I see him across the room; he’s perfect, perfect for what I want.  He’s tall, at least over six feet, and thin, so thin, his bones visible through the thin, sallow skin of his torso.  He has long flowing hair, the ragged ends touching the skin below his short tight t-shirt.  I lick my lips in anticipation; he just has to be it.

I pick myself up from the stool I am perched on at the bar and wander over; I walk past him, turning my head to smile, half hoping he isn’t gay, half hoping he is.  To have a lover of men for my project would be perfect.  But whatever his inclination might be I catch his eye and in that moment he loses his will to resist me.  Smiling sweetly at him I hook my finger, he walks towards me, as I knew he would, without a backward look at the people he was with.  Tonight I care nothing for hiding what I am doing, they’ll work it out soon enough, I don’t care. This is my perfect specimen and nothing else will do.  Tonight I do not even bother to try and chat him up or get him drunk; I’m too excited at the prospect of starting my new project and playing with my new abilities, of making something worth remembering.  I do however ask him his name; it’s Daniel, Daniel Alexander.  Somehow I like knowing his name; it makes this pet project of mine all the more personal to him.  I so want him to enjoy this experience, because it’s all he’s going to know, now and forever……

I stand looking at him, analysing his every detail, carefully examining my handy work, making sure that it’s just right.  It’s so hard when you are trying to create something in the image of someone else, but not just them, but their ideal, their world.  It is so hard to put into words what I have hoped to achieve in this work.  My most demanding and intricate piece.

And why am I creating it? To honour someone that was my world. Oh he wasn’t my lover, not even really a friend, he was something else, something that is hard to explain, he was more than simply my pack mate, we were flip sides of the same coin, he, cold dispassionate, science is everything, me? Well I’m raw passion and feeling, I love every single creation, whereas to him they were simply experiments.  And yet now looking back I can see a passion there, how else could he have created these beautiful creatures? I have tried so hard to put myself in to his shoes, to use his vision to create this monument to him, my inspiration and oh so much more.

This is all probably very confusing, but I will try to explain.  In him I found my equal, my companion, someone who had the same kind of vision as me.  We worked well as a team and now he is dead, brutally slaughtered and I am alone and in grief.

Stillness, we stand still, chained together like the animals we are pretending to be, then out of the night comes a figure, tall, cold darkness waiting silently in the corner of my vision.  I have no idea what fatal and irrevocable changes this will bring, but as his flaming sword falls through the body of my companion.  Our minds still linked I feel it as if it were my own body, but I do not cry or scream, I know what he would want and I keep in touch until there is no more of his mind left, I savour the pain as if it were the hands of a lover.  I keep the pain of his loss deep inside me, to treasure once I am alone.

This is a pain beyond anything I have ever felt before; I explore its depths, its inner meanings.  I am finally alone, utterly alone, the last of my pack to survive, the rest brutally slaughtered in the constant battle with those Methuselah controlled freaks.  No longer do I have someone to share my ideas, lusts, thoughts or creations.  My final link with the past is gone forever, but my grief will last longer, until I have immortalised their beauty, their inner struggle for all to see.

So there is my reasoning, simple and plain, hopefully someone will now understand a little better what I want, what I am trying to achieve.  I can but hope that out there somewhere is another mind like my own which will understand my vision and my pain and worship at the feet of my loved one once more.

When first I lost him, my grief was terrible, my pain unbearable, and yet it was my inspiration, I basked in its torments, treasured its suffering, embraced its agony.  I tore at my very flesh, ripped at it, took chunks away in my hands, and do you know I laughed! For not knowing I had his gift, his ability to mould flesh and bone, to twist it into new intricate forms.  It was this knowledge that brought forth my idea, my need to express his ideas as a lasting gift to him.  I would not simply recreate a piece of his work, but recreate my own and blend them together in the finest masterpiece that the world had ever seen, more than it could hope to understand.  But first I had to escape this blasted prison cell we had created for ourselves.

*          *             *

We had awakened from our long sleep not four months ago, I won’t bore you with too many details as to the whys and wherefores, but needless to say we had nearly been killed with the rest of our pack in the desperate conflict for our home city, but instead of meeting that final grisly end, we had followed our Ductus into the depths of an unused section of the sewers and there laid ourselves down to sleep and heal.  To let time pass above us and minds forget until we could arise once more and destroy our enemies from within.

In that state I had dreamed of beauty and lust, the work I left unattended to moulder and die as mortals do.  That without me to rescue them they would perish and lie six feet under forever.  So when we awoke to the new night I was ready for our mission to be fulfilled and for my search to start anew.  But something was different, the Ductus had new plans, he had lost that which had made him our leader and had preserved us through those final moments of battle. 

