Pink Top City Shorts: The Gorilla Hunt of 1956

Pink Top City Shorts: The Gorilla Hunt of 1956

September 5th, 1956

The humid, mist-choked air of the Moonspine Chasm clung to the dense canopy of the Federal Republic of Bukiriro like a sodden blanket. The vintage, olive-drab Land Rover groaned in low gear, its leaf springs complaining with every jagged volcanic rock and slick root it crawled over.

Behind the heavy wooden steering wheel sat Gaston Beaumont. At forty-nine, he commanded the churning vehicle with effortless, calculated authority. Even amidst the jungle’s unrelenting, sweat-drenched heat, his khaki drill safari jacket remained immaculate, his silk cravat neatly tucked beneath his collar, and an unlit briar pipe clamped firmly between his teeth. Atop his thick, white waves sat a pristine, khaki-wrapped pith helmet, tilted just enough to shield his sharp eyes from the shafts of high-noon sun piercing the foliage.

Beside him in the passenger seat sat his thirteen-year-old son, Narcisse.

Narcisse was his father in miniature, dressed in a mirror-image ensemble: a tailored safari jacket with pleated bellow pockets, crisp trousers tucked into stout cordovan leather boots, and a pith helmet perched evenly over his wild crest of white hair. Round spectacles sat perched on the bridge of the boy’s patrician nose, reflecting the shifting patterns of the equatorial green beyond the windscreen.

Resting upright between Narcisse’s knees was an exquisite piece of gunsmithing—a custom double-barreled .470 Nitro Express rifle, its walnut stock hand-checkered and its blued sidelock action gleaming beneath a fine sheen of protective gun oil. Gaston carried its identical twin secured in the scabbard bracket fixed beside the driver’s bench.

In the open rear bench sat Kigozi, their local Mukiriro tracker. Kigozi’s eyes were narrowed against the foliage whipping past the canvas awning. He held only a machete and a weathered ash walking stave, his gaze fixed not on the winding mud path, but on the shredded stalks of wild celery and crushed beddings of fern that lined the volcanic ridgelines.

Gaston brought the Rover to a halt beneath the sprawling shelter of a fig tree draped in hanging vines. He pulled the handbrake until it clattered sharp and true, cutting the engine. The sudden silence was vast, filled instantly by the drone of cicadas, the distant, hollow drum of a hornbill, and the steady drip of condensation falling from broad, waxy leaves.

Gastron: “We have reached the high boundary, Narcisse.”

He said, his voice a smooth, low baritone, indifferent to the wilderness. He reached out and adjusted the lapel of his son’s jacket with a firm, paternal brush.

Gaston: “Today, you enter your thirteenth year. Most children in Argentville or Clerteaux are handed silver watches or leather-bound folios. But a Beaumont must understand authority before he understands luxury. One does not truly rule men until one has learned to face raw, unyielding nature and break its will.”

Narcisse adjusted his glasses with his left index finger, a composed, nascent smirk tracing his lips.

Narcisse: “And an ape of the high mountains does not negotiate, father.”

Gaston: “Precisely.”

He said with a slow nod of approval.

Gaston: “It only submits. Come.”

They descended from the vehicle. Narcisse shouldered the ten-pound weight of the .470 Nitro Express without a hint of complaint, though the sheer mass of the heavy double rifle was a formidable burden for a thirteen-year-old boy. He broke the action open smoothly and checked the breech. Two thumb-sized, brass-cased cartridges—massive 500-grain solid nickel-jacketed rounds designed to stop a charging bull elephant—sat snug in the chambers. Satisfied, he snapped the barrels shut with a sharp, mechanical clack.

Kigozi slipped ahead without a word, stepping onto a game trail slick with red mud. Gaston and Narcisse followed in deliberate cadence, their pith helmets bobbing beneath the tangle of low-hanging lianas and strangler figs. The air grew thinner and cooler as they climbed into the bamboo thickets of Bukiriro’s Virunga slopes.

For two grueling hours, Kigozi led them deeper into the mist. He stopped periodically, stooping to press two fingers into a fresh knuckle-print stamped deep in the volcanic loam, or to test the snapped fibers of wild banana stalks. Eventually, the tracker froze, sinking low onto his haunches. He pointed a trembling, cautious finger through a dense curtain of bamboo.

Gaston placed a steady hand on Narcisse’s shoulder, guiding him forward with absolute quiet.

There, forty yards away in a small sunlit clearing carpeted in moss and wild celery, sat a family troop. And at the center of it, towering over the females and juveniles, was a massive silverback.

The great ape was immense—a barrel-chested titan easily exceeding four hundred pounds, his back frosted in shimmering platinum fur. The beast was idly stripping bamboo shoots with fingers as thick as mallets, its leathery, jet-black brow creased in primal sovereignty. The sheer musculature of its shoulders rippled with every breath, radiating an indifferent, terrifying power.

