Post Pop Pulp Magazine » Voluptuous Afflictions

Voluptuous Afflictions

A surreal exploration into the heart and psyche of a young woman

The writer begins to write a
conversation. Then a conversation begins. Begins writing

itself.
That?s how it should be. Always. The writer should have nothing
to do with

Why you?

Why not you?

Why you and not someone

else?

I don?t know.

Maybe it was something about the wind
that

day, the way it blew my hair from my face, otherwise, perhaps I
wouldn?t have seen you

at all.

At first an imaginary person answers.
Then the imaginary

becomes real. This conversation could take place
anywhere. In a caf?, in the park, on

a train. The writer is
female. You will learn her name later. The stranger is male.

He is
attractive and well groomed. His movements are very slight, but
languorous,

nearly epicene. This is not the first time they have met.

The

writer has a simultaneous thought.
I?m no writer. Is it because I write that I can

call myself a
writer? I simply want to write my words down. It?s the same
thing as

saying I thought I ate enough, yet I am still hungry. But I
don?t want to eat again.

Not right now.

Hmmm, let?s see?..

Why you?

Was

it a smile, some warmth, an
extending of my hand, a release you needed from boredom?

Perhaps I
just want to be alone so I can?..

The stranger

appears.

Excuse me?

The woman stops writing.

I always

see you writing. Are you (he
pauses to look at her hands) a writer?

What

does it mean to be a writer? She
asks.

I suppose it is one who writes.

He
answers.

How is it that you know? She asks.

By watching you.

He answers

I am not a writer.

But you write.

Always.

Then I suppose that is enough.

What is

enough?

Nothing.

Nothing is enough?

Yes.

What

is writing?

A kind of speaking that keeps me from
mumbling to

myself.

Like a deranged person—

Yes! Writing is a derangement.

A
derangement of the senses.

How is it that we began talking?

swallow up the silences. To pass in
time, to pass as time. So that we had to stop just

looking at one
another.

So you were too—

Yes.

Does

it ever stop?

Writing?

She does not answer.

He speaks

again:

This was not what I wanted to say at
all.

This is not

what I wanted to write at
all, she thinks. Ask me another question now, she asks the

stranger
whose furtive glances circle only her face and her hands.

Where

does it begin?

It never begins.

I mean, where do the ideas come

from.
From God? From the devil? From dead souls putting thoughts into—-

do not know. I have no idea.

Why do you write?

Again, I do not

know.

But you must. There must be a reason.

There are

many.

But you just said—-

Yes, but I don?t know what any

of
them are. For instance: Is writing what keeps me from enjoying a
simple pleasure

like fastening a flower to my hair, or stroking my
legs in silk stockings, from

talking, from listening.

But can?t writing be a
simultaneous

act?

One does this as another would do
something else. Dance. Make love.

Eat. Take a drive.

So then what are the usual reasons for
wanting to

write? To make money, to gain fame, to express inner
thoughts, to live inside a

created world, to have he ultimate
control, to communicate, to—

I would

like to do something crazy.
Something sudden. Unexpected.

Put down your

notebook and pen. Come
see me tonight.

He won?t come to see me.

Something
will have come up. Some untruth. There is very little conversation
going

on behind me on this train. I wonder if they are trying to read
what I am

writing?.

?I have just returned from the
deserts of Morocco where I

spent the summer having an affair with a
very wealthy older man and his young wife.

She knew what was going on
but he did not. We used to laugh about it in their bedroom.

She had
never been unfaithful before. Only him. He was a good lover when he
wasn?t

being impatient and insensitive. Dinia and I used to make
up wild stories, dizzy with

the afterglow of making love. Together we
traveled on ships made of sandalwood. We

invented sounds of the
creatures below the water. We laughed at the boys we dragged

under
water who would drop their little pants for us. We floated with the
heavily

veiled women, pressing their hairs against us. She told me
she had thought of straying

from her husband before but she needed
chaos in order to act on her true feelings. Her

husband tried to make
her believe her life was stable, calm, unharmed. There was rape

and
murder and stealing everywhere, of course, but he wanted to create an
illusion

of safeness for her. He said it was so she would never be
exposed to things that would

hurt her; yet every night he lied to her
face before rushing out to be with me. She

was impressed with me
because I had no interest in her husband other than his money.

