When the biographer Burke Desjardins sat down with me in his personal study, I was immediately stricken by a tension that tugged at my chest. He was nice enough; when I took my place in the cushioned chair across from him, he shook my hand cordially and asked me how I was doing. But I could tell he wanted to get down to business. He wanted to know about what happened to the Moreau family, and that was all he wanted to know.

….

“Before we get started,” Mr. Desjardins said, after clearing his throat, “for the record: I need your full name, and your relation to the Moreaus.” He looked at me as he spoke, and looked down quickly to his pad of paper as if my words would escape him and be lost forever if he didn’t have them written as soon as they were spoken.

I replied dully, “My full name is Jules Dashiell Lambert, I worked as a servant in their household for a little over half my life.”

“How many years is that?”

“About seven years, Monsieur.”

M. Desjardins scribbled this down, and I wondered if he would be able to read it, it seemed to take him no time at all. As soon as he was done writing, he looked at me thoughtfully, then jotted something else down, what I figured was a description of some sort. Once he’d gotten down what he wanted, he looked up, ushering, “Let’s start from the beginning, shall we?”

I shrugged, but he didn’t seem to notice. “How do I start?”

“You can start where you started, if you’d like. Maybe start with the first time you noticed something odd about les Moreau.”

….

For a moment I was silent, gathering my thoughts and finding the beginnings; when I started, and when the strange started; and I found that they coincided. “Well… Monsieur Elroy Moreau took me in when I was seven years old from a poor, neglective homelife,…

&1&

He told me he would shelter me and that the other servants would take care of me until I grew to be more independent, and I would have food and a bedroom and they would pay me for my service every month. I left home and never bothered telling my parents goodbye; they never seemed to notice I was gone anyway.

Elroy Moreau was a tall bald man, with a dark complexion and piercingly blue eyes. His gut protruded as the mark of a well-to-do entrepreneur, and he always wore a firm, concentrating expression, like he always had something vexing that he was mulling over in his brain. He was a very successful man in Tulles; he owned the town’s funeral home, which also ironically was a doctor’s office as well, and this earned him a healthy salary. He was a shrewd businessman, but a lousy father.

The Moreau children were known possibly more prominently than their father. There were three of them, two sons and one precious daughter. Severin Moreau was the oldest, at fourteen years when I became a servant in the maison. No one knew what to make of him, but they all had a deep fear of him. He resembled his father more closely than his siblings, but with almost-black hair and vacant black eyes, darkly attractive in his own right. Not even the staff in the Moreau home dared to approach Severin, especially when he was in a foul mood—he had a raging temper like no one in Tulles had ever imagined possible.

Aure, who was two years younger than Severin, was the Moreaus’ cherished only daughter. She was the most beautiful young woman in Tulles, and every young man knew it. Her blonde hair grew long and curled at the tips, she had a naturally tan complexion, and her eyes shone like bright blue stars. She had virtually no temper, from what anyone outside of the family knew; and her brother Severin did not dare to raise a hand to her, even in the worst of his rages—she seemed to be the only one who could soothe him.

The youngest was three years my senior. Royce was a pallid boy, strongly taking after his mother. His hair was dark blonde, and his green eyes were set in a round boyish face, even once he had reached his teen years. Royce was as much his mother’s son as Aure was her father’s daughter, and he almost never left her side.

….

Mr. Moreau led me down Route Principale, toward his home that stood on a hillside; it loomed over Main Street in the distance as we walked toward it. The Moreau family maison was almost mansionesque, one of the largest homes in Tulles at the time; it had two stories and a gothic-style wrot-iron fence that encircled it and gave it an eery feeling.

When M. Moreau showed me around the house, I found that there were ten bedrooms alone in the house (and yet those weren’t enough to comfortably fit the family and their servants), as well as four toilets and a living room on both floors. There was only one kitchen, on the ground floor of the home, but it was quite large. The dining room branched directly off the kitchen, with an ebony table with six chairs, and a curio cabinet filled with Mme. Moreau’s finest chinaware.

