Life Drawing

“Solipsism is a lonely island.
That’s why I have so many imaginary friends.”

Jack: So what sorta books you read?
Jordan: I don’t. I get all my education from fucking living, man.
Jack: Have you ever read a book?
Jordan: Well…Not cover to cover but, I’ve used telephone directories…and maps…and I used to look at pictures when my mum was preparing a recipe from a book. Hers always looked like burnt shit by comparison. I went to a boarding school and if you’ve ever read Black Narcissus you’ll know why I don’t read. I was ten fucking years old, man. I read art books. Mainly.
Jack: So you can read then? Or do you just look at the pictures?
Jordan: Don’t take the piss, fuckhead.
Jack: I wasn’t, it was guileless enquiry…Art criticism or catalogues?
Jordan: Fuck you. Why, whadda you read?
Jack: Oh, French authors mainly. English translations thereof, I should say.
Jordan: Cool. I fucking love Nietzche.

Jordan binds Jack’s pale hands with rough coils of bailer twine. His legs are bound at the ankles with a pair of old stockings found by Jordan in a nearby bin. The dust in the barn makes Jack’s eyes trickle more than they already are. He’s propped up by an old mangle which occupies the centre of the room, and which at Jordan’s insistence has swallowed the boy’s school-tie, meaning, Jack’s head is about three inches from the mouth of the rollers. Basically, he’s fastened tight to the mangle. The delicate hissing of water is audible from outside. It used to be a water mill, but the mill wheel came unattached during a storm last winter, and the village never having recovered from the crops dying back in 1962, were unable to summon funds for its repair. Now it’s just a disused barn with an adjacent stream.

Jordan: You want a drink?
Jack: Yes.
Jordan: Address my like we agreed or I’ll leave you here.
Jack: Yes, Oh omnipotent fuck-lord, please aid in my rehydration before commencing armageddon.
Jordan: Haha. Cool. You are so my clay, Jack. I’m really gonna fuck you up.
Jack: Good. I deserve it. Can I have that drink?
Jordan: Yeh, well it’s only water, but here. Physical labour does have a tendency to leave a guy parched…

Jack awkwardly but eagerly swills back lukewarm water from Jordan’s rusted, plaid thermos. Jordan is in a postion to provide or prohibit everything Jack needs. Jordan stuffs a fistful of hay in Jack’s mouth. Seconds later it blasts onto the floor; Jack spits and sneezes.

Jack: Fucker.
Jordan: Well, I thought it was funny. Sorry.
Jack: Can we just get on with this.
Jordan: Sure, let me get a photo first. You look so hot like that y’know?
Jack: Well it’s fucking uncomfortable.
Jordan: Yeh, well obviously, and that’s half the appeal. Whatever you do, don’t smile.
Jack: Believe me. I’m not going to. Get on with it. Nietzche’s German by the way.

FLASH.

Jordan: Hahaha. I swear your skin is like a space blanket, boy, photographically I mean. There’ll probably be a you-shaped blankness in the photo. That surely hurt my eyes more than yours. Seriously.
Jack: Whatever, I’m not gonna get a tan in this barn so get on with it so we can fuck off out of here.
Jordan: Look, this is supposed to be fun, just get in the zone and stop being a miserable whiny little runt.

Jordan stands behind Jack’s incapacitated body, reaches around to his flies and lowers his trousers and boxer shorts.

FLASH.

Jordan (singing) Oh…there’s a…moon out tonight… Looks like a full moon to me.
Jack: Shut up dickhead.
Jordan: Ooh, a method shot coming right up.

FLASH.

Jordan: Right, I’m gonna gag you now, ok?
Jack: Yeh, good, just get on with it. I’m cold.
Jordan: I’ll warm you up, baby.
Jack: Hmmm. Talking dirty huh? Finally.
Jordan: Look, I know Nietzche’s German, y’know? Just ‘cause I choose not to read all of your poncey literature doesn’t mean I’m illiterate or academically-retarded. I hate that fucking snobbery. Do you know much of Francis Bacon’s work?
Jack: What’s he written?
Jordan: You are joking, right, or…at least attempting to?
Jack: Yeah…
Jordan: Whatever. Here goes.

An oily rag binds tightly binds Jack’s skull. His hair is messily strewn about by it’s application. Jordan kicks him hard in the ass, kisses him on the cheek, yanks his hair real hard, and starts laughing.

FLASH:

Jordan: (rubbing his eyes and hopping from foot to foot)
Fuck yes! What a shot! Ok, you ready?
Jack: MMnnnff…Mnnnfff.
Jordan: I’ll choose to interpret that as ‘bring it on motherfucker’. I can’t believe you don’t know who Francis Bacon is. By the way, Lucien Freud isn’t the cartoonist in The Independent, either, y’know? Let’s keep this educational, we are doing homework after all. What’s that, you wanna say something?

Jordan lifts the gag briefly.

Jack: Don’t kick me again fucker.
Jordan: Oh, is that all? Ok, I promise. It was funny. Right, that’s all from you for a good while my friend. We’re so getting top marks for this.

