Contributor: Craig Podmore
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After walking the isolated, rural country road I finally come across an idyllic cottage. I spray my perfume, all over my neck, my wrists and my exposed cleavage. I knock on the door. A male dwarf answers; he thoroughly scans my legs, all the way up, past my thighs to my breasts and then finally my face. Not a word is muttered as I enter the cottage. Inside there’s a fire and two naked women, both wearing amputated pigs’ snouts that crudely deform their pretty faces. The perfume stings my skin as the salt of my sweat reacts. The heat is immense.
I have no recollection of getting here...
“Welcome, welcome! My beautiful flower is here.” The director greets me with his absurd sentiment.
“Do you have the key?” He asks. An overwhelming confusion envelops me.
“A key? I’m sorry…I…”
“Don’t worry, princess…” He claps, smiling intensely, almost unnervingly. The dwarf man claps too but the two naked women stand with a haunting stoicism. The fire is nearly as big as the room itself; it’s a blue and green flame and not a normal colour.
“This is Grieg, he’s the cameraman for the shoot.” Grieg, an obvious man of sleaze, his grin stretches to a disturbing point, his neck has burn marks – “it’s just a love bite, don’t worry about it.” They both laugh; as Grieg knew I was staring at his inflamed scars. The feeling of inadequacy is unbearable; I could not comfort nor contain myself at all. The dwarf approaches me with a disturbing grimace: “is your cunt wet yet?”
I look at the director and he just continues to laugh but suddenly stops, almost robotic-like, he takes a knife out of his pocket, I drop my handbag, Grieg starts shooting, the director starts to smile again with a more inhuman jest, he penetrates the knife into himself, such screams, such woe, such pain as he slices the knife up from his abdomen to the top of his chest, he stretches the wound open, blood spits onto my make-up and expensive lipstick, I quickly look at the two naked women and still they stand inanimately, the dwarf however is dead on the floor, headless; his head smoulders in the fire, the director’s self-autopsy is at a near completion as his ribs, sinew, guts and bone exhibit explicitly in front of me, shockingly still, in the darkness of his very flesh, something moves, something alive comes forward, it has a face, I cover my mouth as vomit protrudes slowly, I recognise the face, it is my father's.
I wake up in the back of a limo as if an electric shock had passed through me. A slight disorientation, a profound irritation overcomes me, a complication of realisation relating to whether I just witnessed the unnerving events that I had experienced back in that ghastly cabin. I notice a glass of champagne, half full, lipstick-smeared glass (my colour); my head is pounding, my mouth unbelievably dry and my vision doubles as one tries to look at things close up. The limo stops. The driver announces my arrival, he gets out of the car and walks round to the door on my side, he opens it with a gentlemanly charm, I did expect an abundance of flash photography bruising the corneas of my eyes, instead, the welcome is of a pure silence. A figure waits in the doorway of a funeral home, it is my mother; I notice that her dress is soaking in blood, so thorough that the cotton of the dress has solidified. The blood derives from her left breast, where her heart resides. She does not greet me with exuberance but with a haunting calm, she mumbles apologies to me with an illustrated torture that resounds throughout my soul and skin. Again, I sweat; my perfume no longer lingers of sweetness but something more death-like. I look back to see if the limo was still there but it has disappeared without a trace, I didn’t hear the engine at all for my mother’s apologies. I look back towards my mother and no longer does she stand in the doorway. I walk into the funeral home, a thick blackness swarms the inside and I hear constant whispers inviting me into the building, I’m somewhat apprehensive but some unconscious notion drives me to walk inside.
A spotlight hits me from a beyond no soul knew existed. It blinds me, I put my hand up to see if I can gain a vision for anything ahead of me but all I can make out is a catwalk-like stage. From within the dark, I start to her voice resonating, steadily progressing louder and chanting my name:
“Anna, Anna, Anna…”
Such a disturbing engagement, I step back due to trepidation and fear until a soft light appears at the end of the stage. A young girl playing with her skipping rope, she does not seem of this age, the delicate pigtail hair and the rich, floral dress flows as she jumps, her movements postponed somewhat, as if she’s in a slower motion than our dimension of actual time. She seems so real and so…familiar. I start to walk towards her in a steady speed and the voices still carry on chanting my name. As I begin to walk, a dead rose is thrown in front of me. I step forward furthermore and to my horror, a human kidney is thrown before me, I shake and stumble in a catharsis so profound. No longer do I want to look back, no longer do I want to see forward. Although, the young girl continues to skip and play in her own little heaven ahead, I pull myself together and step over the grotesque organ. More steps I take and blood starts to flicker onto my face, I vomit onto the stage with such violence. The chanting abruptly stops, I look unto the darkness, nothing to be seen but the glare of the spotlight, again I stand straight and look ahead. The girl still skips. Voices appear again although this time, it is a choir of incoherent ululations, it makes me look around in an erratic fashion and never before have I witnessed such madness. I walk, faster now, towards the girl, more intestines, hearts, bones, fragments of brain, amputated genitals, prosthetic limbs, dildos, pictures of murder victims that I could recognise, my pace growing and growing and more macabre offerings land in my path.
