by Eden Night
A bell tinkles above the door. The room is womb-red and lined with dark wooden and glass shop counters and display units. Everywhere you look, there is something to test the mind. The walls are covered in masks and framed butterfly specimens, along with a hundred other things. A flying sheepdog with leather waxed wings twirls on the warm eddies of the heating. In the cabinets are miniature dolls, and carved dildos, fossils and preserved animal specimens. There is a whole shelf of human skulls and jars and jars of pickled 'things'. A stuffed Leopard sits on guard by the counter. Someone has jauntily placed a Fez on its head.
"Mr Hughes!" The man behind the counter steps out and takes Alexander by the hand, pumping a hard greeting whilst patting his shoulder with the other. Obviously Alexander is a well-known acquaintance.
"This is Quentin," Alexander introduces.
Quentin is probably in his mid twenties, not much older than us, but he looks like a gentleman of fifty with his full ginger beard, and tweed waistcoat, from which a pipe pokes out from the pocket. He is wearing britches and riding boots. Despite all the freakish curiosities surrounding us, it is me that feels wildly out of place in my black work suit. Quentin doesn't seem to notice the disconnect and he holds out his bear-paw to shake my hand.
"And this is Charlotte," Alexander says, smiling with a look of pride.
"Enchante, Charlotte. Most welcome. Most welcome." Quentin’s dark green eyes sparkle and I understand that he is probably a very attractive man. A theory that is confirmed when the beaded curtain parts and a pretty young woman comes through from the back. She is dressed in full rockability skirts and tattoo sleeves. Her dark hair is pinned up and crowned with a bright red ribbon. Her eyeliner has been painted on by a skilled hand.
"My wife, Emeline," Quentin informs me.
I think how paradoxically quaint and socially radical it is to already be married. Emeline offers a small wave. "Hi, Alexander." She smiles flirtatiously. "I guess you guys are here for the taxidermy lesson. Come on up, almost everybody else has already arrived. They're quite excited." Alexander guides me by a hand in the base of my back. As he passes Quentin, I overhear him say in a low voice, "I may have a little something you might be interested in. I'll be in touch."
We travel up a narrow staircase that is flanked on either side by Tudor style portraits, only they aren’t of people but of ducks and rhinos and other animals all dressed up like lords and ladies. I think one of them would look great in Alexander’s flat and make a mental note to come by and buy one as a gift. We enter a space that had most likely once been several rooms but had now been opened up to provide a useful space. The grey, unwaxed floorboards are decorated with a few tired looking Afghan rugs. In the middle of the room is a large worn pine table that could quite believably have come from an old autopsy theatre. A small excited, eclectic collection of people is gathered around the table discussing the various animal carcasses heaped unceremoniously in the middle of it.
Emeline is to be our teacher for the evening. She is engaging and funny, and before we know it, our group of strangers are giggling classmates. The evening starts with a short lecture on the history of taxidermy and Emeline walks us around the room to the various stations that have been set up with examples. We gaze curiously at ducks dressed as portly gentlemen and fantastical Frankenstein creatures made from the seemingly random parts of several animals. The final stop is a piece by the infamous Walter Potter, titled ‘The Rabbits’ School’ which is eerily evocative of a reception class. With great animation, Emeline tells us how privileged we are to be seeing it so close up and how it is on special loan from a fellow member of the society. It is very valuable and we are told we must resist the temptation to touch.
We return to the table where Emeline deftly demonstrates the basic process of taxidermy. She works on a frog, which is apparently more challenging because of the nature of their skin. In Emeline’s hands it looks easy – she peels away the skin almost as easily as skinning an onion. She offers an amusing and instructive commentary, reassuring her tutees that it is, “…really is quite easy once you’re focused. The trick is to remember that you are an artist – and the animal is your muse. The muse is yours to shape and mould – to create into an artifice designed only for the pleasure of your own appetite and imagination, whether it is humour, nostalgia, or something all together darker.”