Jordan lowers the gag and then his trousers. Jack is panting heavily through the oily cloth. The taste is doing untold weird shit to his brain. It’s safe to say he’s in some discomfort. Jordan tosses the gaudy disposable camera towards an accumulation of straw. It hits a plough and breaks, landing on the straw in three pieces. Shit. Jordan produces a Swiss Army Knife from his pocket, unleashes the small blade and waddles across to Jack. With the blade he makes an incision in the captive boy’s blazer, somewhere near the tailbone; he slices all the way up to the collar, grabs both sides of the bisected blazer and in one action tears it off of Jack’s body. Complete removal of the blazer is blocked by Jack’s wrists, so it just dangles there. Same goes for the shirt which meets the same fate. Jordan bares his upper teeth and drags them from the nape of Jack’s neck, across the dim bumps which constitute his vertebrae, right down to the tail-bone. A faint red column forms in his wake. Jack shivers. He grabs Jack’s buttocks with his palms and prises them apart. Jordan fucks Jack, unlubricated for about twelve minutes, hands on his hips, nails digging into the soft pits either side of his stomach, which is concave and untoned. Read less and eat more, Jordan thinks as his cock pummels Jack’s insides. It has the rhythm of a mantra he contends. His thumbs massage the skin over Jack’s kidneys, and his teeth are clamped across his left shoulder. Jack is contorted, attempting a wriggle, he’s never been fucked by Jordan before and wasn’t prepared for such unchecked animalism. His wriggling looks ludicrous given how impotent to resistance the mangle and various bindings have him, but the ridiculousness endears him to Jordan’s paternal instincts. Jordan slams Jack’s head three times into the mangle. Blood pools form and mingle with the rust. His teeth grind their way into meagre flesh on Jack’s neck. Jack’s still being fucked. The larger blade on the Swiss Army knife now shreds huge clumps of hair from Jack’s bleeding scalp. These are tucked inside the gag, stuffed up Jack’s nose and otherwise strewn about the floor, where the similarity of his hair’s consistency to hay does not go unnoticed by Jordan, despite his attention being concentrated elsewhere. Jack’s sporadic thatch now gleams with blood and sweat. Jordan is etching a cartoon drawing of a little box house. Jack’s back is the canvas. Only just breaking the skin, so blood bubbles to the surface intermittently along the outline. Jack’s left kidney is punched. The toothpick from the Swiss Army knife is introduced to the gap behind Jack’s left collar bone, it greedily swallows its entire length. The tweezers follow, arms separated somewhat, into the gap behind the right collar bone. Jack’s state of consciousness paddles between total panic and a lolling grogginess and there’s little he can do to harness either into a decisive action. Jordan unholsters his cock from Jack, grabs him roughly by the hips and spins him round so his chest and stomach are exposed. This elicits choking from Jack, the skin on his neck is burnt by the tie, upon being so roughly whipped around. His eyes are leaking, not quite bulging. Blood drips in two thin lines from behind his collar bones, disappearing behind each armpit. Jordan at one point licks these dry, albeit temporarily. He kisses Jack’s eyelids. Jack’s attempting to convulse and loosen his bindings, but they’re too tight, so he recants. The small blade drags snowy curls of white skin down from Jack’s sternum. His cock is semi-erect; Jordan takes it in the palm of his left hand and squeezes it rhythmically whilst etching who-knows-what into his chest. The heat of his palm induces a full-on erection in Jack. Jordan has never touched Jack’s cock before, despite being regularly invited to do so at parties. Jordan kneels down and fellates his model in true casting couch tradition, while his right hand unhooks the corkscrew from the Swiss Army knife. This he proceeds to screw into the side of Jack’s abdomen, probably directly into his left kidney. Once it’s fully wound in, he yanks it our in one move. Jack would like to scream; instead a hoarse but muffled roar escapes and, small doubt as regards the purity of the sentiment behind it, fills the gag but little else. Instead, Jack’s sphincter relaxes and he unleashes a torrent of piss into Jordan’s palpating mouth. A reflex hurls Jordan backwards, then he whips around sharply and spews the piss in an arc, straight at Jack’s face. He then sits down on some hay, wipes his face on Jack’s coat, which rests on top of the two boy’s bags. He hums some ‘…Valkyries’, then giggles…Nietzche…Wagner. Snap out of it man. Jack’s bag is opened, his lunch box emptied on the ground. From his pocket, Jordan produces a hypodermic needle, this is filled with milk from a carton, which continues to dribble milk from the point of entry as Jordan injects milk into the white of Jack’s right eye. The needle remains hanging there, an absurd protrusion, a surgical horn, the sort of appendage they’d make the village fool wear in a future dystopia if villages still exist by then. Jordan kicks him in the groin. Jack is shaking involuntarily. Jordan takes the large blade and carves the outline of a square into the skin covering Jack’s stomach before tracing the outline of his kneecaps with the corkscrew; moons of blood form and gather at the base the knees, dripping down his shins, flooding down over his trousers and immaculately polished schoolshoes. He then jabs arbitrarily around the soft patched behind the kneecaps, soon rendering Jack’s legs useless. Jack is basically supported by the tie around his neck. The needle is shaken free from Jack’s eye. Jordan collects it, sprays whatever fluids up into Jack’s right nostril, then refills it with some stagnant water from an old feed trough near the door. He grabs Jack’s bound wrists, loosens some cloth with the knife and injects a needle full of it into the most immediate vein. He’s finding this cool and amusing, but not so funny that his hard-on isn’t raging. Digging the fingertips of both hands into the deepest fissure available in Jack’s lower abdomen, he peels open a flesh crevice just large enough to muscle his cock into the warm folds. He obviously hasn’t punctured the stomach lining yet because the guts haven’t yet spilt forth. Nevertheless, the presiding aroma would suggest that Jack has shit himself. Jordan thrusts himself into the envelope he’s carved below Jack’s ribcage. He bites a small shaft of skin away from the tip of his nose. He’s actually a tiny bit sorry to see Jack’s eye bleeding. No other eyes used to be able to articulate sorrow so quintessentially. Jordan is anxious that he’s getting slightly bored, so he retreats from the warmth of Jack’s abdominal slit, takes a moment to centre his strength and pushes the mangle over, which of course, means Jack is dragged over by his throat. The gag has slipped over the right-hand corner of Jack’s mouth throughout this action, but even if he wanted to speak, swear, scream, words are by now, ridiculous, anachronistic conceits, way too crude for this context. That considered, Jordan rips off the remaining gag. Jack vomits down his chest. Jordan’s cock snakes back into the brand new cunt Jack sports on his belly, the familiarity soothes, as he grinds deeper into the fissure, purring deep within his throat. His hand reaches behind Jack’s convoluted shape and drags forth a palm full of shit. He smears this into Jack’s face, punches him twice, and smashes his head into the mangler. Weirdly, he’s still vaguely conscious, or not least not totally blacked out. This surprises and pleases Jack. He pulls off one of Jack’s blood-saturated shoes and jams as much as possible of it – toe first - into his mouth, after prising his jaws open as wide as they’d go, and then some. He whacks the heel repeatedly, hammering it centimetre by centimetre, further into Jack’s throat. He can hear ligaments, maybe bones adjusting, maybe snapping to accommodate. The leather is slippery with blood. He’s stopped gyrating his cock into the stomach crevice, he’s already filled it with his ejaculate and he barely noticed, but he leaves it in there for the warmth. Jack is no longer hard. Jordan’s fingers stumble across the syringe. He licks a stripe of blood from Jack’s chest, takes a moment to reflect on the taste, and then hauls his cock out of the heavily-pounded gap below him. He drives the needle into the gap, which is swimming with various fluids, not all of them originated by Jack. He draws back the dropper, watches his semen flood the little glass window along with blood and something of a dark, bilious hue. He slaps Jack around the face, the shoe barely quakes, it’s fairly tightly lodged at this point. The needle is slid gingerly into the base of Jack’s scrotum, up between his heavy, hot, wet testicles. He pauses. Then in a sharp movement he uses the needle to tear a tiny gash in the wall of the scrotum, as though he changed his mind about something halfway through the operation. The needle has left Jack, not for long. He licks the needle clean, cold metal always polishes up well. He injects his sperm, blood, bile cocktail into Jack’s left testicle, a sliver of which smiles through the parted skin of the broken scrotum. Jack writhes and spasms in a rapid vibrato. His jaw is probably aching like shit, which is the surely worst thing if you’re of the mind to use your final breath to scream.

