Submitted by MrDave on Sat, 12/14/2002 - 03:03
Posted in
Author's Note: I am going to preface this post by saying this idea occurred to me one night while talking to Heather. Somehow I felt like the legacy of Vrithetek being free should exist somewhere. This little bit of soul searching is graphic. Be warned.
This is also not really set at a specific time or place. Victor's comments and Tash's comments and Vrithetek's comments are given at different times and in different ways. They are just grouped with the photos. He (Victor) picks up the photos and sets them back down a number of times. Not all of those times are in the same day. It happens over time. I can only imagine Tash does the same.
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The Photo Album Part One
Victor sat in Henna's Jeep Cherokee and looked at the flat envelope of photos sitting innocently on the dashboard. The woman at the one hour photo place had looked ashen when he gave his name. He had to pay her $100 to keep his secret.
He knew the photos were in there; 4 x 6 satin finish double prints. * Just like he had ordered...I ordered.* At least it felt that way. Vrithetek's memories dovetailed with his making it truely odd to remember events like the docks where he had four distinct impressions of the events: His, Tash's, Vrithetek's and Vicasha's.
He had odd feelings about them too. Like echoes of memories. A smell he might remember but not where he remembered it from. A lyric remembered but not a tune. A letter or a book but not the plot. All he could think was that these half-memories were leftovers from the seperation. They would likely fade with time like a feeling of deja vu (something else Victor could remember but could not ever recall having felt it).
He took a deep breath. He had to look at the photos. The artist within him had to see his handiwork.
[Image of a severed head lying on the street. There are combat boots of someone standing next to it]
Vrithetek: "There was an almost accepting expression on his face that I had to capture. I ran to a 7-11 and grabbed a disposable camera. This was the one that made me start the album."
Victor: "This one was almost tolorable but I could not help wondering whose shoes those were."
Tash: "There are some interesting divinations that can be performed with a severed head. Something about the accuity of a dead man's eyes."
====
[Image of a man face down with the top of his head cracked open like an egg. His brains are spilled onto the pavement. Two views. One of them is a closeup from a different angle]
Victor: "I remember brains vrom the old days and they have always facinated me. The human grey matter, the spaghetti, is a marvel of biology. It does not take much impact to scrable them. But if they are cared for they can produce marvelous things. And artists brains and simpleton's brains look virtually identical. Never did figure out what the differences were."
Tash: "I felt sorry for this guy. Aside from the 'eew' there is the sort of uncomfortable way he seems to be lying there. Almost as if he didn't care how he landed."
Vrithetek "There was something about the way his hemipheres pooled like a double egg yolk on a plate. If it was only yellow it could have been beautiful. I also kept remembering 'The Brain' from Dick Tracy. This was much cooler."
====
[A body lying on a beach in the sun mangled almost beyond recognition. The body is nude and the limbs are twisted so that bones are sticking out of them]
Tash: "I could not take my eyes off this one, where was his head? What was that? Oh my God thats his genitalia! Horrible to think that was a person once."
Vrithetek: "I remember the sun was warm on te beach and there was just this one jogger. Runing it for me and for everyone else by putting stinking footprints all over that pristine sand. I asked him to stop nicely once. Then I took matters into my own hands"
Victor: (mumbling in monotone) "...sinews pulling, muscles popping, blood spurting, joints dislocating, flesh rupturing..."
====
Victor sat the photos down and closed his eyes He could not get the smell of the man's bowels emptying out of his mind. Strangely enough he could not remember if he screamed or not. Victor drove the Cherokee to a shady spot where he could overlook the highway. There was a calming felling by watching people drive who did not have to remember this kind of horror.
====
The Photo Album Part Two
[A man's head split open from his crown to his nose and spread oapart to the point it is distorting his jaw. His mouth however is almost unmutilated]
Victor : "For some reason I can't remember how he..no..I did this. It was tricky, I remember that, and it my have taken more than one try. With how many? More than one. Where did that memory go?"
Tash: "It was large and fast moving. It was violent and quick for all..no..most of them. One of them didn't die right away. I remember a tower. I remember a road. The memory is fagmented. I have impressions of sound and motion, but I can't put my mind around the events."
Vrithetek: "..a technical challenge. I had to time throwing the body at the airplane propeller just as it was slowing down becasue (as I found out) if it was moving too fast it ruined the effect. I like how this guy's mouth makes it look like he is disappointed with the final outcome."
