But mostly, the Paris of old had a scent. As it does now within this room.
In my past lives I have been many things. Chief among them, a butcher and a soldier. They are not separate from one another for they are alike in their similarities. They are both purveyors of death, and death seems to be my lot in this life and perhaps the next. Both fields of work have the same unique odor - acrid like sulfur and as sweet as rotted meat. In the abattoir or the killing fields where men slaughter men, the sickly aroma permeates the senses, and you either succumb to the overwhelming stench of death as you wretch out your insides or you choose to accept the intrusion of lost souls into your very own heart of hearts and soulless soul. I chose the acceptance of death. As butcher and soldier, I was indiscriminate. I slaughtered animals so that others may eat; so others may survive. As a soldier, I slaughtered others so others may survive the indiscriminate slaughtering of the innocent souls amongst this earth. And so are the butcher and soldier forever linked in history. The tools of the butcher are the tools of the soldier. What is the difference between gutting a pig and the ending of a human life? The butcher and the soldier both kill to live.
And within the slaughterhouse and upon the general's game board there is the odoriferousness of despair and solitude. The heaviness I felt that evening as the sun did set and the moon began to shine it's dark and desperate glow. I sat in my armchair with brandy and gun at my side, gazing through the glazed window which overlooked the rue morgue as curtains seemingly danced in anticipation of a visitor surely to come. The scent of dead flesh wafted amongst the trees and flowers in bloom. A thousand corpse flowers sprouted at midnight and I gripped the brandy glass so tightly that it exploded as if shot by the gun that still lay at my behest. The fire crackled and spat at me as the wet pine dripped into the flames, burning and smoldering and smelling of cleanliness.
Yves Saint Laurent. Death and roses. It hit me in the gut, the face. I was forced back into the chair with a violent fist. The stench was so overwhelming I vomited upon my silken shirt; the bile mixing with the already saturated air. Still, my body sat still - prone. Unmoving. Motionless. Emotionless. I breathed. I breathed and I struggled to breathe. I gasped a deadly intake of noxious fumes, of poisonous air. I inhaled lavender and jasmine and spat out regrets. Acid tickled my nose as a memory attacked my olfactory nerves. Sweet and sick was Paris this night. Gaseous fumes blew into the room from the streets below and all became still. Dead.
Dead. She is and I am. I am close to being so. I can smell her. I can smell her perfume, her being. Her way. I can sense her death, her passing. She passes through me nightly. Like my knife did pass through the gentle lamb at the abattoir, and as my lead did pass through the flesh of man as I fought for peace. I will sit here upon my chair, my throne, and I will buy a bouquet of fleshy floral scents for her. I will await her return for she is revenant. She is the visitor who announces her arrival with wicked and whispered ways of a buried corpse and all the remnants of the old and fragrant Parisian catacombs.
And here within the tomb I shall await. Hands fondling the silky and sickly words of madness that a butcher and a soldier once wrote. She comes at once; tracing the outlines of my face as she breathes belief into my very soul. Death smells like her and she and I were meant to be together forever.
Paris smells sick tonight.
I have heard the cries of slaughtered souls. The animals I have murdered within the cold antiseptic warehouses of south side meat production plants, and the animals upon the battlefields in a war of attrition. They all sound the same, yet unique in their own vicious sense. A guttural wailing like a banshee forewarning impending doom. The pigs and cattle actually sound like angels sometimes - a certain hymn escapes their throats and bowels as if they know they will soon meet their god, and they are fine with that. I often took solace hearing their final cries. I wrapped my arms around their warm and bloody form and whispered promises to them: "It's okay. Ssshhh ... you must die so we may live. It's okay, it's okay". Finally, their protestations would fade away and I was stronger for having known them.