Gaston: “Look at him.”

He murmured directly into Narcisse’s ear, his breath warm against the boy's pith helmet.

Gaston: “He believes this forest belongs to him because he is the strongest brute within it. He does not know what iron and intellect are. Raise your gun.”

Narcisse stepped forward into the humid clearing. The young boy did not tremble. His heart hammered in his chest, not from fear, but from a budding, intoxicating realization of dominance. He planted his boots in the slick loam and brought the twin barrels of the .470 Nitro Express up to his shoulder. The bead sight settled dead center on the silverback’s broad, muscular chest.

The metallic snick of Narcisse slipping the rifle’s tang safety catch forward cut cleanly through the clearing.

Instantly, the silverback’s head snapped toward them. Deep amber eyes, ancient and territorial, locked onto the small boy in khaki. The ape let out a guttural, rolling roar that resonated like thunder in Narcisse’s sternum, rising onto its hind legs to beat its cavernous chest with hollow, drum-like strikes. The jungle erupted into screaming juveniles and scattering females.

The silverback dropped to all fours and charged, tearing through the bamboo stalks as if they were dry straw, closing the distance with terrifying velocity.

Beside him, Gaston did not raise his own rifle. He stood motionless, his pipe still clenched in his teeth, his hand resting calmly on his hip. He was testing the boy.

Narcisse drew a measured breath through his nose. His grip tightened on the forend. He waited until the rampaging beast crossed the twenty-yard mark, feeling the ground tremble beneath the creature's immense stride.

Crack-BOOM!

The right barrel detonated with a deafening, concussive roar that rolled across Bukiriro’s mist-shrouded valleys. The tremendous recoil drove Narcisse back a full step, his heel digging deep into the red soil to arrest his momentum, but his shoulder absorbed the brutal kick with stubborn rigidity.

The 500-grain solid slug struck the silverback squarely in the center of its mass, arresting its forward momentum in an explosion of torn bamboo and leaf-litter. The monstrous beast pitched sideways, sliding to a halt in the dirt just fifteen yards from where the boy stood. It let out one shuddering, shallow rattle before the volcanic jungle fell entirely silent once more.

Blue-gray cordite smoke drifted from the muzzle of Narcisse’s rifle, curling lazily past the brim of his pith helmet.

Narcisse did not lower the rifle immediately. With practiced composure, he thumbed the top lever, broke the barrels open, and watched the smoking, spent brass cartridge eject cleanly over his shoulder into the fern bushes, clicking another heavy round from his belt into the open chamber before snapping it shut.

Gaston walked up beside his son, looking down at the fallen giant of the mountain, then over to the boy. A rare, genuine smile touched the corner of Gaston's mouth—pride mixed with the chilling recognition of his own bloodline.

Gaston: “Clean.”

He said softly, reaching down to tap the side of Narcisse’s pith helmet.

Gaston: “No hesitation. No panic.”

Narcisse looked up at his father.

Narcisse: “It was an easy shot, Father.”

He said, resting the heavy double rifle casually across the crook of his arm as the mist began to roll back over the clearing.

Narcisse: “He never stood a chance.”

The lingering echo of Narcisse’s concussive shot had barely dissipated into the mountain hollows when the wall of green exploded to their flank.

No warning bark, no theatrical chest-beating. From the tangled thicket of wild bamboo and nettles, a massive female gorilla—broad-shouldered, scarred across her muzzle, and driven by the frenzied instinct to avenge the fallen troop leader—erupted like a living battering ram. Black fur bristled in the damp mist, and her yellowed canines were bared in a silent, savage snarl of pure fury.

Kigozi: “Monsieur, attention!”

He shouted from the perimeter, his voice cracking as he scrambled back against an ancient mahogany trunk.

Gaston reacted with the razor reflexes of an experienced marksman, wheeling around on his heel, his heavy boots biting deep into the volcanic mud. He swung the twin barrels of his .470 Nitro Express toward the charging beast, his thumb sweeping hard against the tang safety. But the jungle offered no clean line of sight; a dense whip of ironwood saplings caught his rifle’s muzzle just as the ape closed the remaining yards.

Before Gaston could clear the obstruction or press the forward trigger, the female slammed into him with the terrifying, kinetic force of two hundred and fifty pounds of compressed muscle.

The impact knocked the breath from Gaston’s lungs in a sharp hiss. His pristine pith helmet tore from his head and tumbled into the trampled fern bedding, exposing his silver waves to the equatorial drizzle. The momentum drove him backward into the slick moss, the ape’s monstrous weight pinning his chest. Gaston’s hand locked instinctively around the creature's thick, leathery throat, his forearm straining to keep those gnashing, mallet-sized jaws away from his neck.

