The Writer's Cafe discussion

so an excerpt from the ebook of short stories (4) I published not to long ago, enjoy.

What Javier Arturo created was known as a grotesquery, an orgy of flesh and blood ripped into the pulp of canvas, sexual nature swelling within the hidden ego of such an innocent fairy of a man. It frightened the norm, it aroused the deranged, and it sold very well. The renown grew into the title of its own, Pornography for the Masses, summoning forth a tirade from the devout while their discourse of blasphemy only helped to garner a following of loyal, if misled, disciples.
Yet, he cared not for the money generated by the compulsions of which he lived his life. A slave to the grind, the brush of his knife, the paint his blood; but how long must this substitute for the physical carnage his mind continued to warp for? To continue would only feed the faux ecstasy that the distortion of his mind called to, urged for. Did those around him not see the challenge, the crystal-less tears that dried below the swelling red of his eyes?
They only sought him for the talent, let him suffer so long as the canvas satisfies their greed; they care not for when Death’s curtains draw to a close. Yes, he knew that is how they thought. All the while he was fighting a war within his soul, and losing quickly. How much longer can he hold onto the brush when it should be a blade in its place?
This latest creation that was a perversion of carnage, an abomination of flesh pressed onto an image of crimson, sat mid-center of his vacant loft. Light shown from the lone window, onto the otherwise dark and empty room, flooding its beauty over the monstrosity Javier Arturo had articulated the night before.
Desires of a tormented rage dripped in an all too fresh coat of paint. The enchantress of this solitary page arched her back in a hue of placid peach, a soft almost nonexistent curve of her only revealed breast topped with a blood cherry flesh, stretching her ache towards the viewer’s eyes. This and her bare mound were all that dare be shown of her body, the rest eclipsed by large strokes of abstract flames growing from the foot of the folio. Faces of tortured souls contorted in the agonizing fire, their eyes reflecting the details of Hades’ spires and its war-machines. Her lips, threaded in an attempt to close and silence through several roughly made piercings, stretched into an o of pain and rapture –the artist seeing her captured in a still frame as the confusion of her suffering gives way to pleasure- the ocean blue pearls of her eyes ever wide with horror. Arms stretched out in a mock crucifixion, held by rusted chains that had melted their way into her flesh. Lashed across the surface of her beauty were gashes of whips that ran wild with her blood.
This was HellBound. The last atrocity. The last massacre upon the surface made by such a man. The next would be a surface given as a gift by God and twisted into a curse by Mephistopheles.
The walls stank of unsettling sterile white glue. Four walls, nothing on them but the microscopic eyes of amoebas watching with mild disinterest towards the larger world they inhabited. One room with a single bed occupied by a body pale to the point of matching the lifeless sheen on the walls; hooked to a monitor that beeped so weakly it appeared to flat-line. Wires hooked to him, forcing life into a body that denied it, bandages draped him, followed by a coating of a thick black cloud of despair that not even the parasitic leeches on the walls could see. But Javier saw it. He saw everything and anything that presented itself to him, whether he wished it or not. The thousand eyed single-celled creatures gnashing their teeth whose only intent was to create nightmares laced with malice. He saw the particles of grime that escaped the decontamination, float into the black aura only to be obliterated into oblivion, the very same void of nothingness that his soul had been cast to. Such was the curse of the Artist’s Eye, to wake from his comatose state and be presented with the harsh details of reality of life and not death.
He could tell from the bindings across his body, stretching forth from toe to head leaving no place untouched, that he failed. A masterpiece of his delusional artistic integrity, there was no escaping such a fate. The images of violence and rhapsody entwined like fireworks on the Fourth of July, exploding into a tour de force of unrelenting nightmarish pleasures that defined his existence --if such a failure of Yahweh’s gift can be called such a thing.
Spiraling into a guilt that singed his consciousness awake, a conscious that swam in a greed for artistic slaughter in order to support a lifestyle that screamed ‘I bought this with the money of the victims I slew.’ All the while the schizophrenic symphony of voices heaved a will for lust towards a true murderous intent into the depths of his psyche. Enough of the paintings, they sang in the thousand voices that rang as one, Legion, we want the true ecstasy. We won’t let you go until we get what we desire.