Finally I approach the girl, she stops skipping, with her back to me she slowly turns around and faces me only to reveal that she is a younger me, she smiles and then places her index finger before her lips; ‘shhhh…’ She disappears, I am frantic as I begin to shout for her, the invisible beings within the cold dark start to laugh and applaud such a delusion.
“Anna. Turn around my sweet petal.”
The deep voice bellows from behind my back, the familiar voice cuts me in two. I fear that it is my father. I turn with an immense apprehension; my guts turn into a sour grave, as it is indeed my father. I nearly fall onto my behind as he stands with a newborn baby girl in his arms along with a revolver pointing to her skull in his right hand. She screams, the poor girl, such hullaballoo, I can’t look him in the eyes; the dark voids of his homicidal menace haunt me.
“The fact that she isn’t screaming because of the sight of the gun but because of something more mundane, like hunger or flatulence, it illustrates to me how stupid we all are, without the wisdom of the elders we’re nothing but flesh…existing.”
He pulls the trigger; the blast, the rapid fire, it’s burning chamber smokes as the innocent’s blood exits the frame of its little head. The audience is revealed; every single person is me, an exact mirror of, laughing and pointing at me, photographers jump onto the stage, the bulbs flashing like machine guns, Polaroid pictures of my bloodied face hit the floor amidst the confetti of flesh and sinew, the blood of me, newborn, stains my eyelids, forehead and cheeks, I feel a gnawing coming from the genital area, a subtle pinch, I guide my hands between my legs and I nervously feel a residue. My fingers reveal specks of menstruation, now I can see…
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After walking the isolated, rural country road I finally come across an idyllic cottage. I spray my perfume, all over my neck, my wrists and my exposed cleavage. I knock on the door. A male dwarf answers; he thoroughly scans my legs, all the way up, past my thighs to my breasts and then finally my face. Not a word is muttered as I enter the cottage. Inside there’s a fire and two naked women, both wearing amputated pigs’ snouts that crudely deform their pretty faces. The perfume stings my skin as the salt of my sweat reacts. The heat is immense.
I have no recollection of getting here...
“Welcome, welcome! My beautiful flower is here.” The director greets me with his absurd sentiment.
“Do you have the key?” He asks. An overwhelming confusion envelops me.
“A key? I’m sorry…I…”
“Don’t worry, princess…” He claps, smiling intensely, almost unnervingly. The dwarf man claps too but the two naked women stand with a haunting stoicism. The fire is nearly as big as the room itself; it’s a blue and green flame and not a normal colour.
“This is Grieg, he’s the cameraman for the shoot.” Grieg, an obvious man of sleaze, his grin stretches to a disturbing point, his neck has burn marks – “it’s just a love bite, don’t worry about it.” They both laugh; as Grieg knew I was staring at his inflamed scars. The feeling of inadequacy is unbearable; I could not comfort nor contain myself at all. The dwarf approaches me with a disturbing grimace: “is your cunt wet yet?”
I look at the director and he just continues to laugh but suddenly stops, almost robotic-like, he takes a knife out of his pocket, I drop my handbag, Grieg starts shooting, the director starts to smile again with a more inhuman jest, he penetrates the knife into himself, such screams, such woe, such pain as he slices the knife up from his abdomen to the top of his chest, he stretches the wound open, blood spits onto my make-up and expensive lipstick, I quickly look at the two naked women and still they stand inanimately, the dwarf however is dead on the floor, headless; his head smoulders in the fire, the director’s self-autopsy is at a near completion as his ribs, sinew, guts and bone exhibit explicitly in front of me, shockingly still, in the darkness of his very flesh, something moves, something alive comes forward, it has a face, I cover my mouth as vomit protrudes slowly, I recognise the face, it is my father's.