*          *             *

We had awakened from our long sleep not four months ago, I won’t bore you with too many details as to the whys and wherefores, but needless to say we had nearly been killed with the rest of our pack in the desperate conflict for our home city, but instead of meeting that final grisly end, we had followed our Ductus into the depths of an unused section of the sewers and there laid ourselves down to sleep and heal.  To let time pass above us and minds forget until we could arise once more and destroy our enemies from within.

In that state I had dreamed of beauty and lust, the work I left unattended to moulder and die as mortals do.  That without me to rescue them they would perish and lie six feet under forever.  So when we awoke to the new night I was ready for our mission to be fulfilled and for my search to start anew.  But something was different, the Ductus had new plans, he had lost that which had made him our leader and had preserved us through those final moments of battle. 

*          *            *

I was kept in a pound, surrounded by vermin, and from here I formulated my escape, of my gifts I told nothing, if they knew they would never let me go and I would live and die on a chain attached to an incompetent mad man.  And though to a certain degree this appealed, I had to move on and explore new horizons and fulfil my promise.

So out I went, without a backward glance, sneaking through gates and fences and out into the night.  The trek was long and cold, though not particularly scary.  I am a hunter, and despite the fact I was running I was never the prey.  Not for one moment did I think they would be able to find me, never, they could under no circumstances be able to follow my trail I was changing too much for them to ever be able to figure it out.  The thing is when one can change the very structure of ones being one need never leave the same prints of scent from one night to the next!

It was a tedious and boring journey for the most part, through countryside and small towns, feeding minimally and killing anyone who saw me.  Oh how hard that was, to simply lay waste to those lives, to pierce their flesh with a sharp bone and feel their life blood running down my arm, to leave them there without hope of ever discovering more about the pain I put them through.  But time was short and they meant nothing to me, nothing to my plans and my reaching a place from which I could work. 

I still dream of those bodies lying in the mud made by their own blood, their empty eyes staring at the night sky, and how I wish I could return and immortalise them for their brave efforts in helping me to stay hidden.  I thank them from the bottom of my immortal soul and commemorate them here.  I thank you brave souls, and may you live through your pain forever, eternally suffering the inner joy that I so thoughtlessly created for you.

*          *            *

Well as you may well have guessed I finally found a new home, and lost myself in this new world.  I decided not to search out for my new subject straight away, I needed to settle in, get supplies and find my feet.  I managed to get myself I nice place to live, with ample space for my work.  I ground floor flat, with minimal natural light.  I decorated in fine style, tailoring it to the taste of those I hoped to lure there.  So imagine a black and purple colour scheme, with lace, bones and Wiccan symbols painted in silver on the walls.  To be honest it wasn’t really me, I like blank canvases on to which can spill anything my work allows.  White walls splattered in blood and tissue, eyes and other body parts on display and to use if required.  But I can understand why this might not appeal to the average mortal, or even the not so average one.  But saying all that, it’s not like I intend to spend too much time here, this is a display, a lie, to cover up my true self and my true intensions.  My studio I have left blank, ready for me to begin my work, and to do that I have to go out and find the perfect man.

Daniel is perfect, as perfect as I could have ever dreamed, we leave the club smiling at each other, he is entranced and has no choice, but I let that fade and enjoy his bemusement as his naked body lies beneath mine on the bed.  Old habits die hard and despite my plans for him I could not resist the chance for him to use that wonderful cock one last time.  Little does he know this is his last chance to enjoy these pleasures of the flesh, before I introduce him to a whole new world of beauty.

I admire the feel of his ribs through thin pale flesh.  I want to sink my hands deep within him and play with his inner workings, to cover myself in him as I used to do with my work.  But he is special, my special project and I must hold back my lust and desire, to place myself somewhere else and look upon him as nothing.  But it is so hard, he is so beautiful, his long skinny limbs spread beneath me, his soft eyes staring at me with longing.  I smile at him again, running my hands over his perfect body.  Oh how I wish my dearest were with me, how he would enjoy this body, know exactly how to make him more than he is.

I take his hand and gently help him to stand, he is shaky with nerves, I smile to reassure him and led him out of this mockery of a room and into my real life.  He stares round at the bare walls and the concrete floor, his hand still in mine I lead him futher in.  I turn towards him and notice that he is covered in goose bumps from the cold air touching every inch of his naked body.  Again I reassure him this time with words of love as I lead him to my easel.

This isn’t the boring wooden framework of a painter, but rather a metal table with chains.  Not sure what to do he stands there and I can’t help but love him for it.  So innocent in the ways of the flesh, the true ways of the flesh.  Not the hot, sweaty, panting kind that we had already tried, but the beauty of pain, the pleasure of hurt and the expansion of the mind.

He looks at me, and then sits on the table.  I push his head back so that he is laying face up, I tie his hands with chains to the sides, pushing the wrists as far back as they will go, then I hold down his feet in clamps, pressing and biting into his tender flesh.

