by Tim Marquitz
He lay down in the grass, next to the statue, in order to look it in the eyes. As the Carpathians and Danube tilted around him, he recognized the face. It belonged to the beggar woman in Pressburg.
An agonized scream roared from the house. Messerschmidt.
Luca rushed to the black oak door. Franz Xaver Messerschmidt emerged, silhouetted against the glowing white sculptures of the hidden room. They stared out into the dark hallway like the chorus in a Greek tragedy.
Luca stared back, awed by their terrible beauty. Messerschmidt had transcended mastery. The pale stone busts radiated a wild vitality.
“I must finish the masterpiece tonight! We will create the sixty-fourth canonical grimace.”
He grabbed Luca by the hand and dragged him to the studio.
“Sit.”
Luca sat next to the armature as indicated.
Messerschmidt began to fasten the steel bars around his wrists, neck and head. Luca realized that he was going to be the model for this sculpture. He was flattered and excited, though he commonly used the water-closet before assuming a pose for a sculptor. It was going to be a long night.
“Master, what exactly is a canonical grimace?”
Messerschmidt ignored him and worked in silence. The Danube gurgled restlessly as the pooling darkness flooded the studio. He spun the clamps in tight, until Luca could not move a muscle.
“There are forty-two muscles in the face. You wrinkle your nose for disgust, but also anger. You widen your eyes for fear, but also surprise. We can make many faces, true, but how many are purely unique?”
He stepped away to light the oil lamps. Luca’s eyes followed the dance of shadow across the crowd of sculptures. The sense of grim anticipation had returned to their leering, distorted faces.
The old sculptor set a mirror in front of Luca so that he could see his own face.
“Are you saying that the sixty-four expressions…they convey the truth of human nature?”
“Human nature? The grimaces have nothing to do with human beings. They are the keys detailed in the hermetic writings to appease the demon that torments and humiliates me.”
Luca swallowed, and the blunt end of the armature dug into his throat.
“If that were true…you must have appeased it by now. You have carved these sculptures a hundred times over.”
Messerschmidt stooped down and glared into his eyes.
“Out of dirty clay! Inanimate stone! I tried for years with utter failure. Flesh is the only medium that will satisfy the demon. I studied the secrets of the alchemists and necromancers, but no one can bring stone to life. I thought all was lost, until I discovered how to transform living flesh into sculpture.”
He snatched up a chisel and hammer. He placed them near the opening of Luca’s right ear.
“There is a nerve on the right side of the skull, just behind the temporal bones. A precise strike with a chisel can sever this nerve and preserve any expression you have formed upon your face. There were so many failed experiments, so many faces frozen halfway or not at all. Still, I persevered until I captured them all. There is but one canonical grimace remaining, the sublime blend of horror and enlightenment. I promise you that it will live on your face forever.”
Luca’s exhausted body surged with a strength borne of terror. He thrashed against his bonds until his skin scraped and tore, but his bones were locked down too tight. He stared at himself in the mirror and strained to keep the terror from his face. He narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaws until his teeth ached.
Messerschmidt caressed the tragus, the delicate bump of skin that lead to the inner ear, with the cold steel chisel.
“You wanted to be my apprentice because you acknowledge that I am the master. You cannot shape your face better than I. Let go. Show me the horror! Accept the truth of this situation and gain the knowledge you came here for!”
Luca’s blurry, tear filled eyes began to bulge in panic. He squeezed them shut. The agonizing rictus in his jaw and neck twisted his face to one side against his will. He jammed his chin bone forward against the steel clamps. He would not give Messerschmidt his prize.
“Your brother was right, you’re a lunatic!”
The edge of the chisel softened against his ear.
“My brother? What are you talking about?”
Luca opened his eyes.
“Your brother, the Professor! He paid me to be your apprentice! He thought you could be saved, but you’re a maniac.”
Messerschmidt shook his head.
“Nonsense! I do not have a brother.”
