by Ed Bemand
“What brought you here tonight?”
“I just didn’t want to spend the night alone in my room.”
“No-one to keep you company?”
She shrugged.
“Your first time away from home?”
Nod.
“Scary, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you made many friends?”
“No.”
“Don’t worry. I’m sure you will.”
“Are you a student here?”
“No, not for a while.”
“Why are you here?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Me?”
She needed a friend and Hannah was happy to be that. They could have fun together. The girl was so beautiful but she didn’t realise it. Her name was Alice. She welcomed Hannah’s company, even if she seemed surprised when her more prurient intent became apparent. Not that she objected really, and it didn’t take long for them to be alone together, in Alice’s small and sparsely furnished room in her hall of residence. The setting was ragged and institutional but the population was mostly cheerful.
Alice admitted with embarrassment that she had no prior experience with women. It wasn’t a problem, Hannah knew what she was doing.
It couldn’t be only about sex but Hannah felt more affection than romantic love for her young friend after her lusts had been sated.
“You’re married?”
“Yes. His name’s Peter.”
“Are you unhappy with him... is that why you’re here?”
“No. I love him. I just want something... else.”
They saw each other a few more times over the following months. When Alice found somebody that offered her more, Hannah was sad for a moment, but mostly just glad that Alice had found someone and that she was happy and that she had been lucky enough to have that little piece of her life.
She’d had the chance to give some help and love to someone that needed it and received her own pleasures in return.
Of course she wasn’t going to stop after Alice. There were so many other girls like her out there. Young, shy, inexperienced. Lonely. Looking for someone to help them complete the transition into womanhood. It seemed to Hannah that there was something almost spiritual about it.
It was a brief and transitory pleasure that she could enjoy. They would all move on to someone else eventually.
She had her fun and she made some friends. She learned not to rush into casual sex. It was better to make sure that she knew the girl well enough to be sure that she was sensible enough to not be hurt by casual encounters. If a girl was too delicate, it was better to just leave well enough alone. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. Nor did she want to jeopardise her marriage to Peter. Somehow, the mere fact that Hannah chose to spend her passions with other women rather than men made it something that Peter was not only tolerant of it but he was even flat out encouraging. She shared all of the details of her amorous encounters with him when they were alone together. He enjoyed masturbating while she whispered them to him.
She still enjoyed sex with him. Perhaps not as regularly as they had before, but it was only natural that there would be some decline in their sexual relationship. And it wasn’t her fault if she found herself more drawn to pretty girls than she was to his increasingly middle-aged body.
Their two children were still young so it made sense that she never brought any of the girls to the house. Fortunately, they had enough disposable income that they didn’t have to worry too much about the amount of money that she was spending on hotel rooms now.
When, in time, Peter was driven to have his own affair, it was with a woman. Of course Hannah felt betrayed. He hadn’t even mentioned that he was thinking about it before he did it. Then he made poor efforts to cover his tracks afterwards. It didn’t take much for her to stumble upon the truth and he didn’t try to deny it.
A part of her could at least comprehend why he had done it, but when her own desire for others had grown, she had obligated herself to discuss it with him and gain his consent before she did anything and had always told him as much as he wanted to know about what she got up to with her young friends. He had lied and tried to hide it.
Where she had known that she had wanted to do something and then had gone looking for someone suitable to do it with, he had fallen for a specific individual. A girl he knew at work. She was more than a decade younger than either of them. Clearly they both had a taste for girls like that.
Whatever. She wanted a divorce. They were both adults and the separation didn’t have to be acrimonious. He seemed to accept it and didn’t argue, which felt like a sign that she was doing the right thing.
By this point their children were both teenagers. She resisted the urge to use them as a weapon against their father. He agreed to move out and found his own place. They had been fortunate with money and wouldn’t have to struggle. She had always kept her own money distinct from what she contributed to the family purse. The official story was simply that they had grown apart and deemed it better to end the marriage now.
Hannah’s later actions with a string of girlfriends were less discrete than they had been previously and she was increasingly less concerned with keeping them away from the family home. On more than one occasion her children found themselves stumbling upon women only a few years older than themselves in states of déshabillé.
Her tastes hadn’t changed, she still wanted twenty-year old girls. There was something special and beautiful about them. They existed in a state of transit, as the shell of childishness was shed but had not quite been replaced with the poise of womanhood. She was always getting older but they never did. It wasn’t a specific individual that she wanted any more. It was just to be with someone that existed in that beautiful moment, to be a part of that.
Within a few short years, her children grew up and moved out. She was alone now in a house that had been intended to room a whole family. She felt lonely, and that made her want to find company. It was always out there if you knew where to look.
Her children grew older than the girls that she wanted. She knew that they found it embarrassing, but she wanted what she wanted and she couldn’t live without it.
Her passions dwindled as age took its toll. In her twilight years she lived alone and the brief moments of friendship that she was able to spare with girls at that special age were the highlights of her existence.
