Closet
Posted: October 31, 2012 Filed under: Galleries, Private Collections | Tags: art, art fix, Brazilian artists, contemporary art, family business, father, ghost stories, Halloween, oh God I am my father, prose, son, spooky, writing Leave a comment
Marc Wanicko, Icon nº1
(third in a series of ghost stories)
He always locks it when he leaves on business. I know it’s off limits. But I can’t help wondering what hides there. I searched the key many times, curious worm darkmawing my chest. But always empty handed.
I’m glad when he leaves town for business, a hurricane here, a revolt there. Massacres too. He assures me there’s always a demand for his skills and one day I’ll take over the family business.
When he comes home he’s so tired, his hands feel of stone. I glance up into his eyes, lost. Can’t seem to find him in shadows. His cheeks move higher on his face.
“This job is killing me,” he sighs. He brings home a dark air, some long wind foreboding and I shiver. He dusts my hair with a withered hand and I gasp. A sinking deep. A feeling to run. To scream, but my body too still. too still.
He opens a beer. Sits mute on the table. Unharmed. Tie flung aside and sunk into the recliner. His bones, a heap. Fingers dripping over arm rests. And I can’t see who I am looking at. I have forgotten.
I notice behind him the door to his room sliced open.
That dark wind swirls me. To the closet door standing – cracked. No heart in my chest. I see into space Dusk outlined souls and glint of sicklesteel and fire. Fear and trembling and teeth scattered round. My teeth falling. Then vast nothing
of no end
“I hoped you wouldn’t see this, yet”
I jump- skin out of pocket, arms tight held around me. The darkness horrible and bright. Faint smells of matches extinguished and scentless nothing.
“This is the family business?”
And his eyes stone sink back into a fleshless skull. my father, now the mask of Death.
“soon this will all be yours”
Ball
Posted: October 30, 2012 Filed under: Galleries, Private Collections | Tags: art, art fix, Cinderella, contemporary art, Ghazal Bigdeloo, ghost stories, Halloween, prose, spooky, writing Leave a comment
Ghazal Bigdeloo, the woman
(Second in a series of ghost stories)
Her half-child back and half-full sack turns, (the sagging sun too tired of the day) and sees a gloaming shade at the field’s far edge. Trudges over to lay down under winded branches, a sleeping bed of white frogfruit. To forget she’s alone. To forget her fingers purple cracked.
An owl hoots at the secret mouse and she wakes in a pool of moon. Shivers. The field spreads a dark stain. A truck forgot, she and the half picked bag. Forgotten. Someone should come for her, of course they should. Of course they would.
Panic chews at her mouth. Closed night all around. Darkness in her eyes and shivers heat to scream.
Only blind woods hears. Hearing
a melodic strain, low and thin. Silver keys thread the dark. Is it a waltz? She turns shadow eyes to a glow. Follows the music through undergrowth. Scrape and claw. She stumbles and pitched to ground, looks up in the foil moon.
A coach.
Filigree door swinging open and seated on the velvet – a crystal slipper. Diamond bright. Leather tuft interior glows pearl. Melody grows with her breath
so close in.
Steps into the coach, how lovely the shoe.
Beauty. Ahhh.
Wedges foot in. Wrought toes pained. But, her hands soft, now French manicured. Her lips pout, red and full. Money rustle of silk and wrapped fur. The smell of rich and clapping for the belle of the ball.
Click door shut.
Glass shoe cold. And colder. Colding and happy and pain. Coursing up and down and into her blood, turns her breath hard. Crystal prisms. Symphonic volt and tympani drums.
Two mornings from now they find her body – chill. Toes broken back. Officer suspects foul play. An old glass slipper inside an overlarge pumpkin rolls away. A belly full of blood.
Ribbon
Posted: October 29, 2012 Filed under: Galleries | Tags: Barcelona artist, contemporary art, ghost stories, ghost story, Halloween, narrative, ooohaha, Pauli Josa, prose, ribbon, Spanish artists, spooky, writing Leave a comment
Pauli Josa
(First in a series of three ghost stories)
Ribbon
He married her in candlelight. A silver ribbon round her neck. Their love in flame. And the house and the cars and kids and the silver ribbon never left her neck. Silked velvet ribbon. Crushed in places, held high on her neck with a clasp of bone. He knew because he studied that ribbon, over coffee, over date night, over her making love. He could tell its everly crease and how the light softened over edge.
Him asking her, take it off.
“You’ll be sorry.” She says. Sometimes hazeleye laughing, sometimes eyes in storm.
Times he demanded, angry. Blood shot through eyes.
“You’ll be sorry,” clear grey tears. Fall like hourglass seconds.
PTA meetings go by, and the days. Going by. And cereal bowls rotate through the sink. He watches her ribbon to plot and scheme against it. This ribbon, a steel rebellion against him. He must have it.
Take it off – the years of denial crush in his throat.
“You’ll be sorry.” Her eyes pearl.
And the clouds hang dead, pale shroud the bulging moon. The branches scrape, scrape against night fall. Across the bed her breath rhythms the universe and he reaches. Reaches across to pull the clasp and her eyelash quivers,
The ribbon limp in his fingers.
A long sigh
as her head
moves
falls
rolls away
the night hush whisper y o u’ l l b e s o r r y
Her soft lips vanish into burgundy dark.
Caught in a trap
Posted: October 28, 2012 Filed under: Museums, Private Collections | Tags: arachnid, art, art fix, Chick-fil-a, corporate spies, creepy, Halloween, Louise Bourgeois, spider, spider web, trap, web, weird, writing Leave a comment
Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, Fabric Work
In the spirits of All Hallow’s eve, I’ll briefly chronicle some daily occurrences I find very “creepy.”
You pull into a fast food chain that hawks chicken sandwiches. Fresh face teenagers repeat “It’s my pleasure” over and over to you. Slaving away in entry level food service (aka chain) is a twilight zone of torture. And when they repeat again, “my pleasure,” they can’t be talking about the chicken. You start to imagine R to X-rated very pleasurable things. With a teenage automatron smiling into your face.
Creepy.
Freak moms spooked by kids climbing trees. Hell, breaking a bone is/was a celebrated kid-rite-of-passage. The cast – a trophy (and weapon). My best thinking, swinging between limbs. “Honey, now let’s not climb that tree, we could get hurt.” We?
Creepy.
Traffic cameras buzzing facial recognition software, recorded phone conversations with corporations, ubiquitous big brothering, internet spiders crawling though your email. Who’s watching? Stalker in your pocket, apple spy phone trick-tracking your every move.
Creepy.
Immortal FB pics/posts, indiscreet tweets frozen in forever cyber-life, little word vampires sucking your bloodygood reputation dry. Ad infinitum.
Creepy.
Go into a clothing store. Feel pretty good about buying those new BOGO jeans. Until you ask to use the restroom and look up to see a big red sign posted by the john, reminds the store’s employees to, “compliment her choices again and again” followed by, “celebrate our new friend with upraised voices.”
Creepy.
It’s a sticky flung corporate web and I’m a juicy morsel. My desire, consumer vibration so slight. Awakens worldwide-long legs. Hairy. Clustering eyes.
igetitart 