What He Owned

Short gothic horror

August, 2086

If you slip through the crowds of Cluny–La Sorbonne and chase the rats up the concrete steps to the unforgiving Parisian sun, you will find yourself on a great flat street where parched trees linger beneath yellow stone galleries. This is a secret place, starch collared men who still wear cufflinks roaming the thighs of their assistants in between the gluttonous defrauding of American victims. They can taste the stench of the desperate noveau riche, that cloying cologne and the coral shellac. Combien coûte cette peinture? White teeth. Californian Sweat. French Indifference. For you, monsieur, 80,000 euro. Relief. A nod, a wallet, a card. The prey accepts his place on the alter of class.

This ritual takes place, day after day in the Augustine burn of the Sorbonne streets, the bankers, the lawyers, the politicians and the trust fund children thrumming to find new faces to add meaning to their cold corporate existence. And the paintings watching on with anger, fear, or indifference as they trade their places in the hands of the wealthy. But this August was alive with the whispering of one newcomer to the walls of Sorbonne.

La Dame Aux Yeux Noirs

She hadn’t been on sale before, not once in fifty years. Some said she’d belonged to an Austrian baron who never let anyone…