DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Her name is Henrietta, and she wears black, because it is the true color of the night sky. She is always at the gallery. She is always in the same spot. That spot is down a hallway lit by few lights in a room lit by even fewer, so only the most adventurous art lovers dare go.
But there is nothing to fear. It is an art gallery, with paintings, sculptures, and installations like all the others. The object Henrietta is so infatuated with, the object she stares at incessantly is a framed piece of flesh. The frame is perhaps seven or eight feet tall without a canvas. Within the frame is a large piece of flesh, a carcass. It is stripped of skin and offal, a clean job. No blood, yet it glistens as if fresh. It hangs from the top of the frame past the bottom, a sinuous specimen carved by expert hands. From what animal it came from, she doesn’t know, but she doesn’t ask. Others ask.
“Disgusting, huh?” A man says whose presence Henrietta doesn’t entertain. He holds a plastic cup, brimming with punch from the reception area. He takes a sip. Pulp sticks to his lips.
Not like you, he thinks. He tests those words in his mind, because Henrietta is a beautiful woman, her fair locks bound into a high ponytail that clings to the back of her head like a trail of candle wax. Her dress exposes her slender neck and arms to the shoulder. She holds her folded hands below her breasts. Her face is only visible in profile, because she stands so close to the framed carcass.
The man tries a different approach, and says, “You think it’s real? If it was real, don’t you think flies would be in here by now?” He sniffs the air. “I don’t smell a thing. Doesn’t look like a cow or a horse.” He sniggers. “For some reason, it reminds me of a big chicken. It’s head, anyway.” He motions to what might be the carcass’s “head” with his cup of punch. A little sloshes out onto the carpet. He kneels to pat it dry with a small paper napkin, but he’s really doing it to get a better look at Henrietta.
Her entire lower body, including her feet, are covered by her black dress, and it fits loosely there, so he gets an even worse indication of her figure. Unsatisfied, he stands.
“Cetus,” Henrietta says.
“Excuse me?” the man asks.
“Cetus.”
He looks around. There is no one there. There is no other art on the walls. “I would, but there aren’t any tables around. I suppose I could go back to the reception area and grab some food. They have these little sandwiches with bread that looks more like cake, kind of like when you were a kid and all the crust is cut off and so white. So artificial. They also have these cookies with–”
“He is no longer with the seas,” Henrietta says, “but still swims in blackness.”
The man steps closer to her. Closer still. He is testing what she will give. “I love poetry. Who is that by?”
She smiles and says, “Why don’t you get us some of those sandwiches? What kind of meat?”
The man closes his mouth, not realizing it hangs open. He drinks the rest of his punch to avoid her gaze, even though she is still in profile, still looking at the hanging carcass. More pulp dashes his upper lip. “Uh, I’m not sure. Ham maybe? Bruschetta?”
“Sounds nice,” Henrietta says. She is no longer smiling. In fact, she has stepped even closer to the hanging carcass.
“Uh-huh,” the man says and scampers out of the room and down the hall.
Henrietta hears jazz music play over the speakers in the ceiling. It fades to an industrial sound, as if a swarm of crickets are caught in a machine, trying to escape but unable, slowly ground into mush until they are all dead. Then the jazz music plays again. Dogs bark, and she thinks she must be near the exit that leads to the alley behind the building, and those dogs are fighting over scraps, their ribs pushing against their skin exposed by mange. Silence returns.
The man returns. He struggles with two cups of punch, two sandwiches, and two cookies balanced on paper napkins because they didn’t have plates.
“I was wrong,” he says. “Roast beef. I hope that’s okay.”
“That’s fine,” Henrietta says. She lowers her hands to her belly, which is full beneath her gown, though concealed from the man.
“I guess we can sit on the floor,” he says.
Henrietta doesn’t respond.
“Or stand,” he says.
He hands her a sandwich, but she doesn’t take it. He tests his proximity again. “What’s your name?”
“Mary,” Henrietta says.
“Simple,” he says. “I like it.”
“A mother’s name,” Henrietta says.
He chuckles. “Sure.”
“The mother of a god.”
“Jesus, you mean.”
“No.”
He chuckles again. “All right.”
“It is,” she says.
“I’m glad,” he says.
“I am, too,” she says.
“Aren’t you going to ask my name?”
“No.”
He shifts his feet. “Okay, okay. Games. I get it.”
She still gazes at the carcass. “Would you like to be a father?”
“Uh . . . someday? I think?”
“You think?”
She looks at him then, and he is stunned, overwhelmed by what he sees. It’s beyond how imagined her, like gazing into the birth of the universe itself, the cosmos exploding in her eyes, nebulae webbing the space between the stars, breeding waves for a great serpent, and his body tingles, seizes, releases. He drops the sandwiches, the punch, and the cookies.
He wants to answer, but he can’t speak, so he nods.
“Good,” she says. “Are you ready?”
He nods.
She doesn’t take his hand. She doesn’t move aside. He knows exactly where to go, and that way is out.
Henrietta gazes at the carcass. She is alone. The man does not return.
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