With the desire of a child on the eve of manhood accepting their coming sexuality, it came to Javier in the wave of lust for the last breath of his victim’s mortality. It emerged with a chill that riveted the sack of manhood into the depths of his gut. He was no failure of his well-executed self-massacre, but a prisoner. A marionette kept alive by a greater force, Legion.
The door, mimicked to the bleached walls if only seen by the outline of its frame, opened with the silence of a stalker approaching their beloved. Javier shut his eyes, if his eyes were indeed open, and yet by some twist of fate his vision tracked the pair that approached his bedside. They appeared to be orderlies, nothing more nothing less although what more they could be he didn’t know, dressed in their own overabundance of white. It was an ache for the eyes, or mind’s eye --whichever was the one feeding him these images.
“Poor son’a bitch,” The taller of the two said, blurring his words together like a professional alcoholic does to disguise their drunken fashion at work.
“Poor? Shit, did it all to himself. More like a crazy son of a bitch if you ask me.” The shorter said with a voice that suggested an intellectual demeanor but the quality of words revealed nothing more than a nature of idiocy much like his partner-in-arms. “Fuckin’ went and cut himself all up. Should’ve seen the mess he made on the way in, that shit was bad.”
Despite the foul disrespect he was getting as a patient, the only thought that seemed to linger with any question was as to why they were speaking of him like they were. Javier felt a shiver of fear burn its way down his spine, to the crack of his buttocks, suddenly feeling a mystical cold envelop him.
They had every right to think ill of him –hell he’d done the same to those he visited on multiple occasions for his research, if visiting morgues and E.R’s could be considered research. But the way they spoke, confident and loud as though they gave zero fucks of their sleeping patient. Something was wrong, and he knew very well what.
“Whatchu mean? Son’bitch did this? No way, damn. You fuckin’ me?” Javier watched as the tall drunken orderly stumbled his way over to the side of the bed, almost reaching down to him.
“Hell’a way ta die, I tell ya.”
To him the word had begun as a gimmick, a shroud to dissolve his true self while gaining a living. A way to fuel his narcissistic desire to have his name voiced by the crowd of his peers --the way most slaughterers urge for their name and work to reach the ears of the world. Soon it journeyed into a cruel dance around a dream he desired the most, but far too cowardice to reach and grab it. And now it was upon him like a lead brick on his chest during the days of Salem’s witch tries, pressuring him into confession for the truth that he faced. Now that it had been grasped by his hands, sullied with painted blood of victims and now his very own, the reality proved too much.
Dead. He hadn’t failed. He hadn’t survived the brutal self-inflicted lacerations as he thought he did. He died, and yet his mind whirled with the efficiency that matched that to his time alive, if not better.
Still the voices shouted, pleaded, roared for murder, inmates of his imprisoned mind calling out for one last crime before walking the green mile. Was this truly death? Hell? It could likely be purgatory, but it didn’t ring with much familiarity as it did with hell. Surely it wasn’t heaven. A man like Javier deserved no such thing as heaven.


(this is actually the lightest part of the story the rest goes on towards an erotic masochistic voice of unwilling horrors and the cold desire to go on despite the sick pulse. please tell me what you think thank you!)

You certainly have a gift for description Michael. I expect that one of your talent will find success. My ONLY criticism (and this is probably just a personal thing) is this excerpt is almost too descriptive maybe, to the point that it might be weighing down the story a bit. It just might be your style and flavor and if that is the case, then by all means disregard me! But maybe find a way to be not quite so abstract in your description if the scene. I kind of felt like I was wading through something VERY heavy and when I was finished, I felt like I needed to go back and read it again to get a better grasp of it. I truly admire your talent and I think you have a great style. Keep it up!

Thank you Brady! And, you are right though. I feel most confortable with description but it is also what I have to pull back on a bit and am trying that with my current story. But thank you nonetheless I really do enjoy any and all input! :)

Just so you know, I suffer from the same affliction. I love description, but find myself having to dial it back sometimes.

I think it's an easy thing to get too into and hard to get out of it