A Sinister Symphony

This story contains sensitive content only by mentioning: Sexual assault, Abuse,

Child abuse, Suicide, Murder, Pornography

Golden chandeliers hung like imprisoned constellations, their light smothered by the stifling scent of pheasant, perfume and wax: intoxicating those lost in their own power.

The hall devoured time in golden mirrors, while crimson curtains hid gardens where flames licked the infernal.                                                                                                               

The Knight, the opera director, hosted monthly dinners, inviting guests chosen by his followers. When his followers changed, so did the guest list.

The guests, draped in golden and silver tones, velvet burgundy jackets, and silk gowns, radiated discord and tastelessness. Their gaudy jewelry shattered the hall’s mystery, while gloves and shoes concealed their secrets and stains.

And yet, the only person in perfect harmony was the unknown man among them. No one knew he was there uninvited—the man seemed eternally present. In black velvet, he exuded a silence that cut sharper than any command, his black diamond ring gleaming like an abyss.

He blended in effortlessly, his silence unnoticed amid the guests’ self-absorption. They all believed the Knight had invited him, while the Knight assumed he came as someone’s companion. And the mysterious guest’s introspection and his genuinely gentle smile convinced the Knight that he posed no threat. His presence hung in the air- silent, seamless, yet laced with an unease that clawed at the edge of perception.

They were all more than at ease. They felt protected.

The guests disrupted the refinement with loud voices and clumsy gestures. Women lounged, men spread their legs—gestures, from tooth-picking to hand-waving, painted a grotesque vision of their stature.

The mysterious man mused, "Do not cast pearls before swine." The guests would have laughed, oblivious to its meaning.

Their chatter wasn’t idle— they gathered to mock absent colleagues, the evening’s highlight. Certainly not the four miniature wonders on the menu. They didn’t understand delicacies; they only knew food for swallowing.

Conversation finally settled on one colleague. “Say something funny!” the Knight ordered the Young-Aged Gossiping Chorister. She grotesquely mimicked a soloist, provoking bursts of laughter—some snorting, others howling.

For the first time the guest spoke quietly, “I knew right away who you were talking about.”

In that moment, as if all the walls of glamour crumbled, the space shrank and grew stifling. The guests felt something intense, though they couldn’t explain it.

The uninvited guest continued softly, instilling a quiet dread in those unaccustomed to such kindness. “The soloist? The one you robbed of love and sanity- stealing her fiancé while branding her mad. And yet- you stayed married. Such artistry in cruelty.”

The room had grown colder. No one interrupted the guest, his manner was polite. The Young-Aged Gossiping Chorister stammered, “Excuse me…?” but the stranger reassured her with a smile. “There’s no need for fear. I remember the hope I had for humanity when you all conspired to declare that perfectly sane soloist mentally ill. Such unity is the only path to triumph.”

The guests fell silent. They all knew each other’s sins, but never spoke of them. The chorister murmured, “I… I didn’t… Please, don’t…”

The enigmatic figure smiled gently. “You have nothing to fear. Your love proves there are no rules in it—that everything is permitted.”

As spines stiffened and bodies leaned back, only the Psychopathic Prostitute Chorister spoke. Leaning forward, her sharp gaze seemed ready to strangle or shoot the guest with her frail arms, weakened by dieting. But her capabilities, fortunately or unfortunately, existed only in her imagination.

She glared and angrily addressed the mysterious figure: “Who asked you anything?”

The guest responded with a manly, charming smile. “Have I offended you? My apologies. Rest assured, you are impossible to overlook. Your passion for photography fascinates me.” She retreated involuntarily. “Your pornographic photographs—pure art.”

Confused but emotionless, like any psychopath, she asked, “Where did you get the right?”

He calmed her. “Don’t be ashamed—everyone here knows of them. Besides, you’re also a photographer, are you not? I’m curious—do you still keep your collection safe? Forty-six councilmen caught in flagrante in bed with you. You still use them, don’t you?”

