Armand:

You said you like my dress, because it's so long and so red and it goes on forever. It's an amaranthine river that flows from the blades of my shoulder to the ground. The scarlet train pools around my feet like blood. Or ketchup.

You said you like my skin. Milky white and luminescent behind the crimson silk. Touch it then, I whisper. Trace it with your finger but be gentle, and soft. My skin is so thin it will break at the slightest pressure, and the red would come out of me, and I will die. Trust me, darling, I'll die.

The Masked Girl

It has become a routine that has to be done daily - a ritual, almost. She stands in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror with a basin of water in one hand and a small towel in another. She forces herself to look into the mirror and suppresses the disgust and utter horror as she wets the towel and dabs at her face (if it can still pass as a face).

The softness of the towel on her skin is delicious. Slowly, gently and with a deftness that could only hint at regularity, she removes the flakes of skin from her purulent flesh. The pinkish, raw sinewy muscles on her face contracts when she opens her mouth. The foul-smelling pus that flows down her throat is carefully cleaned.

She lifts up a rubber mask from her dresser and puts it on, careful to secure the edges. Make-up is applied to make her face more realistic, more natural. At best, she looked as though she had had a bad plastic surgery, at worst the bleeding is too heavy to put on a fake face at all. She looks at herself proudly, admiring the face that her own hands had produced.

He wouldn't recognize her now. No, she had been beautiful once and he had been the devil. If she had known better she wouldn't have made the deal with him but he had been so charming, so alluring. Let me love you and let me be with you and I'll give you anything. Anything. Well, he did. He let her love him and let her be with him and he wanted her face.

But you know what they say, a deal's a deal and he got her goddamned face. She hopes he does it justice. Pretty faces are hard to come by, after all.

Caravaggio

I only started to really like Caravaggio when I was 15, having read this amazing book by David Hewson - The Garden of Evil. And since then, I've been a faithful admirer. =)

Judith Beheading Holofernes

David and Goliath

Amor Victorious

Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy

I have to say, his rendition of David and Goliath is one of my favorites. In fact, it's only second to Gustave Dore's.

When Love Dies

"It's a stillborn," the doctor says, mopping his brows with a spotted kerchief. "I'm sorry." And he genuinely does seem so.

We would not look at each other. Instead, we fixed our eyes at the mass of bloody flesh in my hands, in our hands. I am looking at it with all my remaining energy, as if I could electric-shock it into living and pulsing again, as if we did not feel the wet coldness seeping through our fingers. It is stiff already, our dead love, rotting and decaying away in our hands until it finally disintegrates. Now it is just my hand in his, the drying blood the sole indication that we had any love between us at all.

At night we sleep together one last time, his knees fitting in the back of mine and his chest cushioning my back. We are both trembling and sobbing quietly, because we know, know with absolute and uncanny certainty that a single escaped cry would break us down and tear us apart. My hair is soaked with his tears.

It is no use trying again. How many loves have we revived only to lose them in the end? How many times have I felt the doctor's shiny scalpel slit through the thin skin of my chest, only to remove my gasping love, deformed and grotesque, as it is? How many times have he dug the graves to bury our loves?

No more.

No more.

Advice for February:

Be nice to people this month. Smile, but take care to ensconce your sharp, jagged teeth. Laugh kindly at people's jokes, but do not spout blood. Speak softly, as to not wake the slumbering demon in the confines of your mind. Ignore your belly, you do not want to eat humans. Keep your hands occupied, try not to pull out your nails when you're nervous. Lock your heart in a jar, it had never been a good influence. Bathe in formaldehyde everyday, or you will be plagued by gnats and maggots. Do not go near the animals, they will shriek and hiss. Eat with a fork and a knife, but do not concentrate too much on the knife - or the fork too for that matter (you don't want to kill somebody). Finally, look into others' eyes with loving kindness and do not let the insanity show.

Save Me From Me

My skin is raw and
my heart whorls,
so my darling will you
please
soak me in you?

Smear yourself on me:
On my cumbersome limbs
on my
throbbing flesh.
You may suck
away
the delirium
and the morbidity
and the abyss
from the pores
of my
skin.

Promise
you'll make me better.
Promise you
won't let me drown
on dry land.
Promise me,
because I
terrify
myself.

Chocolate Fudge, Anyone?

I would die for one of these right now.