A Perfect Canvas

by Kevin Adkisson

  Chapter 10

  Steele didn’t want to move. Not yet. There was a tiny buzz outside his window and then the tap, tap of winged bodies against glass. He smiled at these little sounds and then quickly tuned them out. Crisp patterns and images formed on the inside of his eyelids: a giant pink tongue, an eyeless face, wooden chessmen, a flame. These images and more washed over his consciousness and crashed like waves against his intellect. They threatened to overwhelm him until he forced a single image to the forefront. A demonic bird-like creature with a single three clawed leg, long ice-pick fangs, catlike eyes, and a tongue extending out from an open beak the brightest shade of blue he had ever seen.

  Steele focused on the creature, brought it closer, made it as real as anything in the world. When he had every detail of the beast memorized, he opened his eyes and welcomed the early afternoon light.

  Since the age of ten, he’d been waking with his eyes closed, studying the images he awoke to, savoring moments of inspiration.

  Sunlight poured through the bedroom’s open blinds creating bars of shadow across the sheets. The bars sectioned a nude blonde woman curled up in a fetal position beside him on the enormous bed. She was a tall, busty woman with shoulder-length blonde hair fanned out behind her. One of her hands cupped her pale white cheek and a portion of the sheet was tucked between her legs. Her other hand was firmly anchored to the wrought-iron headboard cuffed in black leather.

  To Steele, she had an almost angelic appearance. But he knew she was no angel.

  “No...,” she mumbled in her sleep, then, “Nicholas?”

  Nicholas wasn’t his real name. It was a name he had taken for her. To make things easier for her.

  Seeing her bound to the bed reminded Steele of Cody Slade’s bleached blonde and the purely aesthetic leash around her neck. He chuckled softly. Cody and his blonde had no concept of true dominance. They only played at Master and servant.

  Steele tossed the sheet over the blonde, rolled off the bed, and walked around to the window.

  Some twenty feet or so away a squirrel scampered up the gnarled Sycamore tree to which the brunette was bound, unconscious. On the Bermuda grass, green with vibrant life, two crows stalked for worms. A Bobwhite quail called its name. The sun burned a hole in the brilliant cobalt blue sky while a single cloud moved quickly by. Just inches away from him, hornets methodically built a nest in the corner of the window.

  Steele tapped the glass with his index finger, and the insects rewarded him with angry buzzing.

  He found it comforting to see everything in nature behaving exactly as it should, fighting to survive. He only wished more people understood the concept.

  Turning back to the blonde on his bed, he saw she had made no movement. Indeed, she rested so still that if he hadn’t heard her speak moments before he might have become concerned. But all was exactly as he would have it.

  Three leather restraints hung on a long nail above Steele’s head. Made of thick leather with locking steel buckles, they were the type of thing a fetish couple might purchase out of a bondage catalog or off of some S&M website. These he had lovingly made with his own hands.

  Steele pulled the restraints from the nail and stepped to the foot of the bed. The steel of the buckles tinkled as he walked to the blonde’s side. He wished the restraints weren’t necessary, but they were. Even people enjoying pain could lose control, and that could be dangerous for both of them.

  He gently slid a restraint over the blonde’s ankle, fastened the buckle, and snapped the attached steel ring to a metal clip mounted to the frame of the bed, effectively immobilizing one side of her body.

  Then he walked to the other side of the bed. He grasped the blonde’s free wrist and gently pulled on her until she flattened out on her stomach. Still asleep, she pulled away from him rolling back on her side. The sheet nearly slipped off her body.

  He counted to ten and eased her back onto her stomach. Easy, easy. He didn’t want to wake her. He wanted this to be a surprise. She enjoyed his surprises.

  Sliding a leather restraint over her remaining wrist, he quickly fastened it to the headboard.

  His gaze darted from one part of her body to another, from ankle to knee, from knee to thigh from thigh to hip. When viewed as a whole, the intricate scars on her body formed a meticulously complete composition. The detail of his work locked his breath in his throat. The beauty caused a shiver to walk across the back of his neck.

  This was his true art, his creation, his labor of love. It was the logical progression of a thousand years worth of tattooing and body modification. It was his contribution to the art form and the community of artists who saved him. He could hardly believe the work was his, that he did this, that he had taken his art to such a high level, higher than anyone living or dead.

  He tossed the sheet back over her body to block the beauty he had created. When he saw so much of it, he was moved in a way he could not express in words. This was why he kept her covered. It was like staring up at and trying to take in the entire Sistine Chapel ceiling or the Winged Victory of Samothrace at the Louvre. It was like looking at an ancient god.

  The blonde’s eyes opened.

  She looked groggy, not quite aware, just awakening. She tried to roll from her stomach to her side and quickly realized she couldn’t. She glanced up at her wrists and saw the restraints holding her. Her eyes widened with comprehension, and she sneered at him.

  He smiled at her, to comfort her.

  The blonde yanked down hard with her arms pulling the top of the headboard away from the wall and kicked with both her feet. The whole bed shook, rattled, and banged back against the wall, but the restraints held.

  He could never be certain how she would react to the restraints, especially when he had surprised her with them. He loved this about her. One day she was as pliant as potting clay, the next she was hard as dogwood.

  One of the blonde’s legs was still free, and Steele quickly moved to restrain it. He reached for her ankle, and she kicked him in the mouth. The inside of his bottom lip, caught between her heel and his teeth, exploded.

