happened in a long time.
But it would not be a sound sleep.
— | — | —
CHAPTER FOUR
(I)
The silence stretches like the neck of a
decomposing corpse on a gibbet; the darkness brims. And through it,
images rise and fall akin to chunks of unclassifiable meat bubbling
in a horrific stew. Fanshawe’s dreams whirl slow, putrid: he sees
women in windows through the infinity-shaped viewing field, beautiful women, nude, sultry, and, best of all, unknowing. Their sexual features are pinpoint-sharp, focused
to a preternatural clarity. One is exercising; one seems to be
talking to herself as if in argument, anger coning her nipples.
Another lay flushed on a couch, her tight stomach sucks in and out
as she masturbates with a peculiarly curved rubber phallus. But
then the women clump together, squashed to nauseous misshape, and
drain away into a swirl of liquescing breasts, navels, and pubic
triangles, to be replaced by more images: faces. The
disgusted face of the police officer, the agape stares of residents
in lit windows as red and blue lights throb, the vision of
pock-cheeked drug addicts, winos, thieves, and, likely, rapists,
child-molesters, and murderers. One of them buckles over to vomit,
hitching in silence. Some of the vomit splatters noiselessly on
Fanshawe’s thousand-dollar shoes, for he sits there with these men
in the deplorable holding cell, being appraised by the scum of the
earth. A man standing hip-cocked in the cell’s corner looks at him
with a smirking grin and mouths You’re MY bitch tonight… Then more faces, a parade of faces: Artie’s face when he
bails Fanshawe out, the judge’s face at the arraignment, the faces
of the lawyers at the pre-trial conferences…all expressions of
blank disgust. But the last face to haunt his dreams is the worst:
his wife’s, Laurel’s, a face whose expression radiates heartbreak,
outrage, revulsion, and hatred concurrently. She stares as the
nightmare stares back. I hate you, her lips speak without
sound. You make me siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick, yet after a
moment, the face warps as if before heat-waves on asphalt, then
mutates and grows, not like a balloon expanding but instead a tumor
or cyst in aberrant hyper-development, and just when the throbbing
mass seems about to erupt, it collapses into a black void…
Fanshawe cannot close his eyes against the
dream’s blackness, which goes on for what seems hours. He hears
nothing save for his anguished breaths and thudding heart.
Then—
A voice, echoic, as if speaking in a
rock-hewn grotto miles deep.
Abbie’s voice.
“Jacob Wraxall, one of the founding members
of the town. He lived here with his daughter, Evanore—”
Fanshawe sees what he believes is the great
portrait again, until its subjects move. Wraxall and his
tantalizing yet somehow obscenely visaged daughter are taking slow
steps up a dark, narrow stairwell, the elder in coattails and
ruffled bib, his pendant of stars and sickle moons glittering, the
sibling with her blood-red hair and plunging bustline, the smooth
stark-white flesh nearly luminous in the plunge. They each hold a
candle whose flickering light turns their eyes into green-crystal
pools. Jacob’s expression is solemn as an undertaker’s, while
Evanore’s is one of deep, intractable rapture. They enter a
room…
A black fog sweeps over Fanshawe’s vision,
thickens, then dissipates, and now— Wraxall stands in a hooded
cloak of sackcloth, in a plank-boarded, windowless room. He reads
silently from an old book with a cord holding in the folded sheets
in place rather than a typical binding. Candlelight wavers,
throwing light that seems leprous; smoke rises from the eyeholes of
a skull serving as a censer, a baby’s skull.
Evanore now stands bereft of clothing; her
lambent skin shines either in sweat or oil. Fanshawe can feel
himself trembling as he looks at her in the dream: the slim,
curvaceous body, long white legs, breasts so deliciously swollen
she could
But it would not be a sound sleep.
— | — | —
CHAPTER FOUR
(I)
The silence stretches like the neck of a
decomposing corpse on a gibbet; the darkness brims. And through it,
images rise and fall akin to chunks of unclassifiable meat bubbling
in a horrific stew. Fanshawe’s dreams whirl slow, putrid: he sees
women in windows through the infinity-shaped viewing field, beautiful women, nude, sultry, and, best of all, unknowing. Their sexual features are pinpoint-sharp, focused
to a preternatural clarity. One is exercising; one seems to be
talking to herself as if in argument, anger coning her nipples.
Another lay flushed on a couch, her tight stomach sucks in and out
as she masturbates with a peculiarly curved rubber phallus. But
then the women clump together, squashed to nauseous misshape, and
drain away into a swirl of liquescing breasts, navels, and pubic
triangles, to be replaced by more images: faces. The
disgusted face of the police officer, the agape stares of residents
in lit windows as red and blue lights throb, the vision of
pock-cheeked drug addicts, winos, thieves, and, likely, rapists,
child-molesters, and murderers. One of them buckles over to vomit,
hitching in silence. Some of the vomit splatters noiselessly on
Fanshawe’s thousand-dollar shoes, for he sits there with these men
in the deplorable holding cell, being appraised by the scum of the
earth. A man standing hip-cocked in the cell’s corner looks at him
with a smirking grin and mouths You’re MY bitch tonight… Then more faces, a parade of faces: Artie’s face when he
bails Fanshawe out, the judge’s face at the arraignment, the faces
of the lawyers at the pre-trial conferences…all expressions of
blank disgust. But the last face to haunt his dreams is the worst:
his wife’s, Laurel’s, a face whose expression radiates heartbreak,
outrage, revulsion, and hatred concurrently. She stares as the
nightmare stares back. I hate you, her lips speak without
sound. You make me siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick, yet after a
moment, the face warps as if before heat-waves on asphalt, then
mutates and grows, not like a balloon expanding but instead a tumor
or cyst in aberrant hyper-development, and just when the throbbing
mass seems about to erupt, it collapses into a black void…
Fanshawe cannot close his eyes against the
dream’s blackness, which goes on for what seems hours. He hears
nothing save for his anguished breaths and thudding heart.
Then—
A voice, echoic, as if speaking in a
rock-hewn grotto miles deep.
Abbie’s voice.
“Jacob Wraxall, one of the founding members
of the town. He lived here with his daughter, Evanore—”
Fanshawe sees what he believes is the great
portrait again, until its subjects move. Wraxall and his
tantalizing yet somehow obscenely visaged daughter are taking slow
steps up a dark, narrow stairwell, the elder in coattails and
ruffled bib, his pendant of stars and sickle moons glittering, the
sibling with her blood-red hair and plunging bustline, the smooth
stark-white flesh nearly luminous in the plunge. They each hold a
candle whose flickering light turns their eyes into green-crystal
pools. Jacob’s expression is solemn as an undertaker’s, while
Evanore’s is one of deep, intractable rapture. They enter a
room…
A black fog sweeps over Fanshawe’s vision,
thickens, then dissipates, and now— Wraxall stands in a hooded
cloak of sackcloth, in a plank-boarded, windowless room. He reads
silently from an old book with a cord holding in the folded sheets
in place rather than a typical binding. Candlelight wavers,
throwing light that seems leprous; smoke rises from the eyeholes of
a skull serving as a censer, a baby’s skull.
Evanore now stands bereft of clothing; her
lambent skin shines either in sweat or oil. Fanshawe can feel
himself trembling as he looks at her in the dream: the slim,
curvaceous body, long white legs, breasts so deliciously swollen
she could
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