The Kiss

The Kiss

The bedroom is huge, ridiculous in size, really. When the house was built, someone decided that the place where you spend most of your time with your eyes closed should be the most impressive, expansive. I thought it odd the moment I saw it – that it was already furnished. But who hasn’t dreamed of having a fancy room with a massive bed, a chaise longue for those days when you plan to recline and read a novel like some 18th-century heroine, and provocative paintings adorning the walls opposite the monstrously oversized television screen with its annoying green light that pierces the dark. Well, I was seduced, as was my husband. We each could imagine scenes of wild, uncensored sex where you could avoid the wet spot and still find room enough to sleep the sleep of the deeply satisfied. The feel of the sumptuous, cream-thick carpet on bare feet was a sensual caress, and the windows, filigreed and opaque, ensured everything inside remained…well, let’s call it…discreet.

How could we not buy the rest of the home, itself not much more than a shabby, ill-furnished shack out in the sticks, where it was obvious none had trodden for quite some time. The lure of the incongruous, misplaced bedroom was simply too much. The price also helped…a lot. The agent said the property’s distance from town, absence of transport, and its somewhat ramshackle external appearance were the main reasons it had remained on the market. And, why its owner had decided to “foolishly discount” – in the words of the agent. Well, we didn’t care much about buses, and we were pretty good with a paintbrush, so the bedroom was the clincher – honestly, we just couldn’t wait.

We should have been just a bit suspicious, I suppose, when the contract landed in front of us. It was standard until we got to the special conditions. It was a simple enough clause, but still baffling. If we were ever to dispose of the house, or indeed, if the house were to pass into our estate (meaning, bluntly, if we died), then our executor was to ensure the bedroom remained exactly as is. An old photo was attached, torn and yellowing, that showed the bedroom just as we had seen it on the day we decided this was our future home. Goodness me. But, as I said, we were entranced by the whole adventure and, as can happen, when emotion conquers reason, we willingly, unequivocally, signed our lives away.

Ben, he’s my husband, is 38. I think he’s a bit of an old soul – always over-thinking things, putting to work all that knowledge he acquired in his university days when he mixed and matched between engineering and philosophy, even dabbling in theology. As I understand it, he was thinking about becoming a missionary, but the doggedness of his parents’ campaign diverted him back to the straight and narrow of bridges and roads. I also take some of the credit because he met me in his final year when we got shoved together by mutual friends at “O” week. I managed to finish my physiotherapy course, but, in truth, a lot of my training – kneading and massaging – was practised on Ben.

So, there we were, Ben and Steph (that’s me), moving away from the city, taking up residence in our shabby chic, up yours, squat with its amazing bedroom that we needed to preserve – forever.

I can’t really pinpoint when it started, but I do remember a couple of months after moving in, lying next to Ben at what we called the “northern” end of the enormous bed when he asked me if I had seen the shadows that moved around the room during the night, the people in the paintings seeming to writhe in the gloom. I know that I answered, “I was dead to the world last night”, adding that it might have been the light from the television. Ben assured me it wasn’t. He said it was a new “phenomenon”, yes, he used that word, which brought with it a deep sense of disquiet, enough, he said, to make him, the practical engineer, feel something akin to dread.

I have to say that I laughed. It’s a response that still haunts me today.

That bedroom did live up to our imaginations in those first few months. We didn’t think much about any other part of the house, so engrossed were we in the newfound freedom that room provided. Sometimes, we would look at the outside, briefly discussing what might be done and when, but between functioning for work and carnal purposes, it was never a priority.

But really, I have to say that Ben was starting to get on my nerves. He was still great in the performance department, but his prowess was starting to dull under the weight of his oft-expressed feelings of disquiet. And while in the past he couldn’t take his eyes off me while mid-copulation, more often his eyes were averted instead, fixed on one of those larger-than-life paintings on the wall. I think it was an indelicate version of “The Kiss” where the two characters entwined appeared to be eating each other rather than kissing. He kept saying that they were watching him, us. He even accused me of being a “demon in bed”, which I wouldn’t have minded if it hadn’t been said with ferocity and a badly disguised touch of loathing. He was changing. Or, perhaps, it was me.

Then it happened. I returned from an irregular visit to a distant supermarket to find my normally composed and thoughtful Ben, clawing at one of the paintings – the one with the people gnawing each other’s faces. He had obviously been at it for some time. Chest heaving under a sweat-soaked and bloody t-shirt, hair slicked to his head, flat and ugly, and an expression of the truly tormented. I looked around the room. There was more evidence of a mind plummeting headlong into madness. The chaise longue, a previously much-loved stand-in for our bed, was upended, the fabric torn with jagged rags bleeding red velvet to the floor. The once beautiful carpet had been splattered with blood, pungent and congealing into great gobs of bright red rancid jelly. Worse still, the bed had been defiled. Ben had taken our sharpest knife – the one used for filleting fish and beef – and like a butcher gone mad, slashed through the pillows and the soft down of the coverlet, spreading their guts across the bed and beyond, dipping into the bloody mess on the floor.

All the while, oblivious to my presence, Ben muttered through spittle-covered lips, “Leave us alone, leave us alone…leave.”

“Ben,” I shouted into the mumbling mayhem. Then, screaming, “Stop it right now.” I understood that the chaos of the room was not going to be tolerated. Not by me and certainly not by the unknown vendor who had demanded that the room remain undisturbed till the property or death did us part.

We have only ever had a passionate relationship, where the passion could, on occasions, be construed as fiery. But never had that passion turned to real violence. On that day, it did. With an adrenaline-fuelled strength, I pushed Ben away from the painting and, strangely, even for my mind, I apologised to the creatures now distorted from the shredding. Ben hardly resisted. He staggered backwards, eyes wild with horror as he stared at the painting, then back at me. “It’s you,” he said. “Who are you?”

The knife was too close to my hand. I saw my reflection in the ghoulish glare of the soul-eater that materialised from the painting and understood my task. That long blade slid so easily into Ben’s chest. Blood flowed, enveloping both of us in the warm embrace of a blanket, and as I lay his bewildered body onto the bed, I kissed his cheek. Delicious, tempting. The room was twisting and snaking – an unearthly convulsion restoring the damage Ben had wrought. We floated upwards – at one with the painting. I wrapped my arms around him and started to feast.

ENDS