  The pain hit him like a photoflash with fangs, but he quickly recovered. He grabbed her foot by the ankle and wrenched it down to the bed. He dug his knee into the back of her calf, holding her ankle in position, and buckled the final restraint.

  The gash on the inside of his mouth filled his mouth with the taste of copper. He licked his lips, coating them red.

  This wasn’t the first time the blonde had bloodied him, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. When properly motivated, she could still be quite the fighter.

  The blonde didn’t scream for help, not that it would have mattered if she did. She could scream as loud as a banshee and no one would hear her, not even the brunette hanging on the tree a rock throw from their window. And even if someone could hear her, Steele didn’t fear being caught. Nor did he fear death or punishment. His primary concern was making sure his work endured, that he left behind an artistic legacy.

  Steele crouched down beside the bed and opened a small trapdoor in the floor revealing a tiny safe. He quickly dialed the combination. Although his hands were large, he spun the dial with a nearly inhuman steady precision. He opened the safe and removed a silver ring holding half a dozen keys and a small credit card like transmitter. He stood, turned for the door and the smell of cherries halted him.

  He looked around the room, looked at the blonde.

  The room should have had no smell beyond flesh and blood. The walls were bare. The room was dry, neat, dust-less. There were no half-eaten plates of food or candles on candelabras. Two pieces of furniture stood in the room: the bed and a nightstand. There was nothing else. He kept this room as free from any unnecessary stimuli as possible.

  He slept here. Dreamt here. This was his inspirational nest. Photos or music or even the scent of a single candle could prompt unwanted activity in the logical left side of
his brain, making it more difficult for the creative right side of his brain to step forward and take control. A brother artist in New York taught Steele the creative technique, and he had since adopted it with a religious fervor. There should be no cherry smell.

  Nothing in the room was capable of giving off the cherry scent and he could think of nothing in the house capable of producing the scent either. Still the smell was there, poking at the analytical side of his mind like a finger in the eye.

  Steele studied her. She lay with one ear on the pillow. Her pale blue eyes stared out past him, seemingly through the wall beyond him. Her face was blank of expression, devoid of even worry wrinkles.

  Could she be the source of the smell? It seemed unlikely, but something lizard-like in the back his brain told him that she was the source, that she was using it as some sort of weapon against his creativity. The voice told him he should kill her. Kill her now.

  But there was no glimmer of rebellious understanding or mischievous intent in her eyes. They were empty.

  He ignored the primitive voice calling for her death. Besides, he didn’t want to kill her. Killing her went against his purpose, would result in the destruction of his greatest work. Of course, he had documented the work so well that killing her wouldn’t result in a complete loss, but the digital video and photographic images paled in comparison with her actual flesh. Those mediums were two-dimensional, lacked texture, lacked the warmth of blood, the movement of breathing.

  Steele considered interrogating the blonde to determine how she’d created the smell. It would be entertaining at the least, she’d always responded well to interrogation, but he quickly decided against it. He would wait and see if she made some other more aggressive move against him.

  He realized then that he was chewing on his bottom lip and forced himself to stop. She had him thinking, and he couldn’t properly work while thinking. He snatched a roll of duct tape off the nightstand and taped the blonde’s mouth shut.

  Air rushed through the blonde’s nostrils. Her eyes widened.

  Satisfied she couldn’t cause further mischief, he flipped his keys. Two stainless steel doors led from the bedroom. One led into the kitchen and the other into a foyer. He pressed a button on the transmitter, unlocked the door leading into the kitchen.

  Immediately to his right, another stainless steel door took him into a large bathroom. This door had a thick rubber seal around the entire edge making the chamber both soundproof and watertight.

  Steele closed the door behind him sealing himself within the vault-like room.

  The mirrored medicine cabinet hanging on the wall matched the vast majority of his custom built home: stainless steel, wood-walled, locking. Using a key, he opened the medicine cabinet. On the bottom shelf was a black bottle of cologne, several bars of soap, two neatly folded hand towels, cinnamon flavored mouthwash. On the top a hemostat, rope tie-offs, several scalpels of varying blade types, two straight razors.

  He spun a chrome knob mounted on the wall. One hundred and two degree water shot from thirty shower jets mounted in the walls blasting his body clean. He loved Tina Turner and liked to sing while he washed.

  “You must understand

  “That the touch of your hand

  “Makes my pulse react

  “That its only that thrill

  “Of boy meeting girl

  “Opposites attract.”

  He washed every square inch of his body, even his hair, with bar soap.

  “Oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it

  “What’s love but a second hand emotion...”

  Steele fiercely rubbed each muscle as he washed. Slowly his muscles relaxed. Each individual drop of water pounded his body, kneading his flesh.

  “Oh what’s love got to do, got to do with it

  “What’s love but a second hand emotion...”

  Finally, his mind, body, and soul became perfectly in tune, and he ended the downpour with a quick twist of the wrist. Steam rose off his body. He splashed a generous amount of cologne into his palm and rubbed the stuff--his only indulgence from his self-imposed anti-stimuli rule--into his chest and neck.

  His mind was perfectly clear when the moment came.

  Steele washed his hands, selected the ivory handled razor from the cabinet, and strode back into the bedroom.

  He locked the door behind him, but he did this without thought. It didn’t matter that he was still dripping wet or that his short black hair was wildly unkempt. The time had come to finish the blonde.