I wake up in the back of a limo as if an electric shock had passed through me. A slight disorientation, a profound irritation overcomes me, a complication of realisation relating to whether I just witnessed the unnerving events that I had experienced back in that ghastly cabin. I notice a glass of champagne, half full, lipstick-smeared glass (my colour); my head is pounding, my mouth unbelievably dry and my vision doubles as one tries to look at things close up. The limo stops. The driver announces my arrival, he gets out of the car and walks round to the door on my side, he opens it with a gentlemanly charm, I did expect an abundance of flash photography bruising the corneas of my eyes, instead, the welcome is of a pure silence. A figure waits in the doorway of a funeral home, it is my mother; I notice that her dress is soaking in blood, so thorough that the cotton of the dress has solidified. The blood derives from her left breast, where her heart resides. She does not greet me with exuberance but with a haunting calm, she mumbles apologies to me with an illustrated torture that resounds throughout my soul and skin. Again, I sweat; my perfume no longer lingers of sweetness but something more death-like. I look back to see if the limo was still there but it has disappeared without a trace, I didn’t hear the engine at all for my mother’s apologies. I look back towards my mother and no longer does she stand in the doorway. I walk into the funeral home, a thick blackness swarms the inside and I hear constant whispers inviting me into the building, I’m somewhat apprehensive but some unconscious notion drives me to walk inside.
A spotlight hits me from a beyond no soul knew existed. It blinds me, I put my hand up to see if I can gain a vision for anything ahead of me but all I can make out is a catwalk-like stage. From within the dark, I start to her voice resonating, steadily progressing louder and chanting my name:
“Anna, Anna, Anna…”
Such a disturbing engagement, I step back due to trepidation and fear until a soft light appears at the end of the stage. A young girl playing with her skipping rope, she does not seem of this age, the delicate pigtail hair and the rich, floral dress flows as she jumps, her movements postponed somewhat, as if she’s in a slower motion than our dimension of actual time. She seems so real and so…familiar. I start to walk towards her in a steady speed and the voices still carry on chanting my name. As I begin to walk, a dead rose is thrown in front of me. I step forward furthermore and to my horror, a human kidney is thrown before me, I shake and stumble in a catharsis so profound. No longer do I want to look back, no longer do I want to see forward. Although, the young girl continues to skip and play in her own little heaven ahead, I pull myself together and step over the grotesque organ. More steps I take and blood starts to flicker onto my face, I vomit onto the stage with such violence. The chanting abruptly stops, I look unto the darkness, nothing to be seen but the glare of the spotlight, again I stand straight and look ahead. The girl still skips. Voices appear again although this time, it is a choir of incoherent ululations, it makes me look around in an erratic fashion and never before have I witnessed such madness. I walk, faster now, towards the girl, more intestines, hearts, bones, fragments of brain, amputated genitals, prosthetic limbs, dildos, pictures of murder victims that I could recognise, my pace growing and growing and more macabre offerings land in my path.
Finally I approach the girl, she stops skipping, with her back to me she slowly turns around and faces me only to reveal that she is a younger me, she smiles and then places her index finger before her lips; ‘shhhh…’ She disappears, I am frantic as I begin to shout for her, the invisible beings within the cold dark start to laugh and applaud such a delusion.
“Anna. Turn around my sweet petal.”
The deep voice bellows from behind my back, the familiar voice cuts me in two. I fear that it is my father. I turn with an immense apprehension; my guts turn into a sour grave, as it is indeed my father. I nearly fall onto my behind as he stands with a newborn baby girl in his arms along with a revolver pointing to her skull in his right hand. She screams, the poor girl, such hullaballoo, I can’t look him in the eyes; the dark voids of his homicidal menace haunt me.
“The fact that she isn’t screaming because of the sight of the gun but because of something more mundane, like hunger or flatulence, it illustrates to me how stupid we all are, without the wisdom of the elders we’re nothing but flesh…existing.”
He pulls the trigger; the blast, the rapid fire, it’s burning chamber smokes as the innocent’s blood exits the frame of its little head. The audience is revealed; every single person is me, an exact mirror of, laughing and pointing at me, photographers jump onto the stage, the bulbs flashing like machine guns, Polaroid pictures of my bloodied face hit the floor amidst the confetti of flesh and sinew, the blood of me, newborn, stains my eyelids, forehead and cheeks, I feel a gnawing coming from the genital area, a subtle pinch, I guide my hands between my legs and I nervously feel a residue. My fingers reveal specks of menstruation, now I can see…
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Author:
Craig Podmore
