The Patron Saint of Sublime Beauty
The Patron Saint of Sublime Beauty
Gothtober, Part V
by &
October Thirty-First: the veil is thin, haunted creatures roam the land of the living, and Gothtober is coming to a close with one more final, frightful tale.
On this Halloween Night, a scorned taxidermist encounters a cold and motionless muse who inspires her to act on the whims of divine beauty. Co-written by Bitch Sensei and Hannah of Haunting the Staircase.
The violent breath of autumn tugs at my veil and I hurriedly pull it back into place. Though the townsfolk by now know of my unfortunate circumstance, I find the shrouded mystery of an unknown face to be more friendly to those I encounter than the naked truth of my complexion. A veil alone could never make me more beautiful – I have seen to it by my own Icarian compulsion that I will be grotesque for the rest of my living days – but it is my hope that a slight obfuscation of my troubling features may dull the tension that pierces the space between myself and others.
The local shopkeep knows my usual order: thread, needles, camphor, powdered arsenic, salt of tartar, bar soap, powdered lime. She hands me my items and gives me a pursed smile that seems to bridle a swelling dam of disgust in her throat. I know not whether it is my appearance or my profession that evoke such responses; to diligently transcend death – to create life in preservation by way of a mounted buck, an immaculately posed falcon – is a line of work which perplexes those who cling to life too tightly. At the counter, I muse that my aspirations to transcendental beauty should be of little surprise to any woman who has felt the bitter and constant rejection that confronts a face unfit for public view, and the fear with which my aesthetic alterations have been met seems, to me, an unwarranted reaction.
“Masks are half price for the All Hallows’ Ball,” the shopkeep says. She refuses direct eye contact with me, for those defining features shrouded by my veil are framed by a crudely stitched line of the blackest mink fur as my latest modification; though extreme, the dark flair offers a stark framing for my eyes – or would, were they not swollen near the point of closure. The mobile parts of my face furrow at her comment.
“All Hallows? So soon?”
“It’s about that time, isn’t it?” The shopkeeper offers up a mask, blood red, with awfully puckered lips and an extravagant collar. Attached to its head are two flopping, jingling appendages. A fool’s mask. Awareness singed across her face that I, in fact, have not once been invited to the All Hallows’ Ball, and that attribution of a fool’s mask only serves as further insult.
I cannot discern what particular circumstance of this year’s condemnation sets alight such a frenzied flame within me. The sneer upon the shopkeepers visage, perhaps, or the perpetual repudiation, year after year, that I have begun to think of as a gaping wound that knits itself together only to be torn apart once again. This year, it seems to have hit bone.
I have only just stepped through the threshold when my eyes catch a glimpse of raven black hair. In one swelling instant I see her face, in the shape of a heart, with a chin that comes to a slender point. It is the congruent nature of her face that strikes me without reserve – I nearly fall to my knees in the square. Each feature appears to have been placed with the utmost care, arranged ever so harmoniously. I turn with haste, engraving the divine image within my memory. As I traverse the streets, I envision Her Holy Visage encased in a camphor mixture, preserving its sheen and delicacy.
My mother spoke often of me as a perverse creature. It is times such as these that I expect she was correct. More oppressive and potent than desire, the feeling that enraptured me upon that moment of witness opened a chasm within me. To run my comb through silky, raven black hair, to hum at a smooth, carved marble face in the mirror, would be to transcend this mortal coil into a primal divinity that is owned by only the most beautiful: O Helen of Troy, O Celopatra, hear my cry from beyond the walls of your holy trenches! My rigid lips struggle to form a scowl as I wonder whether “invite only” applies to the Helens and the Celopatras, or if their seraphic beauty would grant them admittance to that cursed All Hallows’ Ball from which I have been scorned once more.
I rush the materials into my workshop and slam the door behind me to begin a new project. Not a preserved creature like those who line the walls of my workshop, but an obfuscation; a grand distraction from the misfortune with which I have been struck; one that will charm those people who, though not my enemies, have stood by my exclusion in complacency all these years.