Mme. Coralie had an alcove in the attic furnished for me to call my own, and promptly put me to work. She let me do menial work, like dusting the furniture and beating rugs and scrubbing the tile of the kitchen floor. She armed me with a feather-duster and sent me to the attic first, to start there and work my way back to the downstairs parlour. This was when I had my first encounter with the scandal of the Moreaus.

….

The attic was Severin’s refuge from the prying eyes of the family servants. They never ventured up there for fear of what might be found there, all being the skittish and superstitious older folks they were, telling of ghosts and devils in the attic. But I was too young to really have these fears, and furthermore I had never had anyone try to convince me of them, and so I went up there to do the job which Coralie Moreau had sent me to do.

Down at the end of the hallway of rooms that branched off from the upstairs parlour, there was a staircase to the attic that was hidden in the wall. There was an old pull-string coming out, and I would have had to jump to reach it had the door not been open already. I started up the steps, and climbed up the spiral that led to the attic. Halfway up I could hear voices; a girl’s giggle, and the low tone of a boy’s voice. The voices stopped abruptly when the stair creaked under my weight as I shifted to listen more closely; I froze, and got a horribly nauceaus, claustrophobic sensation in the pit of my stomach. I heard a zipper, then footsteps, but I couldn’t move. I looked up the remaining steps with dread as I heard heavy, slow footsteps coming down toward me. The owner of those footsteps turned the remaining bend of the spiral and stood towering over me then, clad only in a pair of unbuttoned khaki trousers, and the look on his face made me shiver.

“Who are you, now?” Severin asked, in a disinterested tone. He sat on the steps to face me, resting his elbows on his knees and his hands rested on his elbows. He had a malicious smirk drawn across his lips that held gently to a burning cigarette.

“I’m Jules,” I replied weakly. “Monsieur Moreau hired me as a servant.”

The older boy picked the cigarette from between his lips and blew a cloud of smoke into my face. “I’m Severin. Now get out.” He said coldly, flicking ash off the fag and putting it back between his lips. Severin stood and watched me as I made my way back down the flight of stairs, back to the second floor, coughing some in response to the smoke that had found its way into my nose and mouth.

&2&

M. Desjardins looked up at me when I stopped talking. “Who did you think the girl was? What do you think they were doing? Do you think they were… having intercourse?” he asked, tapping the eraser of his pencil onto the notepad. His eyes seemed to look right through me, but at the same time they were intent upon me.

“It was Aure, the girl.” I said, matter-of-factly. To the second question I shrugged. “It sounded like they were messing around, sure. And it was kind of suspicious that he didn’t even have his trousers buttoned up. I never told anyone about it, not until now… But even then I had a feeling that everyone already knew. Eventually they found out the hard way.”

The biographer scribbled these things down in his margins, then gestured for me to continue with the story. So I took a deep breath, pulled my scattered thoughts together once more, and began again.

“From then on I grew up in Severin’s shadow,…

&3&

The attic, it turned out, never was a good place in which to be trapped. It was where I slept, and where I was tortured. I learned over that first year of my service in the Moreau maison that Severin was a sadist, and I became his constant victim. When I was sent to bed I was not to leave the attic, and that was when he usually would come. But by the year I was nine and he was sixteen, there was no hour in which he restrained himself. It had become commonplace, and he only hid it from people outside of the house, although the worst still happened in the attic. Severin’s affair with Aure continued, despite any boyfriend she may have at any given time; she never seemed to find it odd that she would tell a boy she loved him outside of the house, then come home and copulate with her brother. They kept this not so much as to themselves, but from their father. He was a sensible man, and I knew as well as they did that he would not approve of the incestuous relationship between his two oldest children.

All of the trouble began that year, on a chilly Monday in autumn. M. Moreau came home from the funeral parlour early one day while Aure and Severin were messing around on the sofa in the upstairs parlour. I was sitting on the chaise longue watching out the window for their father like I was told to do, blocking out the sounds of Aure giggling as Severin’s hand tickled up the middle of her legs and under her dress. I had concentrated so heavily on watching the road that I actually missed their father walking up the drive. Aure and Severin hadn’t noticed the sounds of the door opening, and I was panicking; I didn’t want to look at them, I didn’t want to talk to them, but if I didn’t say anything and they got caught, I would be in for as much of a punishment as either of them would be.

