FSE

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Disclaimer: This is some awful stuff which you should not read if you're squemish or normal in any way shape or form. This is a little bit of a departure from my usual style with this series, and to avoid confusion, I will tell you that the first part is entirely dialogue- yes. It's one person speaking to someone else. I hope you enjoy this little venture into the mind of an artist.

---

_While though the tempest ‘round me roars,

I hear the truth: it liveth.

And though the darkness ‘round me grows,

Songs in the night, it giveth._

-Written on a tombstone marked "Daniel White", fifteen miles out of town.

===

"I have a very bad habit, I suppose, of taking too much pride in my work. Whenever I do a job that could be considered admirable, whenever I surprise myself with my own vision or technique, whenever I truly see, I find myself slipping away. I wake, and everything is a blur. My work lies before me, complete and wonderful, grotesque and so full of emotion and meaning. This is the culmination of everything I am, and often I swell with pride so that I burst, and it all flutters down like a shaken house of cards.

This isn't to say I don't know what I'm doing. Perhaps you have seen some of my work? There was an exhibit in the Chicago museum late last week. Photographs in triptychs, covered in all that I am. Some of them gaunt, some wide and expecting, all accepting- my beauties. All of those I can assure you were female, because beauty in its basic form is female, and when I scrape the outer recesses of my mind, I can picture her laying there, looking at me with wide blue eyes and curled black lips. Beauty is something feral and unique to me, and I think even someone as brazen and philistine as you can appreciate that.

Of course, the subjects for those photographs were models, and because of legal reasons I fear I cannot display the true pride and joy of my collection. I would invite you to look at this picture here... I asked my son to help me with it, you see. Can you sense the dread in her heart, though she shies away from the camera? Do you see how I composed it so the light is casting the long shadow of the noose right over her gulping throat? The picture is far from perfect, but the fox mask she's cradling certainly is. I made it from paper Mache... it's modeled after my son's face.

And what of this one here? She was truly an exceptional model, and willing to shave off all of her fur for the shot, too. Her mouth didn't let out a single sound while we slid all fifty five of those needles under her flesh. I ask you, could an artist of lesser stature illicit such discipline from his models?

I would wager not.

You may be wondering what a fox of my integrity and talent did to attract such a lovely wolf for a mate? After all, are we not the weaker species, and do the wolves not prefer their dominant partners? I can say with pride that my wife was a woman whose devotion to me and my cause transcended such weak values as ‘dominance' and ‘control'. Our lovemaking was all teeth and claws. I bled into her, and she bore me my two loves, my son and my art. Even as I watched her eyes sink into her head as months passed in that pallid, white room, I never forgot the macabre devotion to true beauty.

It was May when I first saw her, clutching herself in the shadow of a photograph depicting a lovely young doe bent over in submission next to several sloppily carved flanks of venison. Taken by a friend of mine, it was titled ‘Brother, Dear Brother', and I could tell she truly grasped the intricacies of the art immediately. There was sweat. It betrayed her.

"Do you like it?" I said. "You seem to be unsure."

"I'm not sure if ‘like' is the right word." She bit her lip when she spoke.

"What does it make you think of?"

"... home..." she whispered.

At once, I knew she understood. Her friends will insist that I lured her in with vulpine charms and absurd gestures of amorous intent- a flower in her bedroom as she woke, a silk handkerchief embroidered with her image... They were but tokens. If her family is to be believed, then I deceived her, and whispered poison into her ear every night, crowing incessantly to her unstable mind words of treacherous beauty and disquieted love. For she did love me suddenly, and within days we found ourselves so aroused that I'd often publicly slip a paw under her skirt only to discover that she had anticipated me and gone without panties.

The truth, as you and I well know, was that she had been entranced by my art. I hesitate to use the phrase "it took her breath away", but I find myself incapable of finding a more descriptive string of words. In fact, as I recall, she wanted to purchase ‘Brother, Dear Brother' the day after, and I later gave it to her as a gift when I asked her to marry me. That was a week before I found that poor hyena girl in her alleyway, too full of heroine to keep from wetting herself and drooling all over the pavement.