Luca’s eyes widened as the Professor emerged from the shadows to take his place among the crowd of eager faces. His once jovial face became a chaotic blur, flickering through hundreds of violent expressions.
Luca recoiled as the awful truth dawned on him.
Messerschmidt swung the hammer.
Shades of Hades
E.J. Alexander
I wish I hadn’t killed her. Not a day goes by I don’t wish that. Wish I could turn back time and run that day through a different course. I regret so strongly I wonder if the power and focus of that emotion might somehow affect reality. But each day I wake up here.
The Sorenstein Center was considered one of the best. Through the safety glass of the main door, I’d glimpsed numerous awards and framed articles hanging on the foyer wall. This floor, Ward 2, of my cozy new home, kept me and my demented brethren from harm—the “Awaiting Restoration of Competency’ bunch-o-nuts. Ward 3, above us, maximum security, was reserved for the more dangerous (or at least the sentenced) of our ilk, the “Not-guilty By Reason of’ nut-bars; rapists, molesters, murderers, serial killers, and the like—a real smorgasbord of the criminally insane.
There was Gary Nugget, who had killed his wife and two daughters with an eight-iron after a disappointing Sunday on the links. And Robert Isemen, or “Iceman’, as he was called—one of Sorenstein’s more illustrious residents—a large, thoughtful, mild-looking man. He was known to store the strangled bodies of toddlers in his freezer. I saw him on occasion, head lowered, shuffling down the halls under full escort.
All of us rendered harmless by these thick green walls and an endless array of mind-thickening drugs.
When in a nut house, one could hardly complain about having a crazy roommate. But I did, perhaps too loudly. And instead of a private room, my protestations won me a restraining bed. They thought, no doubt, I’d strangle poor Elwood in his sleep. They locked my wrists and ankles with wide nylon straps; then I couldn’t even cover my ears. But the drugs helped—numbed me, and nudged me into a warm sleep that even Elwood’s ravings couldn’t penetrate. They did have good drugs. I worried though, that if I stayed much longer I’d become as loony as the rest.
But I didn’t plan on staying.
Down the corridor, came the echoing steps and jingle of keys of the nightly lock-in crew. Elwood looked up from his folding. Although our orange pajama-uniforms and underclothes came from the laundry neatly folded, Elwood would always shake them out and fold them again, meticulously pressing and smoothing them with his hard cover of Jurassic Park as if it were an iron. Some days he did it twice. He was a frail, nervous man, only thirty or so but already balding. Elwood’s signature characteristic, however, was that he never spoke, at least while conscious. His words all came out in a jumbled maelstrom at night. Every night.
This mouse of a man should have been housed on Ward 1, with the schizoids, bipoles, MPDs, manics, and acute obsessives. It was a strict policy of mine to avoid imagining what acts of violence Elwood must have committed to earn himself a bed up here on 2.
Nurse Francine Tettles, or ‘Nurse Titties’ as some of the inmates joyously referred to her, entered. An ill-suited nickname, in that she was a small woman—in all proportions—and was the nicest, most genuine of any of the staff. Behind her, pushing a cart clattering over the threshold, came Khuram, the young Pakistani intern. In dramatic contrast to Francine, he was dark-skinned and as large
as an Indian elephant.
She looked first to Elwood, nearest the door. “Lights out, Mr. Carding,” she said in her timid, regretful voice.
“And time for your tuck-in, Mr. Hall.” Her shy blue gaze swung briefly over me.
“Tuck-in’—a cute term, reminiscent of those happy nuclear “Sunshine Units.’ I closed my paperback “The Catcher in the Rye’—more a test of whether the administration would allow the notorious title than any real desire to read it. At first, I made certain I was seen with it often. Though now, I think, I had little worry of the administration declaring me sane, that is, after my episode in March. I’d even scared myself that time.
Sanity has a slippery edge. In an evaluation session with a visiting psychiatrist, I worked myself into a crying fit. And as I got into it, it became more real—only half act. I convinced her of my instability and even left myself wondering.
