He had his latest girlfriend, Claire, one in a long line of art lovers who, once spending any amount of time with him, would realize that art was his lover and she was there as a vessel of his occasional physical passion or verbal abuse, research Mr. Liu, with minimal results. The phrase, “wealthy Chinese gentleman,” seemed prevalent in search results, yet no source for his wealth was to be gleaned. Only one badly lit black and white photo, his features indistinct, though a trace of something Samuel thought of as world weariness and deep knowledge reflected in his eyes. He was an enigma, making an enigmatic proposition: to find the enigma within the marble.
Fine by Samuel: open to interpretation. Yet the act of putting the hammer to the chisel and the chisel to the marble inspired nothing but frustration. His muse was on vacation, something he’d never experienced before. Which surprised him even more, since the huge block of marble that had been delivered a week ago filled him with anticipation.
Most of the time, he worked with marble that featured, ever so slightly, the promise of smooth finality. This one had only the promise on display. Besides a perfectly flat foundation, the whole of what amazed him was the smooth, curved body, as if another sculptor had sheared off the edges, delineating an oval shape, and stopped, backed away, probably because he could not find the soul of this wondrous rock, either. When Samuel stroked it, placed his cheek to it in getting to know it— a ritual he’d undertaken with all blocks of marble— the sensations he felt were all wrong. Colder. Alien, he thought.
Yet when he circled it, looking for an opening, a way in— for inspiration— every step forward led to two steps back, and more contemplation. Where to begin? Though he’d worked marble hundreds of times without issue, something of the difference here gave him reason to pause.
But these sensations only urged him onward: he would not give in. He would listen with his hands, his anxious soul; he would listen or force it to talk to him, damn it!
“Honey,” Claire said, drawing him away from his fragmented thoughts.
Not wanting to deal with any distractions and, really, that’s mostly what she was at this point, Samuel said, “Can’t get anything done with all these interruptions.” He hadn’t turned to face her, yet registered her heavy sigh.
“Fine. I can see you’re in your usual cheerful mood, but I have something of importance to discuss with you.”
“Something of importance?”
Another upscale art opening? Favors for whom, this time? He turned to see her, this beautiful, slender woman upon which, despite the chill outside, a lavender summer dress sprinkled with brilliant yellow Van Gogh sunflowers hung with luxurious perfection. She’d braided a matching bandana through her auburn hair. Lovely, but since they’d been together, her cheeks had grown cliff-sheared edges. Wasn’t his fault, was it? Couldn’t be. Even if he was a sculptor.
He smiled at the thought.
“Funny? What’s funny, dear?” She moved closer to him, arms reaching awkwardly toward him, an insect quality laced into the movements as if she were hungry for something he no longer had the capacity to give to her: compassion, or even warmth.
Samuel ignored her, as he had work to do, a legacy to create. “What’s so important that it can’t wait until later?”
“It’s been later the last three times I’ve attempted this conversation, Sam. We need to talk now, before it gets… too late.” Her eyes narrowed, silently pleading.
“Too late? The only thing that may ever be too late, my dear, Claire, is my appointment with destiny, distracted to derailment by the likes of, well”— sneering as he said it, an asp about to strike— “people like you. People in general. People— what a pitiable race to be associated with.”
The moment hung heavy, the humidity eating comfort with the ravenous appetite of a flame to the wooden match beneath it.
With tears welling in her eyes, the light reflecting off the glossy azure orbs as sunlight on Caribbean seas, Claire blurted as if she could hold it in no longer, “I’m pregnant, Sam. I’m pregnant with our child, one of those people you so despise.”
“For fuck’s sake, just get an abortion—”
“An abortion?” Samuel watched her face crumble, like so many of the ruins that littered the Roman countryside. “You egotistical bastard. Your seed grows in my womb and you want me to cut it out and throw it away with the morning trash. How can you be so cruel?” She rubbed her belly. Samuel thought the affectation artificial. He shook his head in disgust.
