Posted by Sawney Beane on August 17, 2006 at 23:09:58:
The Collected Works of Sawney Beane: Volume #55
ARTWORKS
by Sawney Beane
15 January, 12, 18, 21, 27 November 1997
4,749 words
DISTRIBUTION NOTICE and DISCLAIMER: Sawney Beane requests that any distribution of this work of fiction remain within the realm of social responsibility. This story is suitable neither for minors nor for the seeming majority of adults who have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. It is pure fantasy, which means that, for whatever reason, someone has found it interesting to think about the events depicted herein. It does not in any way mean that the author would like to see this fantasy become reality, so if you are the type of person who might be swayed into doing something irrational by reading a work of fiction, the author respectfully requests that you decline to read further.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sawney Beane, originally a native of Edinburgh, lived for twenty-five years in a cave on the coast of County Galloway, subsisting on the flesh of unfortunate travellers, roughly a thousand of them all told. He and his wife raised a large family of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters. Eventually, the family was captured, and the whole lot was brutally and unjustifiably tortured and executed without trial. Since his death in the early 17th century, Beane has reformed his ways and now confines his atrocities to his literary endeavours.
WARNING: This story contains scenes of snuff concerning consenting male and female victims. If you find such things offensive, please steer clear; you have been warned.
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I
"No, honey," he said, "I'm not ready for that kind of thing and that's final."
"Come on, darling," she purred, "please be reasonable."
"You're insane."
"No, I'm not. This is the perfect time to have a family portrait done."
"Why?"
"Because we're still young. If we wait any longer, we won't make a very attractive portrait. This is our only chance at immortality. How can you throw this away?"
"You're just upset because the doctor said you can't have children," he said sympathetically. "Wait a few days, and I'm sure you'll realize how insane this is. There are lots of things we can do."
"No," she insisted, "This is the only way. Yes, I'm upset about the children, but I always wanted to do this someday. We're nearly thirty, and we're not getting any younger. We could have a beautiful portrait done, and everyone will still remark on what a beautiful couple we are. If we wait a few more years, it will be too late."
"Just wait a few more weeks."
That was the end of it for that particular day, but those few more weeks turned into a non-stop campaign on the part of the wife. In the end, the husband gave in wearily and accompanied his wife to the artist's studio for an evaluation. That visit turned out exactly as the wife had wanted, and the artist agreed to make a world-class portrait of them. And so it happened that three weeks later, the young couple entered the artist's studio to pose for the portrait that would guarantee them immortality.
The artist had suggested a sexual pose for such a beautiful couple, and the wife had readily agreed. The husband was not enthusiastic, but he found himself outvoted and out-argued. So a sexual pose it was. Actually, they were to pose in the midst of intercourse.
"OK, Mr. Rolands," said the artist when he had the couple standing nude in the middle of his private studio, "you will require an erection for this portrait, and you will have to pose with it for much longer than you could normally maintain an erection, so I'm giving you an injection that will solve that particular problem."
Tom Rolands felt the prick of the needle without what he believed to be adequate warning, and within fifteen minutes he felt his penis begin to stiffen. In a few more minutes it was rock hard and even a bit painful. He wasn't enjoying this much, and his repulsion grew by the minute.
"OK, Mrs. Rolands, we need you lubricated, and I could help you with that, but I see you're already in pretty good shape." It was true. The whole idea of posing for a portrait turned Liz Rolands on, and standing nude in the artist's studio waiting to get started and watching her husband's pharmacologically induced erection had made her deliciously wet and a bit breathless.
There was a pedestal in the centre of the studio. It was made of mirrored glass and about a foot off the ground. It was roughly six feet long and three feet wide. The Rolands watched nervously as the artist placed an antique mahogany table on top of the platform and slightly off-centre. It was about four feet long and a foot wide, and Mr. Rolands didn't think that it looked very sturdy. It was a beautiful piece of furniture, however, and it had been polished to a mirror sheen.
Tom Rolands was quite surprised when the artist asked him to lie down on it. Mr. Rolands did as he was asked and found that the table would support his weight very nicely. It was just long enough that his head hung a few inches over one end while he laid on his back with his knees positioned at the other end with his legs hanging down. He stared up at the ceiling wondering what would come next. He couldn't help but notice that his penis was standing straight up, embarrassingly at attention.
The next step was inevitable. Mrs. Rolands was asked to straddle her husband, easing his penis into her wet vagina. Both of them let out pleasurable sighs as they felt the familiar intimacy of their partners' genitals. They moved back and forth a bit just to enjoy each other a little more, but the mutual state of nervous energy prevented normal sex, and the old table beneath them was a bit strained as it was carrying both of them.
