Halloween “Tropes” Honorable Mention
Although deformed and misshapen since birth, it wasn’t as if Hubert had a beak for a nose, or glittering reptile scales. Still, people recoiled, little mercy in their eyes. When not an object to be scorned, the best he could hope for was to be merely something laughed at.
The tumult of the Paris streets had changed with the beginning of the insurrection. The reign of privilege and Royalism was being struck down to maximum effect. Because Hubert was slow and hunchbacked, sanctuary existed only by the grace of his benefactor, and as long as he was in this safe if squalid refuge, he didn’t care how long the chaos and destruction and the cries of Vive la France continued. He was happy for both employment and the opportunity this period in France’s history provided.
He had witnessed executions from the back edges of the roaring crowds. Too near the entertainment might be cause to offer him up as an undesirable, fit to be shuffled towards the executioner. His job was to receive corpses for burial. Hanged bodies exhibited purple faces and protruding tongues, no dignity left to them, but severed heads were spared such unnaturalness. The males were no more than stilled husks of clay to be prepared and dispatched quickly, but he did not think of the female victims in the same manner. Rather, they were silent companions to which he now had access. And there was something specific to the female corpses that he possessed a fondness for; the dainty feet with their miraculous toes as vulnerable as robins’ eggs that provided enticement. He could not have approached living women given his beastly appearance, but with the rampant imprisonments and hasty trials, those once fine ladies who might have tossed him a coin now stood atop a gallows or kneeled at the altar of a guillotine. Now, before their eventual transfer to eternal unmarked graves, many were brought to him providing heretofore unimaginable access to his fetish.
A nice specimen had arrived on this particular day—a woman whose bare feet had seldom touched ground, one whose fancy jeweled slippers had been replaced by rough-hewn cloth slip-ons for the final hours of her life. Hubert’s eyes grew large with anticipation when he slipped off the foot covers to inspect the pampered flesh on the wrong side of current politics.
There was something everyone had missed, the gendarmes, the jailor, even the executioner who held title to all clothing and jewelry found on men and women put to death—a band of silver around the second toe of the right foot. Hubert’s loins stirred as he twisted the ring and slowly removed it. There was little to do except consider it a keepsake from a contributor he would only know through the well-tended feet upon which she once stood.
Hubert was about to place his mouth over the toes when the door of the hovel banged opened. The man who was both benefactor and employer entered the room. The two men were comically mismatched. Though diminutive in stature, Hubert was wary of this man, especially when he made unscheduled appearances. It was not through sympathy that he had given Hubert an occupation, but rather because the new government provided a stipend for businessmen who handled such undesirable tasks as disposing of the dead.
Hubert stepped away from the body on the wooden slab and bowed slightly. With a profile as sharp as a hatchet, the man took inventory, his rodent-like eyes glittered like the black beads of a stuffed toy and burned into Hubert’s large ones. “What have you there?”
Hubert reluctantly held out the hand that wore the ring.
“Are you stealing from the dead, Hubert? Give that to me.”
Hubert removed the find from his finger and placed it in the other man’s palm.
“What else have you taken,” the man demanded, contempt dripping from his voice.
“Nothing, Sir. Nothing at all.”
“You know I can replace you easily enough. I’ve given you this opportunity out of the goodness of my heart and you repay me by taking my property.” The ring disappeared inside his coat pocket. “I’m bringing someone else in tomorrow. You may teach them what must be done, then find yourself some other way to keep yourself from the streets.”
“Begging your pardon, Monsieur, but I’m happy here and am good at what I do.”
The man snorted scornfully. “A trained monkey could accomplish these tasks. Now that I know you to be a thief, my decision seems well-founded. I’ve provided for you long enough.” His tone was without remorse. “Continue to prepare bodies that are delivered until I return. Is that understood?”
“Oui,” Hubert mumbled and hung his head shamefully. Agony sliced through him like a scythe with the realization he was soon to be deprived of both shelter and his passion, his very well-being capriciously threatened.
Hubert’s employer looked at him as if he were an insect caught crawling across his dinner plate. Anguish overtook Hubert as the man turned for the doorway. A knot of despair twisted inside him. He could not let this happen. This place had become his kingdom. The bodies were his subjects. Hubert’s wariness turned from desolation, to anger, to action in less than a heartbeat. The thud of the man’s boots made the pulse in Hubert’s temples throb. Self-preservation overtook him. He picked up an iron rod used to position corpses in a wagon and approached his tormentor. Hubert swung the instrument at the back of the man’s head with all his might.
Swackk!
His employer yowled from the impact like a child who had been pinched, but he did not fall. His hand flew to the injured side of his head. Blood leaked between his fingers. As he staggered unsteadily toward the door, Hubert struck another blow against the curve of the man’s skull, harder this time.