[A man lies on his side with an axe imbedded in the side of his head]
Vrithetek: "This one was a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping for more splattage. Maybe a little brain tissue. But the axe just stuck there. I didn't waste any more time on this, but it did give me an idea..."
Victor: "I remember a small boy and his mother sitting on a step watching you..him..me do this. I remember them watching me bury the axe in their father...husband. Then I walked around the body looking for the best...angle to photograph it."
Tash: "Poor man. Poor family. A waste of life."
====
[Two photos: The first of a pair of severed legs an the second of a severed torso]
Vrithetek: "I should not have rushed these shots. If I had taken some time to arrange the limbs then I could have better captured the sequence. As it stands it looks a little ameteurish."
Victor: "The legs look like they are running an the torso looks like it is crawling. I think of old cartoons and silent movies where the magician saws a woman in half and does not get her reassembled properly. I won't ever think of those the same way again."
Tash: "I dont remember Vrithetek ever doing things like this before. I don't remember him being this cruel. These acts are ...senseless. He didn't even try to eat their souls. What did he hope to accomplish?"
====
Victor lay the packet of photos down again. His breathing was shallow and and his mind was racing. He could feel Vrithetek's conciousness treatening to seperate. But there was no seperation between Vrithetek and Victor. It was an illusion, a lie. The truth he had to accept was that he had done these things and he had taken these pictures. The truth was that he was Vrithetek.
Photo Album Part Three
[A body is charred like a roasted pig; the skin is black and there are bits of black clothing clinging to his skin which has ruptured in places showing pink meat inside]
Tash: "He burned this man alive!"
Victor: "He stayed until the fire went out"
Vrithetek: "Too bad I don't eat, he smelled delicious."
====
[a man lies bloody in the front set of a van]
Victor: "I didn't do this one, did I? I don'tremember doing it, I remember taking the picture. I remember hearing a shot. "
Tash "Yes, I remember. Gang murder. He..you...couldn't resist. Liked the pose if I remember."
Vrithetek "...like a break dancer or a skateboarder doing a handstand. He was tied up in a knot like he had planned it that way. Too bad I couldn't photograph the music, it was full of appropriate lyrics about guns and violence. Kind of liked it."
====
[image of a body mashed flat. It is looking up and it is crumpled like an accordion]
Vrithetek: "I wondered if you stuffed someone in a barrell and then dropped them off a tall building if they would compress or just liquify. I got an answer. I have to say I was also strting to run out of ideas at this point."
Victor "Yeas, I can see that. Its contrived."
Tash "We don't have to keep these do we?"
====
[The intoerior of a car with a headless body holding a shotgun]
Victor "Why fake the suicide? It seems almost a waste to destroy the composition with the artifice of the suicide. It is so obviously staged compared to the others."
Tash: "Thank God the last one. Burn them *image of the charred man * .. uh... no shred them * image of the mangled body on the beach * Shit. Just throw them away * Image of the mashed corpse *. *Sigh* Get rid of them, Victor, just don't tell me how"
Vrithetek "This last picture was an attempt to frame these images in a metaphor. I placed the body in a posture of suicide. Its head blown away by an act of its own volition. He volunteered to die by his own hand. Why? What was his motive? Escape? Certainly this is a lame way out. But it may have been his only way out. There may not have been any choices.
If you get me back Victor, trap me again, you may never remember what I was thinking when I took these photos. You may only retain the most vague idea of what I was striving for. Yo umight even be able to surpress those feelings once and for all.
"But these images will haunt you Victor. I hope you look at them over and over and over trying to figure out what it was I was thinking."
====
Vitor folded up the note that Vrithetek had written for him His feelings about the photos was mixed. He felt a certain amount of pride in them. Really. They were created specifically for a purpose.
He was sorry he had shared them with Tash, but she had bits of memories that still needed to be resolved as well. It would take a week or even more he figured to get back any semblence of individuality rather than this mishmash of ideas.
Victor took out the manilla envelope he had gotten from Henna when he had borrowed her truck. He penned the address of the New York Bank on the front of it and placed the photos inside. He wrote the special code that would tell the bank to place this envelope in the safe deposit box without opening it.
A few moments later the envelope as in the mail. *Someday I will take those back out and see how I feel about them. Hopefully I will still be outraged*