Her eyes flit fleetingly towards Alexander. I cannot tell whether it was a conscious communication or not. He is stood with his arms folded and his chin cupped in his fingers. He is concentrating hard, watching Emeline’s hands working quickly and precisely as she moulds her muse into an amusing figure of Toady of Toady Hall, complete with pipe and tweed waistcoat. I stifle the comment that it reminds me of her husband, Quentin. Enthusiastic appreciation ripples around the table and Emeline takes a comic bow before instructing us to select our corpse. The room falls weirdly quiet. There is no mad scrambling like there would have been in our school days. It's as if everybody is nervous to make the first move: afraid of looking too hungry.
"Come on Alexander, it's not like you to shy away," Emeline teases.
He winks at her and flashes her a disarming smile that would have made any other girl blush. Not Emeline. All at once I'm insanely jealous. I look her up and down wondering just how well she knows him. He removes his jacket and rolls up his crisp white sleeves. His eyes pour over the pile of beast corpses before he reaches forward and picks up the stoat. If it feels unpleasant to hold death in his hands, he doesn’t show it. He holds the stoat up so that it is level with his face and declares the creature, “cute!” much to everyone’s amusement. With the taboo broken, the rest of the group select their projects until the only choice left is between a mouse and a sparrow. It’s not that I have held back through fear – I felt compelled to wait until only the final remains were left.
Whilst everyone has been claiming their prize, I have been fingering through the basket of accessories at the centre of the table, looking for inspiration.
I choose the mouse after selecting a small ballerina tutu and a gold crown. I am reminded of a soft toy I had as a child.
There is a babble of excited chatter as each of the students explore their partner’s choices. They turn to Emeline expectantly, waiting for permission to start. Somehow it feels as if permission is needed.
“You can begin. There’s a box of gloves on the table, but I encourage you to do it with bare hands. Latex may be more sanitary, but personally I find it completely reduces the delicious sensation of skin on skin.” She flicks her skilfully arched eyebrow up and bites her lip seductively. “There’s a help sheet to your right. Give me a shout if you need assistance.” She strides towards the antique gramophone in the corner of the room and places the needle down onto an old crackly vinyl of classical music that I can’t identify. “You’ll be surprised how quiet is will get once you get started,” she explains.
Quentin comes in to the room carrying a tray of half-filled wine glasses, which Emeline takes from him and places down on a desk by the window. “Feel free to take a break for a drink when you wish.” Eventually everyone settles. I look around the table, fascinated as much by everyone’s approach as by the task itself. I turn to whisper to Alexander, but he is bent over, scalpel in hand, splicing with intense concentration. Now is not a good time to disturb him.
I return my attention to my own muse. I'm face to face with my dead mouse, and even though it's only a mouse, there is something vast and complex about this moment; something so profound that my hand starts to tremble. I look down on the gleaming scalpel held between my fingers. It feels both familiar and alien. I'm about to cross some unwritten boundary: about to commit some terrible crime against order and normalcy – and the feeling is delicious. I am looking at Death and I’m mocking him: daring him, right here, to his face. I'm going to take decay and rot and steal it from the compost heap of the life-and-death cycle; I'm going to cheat Death with a tutu and a crown - in the same way that I am going to cheat Death by di
sguising myself. Like some trickery of Carnivale, I'll be so many different masks and costume changes that Death won't ever catch me. I'm going to fuck the beautiful and the weird, and the cold and the fire. I'm going to drink and dance and feel. Most of all I'm going to feel, because now I understand that as soon as we stop feeling, we're already dead.
And all these unpolished thoughts are streaming through my head whilst I look down at the blade in my hand, and I think about Lucy and her clackity-clack red-plastic mouth, and I think about my mother in her awful synthetic chintz blouses, and I think about Marcia and her fake nails and hair and soul, and I realise that David, my ridiculously stupid boss, has been right all along, they're all a bunch of Muppets!