The fields of conflict where men butchered men in the name of piece had an altogether different sound. The voices of the dead do not fall silent when blood is spilled. When their life force is extinguished and their souls depart this mortal plane, their passing is not muted. It resounds and reverberates mightily, as did the cannons and shells which laid waste to the corporeal forms of thousands upon thousands of young men. A final prayer to Gods they may or may not believe in any longer escapes from their bloodied lips and floats into the acrid clouds. Whispered "I love you" 's to lovers they will never see or touch again. Cries for mother's and father's who sit home and worry for their son's - never realizing that at that exact moment, their son lays ragged, torn and bloody and begging for a savior to rescue him from this hell. These are the voices that echo within my very heart and soul. This night as I sit alone, a solitary sentinel guarding myself from past memories, has proven to be no different than my days as a murderer of tasty flesh and slaughterer of human souls; all done in the name of duty and honor, mind you.
First, it was the permeating scent of decay and perfume, and now the oratory waterfall of accusations and whispered betrayals directed towards myself. I was first attentive to the ever so light rush of a breeze gently tickling my ear, as I knew this happenstance was impossible for the windows were closed this evening. The air was sickly sweet and chill, and the wind whispered undecipherable words to me; their meanings and origins known only to whose mouth and lips they quietly explode from. The spiny words poked my inner ears with spindly and poisonous promises of retribution and I whimpered like a tiny child; to her great pleasure I am sure as a muffled laugh enveloped me and held me fast in my place.
My God, I was frozen. I was cold and damp and weak. My heart beat a tattoo; a drum drum drumming pounding within my head until I could take no more.
"Enough!" I cried. I begged, "I can take no more! What is it you want?"
Silence. Stillness. Yet not only silence, the answer was the complete and total absence of sound. Of all sound. My heart stopped beating. Did my heart stop beating completely? The rush of blood in my head was quieted and my breath was nonexistent. I couldn't hear myself breathing anymore. Was I still breathing? I could not cry out for I had no voice. I was a mute witness to my own undoing. The night was dead and unknown to me; a void where all things perish. Vacuous. It was nothing. I was nothing. Nothing.
A blood curdling scream rescued me from the blackness and to this day I shall never forget its sound. And to this day I shall curse the fact that it was that which awakened me from my premature burial, and not the pleasant sounds of my Paris below my balcony, for my death would have been preferred to the terror which awaited me this night.
Not in all my years as an employee of death had I heard such a wail. It was not the screams of soldiers in the throes of death nor the choking and suffocating bleats of tortured creatures as blood spilled upon my hand. This was God crying and the Devil laughing and a train going off the tracks; the crunch of metal upon metal, like the sound of the saw upon bone - as it slices flesh from animal or man it does not matter, it does not discriminate. It was a cold and rigid decomposed memory of life and love. It was the icy grip of death in my ears; a searing flood of molten thoughts within my soul. The hackles upon my flesh were raised. The microorganisms crawling upon my body begged for mercy - their protests went unheeded as they died in rivers of flame. I could no longer hear myself scream.
I swear I am not insane.
But just perhaps a little mad.
Paris sounds sick tonight.
I was pulled away from my personal hell by the lights of the city below as all went quiet again. The colors washed over me; red like blood, blue like ice and yellow like cowardice. A dark rainbow burst through the window like dead soldiers going over the top. Blind in their ambition and duty, and foolish in their bravado. The dead never come back the same. Not as they were before. But they a
lways return, as does she.
I had suffered the worst - corpse like flowers blossoming and assaulting my senses and the purest sounds of torture and regret piercing my brain, yet I knew in my heart of hearts and my soulless soul this was untrue; I had not suffered enough and I would be shown the consequences of my betrayal. I only had to wait, enraptured as a child by magic, this deathly and tragic magic of psychosis and sociopathic love, and all would be shown to me. And so I rested, unable to move myself from the chair. Unable to reach for the pistol that lay upon the table next to me. If only I could see where my hand does lay - is it close by the gun? For if it was I would surely grasp it and end my life. Better by my choosing than hers. Yet I am blinded by the photographs in my mind, upon the mantle and within the fire. I see nothing yet notice everything imaginable and unimaginable.
She was beautiful.
She is beautiful.
She is dead.
She still lives.