The artist added the finishing touches to the pose to make them the perfect tableau before setting to work on his masterpiece. Liz Rolands' feet dangled straight beneath her as she perched atop her husband. The artist asked her to point her toes downward, which left them only a few inches above the base of the platform. Then he asked her to lean forward with her hands gripping the table beneath her husband's armpits. Mr. Rolands had to admire the way this made his wife's gorgeous breasts dangle tantalizingly above his chest. He had to admit that they were going to make a beautiful piece of art, but he still had misgivings about participating in such an ordeal as posing for the thing.
"Smile, Mr. Rolands; you're supposed to be in the midst of sexual ecstasy!" Tom tried to comply, but he felt his performance was superficial. "Never mind, we'll work on that later," concluded the artist.
Liz Rolands felt her body tingle with anticipation and the still pleasant feeling of her lover's penis in her vagina. This was really it. They were going to be great art.
The artist lowered a Plexiglas box from the ceiling. It was four sides connected by rubberized seals and perfectly fitted to the edges of the platform. It surrounded the Rolands and rose about six feet, just a few inches above Mrs. Rolands' head. Mr. Rolands' found that his head was several inches from one end, and his feet were several inches from the other. Liz Rolands' knees came close to the sides, but did not touch them.
"OK, are you ready to begin?" asked the artist. "It will take quite a while, and I will make the minor adjustments to your pose as we go, so just be patient, and you'll be my masterpiece."
Liz nodded her head eagerly and her husband nodded more solemnly. It was begun. The artist flipped a switch and a liquid began to fill the box in which the Rolands were posed. It flowed very slowly, and neither Tom nor Liz was sure that anything had started until five minutes later when Liz exclaimed, "It's warm, and it tickles!"
"Keep your toes pointed, Mrs. Rolands," warned the artist. "The liquid is, of course, a polymer that will take several hours to solidify completely, but you will feel it get pretty hard in about ten minutes."
"It feels good," purred Liz Rolands.
"I'm glad you are enjoying it," said the artist proudly, "It's my own special formula."
After fifteen more minutes, Liz's feet were completely encased in plastic, and the polymer began to creep up the smoothly-shaven skin of her tanned calves. She made erotic noises the whole time and felt as if she were being enveloped in pure joy, one inch at a time.
Five minutes later, Tom Rolands gasped as the polymer touched the tips of his toes. He closed his eyes in discomfort. The sensation was far from painful and actually felt rather nice, but the monstrous implications of the beginning of his end overpowered any joy he could take in it.
Another fifteen minutes and the polymer was up to Liz's knees and well past Tom's ankles. Liz was still enjoying herself immensely, and Tom was in agony.
"You're coming along quite nicely, dears," said the artist. "Tom, could you please hold onto your wife's waist with both hands? Yes, that looks quite nice."
Fifteen minutes later, the polymer was almost up to Tom's knees and was lapping at the bottom of the table. It had already consumed over half of his wife's silky thighs. In another five minutes and the polymer had encased some of his hair hanging over the edge of the table, and he felt it rise above the surface of the table and lap at the sides of his thighs, buttocks, and shoulders. His neck began to feel its warmth. He wanted to panic, but he had the presence of mind to know that any move he made would ruin his wife's wonderful idealistic plan. Liz, for her part was enraptured by the polymer covering her hands as they gripped the edges of the table.
Although her movements were rapidly being restricted by the rising polymer, the wife was nearly orgasmic. Through his panic, Tom Rolands could feel her vagina clenching his penis. It felt good, but the polymer was lapping at his earlobes and was seeping into his anus. His armpits began to fill with polymer.
"OK, Mr. Rolands," said the artist, "I see that you will soon not be able to hear me, so I just want to assure you that this is turning out to be a very nice work of art, and you should be proud to have taken part in it. When the polymer reaches your face, just let as much of it as possible into your mouth. Don't worry too much about what your face looks like. I find that a man drowning in polymer has a facial expression surprisingly similar to one having an orgasm." The artist chuckled a little bit at this little tidbit.
Tom Rolands, for his part, did not find it funny at all. He suddenly became even more aware of the insanity of this endeavour, and became instantly aware of the fact that he thought had been crystal clear in his mind all morning. He was going to die. This shocking reminder of his mortality made him want to raise his head, but the hairs embedded in polymer held him down. He gasped furiously as the polymer filled his ears and rose up the sides of his cheeks.
Her husband's distress shook Liz Rolands out of her orgasm, and she looked down tenderly at her dying husband. She was confident that they were doing a good thing, but it pained her to see the unpleasant result of her decisions. She told him how much she loved him and how much she appreciated all he was giving up for her dream, but his ears were submerged.
Tom Rolands looked up and saw his wife mouth the words "I love you," and it was the last thing he was aware of before the rapid breaths his mouth was gulping began to be mostly polymer. He drowned quickly as the polymer was pulled down into his lungs. His eyes were clenched in a sort of agony, but the artist was right. He did look like he was having the greatest orgasm of his life.