The
other women all let themselves be dominated by him. She was the one
who could

truly indulge me because her imagination had been nourished
by her constant fantasies.

She would cover the bed in rare silks and
then throw upon the bed the calla lilies and

orchids that her husband
just bought her. We would fall upon them, crushing them as we

made
love again??.

The stranger proved me wrong. He came
to me,

strolling through my room with a dusty suitcase under his arm.
It was plastered with

stickers and patches from every country he had
lived in. I thought he might be going

away again. He sat down next to
me and lifted the edge of it playfully. His eyes were

alive with the
surprise of a magician who has performed their tricks over and

over
yet still finds something new to show you.

?Will you let me read

what
you have written?? he asked.

?Only if I can see the face
of

that doll in your suitcase.? I answered. He proceeded to pull
out, one by one, the

most daring puppets I have ever seen. His
favorite one was the one who resembled the

childlike version of
himself. On it?s feet were little wooden mismatched shoes

lamed
in metallic bronze. He made it walk for me, and cupped his hands
together to

sound like horses hooves. It?s eyes shone brightly
while the body crippled with age.

Through it?s mouth I heard the
lament he would later sing to me. I smelled the pale

sand he filled
its body with, the sand he built castles to hide in. I touched

its
beckoning eyes and felt the stones behind them. He designed a special
music box

for a different puppet. I turned the rusty key in it?s
back and watched as it released

itself seemed from it?s strings
and performed it?s own dance for me. He showed me

another one.
She carried an umbrella of poppies that was too heavy for her

body.
Each time he made her move she would topple over.

?She?s

terribly
unbalanced,? he grinned.

He took her strings between

his
fingers. They moved like the fingers of a sign language master. But
when he

grabbed the string to make her arms move the legs performed
obtuse dances. When he

pulled the string attached to her neck I
feared it would snap in two. But she only

kept winking her insect
eyes at me.

?You see, ? he laughed,
?she

has always hated me!?

He touched each of them so
gingerly, as if

being careful to not disturb the spirits their wooden
bodies housed. I watched his

gentle hands laying them all out across
the floor. Hundreds of them, nudged out of

their tiny compartments.
Inside each little box was a collection of objects. Pieces of

bird?s
wings, clumps of grass, old brittle newspaper articles, broken and
rusted

utensils, human hair wound into perfect little balls and tied
with discolored lace,

pieces of bones from dead cats.

?This one is my latest
creation,? he

said. She had my face as a child and my body as a
woman. When I touched her, her mouth

fell open like a woman lost in
an orgasm. Such a lazy mouth. It would not

close.

?She?s a somnambulist,?
he said with a smile. ?One looked at

who cannot enjoy the
privilege of looking back.?

He picked her up and

cradled her
in his arms for just a moment before squeezing the lower half of

her
body into a tiny drumhead. He arranged their arms to lay neatly at
their sides,

careful to never touch their faces. He said he used to
wash them every night before

bed as a child.

?Everything, everything had
to be cleaned everyday

back then,? he said, wiping the tiny webs
from their eyes. As he continued to talk I

realized he was no longer
speaking to me at all. He had begun to put on an elaborate

show for
me. I was no longer sure what was true, or who was doing the
speaking. He

turned out the light.

He let his favorite one emerge
from the

eruptive darkness. All my senses were concentrated on the
rustlings of its costume

over my imaginary spun tapestries of
brilliant Persian rugs. He matched this puppet

with a second one, a
lioness whose tail brushed over the broken Russian teacups. She

let
out a tremendous growl as her eyes were snagged on the Haitian masks
that hung

from needles poking out of the wall.