He turned away, eyes on the window, taking in the rain as it kicked into high gear. In the distance, thunder rumbled, a vicious yet appropriate punctuation to his dismay.
“It’s your child, Sam. We are going to be parents.”
“Claire, I don’t care what’s inside you. I only care about what’s inside that.” He jerked his thumb toward the block of marble. “The last thing I want is to bring somebody else into this godforsaken world.”
“Godforsaken or not, you shit, I’m pregnant and you must deal with this—”
“I’m not the one who’s pregnant, Claire. That’s your problem. You deal with it. I have my destiny to define.”
She barked a laugh of derision.
“Your destiny. Your damned destiny has driven you to be a hateful human being. You’re all ego, no heart.”
Samuel paced as she spoke with such vitriol— she did not understand him. Would anybody? Was his goal of immortality one destined to fail, sinking into the swamp of worthless shit this meager race wallowed in?
No matter, he let the asp strike.
“It is the only consequence in this fallacy of an existence”—taking aim at her, sinking the fangs in with fervor— “but this fallacy of a relationship has run its course and if you want to have a bastard as evidence of our time together, by all means, squeeze that puppy out, but don’t bring it around for me to see or to hear its whimpering cries or”—he picked up the hammer, his grip bleaching his knuckles white— “I’ll find reason to put it to sleep forever.”
Samuel let the demon within fuel his rage and welcomed its fury.
Claire backed away, slowly at first, trapped in the laser beam hatred of his stare.
As her foot met the chisel, her ankle twisted and she tumbled to the marble’s base.
From his perch above her, lava filling his veins, he allowed the most malicious part of himself room to frolic.
“Perhaps I should make sure for good that there’s no baby to interfere, eh, darling?” His lips peeled back as he bared his teeth. The demon was a rabid dog, a blood-crazed shark. He watched as Claire turned to crawl from him as his laughter dressed the room in the buzzing intonations of murder.
The thunder rumbled as ripped metal and gained foothold around them. It grew to a roar, something throaty and seething with its own black intent.
Lightning flashed white hot at the windows, then swallowed all light from the studio down its gleaming throat, lips clamped shut. The darkness was beyond birth and nightmare. This darkness promised complete soul annihilation.
Claire screamed and screamed again, as if her fear lodged as a needle stuck in the groove of a darkness swelling with insidious designs.
A voice cut like a machete into the soft belly of the ripe, juicy melon; not unpleasant, peculiar. The voice wavered as did the image— Samuel thought of celluloid strung through a dying camera. “Claire, it’s time for you to go,” the voice said. “You won’t want to witness this. You and your son, Marshall…”
“Marshall. His name will be Marshall? I will have a boy?”
A small figure leaned over and offered his hand to help her to her feet.
“Marshall is my father’s name. He was a good and kind man.”
“I know,” said the small figure. “I know.”
“Mr. Liu?” Samuel said miffed to the teeth, uncertain of how he had gotten here. The shadows in the corner held no doorway.
Mr. Liu continued to flicker as he led Claire to the stairs. “Samuel will not be of any consequenc
e in your child’s life, but remember, he is your child. Not his. He will grow up to be a man of worth. Go now, and never look back.”
“Thank you,” she said, her words barely audible, eyes glazed as if drugged, as she drifted down the stairs.
Mr. Liu turned from her as she descended and went immediately toward Samuel. His gait was easy, confident. His stern features bore the weight of the task at hand, screwed tight into unsmiling stone.
Mr. Liu’s flickering appearance downshifted into a lazy strobe, exposing sporadic glimpses of the marble’s now malleable consistency. Malleable and seemingly alive.
“She won’t remember a thing after your crude, heartless exhibition, Mr. Nisi.” Samuel peripherally noticed the agile fingers of Mr. Liu’s right hand as they seemed to roll invisible coins between them as he spoke. “She will wake after many hours of sleep and remember telling you she was pregnant. She’ll remember your negative response, but that is all. Tired of your dispassionate ways, she will move out of the apartment you share and move on for the sake of the boy.” Mr. Liu shifted his gaze to the marble.