Mrs. Rolands grieving process was short. She was assaulted by two new sensations. Once she became aware of her husband's death, she also realized that she held within her womb the penis of a dead man. It wasn't altogether unpleasant, but she felt eerie about it. The other sensation was the covering of her genitals in polymer. Now she and her husband were locked in eternal carnal contact. However, her genitals were still alive, and the warm sticky liquid encasing them felt nice and strange at the same time. She quickly returned to her ecstasy.
In a short time, the polymer was up to her waist, and the dead hands of her husband were nearly covered. At the same time, her elbows were nearly submerged, and she was feeling warm and soft inside. She felt the thick liquid as it coated her belly and filled her navel. There was a tinge of sadness as her husband's fingers finally went under, and she realized that he was now completely within the block of polymer. But she felt the liquid run up her back like warm honey. And she was about to experience an even greater sensation.
When her nipples touched the surface of the warm polymer, she recoiled a bit. Then it rose higher and covered more of her breasts. She felt the wonder of sexual excitement washing over her once again. Her excitement grew with every inch. When her breasts were entirely covered and her armpits were being filled, Mrs. Rolands found her breathing restricted by the pressure of the polymer on her heaving chest, but this served only to increase her arousal. It was up to her shoulders and rising. It was about to be finished, and everything was looking perfect. She couldn't have hoped for a better portrait.
"OK, Mrs. Rolands," said the artist gently, "You're doing great. When the polymer reaches your lips, your natural reaction will be to toss your head back and try to keep breathing as long as possible. Just let yourself do that. It will heighten the image of orgasm, and I see you've got a pretty realistic one going already. Just do whatever comes naturally at this point, and you'll look great. By the way, thanks for helping me to make such a great portrait. It will be the centerpiece of the museum. Good-bye, Mrs. Rolands."
She heard only parts of his parting speech. When the polymer reached her chin, she threw her head back and gasped for breath, her eyes stared in a strange mix of terror and ecstasy. The polymer covered her cheeks and flowed into her mouth, covering teeth and tongue. She drowned with her eyes wide open and a gasping face that looked just like the greatest orgasm of a woman's life. It was not far from genuine. The polymer continued to rise and covered her forehead and continued a few inches above her final resting place.
The artist gazed happily at his latest portrait. It was his best yet, and he whistled a happy tune as he anticipated the final polishing and shining he would give its exterior the following day. There was no match for a portrait of two people showing their love for one another.
II
Monica was an orphan, her parents having been killed in an airplane crash when she was two years old, and she had always had to rely on herself to get by. Her sixteen years living in an orphanage and various foster homes had left her a very introverted and self-absorbed young woman. By the time she had graduated from high school and had been thrust upon the world without friends or family at the age of eighteen, she cared about only one thing besides herself.
Throughout her life, art had played a significant role in her life. From the first art books she had found in the home of one of her early foster families, she had been fascinated by the process of creating beauty. It was her ambition to one day be a famous artist herself, to bring to life the wondrous images in her head. Art was her only refuge from a cruel world, and it was her god and heaven and universe.
So, two years out of high school, Monica found herself struggling to get by as a waitress and desperately trying to save enough money to enrol herself in art school. All of her spare moments were spent gazing longingly at the portraits in the gallery downtown.
Her favourite was the large one near the entrance. She spent long hours studying the expressions on the subjects' faces and every aspect of their pose. She admired the composition of the masterpiece, which was titled simply "Ecstasy" and was labelled "Donated by Thomas and Elizabeth Rolands." The piece was just over twenty years old, and she thought it an odd coincidence that her favourite artwork was almost exactly the same age as she was. This made her love it all the more.
This is not to say that she didn't admire the other artworks in the gallery. The portrait of a young girl and her dog was another favourite, and the man in jeans and T-shirt kneeling in the traditional pose of proposition before the shapely brunette in a short skirt and halter top also sparked her imagination.
All of Monica's intent studying of the artworks could not fail to attract the attention of the gallery's owner, the sixty-two year old artist who was responsible for most of the gallery's collection. His notice of her was all the more enhanced by her own personal appearance. She was in some ways a work of art herself, with long brown hair, a lithe body, and bright green eyes. Her body was not beautiful in a supermodel-type way but rather in the much more pleasing, at least in the eyes of this particular artist, girl-next-door mould. One day the artist introduced himself to her.
"I see you like my portraits," he said standing behind her.
She had been unaware of his presence through her rapture, but blinkingly turned her attention to the intruder. "These are yours?"
"Most of them," he said with a well-practiced self-effacing smile. "They represent over thirty years of work."
"They're magnificent!" she said as if she were addressing God to compliment his creation.
"Thank you," he said. "It's always nice to see that someone appreciates them."