Whack!
The man fell to his knees as if in prayer, crumpled from the second blow. A furious grunt rose from somewhere deep within him.
Some men are hard to kill, encouraging a third swing.
Crack!
The victim toppled sideways onto the floor, the weapon following him down, lodged in his skull. The tip of the iron rod had caught on brains and bone. Hubert had difficulty extracting the weapon, but this man could no longer threaten to take away his raison-d’etre.
Hubert wrapped a cloth rag around the man’s bloody head, then lifted the fresh deadweight over his shoulder. He dropped the body on a second wooden slab. He was breathing hard and his hump was aching worse than ever, but he must act quickly.
A sharp axe stood near the wood stove. Hubert’s treasonous act would not be complete until he committed this final defilement. His former employer’s head tilted back and his dead eyes stared accusingly at the dingy ceiling.
Hubert raised the axe as high as he was able and brought it down on the man’s neck, severing his head with one chop. It wasn’t nearly the clean cut the guillotine’s Republican Window would have provided, but good enough for the burial wagon.
***
He then wrapped the cadaver in the customary burlap long-cloth and secured the bundle with knotted rope at chest and ankles with the head inside like he’d done dozens of times. He planned to load the body onto the next wagon to arrive just as if his late employer was but one more victim of the revolution.
Hubert had enough intelligence to realize he’d killed the hand that fed him. Remorse slipped into his mind as he remembered another unwise indiscretion. Once he’d been taken in by the church, but had been cast out when a nun had awakened to find him at the foot of her bed gently fondling her toes. The look of revulsion on her face that made him feel less than human was a great burden to bear. He thought of the cloistered order of women every time he heard the clang of an iron bell calling the faithful to worship. Sadly, there was no longer anywhere for him but this place.
Eventually, men in fancy red, white, and blue uniforms with the word Liberté embroidered on a patch would come and take him away, as resolute as the nuns. There would be no liberty for him, or mercy. He had cracked open the skull of a merchant who served the cause. Though no one would understand, he would rather be taken to the gallows himself than be parted from the lovely feet he worshipped so.
There would be but a few precious days before his employer would be missed. He could at least make the best of it. The feet of the most recent female arrival still rested uncovered at the foot of the other slab. The sight of them smoothed the turbulent waters of Hubert’s fears. He returned to the cadaver and performed his ritual of covetous delight.
***
With his procedure complete, Hubert unlocked his private chest for a final indulgence because, more than likely, he would be making his own trip to the gallows or up thirteen steps in due time. The chest’s lid creaked open to reveal his collection—sets of half-feet severed at the point where they flatten out above the ball of the foot. They sat in three rows on the floor of the chest, just enough of the feet taken to go unnoticed inside the heavy material tied around the entire corpse for communal burial.
Now satiated from his ritual with the latest pair, Hubert gently laid them in the chest next to others. He pondered an alternative of escaping from justice—laying open his wrists with the same instrument that had severed his treasures from the lifeless females. That would leave two dead men for the authorities to find. Could he bring himself to abandon the contents of his chest to unsympathetic hands? He shuttered at the thought, but such matters could be contemplated after…
His ears attuned to a rustling sound. His eye caught movement as a rat skittered along the earthen floor and disappeared into the crevice of a dank wall. Things that live in dark corners were part of Hubert’s world, insects and vermin waiting to conduct their business around the conveniences of humans. Perhaps he should leave his precious box open for the rodent and his friends to get what nourishment the chest’s contents could provide. He couldn’t allow the authorities to toss his treasures into a bag to be delivered to a pig stall or onto a bonfire. The chest filled with women’s delicate digits were his legacy.
A better idea came to Hubert, a profound idea whereby he would not lose his inventory. He picked up one pair of the Asian woman’s toes. He made a gurgling sound that passed for a chuckle, the laughter of the damned. “Come, my little friends,” he said to the vermin lurking in dark places. “You’ve wanted access to my chest all along, so come and feast with me.”
The toes he admired had turned greenish-blue and were decaying rapidly. Hubert took hold of its dainty nails and pulled each one out of the rotting flesh. Then he began to nibble. His existence was as good as done, his future having little more space than that between his thick neck and the raised blade, time for few indulgences. So indulge he would until they came for him. He wiggled the toes on his left foot and admired the band he had taken first from its owner then from the pocket of the would-be usurper, now displayed on his own pinky toe.
Perhaps the authorities would not find it when they came. Perhaps he could wear it for eternity in the pit where his body, with or without its head, would be covered in quicklime, a place where the earth would lie over the bones of strangers, hopefully near the women who had given him so much.
Published 10/30/25