“Monsieur, your father’s home,” I said quickly behind myself. But by then Mr. Moreau had mounted the steps and found his son with his hand in between his precious daughter’s legs.

The rage that came from Monsieur Moreau was blind and furious. He pulled Severin up off the sofa and punched him square in the jaw, so hard that Severin reeled and fell. The young man stayed on the floor, I guess realising that it could have been much worse. Then Elroy turned to his daughter, who had a scared and somewhat bewildered look on her face. He smacked her as hard as he had punched his son, called her a slut, and smacked her until she began to cry helplessly. When he had finished with his children he spun and turned his attention to me. He grabbed me up by the collar of my shirt and dragged me to the stairs. If Royce hadn’t been standing at the top of them I think he might have thrown me down them. Instead he flung me into a wall and let go; my legs collapsed under me and I fell weakly to the floor.

Elroy yelled all the while, pacing in a circle in the parlour where his son lay still on the floor, and his daughter sat snuffling on the sofa. “After everything I’ve done for you…you disgust me. You all disgust me!” he ranted. He went on and on, and the four of us kids all afraid to move. It was a blessing from God that Mme. Coralie awoke from her nap thanks to all the ruckus and cooed her husband to calmness. She dismissed Royce, who had just arrived home from a friend’s house, and Aure to their rooms. I twisted myself around and Severin got up from the floor slowly and stood next to the sofa, against the wall. For a moment he and I locked eyes, and I knew that I was going to deeply regret this day. And from the malice in his demeanour, so was his father.

….

“Cora, I want to speak to the boys alone.” M. Moreau said, after what felt like an eternity of silence. Coralie, the good wife that she was, nodded and went back downstairs, passing me as she went. She spared me a glance as she passed by, and it was full of pity. I knew that Severin and I were going to learn then what our punishments should be. “Jules, boy, come sit on the sofa. Severin, sit as well.”

We both did as he bade, and he looked sternly at us for a moment. “Jules,” he said evenly, looking to me. “You’re almost as much my son as Severin is now.” At this, even though I didn’t turn to look, I knew Severin was giving me a look that could kill. “So as such, I’m going to whip you for helping my son commit this revolting crime against my beautiful daughter.”

I couldn’t possibly say anything, and so I simply bowed my head and said nothing.

Then M. Moreau turned to his son. “As for you, Severin,” he said this with a colder tone than he had used before, “I want you out of my house. Pack whatever things you can carry and leave my house. You have until Wednesday. I never want you near my daughter again, do you understand me?”

Severin scowled at his father and nodded. “Yes, I understand. Fine. Whatever you say, Father.” He sounded so devoid of emotion that I knew he was planning something. The look in his eyes foreshadowed some act of hatred and evil.

….

Monsieur Moreau took me by the shoulder out to the back of the house where he whipped me with his belt on my bare back and neck. I didn’t cry, but I didn’t apologise either— Mr. Moreau did, though. He had never had to whip his kids (or, at least, he had never caught them doing something for which to whip them), and, he sobbed, doing it hurt him more than it hurt me. I doubted that, but I didn’t argue… the less he liked doing it, the less he would do it. I took my twenty lashes, then he gave me my shirt and sent me to my alcove upstairs.

I put my shirt on and buttoned it up as I climbed the steps to the attic. Severin was there waiting for me when I got there. He was leaning coolly against one slanted wall, his arms crossed over his chest and a foot resting back on the wall. “What the hell happened to you, Jules? Didn’t I tell you to watch for him? Did you want me to get caught?”

I stared up into Severin’s face, and wrung my fingers in front of me. “I…” I said slowly, needing to regain some semblance of composure before I could explain myself. “N-no, Sev, I didn’t want you to get caught. I… I guess I got distracted. I’m sorry.” I sputtered, my voice small and servile.

Severin lit a smoke and narrowed his eyes to see through the smoke. “You guess? What the hell is that? Come here.” He said, in his usual cold manner.