“ Daniel,” I say “ you are the most beautiful being I have seen and I want to immortalise you, make it so that everyone will see you and know it”

He simply nods his head in some kind of understanding.  I stand over him and ponder how to begin his transformation.  He closes his eyes as I push my hands into his flesh, biting deep hoping to draw out that wonderful look that will inspire me onwards.  In order to achieve the true monument I desire I remove his cock, ripping the flesh from a fingertip I stretch the bone underneath in to a sharp point and cut along his flesh, gently breaking the skin surrounding it, the second time round I bite deeper into muscle and flesh.  Ohh to be able to do this with my own hand instead of cold heartless steel, to truly feel the skin and flesh separate from each other in delicate bliss.  Slowly, so slowly, I pull away the muscles holding him together, until my hand is red with his blood as it flows from his open wound.  I place those symbols of manhood into a jar and seal it. Turning with longing to the work at hand, I pull the skin over the gapping wound in his crotch so he becomes a sexless being, empty and formless.  Not even pubic hair left to mar its seamless elegance.  I look at his face as see he is now watching me in horror, pain rippling across his features.  I stare at his eyes, the deepest of blues, so fantastically delicate and pure.  I smile for him one last time before I plunge the spike I call my index finger into that blue ocean of passion.  To feel the gentle bulge of the flesh before it’s pierced and the texture of the inner eye on my skin..I smile in lust at this feeling, this beauty, the sounds of his screams ripping through me and making me shiver with orgasm.  I pluck the eye out of his marvellous perfect face; it lies on the end of my finger, the black fluid of its being mingling with the red that already covers my hand.  Gently I remove the eye and place it in my mouth; slowly I start to suck at the flesh, nibbling with my teeth as I repeat the process with his remaining eye.  Again I put the sacred flesh into my mouth and thank the Dark Mother for Her bounty.

Now he truly resembles he whom inspires this work.  But he experimented with the melding of flesh with machine. The juxtaposition of blood and bone with steal and chain.  I leave Daniel naked and wounded on the table, licking the blood from my hand as I go in search for the tools to make him whole.

*          *            *

The flesh has been stripped from his arms, from below the shoulder to the wrist, exposing the naked bones.  I stop to admire the work of Mother Nature, how beautifully she created the joint, how marvellously it works. I untie his hand and move his hand, bending and straightening, seeing the bones move against each other in perfect harmony.  I then let my fingers slip through the bone, cutting it off from his body.  He screams at first, but I think he’s fainted; this is simply too much for him to take. I repeat the procedure on the other end of the exposed bone, leaving me with a stump of an arm and a disembodied hand. Oh to give that hand life and let it roam the world as Thing did in The Addams Family, I laugh at the thought, and return to my project.  Having disembowelled an old umbrella, I take the spoke and use it as a replacement arm. I even replace the hand, knowing he’ll never need to use it again anyway. 

I smile at my first attempt to meld man and machine, not the most original of ideas I know, but then this is new to me. I cover the join carefully so that it appears to be metal growing out of his flesh.  I stand over my handy work, not bad, I think.  But I decide to stop for today, and return to my memory to remember the inspirational work of my tutor.

As the new night dawns, I rise, a smile on my lips in anticipation of the plans that have developed over the hours of day.  Washing myself carefully I walk into my studio, as naked as the body before me.  As I enter his head rises, then falls back down as he remembers that I have taken his eyes and indigested them into my being.

“ Do not fear me Daniel,” I whisper into his perfect ear “ you are beauty personified, and I will make you immortal”

He moans softly as I lay my cold hand on his flesh, gently rubbing against the contours of his ribs. Again I make my finger into a bone knife and cut away the skin on his chest, ripping it back slowly, watching the grimace on his face.  Next I remove the layer of muscle and flesh until I can truly feel his bone against bone.  Ribs are such beautiful things, their long thin arrows of bones jutting forth from a bed of flesh.  Such a pity they have to go.

Carefully I remove each of his ribs, so gently and carefully he only moans softly in my ear as each part of him takes on its own being.  I only take one at a time, to remove them all would spoil the structure of his form, I want him to live when I am done, even if it is only briefly.  For each rib I take I replace it with a curve of metal, long, sharp and blissfully shiny.  Taking each from one side so that the cross together, like fingers interlinked, the ends pointing towards the ceiling.  So, so beautiful, I must keep my calm exterior, not let the lust over take me.  I must let my mind keep in contact with his, feel every moment of his pain, and yet not live in it myself.  This is so hard for me, it’s like nothing I’ve ever done before and I only hope I can do him justice, that he will see what I am creating and know the hows and whys!  Once all his ribs are replaced I slowly stretch the skin back across, piercing it with the metal spikes to hold it in place.  This is true beauty, the melding of man and metal, the criss cross of flesh.