In the violent tangle of limbs and wet dirt, the heavy double rifle was ripped clean from Gaston’s grip. The polished walnut stock skittered across the wet roots, plunging off the lip of a steep, muddy ravine where it clattered harmlessly into the dark underbrush fifteen feet below, entirely out of reach.

Kigozi: “Gaston!”

He raised his machete, knuckles white, but hesitated—the two bodies thrashed too wildly, black fur and torn khaki fabric rolling together in the churned red loam.

Gaston gritted his teeth as the female’s calloused knuckles slammed down on his shoulder, tearing open the tailored pleated pocket and scattering loose brass cartridges into the dirt. Yet, even pinned beneath the mountain ape’s primal fury, Gaston did not cry out. His piercing gaze cut through the rain and mud, locking dead onto his son.

Twenty paces away, Narcisse watched in horror.

Narcisse: “FATHER!!”

He screamed and raised his .470 Nitro Express, settling the cold walnut comb firmly against his cheek. With ambidextrous ease, he adjusted his balance on the slick ridge, leading his aim just an inch ahead of the female’s broad, muscular shoulder blade to ensure the massive 500-grain slug would bypass his father entirely.

Narcisse took a shallow breath, holding the air suspended in his chest. In that fractured heartbeat, Gaston twisted his torso with a final, violent surge of leverage, wrenching his shoulder clear of the ape’s chest and pinning her head momentarily against a mossy root.

BOOM!

The left barrel of the .470 Nitro Express erupted in an ear-splitting clap of thunder. A blinding spear of muzzle flash lit the dim, green twilight of the canopy, casting long, sharp shadows across the clearing. The immense, concussive pressure wave tore the ferns flat and sent a shower of wet loam down into the ravine.

The heavy 500-grain solid slug struck the female ape with devastating precision, driving straight through the apex of her left shoulder and instantly destroying her thoracic cavity. The sheer kinetic shock of the express rifle arrested her frantic thrashing mid-breath. She went utterly limp, collapsing sideways away from Gaston into the red mud with a heavy, wet thud.

Silence descended upon the Virunga slopes once more, thick and suffocating, punctuated only by the sizzle of raindrops landing on the rifle's hot steel barrels. A cloud of acrid, gray-white cordite smoke billowed around Narcisse’s pith helmet, curling up into the damp vines above.

Narcisse held his stance for a beat, cheek pressed lightly against the checkered walnut stock. Slowly, he lowered the weapon.

Gaston pushed the ape’s dead weight aside with an arm slick with volcanic mud and rain. He rose, dusting crushed fern leaves from his torn, mud-streaked jacket. For a long moment, the older man said nothing. He reached down, picked up his fallen pith helmet from the ferns, knocked the damp soil from its brim, and settled it back on his head.

Then, Gaston stepped forward, his boots squelching in the churned ground, and stood directly before his thirteen-year-old son.

Narcisse smoothly cracked the rifle’s top lever, letting the spent brass hull spit backward over his shoulder into the foliage with an effortless flick of his wrist. He looked up at his father, his white hair peeking out from beneath his helmet.

Gaston placed a heavy, calloused hand on Narcisse’s shoulder, gripping it with a firm, resounding pride.

Gaston: “A masterstroke, Narcisse.”

He said, his low baritone steady and resonant.

Gaston: “Not a trace of hesitation in your hand. Most men twice your age would have flinched, panicked, and put that round through my ribs.”

Narcisse: “A Beaumont never misses his targets.”

He replied smoothly, clicking a fresh round into the open breech and snapping the barrels shut with a decisive ring. Gaston let out a short, dry chuckle, pulled his briar pipe from his breast pocket, and tapped the stem against his son’s shoulder patch.

Gaston: “No. No, we certainly do not. Happy thirteenth birthday, my boy.”

Gaston unclipped a leather field bag from his side and produced an ornate, metal-bodied folding camera. He wiped a stray smear of red loam from the brass dial with the edge of his silk cravat and handed the apparatus to Kigozi, who was still catching his breath against the broad trunk of the mahogany tree.

Gaston: “Kigozi.”

He commanded, his tone effortlessly aristocratic, as if issuing an order from the head of a banquet table.

Gaston: “The light through the canopy is fading. Stand twenty paces back, frame us from the waist up, and ensure both specimens are clearly in the foreground.”

The tracker nodded quickly, adjusting the heavy camera with cautious, respectful hands.

Gaston gestured toward the clearing. Together, they arranged the fallen silverback and the female across the crushed bed of wild celery and volcanic ferns. The two great mountain apes lay side by side, their immense, broad frames framing the foreground like fallen sentinels of the Bukiriro mist.