All this time, Alexander has been watching me, and I know that he sees it - my awakening, and it's making him hard as fuck. A smile twists the corner of his mouth. His eyes glitter. I breathe deeply and my blink rests for a moment, shutting out the sight of it all. Emeline places a comforting hand on my arm, mistaking this moment for fear or revulsion or nerves, but it's none of those things; it's the divinity of knowledge, and I don't think I'll ever be able to walk into that bloody office again.
I open my eyes, smile and
cut.
On the way home in the cab, Alexander asks if he can pass our film on to Quentin. “He has contacts with 'special purveyors' of such material,” Alexander informs me.
All this time I’ve half-expected it to be already uploaded onto some Internet porn site.
"They'll pay well for the rights; I mean we're talking several thousands here, not just a couple of hundred pounds."
I laugh. The thought of anybody wanting to pay thousands of pounds to watch me screw is quite ludicrous.
"And if they buy the rights, won't it mean we'll be up on YouTube next week?"
He shakes his head. "The scene doesn't work like that, it relies on exclusivity for it to be economically sustainable. There's a huge amount of politic involved. If the film 'leaks' the buyer is cut from the circle."
"You know a lot about this," I say.
Alexander shrugs. I've done it a couple of times before.
I lower my already lowered voice out of the hearing of the cabbie. "Are you telling me that you have a habit of making porn-films?"
He shakes his head. Not really, it’s not quite like that. I don’t set out to make them; they can't be staged or planned – it doesn't work. It all wrong, it looks cheap: manufactured. You can't go about making a film like a production - it just happens in the moment. Like a collection of beautiful moments – like a collection of butterflies."
I snort-laugh, "Maybe in your world, Alexander, but that kind of thing doesn't just kind of happen in mine."
He looks at me intensely, "But it did,” he says.
And he has a point.
“And didn’t you find it sublime, Charlotte? A thing of beauty.”
"How many thousands are we talking here," I ask, thinking about the moment in the taxidermy lesson when I visualised slashing my boss' smile open with a scalpel.
"I'm not sure exactly, it all depends on the individual film. All I know is that the one from the other night is better than the other couple I've sold and they made over forty thousand."
I cough and clear my throat. "Sorry did you say four or forty?"
"Forty. It might have been better to sell for a lower price and work out a royalty deal, but that just felt a little..." He squirms his face up and sighs. "I prefer the idea of a single exchange in return for a piece of art."
"And what about Celia? You can't go and pass on a film she knows nothing about."
Alexander shook his head with surprise. "Sorry, I thought you knew."
"Knew what?"
"Celia knew she was being filmed. It was part of the deal."
"What deal?"
"The deal of how much I paid her."
I rock forward and let out a low whistle before taking in a deep breath. "Are you saying that Celia was a prostitute?"
"I always think that the term prostitute is so ugly," he says.
"Sorry, would you prefer I use the term, 'whore'?"
"I don't see what your problem is. You had a good time. What's the difference between paying for Molly and paying for Celia? They both serviced your needs. They both gave you pleasure."
I stare at him for a long time, looking for a single trace of conscience. But there isn’t one. I fall back into the seat and look out of the window. The most infuriating thing about what he has just said is that although he isn't right, he isn't wrong either.
The cab pulls up outside and I pay the driver, which involves quite a precarious balancing act as I juggle my workbag and stuffed ballerina mouse.
"I want to watch it again before I decide," I say to him. I can't believe that I'm even considering it, but I've argued with myself that I'm masked and the lighting makes much of it soft focus. I'm surprised to discover that I appear to have a greater issue with my vanity than my dissolute morality.
I go to the fridge and recover a bottle of wine. Sod getting holiday leave from work, I feel 'a terrible bout of food poisoning' coming on. The figure of forty thousand pound refuses to leave my thoughts. Two thirds of that is my year's salary.
