain occasions, she accepted proposals to sleep with certain admirers if they paid an amount for her.
Simone was French and got along very well with Christine. Christine's mother was, too, and Simone was about the age that her mother would be if she were alive. She asked him to be a cabaret singer because she was going to quit the job and the pay wasn't bad, especially when "extra" jobs came up, Christine thought, and Simone read her mind: "I take them because I'm an old woman, Christine, I don't have much love or passion left to give. But from my experience, I suggest that you save that love for a man who actually loves you; I would have. But now, life takes a lot of turns " she told Christine once in her good french.
Christine took her word for it, not without some doubts and fears from the gossip and rumors of the people and out of shame for her father. That's when Simone suggested creating Jessica, Christine's artistic alter ego. She taught her how to move on the stage, draw a sultry voice out of inside her, and some dress and makeup basics. Simone sometimes took her to the movies to see the beauty and charms of the Hollywood womens."If you feel uncomfortable, you don't have to be yourself if you don't want to. Think of it as a performance, Christine; Movie actresses may not agree with her character, but they put their soul and effort to make her appear as realistic as possible on screen. And our screen is the stage. The secret of captivating people is not only born with the sight, but with the gestures, with the personality ". She performed three times a week, and she wouldn't deny she got some extra good money.
Simone bequeathed her dresses and taught her to do her hair and make up, together they defined what Jessica would be like. Christine defined her as a young and sensual woman trapped in her body, with the melancholy of a love that does not come and the repudiation of her by the men who look at her. She took inspiration from the presence of Lauren Bacall, the audacity of Rita Hayworth and the melancholy of Ingrid Bergman.
Voices and laughter could be heard through the jazz notes. Christine began to roll some gauze around her ankles, and very carefully pulled the lace nylon stockings up her legs, she did not plan to put them on because of her sexual connotation, but she had no choice if she wanted to hide her bandages. She tied the corset well around her waist and adjusted her breasts well in her red dress, wet her hair and went up to fluff it on the roof, breathing and making the cold of the night her own in her lungs. She came downstairs and adjusted her blonde hair to the best as she could. Jessica doesn't see very well, thinks Christine, and she covers her left eye with a generous wave of platinum hair. Or rather, Jessica doesn't want to see. Christine's only good eye was her left, and with her right she looked partially blurred.
This lack of vision gave Christine a slowness in walking and touching that men considered sensual. Half of her face was a mystery to men, but the triangle of her bright red mouth, her breasts and her bare shoulders left them perplexed. She knew Jessica's response "Darling, I don't want to get a close look at men's sweat, the wedding rings on their fingers, or their depraved faces. Sometimes, ignorance is a blessing".
Thank goodness no one had correlated Christine with Jessica, and the only one who knew, apart from Simone and the occasional member of the jazz band, was Richard. She placed high purple silk gloves on her arms. And went out to meet her with Robert Lloyd. Robert owned several construction buildings and invested his money in other matters that Christine did not really care about.
"Jessica! As beautiful as ever! " He gave her two kisses on the cheeks in the Italian style
"What's so important that you ask me to come on my day off, Robert? If you had told me before, I would consider you, darling. " Christine purposely looked to her left, ignoring how Robert and her men ran their gaze up her body and followed the open line of her red dress to where her black nylon stocking ended.
"It's to celebrate my dear. I am about to close business with a very prestigious French architect. He is fucking weird, but all of his projects are a huge success ". Robert took Jessica's gloved hand and planted a kiss "I may commission him the most beautiful house in New York, and you will come with me as my wife." Robert, always such a womanizer.
"I don't think my husband would like the idea, my dear Robert." The men accompanying Robert made a scoffing noise. Robert looked at them suspiciously.
"He does not deserve you, my dear Jessica. You are the sun that shines at night in New York. This man, Mr. Drestler, was very difficult to convince to celebrate. I need him to trust me to get some good prices. He refused restaurants, concerts, opera and sports, because they were crowded he says. So I suggested showing him my sun at night, and almost didn't succeed, it's very difficult to socialize with him".
"And where is your friend?"
"He went back to his house, he'll be right back. You know, he wears a mask. That's why I said he was fucking weird! I imagine he was either burned with water or trapped in a fire building. He is very serious. Sometimes he scares even me" Robert laughed and took a sip of his drink, served by Richard. "I found out that Christine touched his mask. He hates it! He has the appearance of being the type that hates germs. Ah, my Christine! Have you seen her?
"I have just arrived. Poor little girl". She remembered how Robert used to pull her by the arm and sit her on his lap when he got drunk while she was a waitress.