Rain forcefully battered the windows, speeding the time.

The Psychopathic Prostitute Chorister cursed God, prompting the Smiling Little Chorister to rebuke her. The guest remarked, “About God, I agree.”

“Do not blaspheme!” the chorister shouted, to which the guest retorted, “Blaspheme? In front of you, who for years has been prostituting yourself to other men for mutual gain?”

The Little Chorister clenched his pearl-white teeth and slammed his hand on the table. “It’s Sunday!”

“Yes,” the guest agreed, almost joyfully. “And isn’t it beautiful that these dinners are always held on Sundays? Just this morning, as every Sunday, you attended liturgy with your wife and four children, and now you’re here. Yes, I blaspheme—but at least I know whom. You don’t.”

The Little Chorister jumped up, but the opera’s Leading Man intervened. “Silence. I decide here.” With all his might, he tore a napkin in half.

The rain grew so loud that the Leading Man had to raise his voice. The mysterious man didn’t have to—his words resonated through the hall.

“Here he is, our Opera’s Leading Man. The power is in your hands. I recall that soloist—you harassed her for a year because she sang better than you. When they found her on stage with her wrists slit, your applause was the loudest of your career. What a weak woman. Weakness has no place here. Bravo!”

Thunder roared, as if striking the Leading Man, who fell backward, pulling his chair down with him. He began muttering feverishly, “I hate… I hate… I hate…”

The guests leapt up; some hid under the table while the Geriatric Prima Donna and the Foreigner tried to steady the Leading Man.

The uninvited stranger remained unfazed, untouched by their chaos or the storm. In fact, he addressed them all chillingly calm:

“My dear ones, you disappoint me. I came here expecting winners among you, but you’ve let me down. Didn’t you stand firm behind your crimes? And look at you now. Stand up. Don’t lose your dignity.”

He encouraged them, but no one moved. The Knight’s fingers dug into the black walnut table, anchoring him against a rising tide of dread. The guest continued:

“Yet I must admit, it’s touching that you still care for one another. As I expected, the Foreigner, the soloist who has falsely claimed that she’s employed here for 17 years—when in reality, she sang in the chorus only a few times a decade ago—is now tending to her ex-husband, the Leading Man. It’s heartwarming. Then again, he probably deserves it, considering you forced him to impregnate you, calculating that he could get you hired if you bore his child.”

The Foreigner lifted her gaze to him, her lips pursed in an exaggerated pout, as if she’d just sucked a lemon. Barely holding back tears, though none appeared, she stammered, “That’s not true…”

“What exactly isn’t true, my dear? We all know each other’s sins. Didn’t you, for your ambition, drown your own child in a bathtub? And now you’re the Knight’s lover, a soloist, and soon, perhaps, the prima donna?”

The Foreigner shrieked and flung herself over the Leading Man like a Greek tragedy heroine, though grossly underestimating both the Greeks and tragedy itself.

“Come now,” the guest said, addressing her like a stern father. “You, in this entire hall, have the least to be ashamed of. You were born as you are—pure evil in all its majesty.”

The storm’s supernatural force flung the windows wide, rain slicing the silence like a blade. It wasn’t cleansing; it was drowning. The mirrors shattered, scattering shards that twisted their faces into grotesque echoes of their sins. Even the Knight rose and grabbed a burning candelabrum without knowing why.

The guest laughed, but it was not from joy—his laughter reverberated like a fracture in reality.

“Even you, Geriatric Prima Donna, haven’t surprised me. Didn’t you achieve the title of prima donna during your final performance before retirement, in the very last applause? Prima for two minutes. But you, with your chinchilla stole, helped the director obtain his title of Knight under equally dubious circumstances. ‘One hand washes the other.’ Your selfless aid deserves admiration.”

Wind knocked over bottles and glasses, spilling wine across the hall. The crimson wine bled into their silks, staining hands and faces like a judgment they couldn’t escape.

When the mysterious man saw them as they truly were, his laughter, a spellbinding trance, fracture the air. “The blood of Christ!” he gasped, wiping tears from his eyes.