I believe I have some photos of her, though they're well hidden. I suspect you've seen enough of my house that you know where they are, by now. I posed her with the grating, using the iron chain-link fence as a backdrop... it's work I'm proud of, and work my wife so dearly loved. I waited for one year.

Shortly after our son was born, I began a side project, the culmination of which would signal the height of my artistic brilliance, the climax of my life. I chose my composition carefully, but along the way, I kept running into several distractions, all of which eventually proved beneficial. Two of them, I believe you found, and wrongly accused me of having planned.

The truth was- I found them. The first was the little otter girl, splayed out in an alley like a spent balloon. I was pleased to hear that the autopsy confirmed she had died before the several blows to the head I gave her. The rigor mortis had already set in, so the only way to curl her paws around the hammer was to break her fingers with a pair of pliers. It was worth it to take those few precious snapshots before the sound of sirens shooed me away from the scene. It was a close call, but I wanted it perfect, and perfect takes time... ah well.

The other was that wolf cub. I regretted that one in small part, because my wife was lupine as well, but it didn't stop my muse from whispering her sweet ambrosia into my black ears, guiding my paws and my eyes, clicking away eternally at my camera. Ah, he was so young! So soft! I can still hear his voice crowing, drifting out his hollow throat"but I cannot dwell on the peculiar vestiges of youth, especially since, as you know, I enjoyed them so well.

Does my smile disturb you? Forgive me- these memories are so fresh. They are incarnations of all I hold dear in this world, and when my muse speaks, I must answer. I suppose I don't have to describe my feelings any further. After all, you found most of him, as I recall.

Unsurprisingly, these distractions did not cease, though I remained diligent in the care of my wife. Every now and again, I would find some poor soul in an alley, squirming under the pressures of their realities. I've watched grown men foam at the mouth, pissing all over themselves. I've watched 14 year old mothers give birth to cubs a month early, only to smother them through the haze. Blood is my structure, vomit my medium, life my backdrop and death my subject. I do not find these abstract concepts so implacable as the rest of the word- I can capture them in a photo. I captured them all in photos- and that's what makes me an artist.

However, her family was skeptical. They insisted I return her, that I stop myself. What was there to stop, I ask you? Can you truly halt art as well as you can rush it? I would argue not, but her brother had different intentions. He persisted, waiting outside of our home every day, leering at me from under the hood of his jacket.

Every day he would stop me. "What are you doing to her in there?" he would ask me.

"Nothing," I would reply. "We're working on a project."

The truth would satisfy him some days. Other days he would fly into a rage, shouting at me.

"You don't think we know? Do you think we're blind? Or stupid!?"

And I would reply "I think nothing of the sort."

Some days he would beat me, or spit in my face. I always believed he would come around and understand that my wife's love of my art was born simply of an understanding of beauty that went deeper than a pretty smile, or perfect breasts. How could I hope that her brother would understand? Some days, he would beat me senseless, and I would wake up to my son prodding my ear with a stick on the front porch. Perhaps he understood my art in some small way- he never touched my paws.

One day, he brought her friends with him, and they each questioned me in turn, because they had seen nothing of my wife for months. I had nothing to tell them: if my wife had forsaken her friends and family and old life for a new one at my side, who was I to tell them they were obsolete? I had not goaded her into letting them go- I assure you, I never mentioned it once. I know that if my precious wife had wanted, she could have seen them at any time. I never kept her from the outside world...

Ah, but something did cage her in. I am forgetting her devotion "not to me- but to my art. I remember it clearly, now. I answered her friends much as I had answered her brother so many times before: I was innocent of all their supposed ‘crimes'. Crimes against nature, crimes against the law... they slandered me in public, and I bore their insults out of respect to my beloved, who surely would have been crestfallen to hear their vicious words. They pecked at me like vultures, and I was eventually forced to throw them off my property. But like one brother before them, they struck at me, and I spent two weeks in a hospital, leaving only my two-year old son to take care of his mother. Nevertheless, I did not call the authorities- they were within their right. My wife was a dear friend, and a precious thing to lose. My photography has that alluring quality to it- it's ensnared more than a few, and drug them off and away from the world of the common man.

Returning home, I found my son very healthy, but my wife was ill. Had she truly missed me to the degree that her body would suffer in my absence? Fleeting pride fills my heart to think that someone could love me so. My presence filled her up and gave her life, and while I was gone she wilted, like a flower.