Gaston stepped into position directly behind the silverback. Despite the mud splattered along his trouser cuffs and the torn stitch on his jacket pocket, he carried himself with towering composure. He tilted his pith helmet back slightly, rested one arm calmly across his son’s shoulder, and clamped the unlit briar pipe between his teeth, letting a razor-sharp, patrician smile touch the corners of his mouth.

Beside him, young Narcisse took his place behind the female he had dropped. The boy stood upright, his pith helmet straight and pristine, round spectacles catching the silver glare of the equatorial sky. He rested the twin steel barrels of the heavy .470 Nitro Express diagonally across his arm, fingers poised naturally along the walnut stock. His expression mirrored his father’s—cool, triumphant, and brimming with unshakeable pride.

Gaston: “Chin up, Narcisse.”

He murmured, his hand gripping the boy’s shoulder.

Gaston: “Let everyone in Argentville see that the Beaumonts conquer whatever wilderness they step into.”

Narcisse’s smile broadened.

Narcisse: “Of course, Father.’

Kigozi: “Hold still, Monsieur.”

He called out, centering the twin sights through the glass viewfinder.

A sharp, mechanical click echoed over the damp ridge, sealing the thirteen-year-old’s bloody rite of passage into Beaumont family history.

The faint, mechanical whir of the camera shutter winding down was the only sound breaking the mountain stillness. While Gaston turned his attention to Kigozi to inspect the camera’s film advance, Narcisse stepped away from the trophy arrangement. His boots made almost no sound on the spongy carpet of moss as he drifted toward the edge of the bamboo thicket.

A soft rustle high up in the dense foliage caught his ear.

Parting a curtain of wild lianas with the twin blued barrels of his .470 Nitro Express, Narcisse peered into the shadows of an ancient fig tree. There, clinging tightly to the broad, moss-covered bark twenty yards away, were two baby gorillas.

Their fur was fluffy, jet-black, and damp from the equatorial drizzle. Their wide, amber-brown eyes were locked onto the clearing below, blinking in silent bewilderment at the motionless bodies of the silverback and the female. One of the infants, smaller than the other, buried its face into its sibling’s chest, its tiny, leather-palmed hands clutching handfuls of dark hair. The larger infant let out a soft, plaintive whimper—a hollow, questioning sound that barely carried over the canopy’s steady drip.

Narcisse did not raise his rifle. He did not call out to his father, nor did his finger stray toward the heavy double triggers.

Instead, the thirteen-year-old tilted his pith helmet back by a fraction, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He leaned his shoulder lightly against a lichen-encrusted trunk and watched them.

He watched the frantic, trembling clutch of their tiny fingers, the instinctive way the older infant placed itself between its sibling and the clearing, and the sheer vulnerability of creatures stripped of their protectors in a single, concussive instant.

The infant ape peeked out from behind the bark, catching the boy’s unwavering stare. For a long moment, the two species held each other’s gaze across the misty divide—the wild, trembling remnant of the mountain troop and the impeccably tailored heir of the Beaumont fortune.

Gaston: “Narcisse.”

He called out from behind, brisk and commanding.

Gaston: “Pierre will be waiting with the tea crate at the base camp, and the light is turning. Let Kigozi secure the Land Rover.”

Without a word, he turned smoothly on his heel, resting the heavy rifle in the crook of his arm, and walked back toward his father without looking back once.

Gaston tapped the cold bowl of his briar pipe against his palm, watching Kigozi retrieve the heavy field ropes from the back of the Land Rover. He gestured toward the two fallen apes with the stem of his pipe, his voice crisp and decisive.

Gaston: “We take both heads and the forearms.”

He instructed, his tone brisk and entirely routine.

Gaston: “The silverback goes above the mantel in the grand study at Clerteaux. The female will be mounted for the gallery wing. See to it that the cuts are clean, Kigozi; I will not have shoddy taxidermy spoiling the display.”

Kigozi bowed his head slightly, murmuring an acknowledgment before kneeling into the churned loam to draw his skinning knife.

Gaston turned toward the vehicle, casually adjusting the cravat tucked into his mud-splattered lapels. He let out a low, satisfied chuckle and rested a heavy hand on the Land Rover’s hood.

Gaston: “A fine narrative for the salon when we return. The boy takes down his first brute on his thirteenth birthday, and when the mate ambushes the line, the old man steps in to break her charge and drop her cold before she can tear the camp apart. Splendid symmetry. A Beaumont patriarch defending the legacy.”

Narcisse paused.

His boots remained rooted to the volcanic ground, behind his father. The checkered walnut stock of the .470 Nitro Express hung in his left hand, heavy and balanced, the cold blued steel still holding the faint tang of spent cordite.

