I was in a production of the musical of Les Miserables three years ago, and I always wanted to write a story about one of the characters I played-- an unnamed beggar who joins the students' revolution and dies on the barricade. Well, here it is.

Jacques le Menteur Remembers

Well, I've been up here for a while, and quite a few people have asked me how such a nice young man managed to get himself killed. I've put them off mostly, with jokes about jealous husbands and bumbling friends, and telling them that I'm not such a nice young man as they think I am, but I think that it might be time for the truth.

Besides, it's probably about time that I started telling the truth, now that I'm dead and in Heaven.

My story starts in Saint Michele, Paris, somewhere around 1812. I'm guessing at the year, mind you. My mother wasn't exactly what you'd call organized when it came to remembering dates. I don't remember her very well, since she was knifed in some dark alley when I was fairly young. After that I kept myself fed by lying. Most of my lies involved sick mothers and armies of starving younger siblings, the usual beggar back-story. It helped that I was always small for my age, whatever it was.

After a few years, people stopped listening. I couldn't figure out why, until a friend of mine suggested that I was getting too old, and that people my age usually got real jobs instead of begging. I tried getting a real job, I really did. But there weren't any to be had, so I was back on the streets.

I had my first run-in with the Thenardiers in 1825, right after they'd come to Paris. I'd found Eponine crying in the gutter one day, so I asked her what was wrong.

"My father beat my brother and kicked him out of the house," she said.

This didn't really sound like a cause for crying in my book. One less person in the family meant more food, after all. But for poor 'Ponine, it was a tragedy. I offered to find her brother and make sure he was alright.

Her face lit up like a million candles. "Oh thank you!" she said. "His name is Gavroche Thenardier. He's five, and he's got dark hair and blue eyes." She began rattling off a list of everything he'd been wearing when she'd seen him last, possible places that he might have gone, and a list of every single bruise and cut. I listened, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

As it turned out, Gavroche wasn't all that hard to find. I merely repeated what Eponine had told me to all the whores and beggars I knew, and the boy turned up within a day. It took longer to find Eponine again.

My first impression of the kid was that he was the sort who didn't mind being homeless in the slightest. He'll get somewhere, I thought. Even if he doesn't know it. Funny how things turn out. Eponine offered to bring him home to make amends with their father, but Gavroche refused.

"Nah," he said. "I'm sick of Papa anyway. I wanna stay with Lapine and Jacques."

Lapine was the whore who had found him, who I had a business agreement with. Why he mentioned me was beyond imagining. I knew nothing about children, other than that they were small and required food. My one blessing in life was that Gavroche was out of diapers by the time he found me.

The elder Thenardiers didn't come into the picture until later.

I'd been sleeping in an empty doorway when I found myself being shaken awake. Being shaken awake was nothing new, but the person doing the shaking was. He was a large man, with black hair and a thick coating of stubble that wasn't quite a beard. Something about his facial features reminded me of Eponine, although there was a vast difference between his crudeness and her mournful expression.

"You. I saw you with Eponine," he accused.

"What's it to you?" I asked sleepily. I was never really a morning person, even at the best of times.

He grabbed the front of my shirt and hoisted me to my feet.

"Alright, alright, no need to get upset!"

His hot breath smelt strongly of fish and garlic. I wrinkled my nose.

"You stay away from my daughter, and that lazy brat she calls a brother."

I'd grown fond of Eponine, despite her constant weepiness over a particular student, and fonder still of Gavroche, who had taken to pretending to be my crippled younger brother (or son, depending on what sort of person we were dealing with). With his looks and skill at pickpocketing and my know-how, we were making enough money to eat quite well. I decided to play dumb.

"Who's your daughter?" I asked.

"Eponine, whelp. I saw you talking to her, just like I've seen you tramping about with her brother."

"Ah yes, little 'Ponine. Gavroche, who I'm guessing is your son—"

"He's no son of mine," Thenardier growled. I ignored him and went on.

"Gavroche is quite the beggar-child. We're partners."

The man's expression softened a bit. Whether it was because he assumed that I was taking care of his son, or taking advantage of him was beyond me.

"He's still a baby, really," he said. "Can't be expected to keep track of his funds. Me and my wife'll keep them straight for him until he's of age."

I noticed the change right away, and I didn't like it. "Eponine says he's almost seven. That's old enough to be taking care of himself," I told him.

