The May Selected Story 2 is by Kurt Jarram

Please feel free to email Kurt at:

kurt-e-autopsy@hotmail.co.uk

BEHELD

by Kurt Jarram

First, you must understand that I am about to die.

Not by the slow ravage of time or by some incurable illness, but by my own hand.

I have filled a syringe with what I know to be a more than deadly amount of the substance that, during my life, was one of my few comforts.

But why? I hear you ask. What has brought me to this terrible and ultimate conclusion?

That is why, before I administer my final and fatal dosage, I shall tell you, as my last act upon this earth, the terrible occurrences that have driven me to madness, and to the welcomed safety that only the void of death can provide. I am writing this down in my journal so that you might possibly understand what brought me to this level of despair and darkness. 

Secondly, you must know that during my life I was a terrible man. I shall admit it now as I indeed have nothing left to lose.

Even from my early adolescence, my purpose for being revolved around one thing and one thing only: Pleasure. The constant search for new levels of self gratification escalated as I grew into adulthood until it began to blur the lines beyond all measures of sense or reason. No longer exited by such trivial pursuits as the vast consumption of drugs and alcohol that had so ravished me as a young man, my obsessions moved from extreme to new extremes.

I began to collect things. Terrible things.

The photographs that had so terrified the French writer George Bataille became a personal favorite. As Battaille himself had done, I looked upon them daily, finding a great fascination of mixed dread and wonder in the agony-wracked face of the victim of the “death by a thousand cuts.” Which, if you’ve ever read Bataille, means being slowly dismembered and disemboweled while still alive and conscious. The image of the jeering faces of the executioners often made me consider the possible enjoyment of committing such an act myself.

But I had many other things in my collection that were equally macabre. For you see, I was not like normal men. Whereas most men would shun and avoid all that is dark and terrible, I instead coveted it and sought it out wherever possible. Due to this morbid need, I began to make frequent visits to Amsterdam, where I relished in the various delicious acts of decadence that can be experienced in that fair city. 

And so it was there that one evening, when I was returning from a most amusing visit to a museum of formaldehyde-preserved corpses, that I came across a curio shop that I had not come across before, despite (as I have said) my many visitations to the area. Although the windows were covered with heavy blackout curtains, there was still light escaping from within, so I assumed the establishment was open. The shingle above the door proclaimed it (in Dutch of course) to be a “purveyor of the finest oddities.” I was instantly captivated and decided to go in and see what was there to offer someone like me.

The interior of the shop was a lot smaller than the street facing front had suggested. Light by a single, shade-less bulb and smelling oddly of damp, it was a mass of unordered shelves and precariously stacked boxes. I could clearly see the counter, but no one was at it.

“Hello there,” I called out, “are you still open?” I received no reply. A bit bemused, I decided to take a quick look around anyway.

While I was rummaging through a rather uninteresting box of various African fertility idols, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a canvas leaning against a crate on the other side of the room.

The picture upon it (if I can describe it as a picture) was merely a great swath of dark red-and-brown patterns that seemed to make no sense. Yet for some reason, upon first seeing it, I was gripped with the sudden and overwhelming desire to posses it. Something about the mystery that was captured in that seemingly nonsensical miasma gripped me in a way I have never experienced before.

Walking over and picking it up for closer inspection, a man suddenly appeared at the counter. “Goede avond,” he said.

“Oh!” I said with a start. “Good evening, sir.”

“Ah, you are English,” he said in a broken Dutch accent. “Good evening.”

He was, I must say, a rather inconspicuous looking chap to be working in such a place.

He wore an unbuttoned black waistcoat over a faded cream shirt. His thin, graying hair was swept back behind his ears so that he looked more like a waiter than a “purveyor of the finest oddities.”

“You notice anything you like?” he asked, gesturing around the room.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” I said, lifting the painting up to rest in my right arm.

“Ah yes, very nice; very nice,” he said with his thick accent, giving me a wide grin.

“Can you tell me who painted it?” I asked, still unable to break my gaze from the lovely thing.

“Oh no, not painted,” the shopkeeper said. “The painting is underneath.”

“Underneath?” I said, tearing myself from the painting at last to look at him. “What do you mean, underneath?”