The Spineless Artistic Director, drenched in Christ’s blood, collapsed to the floor, deliriously listing ailments:

“I’m unwell… My blood pressure is too high! No, it’s a heart attack! No, a stroke!” he screamed. “My spine! It hurts! I’ve broken it!”

Roaring with laughter, the guest tapped his fingers on the table, barely managing to say, “My dear, calm yourself. We all know the doctors discovered you don’t have a spine!”

The guest’s laughter grew even louder. “Only a man without a spine could condemn another to rot in prison by false accusations for daring to sing against him. I admire the lengths you went to in order to suppress rebellion! But truly, why else do you think the Knight keeps you in your position? Only a spineless man can bear the weight of someone else’s guilt.”

Finally, the Knight spoke, his voice authoritative, though the candle flames quivered with his breath.

“Damnation! How do you know all this? Who gave you this information?”

Suddenly, the storm stopped, and the mysterious man’s laughter ceased. The guests seemed to stop breathing altogether. Through the villa’s corridors, a deathly silence echoed long enough for them to question their sanity.

The stranger’s piercing black eyes fixed directly on the Knight.

“Demagoguery runs in your blood, Director.” His words carried the weight of a threat. “Where I get my information is irrelevant compared to whether what I know is true.”

The Knight’s hand trembled, but the guest continued in the same perilous tone. “And since all your guests know the truth, shall we finally discuss what they don’t know?”

Burning wax fell onto the Knight’s fingers, unnoticed. Yet the guests felt the same heat burning in their throats, stomachs, and minds.

The stranger let silence to torment them, staring at his black diamond ring as if it were Pandora’s box. The guests, trembling, focused on the ring as it held their fate, instinctively withdrew from one another, torn between fighting or fleeing. The ring terrified them, as if it alone could destroy them.

When the tension in the room reached its peak, the guest prepared to conclude his bloody spectacle.

“Tonight, your behavior has been disgraceful. No secret has yet been revealed, and already you’ve fallen to your knees. Committing a crime is weakness, but standing proudly by it—that is power. And you lack it. You’ve ruined my moment of surprise by succumbing to fear before anything has even occurred. I shall now settle for the cherry on top rather than the whole cake.”

The guests retreated into the shadows, twisted into grotesque poses, uncertain whether to attack or flee.

Without lifting his gaze from the ring, the guest spoke slowly, his voice indifferent. Yet the villa reverberated with his words, as if they were pre-recorded proclamations, his lips barely moving.

“What we know—we all know. But since we are so open and friendly tonight, why not know everything?”

He looked at them briefly, offering a chance to respond. They stood like grotesque statues in the center of chaos, so he continued—or rather, began.

“Does anyone, dear gossiper, know you broke the geriatric’s ribs because, during one performance, she stood before you?”

The geriatric, in a theatrical tone reminiscent of opera, clutching her heart in a plea for sympathy, cried out: “It’s true! That girl isn’t the sweet, quiet soul she pretends to be—she’s the devil himself! She threatened to break me again if I ever spoke of it. I didn’t leave my bed for three weeks!”

The crowd began inching toward the gossiper, hypnotized by what they had just learned. But the stranger stopped them.

“Ladies and gentlemen, isn’t it fascinating how none of you know what truly drives you? Ambition and fear.”

He paused, pointing toward the foreigner.

“Does anyone, other than you and the knight, know that you took the gossiper’s position as a soloist, one she waited 15 years to achieve? In one night. Or, rather, in one bed.”

The gossiper’s face contorted from innocent fear to demonic rage, and she screamed at the foreigner: “You damned whore! I knew it! Fifteen years of effort! You slut!”

She lunged toward her, but the stranger stopped her with a few calm words. “Please, save your outburst for later. Be so kind as to wait until I leave, which, I assure you, will be very soon.”

Hearing this, the entire crowd stirred. “He’s leaving...” they thought, though they could no longer decide if his departure was desirable or not.

