The following was inspired by Vlad Potemkin's story, "The 
Painting."  I sent a copy to Vlad; he liked it and encouraged 
me to post it. 






                        HALLOWEEN GOTHIC

                               by

                          C. Lakewood

 

    Charlotte Renfield was shopping.  The 36-year-old associate 
professor of history at the University of Chicago had decided to 
spend the last full day of her latest trip to London by venturing 
off the beaten path a bit and looking for something "significant" 
as a souvenir.  So she found herself shopping, in Islington -- not 
on Saturday, when hordes swarmed round -- but in mid-week, and in 
the rain.  

    The untidy little gallery was deserted when she wandered in, 
except for the 40-ish Romany woman who was obviously the owner.  
Actually, it was much more a "curiosity shop" than an art gallery 
and displayed a variety of wares: a case of campaign medals, a 
plaster bust of George IV, shelves of elderly books and East 
European crafts, an elephant's foot, a painted cast iron figurine 
of Sary Gamp, a Turkish scimitar, a few paintings -- amateur 
watercolors, mainly, but then there was...THE painting.  

    It was a smallish, weird oil, showing a dim, garret room 
strewn with books and papers and other scholarly debris.  There 
was a lancet window, through which a bit of Notre Dame could be 
just seen against an overcast sky.  A tenuous shaft of light from 
the window illuminated the central figure: a naked blonde woman, 
20s, hanging by chains, her mouth wedged open in a soundless moan 
by some sort of ring-gag.  Tentacles of darkness seemed to reach 
out for her sweating, straining body, and, in the background, 
barely visible, there was the shadowy figure of a large man, a 
brute.  As Charlotte concentrated on the blur, more details 
appeared to her.  He was big and dark and foreign (Asian or 
Semitic, maybe).  Hulking, with a heavy body, massive shoulders, 
and long muscular arms; short, strong bow-legs; big, thick, dark 
c-c...um...um...v-very virile....  Sneering lips, crooked yellow 
teeth, flat nose, flaring nostrils, small feral eyes.  He's 
crude, but also very intelligent and very demanding.  He's the 
master there, forcing captive women to do...th-things...humiliating 
things...made to m-masturbate while people watch and not being 
allowed to cum, or having to cum over and over and over...being 
naked and d-disciplined...and...and...oh, god....  

    Charlotte looked away, conscious of sweating and breathing 
hard...and getting wet....

    "Fascinating, no?" said the shop owner, hovering at Charlotte's 
elbow.  "It comes from estate sale in France.  Swedish girl, 
studying in Paree....  They say she had the break-down and ran off. 
Present whereabouts?  Pfah!"  She shrugged.  "Not so surprising, 
really.  Swedes, you know...most of 'em on the edge, anyway.  All 
those long, black nights...."  

    The woman's accent seemed to be a weird mixture of Eastern 
Europe and Birmingham.  Like her speech, her appearance might have 
been improved with a little effort.    

    "Who's the artist?"  Charlotte squinted at the signature.  
"Packman?  Pittman?"

    "Pickman," the woman murmured.  

    Charlotte shrugged.  She knew that she had to have this -- 
after all, she did love the bizarre, and Halloween was her favorite 
holiday -- but she wanted to establish a pose of indifference as a 
basis for haggling over the price.  

    In the event, she proved only second best at haggling, and she 
left the shop lighter by more cash than she liked to think about, 
but with the receipt and provenance in her purse and the picture 
securely wrapped in brown paper and plastic against the weather.  
(An hour later, she'd bought a stout and stylish carrying case for 
it in Regent Street.)

    She resisted the impulse to unwrap it that night.  Instead, 
she went to bed not long after dinner, knowing that she'd have to 
rise early for her flight home.  But her sleep that night was not 
untroubled.  She dreamed dreams, from which she would awaken, 
sweating and horny, but unable to remember even a shred of them.

    She was tired the next morning, but she got to Victoria Station 
and thence to Gatwick and thence, after a numbingly uncomfortable 
flight, back to Chicago.  Even teeming O'Hare looked good to her at 
that point.

    A few hours later, she was back in her Hyde Park flat (a term 
she preferred to "apartment"), a few blocks from the heart of the 
campus.  She stripped, showered, made herself a vodka-tonic, and 
then, energized and still naked, unwrapped the painting.      

    As she tore away the last of the brown paper, she was already 
trying to visualize the best place to hang it.  She flipped it 
over...and froze.  She blinked...and looked again.  "FUCK-ING-HELL!" 

    It was not the same picture.  The technique was the same, but 
the picture was not.  To begin with, the girl was gone; the chains 
still hung there, but unoccupied.  There were other differences, 
too: the window was now squarish and showed the dome of St. Paul's. 
The dim, miscellaneous contents of the room were gone; it looked 
empty...or unfinished.  The brute in the background was farther 
forward now, but still as indistinct as before...maybe more so.  
In fact, though the paint was dry (it might be acrylic, instead of 
oil), it seemed almost like a painting in progress.... 
   
    "That gypsy bitch switched paintings," Charlotte muttered.  
"But how?  I watched her wrap it, and it was never out of my 
possession afterwards.  Crap!  Some damn gypsy trick...."     
 
    Outraged, she got out the receipt and reached for her phone.  
"Okay, 'Argos Gallery...Sofia Tedescu...Phone....'"  She'd punched 
in 01144-207- before she realized, "Shit!  It's after midnight 
there, now.  Fuck it!"  Then, after she'd cooled, slightly, she 
wondered, "So what's she going to say?  'Ima so sssorry Ia cheet 
you, Meez Rrrrenn-veeldt.  Ima sendin' zee mo-ney back, you 
betcha!'"  

    She dropped the picture behind the couch, in disgust, stared 
out the casement window at the gathering night, then reached for 
the tantalus, and proceeded to get drunk.