“I’m sorry.”

“Get over here, goddammit.”

I shuffled terrifiedly to Severin as he exhaled another cloud of smoke, holding the fag between his index and middle fingers. I could feel his eyes follow me even when I looked away, and my nervousness grew until I was lightheaded and dizzy. I stood near him, and he slipped his empty hand around the back of the base of my neck. This in itself hurt from the whipping, and I winced severely. He moved his hand up then and took hold of the hair on the back of my head, pulling my head back to expose the sensitive flesh of my throat to him, and reveal the circular scars at the base of it. I was numb with anxiety and was at Severin’s mercy, and I knew full well that he had no mercy in him.

Severin put the cigarette back in between his lips for a second, running his free hand over my throat, then down over the scars he had inflicted before. He enjoyed remembering the pain he had inflicted on others, but even more he delighted in inflicting new pain. I shut my eyes tightly when I felt his hand pull away from the scars and saw it move to take the fag from his lips. He intended not to make one, but a whole new set of round welts across my neck, and all I could do was try not to scream.

&4&

I hadn’t noticed until I was finished telling all this that my eyes had begun to water and tears began to roll freely down my face of their own accord. I held my hand lightly over the scars just above my collarbone, a pattern that stretched from the end of one shoulder to the beginning of the other. The scars were so numerous that they had become scar tissue upon scar tissue, and I had gotten into the habit of wearing my collars up, paranoid that someone should see the scars and know the malicious things that I had helped to do. I didn’t want people to see that darkness in my past; I didn’t want to see it, myself. But ignoring it had been destroying me.

“So what happened to Monsieur Moreau? What did Severin do to get back at his father?” the biographer ushered, taking no notice of my reaction or the tears in my eyes.

“Can’t we take a break?” I asked weakly. I needed a tissue and some time to organise the memories racing through my brain. But Monsieur Desjardins didn’t seem to register any of this.

He shook his head distractedly. “We’ve only got a little more to cover, Jules. Can’t you just hold on for a bit longer? Give me a little more.” He sounded voracious for the story, like a man lost in the desert in want of a few drops of water.

I shrugged. “If I have to…” I took my hand away from my scars and let it lie limply in my lap. I thought again, back to the Tuesday that followed that painful night. “Mme. Coralie had me helping Monsieur Saber Fournier cook supper the next night,…

&5&

When I was outside dumping vegetable shavings into the compost pile, Severin came out to see me. He stood on the patio and watched me clear the cutting board, and when I turned around I was startled to see him there. He laughed at me for a moment, then was stern as ever in a split second. “Tonight’s supposedly my last night in Father’s house,” he said, emphasizing the word supposedly.

“What’s that supposed to mean, supposedly? He’s kicked you out; what are you going to do?” I replied, not earnestly wanting to know. But he had come to me, and so I was afraid that I was a part of his plot, whatever it happened to be.

Severin shlepped to me and rested his hand familiarly around the base of the back of my throat. He put pressure on the sides of my throat threateningly. “You’re going to help me.” He said simply.

“No.” I tried to shrug his hand away, instead his grip grew tighter. “No,” I repeated, this time more pleadingly. Severin slipped his hand around to the front of my throat and easily wrapped his hand all the way around, his grip almost tight enough to constrict my windpipe.

He pulled a little bottle out of his pocket that was full of some clear liquid. “Yes. You’re going to help me. You’re going to tell me which bowl is Father’s, and you’re going to feed him this poison.”

I writhed in Severin’s grip, but he only tightened it more. “I won’t; no.” I said again. He tightened his grasp around my throat even more, and I dropped the cutting board and pried at his hand with mine. He loosened his grasp a bit and uncorked the bottle carefully with his teeth, spitting the cork quickly to the ground.

“Do you want some, too, Jules? Do you?” Severin moved the bottle closer and closer to my mouth, and I couldn’t get away.

“No, please don’t, Severin, don’t,” I pleaded.

“So you’ll help me, then, right?”