?This one I call Amerterusu,?
he

said and lit a candle whose light bounced off the gilded rays that
nearly obscured her

face. Locked into her hand was the hand of her
god. A diminutive body was floating

beneath his monstrous eyeball of
a face. I was beginning to confuse my own fantasies

with Tristan?s.
He had become my imaginary friend I never told anyone about. Was

the
next puppet a singer who kept swallowing sparrows so she could never
be outdone

at the opera? Was this little doll releasing these sounds
or was it me? Why had

Tristan stopped talking to me? Why did he put
out the light again? Dusty lanterns were

now swinging above my head
as the Voodoo doll Siamese twins began to tickle my feet. I

am
afraid. So why am I laughing? One doll pushed the pins and other
received each

curse. Watching and caring for only Tristan?s
gestures, the two mime puppets made a

brief appearance before
disappearing like ghosts. Next came Morning with her dewdrop

dress of
Expectations, telling me to be a good girl. Followed by night with
his

cloak of Infinite Possibilities, whispering to me to be my true
self. The puppets with

mirrors attached to their faces did everything
they could to deceive their own

reflections before jumping back into
their boxes and crushing them. I received a host

of prayers from a
monk wearing a large hood to conceal his devil horns; and a

lament
from a nun whose long skirt concealed what tempted him. Tristan
appeared out

of the shadows kissing my child face and touching my
woman body. He wrapped me in a

cocoon and called me Isolde.

?I will continue to toss
these dreams

around your cage,? he said as his quick and agile
fingers began to spin a necklace

from the dissolving fibers of a
cocoon. It was descending the length of my spine.

?And weave you dresses
colored with your moods.?

Indeed those colors began to shift
like music throwing long chords over the

floor.

?Come now, ?he said.
?Let me take you away from

here.?

I had not realized that from the
beginning I still held the pen

in my hands, the paper against my
skin. He still does not know what I had written that

night.

When I stepped outside of my door
it was no longer

summertime. Now the heels of my shoes dug into snow,
leaving behind the perfect points

of stars with each step I took. I
followed each move Tristan made and watched as the

landscape shifted
before my eyes. Birds flew silently above us with ice dangling

from
their wing tips. Not crestfallen, their flights continued unhindered.
I did

not know where I was being led. I did not know how to stop
following. The wind tossed

the snow into my eyes and everything I saw
became the passing filigrees of shadows

passing into each other. Each
face resembled the last. Each body was a hollow shell.

All I could
truly experience was sound. Everything other sensation was lost to
me.

Drowned. I only knew I was breathing because I could hear it. I
heard my skin crack as

I clung tighter and tighter to my pen. It
would not stop moving over the surface of my

paper that hung against
my skin like bloodstained silk. I had to keep my eyes open

against
this wind and snow. If I lost the sight of Tristan I would be lost
here

forever. Each footstep we made was followed by a fall. He
laughed harder each time and

dusted the snow from my dress. These
sounds, these voices, these noises. I had to make

it all music or I
wouldn?t have been able to go on. In the clamor of

pitiful
branches falling to the ground I heard the piercing cry of a guitar.
It was

as if my heart had been stabbed with its notes. When the awful
roar of dying animals

covered the sky it was the notes of a piano
being pushed out and it was my skin that

could feel the vibration of
it?s insides. When the sun crashed away it was the sound

of
symbols and what lingered what my own restlessness crashing down upon
me. When I

have finally caught up with Tristan he was crouched on his
knees at the head of a

little gravestone, singing very softly to it.
His voice was like a sickle covered in

velvet, dripping molasses. His
melody of longing cut me to the bone. His voice began

to rise until
it was echoing over the hills; cutting threw the wind and

slicing
open the heaving limbs of the trees. On the frozen skin of my face
broke a

tiny fissure. Seeing what he has done to me he flees. I run
after him, the snow

whipping my eyes. He has fallen face down in the
snow and I am standing, my whole

being frozen now, over the silence
of a body immobilized by dead

memories.