"How much did you pay Celia?" I ask.
"Three thousand in cash."
He must register some communication in my face that invites him to justify himself. "Trust me, she doesn't need the money. Celia is an heiress; she plays at being a whore because," he shrugs, "I guess it's the thing that turns her on. It's her form of foreplay. She loved the idea of being filmed."
"You seem to know a lot about her all of a sudden," I say suspiciously. "And there was me thinking we just picked her up on the night."
"We did. I met her down in the Love Dungeon and we got talking."
"The Love Dungeon?" I ask, laughing, although I'm really not sure I'm amused.
"Don't you remember?"
I shake my head.
"Oh," he shrugs, "maybe you were partying elsewhere."
I can't remember being alone that night. I certainly can't remember visiting an S&M sex dungeon.
He nods his head, recalling the details of the evening, "I remember now, you were dancing with that crowd that had come up from Brighton; you remember the guy with the rabbit onesie and that girl with the full Goth thing going on.
I think back and vaguely remember dancing with a giant rabbit. I drink down most of the glass of wine in one go.
I watch the film from beginning to end. Alexander has edited it, splicing it with other filmed images such as
spring cherry blossom,
starlings whirling in flight,
a spinning bicycle wheel
the slow motion track of a single tear.
Our bodies and our fucking are deconstructed, broken down into dismembered parts. We are not whole people; we are not whole identities. We are layered with beauty and poetry. It is like nothing I understand of pornography. The film ends with the close-up of my sleeping eye. The eyeliner smudged. I can tell from the rapid fluttering of my eyelids that I am dreaming.
I breathe in deeply. "Okay, what cut will I get?" I ask, selling myself.
"That depends on whether this is a business transaction or a partnership?" he says enigmatically.
"I'm not entirely sure I understand the difference," I say.
"Yes, you do, Charlotte." He stands up and runs his hands through his hair before turning towards the bedroom door. "Yes you do."
But I don't. Not really. And maybe if I had then it wouldn't have ended how it did.
Chapter Five: Metamorphosis
My intensive course of lessons with Arabella continues for several weeks until I have learned the art of basic submission and dominance. I have discovered that despite my casual feminist principles, which dictate I should relish being dominant, I am a natural submissive – but I have also learned that submissive doesn’t mean weak; to be a submissive takes a great deal of personal control. In all m
y lessons, apart from Arabella’s cold, detached applications of touch, there has been no other – it has been Alexander’s insistence that it be this way, which it is why, blindfolded and tied to a whipping post, I am startled to feel male hands cradling my slick sex, and pressing an eager, hungry cock against by buttocks. I gasp, unsure how I should be responding. After Arabella’s deliciously playful lesson, I am desperate to be satisfied; my body craving fulfilment. I flinch away, twisting into the hard wooden post. I am determined not to betray Alexander, but my hips are behaving as if they are hexed, and draw back towards that large, throbbing rod and the promise of release.
I feel hot breath on my neck and I shudder under the sensation.
“You are so beautiful, Charlotte,” Alexander whispers.
Immediately my body responds to the familiarity of his voice. Relief mixes a potent cocktail with desire and I push my hips out as far as I can from within the confines of leather cuffs.
Alexander enters me hard, pulling at my chin and neck to shower me in kisses. The thought flits through my mind that it is the most affectionately he has ever kissed me. As he thrusts into me, my hips crash into the post, creating a delicious hardness both in front and behind me.
As we come together in a shuddering, moaning, knitting of flesh and soul, I bathe in the achievement of a secret knowledge – a knowledge that transforms mortals into angels.
*
Alexander has spoken with Quentin and he has already found a buyer for the film. Alexander has titled it Bohemia and the buyer is very impressed, praising Alexander’s understanding and subtlety of form. He is willing to pay over sixty thousand pounds for it, with the hope that it will be the beginning of a long-term business relationship.
