Read the First Chapter
The Cabaret
Sunday evenings for Tellem and Gertrude had always followed a bloodless, predictable script. It was a routine carved into the fabric of their marriage: a bland dinner of dry meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and asparagus eaten in the heavy, flickering silence of the television screen. Gertrude sipped her tea, Tellem drank his coffee, and they ignored each other with the quiet efficiency of a couple who had long since run out of things to say.
But a strange, wild impulse had seized Tellem earlier that week—a sudden urge to fracture the monotony of their existence. Eager to break tradition, he had treated Gertrude to an evening out. No hours spent slaving behind a hot stove for her, no heavy dishes to wash, and no annoying cleanup when the meal was finished. Instead, Tellem was determined to see whether the whispers he’d overheard his colleagues exchanging at the office were true.
The sedan smelled faintly of old peppermint and upholstery cleaner—the comforting, stagnant scent of their life together. As the vehicle glided away from their suburban neighborhood, the familiar streetlamps gave way to the industrial, grey-walled edges of Mournside. It was a town built on old brick and forgotten manufacturing, a place where people lived quietly and died without making a fuss. For fifteen years, their world had been bounded by the supermarket, the church, and the insurance office where Tellem spent his days tracking risk assessments.
Risk. The word had a completely different meaning tonight. Tellem’s mind drifted back to Tuesday afternoon by the water cooler. He had been filling his paper cup when he heard Miller and Henderson from accounting laughing in low, conspiratorial tones. They had used words like transcendent, forbidden, and unmasked. They had spoken of a place where the rules of Mournside simply ceased to apply. Tellem had felt a sudden, hot flash of jealousy. Why did they get to have secrets? Why did their lives have color while his felt like a faded photograph left out in the sun?
Beside him, Gertrude’s fingers were white-knuckled around the strap of her canvas purse. The hum of the tires on the asphalt felt deafening in the absence of the television’s evening news broadcast.
“Tellem?” she said, her voice cutting through the dark cabin like a dull knife.
“Yes, Gerty?”
“Are you sure of the directions? It’s getting quite dark. We could always… well, the diner on 4th Street is open late. They have that lemon meringue pie you like.”
It was an exit ramp, an offering of safety. Tellem’s foot hovered over the brake pedal for a fraction of a second. The safety of the pie, the predictable ride home, the 10:00 PM bedtime—it pulled at him like gravity. But then he caught a glimpse of his own reflection in the rearview mirror, looking tired and graying at the temples.
“No,” Tellem said, surprising himself with the firmness in his tone. “We’re almost there. Let’s just see it through.”
Gertrude didn’t argue. She merely pulled her heavy knit cardigan tighter around her collarbone, staring out at the passing warehouses as if she were a political prisoner being transported to an unknown destination.
They were headed to a new venue called The Naughty Kitty Cabaret. Tonight, however, the silence inside their vehicle was entirely different. As Tellem navigated their modern, four-door sedan through the winding, nocturnal streets of Mournside, the air inside the cabin was thick with a weird, suffocating awkwardness. They were both noticeably, deeply nervous. They were stepping completely outside of their comfort zone to try something entirely new, and neither of them knew how to handle the sudden friction of it.
Every few minutes, a heavy, quiet tension would build until it was unbearable, forcing one of them to move. Tellem would shift his grip on the steering wheel, his eyes darting sideways to glance awkwardly at his wife. Sensing his gaze, Gertrude would turn her head from the passenger window to look back at him. What followed was a synchronized, recurring ritual of counterfeit comfort. They would give each other tight, strained smiles. These were not real smiles. Their lips flattened into polite, toothless grimaces that silently communicated: I am terrified, but I am going to go along with this anyway. They would hold that brittle mask for a fleeting second, nod stiffly, and then snap their eyes back forward, returning to the heavy quiet of the car.
When they finally arrived at the coordinates Tellem’s colleagues had spoken of, the venue itself offered a stark, physical manifestation of the boundary they were about to cross. The Cabaret did not boast a grand, towering marquee on the surface of the Mournside streets. Instead, it required a literal descent.
They stepped out of the car into the cool night air, instantly feeling exposed in their bizarre, outdated outfits. Standing before the entrance, they realized the venue was entirely subterranean—situated deep below surface level. To enter, they had to navigate a steep, narrow staircase that cut straight down into the concrete earth, leading away from the familiar streetlamps and the predictable world above. With every step the muffled, bass-heavy thumping of music vibrated through the stone beneath Gertrude’s blocky, sensible shoes. It felt as though they were willfully sinking into a hidden, secret underworld, leaving their sheltered reality behind on the sidewalk.
At the bottom of the descent, the heavy doors opened into a space suffocated by a dense, theatrical gloom.
Neither of them truly knew what a cabaret entailed, but the sheer, illicit excitement in his coworkers’ voices had been enough to tempt them out of their comfort zone. Dressed in their absolute Sunday best—outfits that usually belonged in a church pew—they stepped through the heavy, unassuming entrance and descended into a world that felt entirely designed for sin.