Every day I would come up to her room and lay by her, licking her nose and asking if she enjoyed the view. She would always tell me she loved it, except when it would rain. On rainy days, she would watch silently, tears streaming down her muzzle, and I would let her listen to music. Soon, she began to weep on grey days, and then cloudy days.

A month before she passed, I got a phone call from her father, asking where she was.

"Why," I told him. "She's here with me. Where else could she be?"

He asked me what I had done with her and I told him that his baseless accusations would never endear her to him. My wife hated her family, and I suppose it was only natural that her marriage to me and her devotion to my craft would cement that. If their word is to be believed, then I was doing all manner of horrible things to her, though this (I assure you) was not the case.

It took roughly that entire month, and it was painful for me. Diligent as I am, however, I took a photograph each and every day, just as I had been doing for the past year. My wife's devotion, however... wavered. She went from ill to sick, and finally her mind slipped from me, and she became wild. I would come into the room, and she would claw at the air, growling at shadows and light, too weak to even lift herself from the bed. That said, I was still forced to restrain her. She would still grasp at me when I drew near, and I feared for my son's safety.

My son and I would eat lunch in her room every day, for the sight of him seemed to quell her madness, if only slightly. We would turn the music up to drown out the pathetic whines that issued every so often from her hollowing throat. She would bang her head sharply against the headboard, pleading with me to relax or do away with her restraints, but I could only look at her with sad eyes, knowing I could not.

Each day, as I said, I would take one photograph of her naked body, spread lewdly across her bed. I began in the morning, when she was more amicable. Her fur was falling out in clumps now, and most came away whenever I would brush a paw over her in an attempt to position her just so. Her rips stuck out, her eyes had sunken- it was truly poetic. The more emaciated she became, the more she seemed to understand the significance of her illness. That final week, she was lucid, filled with epiphanic understanding and quiet knowing. She didn't even move as I posed her. Indeed, it took me three days of solid photography before her brother finally broke into the apartment.

I was posing her eyes when I heard the door crash behind me. I had rolled them up against each other, somewhat comically. She looked as if she were cross-eyed. The sound of the door splintering open startled me so that I shoved the right eye deep into her skull. I'd imagine it is now irretrievable, or certainly impossible to recover without destroying it. Seeing what I had done, her brother moved beat me savagely with an iron pipe while my son watched, numbly attempting to work the only three numbers on a phone I had ever taught him to use.

I did not, as you may suspect, get myself caught that day. I ducked her brother's violent attempts at assault and battery, and managed to worm myself out of a window. As for my son, well... I can only hope that my late wife's family has had mercy on him. I'm afraid I'm unsure of exactly what they did to him. If the news reports I watched the following day are to be believed, they are putting him in an orphanage, though I rather suspect they may have given him something to remember his mother by. I can only speculate what they've told him.

Of course, if the newscasts are to be believed (as I just mentioned), I also kept my wife tied to her bed with several loops of wire tied around her wrists for months on end. Apparently, I starved her, kept her from sleeping, or using the bathroom"can the modern world not accept that she was sick? And dying? I can only pray that they realize that they not only slander myself, but my wife and my art as well...

Ahh, but I didn't lose hope. Slanderous reports never deterred me from my cause, and even watching you search for me night after night never drew me back inside of myself. One month after my escape, I crept into their yard with all the cunning of my feral ancestors. Of course, I meant no harm at first. I merely wanted to discuss with them my feelings of being wronged and shamed so. God willing, they hadn't burnt my photographs, although I figured that something like that would be entirely too much to hope for. The sky was pitch black- there was no moon.

Alas, I discovered the house was empty- completely stripped of all its furnishings and any trace of a family of wolves, save claw marks on the floor where they had gone barefoot. It was what you would call a crushing blow. Devastated, I held my heart in my hands for days, simply laying on the floor and thinking of all I had lost. And then- as if I were struck by lightning- my muse! Inspiration guided my paws as I rent the house asunder, looking for any and all clues as to the whereabouts of my wife's family! The trail was faint, but it was there.