Under the shade of his pith helmet, the young boy did not blink. His green eyes narrowed to sharp, icy points.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t stomp his feet or cry out in teenage outrage. Openly complaining was common, undignified, and entirely un-Beaumont. Instead, Narcisse silently seethed. A caustic, bitter heat flared behind his ribs, sharp as battery acid. He had made that shot. He had held his ground while the great beast pinned Gaston into the mud. He had calculated the trajectory, spared his father’s life by half a foot, and shattered the beast’s spine without a tremor in his hands.

Now, with a casual wave of a briar pipe, he quietly pocketed his triumph, tucking it into Gaston’s pocket alongside the spent brass and the camera film.

Narcisse’s gloved fingers tightened on the rifle’s grip until the leather groaned in protest. His jaw clamped shut, a small, rigid knot jumping at the corner of his cheek. He watched the back of his father’s head—that identical crop of wavy silver hair framed beneath the matching pith helmet—and realized, with absolute and venomous clarity, that in Gaston’s world, there was only ever room for one master.

Gaston: “Narcisse.”

He called, not bothering to look back as he climbed onto the Rover’s running board.

Gaston: “Stow your gun. Pierre’s tea won’t stay hot forever.”

Narcisse held his breath for two slow beats, letting the white-hot resentment settle into a quiet, frozen reservoir deep within his chest.

Narcisse: “Right behind you, Father.”

His voice was entirely smooth, pleasant, and completely devoid of warmth.

~

The wrought-iron gates of the Beaumont estate swung open with a heavy, oiled glide, parting the mist that clung to the manicured lawns of Clerteaux. The long, crushed-gravel driveway crunched rhythmically beneath the tires of the dark saloon car Gaston had commandeered upon their return from the docks.

The dust of Bukiriro had been washed away, replaced by the cool, gray refinement of home, but the silence inside the cabin remained suffocating.

Gaston drove with one hand resting casually on the wheel, humming a faint, airy tune from the Argentville opera. He seemed invigorated, expansive, bathed in the afterglow of an expedition that would soon be the talk of every high-society parlor in the city. The leather cases holding their custom .470 Nitro Express rifles lay flat in the boot, alongside the sealed crates bearing the salted trophies destined for the taxidermist.

Gaston: “A magnificent passage, was it not?”

He remarked, glancing sideways as the mansion’s great stone facade loomed into view. Its tall, arched windows reflected the fading afternoon light like cold mirrors.

Gaston: “The head of that female will command the northern wall of the gallery. A true testament to decisive nerve under pressure.”

In the passenger seat, Narcisse did not answer.

He was unusually, chillingly quiet. He sat ramrod straight, his hands folded neatly over his lap, the tailored wool of his traveling coat spotless. His glasses caught the glare of the gravel drive, completely concealing his eyes behind two blank discs of glass.

Normally, Narcisse was eager to dissect every nuance of an excursion—debating ballistics, evaluating the terrain, matching his father’s sharp intellect point for point with that precocious, cutting wit. But since the mountain clearing, since the shutter had clicked and Gaston had rewritten the ledger of the kill, the boy had retreated behind an impenetrable wall of reserve.

Gaston brought the car to a smooth halt before the sweeping limestone steps of the portico. He cut the engine, resting his forearms against the steering wheel, and turned to study his son.

Gaston: “You have barely offered three words since we boarded the steamer, Narcisse.”

He said, his tone hovering between amused patronization and mild critique.

Gaston: “Brooding does not suit a gentleman of thirteen. A hunter savors his victory; he does not sulk like a reprimanded clerk.”

Narcisse slowly turned his head. His gaze was flat, entirely devoid of the warmth or eager admiration he had carried into Bukiriro just days prior.

Narcisse: “I am merely reflecting, Father.”

He said. His voice was smooth, measured, and quiet, every syllable clipped with immaculate precision.

Gaston: “Reflecting on what?”

He asked with a low chuckle, reaching out to give Narcisse’s shoulder a firm, patronizing pat.

Narcisse: “On the nature of credit…”

He replied softly, his lips barely parting.

Narcisse: “And how easily history is written by whoever holds the floor.”

Gaston laughed—a sharp, dismissive bark that echoed off the stone entryway.

Gaston: “That, my boy, is the most valuable lesson of all. Power is not merely in the taking; it is in the telling.”

The mansion’s front doors opened, and Armand appeared at the top of the terrace steps, a silver tray tucked under his arm, ready to take their coats and travel cases.

Narcisse did not smile. He turned the brass latch and stepped onto the gravel, his cold silence following him like a shadow into the grand Beaumont halls.

Emmeline Beaumont stepped out onto the marble-floored entryway.

Dressed in an elegant, high-collared gown of deep emerald silk, a string of pearls gleamed at her throat, catching the amber light cast by the entryway’s towering crystal chandelier.

Emmeline: “Gaston. Narcisse.”