“Y-yes…” I ceded reluctantly, sobbing now. “I will… let me go.”

Severin dropped his hand away, and picked up the little cork from the grass of the yard. “I’ll be in before supper to put it in the soup.” He said, putting the bottle in his pocket and walking away. I grabbed up the cutting board, gathered up my nerves, and walked back to the kitchen as if nothing had happened.

The crime hadn’t yet been committed, but I already felt like a murderer.

….

Saber and I had doled out the soup into the bowls at the table, and when Saber left to gather up the family Severin came to slip the poison into his father’s soup bowl. I watched by the door for everyone, and luckily he was finished tampering with the soup before anyone arrived, so that he could leave and re-enter. He pat me affectionately on the cheek and cooed “Good boy” as he went to the toilet to seem as if he had just come out of it when Saber calls him for supper.

I left, myself, to the upstairs parlour. I laid on the chaise longue and beat myself up over this crime in my head, knowing that I would certainly go to Hell for letting this happen. Telling myself I should have let him pour that poison down my throat instead of caving in and helping him to kill his own father.

Genivieve Rosseau, one of the other servants in the Moreau maison, came to sit on the sofa across from me. “Bonjour, Jules. What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she greeted, seeing the troubled look on my face.

“Nothing, Geni,” I lied. “I’m fine; just hungry.”

“Are you sure?” she asked. I had always been a sorry liar.

“Yes ma’m.” I replied.

In the dining room there was some commotion, and Mme. Coralie was screaming for help. Saber’s voice chimed, “Someone get the doctor!” And I took it upon myself to run away down Route Principale to fetch the doctor who I knew wouldn’t be able to save poor Monsieur Moreau.

….

Dr Pierre Michel pronounced Elroy Moreau dead at the supper table that evening. He had employees of the funeral parlour—ironically, M. Moreau’s own employees—carry the body to the funeral home/doctor office/morgue for an autopsy. Severin told me later that he had used a virtually intraceable poison, and that they would never find anything; they would probably attribute it to a bad heart.

The rest of us grieved in earnest, myself maybe more so than anyone else. All Severin had to say for himself was, “I guess I don’t have to leave the house now,” and that was when I became thoroughly terrified of him.

….

Instead of his own company burying him, a week later Elroy Moreau was interred in part by the property gardener, Bernarde “Berne” Dubois. Berne dug Elroy’s grave in the front lawn of the maison, with his granite tombstone outlined by a bed of roses behind it. Loving Father of Three, Husband, Son, and Employer; Successful Businessman; Elroy Francis Moreau was engraved in his tombstone, and privately Severin spat distastefully upon this memorial.

….

Without his father around, Severin could have relations with Aure whenever and wherever they pleased; he engaged her in parlour sofas and in beds and on the floor, although Aure when she did engage her brother she was much more modest about where they were. Severin was suddenly the man of the house, and he could do anything he wanted.

Royce went away to boarding school in Sweden a year after his father died, and their mother had become a hermit within herself. She would not eat, drink, or sleep of her own volition. Geni and Madeline, another servant in the house, had to force-feed her like a child who refuses to take her medicine, and they had to give her drugs to put her to sleep. Mme. Coralie was falling apart before our eyes, and we all knew it, and that was why Royce went away.

Severin eventually had his mother committed to an asylum, where she could be looked after more closely (one of the few good things he did), and dismissed all of the servants of the household, except me. I knew his secret, and he seemed to intend to let me in on a couple more before he did away with me.

&6&

Here I paused thoughtfully. I had the hint of a migraine coming on, and my mouth was dry from all the talking I’d done. M. Desjardins stood and put his notepad on his seat, stretching some. “Care for a glass of water, Monsieur Lambert?” he invited.

“Oui. Thank you.”

Mr. Desjardins poured water into two glasses from the tap and handed one to me. It was city water, and it tasted horrible and diseased, but I drank it nonetheless; I wasn’t in any condition to complain, a drink was a drink.