The dozens of questions that had initially filled Samuel’s head, most of all, about Mr. Liu’s mysterious appearance, fell by the wayside, sinking as an anchor, never to be dredged up. The amorphous wonder held him enraptured. This living marble held the key to his immortality. When he touched it, he felt as well as heard, the sonorous chants course through his marrow, fluttering at the ridge of his tympanic membranes.
Thunder roared again, the voluminous voice of the void opening wide to gulp down the morsel. The wooden beams above cracked and rippled as liquid, a stone kissing the surface of the serene lake.
“Those who require balance within the universe have a perverse sense of humor, Mr. Nisi. I am their liaison here on earth. The last link to logic you will not comprehend.” He sighed, as though his motivation was dictated by others. “As if your understanding matters to them. It’s merely my job to relay these messages. None of this will make sense to you, except perhaps the final result.”
The beams began to splinter, cracking as the joints of weary giants.
The thunder growled, an impossible, strident reverberation reeled in from the limitless expanse of the cosmos’ deepest back alley chasms, jolting Samuel from his trance-like obsession.
Turning to Mr. Liu, he noticed how the pulsing strobe, fluid and prismatic, had moved from his flesh and now resided in his eyes. Bright colors and damaged hues streamed out with the wriggling motivation of eels.
Mr. Liu was right: if there was logic here, it could not be a logic that even matters to him, what with the strange, hallucinatory folly he was presently experiencing. The rules he understood held no sway here. As he went to pull away from the marble, to abandon this madness and make a hasty exit, he was stymied. His fingers remained glued to the marble.
Mr. Liu backed away, dropping the invisible coins. Samuel thought he heard the metallic clink as they kissed the floor. “Mr. Nisi, you’ve turned from human into monster over the years. This monster would inhibit the aspirations of a young boy whose destiny matters to this world.”
“What the hell is going on with my…” Samuel twisted, pulling hard, but with every effort, his hand was sucked deeper into the quicksand of the marble. Worse yet, the process began to peel his flesh and pulverize the bones beneath.
He screamed. His scream expressed true agony, a pain worthy of admiration.
Samuel forced “Help me” from his throat, yet no help would be had. He watched as Mr. Liu slinked back to his hidden doorway in the intersection of here and there.
Mr. Liu continued: “But those who preside over such things have decided to grant you your wish, Mr. Nisi. They require balance.” With that, he ducked into the shadows, as if seeking refuge, as though this were his hub of relative safety.
The more Samuel struggled, the swifter he was devoured by the marble. But the bottomless pit of pain required struggling. He had to give all of himself to this piece.
All of himself.
Despite his predicament, Samuel was momentarily distracted as he watched the rafters rattle and burst skyward, enthusiastically gulped into the black heavens above. Stars winked into non-existence, magnifying the depth of infinite space. Wood wailed in splintered defeat, the sound slipping preposterously into metallic registers before mutating into cadences that hinted at the tearing of meat from the broken bones of fallen prey.
The insistence of the roar roughly shoved aside the clouds. The impossible scenario witnessed by eyes wide with panic and ears praying for silence suggested truths the mad display confirmed. Everything he thought he knew was false or at least altered.
From around the ragged edges of the displaced roof where cilia trembled violently as if being whipped by a cosmic wind of immense power, weird, aberrant geometric shapes waterfalled into the gaping wound of the vacated roof. Shining as shards of stars, they splatted in oily pools, reconstituting instantly, shifting between cube and octagon and triangle and so many more geometric shapes. Their cries reverberated between the slim film of the murmur and the blunt, pot-holed skin of the lie.
The form’s stench clogged his nostrils with the vile afterbirth stew of their incessant breeding. Each impact constituted a rebirth of hideous objectives, the details of which his mind ached not to imagine.
They were precursors to a truth Samuel did not want to engage.
Swarming around the base of the marble and flowing into it, these monstrosities enhanced the process in progress, ratcheting the pain to excruciating levels.