At first it had hurt her when she could no longer stir desire, then she had grown resigned to it. The time when the treasures of youth were available to her by proxy had passed. She was a grandmother now.
When her loneliness and frailty became too much, she consented to move into sheltered accommodation. It was easier having people that could deal with a lot of the day to day matters that were increasingly too much for her to perform for herself.
She knew there were others among the inhabitants who formed romances, even had liaisons. She didn’t find the idea appealing. The last thing that she needed was to have her decrepitude highlighted to her by being intimate with someone else her own age. She was better off alone with her reminiscences. They warmed her heart even if her body seemed to have completely forgotten how to respond to such urges.
She was found dead in her bed one morning, several weeks before her ninetieth birthday.
Sixteen: How Antoine became his great work
The finding of the lost works of Dr. LeConte represented a major turning point in Antoine’s career. He didn’t know where Lucille had found the book, but it contained extremely detailed practical advice on preserving different tissues, illustrated with many fine prints of anatomy.
The language was archaic and it would be years before he could claim to fully understand all that it contained, but the notes left by the doctor were comprehensive and highly informative. They enabled Antoine to learn far more of what he needed for his art to last. The doctor had developed incredible preservatives, far in advance even of the wonders that modern
science had wrought in this area by Antoine’s time, but the years had allowed the development of other technologies, things that the doctor had not had and that meant that Antoine was able to rapidly achieve more than the doctor had ever been able to.
He owed it to Lucille to achieve something great with her. She was trusting him to do it. He couldn’t let her down. The task ahead of him would not be easy. Lucille had meant her death to be an inspiration to him, so be it. He laboured for the next week, desperate that he would stave the decay that had so readily consume Adrienne. He wasted no time trying to draw or paint Lucille, she herself was to be the artwork. Whereas when confronted with Adrienne he had felt a mania, now he was calm. He could focus and create something transcendent.
Gautier was paying one of his regular visits to Antoine’s studio to check up on him, taking with him bags of food and wine as had become his habit. At first Antoine had held the door shut, peering round its edge at him.
“You can’t come in.”
“Why not?”
“I’m working.”
“That’s fantastic. Let me see...”
“It’s not finished.”
Gautier kept pushing on the door and Antoine abandoned his attempt to block his way. There was an acrid chemical smell that made Gautier choke. He held his handkerchief to his mouth. Antoine was dishevelled but unusually free of paint splatters. Instead Gautier observed suspicious surgical tools and bottles of unpleasant looking fluids.
“What are you working on?”
Antoine led him by the arm to the bathroom. Lucille’s body was in the bath, immersed in preservatives.
“What did you do?”
“I’m trying to save her.”
Lucille’s note had been left on the side. Gautier read it through twice. Of course, he felt sympathy for Antoine’s pain, but mostly he felt excited about what this could mean. He started taking photos of the work in progress.
“I need to get this note to the lawyers. How long will you need to finish?”
“I don’t know, maybe a few more days...”
“You’ve got to be done within three. Okay?”
The smell was too much for Gautier to want to linger. Anyway, he had lots of work to do. He contacted his lawyers and let them know what they would soon be facing, then, as Antoine’s three days drew to a close, he started letting the photos of Antoine at work on Lucille find their way into the media.
The police came to visit Antoine. They arrested him and confiscated Lucille. Gautier had planned for this. His lawyers were ready to handle the situation. Antoine’s new work was famous before it was ever displayed. The court case was covered prominently in the media. Antoine didn’t find this trial as bad as his last one. It had been very thoughtful of Lucille to leave the note. Without it he would have been in much more trouble. Gautier had invested wisely in the legal team. Last time Antoine had been broke so his defence was led by somebody provided by the state for free. He had been worth every penny of it.
“Your honour, unusual as this case may be and as emotive as it clearly is that does not entitle us to ignore the facts. Lucille Dubois was a young woman of strong emotions but she was not insane. She chose to kill herself so that through her sacrifice she could give my client the raw materials that he needed for his work.”
“Does the law recognise the right of the individual to give their body over to desecration?”
“It is the right of any person to choose to give their body over for scientific research, in order that others might benefit from their passing.”
“That is hardly the same thing. Cadavers are necessary for scientific research and for doctors in training. What has been done here is not science. This is simple perversion.”
“But what is greater, science or art? It is the right of any person to offer their remains for science, so why not for art?”
The court case was a source of secret delight to Gautier. He need make no efforts in the promotion of the work. The press couldn’t resist the story. Galleries vied for the chance to host the piece. The exhibit travelled the world as “Lucille’s sacrifice for love & art”. Most of the time, people just called it Love.