I had to think carefully at this point in my history; there had been a sticking point in Severin’s perfect plan. None of the house servants had ever seen him and Aure actually having sex, and the things they saw they could write it off as young curiousity of the body… the incestuous intercourse was a secret, since it was not so much that it was illegal but it was morally revolting. Severin never wanted the town to know that he was copulating with his sister, and Aure never wanted anyone to know either; it was understood that it would mean crucification for them both if anyone in the community ever found out how close they really were.

That was what led to the eventual downfall of the Moreaus.

“Shall I continue, sir?” I asked Mr. Desjardins.

“Yes, by all means, go on.” He replied.

So I went on: “Like I said earlier, no one ever thought Severin would possibly hurt Aure; he loved her that much…

&7&

Unfortunately, Severin found that he loved Aure too much, in fact. They had intercourse often, and for a long time, now that they had the house to themselves (by then I was more of a pincushion and an errand boy; even Aure barely noticed I existed), and inevitably Severin inpregnated his sister. She had become somewhat reclusive and had not had any boyfriends since she and her brother got more involved, but Severin knew that birthing a baby would mean calling Dr Michel, and that calling in a doctor, as well as a birth certificate meant that the public would know that he had fathered the child.

Severin sat down with me while Aure was in the kitchen preparing a meal, daintily humming to herself. We sat in the upstairs parlour, and Severin sat close to me on my right, his arm wrapped behind my back and around my left forearm. “Jules,” he began. “I can’t let it happen.” And for a split second, I froze.

When I tried to break free and stand up, Severin’s grip on my arm tightened so drastically that it made my head pound and my pulse speed up. He rested his other hand on my left cheek and stroked it with his thumb. “Sev, you can’t—don’t—God, not again, please.” I protested, in an already-weakened voice.

“I have to. I do love her, but I have to kill her.” His tone was pained, and I was dumbstruck. He hadn’t felt any remorse for killing his father; so suddenly he had developed emotions?

I stood my ground firmly, “I’m not going to help you. You can’t talk me into it again. You can’t threaten me into it. I’m probably next anyway…”

Severin let go of me and stood up briskly. “No. After everything I’ve done to you”—for a moment, I thought he was going to say something regretful; instead that old, malicious smirk frightened all the humanity out of his face—“why would I be subtle about killing you?”

With that he left me and went to help Aure make supper (this one he didn’t poison, yet). I didn’t bother coming down to eat; I was nourished as one is by rotten foods with dark thoughts about my own fate.

….

A week later, Severin took the little bottle of poison out of the chest he had put it away in, one that used to belong to the house servant Monet Lefèvre before Severin fired him. He mixed some of the liquid into Aure’s nightly cup of lemon tea, as well as about four ground sleeping pills. He didn’t want her to feel any pain, the way their father had suffered before he died. Aure drank the tea, despite its gritty consistency, and fell asleep quickly enough that she was asleep before she died. Severin sat up with her until she was asleep, and then until she breathed no more. In the morning he would dispose of the tea cup, then send me to fetch Dr Michel, and he would say that it was heart failure, and that it must run in the family.

There would be no autopsy on Aure Moreau, and she was interred next to her father, where Severin and I agreed she would want to be buried.

….

So there were only Royce, Coralie, and Severin Moreau left in the realm of the living; and then there was me, in the dark shadow of Severin, in the blood of his bloodless murders that was smeared to write the word GUILTY on the walls, floors, and ceilings everywhere I went.

&8&

Monsieur Desjardins gave me a look like I was insane when he finally peered up from his notepad. “I think maybe we’re done for today, Jules.” He said rushedly.

“But there are only three more deaths left in the story, sir,” I replied, kind of disheartenedly. Now I wanted to finish the story, and he wanted to get the hell away from me—wasn’t that a switch. “Please, just let me finish.”

The biographer looked into my eyes with his hazel ones, sighed defeatedly, and nodded. “Alright. So… what happened after that?”