“Belonged to an old chap who lived on the outskirts of the city,” he said. “Shot himself.” He placed his right index finger into his mouth miming a gun, before making the appropriate banging noise. “And that on top of the old painting is what came out, if you get me sir? Caught it right out of the air.”

I couldn’t help but give a little laugh, because I figured the tale to be untrue, yet I had to give the man credit for ingenuity. Not too many people could come up with such a yarn.

“How much?” I asked, still smiling.

“Err. . . shall we say two hundred Euros?”

I agreed and shook his hand before handing over the money. I thought it a good price, translating into one hundred and seventy pounds, an all right amount for such a captivating thing. Even if its macabre back-story was nonsense, it had amused me nonetheless.

***

A week later, I returned to England with the painting as my sole souvenir. I had it wrapped in thick brown paper to prevent it from being damaged, and had no time to look at it during the rest of my stay as I had many things to do, and see, and experience.

Upon arrival at my house, even before unpacking my suitcase, I tore off the paper and looked at the painting once again. And looked at it, and looked at it some more. 

In fact before I  knew it, I had been staring at the thing for over five minutes. I decided it deserved a place of pride above the mantle, surrounded by my other dark collections of ghastly and terribly morbid items.

Breaking myself away from my new painting, I went about my usual acts of the day. I washed and prepared myself a meal. But every time I walked past the door to the living room, I would look in at the painting, almost to see that it was still there, as if I thought it would mysteriously vanish if I did not keep checking upon it.

And then at last the time came where I was to partake of the substance that I had (perhaps knowingly, and even willingly) become a devout disciple. I seated myself in my faithful armchair in front of the fire place and, under the grand visage of my newly bought trinket, heated the sheet of foil from beneath, while inhaling the fumes through a similar foil tube.

Oh the great exultation of excess made flesh I had been in those moments. Why did the blur and maelstrom of narcotic delirium make one feel more real than reality itself?

And in that state, I reared my head back, resting it upon the back of the armchair, when what should meet my gaze? The painting, my new favorite thing in the world.

And, as I stared upon it through my bleary eyes (and this is where I beg of your belief), lo and behold, the once static-mess of dark red and brown smears began to move. The painting was swirling and undulating as if it were taking part in some strange, Nilotic rite.

And then from the mass came shapes. Images of figures appearing within, in such detail as would rival Gustave Dore; figures of men and women writhing and turning side upon side in various stages of pure and unadulterated decadent ecstasy. I laughed out loud and clapped my hands together.

But before long, in succession with my drug-induced nirvana, the images faded and the painting became still once again.

After this, every night when I took of the substance, the painting would come to life, showing me images of my greatest desires and fantasies. The images were of sex and violence, of the pleasures of this world, and some that I believe come from some other world, some unearthly plane. But every time that the physical experience of the drug faded, the images would also fade and the painting would become still once more.

For almost four months this would happen every night. And each time, new bastions of earthly and unearthly delights, pleasures and pains would be reveled to me. And I reveled in them all.

I lost interest in all my other obsessions. The “death by a thousand cuts” images were lost under unknown piles of paper. My recordings of satanic masses and Crowley readings began to gather dust.

I rarely ate or slept, and as the weeks went by, I seldom left the house, and then ultimately I left the house not at all.

I had also made the inevitable transition from the clumsy novice like foil inhalation, to injecting the substance directly into my veins in liquid form. I found that when I did this the offerings from the painting intensified tenfold.

And then, after almost seven months since I first purchased the painting, the unimaginable struck.

Oh, how my hand shakes to write of it, and it is now, my dear reader, that I beg of you your utmost understanding and belief!

But I must go on with my story. One night, after I had completed my ritual that had become almost second nature by that time, I wound up in the armchair fast asleep, after many nights of insomnia.

I was suddenly awakened by a crash, and as I started up, to my absolute horror, the painting had fallen from above the mantle and now lay face down upon the electric bar fire (the house’s only source of heating) which I kept in the redundant fireplace.

I gave a yell and threw myself towards it, even burning my hands on the metal grill as I yanked the painting away. Fortunately it had not caught fire, but had been sufficiently heated so as that when I drew it away, long, melted strands clung to the heater’s mesh, sizzling as they fell from the canvas and onto the electric bar.

I crouched on my haunches and flipped the painting around to survey the damage. The only light in the room being that of the fire itself, I could not see the painting all that clearly, but it was obvious that part of the mysterious brown and red markings had been melted away.

