Muse

Photo by Sai on Unsplash

The house lights faded first in the vaulted concert hall, so that rows of shadowed faces stretched beyond the reach of the spotlight, even the ceiling arched so high that the dim glow failed to touch its darkened curves, causing a stir in the upper balconies where the sudden hush, like one single exhale, revealed that each seat was full and anticipation running high.

Both the fill and key lights came alive above the majestic stage not long after, followed closely by the backlights catching the polished black lid of the Steinway concert grand. Two footlights along the platform’s edge kept just enough glow for safe footing, the soft colours creating shallow shades along the stage as Francisco approached the centre of the podium.

Hypnotised eyes traced his every move, the way his breath fogged beneath the intense backlights as he took his designated seat at the grand piano. With his slender fingers hovering above the black and white keys, a moment of absolute silence hung in the air. Then, as he flexed his wrists once, in E‑flat minor, he struck the first chord of Samuel Barber’s Sonata.

The action of the hammer danced beneath the enthralling sound, the immediate mechanical click lost beneath the sonata’s brutality, and notes shattered into the air in dissonant clusters that lingered too long, bending back from somewhere high in the deepening shadows where the stage lightning could not reach.

When the Adagio’s slow ostinato began, his fingers pressed softer, sinking deep into the weighted keys, and the haunting melody bent again, before collapsing into the opening of the finale. His hands moved faster now, crossing and twisting in all directions as the grand piano growled and shrieked in four different tones, creating a hauntingly beautiful harmony.

Then… silence. The striking notes came to an end as thousands breathed out as one, gasping, captivated by the melancholy sonata and lost in its remarkable and tender melodies that ended far too soon, far too suddenly.

And the world tilted on its axis.

Francisco lifted his hands off the keys, and the cameras pulled back and tilted the frame so that they captured a distorted version of the concert hall and the thousands of attendees, who secured seats at great expense to witness the craft of his otherworldly artistry as a famed pianist, whose renown stretched far and wide, across the globe. A living legend, a black sheep in the dwindling industry slowly losing its soul, bringing back the golden days of the classics with his talents.

But as the cameras lingered on his inverted form, recording the chiselled features of his face under the dimness and shrewd angle, he carried a secret so great that should the word spread, he might never recover from it, and the ladder be ripped out from under him before he even reached the top.

Greeting the audience, bowing just low enough to make it look like he cared about them, he raised his head and let his eyes settle on the clapping audience clad in elegant costumes made from the finest fabric to ever exist. But it was not those superficial details that caught his attention this very second.

As the sea of bewitched attendees fought to meet his gaze, the stage lights gradually switched on, and his eyes settled on a young woman who wasn’t supposed to be there. Garbed in a black evening dress, she wore a smile on her china face, one that grew wider by the second until it turned into a grotesque rictus – something in between a grin and a scream cut short. Too short, in his opinion.

When he straightened his spine, she was gone, and in place of her remained an empty seat with white lilies on top, and from the petals dripped fresh blood. A smirk tugged at his lips as he saw the crimson liquid, reliving the moment his muse sacrificed her body and soul for him, going so far as to become his – truly his – just to see him grow into his full potential, or rather, die thinking her selfless contribution added something to this mundane world.

But she wasn’t the only one who had these unhealthy ideas, not the only muse he had and would continue to have for as long as his secret remained hidden from plain sight.

People of all sexes and walks of life sought him out, some as genuine fans of what he represented or thought he did, while others were slaves to their sexual desires, hankering for his flesh as if it were the forbidden fruit itself, unable to resist the sweetness. But what was so bad about Eden’s fruit? Wasn’t it the beginning of humanity as it is, or perhaps, the moment humanity’s story began to unravel because it fell apart first?

Without the darkness we each carry deep in the chambers of our blackened hearts, what purpose would light serve? In the end, light was created as a response to this vast darkness and the weight of that morbidity within it, hiding in plain sight but never truly seen, not until it was brought back into our lives one way or the other – sometimes – on purpose, even.

And just as light needed darkness to thrive, a harmless and necessary agreement, so too was the pact Francisco made with his victims. He gave them what they wanted in return for something far greater, turning each one of them into his muses and keeping them alive in his memories and celebrated magnum opuses. Such was indeed the secret he carried, and not a single day passed without him honouring them, as he relived their final sacrifices each night before stepping onto yet another sold-out stage.

With the cheers reaching a disturbing crescendo and the concert hall trembling beneath the weight of the audience’s fervent applause, Francisco slipped away from the podium, and his shrewd, upside-down shadow stretched long and restless into the growing darkness beyond the stage lights.