She comes to me in dreams; in nightmares and waking incoherent madness. But I am not mad nor paranoid. I am real and I am all knowing and I am a seer of things better left unseen. I do not visit her for she visits me here in my apartment upon the Seine. She is bright and beautiful and angelic and she is demonic, but she is my demon and for this I love her to no end. Not even the end of the noose or the funeral pyre or premature burial will change my feelings for her. But what if she has changed? I see it in her eyes, I believe. In her ways that are no longer her ways at all anymore. She was brighter and more stardust in life and, now here upon her return, she appears dark and uneven in spirit and body and mind. I believe, as I am curled within myself and shrouded in this nothingness, that she is real. She must be real for I am sane and only sane people see what is real; true or not. Vision or angel or apparition or devil, she is here and we are together again.
I have been visited before. Once as a child I killed my neighbor's cat out of boredom. It had always been friendly with me and for some reason that kindness bothered me to no end. So on this day I decided to test its friendliness with a small tin of sardines. It was quite happy lapping up the oil and skin of these tiny and useless fish and became quite feisty when I pulled it up by the nape of its neck and slit it's throat with my pocket knife. The beasts warm and slick blood oozed from its body and slid down my hands as its legs kicked in the air and I looked into his eyes as they glazed over and the light expired. Then it was dead and I was complete. I buried the cat late at night in the field behind my neighbor's house so it could be close to them.
One night as I lay in bed awake, I saw a shadow move upon my wall. The lights outside usually played tricks on me and I discounted this as simply that; shadows and fog and tricks of my imagination. Black upon black and yellow and green eyes told me otherwise however and the cat appeared upon my bed with red fangs primed for attack and vengeance and I screamed silently in my tomb.
It rested contentedly on my chest and cleaned itself with the devil's tongue.
The next morning I confessed my sin to my parents (may they rest in peace) and I received a beating like none I had received before.
And here, many years later, I am visited once again. With black cat resting on shoulder, she comes to me as if a dream but actually a nightmare in her silken gown of white and her nails torn and broken and bloodied. I see her, or envision her in a flash of flesh - fleshy and ragged, her arms extended in a loving and deadly quest for embrace. She is faded and invisible; solid and stout, menacing but, oh my God she is beautiful and wanting and needing and I want and need her still to this day. The breeze through shuttered windows lifts her skirts and forms wings around her and a halo shines as the brightest star around her visage and I am chained to velvet cushions. The sight of her is more than I can bear and I long for release from this life. Please God, I beg of you to scratch out my eyes so I may never see her again.
Paris looks so alive tonight.
Paris feels dead tonight.
And I do not care.
I am fed up with this city, and it with I.
I have touched the souls of dying men and felt the flesh of slaughtered animals as they take their last breath. There really is no difference between man and animal. They both die the same. But they feel different. Oh yes they do.
I am alone. I have always been alone but this is the first time I really do 'feel' alone. I do not, and cannot, touch myself for I have no feeling.
And yet she begs me to touch her. To feel her. Love her. Kill her/love her/kill myself. No! I shall not feel nor think. Her touch is poison.
Her face is taut as I play my fingers along the lines of her face. I am a dead blind man searching her features for meaning. I never learned how to feel so now I must learn how to touch. Like she touches me. Physical and emotional. She is mental, and quite possibly I as well. Her tendrils reach into the darkest and deepest chasms of my soul and body. She invades and penetrates my senses.
She touches me like no other woman has ever touched me before.
She is violent and tender and lovely in her caress. Her body convulses as it wraps around mine, and I wonder if I am dreaming as it feels like I am a young boy once again torturing the black cat who sleeps with me still. Or am I murdering young boys in the trenches of the France of old with its perfumed women and silent pigs ... I feel her ... I feel nothing but her. My body does not touch the chair or the air that surrounds me. I feel love, tenderness and pain and sorrow. I want to not want to feel anything anymore. Her touch is absolute and immortal; yet so much like the passing of time as she reaches for me from the grave. It cannot, must not be. Or can it? Must it?
My blood runs rampant through my veins as she kisses me. Sweet and soft as velvet mornings and the blackest of blackest nights. Her touch is moonlight and stars mingling with lava and regret and I pull away, only to be forced back into her succubus breath and destitute eyes. I picture her as a young girl, when first we touched and loved one another, and my first thought of evil. With fingers entwined and hearts eclipsed, we swore no other would lay hands upon us. For our flesh is ours and ours only, and those who dare to touch us would pay the ultimate price.