I yelled out a curse and kicked the heater, sending it to the back of the fireplace with a crash. Turing my attention back to my beloved painting, I noticed, with great amazement and shock, that the patterns had begun their swirling dance.

How was this happening? I was totally level-headed because the effects of the drug were long gone, but nonetheless, the painting had begun its ravishing performance. But now it was different than anything I had seen before. The swirls and eddies in the mess of dark colors were more violent; twisting and re-twisting as if they were writhing in pain from the injury caused to them by the heater.

I looked on in utter astonishment as tiny bubbles began to appear upon its surface, and I swear to god (as my hands were clapped fast upon its edges) that it began to vibrate and shift in my grasp as though trying to escape.
So frightened by this, I finally dropped the painting, which, defying all my understanding of the laws of physics, seemed to leap from my hands to lodge into the space between the armchair and the fireplace, still facing towards me. I fell backwards onto the floor, propping myself up with my elbows; still staring at the painting as the image now began to move, almost crawl, towards the center of the canvas.

The images were moving towards the center, and then flattening out into an almost straight horizontal line. But it was not a line at all, nor was it merely a painting of a line; but it was a lid. The lid of an eye, a great eye, oh that great and horrible eye! And then, when I was totally gripped by this new horror, that eye opened.

It twitched and bulged out as it pierced me with its atrocious gaze, the veins within its whites pulsing with deep and crimson blood. I held my left hand over my face trying to avoid its stare, but still I felt it watching me, as though it saw through the petty mediums of flesh and bone and looked right into my very soul.

I tried to stand up but I was paralyzed with terror. I collapsed onto my side, open and naked to the eye’s punishing gaze. And within its black and chasm-like pupil, I saw myself reflected.

And in that image, I saw all of the vile and selfish acts I had committed in my life. All of my own desires, fantasies, debaucheries and wicked perversions were distilled into a single moment. Here was the victim of the “death by a thousand cuts” and his grinning tormentors. Here were the deformed preserved in their jars. Here was Lavey and Crowley, Desade and Baudelaire. Here were the forms of a hundred naked Succubi beckoning towards their realms of exquisite pleasure and absolute agony entwined.

I let out a great scream. I screamed and screamed and threw myself about on the floor seeking any means of escape from the eye’s vision. I became a gibbering, writhing, bawling maniac, twisting and turning end-over-end as like a new born infant that had been dropped to the ground upon its first second of life.

I finally managed to claw my way behind the armchair where I curled myself into a tight ball. But I was still aware of the eye, as if I could feel it searching for me.

I could not let it see me! And I couldn’t look back at it either; I could not bare to look upon it ever again.

The door to the hall was a mere few paces from where I crouched. But to me, at that moment, it may as well have been a mile. I laid myself down, totally prostrate on my front, and with literally my forearms alone I crawled to the door. All the time I was trying to stay parallel with the armchair to avoid the attention of the terrible eye.

I then noticed my leather-bound case in which I kept my paraphernalia for the consumption of the drug. As I passed it, I reached out and snatched it towards me, bringing it with me as I continued to crawl. When I got to the hallway, I quickly thrust myself through the lintel and rested my back against the hallway wall.

But I could still feel the eye, still relentlessly searching for me.
It was then that I understood that the eye would never stop looking for me. Even if I were a thousand miles away, I would until the day I die feel the constant presence of the eye as it sought me out in order to torture me with visions of my own sick thoughts and even sicker deeds. 

The pen and paper upon which I now transcribe to you this tale, I found on the desk at the front door. I can’t explain it, but I feel the need to write the story for anyone who will read it. Perhaps no one will ever read this, in fact, deep down inside I pray no one ever does.

And so now I shall soon, through my own death, attempt to seek respite and safety from the gaze of the eye, that indescribable terror, the terror of being beheld.

Kurt Ethen Jarram was born and lives in Leicestershire, England. Taking a keen interest in literature from early childhood, he began writing his own stories by the age of eleven.
He later made the transition from standard fiction to focus more upon the darker aspects of life. Finding the usual over-the top-gore overdone, and ghost stories mundane, his work instead combines the supernatural and unexpected with a gritty realism, as if to say, no matter who or where you are, at any time in any place, this could happen to you.