What I found was an advertisement for their bank, which I quickly came into contact with. I spoke under the guise of her brother, asking the young lady at the end of the line for a change of address form, and when she looked up the address, aha! The words she said will ring in my perfect black ears for decades to come.

"But we already have you down for 5044 Plymouth Drive, sir."

Could the angels have sung me sweeter music? I venture to say that they could not. My joy was uncontained initially- but I quickly remembered my business and I tried desperately to prepare myself adequately. I ran arguments through my mind several times, and I repeated facts and details and counterpoints to any case they could make- I sharpened my wit to a razor's edge, and within a week, I was standing outside their door at three in the morning, freezing down to my bones.

I knocked twice. "You!" her brother's breath seemed to catch in his throat.

"Me," I said as I invited myself into his home.

I was brief, but poignant with him. Regrettably, I had forgotten to bring my camera. Still, my muse was with me, and as the discussion lengthened, I realized that art was guiding my words the same way my paws guided my camera to every gruesome beauty. His disposition at first was... beastly, and I had him calm down. I made it myself, after all. Her brother would throw up a point, only to have it slashed back down, right into his muzzle. I peeled his arguments apart, and plucked his logic off in sheets- I left him skinless and bare to the world for what a cowardly fraud he truly was. Is that not justice?

Ahh... you found him, did you? And was he alive? No, I wouldn't consider his condition poor- he simply is what he is now. And that's part of beauty, you see- honesty. A pure reflection of the inner self is a key component in my work. I'm sure he wasn't planning on having cubs anyway.

Before I left that night, I did ask him a few questions, the answers to which I had to scrape out of him (to coin a phrase). I asked if he had burned my photos, and he had. I asked what he had done with my son, and I never did get a clear answer to that. And finally, I asked where he had buried my beloved, and he told me. My heart raced at the thought of seeing her again. Granted, she would be a brutal mockery of everything she once was, caressed by the sly paw of the embalmer. Still, I figured she still had a stake in my work. It was my duty, therefore, to retrieve her, and give her one last chance, and I knew it would be perfect, had I only acted sooner...

Imagine my regret in seeing you, Agent, as I pulled myself from her grave. Though I was covered in muck and dirt from my exploits, I assure you I had only the purest intentions. I even let you watch as I made love to my wife one last time, but the world was so cruel. Can you forgive me for trying to cement a dual-love? Between my art and my wife, I never had to choose before.

I know I'll fry for what I've done. You should press that gun of yours into my eye and blow my brains out the back of my head. I know you want to... But if you do, please take a picture, alright? It will complete me."

---

"No can do." The Agent said. "I'm afraid you and I have business."

"You're going to let me rot in prison?"

"Me? I wouldn't dream of it. Don't kid yourself."

"What is that supposed to mean? . . . I'm. . . Not sure what to make of this."

"We're going to arrange for your record to be expunged, and your sentence to be nullified. Consider it a gift."

"From the state?"

"No, from me personally." A cruel grin graced the Agent's lips. "However, I do need something from you in return. Me specifically. The government doesn't need to know about this."

"What could I possibly give you?" The fox snarled.

"I want you to take a few pictures of a friend of mine, that's all. Good pictures. Artistic pictures."

". . . I don't do commission work."

"It's a wolf."

"I don't do commission work."

"He's famous."

"I don't do commission work."

"He's a psychopath living in Vermont."

"Ian White!? You mean you haven't caught him!?"

"You know the name?"

"He's been my idol f-for... God, THIS is inspiration! You're r-really asking m-me to-"

"I thought you might feel that way." The Agent stood, adjusting his suit-coat and stretching a little bit. "So long as you tell no one of our deal here, he's yours to track and do with what you please. I have a personal stake in this, and if you breathe a word of it to anyone outside this room, well... You can pretty much consider the electric chair 'mercy' compared to what I'm willing to do to you."

The fox's paws were shaking; he was incapable of uttering one coherent sound. His body shivered and his mind raced, his lips peeling back into a smile. "I... would...be... honored. I can't thank you enough for this opportunity, Mr... Mr..."

"Please." The Agent said, running a paw through his fur and adjusting the eye patch string behind his ear. "Call me John."

"Blessed is he that fears the Lord, whose anger will come rushing through his fangs, and then subside. And man's desire for sin will perish."