The guests’ bodies slowly began converging toward each other like predators.

The uninvited guest continued with measured indifference, speaking only to inform:

“Secrets destroy. If you were confident in yourselves, you wouldn’t need them. But as it stands, you are all vulnerable and therefor susceptible to exposure and punishment. Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Your friend, the prostitute, blackmails the foreigner with lascivious photographs of a married councilman in bed with her soughting employment of him while still married to the leading man. Meanwhile, the leading man has been spying for the director on all of you for years now. But the geriatric, more cunning than all of you, has filed complaints against everyone here. It’s only a matter of time before they come for you.”

A mist, born from the rain, enveloped the hall as he exhaled with sweet regret. “Please don’t blame me. I didn’t turn you against each other. You did that all on your own.”

The guests, deformed by anger and pain, turned on each other—beasts in human form. The entire hall became a chorus of hellish whispers: “Monster... Whore... It’s over... Traitor... I’ll kill you...” as the mist spread eerily.

The uninvited guest poured a glass of exquisite wine, savoring its crimson clarity. He swirled the wine in his glass, inhaled its aroma, and watched his reflection smiled back at him as he took a single sip. He then motioned for the room to fall silent.

“Please, just a little more quiet. Only for a moment,” he requested. The guests, now subdued by his words, froze in silence. Their gazes, locked on each other, remained frozen as if anticipating another storm.

He savored the silence, allowing them to stew in their anger, the crimson wine on their clothes now indistinguishable from blood.

Relishing the sip, he smiled and said:

“Now, we’re left with only the smiling man and the great knight, the director.” He chuckled, his deep laughter echoing powerfully.

“Knight, while you were preoccupied with petty schemes, the little one became your successor. But what good is that to him now? The opera no longer exists. It’s gone.”

The tension in the room grew unbearable, the guests staring at the little man as if they were playing Russian roulette with a full loaded gun.

The elderly director clenched his fists, hissing through his teeth, “That little shit.”

“Come now, former director,” the guest interjected. “Why such anger when you know you won’t be there tomorrow anyway? Or did you believe your secret also wouldn’t be uncovered?” His laughter shook the ground beneath their feet.

The director began to strike his own head in a surreal frenzy, as though trying to force out some unbearable truth. The uninvited guest stood for the first time, his movements graceful and deliberate.

Standing tall in his flawless black velvet suit, with the serene confidence of someone beyond reproach, he addressed the former director one last time.

“I must ask you to maintain control over your mental disorder just for a few more minutes. After all, your outburst is entirely unnecessary, and you know it.”

The guests stared, unable to distinguish nightmare from reality.

“My dear friends,” he began, his tone almost joyous, “I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to enjoy one of your famed dinners—tonight, of all nights.”

The new director, with his usual smile now gone, asked in an authoritative tone, “Why tonight?”

Without a gesture or blink, the guest replied:

“Your opera is burning. Tonight, you serve as the Knight’s alibi. By morning, he would have been arrested for a “minor” bureaucratic oversight. He still will be, of course—but now it will be for something grander. The magnificence of setting the entire opera ablaze. Let the flames of the opera erase all you’ve done, leaving only the smoke of your so-called greatness.”

His fractured laughter sent the room into madness.

The former director dropped the candelabrum he had been clutching, its flame quickly catching the heavy crimson curtains. As the fire spread, the guests muttered feverishly, delirious:

“Who are you?... Who are you?... Who are you?...”

The guest’s laughter abruptly stopped as he said deadly serious: “It was never about who I am,” he said, his voice like the closing tomb. “The question is, who are you? You are now free.”

He bowed and turned his back as the chaos erupted behind him.

The beasts, drenched in wine that glistened like blood, tore into one another, unbound.

Walking into the perfect darkness, eerily serene with a terrifyingly smile, the mysterious guest listened to the sounds of chaos and agonized screams, as the villa, with its crimson curtains, was consumed in a blaze of scarlet smoke.