With Lucille, Antoine was closer to achieving LeConte’s ultimate goal than the doctor had ever been. She was imperfect in some ways. Some took her for a mannequin. She was kneeling in supplication. Mostly because it was the posture he had been forced to use to jam her into the bath. Her face was like a mask. Antoine had painted her with strong preservatives and any who touched her would have realised that she was like wood. Her skin had been layered in varnishes to keep it free of decay and it had required deft application of powders to take the shine off it. There was something very inhuman about her, but that could be seen less as poor technique than the art that transcended her to be more than just a corpse.
Antoine refused to speak publicly. It didn’t matter. What he had done had already given them plenty to think about. Nor would he appear in person to collect the awards and accolades that the work earned him. Gautier collected them all on his behalf, making sure to mention that each award was really in part Lucille’s as well, because of her ultimate sacrifice in giving herself over to Antoine’s art.
As Antoine became more withdrawn from people Gautier was able to project himself as being a major part of the work, in managing Antoine he made it capable for the work to be created. Antoine didn’t care. As long as he had what he needed to keep working nothing else mattered and if Gautier was willing to deal with everything else, what did it matter how thickly he lined his own pockets in the process?
It broke Antoine’s heart when Gautier made him sell Lucille. She was to be used as the centrepiece in the lobby of some new über-giant luxury hotel. It seemed base and shameful but it was an unbelievable amount of money to pay for a corpse. That one sale would give him enough money that he never needed to sell another piece if he didn’t want to. It felt like a betrayal but he hoped that she would understand. She knew that art was a commodity and in choosing to become art she inevitably also made herself a commodity. In the end it wasn’t like he even had a choice. He had granted Gautier power to decide these things when he had signed the paperwork he’d been presented with back in the institution.
The company that owned the hotel had initially wanted Antoine to be present at the unveiling that was just one part of the grand and lavish opening ceremonies planned for the hotel. Antoine couldn’t face it and in the end Gautier was able to convince them that it was better to just let the art speak for itself. Anyway, Antoine was liable to be somewhat erratic in his rare public appearances and it was all too likely that he would inadvertently spoil the occasion.
Antoine now wanted to hide away and focus on his work. He bought a big empty warehouse building. He was happy to make a home for himself in what had once been an office above it. The rest of the space was his studio. It felt huge and empty but he rapidly started to fill it. His paints and canvasses had always been wont to spread and take up all available space in his studio, and Antoine was now starting to learn the more advanced techniques that Dr. LeConte described in his notes, which required lots of large and expensive equipment.
In the absence of a ready supply of bodies, Antoine had to improvise. Gautier had profited well enough by the association that he didn’t even question when Antoine asked him to arrange for a supply of freshly slaughtered pigs to be delivered to the warehouse every week.
Antoine barely left his studio for the next year. He spent his days surrounded by rotting meat as his failures succumbed to natural decomposition. He had been lucky in his attempts to preserve Lucille, but even she had required many coats of varnish to stave off decomposition. Now he wanted to develop Dr. LeConte’s embalming techniques enough that they alone would preserve his works.
His work meant a lot of pig carcasses needed to be disposed of. Specialists had to be called in. The chemical sludge and decaying flesh was regarded as dangerous medical waste. He didn’t care. His experiments needed to be d
isposed of when he was done with them.
Gautier was left to deal with all such mundane concerns. All Antoine cared about was refining his skills. He was subject to occasional and unavoidable psychological assessments and the results of his previous conviction were public knowledge. The media preferred it that way. It was easier to explain him as a crazy tragic recluse than it was to try to actually look at what he was doing.
Antoine refused to consider his pig creations art, even the successful ones. He was trying to learn to expose the truth of the human soul, not gammon. Gautier disagreed with Antoine. This was definitely art.
Gautier made sure that photos of the pigs made it to the press. Antoine standing over a rearing preserved pig with a chainsaw, ready to carve his work, dressed in just stained jeans and heavy rigger boots, his face concealed behind goggles and a white plastic filter mask, flecks of flesh all over him.
It took some deft juggling to make it clear who the photos were of and what was going on without making it completely obvious that he was doing it as a publicity stunt.
He got plenty of phone calls the day after. Now he just had to make sure that Antoine did something that he could show to the public, preferably something that he could attach a price-tag to. It was a shame about the pigs though. He was sure he could have found a buyer able to appreciate their unique and valuable quality as prestige art. The successful ones were properly preserved and wouldn’t even smell if they were cleaned up a bit. The less said about the unsuccessful ones the better.
The stench of chemicals and decaying flesh was miasmic in Antoine’s studio and he carried it on him. Gautier’s visits were typically brief. He preferred to tend to his side of affairs from his office, which was opulent and played venue to prominent people from the media and art worlds whenever they wanted to know more about Antoine.
After his success with the pigs, Antoine knew what he wanted to do next. He also knew that he would need help to achieve his goals. At first he was reluctant to even consider enlisting further help, but the mundane aspects of the preparation of his subjects was more than he could attend to if he were to remain free to focus on the greater aspects of what he was trying to create.