Thenardier frowned, and marched off. I had a feeling that I'd just made an enemy.

"S'not so bad," Gavroche told me later. "I made some friends today." The boy half-dragged me over to the nearby Café Musain, where I was introduced to Enjolras and his friends, including Eponine's student.

Enjolras, now there was a puzzle. I never did find out what his first name was, or even if he had one. Blond, tall, girls dripping from his arms, he was the stuff of legend. Even street-wise, cynical liars like me found themselves compelled to follow him into sure disaster, just because. Yet it never seemed to go to his head. Or if it did, I was too oblivious to notice. He taught me to read, and kept me well-supplied with books, claiming that even the lowest of beggars deserves an education. I thought he was mad, but I followed him anyway. He was my hero.

I remember once he asked me why I was called Jacques le Menteur.

"Because I lie, of course," I told him.

"But why do you lie?" he asked. "Wouldn't it be better to tell the truth?"

"I have to lie. I couldn't beg without lying. Nobody wants to hear about a whore's son who can't get a job. They only listen to stories about starving children. That's why I keep Gavroche around as my crippled little brother."

The look he gave me was so devastating that I swore I'd never lie again. Of course, the very next day, Gavroche and I were back on the street, posing as brothers and picking pockets. A liar doesn't reform easily, especially when an empty stomach hangs in the balance.

And then there was that fateful two days at the barricade. I don't know why I even bothered, seeing where it's gotten me. I knew more about fighting than les Amis did, and the fighting I knew was fist- and knife-fighting, useless against professional soldiers armed with muskets. I guess it was Enjolras again, and my hero-worship of him, more than any sort of higher morality, that made me help with the building and defending of the barricade.

It was amazing how quickly everything happened, once we'd started piling things up in the street. Eponine appeared with a bullet lodged in her stomach, died right there in the arms of the student she'd fancied, the one who'd fallen in love with someone else. I didn't cry, but I helped carry her into the café, out of sight. She was the first to fall.

Les Amis had managed to find muskets for nearly all the defenders, although I haven't the faintest idea where they got them. I was one of the unlucky ones who didn't get a musket at first, so I ran back and forth, carrying ammunition to those who did. The number of casualties began to climb, and I took a gun from the hands of a corpse and climbed up to learn how to shoot.

My aim was terrible. I managed to shoot exactly one man, and it wasn't the one I was aiming for. I cursed myself, the musket, Enjolras, the soldiers, and the barricade itself, although it hadn't done anything other than sit there.

The fighting continued until well after sundown, when the constant noise stopped as suddenly as it had started. My ears were ringing as I bedded down under a table, my musket clutched in nerveless hands.

"They won't attack again until tomorrow," Enjolras said. "But stay awake anyway. We don't want to be taken by surprise." This sounded like sound advice, especially since it came from Enjolras. I took advantage of the lull to carry a protesting Gavroche away from the barricade, releasing him into Lapine's care and giving him strict orders to wait for me. He didn't, naturally.

The second day went very like the first, only I had a musket from the beginning, and there weren't as many people defending while the number of soldiers attacking seemed to have grown. It didn't look good, and there was nothing I could do, even if I lied to myself. Then we began to run low on ammunition.

Two of the men began arguing over who would go out into the street and collect cartriges from the bodies of the soldiers lying there. Gavroche, the little idiot, took advantage of everyone's distraction to climb over the barricade. He managed to chuck two cartridge pouches over before they gunned him down. He shouted curses at them as long as he could. I couldn't decide whether to be horrified or proud.

After that, my aim got noticeably better. I didn't keep track of how many men I killed, but it sure felt good to know that they were suffering for killing my friends.

Then I noticed Enjolras, sprawled over the flag he'd been waving, sightless eyes staring into nothingness. He was dead as a doornail. That, I think, was the breaking point. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I tugged the flag out from under his corpse, raised it high and started yelling something that didn't make sense even to me. People were dying all around, and I vaguely wondered why. I heard, rather than felt the bullet go flying into my chest. I fell from the impact, wondering why it didn't hurt. It never even occurred to me that the wound was fatal, not even as my vision began to blur and my body grow numb.

"We lost," I thought. Then I was here.

Note: Menteur means "liar" in French, thus Jacques le Menteur would be Jack the Liar.