“You mean Who dies next?… If you want the short answer first, it was Madame Moreau…

&9&

They gave up on Madame Moreau at the asylum long before her daughter was “found” and pronounced dead. As a matter of fact, she laid as a petrified corpse in her asylum bed for a week and a half before anyone there realised that she was dead. She had died mostly of starvation, but I think it mostly was grief. She had lost her husband, and she had lost herself; that had caused her to lose the rest of her family as well. Royce’s letters had stopped months ago, and she no longer had the energy to write, or to burn a candle over the back of an envelope. She had lost all will to live, and she had died a comparatively natural death.

Severin and Royce had to go to court to have their mother interred in the yard of the family maison. They eventually won out, and the three of us dug her grave and made up her epitaph; they pushed to make the asylum pay for the tombstone after we saw her medical records. Her epitaph was basically the same as her husband’s; Loving Mother of Three, Wife, Daughter, and Mistress; Coralie Marie Moreau. Severin hadn’t been able to muster the money to buy Aure a proper tombstone, and we simply had a cross of wood with her name painted on it to mark her grave. RIP Aure Remy Moreau.

….

After his mother’s funeral, Royce came back to live at home with his brother, his final living family member. But he was broken and lost without his mother; as much as Severin tried to guide him, Royce could not be recovered. He was only fourteen years old, and had lost over half of his family; he didn’t know how to handle it. And I knew it was all his brother’s fault, the one person he had left, and he was all Royce had left by his own doing.

&10&

I let my voice trail off here, and Burke didn’t even bother to look up at me this time. He asked, “So, how does Royce die?” After a moment or two of silence, he did eventually look up at me. He was curious, and again he wanted to know how the story ended.

….

I just shrugged and crossed my shins under my chair, making the chains clang absentmindedly. “He disappeared. He took his bike and rode away. We thought he had decided to try to bike to Paris; he had taken some money with him. But we never heard of him or saw him again. I was really upset about it; not only because I liked Royce—he was a good guy, never around much, not that I blame him—but because I knew I was next on the list…and I didn’t want to be.”

“Well, go on. Finish your story so we can send you back.” Burke said, waving his hand impatiently at me.

“Yes, sir. Well, there was an old gun in Elroy Moreau’s old bureau…

&11&

Severin dropped me hints the year I was twelve that it was about time for me to go. He was nineteen by then, and he wanted to get away from Tulles, but he didn’t want to have to tote me around forever. So that was the year we both agreed without saying that it was either him or me. We lived in a warped peace that was tense and full of hate but as tranquil as ice. But it ended on the eve of Severin’s twentieth birthday. He was chopping vegetables for our supper, and suddenly he took the butcher’s knife and told me it was over.

There was no use in pleading or trying to dissuade him; instead, I ran. He nicked my arm with the knife as I turned to run toward his father’s abandoned room, and having forgotten completely about the old revolver in the bureau, he stalked steadily with the knife in hand. “Come out and face me like a man, Jules.” He called, tauntingly. “You cornered yourself, so you might as well just let me get this over with.” A tone that hinted at insanity crept into his voice.

For a second I panicked, because I’d gone through the drawers in the bureau and found nothing. The door opened behind me, and I could feel the air bristle around me. I rummaged through the top drawer one more time, and touched the cold metal of the revolver.

Severin was almost within reach of me by the time I turned around. He was getting ready to swing as I was cocking the gun, praying to God and Jesus that the damn thing was loaded. I crossed myself in my mind and pressured the trigger.

For a second I thought the trigger wouldn’t give way, and even if it was loaded it wouldn’t fire. Just as Severin began the downward swoop of the knife that would have chopped right down the centre of my skull, the revolver fired and a bullet pierced Severin’s chest. He stumbled back, sputtering, blood pouring out of his mouth. He dropped the knife at my feet and held his bleeding wound.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, and cocked the gun and shot him straight in the head.

Then it was over.

….

When I went to town to get help, I was arrested for murder…

&12&

And here I am.” I sighed, lifting my hands emphatically from my lap to show my defeat. “That’s my story, Monsieur Desjardins. I’m ready to go now.”

Burke Desjardins the biographer called the armed policemen over to take me away, and they freed me of the leg cuffs and replaced the usual hand-manacles of a dangerous criminal.

….

My next destination is the executioner, and good riddance to me.

Jules Dashiell Lambert