"Gifune, Greg F. - obedient flies (SS)(txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gifune Greg F)

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Greg F. Gifune
about:

Greg F. Gifune's critically acclaimed work has garnered many recommendations for the BRAM STOKER AWARD and the INTERNATIONAL HORROR GUILD AWARD, as well as a nomination for the BRITISH FANTASY AWARD.

His fiction has been published in magazines and anthologies all over the world, and he has also authored two short story collections and four novels: Down To Sleep, Heretics, Drago Descending, The Bleeding Season, and Saying Uncle.For more information on his books and for news and updates:

Visit the Greg F. Gifune Official Web Site at:
http://www.angelfire.com/biz3/GFGpg/



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obedient flies

It was the blood that caught her attention. Sizzling and popping, melding to the fry pan as wafts of thick smoke billowed up, only to be sucked away by a fan over the back burners. Whatever remnants of life it had once sustained, now trapped in that smoke, filtered through the twirling blades before being released back into the open air outside her apartment. Dust to dust. Born of nature only to be returned to it in some bizarre, almost ritualistic manner. She poked at the slab of meat with a spatula. The heat was too high, the steak had already burned, and the blood—juice she had been taught to call it as a young girl—had all but evaporated.
With a frown she switched off the stove and dumped the entire pan into the adjacent sink, watching it spit and spatter like a still living thing until most of the smoke had gone. The smell—so distinctive and primitive—conjured feelings of prehistoric impulse, and she imagined life on an open plane, clad in furs and bones, huddled in caves amidst the tortured screams of nature, interrupted, reborn, mutated by the sudden emergence of man. A disease, she thought, a destroyer…an arrogant corrupter of beauty and natural order.
From a duffel bag on the kitchen table she removed her camera, focused on the contents of the sink, and fired off several clicks, photographing it from several angles. Inhaling the pungent aroma of charred flesh, she felt at one with her newest piece, her art, and allowed a slight smile to purse her lips. The losers at the ad agencies she’d once freelanced for had never understood—couldn’t even begin to comprehend—this work that was so dear to her. Commercial photography had paid the bills, as insipid as it was, but had also allowed her to spend free time focusing on the artistic expression her camera allowed. As much a physical extension of herself as a painter’s brush, for Lydia, the camera was her tool, her eyes, her witness to the world in which she moved and lived and would eventually die. It was her soul, really, the prism through which a piece of her would live forever, if only within the pages of an ignored and insignificant portfolio few would ever see.
She put the camera away, ran cold water over the pan, then dumped the meat into a tall wastebasket beneath the sink. It had never been her intention to eat it.
Before she’d stopped taking work, before Devon had moved in, before he’d gotten sick, Lydia would have spent the evening at The Spine, camera in one hand; a drink in the other. A club a few blocks from her apartment where local rock and roll wannabes played, often sharing the stage with self-appointed poets who smoked clove cigarettes and recited embarrassingly pretentious white-angst verse, it had provided her with a relatively safe place to hide and burn away the hours. But those days were over now. Life had changed, and frivolous diversions were no longer an option.
Devon was dying; they both knew it.
Dragging the camera along, she moved from the kitchen into the den, ignoring the windows fogged with condensation and the light snow swirling about, tripping through the beams of streetlights and draping the city in white. Transformation no longer held the fascination for her it once had. She leaned against the foot of the threadbare couch, focused on Devon and snapped off a few shots.
He smiled up at her, swaddled in moth-nibbled blankets; his head propped against two pillows stained with sweat. “Hey,” he said, his voice reduced to a raspy gurgle, always on the verge of erupting into the hacking cough they had both grown accustomed to. “Is it still snowing?”
Lydia nodded. “Didn’t think you’d care.”
He blinked some perspiration from his eyes and shifted his position a bit, downplaying the pain with a muffled grunt. “Wish we could go for a walk. I always loved walking in the snow.”
“Shameless romantic.”
“Yes,” he answered quietly, swallowing with difficulty.
Lydia put the camera down on a coffee table and sat on the arm of the couch. “It’s bad again, Dev. I’m going to have to pick up some work or they’re going to start shutting things off. They already disconnected the cable and the gas.”
Eyes wet, he looked away. His sunken features bathed in sweat, body wracked with uncontrollable bouts of shivers, convulsive coughing fits, and the terrible flesh wounds no longer wielded the power over her they had initially. Like all else around her, Devon was becoming art, teetering between reality and the subjective—something his weary expression signaled he had accepted somewhere along the line as well. “I’ll be dead soon,” he told her.
“I know.”
“Just another series in your portfolio.”
“Yes.”
He forced another smile. “I’m honored.”
Lydia remembered the first time she’d seen him. A gay club she frequented, a place where a woman could go and dance and observe without having to worry about anyone trying to pick her up. Visions of a strong and healthy Devon dancing atop a small platform near one of the bars in a turquoise g-string, his wiry body, tight and strong from hours of swimming at the nearby YMCA gyrating in time to the music. She remembered their first drink together, how she’d asked if she could photograph him, and how he’d giggled and blushed like a flattered school kid. Not at all what she’d expected from a man who earned his living shaking his ass.
“If you helped me,” he said, “I could go to the park.”
“I’m not doing that.”
“They’d find me in the morning. Covered in snow, peaceful. Then you’d be free of me. You could get on with your life.”
Lydia glared at him. “Don’t be an idiot, Dev.”
“I’ve heard freezing to death isn’t that bad. Only at first—that’s what they say—but then supposedly you get all warm and drowsy, and it’s just like drifting off to sleep.”
“Shhh.”
“You could photograph it,” he offered. “Think of it from that angle. The imagery, the—”
“We’ll see,” she said. “We’ll see.”
“Besides, if they shut the heat off we’ll both freeze to death anyway.”
They realized Devon needed to be in a hospital, but it would only be a temporary solution, an impersonal and sterile rest stop, and Lydia couldn’t bring herself to do it. Deep down that wasn’t what Devon wanted either. Not really. Not anymore.
“Pain...” An exhaling rush masked as fragile laughter broke free of him.
Lydia gave an understanding nod. Even now, slowly fading away, it was not physical pain he was referring to, rather something more. The pain born of death, separation, longing, love, hate—that often-elusive feeling that the soul had been torn from the body and there wasn’t a goddamn thing that could be done to prevent it. Somewhere on the way to Heaven even Jesus had stumbled. Three times, the Bible said. A man—a human being—bearing the internal pain of a world gone mad in order to transcend it, to become something better, something pure and good. The crown of thorns, the bloodied and devastated palms and feet, the punctured side—all of it as real as anything else, yet still black window dressing—a simplified visual even a child could comprehend. But His agony—like theirs—had been something far more profound, with greater depth and meaning than what could be experienced merely through the flesh. Lydia’s camera—the things it recorded—had never been intended absolutes, only gateways, like the allure of the ocean’s surface, tempting the beholder to explore it further, to venture beyond it, to see what may or may not lie beneath its simplistic exterior.
She looked at the empty audio rack where the stereo had resided until a few weeks prior, when she’d loaded it in her arms and carried it to the pawnshop on the corner. It had afforded them another month with heat, a few rolls of film, and a bit of food. Now silence ruled, interrupted only by the sounds of her clicking shutter, small talk, and Devon’s illness.