He said, her voice smooth and refined as she descended a couple of steps to meet them. She kissed her husband on the cheek, then lowered her gaze to her son. She looked at him with concern.

Emmeline: “Is everything okay, Narcisse?”

She asked. Narcisse nodded slightly, glaring at his father.

Gaston: “He’s fine.”

He replied with an expansive sweep of his hand, pulling off his leather driving gloves and handing them to Armand, who stood waiting in the wings.

Gaston: “A triumph across the board. The gallery will have two magnificent additions by the end of next month. Narcisse acquitted himself admirably.”

Narcisse merely inclined his head in a quiet, courtly bow toward his mother, his lips set in a tight, unreadable line.

Emmeline’s gaze lingered on Narcisse for a second longer, noting his unnatural silence and the guarded chill in his eyes, but she quickly turned her focus back to her husband. Her brow knit together in a subtle, fleeting expression of concern.

Emmeline: “I am pleased to hear it, Gaston.”

She said, lowering her voice slightly as she stepped closer to him in the grand foyer.

Emmeline: “Though you will have to delay your recounting of the expedition. Dr. Fontane is waiting for you in the sitting room.”

Gaston paused mid-stride, his brows raising.

Gaston: “Dr. Fontane? On a Tuesday afternoon? What could the good doctor possibly need that couldn’t wait until our standard appointment?”

Emmeline: “He arrived nearly an hour ago, unannounced.”

She answered quietly.

Emmeline: “He insisted on speaking with you immediately upon your arrival. He said it was a matter of some urgency regarding the family’s latest medical files.”

Gaston exchanged a brief, curious glance with Emmeline, then straightened his cravat with a dismissive flick of his fingers.

Gaston: “Very well. Let us see what has agitated the old man.”

He turned his head toward his son, flashing that confident, dominant smirk.

Gaston: “Go upstairs and wash the road from your hands, Narcisse. We will resume our discussion at dinner.”

Narcisse remained motionless at the base of the grand mahogany staircase, watching his father stride toward the corridor leading to the sitting room. His eyes narrowed, sharp and calculating, as he listened to the quiet rustle of silk and the ominous murmur of Dr. Fontane’s muffled voice waiting just beyond the heavy timber doors.

Narcisse did not ascend the grand staircase.

The moment his mother moved toward the back parlor to instruct the kitchen staff, he melted into the shadowed corridor of the west wing. His shoes, light and deliberate, made no squeak against the heavy Persian runners. Slipping past a towering grandfather clock whose steady pendulum masked his presence, Narcisse positioned himself in the alcove beside the blue sitting room’s carved walnut double doors.

The door was latched, but the heavy brass escutcheon plate around the keyhole was just wide enough to let voices bleed into the hallway.

Inside, the atmosphere was dense with tension. Narcisse could hear the clink of a decanter against crystal as Gaston poured himself a measure of brandy, followed by the dry, nervous throat-clearing of Dr. Fontane.

Gaston: “Sit down, Dr. Fontane.”

His voice carried through the timber, smooth, dismissive, and tinged with impatience.

Gaston: “You look as though someone has died. What has happened that couldn’t be committed to a discreet letter?"

Dr. Fontane: “Gaston, please... lower your voice.”

He replied, his tone strained, frayed at the edges.

Dr. Fontane: “I came in person because this is not a matter for stationery or couriers. If word of this reached beyond these walls before you were informed, the consequences for the Beaumont name would be catastrophic.”

A pause. The muffled strike of Gaston’s match as he lit his briar pipe.

Gaston: “Cease the theatrical preamble. What is it?”

Dr. Fontane: “It is Charlotte.”

He said, each word heavy and hesitant.

Outside the door, Narcisse stiffened. His fingers lightly grazed the paneling.

Dr. Fontane: “She came to my practice two days ago.”

He continued in a hushed, urgent murmur.

Dr. Fontane: “Complaining of persistent morning nausea, fatigue, faintness during her morning studies. Her governess thought it was anemia or the change of season. She hasn’t been practicing her ballet. I performed a thorough examination, Gaston. Twice. To be beyond any shadow of a doubt.”

Gaston: “And?”

His tone dropped its pleasant veneer, sharpening into something icy and dangerous.

Gaston: “An ulcer? A fever?”

Dr. Fontane: “She is with child, Gaston.”

The words fell like lead into the room.

A profound, suffocating silence followed. Narcisse, holding his breath in the alcove, could hear only the faint, ominous crackle of tobacco burning in his father’s pipe.

Gaston: “Repeat that.”

He said, his baritone dropping to a venomous whisper that carried an edge far sharper than the crack of a rifle.

Dr. Fontane: “Charlotte is pregnant.”

He said, his voice trembling slightly under the weight of the patriarch’s fury.

