France,
1968
-1-
Tangled bodies.
A villa in the country. Skin turning bronze in summer sun. The pool, glimmering blue and diamond colored, and shaped like an egg. Every morning a boy on a bicycle brings fresh pastries, fruit, milk, cheese, bread, and wine- all from a shop in the village.
The grounds of the villa are stunning. Nothing short of pristine. The lawn spreads out in all directions, a massive house standing in its center, pale-pink stucco, with wooden shutters painted white. There is always a breeze blowing though the house, the yard. It smells of salt from a sea which is impossibly far away. There are no clocks in the house because time does not exist here.
Three women lying on beach towels beside the pool. Their bodies immaculately sculpted to perfection. Scattered about on the cement patio around their towels there are magazines featuring photographs of each of them. A reflection of a naked body spread across a centerfold; a face which fills the whole space of a cover; entire sections of the magazine dedicated to their flesh. The villa is so picturesque that it’s hard to tell if it exists in reality or if it lives on one of the pages of the spread of magazines beside them.
Everything in the yard is still. Birds in the woods singing, chirping, hiding from the midday sun. For a long time no one speaks. The clouds in the sky stop moving.
Then, the one named Vanessa opens another bottle of wine.
How many will it be today, Van? The one named Ilyana asks.
Vanessa doesn’t answer. She pours the shimmering liquid into her glass with obvious desperation.
Ilyana sighs, Never mind.
The one named Elise is watching the edge of the woods. A moment ago, there was a movement, a flicker of red. The other two girls barely exist to her. The whole time that she has lived here, she has felt as if she were lost, obscured by some heavy fog. It feels as if she has always lived here. It feels as if she will never leave.
She sees it again. A movement. Something red, a blur, gliding between the trees, but then it is gone once more.
-2-
Bandaged face.
The woman at the counter does not make eye contact, cannot anyway, even if she wanted to. A hat pulled down low, eyes obscured by boxy black sunglasses, the face which lies behind them covered in bandages. The woman behind the counter imagines what lies beneath, what scarred and tortured mass of flesh is hiding there just out sight.
The customer does not speak, just slides their ticket across the counter for it to be stamped, and then walks off. A busy American airport. Thin, lithe figure with a bandaged face, disappearing into the crowd.
-3-
Nightfall.
The curtains drifting away from the windows. Eyes like mirrors. Tiled floor. Spilled wine and a broken vase. Flowers scattered among shattered glass. Vanessa bending down, cleaning up the mess. Vanessa cutting her finger, blood running down her hand and dotting the tile floor.
They are watching an American film that Ilyana starred in last year. An underground film about a woman who is raped and killed by a biker gang, and once they’ve finished with the terrible deed, they leave her mangled corpse in a graveyard at the edge of town. The rape scene is extremely graphic. More graphic than Elise had anticipated and watching it with Ilyana makes her uncomfortable.
Elise watches silently as Ilyana’s corpse is resurrected by a witch who empowers her to take vengeance upon the fiendish Bikers… Ilyana floating though the forest, her arms outstretched… Ilyana naked, using clawed hands to tear out a man’s eyes… Ilyana pulling handfuls of vile loops of sausage-like intestines from a fat man’s stomach… At the end of the film, once vengeance has been served, Ilyana is dragged to hell by a smiling demon as the witch cackles and the credits roll…
Let’s smoke some grass, Vanessa says.
She rolls a joint. The balcony. Long silk curtains drifting slowly. The yard is black, pools of empty space, as if there is a hole in the world where the yard and the woods existed earlier that day. Darkness falling away from her. Black and quiet and still.
Vanessa lights the joint and the three of them smoke it in silence. Elise thinks that they do not like one another. She cannot remember what has brought them together here. How long have they been here? The fog in her mind grows thicker every day. There is no escape. Pile of ash. Swirling smoke. Stoned. The girls laughing. Stumbling back within. Tangled bodies, tan and golden. Angel flesh, golden, smooth.
A French television show with the volume up too loud. Reports of a murder in the village. A woman and a child, both found horrifically mutilated this morning. Elise struggles to understand the French reporter.
Vanessa puts a record on, dancing through the room and opening the last bottle of wine. Ilyana falls asleep on the large round woven rug in the center of the room, indistinguishable from the character she played in the movie they watched earlier. Elise staring at the tv, trying to understand what the people on the screen are saying, lost in a fog.
-4-
Lying completely still in darkness.
Beneath a house. A country house. The people above have no idea. At night, a lithe figure, face obscured, crawling out from beneath the porch. Inside, stealing food, drinks. Too loud, careless. A curious child standing in the doorway. Everything after that is a red blur.
-5-
Days by the pool.
The birds stop singing. No shade. Endless sun. More wine. The boy from the shop in town arrives on his bicycle every day. One morning he does not show. Vanessa throws a fit. The wine is gone, and there will be no more today. She picks up the telephone to ring the shop in town, but there is no dial tone. The line is dead.
-6-
No one speaks.
Night. The girls retire to their rooms alone. Vanessa smoking a joint by the open window. Starless sky. No moon. The pool, shaped like an egg, blue and glimmering, lit from below. Her eyes connect with what she believes to be a mirage at first; a solitary bottle of wine standing on the cement patio in front of the pool. Her feet carry her down the stairs. She does not go to the others, cannot remember them or their names anyway.
