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- 09/01/2011
- 1,438 Words
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Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2011 - Fall - Legends Entry
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2011 - Fall - Legends Entry
Whisper - 1. Chapter 1
WHISPER
by bugeye
Slowly and carefully, with one step… pause… then another step, Whisper, confidently as possible breathed his way across his studio. There was only so much revivification could do for him now. He had his extra forty years. Now he was about done, with living at least. Much like a living statue, he would continue to stiffen until the end. Now he crossed his forgotten studio in stops and starts. What an empty joke that was. He and his studio had ended up so alike. This cluttered and dirty space hadn’t been used in years now. And Whisper had retreated into his past. Most of his remaining works were now in vaults or on loan in various places; all except for a dozen or so paintings. It was these paintings Whisper wanted to see one more time. He struggled to stand tall and proud. He needed to be at his best one last time. One last time he would remember and relive. Become his past. Feel his love. Join with his Sigh.
Why look again? Why now? Why this last minute change to his plans? Because number thirteen was in the news. She had sold it today at auction. And the story was being reborn again. Silly woman. Why didn’t she contact him? Maybe it wasn’t Song who sold it. Maybe it was one of the children. Whisper wanted to know and he didn’t want to hear. Did Song even still live? Again, did he even want the details. But the news had bought him to his studio for the first time in over a year. His Keepers were standing at the studio door watching him. Vultures. He would have to arrange for these paintings to be moved today. Now that he knew where number thirteen was going he knew what he would do with one thru twelve.
In the far corner was the locked door to his studio office. Whisper found his key and mused that no one had found it yet. Well, he would have to keep it close now or the Vultures would have it. He unlocked the door with both key and mind command, then let it sweep open. Slipping in, he shut the door and relocked it behind him. The room waited in half gloom, light filtering in from the long opaque glass wall to his right. His desk and chair sat there in silhouette, covered in sheets. He reached to the left and waved on the radiant lighting. Hanging on the three other walls were the paintings, in three groups of four. All covered in sheets. Whisper pulled the sheets from his desk and chair and left them on the floor. He thought there would be more dust, but apparently the air filters for his office were still working. Well, someone must still be doing their job then.
Determined, he made his way to number one and unfastened the protective sheet. He was face to face with Sigh again. He wasn’t going to embarrass them both and cry. What would be the point. After removing the final sheets, he needed to sit down and think for a moment. Just how much immersion was he up for? He decided it would be best to use manual voice override. He took his seat behind his desk and gave the voice command “Proceed”. A moment later he heard Song’s simulated voice. “Ready, manual voice override.” It was always a shock. The first of many he knew he was in for. The viewing was slightly different each time. A new bit overlooked from before and a new connection. Falling in love, new again. Impossible love. It was overwhelming.
Whisper expanded his mind and prepared his way with reminiscing. The genesis of this series of paintings came in the form of an unexpected offer, at a time when Whisper had been a free agent again. He was thru he thought. He had completed two, ten year corporate contracts and had been offered a third. Unheard of. He didn’t want it. Few artists survived one corporate contract. But at the beginning, a contract was a guarantee of work and a degree of success and in a very real way it was validation. Yet with the rewards came other things. Pressure. Criticism. Censorship. Being controlled. Being owned. Manipulation. And with the simple passage of time an assurance of being viewed as outdated. But surprisingly, he thought in his case, came fame so beyond belief that it was… historical, a legend in his own lifetime. Another joke on him. A curse he did his best to ignore. It had made him rich, powerful in some circles. It had offered him everything, so current fashion proclaimed. He had complete artistic freedom, now. And he felt alone, adrift from life. And he felt owned. Without desire, without purpose, without vision. Maybe it was just luck that everything changed with this offer. It was not made out of kindness, it was made from greed and the thrill of conquest… of winning. Just anything to win. To keep him producing.
Corporate had always wanted what Corporate wanted. And this time it was Whisper, again. He had turned down the last offer, insisting it was over for him, that he was finished, that he had nothing left to give or do. That is when they made an unusual offer. A one time commission. A portraiture of a new sensation. A young, performance talent who had only just signed his first contract. They sent him a demo of the young man along with a financial windfall just for his viewing and his consideration.
It was a simple handgrip-sponge spike, nothing cutting edge, hardly avante-garde. Whisper had sat at his office desk to review the demo, he flexed his hand and skipped thru all the corporate bullcrap. What was he expecting, another young wannabe who poured his life into the off-corporate markets, building up an image. As expected the boy was a singer and apparently a songwriter. Whisper didn’t recognize the song. The young singer also masturbated as part of his performance, a bit surprising. But that was not what caught Whisper’s interest. It was the mind behind all this blatant seduction. Simple words of lonely life. Vocal chords. Pacing breathe. Long lines of form and shade. All thrown out into the universe, like it was only a hand away. A punch in the face. A mind surpassing the beauty of the music, a mind beyond his dreams, a mind equal to his own. Like his own but focused differently. Passion spilt in waves. An infinite mind, a soul. They shared a secret. This was Whisper’s gift, sight below the surface with hands that could bring it all into tangible desire and a mind capable of mapping the landscape of thought and emotion. A psychic painter. Whisper’s mind flared into the vortex of this young monstrosity of creation and destruction. It was a madness. He didn’t decide, he just knew… knew he would have to paint this, he had to do this. This Sigh.
The pale pale frail red
The sharp sharp sweet green
The moist moist translucent skin
The almost real dream
Of a secret knowing scream
Of a girl I met
So serene
Of a girl with curls, a gale at sail
Without dread
She slipped her dress
Off stone shoulders blanched
And gave me again those pale pale eyes
And hard hard nipples
Down down down
On the grass
The small small talk forgotten
The long long looks
The deep deep dark between
The bright blue blue blue above
Given to me
Taken from me
…
The boy recited? Sang? Chanted his words, as he stroked and his fingers traveled his body. But these were just images and sounds that hid the deep swirling tempest Whisper was lost in. Lost between the beginning and the ending where life exists and awareness creates. The boy was a gift to life and Whisper found that he had never really seen before and that he had never really created before. And that life only began now.
All those years ago, Whisper made his deal again with Corporate. He got all that he asked for and more. Funny, they were ready to say yes to every detail and demand. They seemed very happy. And for years after Whisper was happy. But that was long ago. And all gone. Whisper looked at his own creation and spoke the command.
“Awaken Number One, please.”
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3
Stories posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2011 - Fall - Legends Entry
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
2011 - Fall - Legends Entry
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