Dr. Fontane: “Roughly seven to eight weeks along. There is no error. I kept the file locked in my private safe, but Gaston... she is sixteen. In our circles, this kind of scandal—”

There was a smash.

The crystal glass shattered against the hearth inside the sitting room, the sharp snap of breaking glass ringing out cleanly through the heavy wood.

In the hallway, Narcisse’s eyes widened, the initial shock flaring through him like lightning before his cold, calculating mind swallowed it.

A slow, chilling smirk formed at the corner of Narcisse’s mouth. The lingering resentment from Bukiriro—the stolen glory, the casual arrogance of his father taking credit for the kill—crystallized into something sharper. For the first time in his life, Narcisse realized that the towering, infallible Gaston Beaumont had just walked into an ambush he couldn’t simply shoot his way out of.

The silence after the crystal tumbler shattered was heavy, thick with the sharp tang of spilled brandy and sulfur.

Inside the blue sitting room, Gaston’s shoes ground a shard of glass into the floorboards with a slow, deliberate crunch. Narcisse, his ear pressed to the brass plate, heard Dr. Fontane’s rapid, shallow breathing against his father’s steady, terrifying calm.

Gaston: “Who?”

His voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried the weight of an iron vise.

Dr. Fontane: “She refused to give a name.”

He stammered, his chair scraping back an inch as if attempting to put distance between himself and the patriarch.

Dr. Fontane: “She sat in my examination room in total silence, Gaston. Staring at the floor.”

Gaston: “She doesn’t have the luxury of being unyielding in my house.”

He said coldly and low.

He began to pace, the measured thud of his heels tracing a short line before the hearth.

Gaston: “A pregnancy. An illegitimate disgrace tied to the Beaumont crest. Clerteaux would tear us to pieces before the month is out. The alliances, the board seats, the dowry negotiations—shattered for the fleeting indiscretion of an idiot child. I want her to wed someone of my choosing to give me my prince! Honorine and Gustave Trémaux have a son: Victor. I was going to arrange for them to wed when she turned eighteen!”

Dr. Fontane: “Gaston, we must be discreet, but we must also be careful.”

He urged, trying to steady his voice.

Dr. Fontane: “There are discreet sanitariums in the south, or across the border in Belleroche. A quiet retreat for six months under the guise of nervous exhaustion or lung trouble. The infant can be placed anonymously into an orphanage abroad, and Charlotte can return—”

Gaston: “A six-month absence is an open confession to the vultures of this city.”

He interrupted, his tone cutting through the doctor’s suggestion like a scalpel.

Gaston: “The parlor harpies would smell it in a fortnight. Rumors do not require proof to destroy a family, Fontane.”

A pause stretched out. Narcisse heard the soft click as Gaston set his unlit pipe down on the mahogany desk.

Gaston: “You will terminate it.”

He commanded flatly. Dr. Fontane let out a sharp, choked breath.

Dr. Fontane: “Gaston... no. Absolutely not. The law—”

Gaston: “The law answers to capital and discretion, both of which I possess in abundance.”

Dr. Fontane: “It is not merely the law!”

His voice cracked, bordering on panic.

Dr. Fontane: “It is a surgical procedure fraught with mortal risk, especially outside of a sanitized clinic! Hemorrhage, sepsis, permanent barrenness... or worse. If something went wrong beneath my hands in this house, my license, my freedom—”

Gaston: “Then you will perform it with the precision I pay you for.”

He said, the veneer of aristocratic gentility peeling away to reveal pure, unadulterated ruthlessness.

Gaston: “You will bring your instruments here tomorrow night. Armand will admit you through the garden entrance. No records. No ledger entries. No nurses. You will purge this problem before the week ends, Dr. Fontane, or I will ensure your comfortable little practice ceases to exist by morning.”

A heavy, suffocating quiet settled over the room. After a few agonizing seconds, Dr. Fontane gave a trembling, defeated sigh.

Dr. Fontane: “Tomorrow night.”

He whispered, broken.

Gaston: “Have yourself composed when you arrive.”

In the dim corridor outside, Narcisse slowly pulled back from the timber door.

His heart thumped with a steady, rhythmic pulse beneath his tailored wool coat. He adjusted his glasses.

Narcisse turned and drifted silently toward the grand staircase, stepping light as a ghost. His lips curved into a faint, dark smirk. The mountain expedition had shown him that Gaston viewed all things—monstrous beasts, trackers, and his own blood—as pieces to be rearranged or eliminated for the sake of the Beaumont myth.

~

The autumn rain beat a relentless, muffled tattoo against the stained-glass windows of the manor’s west corridor. Midnight had settled over Clerteaux like cold iron.

Narcisse sat on the velvet-cushioned bench in the shadowy alcove outside the third-floor guest suite. In his hands rested an unread leather-bound volume of “Faire un voyage intérieur,” but his gaze remained fixed on the narrow sliver of yellow light spilling from beneath the locked door.

