Baguette Rhymes with Dead || ONC 2024 | ✔

Chapter 11: La Santé 2023

Out of everything that fucked me up that night, how much time we lost after the prison affair probably messed with my head the most.

It took half an hour to get from La Santé to the Place de la Bastille. Half an hour to powerwalk through streets hoping to God I wouldn't get lost, half an hour to sit in a subway car twiddling my thumbs and willing the vehicle to go faster, half an hour to be a bundle of nerves sending anxious glances every which way. Students of Abelard's, if they were still looking for us, sought two young men running around the city together rather than one solo traveller, but paranoia still gripped me well until I'd reached Paris' famous revolutionary square unharmed.

Ten minutes to fight my way through the crowd gathered there and pull Omar away from the cup of hot chocolate he'd been enjoying with some fellow protesters. Ten minutes to relay all that had happened to him, a tale that wouldn't come out as coherently as I wanted, and convince him to make good on his mission to ensure ethical treatment of the living. Ten minutes for him to find himself a megaphone and let his followers know there'd be a slight change in the programme this year, that the march would continue on its way to La Santé Prison.

An hour to lead a small army of dead pro-life protesters to Uncle Dick's humble abode.

My feet hurt as I marched next to Omar, the chaos of the whole night starting to take its toll; I hadn't gotten a wink of sleep since the previous morning, my body hadn't gotten this much exercise since the previous year, and I was more stressed now than I had been for the toughest of my Leaving Cert exams. Still, even through the jumbled mess of heightened emotions, I was able to marvel at what was happening, as did the necropolis' ghosts: curious ones joined from all sides as our procession, deviating from its annual path, filtered through their streets. All of it made me feel oddly powerful.

"It's so hard to believe Madame Heloise and her husband would come for your lives like this." Omar hadn't doubted my honesty, but he struggled to wrap his head around Heloise's 360 degree-turn regardless. "For them to threaten your lives... I never knew either of them all that well, but I think it would come as a surprise to most who dwell here. Those two are quite well-loved."

That had become apparent to me fast enough. Except Béatrice, most of the ghosts here had been remarkably positive in their attitudes to Brilliant Professor Abelard and Equally Brilliant Madame Heloise. Anger bloomed in my chest, anger for what Luc and I endured, anger for the fate of poor Gilbert Perrault. The more I thought about it, the more jaded I became. These people didn't deserve the good reputations they enjoyed.

"Must be an act, all of it. They're smart, excellent manipulators, ruthless. All markers for villainy in stories." I scoffed. "They're evil, simple as that."

"Nothing's ever simple." Omar stared into the distance, at La Santé looming ahead. "Abelard and Heloise should be held accountable for what they've facilitated with Gilbert and what they're trying to do to you now. But they've been dead for over eight hundred years. More than two hundred of those years, they've spent in this necropolis, and they've been good to those within. People don't maintain acts for that long." He paused. "But they do grow desperate after so much time. And desperation makes people do things they never would've done otherwise."

He was right—I realised that much when I contemplated his words in silence. None of what Abelard and Heloise had been through excused their attempting to steal lives, but I could see where they were coming from if I tried. I'd just preferred, for a moment, to forget, all so I could loathe them freely.

"I guess they were already here long before either of us was even born," I admitted. "Long before Gilbert was born, too."

Omar nodded. "Yes. But don't get me wrong: I do think Abelard and Heloise need someone to knock serious sense into those genius brains of theirs. Their plans for you are unacceptable."