The preparations devour the hours. The sun sulks beneath the horizon. The mask begins to take shape in my mind; one that would bring the patrons of the ball to their knees in adoration. It is this imagined sight that solidifies my resolve. I do not rest. Following a night of planning in my workshop, beneath the watchful glass eyes of my former subjects, I step outside once again, to walk under the moon.
Futile would any efforts be to discern at what age, in which circumstances this obsession came to fruition. Often I liken it to a rot that has grown in the marrow of my bones, in the crooks of my spine from the moment I was brought into this world. From a young age, my mother insisted upon perfection. My posture, to this day, remains immaculate. I speak with the intonation of a proper lady. Hands clasped behind my back, I learned to bow, to position myself below others, to supplicate with an air of dignity. Hair the color of flames that fell from my head was arranged in such a way that not a single strand was out of place. It was the one piece of myself that my mother loved above all others. She would spend hours brushing, oiling, smoothing it upon my head. My scalp would redden from her sharp tugging and preening.
As I grew, the sublimity festered. In my thirteenth year, armed with a pair of dull shears and the fire of a scorned young woman, I mangled my hair beyond repair to spite my mother after some unforgivable violation that I have since forgotten. With each strand that I cut, I felt nearer to liberation from that which has been forced down my throat all my life. My mother banished me from her home and I have spent years caring for myself. Though I have yet to banish my mother; she is with me still, critiquing and sighing, my own scornful angel perched upon my shoulder.
It was her voice that became a cruel resident of my subconscious, the driving muse of my indiscretions; that resident who slams on the walls of my brain without cessation, she who pleaded and howled at me, resulting in those beautifying procedures that have warped my features beyond recognition. For her, I confronted every skewed feature to chisel them to perfection. My mink fur eyelashes. My swollen lips. My failed tinctures and formaldehyde injections caused tightening, stretching, and melting to create my own mask – not one of beauty, but of shame – which could never be removed in spite of my greatest efforts.
And it is she – the wretched woman who cursed me with life – who drives me to the concealed paths behind my workshop, those which unfailingly afford me a place I may walk through the night unseen.
As I walk, that raven-haired woman drifts through me like a ghost. The image of her marble skin swallows my every thought – how haunting her presence! How it made me shudder with pleasure and envy! What a truly seamless life it must be to move through the world with the power of transcendent beauty. My obsessive musing is interrupted by the moonlight illuminating a delicate hand laid out under a bush. The hand, upon further inspection, is attached to a slender shape that lies twisted in the bush. I struggle to quiet a gasp when I realize her face is hauntingly similar to that one raven-haired beauty; the same long, oil slick hair, the same marble skin, that ethereal softness that reached to me just hours before, but missing one vital quality: the breath of life.
The cause of her death is unclear, and yet she beckons me closer. The scent of fresh persimmon tantalizes my veil and I whip the cloth from my head to drink in that odor of sweet and pungent death. Who is this creature of the night, this divine statuette who lay crumbled – yet seemingly undamaged – and lifeless on this path?
I am pushed to act by the primal urge to possess.
What ancient spell, what undead canticle may I chant to find myself stirring inside that immaculate flesh that laid before me? If I swallow a bit of her for a taste of the divine, find the still blood that lurks below her somber skin and drink it, might I reach transcendence? Her still face speaks to me, pleading for a life beyond that which was taken from her so early. So delicate was she, so undeserving of such a fate. A loving blade slides under pale marble flesh. Her skin is softer than the subjects with which I am accustomed, thus removing the skin in one piece is impossible in this first attempt; with my gaining panic and frustration come careless flicks of the blade that render her marble skin shattered and useless.
I think of my mother and her cruel affection for my auburn waves. To enact some quiet revenge, to slight her from her hatred beyond the grave, I slide my wretched knife beneath the brow of the woman and lovingly carve around her crown, revealing a vile and shining red beneath. To my surprise, that pristine raven black is removed easily in a single swift pull.