Samuel’s mind floundered for thoughts that made sense.
At the center of this sentient wasteland, something that could only be thought of as “it” throbbed and shimmered. It blinked and blinked again as it took him in. From beyond perception, contemplation, and oblivion it approached: squirming, rotating feverishly, folding into itself as it flowered outward, a diseased, kaleidoscopic maelstrom regurgitating constantly. It spun faster as it advanced. The pinprick at the center of it all opening as a predatory aperture, an iris dilating at the insistence of such desolate, immeasurable space and fierce desire.
Samuel thought— God?— and laughed, delirious now. His laughter died. Yes, perhaps this was God. What other being could perform with such awe-inspiring panache? He gibbered piecemeal prayers until they crumbled at the feet of incomparable fear. God approached at blinding speed, the blurred countenance gaining burnished clarity. It had a purpose here, that Samuel would never know or understand or even have the time to consider— only experience. Struggling harder, his face peeled as the marble ingested him, yet as his final scream redefined terror and dread for those who enjoyed such discoveries, he could not pull his gaze from that which contaminated the whole of his vision. He stared as his eyes bled and he could not deny the horrific veracity of what he saw, what he saw…
Then silence…
…and infinite blackness: such dense, ebony beauty, such a grand obscene vista…
These were his thoughts during his last few seconds in the flesh before all sanity was wiped from his cranial blackboard.
~
Hours later, before dawn, Mr. Liu stood in front of Samuel Nisi’s masterwork. He already knew its history, the astonished reception it would reap.
A modern masterpiece incorporating a depth of emotion Nisi’s previous art barely acknowledged.
On par with Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” although the choice to make himself the subject and the three-dimensional aspect of marble sculpture gives it more resonance.
This shockingly realistic depiction of an unseen horror left to the imagination of the individual, as rendered by troubled artist, Samuel Nisi, is sure to transcend time…
On and on, it was the art world event of the year, the decade. It would persevere forever, a landmark work, the landmark work of the 21st century.
Mr. Liu canted his head toward the sculpture, sweat beading at his brow as he listened to the thin exhalation of Samuel Nisi’s final s
cream from within the marble prison. A sound only he could hear, a forbidding present handed down from his employers.
A sound that would linger evermore.
“We are much alike, Mr. Nisi,” he said, his voice a notch above a whisper. “We are men who squandered our humanity in order to gain immortality. But I received an opportunity of the rarest sort amidst times of internal chaos.” His bleakest memories bloomed, corrosive, famished, but he refused to feed them now, or ever again. It was part of the price he paid for his immortality— this battle. “You would never have gotten back to yours.”
He knelt down and ran his fingers over the base, as his employers had insisted. Letters took shape beneath his moist caress.
La mia immortalità. My Immortality.
He thought he heard thunder laughing in the distance, but the storm had passed. His work was done. He left Samuel Nisi to his singular torment— the fulfilment of his life’s goal— as he strode dispassionately toward an invisible door between here and there and awaited his next assignment.
Becoming Human
Detective Roberto “Bobby” Vera clenched his large, gnarled fists, then opened them wide and took the bottle of whiskey in one hand, the shot glass in the other. He set the glass down and tipped the bottle against his eager lips. He needed the burn. He needed to have his insides cauterized by the harsh liquid. He set the bottle down, head swimming in dismal thoughts, drowning in the knowledge of what came next. Moving the mouse, he clicked on the arrow to the video clip sent to him by a copycat killer, rapist, and worse— a strange statement, but Vera understood the vile contingencies of “worse;” it crippled his every thought— and cursed God, cursed his mere existence, and cursed the deranged déjà vu mockery playing out before him on the monitor.
He set out on his path to the abandoned factory in northern California immediately after watching the clip. He had done this before. Done exactly this before. It may have been a different factory the first time, but the gist of what was in motion was a perfect reproduction. What he’d just watched looked like the work of the fiend from that other time.
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