I set the book on the side table and rose from my chair. One advantage, I suppose, of wearing pajamas all day was the ease of bedtime.
“Who won?” I asked Khuram while “assuming the position’ in my high, cold bed.
I didn’t, in truth, give a damn about cricket but that was the one thing that seemed to spark Khuram. And my unborn escape plans might well include his participation. Besides, it was a friendly thing to do, and Khuram was the gentlest of interns.
“India must have cheated,” he said cheerfully. “The only way they could have beat Hassam’s arm.” He tilted my bed upright.
Francine selected pills from the cart, dropping them into a tiny paper cup (just like the ones used at Wendy’s for ketchup), while patiently waiting out Khuram’s inevitable string of specifics. Her usual mode of operation was one of being efficiently friendly in that professional-impersonal way, but she was easily tripped into showing her kind heart. And for that failing, the rest of the staff treated her with less respect.
“And Jameel was unstoppable at bat. You should have seen—184 runs,” said Khuram, strapping my left leg.
Francine poured water into another paper cup. “Here you are, Mr. Hall,” she said, offering both water and cup of pills.
I accepted hesitantly: a white oval one and two small red ones. The red ones I welcomed; they put me out and had the entertaining side effect of enhancing my dreams. But the white one was a worry—though they seemed to give it to everyone—it was an anti-psychotic they claimed, and new. There were some people, I’m sure, who could be happy knowing they aided the medical community in discovering that a new drug causes livers to implode. I was not one those people. “Gillespie in tomorrow?”
Ms. Gillespie was the Social Worker who had the misfortune of having me on her roster. Having my arms and legs bound nightly could in no way be conducive to my escape. To remedy this, I would use every tool at my disposal. There was no evidence, however, that anyone actually listened to her recommendations.
“Half-day tomorrow—the morning. Are you uncomfortable, Drew?” she asked, with real concern.
“Best that can be expected—under the circumstances.” I then looked pointedly at the strap Khuram was tightening over my wrist. “It’s the circumstances I’d like to remedy.”
“Be sure to talk to Dr. Sielinski. He’s in next Thursday. Oh, and I’ll try and commandeer one of those orthopedic pillows for you.”
“You’re an angel,” I said, meaning it.
She gave me an appreciative smile. I had planned, of course, on bringing the matter to Sielinski’s attention. He was a Board Associate and saw patients only rarely; in my eight months at Sorenstein I had talked to him twice. I would not miss this chance.
“Pleasant dreams, gentleman,” she said, already on her way next-door to John and Dino’s room. The cart’s wheels clattering again over the threshold. I allowed my eyes to follow her small, fit frame as she left. I wondered if all the inmates fell in love with her. Oh, what an asshole I was. I didn’t deserve to even think about a woman, especially one like Francine.
A short while later, Francine’s key clicked in the lock and the lights popped out. Light from the hall pulsed through the little window in the door, turning the foot of Elwood’s bed a ghostly gray. The lurid red eye of the hall’s surveillance camera added a pulsing pink glow up in the ceiling corner. Privacy—another thing I’d never appreciated, until it was gone.
I closed my eyes. How pleasant it would be to find sleep before Elwood started in. But my mind started down its familiar path. Rehashing that day over and over. Images of her on top of him—riding in that unabashed display of ecstasy, like she’d never shown with me. Why him? Of all people, why that son-of-a-bitch of a Senior Partner, Clint Buckle?
Laurie. What would my life be like if I hadn’t come home early that Tuesday? I should have just walked out and shot myself then, while I had the guts.
Such thoughts spun through my head, one bringing on the next and the next. It was like a big, heavy wheel spinning: memory, anger, guilt, and self-recrimination. Round, and round, and round again. The same crap and nothing to do about it. It was all in the past. But the present seemed unreal—surreal, like a bad movie. And the future was too indistinct to get my mind around.