The act of placing it upon my own head is one that I must perpetuate with reverence, away from the prying eyes of the night’s creatures. It must be done in preparation. My mother’s phantom, as I have begun to refer to her, recoils in disgust. Shame, she hisses; I writhe at her voice, and yet she hasn’t the courage to speak it above a whisper. Oh, mother, I breathe, do you not yet comprehend? Of that I have none.
In the safe confines of my workshop, I don that dark and dripping crown. A metamorphosis begins; a sacred transformation from a site of thick blood and matted hair into a relic upon my head, imbued with such soul, such breath of life!
Its warm caress softens around my scarred skin and treats my mania like a salve – I find a a transformed woman in the mirror, an unrecognizable statuette whose oil slick mane shrouds her features. God’s veil. A precious red tear slips down my face from the root of my second scalp.
A splintering feeling of incompleteness fills me, and as I gaze lovingly upon the woman’s discarded skin that once sat upon her head, a notion I recognize as vile strikes me. Yet, at once it brings me harmony to place the lacerated skin upon my own, the only aberration stemming from its imperfect surface.
Shame! I hear once more, a futile denouncement of the vision sharpening in my mind, but this time I laugh.
I hear my neighbors’ chatter in passing, pleading with each other, what kind of man would do such a thing? Per routine, they refused to meet my eye. Their rigid mixture of apathy and disgust towards me remains uninterrupted by any sympathy or fear for the young women that may fall victim to the next senseless slaying. For I, the disfigured – and thus, less than a woman – am a disposable creature. The discretion that paired with my mutation, though humiliating, is but another tool in my kit. Further, the pity it evokes in the kind women on the street lends to my repeated success in the theft of their vitality.
Four new saints were christened that week from four exquisite specimens who were unlucky enough to tread that desolate path beyond my workshop. I strike from the shrubs, blade in hand, clipping the notch of Achilles, sending my muse to the ground, immobilized before the one who will bestow upon her the gift of transcendence. Their sacrifices will not soon be forgotten, for from their anguish springs a new writhing, screaming, wretched life. Have I built a face worthy of your love?
My visit to the shopkeepers to purchase the fool’s mask fills me with cold dread — and yet it must be done. My stiff cheeks redden at her cruel laughter, her wicked stare. I soothe my thoughts by envisioning her mouth stuck in the shape of a fearful howl.
“This is the last time you shall ridicule me,” I state.
I do not give her a chance to counter before I am back on the street. In my workshop, I construct the face of a God.
I slice around the coarse fabric of the fool’s mask, creating a hole at the center for my creation. Each component has been thoroughly treated, dried, and laid out; I spend hours weaving together the skin of my four muses, already separated from muscle and sinew by my blade and desiccated to perfection. And with that wretched, holy thing wrapped around the face that not even a mother could love, I set out for my grand debut as the Patron Saint of Sublime Beauty.
In order to fathom the physiognomy of that which I place upon myself, the faces of those in attendance of the All Hallow’s Ball must be laid bare. Upon first glance, many lift their own masks, peering out from underneath them in bewilderment. Their writhing cries, their unadorned fear, their hysterical desperation to understand!
Among the faces at the ball, my mother’s phantom stands rigid and nearly limpid. She is bearing her yellowed, dead teeth in a vile grin. Oh mother, I call to her, I still feel you pulling on my tender scalp. Your cold hands try to force my gaze away from my shame. And yet I stare at it now, eye to eye. And yet I am free.
How does black suit me? How is my posture? Have I the carved marble face of a living muse? I wash in the spilled blood of saints and let their holiness steep into me. I have awakened a new sect of divine beauty. I will stare in the eye of the foul beast of shame and demand, LOOK AT ME.
LOOK AT ME, I wail once more, now to the crowd quivering before me, cast your eyes upon that which you created! I bathe in their frightful recoil, their trembling whispers, their frail protests. As the distant bell tolls in the dead of night, the last sight of the world I glimpse is the patrons descending upon me. And yet. I am free.
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this was magnificent