"Can you put on a good show? I want him to see that my tastes are good. And there is nothing in better taste than you, my Jessica. But please don't make me jealous. Nobody steals my sun from me "
Jessica laughed. "I can't promise you anything, but I will do my best, darling. I wait for the check in my dressing room. "She put a gloved hand on Robert's chest and raised it up to his neck." See you".
Ten minutes later the check arrived under the door. Christine put it in a pocket of her corset. And five minutes later, they knocked on the door saying that the guest had arrived. Her stomach turned over and she was dizzy, like always before going on stage. She enlisted the help of Joe, the young man who played her bass, to help her walking to the stage. She had her heart in her mouth. She thought. Would she sing to the man she mistook as the Angel of death? She felt an anger. How had he dared to move her, make her fall in love, and hate her? She chose the song Why do not you do right?, to say to him "Get out of here". The song took off with a slight melody.
She took the red curtains and let her leg wander over it, stroking the curtain as if he were her lover.
"You had plenty of money in 1922" she opened the curtain and it began to slide, showing the other members of the band. She was greeted with hisses, snorts, and compliments from Robert's men. "You let other women make a ... fool of you." Approaching a pillar, she leaned back and arched her back, lowering with desire.
"Why don't you do right? Like some other men do?" Resuming her walk, she approached the edge of the stage. At the iron table she used to go down, she was awaited by two men with desire. One tried to touch her dress as if to kiss him, and she pushed her hand away from her with a slap of her heels. As she climbed to the table, the other man stood up bewitched by her face.
"Get out of here" She took his hat and covered his face with it before he touched her. "Get me some money too." Coming down from the chair, she sang:
"You're sittin down and wonderin what it's all about. If you ain't got no money, they will put you out. Why don't you do right? Like some other men do?"
Reaching for Robert's table, he watched her raptly sing. "Get out of here." she reached for his suit handkerchief and wrapped it around his neck with secret contempt, and in his ear she sang "Get me some money too.". And she let go of the cloth with contempt
A bold hand rested on her shoulder. "Now if you had prepared 20 years ago" she followed his arm and laid her breasts on him. "You would not be a wanderin now from door to door" She stole the man's wedding ring, held it high as her trophy. "Why don't you do right?"The companions made a mocking sound at the person who was robbed. "Like some other men do?" She returned the ring to him as if it were a stone. The man barely reached for the ring.
She looked at the guest, who was staring at her, tall and imposing.
"Get out of here. Get me some money too". She felt a sudden rage at her false deception. She sat on him on his lap and felt him stiffen, said to his face "Get out of here. Get me some money too." As she ran her hands down his chest, she felt him tremble slightly, and she pushed him away with contempt. At the top, she asked him:
"Why don't you do right?" She leaned against the table, coming closer to him like a jaguar "Like some other men ..." she pulled on his black tie, he immediately giving in to her. His expression cold from her from his mask. They all stopped breathing. She brought his fake lips dangerously close, as if about to kiss them and sang "..do?" She let go of his tie with sensual slowness and pulled away from him, still looking into his eyes as she walked away from him. Robert's men cheered, clapped, and complimented her to get her attention. She looked up at him with contempt, and returned to the stage where the curtains closed behind her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the masked man raise her arm, requesting Richard's assistance, approaching his table.
In her dressing room, after resting to regain her composure from the performance, and checking her swollen ankles from the cuts, she was about to remove her dress when Joe advised her that the building was empty, and that Mr. Drestler wanted to speak to her on the stage. Jessica put her hands on her hips and sighed, but she agreed to get out of it. She checked herself in the mirror before stepping out of it, well covering half of her face with the wave of hair
Indeed, everything was empty, and there was not a soul. She tapped onto the stage, and saw the tall figure of this Mr. Destler, staring at the instruments and running his gloved hands over the piano keys.
"Any problem, Mr. Destler?" She crossed her hands on her chest, in her role as proud Jessica
"You are a liar". She got confused. "It's not easy to see, but I want an apology." His voice seemed to come from Lucifer's mouth. Sensual, deep and alone.
"I don't know what you're talking about"
"I don't know what you are talking about either. Who are you looking forward to? "
Jessica was confused. She was about to open her mouth to speak when he droped it, playing the smallest key on the piano "You are the woman who broke the bottle and the glass when she saw me in front of the bar. Apologize ".
Her heart went to Christine's feet, he continued to play random keys on the piano waiting for the answer. She came trembling toward him; Jessica's mask was breaking like a brick wall hit by a stone. "How do you know?"
"Your eyes" He played something soft on the piano. "And your voice" and he dropped his hand on the low notes. "It's unmistakable, if you pay attention to it. I can't be taken for a fool."