If I were to stand trial, I’d get the chair for sure. After Laurie’s sister found me sitting there on the bed beside Laurie’s naked body, soaked in blood, stroking her hair with one hand while the other still held the gun—only one verdict from a Texas jury would do. I needn’t be a trial lawyer to realize that. I don’t remember much of that day, the afterward part anyway. I must have been sitting there for hours, zoned-out, just staring into those vacant yet accusing eyes.
But that was the past. For now, I had to find a way out. My brother would help—if I could get to him, and I had a couple of old friends I think I could count on. I just had to get away.
I heard Elwood’s breath, slow and deep. The race was on. I was losing. And then, just as the “reds’ pulled me drifting into fluffdom, he brought me back.
“No, no…don’t…can’t…” he mumbled, “…dark…flood…” And then, quite clearly, “Yes, Mistress.”
This was the sort of gibberish he’d been spewing for weeks. Maybe he’d had some hot dominatrix once and was reliving his fantasy. I don’t know, and don’t care.
But he seemed more agitated than usual. His head lolled from side to side and his legs twitched.
Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Elwood should get extra meds—the reds. He wouldn’t complain. Besides it was perfectly reasonable; a deeper sleep would obviously be good for him—and me. Consoled in thinking I might soon be rid of this nightly annoyance, I found sleep, even as his moaning words jostled my consciousness.
#
Every morning, as I waited for Nurse Andrews to come and release me from my bed, I considered the window. And every morning I rejected it. They took no chances here: the glass was that safety stuff with a grid of embedded steel wire, and beyond that was a heavy mesh grating. I would need an axe and a lot of time—time with no one around to say, “Hey, did you hear that? It sounded like someone taking an axe to a window.”
I had a blurry view of the grounds: an enclosed rectangle of well-watered grass, flowerbeds, and bushes, with an intersection of paved walk. Serene—if you could ignore the chain-link fence topped with its shiny curl of razor-wire just beyond.
My morning routine consisted of a quick workout in the Activity Center, a shower, and then the short jaunt down the hall to the “dining room’ for breakfast. If no therapy sessions were scheduled, I would spend the bulk of the day reading in the day room.
The day room was well named. It was always bright, if not from the Texas sun that scorched in from the south like a laser beam, then from the rows of florescent lights that buzzed and sang every evening. Round Formica tables were encircled by those blue molded-plastic chairs found in every high-school cafeteria. I sat by myself, shuffling through a handful of well-worn Trivial Pursuit cards, flipping to the answers on any that eluded memory.
Ms. Gillespie was an ob
ese young woman, maybe twenty-five. Not pleasantly fat, she was more the “I don’t give a damn what you think’ kind of fat.
“Good morning,” she said, not looking at me. “How are you today,” she paused to remember my name, “Mr. Hall?”
“I have a problem.”
She stared at me blankly until I was obliged to remind her of Elwood’s disruptive activities and the incident whereby I became restrained.
I used all of my attorney skills to present my case. I requested that the need for my immobilization be reexamined, and suggested that the extrication of either Elwood or myself might easily resolve the issue. I ended with a clear rationale for upping Elwood’s medication.
“I’ll take it up with the doctors,” she said curtly, scribbling on her notepad.
#
That night was the worst yet. Elwood tossed and babbled. Taker of light was discernible and something about river of souls and the usual no, no, not me raving. But this night was different; somehow Elwood seemed more cogent, even more terrified—closer to the surface of his nightmare.
What was going on inside his tortured little head?
The stainless steel of his bed frame rattled with his jerking movements. I worried that he might split his skull on a rail.
I considered buzzing the nurse’s station to get someone to come and witness the racket, but the lights and commotion would surely wake Elwood before they arrived and just sink me into hotter water. Then, suddenly, he grew calmer, perhaps exhausting himself.
And so it went, until Tuesday night, when I noted Elwood getting two familiar looking red pills along with his other medication. The wheels of administration had spun remarkably fast. Finally, some peace.
I lay in my hazy discomfort—guilt and sorrow battling for dominance—awaiting sleep to draw me away from the torment of my thoughts. And astonishingly, triumphantly, not a sound came from Elwood.