Jordan’s always bored the instant they die. So he retreats from Jack’s ‘body’, hoists up his pants and trousers, frowns at the broken camera, perches on the corner of a bale, absently sifts through the contents of Jack’s bag, finds a sketch pad and a tin of pencils and decides to sketch the present scene, as though he were a courtroom artist. Although in court, of course, they didn’t sketch because the court photographer’s disposable camera shattered the morning of the trial, they sketched because cameras are forbidden in court. About two hours into the sketch, the light begins to fail, and he’s happy with his depiction. As a parting whim, he eases the shoe out of Jack’s mouth, the unplugging of which heralds the flow of all manner of juices. Once these are amply flushed, he uses the small blade to saw through the tip of Jack’s fat, dead tongue. He drops it in his own mouth briefly like Mary Poppins administering a boiled sweet to a child, sucks on the various juices analytically, and then rolls Jack’s lower body over, spits the excised tongue onto his back. He stuffs it deep into Jack’s asshole using his index finger, the action of which for some reason reminds him of a meercat documentary he saw when he was a kid, and using a stapler from Jack’s pencil case attempts to staple the buttocks together. The buoyancy engenders some natural resistance. It’s only marginally successful. The buttocks are more perforated with staples than married by them. Whatever, the tongue is pretty much buried and sealed tight under two grossly mutilated, mounds of meat; and Jordan’s closing thoughts as he gathers his stuff together and leaves the barn are that a) it’s the intention not the execution that counts this late in the game and b) he doesn’t especially mind that this last minute inspired frippery renders his sketch somewhat untruthful. Still, he hopes to keep a straight face when asked by the art teacher where he got the inspiration for such a grotesquely silly and brutally bizarre pose.

Nick Hudson.