I lift him up and carry him to the
first house I

see. The only house for miles. I fling open the door
that leads to a small dusty

parlor. The door slams behind me. It is
not the sound of wood breaking but a chorus of

laughing children. As
I move the creaking jaws of bats have replaced the sound of my

shoes.
It is so dark I cannot remember if I put Tristan down. He has
suddenly

become weightless. I reach my hands out and over the caved
in walls, searching for

light. The walls are so soft they crumble at
my touch and form holes that black light

seeps through. Against the
light is the hollow glow of eyes that never blink. I push

my body
into the wall and walk through my own form that I have pressed

there.

I have walked into a room of
dreams. I recognize this room.

Everything I have ever owned that ever
meant anything to me is in here. In this

swollen room, veiled
whispers hang from the ceilings, hot inside against the

winter
outside. Tiny music boxes flip open and play my favorite songs,

just
slightly off key, just slightly broken. Every word I have ever
written is all

over these walls in a collage of leaves and snapped
threads. All the words I wished I

had said were tattooed on the floor
beneath the bed. The light I saw from the other

room is shifting
between two piercing eyes of a doll called Belladonna. Dilated

eyes,
all black pupil, all the white sucked out by those lethal drops she
had taken

daily. Her dress is made of fragments of sentences from
people I never really got to

know, pages of books I never finished,
dreams whose meanings were never explored. Over

the years the fragile
layers had been clawed through with her own anxious fingers.

This
room is the house of my soul. One side a color of joy, another of
fear. The

darkest color is sadness and the brightest is hope. All I
have seen and heard, every

dream I ever tossed through in the night.
She knows it all.

?Don?t you

remember me??
she asked. ?Don?t you remember each night I was the only
one you

trusted the truth with?? I plead with Belladonna to give
me back my secrets, plead

with her to tell me what I have chosen to
forget. Together we begin the song and

dance:

?Ring around the rosy??

Taking out a little book

she begins
to scrawl lines all over the pages but because she does not know how
to

read or write she has to make up all the stories as she goes
along. One by one new

dolls appear. She tells stories and they become
singing dolls, weeping dolls,

confused, shocked, enraptured dolls,
all spiraling their dances about us.

?Remember how you used to try
to entertain them all? Remember wherever your mother

took you had
that book with you and you made everyone believe each word?

Remember
how you only felt at ease making things up??

?A pocketful of

poesy??

I see Belladonna in the night
getting under the covers trying to

fall asleep with her eyes open. As
soon as they begin to close she wakes up in

fear.

?Remember how you tossed in
the night afraid to see the dark

because you thought each night this
will be the one, the one you awaken blind from?

Remember you had to
turn it into a story before you could tell anyone about

it??

?Ashes to ashes??

Belladonna puts on her shoes. It

is
early morning. We watch the school bus coming down the hill.

?Remember how you would kiss
your mother and then run so fast down the drive? Remember

how you
would fall and cut open your knee every morning and mother would have
to

come running out and take you back inside?? I watch this
scene repeat itself over and

over, exactly the same sequences each
time. The only change I see now is how with each

fall her smile
becomes wider.

?We all fall down??

continue to dance, singing the
phrases over and over. But I cannot keep up with her.

Faster and
faster her dolls limbs slice into the air, like a room full

of
contortionists competing with each other. The meanings in her
movements were

immediately destroyed by the violence of their
eruptions. Her words became more

inarticulate. They were balanced
upon a tongue seeking sweet icing, but on the edge of

a rusty, jagged
knife. Cunning words made to cut right through my skin.

?Oh yes, and remember that
touch, how it made you feel? Remember the way he looked at

you?
Remember how every night you wished him dead??