The air inside was thick, perfumed, and laced with a decadent kind of danger. It wasn’t a standard nightclub. Shifting, theatrical shadows stretched across rows of small, candlelit tables. Everywhere they looked, there was pristine, plush crimson velvet that seemed to absorb the low, rumbling chatter of the crowd. It was a den of luxury and unspoken desires—a complete shock to their senses, and a change that neither of them would ever be able to forget.
Tonight, Gertrude had hidden herself away in a high-necked, long-sleeved dress covered in a print of impossibly tiny, faded flowers. In her mind, she was dressed up for a rare night on the town, but anyone looking at her in these modern times would have mistaken her for a woman double her age. Gertrude was, beneath it all, an undeniable beauty, but she carried herself like a woman who wanted to be entirely invisible.
It looked as though she had literally stolen somebody’s grandparents’ old living room curtains and stitched them together. The fabric fully covered everything, culminating in a giant, modest bow that tied strictly at the hollow of her throat. It hung well past her knees, and to ensure not a single natural curve could be decoded by the outside world, she had draped a thick, heavy knit cardigan over her shoulders. On her feet were a pair of sensible, blocky, and aggressively ugly shoes—the kind of rigid, low-heeled oxfords a prudish schoolmistress might wear to march down an institutional hallway.
She wore her hair pulled back into a tight, severe bun at the crown of her head, and her face was heavily masked by a pair of massive, oversized glasses on a delicate chain, dangling like the spectacles of an old librarian. Her only concession to glamour was a pair of simple, tiny pearl earrings. She clutched a heavy canvas shoulder-strap purse tightly against her ribs, shrinking into herself, terrified of drawing a single stray eye.
A cocktail waitress clad in nothing but a sleek, asymmetrical black bodysuit and sheer mesh had guided them to a small, circular table near the perimeter of the room. The table was barely large enough for two glasses, forcing Tellem and Gertrude to sit close enough that their knees knocked together under the low velvet tablecloth.
Before the house lights dimmed, Gertrude risked a glance at the surrounding patrons. She had expected to see degenerates, criminals, or perhaps the lonely, desperate men from the rougher parts of town. Instead, the room was filled with a terrifyingly chic menagerie of Mournside’s hidden elite. To her left sat a woman in an impeccably tailored silk pantsuit, her fingers dripping with genuine diamonds, laughing softly as a younger man whispered into her ear. To her right, a group of artists or intellectuals in dark leather and sheer lace were drinking absinthe from delicate, silver spoons.
Everyone here seemed to know a secret that Gertrude had missed out on. They carried themselves with an effortless, predatory grace. They didn’t hide their bodies; they flaunted them.
A small candle in a ruby-red glass holder flickered between Tellem and Gertrude, casting long, dancing shadows across Tellem’s oversized 1980s gray lapels. He looked wildly out of place, like a time traveler who had miscalculated his coordinates by forty years. He reached for the menu, his eyes widening at the exotic names of the drinks. The Velvet Noose. The Serpent’s Kiss.
“Would you like a drink, Gerty?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“Just water, please,” she whispered, her eyes glued to a couple three tables over who were openly, passionately kissing without a care for who saw them. Her stomach did a strange, nervous flip. It wasn’t disgust she felt—it was a sudden, terrifying realization that she had spent her entire life hiding from the very air these people breathed.
Down at the table, Tellem was a striking match for his wife’s antiquated style, looking like he had raided a closet from a completely different decade. He had attempted a modern, stylish look, but the execution was pure retro nostalgia. He wore an unstructured suit reminiscent of something straight out of a popular eighties buddy-cop television drama—the kind of look the slick lead detectives used to rock back in the day, though Tellem lacked the flowing, feathered hair to pull it off. The fabric was a flat, aggressively ugly shade of 1980s gray. In true period fashion, he had the sleeves of the blazer bunched and rolled up his forearms. On his feet, he wore a pair of cream-colored loafers that featured a bizarre, basket-weave lattice work across the top—shoes that looked as if they were woven out of wicker or bamboo, an ugly-as-sin choice for a night out.
Yet, Tellem had truly tried. He had slicked his hair back with a generous amount of styling mousse, donned a thin silver chain that caught the low candlelight, and wore a sleek digital fitness tracker watch on his wrist, its dark screen occasionally blinking to life against the retro fabric of his rolled sleeve.
At first, as the house lights dimmed, Tellem sat incredibly rigid. His heart hammered against his gray lapels, his nerves completely frayed by the alien, hyper-charged atmosphere of the venue. Neither he nor Gertrude had ever experienced anything like this; it was their very first exposure to the raw, uninhibited world of a nightlife den.
The space around them was suffocated by a heavy, theatrical gloom. It was a non-smoking establishment, yet the air hung thick and cloud-like, heavy with a dense, rolling fog that poured from the edges of the stage. The heavy mist didn’t just drift; it moved with a deliberate, undulating life of its own, swirling around the low tables and rising to cloud the visibility of the room. It created a profound sense of Gothic obscurity. As the various acts performed under the shifting lights, the fog left everything to interpretation. The patrons could see pieces of the display—a flashing limb, a dramatic silhouette—but the rest was cloaked in shifting vapors, forcing the imagination to fill in the gaps of what was truly happening on stage. It was beautiful, disorienting, and heavy with a decadent kind of danger.