Slowly more ideas take hold of me and I work fast through the night, removing and replacing, cutting and stitching, a bone here, a spoke there.  Trying to leave only hints of the metal beneath and yet at other times making it obvious.  I feel strangely exhilarated, that despite all my work I have kept him alive, that he still breathes and his heart still pumps.  Yes technically parts of him are dead, as no blood can reach them, like the useless hand but he can still talk and I love him for it.

Despite every attempt I can not keep my passions totally at bay, I have to love my art or it means nothing, and if I do not love this boy, this creature, this Frankenstein’s monster then it means nothing. Less than nothing, if I truly want to create the ultimate monument then it has simply got to be made from my dearest love.  I kiss him lips, let my tongue run along the sharp metal points he once called teeth, let myself taste the iron of his blood, of his metal.  I place his dead hand in me moving it, seeing the new joint move in the intricate ways; I make him make me come. I can’t help it; it’s what I am! And for this to come from me it must contain passion above all else.

*          *            *

I keep Daniel in this state for days, feeding him blood and food, mixed together in fluid form, slowly the wounds heal and the metal becomes part of him.  I love him and caress him, feel the bliss of his change.  I’m sure he has come to love it as much as I have, and although he cannot move I take him to the window and leave him looking out on the world all day while I sleep.  Time passes and I know I can not keep him this way for much longer, the final act is upon me, sad as I am I know that if I do not act soon his flesh will rot away and his angelic splendour will die.

On the last night I enter the studio and turn him to face me,

“ Daniel, Daniel” I whisper “ wake up and look upon me, for tonight is our last together, despite everything your flesh is wilting and I must preserve you forever”

Linked to his mind I feel his fear, his dread

“ Do not be afraid my love, the pain will last but an eternity and I will be with you”

He tries to talk, but I silence him with a kiss

“Be silent my love, let our minds join together in pain as I end this life and you enter a new one, remember me always”

I kiss him again, passionately letting the jagged teeth bite into my tongue mixing our flavours in a memory I will treasure for all my nights.  Now I must leave him briefly as I go to concoct the brew to end his mortal days.

I return with by bucket of plaster.  What else did you think I would do, I intend to cover those empty pieces of flesh that remain so that he’ll live on inside this immortal image.  He does not know what I intend and I read the shock as he feels the cold liquid on his feet.  Oh yes he will suffocate to death, unable to ever scream, a truly fitting end for the most spectacular creature to ever walk under the sun.  Slowly and gently I wrap him up in icy whiteness.  Leaving exposed metal bones.  The wondrous combination of my work and his, the best of both us, lasting forever to remind the world of the incredible talent they lost in pain and fire.

In his mind I reassure him, taking in the pain, the fear he can no longer express in any other way, I gently massage the plaster into his mouth, blocking this throat, into each nostril, over the eye sockets, now replaced with awe-inspiring spirals of delicate chain.  His hair I tie up, letting gentle spirals flow to his shoulders, using the images of ancient Greek  statues as models.  My very own David or Aphrodite, sexless and yet masculine, hard and yet feminine.  Indeed he could make me come by touching him.

When finally he is covered I stand back to admire my handy work. I touch his mind and feel he is close to death, I reassure him, mentally hug him close to me and stay with him as the darkness approaches.  I feel it has his heart labours to draw a breath, impossible for him now, and I smile at his last efforts to hold on to life.  No wonder it was something that obsessed my dearest all of his Unlife, this is a truly amazing thing. This point of death, the second they are a living breathing being the next a lump of flesh.  But my darling Daniel is more, for he is no simple lump of flesh, nor even flesh and metal.  He is art, a last memory for Seven, may he live forever in our hearts.

Epilogue

The Telegraph, Sunday 24^th December 2000

Today saw the opening of the newest exhibit of young talented artists for the twenty-first century.  And we managed to get a private interview with one of the most acclaimed and controversial artists showing here today.  Calling herself simply Zenith, after her own studio, Zenith Arts, she has shown her today a vision more radical than even the Turner Prize winning Mr Hurst.

Her masterpiece for this exhibition, is entitled “ In Memorandum”. We see a figure, neither male nor female, standing in the pose of a classical god, its hair trailing from a traditional style found in Greek sculpture.  This mix of male and female is juxtaposed with  the combination of “flesh” and metal.  She has cleverly interwoven the structure of the piece with metal bones, joints and eyes.  It grimaces in pain as the serrated teeth dig into its lower lip.  The eyes, interestingly replaced with different size chains to represent the pupil and iris.  This is surely a piece of work for the new century, a new move forward from what we have come to expect from this brave new artist, and a welcome return after her years of absence from the artistic scene.

When asked about the title of this piece the author imply stated “ there is no hidden meaning in the title, it is what it says, a monument to the greatest mind I have ever known, who was taken before his time, remember Seven is the perfect number, and here is the perfect man, his image”

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