The doors open onto the patio. The bottle of wine by itself awaiting her. She moves across the cement patio smiling, a silk nightgown swirling around her. She bends to scoop the bottle, and a hand tangles itself in her hair, pulling her head back. A hand wearing a red glove. Vanessa gasps and drops the bottle. It smashes on the ground leaving the neck of the bottle with one long, jagged shard that resembles a blade. Before Vanessa can scream, the hand is pushing her head beneath the surface of the pool. Her face beneath the waves screaming, eyes wide, hands flailing and stirring up the brightly lit water.
One red glove holding her head in place, another reaching for the remainder of the smashed wine bottle. The red glove plunges the bottle into the side of her throat, moving it around in tight circles, destroying her carotid artery. Her eyes go wide. Buckets of blood mixing with the water, turning the light at the bottom of the pool bright crimson.
Once all her blood has left her body, the red glove releases Vanessa. Her body slides into the pool, sinking to the bottom, before bobbing back up and floating face down at the surface.
The murderous figure stands, dressed all in red. A tight body suit, boots, gloves, a faceless mask, and on their head a red shawl which hangs down to the shoulders. The red figure turns and enters the house, closing the door quietly behind them. Everything is still.
-7-
Ilyana thinks of Mitsy.
Oh, poor Mitsy. She was one of the best, and she truly had so much potential. She could have been bigger than them all. A household name. Poor Mitsy. People loved her. She was charismatic, gorgeous, skinny. Perfectly skinny, never gaining or losing a pound. A stone sculpture, unchanging.
A large house not unlike this one. Not in France, but in America. A party. Strangers. There was an accident. A horrible accident. Mitsy screaming, running through the house, her face melting off. No longer Mitsy but something else. Rushed to the hospital. Weeks of visiting her, body unmoving, face covered in bandages, unrecognizable. The beeping of machines, smell of sterile alcohol. Oh, poor Mitsy…
A knock at the bedroom door.
What is it? Ilyana asks.
The knock again. This time agitated, in a rush. Ilyana stands up, sighing and crossing the room.
Give it up, Vanessa- she says as she opens the door, but the hallway outside of her room is empty.
She looks both ways. Nothing. She pulls her silk nightgown tighter around her body. Suddenly the lights go out. The hallway is black now. Startled, Ilyana steps back into her room. Hands, red gloved, grab her by the shoulders and throw her to the ground.
Ilyana screams. The red figure kneeling above her, forcing her hands down to the wood floor. One red glove holding a knife. The blade pushing into Ilyana’s face over and over again. Slashing and dragging across her skin. Pushing through it, turning everything red, until her face hangs off in thin flaps, jagged red chunks, some falling off and lying on either side of her head. Then the red hand pushes the knife into her throat until the screaming stops.
-8-
Screams.
Elise sits up in bed. Her eyes wide in the darkness. The sound of things falling to the floor, shattering, more screams. The screaming ends. Silence. Darkness. Elise wishes to yell out, to see if the others are ok, but she cannot remember their names, their faces, anything about them. She walks to the door. Opens it. Out of the darkness, a red hand appears, something blunt and heavy making contact with her face- then everything is blank.
-9-
The fog recedes.
Elise awakes, tied to her bed. The room lit by candles. She remembers now what brought them all here. The party. The car crash in the long driveway. Mitsy, her face gone, as if erased. Blood and flesh turned into a slushy mix, falling from her skull. Elise, her head having made contact with the pavement, reeling, lost in a fog, a thin trickle of blood running down her forehead. Mitsy screaming, running in circles, putting her hands to her face, the mushy remains of her skin falling between her fingers to the ground. The car on its side, engulfed in flames. Mitsy running back to the house, the party. Mitsy running from room to room with no face, trailing blood everywhere as she goes… Screams. An ambulance, police cars.
After that the only thing Elise remembers is waking up in the cold white hospital room the next morning. Someone opened the window to let the light in, but it was a gray, foggy day and the fog had drifted in through the window, entering her head through her open eyes and settling there…
She looks up. A figure dressed in red standing beside her.
Pitiful cunt… The red figure says, titling its head at her. You’re mine now.
The red figure removes the mask she is wearing. Two eyes peering out through a mound of scarred flesh, hateful and hideous. Her face resembles chewed bubble gum, gnarled and bumpy and pink. Valleys and mountains of scarred flesh mapped out across her visage. Her nose is missing from the center of her face, and all that remains are the thin holes where her nostrils once were.
The ragged line of her mouth opens; I hate you Elise… Mitsy says.
Elise struggles, trying to free herself from the restraints in the bed.
Please, Mitsy, no! Elise begs, Mitsy it was an accident! Please, don’t…
Mitsy puts one red gloved finger to her lips.
Silence, she says, There’s no way out now.
The candles flicker, their light projecting the room upon Elise’s eyes like an antique oil painting.
Please, please… Elise begs again.
Mitsy picks up a jar from the bedside table. Twists off the lid. Filled to the top with clear liquid. She stands above Elise, holding the jar in her hand. Elise struggles, her body thrashing upon the bed. Farewell, Elise… Mitsy waves one red hand at her as she tilts the jar above Elise’s head with her other hand, the clear liquid rushing out and spilling over her face. Acid. Her features melt away, running off her skull, reduced to foaming, bubbling mush as she screams.
— Saint Nick is a writer and artist from Western Massachusetts. His work aims to capture the spiritual desperation of the modern world by exploring themes of existential dread, loss of self, and trauma. Follow him and find more of his work on Instagram: @stnick_atnight