Then, a beautiful woman stepped into the center of the spotlight, instantly captivating the room. The fog had dissipated, as if it knew better than to compete with the beautiful performer. She was a vision that completely blinded them to the rest of the evening. Her skin was a flawless, striking brown, as rich and smooth as dark chocolate beneath the electric glare. She wore a sequined black dress that sparked violently every time the light caught the fabric, and a royal purple feather boa was draped elegantly around her neck. Atop her head sat a stunning, low-rimmed glamour hat. There was no veil over her face; instead, the deep, wide brim cast a heavy, dramatic shadow over her features. Yet, cut straight through that darkness were her eyes—a vibrant, piercing kelly green. They were hypnotic, mesmerizing, and impossibly bright against the shade of her hat, leaving the crowd completely unable to tell exactly where her gaze was landing.
When she began to speak, her voice was pure silk, delivering heavy, sultry love poetry that drifted over the audience. She directed her words toward the couple as well as everyone else, casting a hypnotic spell over the room. Tellem sat frozen, caught in a state of breathless indecision, not knowing whether he should look away or keep staring as she ruled the stage.
Slowly, deliberately, the performer began to slide a chair across the wooden floorboards of the stage. The audience watched, spellbound, none of them knowing what the chair was truly for. She lowered herself into the chair with unhurried grace. The spoken cadence of her poem melted into a haunting melody.
But it was all an act of misdirection. As the song progressed, the performer began to actively work the audience, stepping down into the floor space. To Gertrude’s absolute, paralyzing surprise, the woman glided straight to their table. Before Gertrude could even gasp, the royal purple feather boa was wrapped securely around her shoulders.
Suddenly, Gertrude was the one being tugged gently toward the stage. The entire room erupted into applause, the sound roaring against the velvet walls. Beside her, Tellem didn’t pull her back; instead, he accepted her purse, as he offered her a look of subtle encouragement and nodded his head towards the stage.
Finding a hidden spark of daring inside her chest, Gertrude allowed herself to be pulled up into the spotlight.
The moment her feet hit the stage, the atmosphere swelled into something intoxicating. The stage lights brightened, shifting from a moody, deep violet to a piercing, electric glow that matched the sudden, roaring excitement of the room. The crowd erupted into a chaotic symphony of whistles, hollers, and booming applause, and Gertrude felt the sheer volume of it vibrate right through the soles of her shoes.
The performer guided her toward the center of the stage, pressing her gently down into the chair. At first, Gertrude’s cheeks bloomed with heat. Her head dropped at once, her gaze settling on her folded hands in her lap. She sat rigid, acutely aware of the texture of the seat beneath her—it was a soft, lavishly cushioned crimson velvet.
Without ever raising her voice, the performer drew the room inward. Every note seemed quieter than the last, forcing the audience to lean in rather than pull away. As the intense, mesmerizing weight of the performance focused entirely on her, Gertrude’s body began to betray her. A sudden, terrifying spike of heat pooled deep within her, and her initial, panicky instinct was a rush of pure, prudish worry. She found herself terrified that she was going to ruin the expensive velvet, nervously wondering if she was going to leave a visible stain through her Sunday best. But as the performance deepened, the sheer exhilaration of the room washed over her, and she stopped caring. With that final, absurd barrier shattered, she simply let herself go.
The ebony performer was the embodiment of style and grace as she twirled and danced about Gertrude, removing Gertrude’s attire one article at time. First the oversized glasses then the cardigan. When the performer’s fingers first brushed against her cheek to remove her oversized librarian glasses, Gertrude’s vision blurred, stripping the room of its sharp edges. Without her lenses, the audience became a vast, undulating sea of darkness and shifting candlelight. She was entirely isolated with this magnificent creature of contrast.
When the cardigan was slipped from her shoulders, it felt as though a layer of armor had been stripped away. For decades, Gertrude had used clothing as a shield against judgment, against desire, against life itself. She had worn garments meant to apologize for her existence. But as the cool air of the theater hit her bare arms, followed immediately by the radiating warmth of the performer’s body, a decades-old dam broke inside her. A dizzying kiss to the lips immediately followed as Gertrude’s bun was loosened into cascading brunette waves about her shoulders. When the brunette waves of her hair fell around her shoulders, Gertrude felt a surge of vanity so sharp it made her gasp. She was beautiful. She was being worshipped. And the most intoxicating part of it all was that Tellem was watching her finally become real.
Another twirl from the performer and a reassuring hand sliding up Gertrude’s arm, encouraging her continued compliance. Another twirl, a shimmy then Gertrude’s dress was whisked in one swell swoosh over her head. The crowd roared the performer bent to give another steadying kiss. Gertrude was being laid bare. Her pale body trembled with excitement as the crowd cheered with encouragement, Tellem being the loudest of them all.
Feed the Muse
Your generous support helps keep the Crown Archives open and makes stories like this possible.