And so here she punishes me for my greatest sin.
Not to touch another.
For as long as I may live.
And no longer touch the city of lights.
I feel her hot breath upon my flesh. Her icy fingertips stroke my sinew as if playing a violin. Her hand around my neck, my throat; I am suffocating within her grasp, choking. Oh my heart, my soul, I ache to feel her inside me - to become one with me. For me to trace the outline of her lips with my own; to experience her fever, to perceive the dark abyss inside her kiss. My God, I want to just feel her. Touch her. To touch ...
But, no. Her caresses are lies and unreal truths. There is not love nor kindness as she sits upon my lap and strokes the velvet shirt I wear, smelling of Parisian perfume and decay. There is no joy hidden behind her laughing accusations and promises of forever. I see not bright eyes, blue and green and alive, but only death and blackness. I do not feel her life. I feel only the pain and suffering of men disguised as animals, and beasts pretending to be men as they are corrupted by power and greed and they must and will suffer like a prophet upon his fence.
I do not feel her soul.
I am not insane but I cannot vouch for this city nor its inhabitants.
But I swear I am not.
I can taste Paris tonight.
The flesh of men is an acquired taste to say the very least, and I do not make excuses for such proclivities on my part; nor shall I apologize or admit regret for I have none. I felt no sorrow for slaughtering animals as they are beneath me and any such feelings of shame or sorrow. They are meant to be killed so we, as human beings, can feed and feast upon their meat for the simple sake of survival. Cats, dogs, pigs, cattle and reptiles are put upon this earth by God or by Satan for the simple and absolute reason for mankind's survival. These beasts are born to be dinner and killing such animals should be looked at as great s
port and an even better dining experience.
Then there is the case of man.
As mentioned previously, I make no excuses for my taste in men nor do I apologize for my part in any man's death. I have no shame nor sorrow, I admit freely, in the taking of a person's life; so long as I reap the benefits of such passing breaths that allow me to survive and prosper.
As I sit here in the chair that sits in my room that sits within the apartment that overlooks this decrepit city, as I smell her and hear her moan and see her writhe beneath my knife and feel her twist and turn underground, I cannot help but to freeze time within this space and mind and revel in my impending doom. I am surely not crazy but, surely, the situation I find myself in is. I envision now how I came to be in this spot of bother. And how she is to blame for my death. Before I am taken away by her demonic/angelic wings, allow me this small explanation of sorts. But in no way should you confuse this for a confession brought on by years of guilt, for I am not guilty of any crime but, quite possibly, the crime of loving too much. It is story I shall call
I did not return from war alone. Physically, yes. Mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, no. The dead returned with me as well. As did my newly acquired taste for the dead or, in a sense, my taste for human flesh, be it dead already or the intoxicating promise of flesh still warm, and soon to be sweating within my belly - sating my hunger. The abattoir of the killing fields was quite similar to the rooms I once worked as a youngster - the tangy scent of rotting flesh from freshly murdered animals which mingled with the daisy's and tulips growing all along the roadside leading to my dark and deadly work cave. Inside these halls I learned the proper way to use my tools of destruction; how to bend my wrist to avoid the bucking of a pig and to slice upwards and deep as I took the life from this filth. In the battlefields, my training served me well. The systematic slaughter of men, and sometimes women when the mood struck, was a breeding ground for my future endeavors; my hopes and dreams, if you will. The rendering and tearing of flesh, the crunching and snapping of bone as my tools worked through corpses - dead or nearly dead, it did not matter to me, became a symphony of war, survival and sadistic pleasure to my ears. Oftentimes late at night when the shelling had stopped and the only sounds upon the winds were the tortured cries of men awaiting the reaper, and the only scent wafting into my nostrils was gunpowder and rotted flesh, I would crawl from my hole like a demon from hell. Quietly, stealthily I would slither upon my belly; a serpent flicking its tongue, tasting death within the smoke and mist. I hungered, I hunted. I was a predator.
Thrills: Vol.2 Page 5