 

The Taste of You

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

There’s something about the way skin tears that excites me; how it peels away as I put knife to flesh and bare the true face of its host. I can’t compare that feeling to any other, then again, have I ever felt this much and so many conflicting emotions at once before? To feel both mesmerised by Mother Nature’s composition, of what lies beneath the surface, made of several layers of tissue, to feel the edge of the knife gently unravel each layer, yet feel so… disgusted? So vulnerable? Beneath the skin, once it peels off and is gone, we’re all the same. Too similar, so uncannily similar.

I’ve always been an odd person. My obsession with the morbid, however, was not a result of this. You know those kinds of people, the ones who always seem kind and good-natured, yet are the most horrible beings? Only they’re good at hiding their true selves and fooling people into thinking the opposite. People always told me similar things growing up: “You’re such a kind person, so pure and innocent like falling snow.”

Just thinking of myself as “kind” and “pure” makes my skin crawl, especially since I know what I am.

I am a murderer. But not the kind you think of.

I don’t hate people, in fact, I’m not sure I’m capable of feeling anything. I just want to skin people, see what they look like beneath all that heavy, leathery tissue, to see their true forms and relish in the insight that only I have seen them, like really seen them. To stare into those hollow eyes once the skin is out of the way… how can I describe such a feeling? And the way that tissue feels on my skin as I place it over my face, and thinking for a moment, a fleeting moment, that we’re the same. Truly the same.

I like that part of the whole process more than anything, to put on my perfectly peeled mask and pretend I’m someone else. I’d wear the females’ clothes, craft wigs out of their beautiful, glossy hair, and put on some make-up. Then I’d dance the whole night, just dance away and pretend I’m the prettiest girl ever without being called a faggot or perverted loser.

Growing up in an all-boys school, I was used to being called all sorts of names and slurs, yet I didn’t mind any of them. I actually liked it; it made me feel like I was different, unique even. But I hated the idea of being told what to act like or look like. It wasn’t like I was overly feminine, either. Honestly, I received a lot of attention from females, especially in my twenties. They found my shyness cute, my awkwardness as some kind of mysterious attribution, and my effeminate features as a “pretty boy” trait.

Naturally, I chose a female as my first real murder. I’d killed animals before, practised on them to be more precise, and even murdered another human far too many times in my mind. Too many times, actually. And those vivid imaginations only made me even more eager to kill, to peel the skin off another human, and use it as my own.

Kayla was her name. Gorgeous thing. Despite looking so petite and feminine, she put up a real fight. I’d just taken off her bra and kissed her tenderly when I got the urge to taste her. Violently so. But not the kind of urge heterosexual males feel towards females; this was another kind of urge, one that was not sexual. I’ve never once felt sexual attraction to anyone or anything. Even this sudden urge lacked that sort of intimacy. I was just curious. What did this pretty thing look like beneath all those layers? Was she as pretty inside as she was outside? What did she taste like?

So, I pinned her down and punched her against the bed. She kept screaming. Kept telling me to stop. At one point, I wanted to. I really wanted to. But I couldn’t help it. Her soft, peaked breasts, the way her beautiful face distorted in horror, and the way she tried to push me away excited me in ways no words could describe. I guess I did feel some sort of sexual release back then, but it only happened that one time and only with her. I tried to replicate that feeling afterwards, always trying to mimic what I did to her with the others, but couldn’t.

Years later, I realised that I was in love with her, only I didn’t know it. I had never experienced love, and so I didn’t know how to express myself. I just wanted to be part of her and her to be part of me, and I was so sure that I only wanted to taste her, to see her real face beneath the skin, that I failed to recognise my own feelings. But at that point, I was too far gone to stop, too intoxicated by what Kayla had done to me and my perverted sexuality that all I wanted was to feel that way again in the most disturbing ways.

Sometimes, I’d wear her clothes and put on her face over mine, then I’d lie on the bed and slap myself repeatedly to relieve myself. It worked only half of the time, but I kept doing it. Over and over. Screaming, just like she did, then crying, begging myself to stop, saying “I’m sorry”, and then suffocating myself with her bra. It still smelled like the sweat of her soft breasts, which were now frozen solid in the freezer. I once cut up some of it to taste it, but they were so leathery that I just threw them away.

There are times when I look at her dismembered body and feel disgusted by myself, but other times I just use whatever I lay my hands on and try to relieve myself with her. But her hands are so cold that it never works. So, I stopped all that and just came to terms with the fact that I had to find some new hands – softer and warmer to the touch. No one would ever give me the sexual release Kayla gave me, I knew that, but I soon figured I just had to chop the head off and pretend those warm, cut-off hands were hers.