She told more

stories with such
seductive spite that I began to confuse my own life with

Tristan?s.
Words shooting out of the dirty cannon of her mouth were causing
dents

in each wall of my room. With each story her dances become more
inflamed until her

limbs drop from her body. I cannot turn my gaze
from this trunk of a doll spinning and

spinning into eternity

?We all fall down??

am shifting in and out of these
rooms. These rooms interconnected like cells coursing

with a constant
flow of blood. I cannot tell if I am shrinking or the walls

are
collapsing upon me. I long for the sound of Tristan?s voice
again. I hunger for

those sad melodies to pour inside me. I search
for the echoes of his shadow as night

descends on the other world
outside. I follow its outline as it recedes down these

intricately
chambered halls. The hollow echoes drone like a thousand

ghatams
answering each other. Through glass walls that bounce his prisms of
light I

peer into each maze of his reflection. We are speaking
tonight, our voices the music

of knives and violins splitting into
jagged openings at the base of our throats,

piercing each step away
from silence. Our words are pieces of glass rubbing against

each
other rupturing the walls that separate us. From the other side of
the glass I

watch his lips move. Opening with the slow precision of a
wind-torn shell being lifted

for its hidden treasures. His voice is
coming closer and closer to me now, breaking

lattice-lined patterns
against the whites of my eyes. Against the switchblade symphony

of
his voice a new truth has broken open. He begins:

?Let me tell you

something.
When you visit a house after many years it will offer its long

lost
secrets to you. The mysteries that once hung in confused silence, and
lingered

throughout each room without being told, have transformed
themselves into ghosts. They

are finally willing to tell us
everything now, but only if we promise to not be afraid

of them. Only
distance and time will allow our eyes to open to our own

secrets.?

After a long pause he began again.

?You must

promise me you will
no longer be afraid. In this house every reflection you see will

be
another specter. You will watch yourself removing masks from your
face just to

put another in its place. You will search for another
mirror to break hoping that this

will be the last mask to fall away.
Every sound that you hear will seduce like music

but it will always
be the sound of their movements coming towards you. They have to

get
close enough to you to whisper in your ear, to tell you your

truth
alone.?

And then, just as quickly as he
first appeared to me,

he was gone.

When I stepped outside of my door
it was no

longer summertime. Now the heels of my shoes dug into snow,
leaving behind the perfect

points of stars with each step I took. I
followed each move Tristan made and watched

as the landscape shifted
before my eyes. Birds flew silently above us with ice

dangling from
their wing tips. Not crestfallen, their flights continued

unhindered.
I did not know where I was being led. I did not know how to

stop
following. The wind tossed the snow into my eyes and everything I saw
became

the passing filigrees of shadows passing into each other. Each
face resembled the

last. Each body was a hollow shell. All I could
truly experience was sound. Everything

other sensation was lost to
me. Drowned. I only knew I was breathing because I could

hear it. I
heard my skin crack as I clung tighter and tighter to my pen. It
would

not stop moving over the surface of my paper that hung against
my skin like

bloodstained silk. I had to keep my eyes open against
this wind and snow. If I lost

the sight of Tristan I would be lost
here forever. Each footstep we made was followed

by a fall. He
laughed harder each time and dusted the snow from my dress.

These
sounds, these voices, these noises. I had to make it all music or I
wouldn?t

have been able to go on. In the clamor of pitiful
branches falling to the ground I

heard the piercing cry of a guitar.
It was as if my heart had been stabbed with its

notes. When the awful
roar of dying animals covered the sky it was the notes of a

piano
being pushed out and it was my skin that could feel the vibration of
it?s

insides. When the sun crashed away it was the sound of
symbols and what lingered what

my own restlessness crashing down upon
me. When I have finally caught up with Tristan

he was crouched on his
knees at the head of a little gravestone, singing very softly

to it.
His voice was like a sickle covered in velvet, dripping molasses. His
melody

of longing cut me to the bone. His voice began to rise until
it was echoing over the

hills; cutting threw the wind and slicing
open the heaving limbs of the trees. On the

frozen skin of my face
broke a tiny fissure. Seeing what he has done to me he flees. I

run
after him, the snow whipping my eyes. He has fallen face down in the
snow and I

am standing, my whole being frozen now, over the silence
of a body immobilized by dead