    Struggling up early the next morning, she breakfasted on 
English muffins and Earl Grey tea and, at 9:00, rang the gypsy's 
shop.  No answer.  Crap!  She went back to bed.

		******************************           

    The next couple of weeks were occupied with getting ready for 
the Fall Quarter -- updating lecture notes and reading lists, 
preparing for a new inter-disciplinary Victorian course, meeting 
with her graduate assistant, and (of course) attending the cocktail 
parties welcoming new faculty.  Then, once the quarter began, there 
was a period of adjustment of almost a month.

    It was therefore late October -- and she'd already rather 
half-heartedly decorated her flat for Halloween -- before she 
hauled "that damned picture" from behind the couch and picked up 
the phone, intending to try calling the gypsy again.

    But, one glance at the picture, and she very quietly returned 
the phone to its cradle.  

    The picture had changed again.

    A naked woman again hung in the chains -- this time with black, 
curly hair and swarthy, sweat-slick skin.  The murky background now 
dimly showed a variety of things: a dusty glass case, a bust of 
somebody, shelves of books and small objets, and...oh, god...an 
elephant's foot....  

    Sofia Tedescu wouldn't be taking any phone calls, now.  

    Charlotte sat, paralyzed with dread, her familiar surroundings 
growing vague and indistinct and her consciousness centering on 
"that damned picture."  The captive woman -- call her "Sofia" -- 
seemed to be looking for help from someone, from anyone, from 
Charlotte...as the fantasy brute closed in.  And there were 
other...entities...in the shadows, also lusting after the 
terrified gypsy.

    Racked by an icy shudder that broke the hypnotic trance, or 
enchantment, or whatever it was, Charlotte staggered up, dazed 
and trembling, groped her way to the fireplace, and clumsily built 
a fire.  When it was well alight, she flung the ghastly painting 
into the flames.  It burnt, but not easily, and produced quite a 
volume of evil smoke, some of which curled out into the sitting 
room.  Coughing and half delirious, she stumbled out of the twilit 
flat and into the watery sunlight.  

    The temperature was crisp, and she had come out without a coat, 
but that actually helped restore her to herself.  She wandered, 
admiring the autumn foliage, and lingered a while by the heroic 
sculpture at the end of the Midway.  To avoid thinking about "that 
damned picture," she thought about her life.  Academically, she'd 
been successful -- though that had grown stale, these last few 
years.  But, socially....  Well, she had a failed marriage to a 
fellow dilettante who just couldn't seem to give her whatever it 
was she needed.  There were also a few fly-by-night lovers (even 
a fling with a butch domme), a scattered and dysfunctional family, 
no real friends, no kids, no pets.  She sighed.  But she did have 
her bibelots, her "stuff," the things that made life worth 
living....  Sure, she might not be happy, but she was 
content...more or less.  

    Eventually, her mind clearer and her spirit quieter, she 
stopped by her office, collected a jacket, and went out for an 
early dinner: a Waldorf salad, thick porterhouse, baked potato, 
and strawberry tart -- all washed down by a great deal of ale.  

		******************************    

    It was late in the day, and darkness was already closing in, 
when she got back to the flat.  But she was well-fed, slightly 
tipsy, and pretty much at peace.  There was some reason to hurry, 
though; it was "Beggers' Night," and she still had to set out the 
"treats" so they'd be handy....

    The smoke had dissipated, and so had the fire's heat.  Inside 
the flat, it was chill, with a hint of sulfur in the air.  But 
Charlotte didn't mind; it all added to the Halloween ambiance.  

    It was perfectly quiet, and that suited her, too.

    She strolled unsteadily into the sitting room and checked the 
fireplace.  Nothing but ashes.  Perfect!  Then her gaze strayed to 
the area above the mantle, and suddenly she was stone sober.

    The "damned picture" was hanging there.  And it was changed.  
Again.

    Breathless, she leaned toward it, afraid to look, but more 
afraid not to.  The furnishings in the new scene were shadowy, 
still, but they were so precious to her that they were easy to 
make out: built-in shelves crammed with books, a Second Empire 
desk with an art nouveau lamp, a tantalus and a bust of Danton 
on a Renaissance Revival table....  The familiar, gothic bulk of 
Rockefeller Chapel now showed through the casement window.  The 
chains once again hung empty against a black wall of living 
darkness.  The brute was much nearer now and appearing very much 
as she had imagined him.  He was looking at her, his lips twisted 
into an evil smile, his erection large and deformed.

    She whirled round and saw the chains hanging, waiting, 
glimmering there, in front of the wall that was now engulfed in 
blackness.  And, as she opened her mouth to scream or plead or 
pray, the darkness reached out and took her. 

    Blackness, silence, nothingness.  And then she felt cold 
fingers seize her, ripping off her clothes, stringing her up, 
naked, then teasing her....  Oh, god...first the fingers, and 
then there were TONGUES!

    "This can't be happening," she told herself, her scholar's 
logic striving to beat down her rising hysteria.  "It's some 
drunken illusion.  If I deny it, it can't hurt me."          

    But it could hurt; it did hurt.  And it aroused her, despite 
herself.  It fondled and caressed her, probing her private places, 
insinuating itself deep, for it was long and thick and misshapen 
and insatiable.  Despite her resistance, it went on...and on...and 
on....  And the more aroused she got, and the more desperate to 
cum, the farther off her orgasm fluttered, seeming to recede, 
infinitely delayed...oh, god...INFINITELY DELAYED!  
	
    Then, as she seemed about to surrender to madness, she 
experienced a moment of clarity, and, unlike Sofia and the 
Swede and countless others, she no longer struggled against 
the inevitable -- but embraced it.

    Joyfully.

    Finally, she was getting exactly what she needed.