The sound of friction woke her. He was rising little by little before suddenly breaking off and fading into a gasp.
She looked at her watch and saw nothing but darkness. She heard ticking and didn't see the time. Voices that ran away from time. She reached out to the other half of the bed and the space hugged her. She kept laying there waiting for him to come back. He must have risen to drink or go to the bathroom. A minute passed, two or three minutes, and he didn't come.
The sound of friction that woke her up came back to her memory. She tried to locate the source of the sound, but her mind between sleep and wakefulness could not help her. She wished the sound would come back to pinpoint its source. After a few minutes—or maybe seconds—she was pulled out of sleep by a leap that felt like her heart had nearly jumped out of her chest.
She looked at the clock again and saw through the beam pouring in through the window one of its hands. It was pointing down. When the bed reminded her that the other half was empty, she decided to get up to stop the hammers of questions that kept pounding the walls of her head.
“What are you doing this late at night?” She saw her husband, sitting with cloudy eyes, looking at an oil painting that topped the living room.
The painting is of a fleshy, flat-bodied woman, which hides a face and accentuates an archer. Or rather, she was viewing it with confidence. She knows the painting very well. How could she not, when she was the one who bought it and chose its frame and hung it on the wall where her husband is now looking with shame? He looked as if he was apologizing to the painting or rather to its flattering lady.
His eyes regained their luster and he jumped off his chair like a frightened animal. He got close to her. He wanted to distract her from the stack of pictures piled next to him on the floor.
He remembered, that his getting up would have drawn her attention to the buttons of his pajamas loosened. The elements of the crime have been completed! Crime scene: the saloon. Evidence: loose buttons. Crime Tool: photo pack.
"Nothing Sweetie. Why did you wake up, my love?” He answered her, between standing and sitting, hastily re-butting his pajamas.
“I asked you what you are doing at this time,” she said, in a trembling voice and shining eyes.
“My love, my love, my love.” He approached her, extending his hands as if trying to catch a chicken that had escaped from its coop. “Nothing. Just looking at the painting. Go back to bed, sweetheart.”
She looked at him from behind a cloak of tears and shouted at the top of her voice: “No, you are not looking at the painting.” And she started throwing her fists.
As he received her sharp, random blows, pictures of their wedding almost a year ago flashed through his head. He remembered it one by one in the smallest details.
The photographer picked it up for him in exchange for a thick wad of money. At first, the photographer did not accept his strange request and almost kicked him out of the studio, but the sight and smell of money quickly suffocated the photographer's professional principles.
The groom’s request was simple: “I want you to make me an extra copy of the wedding photo album, but without faces. Faces do not interest me at all.”
Indeed, a few days after the wedding, the photographer handed him a thick album containing pictures of people with full organs and limbs, healthy but without faces. Bodies intertwined with each other. legs and arms; shoulders and chests; backs and knees; necks and stomachs; A swirling sea of intertwined, stranded organs spread out in dance circles, over tables, on chairs, and on the stage.
The album was called "Forest of Bodies" and kept under the car seat where he accompanies him wherever he goes. He browses it before turning the car key, at traffic lights, and before leaving the car. turns its pages; staring at its contents; He gets lost in the “Forest of Bodies,” which keeps surprising him with new formations and images every time he looks at them.
He couldn't imagine spending not even a minute away from his album. A second reason why he kept the album in the car was his fear that it might fall into the hands of his bride, who would inevitably condemn him to delinquency or insanity, not to mention the interrogation sessions and consequences that he could do without. But the reality was much better than his fears. When the bride, by chance, discovered his album, she did not investigate or judge him at all.
All in all, she refused to wander in his "forest" and made an agreement with her groom. Borrowing a tone of disappointment much faster than she expected, she told him: “Obviously, these pictures mean a lot to you. I do not want to understand the moral behind it, it is up to you, but if you want to stay with me, you have to burn a picture of it in front of me.
The groom reluctantly brought his album and put it in an old tin, then poured a large amount of kerosene on it, followed by a burning match that quickly devoured the entire “forest” leaves. When she saw the reflection of fire dancing on the page of his face and his eyes extinguished, she took pity on him and suggested that she buy him an oil painting of her choice of a naked woman that she hangs for him in the salon to look at her whenever he wants as long as it is with her knowledge and under her eyes.
The groom agreed, apologized, and promised her that he would never look at a woman's body behind her back.
When she stopped hitting him due to fatigue and drowsiness, he held her to his chest with both arms and then carried her to the bedroom where he put her back on the bed. “Sorry, my love,” he said to her, then placed a kiss on her forehead that contained more voice than emotion.
“You promised me that you would not look at a body other than that of the woman in the painting,” she said to him, without seeing his face in the darkness of the room, although her eyes were wide open.
“By God, I was looking at her,” he replied as if he was pulling a sword from its sheath.
"Do not lie! I saw the stack of pictures next to you on the floor.”
He was struck by the weight of her words. He did not know how to answer, or rather, he did not know if there was any point in answering. He lay next to her on the bed and watched with his eyes the silhouettes of the street that were reflected on the ceiling of the room. They were transparent light reliefs moving in straight lines along the ceiling. Suppose the fast phantoms were cars and the slow phantoms were pedestrians.
He was not sure of his analysis because the closed window glass was completely blocking the sounds of the street from him.
“I think it's the shapes that draw me to the album,” he said after a long silence, addressing his bride or perhaps himself. He then repeated confidently: “Yes, they are the shapes.” Then he added, as his eyes watched the movement of the street reflected on the ceiling: “It's more than I can handle. The album leads me into a forest of infinite forms". Then he asked her, “Right, why don't you give it a try. Try it just once, believe me, you will fall in love with the forest.”
"No, thanks!" she replied with a mixture of sharpness and sarcasm. One tree is enough for me, I don't need your forest.” Then she got up and closed the lid, and the room plunged into darkness, wiping out the shadows of light from the ceiling.
“I want to sleep well,” she declared, returning to bed in the darkness that swallowed her words.
His eyes were fixed on the ceiling, searching for any trace of those light shapes. Before closing his eyes he decided that the first thing he would do tomorrow was to get rid of the lady of the painting for good.
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I loved the intrigue, the drama, and the surrealism. But I have no idea what it's about or if it's done or just on a cliffhanger. Still, it's poetic and colourful. Reminds me of a theatre drama, but with words instead of actors. Does the guy imagine the various forms in the forest or is it the work of the photographer's photo editing? It seems as if he has some sort of disorder, maybe delusional schizophrenia, but also seems as though he has a degeneracy he's been suppressing. The confusion and ambivalence is wonderful!
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It's pretty much that, to be honest. Theatre drama is also a good compliment that does resemble what I try to do with these "Horribly written stories" as they're basically a way to tell someone there's a fire in the house next door but by describing the absence of the curtain rather than the clear signs lol.
Thank you for reading.
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