Behind that door, the sounds were muffled, clinical, and awful.

The low, trembling murmur of Dr. Fontane’s voice; the harsh, muffled stifling of Charlotte’s gasps into a linen pillow; the faint, hollow clink of surgical steel against an enamel basin.

Narcisse’s face was utterly numb.

He didn’t flinch at the groans that seeped through the heavy oak. The sheer brutality of the Beaumont household was not a revelation to him. Gaston eradicated whatever threatened his order, whether it was a charging ape or a scandal swelling beneath his daughter’s ribs.

Staring at the brass door handle, Narcisse’s mind drifted back two months. July 24th. Charlotte’s lavish sweet-sixteen gala on the estate grounds.

Grease-stained hands. A cheap cigarette tucked behind a bruised ear. He thought he could slink onto Beaumont grounds, peddling his pathetic, polished brass compass like a common thief offering scraps to a queen.

He watched Julien from the shadows—a parasite. A filthy, worthless street rat encroaching upon sacred territory, whispering sweet, meaningless drivel into Charlotte’s ear while she played at rebellion.

And when Julien thought he had slipped away—when he fancied himself clever enough to escape the perimeter—he learned what happens to things that think they belong where they do not. The hunt is not merely a sport for the wild; it is a cleansing. And he was the easiest target I ever cleared from the path, Narcisse thought.

~

The heavy oak door groaned open, spilling a sickening wash of stale medicinal vapor, carbolic acid, and the faint, coppery scent of blood into the dim hallway.

Dr. Fontane emerged like a condemned man stepping off a gallows. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows, his starched linen cuffs limp and soiled with pale pink rinses of water. His face was ash-gray, beaded with cold sweat that ran into his graying mustache. In his trembling, spotted hands, he clutched a leather physician’s bag, hastily buckled shut.

Gaston stood dead center in the corridor, arms folded behind his back, an unlit briar pipe resting between his fingers. He hadn’t moved an inch during the entire ordeal.

Dr. Fontane: “It is... finished.”

He whispered, his voice cracking into a ragged wheeze. He could barely bring himself to look Gaston in the eyes.

Dr. Fontane: “You instructed her to wear a power-suppressing collar. It’s in its beta stage. She has suffered a considerable loss of blood, but the hemorrhage has been arrested. She will require absolute bed rest for three weeks. Tincture of laudanum every six hours for the pain, and broth only. Gaston... by all that is sacred, do not let her exert herself. One tear in the uterine wall and she will bleed out before dawn.”

Gaston merely inclined his chin, cold and unyielding as a marble monument.

Gaston: “Armand will see you to the garden gate. Your fee has already been deposited into your private account in Lémanville. Double the agreed sum. You were never here, Dr. Fontane. A bout of acute influenza. Nothing more.”

The doctor swallowed hard, nodded weakly, and hurried down the corridor with hurried, shuffling steps, disappearing into the shadows of the grand staircase.

Through the ajar door behind them, the room’s stifled sounds finally broke into the open.

Charlotte lay curled on her side in the center of the massive, four-poster canopy bed. Her frame was small, swallowed entirely by the pink velvet drapes and tangled, sweat-drenched sheets.

Her white hair clung in wet, tangled ribbons to her fever-pale temples and shoulders. She was trembling violently, her knees drawn up toward her stomach in a desperate, defensive knot. Her eyes were bloodshot, swimming in a relentless flood of tears.

She was sobbing. It was not a loud, theatrical wail, but a broken, hollow weep that came from the deepest marrow of her bones—a sound of utter, agonizing ruin. Her knuckles were white as she clutched the damp linen pillow against her chest, as if trying to hold together something irrevocably shattered.

Gaston stepped across the threshold and looked down at his daughter.

Gaston: “Control yourself, Charlotte.”

He said, his baritone quiet, smooth, and devoid of pity.

Gaston: “The disgrace is handled. The family ledger is balanced.”

Gaston stepped closer, untying his cravat and unsnapping his buttons.

Gaston: “How could you do this to me, Charlotte? I fully expected this from Narcisse, but never you. You’re perfect.”

He said as he caressed her leg.

Gaston: “You’re my ice princess, and you will give me my prince with the man I choose. We discussed this. Gustave and Honorine Trémaux are people of our class, and they have a son named Victor. You and him will give me my prince!”

He rasped and rose, unbuckling his belt.

~

From his seat in the shadowed alcove, Narcisse slowly adjusted his glasses. His green eyes watched the solid oak door where his sister’s muffled sobs, his father’s moans, and the thumps and mattress squealing still bled through the wood. His face remained an impenetrable, numb mask, absorbing every detail, every tremor, and locking it away in the cold vault of his mind.