And so, my killing spree began in November of that same year I took this decision. Although I was still socially inadequate and it showed, I had managed to land a decent job at a chocolate factory, and women were still attracted to my pitiful personality, coupled with my above-average looks. There were days when I had two or three women over to my apartment, always of the same age as her, and took my time killing and dismembering them over the week. I didn’t like to rush things and was a perfectionist, and every new face and body required different tools and different care.

I liked especially the ones with some meat on them; that way, I could reserve some for supper and make soap with the fat. Did you know humans have yellow fat, by the way? I never knew until I chopped this middle-aged Somali woman. She’d given birth to six children and had fat in the right places. I must’ve used a great portion of her to make a whole course meal and several batches of fat. Which reminds me of something: she was the one who eventually helped me see my true potential and my innate talent for cooking and craftsmanship.

Long story short, I joined the cast of MasterChef – one of thousands and millions of home cooks, who were lucky enough to impress the judges and begin a new phase in life. Over the course of eighteen weeks, I became a fan favourite and earned the nickname “The Handsome Chef”, and when I came in second, I opened my own restaurant downtown and got people queuing for my dishes. My speciality? Sous vide turkey breast in vanilla and orange broth to enhance the sweet taste and give it a tang, served with a roux-based sauce made with a dash of cinnamon to double the effect of the vanilla without taking too much away from it.

You know, at first, I really wanted to start anew and make things the right way. But although I was making the bank, my urges were hitting an all-time low. Receiving attention from all those females, smelling their intoxicating sweat, seeing their soft and peaked breasts through their deep V-neck shirts, was getting to me. But, miraculously, I was holding on very well despite the temptation. Until a particular incident, that is.

As mentioned, I did not feel sexually attracted to anybody, and so I wasn’t particularly good at picking up the kind of sexual signals and tension people sent me. Not until it was too late. That was what happened on the evening of a party I was invited to by a celebrity couple who’d enjoyed my dishes. I was approached by many people, mind you, of all walks of life and sexes. But I didn’t really pay attention to anyone, in fact; I was actually planning on leaving the party early to keep myself in check, going as far as to avoid drinking altogether since years back.

But then he came. A young fella, no older than twenty. Good looking. He introduced himself as an up-and-coming actor and said that he was a big fan of mine. We exchanged phone numbers, and then I left. I didn’t realise just how big of a star this young man was, not until I looked up his name and noticed that he was a rising star in one of the most-watched coming-of-age, high school television series in recent years.

We kept in touch occasionally. I didn’t put any effort into trying to contact him as he wasn’t female and he wasn’t exactly what I liked to taste. Overall, not my type. But at some point, his messages overwhelmed me and would come at the most random of times. Each message started the same way: “Hey, I was wondering if you might be open to making some plans sometime soon?” or some variant of this. I usually ignored those kinds of messages, and honestly, I was slightly disturbed. That was a first for me – to feel disturbed by someone other than myself. And it was this fascination that eventually led me to accept his invites.

Of course, I knew what the guy wanted. I’d seen him give me those stares, the ones I’d given Kayla before I kissed her that night. But it wasn’t that I was sexually intrigued, only curious. The morbid kind of curiosity. I had never killed a male before. It never occurred to me that I could – or would. But lo and behold, as we made out in bed, I got that strange arousal I got with Kayla, and I just knew I had to take this opportunity.

He didn’t look much different from the others beneath the skin, to be honest. My expectations fell short. But he made me realise something about myself and those conflicting feelings of mine: it wasn’t the people themselves who aroused me, it was the fact that I did something I had never done before, something so perfectly disturbed, that it excited me.

I had to test this theory out, of course. So, I resumed my killing spree and used the flesh in my recipes. With each new dish, the sexual arousal was beyond anything I’d ever experienced, and when I received a two-star Michelin review from an acclaimed critic, I reached climax for the first time.

Today, I work as a judge in the newest season of MasterChef. Already past my sixties and my prime yet seeing those youthful faces look up to me and praise my craft triggers something deeply inside me. Had I the time and energy, especially the opportunity, I’d like to taste them and make a new dish out of them. Just imagining it makes me excited. But for now, all I can do is imagine and create the next best dish, imagining what each contestant would taste like in my mind.

I still wear Kayla’s face regularly and dance in the darkest hours of the night. She’s become some sort of comfort to me over the years. Her bra still smells of sweat, so salty yet delicious, that I sometimes scrape some of the fabric to infuse her sweaty breasts into my dishes. Serving it to customers gives me a kick, and once in a while, I reach climax – to her scent – and relive those beautiful moments of our bodies intertwining, her face over mine, her cold corpse against my skin, and me inside her rotting insides.