"Who wouldn't?" she raved. "You've captured the emotions so well." She gestured toward "Ecstasy" as if the wave of her hand amply demonstrated her point. "And the posing is perfect to draw the viewer's attention into the work."
"I do try."
"I've never seen such beauty!"
And so the conversation went for many minutes, as the artist drank in the praise and the view of this lovely young art aficionado. Before the end he had hired her as his assistant and asked her to attend a session on the following Friday. She waited all week with bated breath.
Monica arrived at the artist's studio early on Friday morning and was introduced to a handsome young man in full high-school football uniform. His name was apparently Rocky, and his parents had commissioned a portrait to commemorate his team's winning the state championship.
Monica was inspired with awe as the artist gently guided her through the process of embedding the young quarterback in plastic and subsequently pasteurising his polymeric prison in order to kill all bacteria that would cause his body to degrade. When all was done, Rocky was enshrined with his arm raised holding a football, perpetually aiming to complete an eternally suspended pass.
Late that night, Monica returned exhausted to her flat and pondered the magnificence of her new occupation. Within the next few weeks, she would assist her artist employer in the production of four additional portraits, each of which found a niche in the gallery adjoining the studio. Monica had never been happier in her life, and she nearly worshipped the artist and his immense talent for creating art from life.
Then one day it happened. The artist mentioned to Monica that all of his creations, while beautiful in their own way, would soon pale in comparison with the original new masterpiece he had in mind. After explaining his radical new idea, he casually mentioned that as soon as he found a suitable subject for the revolutionary new portrait, he could begin the radical transformation of modern art.
Monica's heart leapt within her breast, and she promptly made a humble offer of her services to the new project. The artist reacted as if the thought had never occurred to him, but he looked her over appraisingly as if seeing her for the first time and concluded that she would, indeed, be the perfect subject. They soon agreed upon the following Saturday as the day of her sitting.
Monica arrived early on Saturday and gazed for one last time upon all of her favourite works of art before reporting to the artist's studio. After cleaning and beautifying herself to the greatest extent possible for a living human, she took up her position.
The pose was a simple one, although the desired portrait was to be a nude. Monica was a bit shy about that, but her love of art was sufficient to overcome her trepidation. She stood on the pedestal atop a half-centimetre thick plate of solidified polymer. The pedestal itself was about one meter square, and the frames that the artist was busily setting up around her came up about to just above her head. The artist instructed her to stand with her feet flat and about forty centimetres apart. Her hands were to be held a few centimetres from her sides with palms facing forwards and fingers spread slightly. Her head would face straight forward with a thoughtful gaze into the distance, but that would come later.
She giggled nervously as the warm liquid polymer began to flow into the space around her feet and to fill the spaces between her delicate toes. The artist talked soothingly to her as the polymer gradually rose to cover her smoothly-shaven and lightly-tanned calves and continued past her knees. As the minutes ticked by, her slim thighs were covered as well, and the tips of her fingers began to feel the warmth of the gooey liquid.
In a few more minutes, Monica became aware of the intrusion of the polymeric fluid between her buttocks and into her genitals. The sensation was far from unpleasant, but she found it slightly difficult to stand still. Nonetheless, she persevered in the name of art. Now the polymer was well past her wrists and working its way up her shapely hips. On and on the polymer flowed, covering her belly button, elbows, and lapping at her medium-sized breasts. As her nipples were covered in warm plastic, she quivered with excitement.
The artist continued to talk her through the procedure as her armpits filled with plastic and the ends of her long brown hair began to stick in the morass. Monica knew enough at this point to realized that she should place her head in its final pose before her hair became entrapped in the wrong position. She did so and stared into the distance before her. She saw out the door of the studio and into the main hall of the gallery, but she also saw much further than that. She imagined the future of art, which she was playing such a crucial role in forming.
Now the liquid plastic was covering her chin, and the artist was telling her to drink as much of it as possible once it reached her mouth. She complied readily, noticing that it lacked flavour but did not taste as bad as she had expected. Soon, her mouth was full, and her stomach was feeling full and slightly stiff.
The artist thanked her for her participation, which she responded to with a happy blink of her eyes, just before her ears and nose began to be filled with plastic. She knew that she would not live much longer and concentrated all of her willpower on not contorting her face as she expired. It was not an easy task, but the somewhat toxic polymer she had ingested killed her more quickly and painlessly than a normal drowning would have. The grimace her face made as she died was replaced post-mortem by a relaxed smile and a distant gaze. Her eyes remained open and sightless as they were covered with polymer. Soon she was entirely submerged, and the artist looked thoughtfully at his young masterpiece as his mind turned to stage two of her transformation from woman to art.
So far, Monica was a normal piece of conventional portraiture. Once her polymeric tomb had completely solidified and her block had been sterilized to preserve her beauty, the artist was ready to apply the masterstroke. Using an elaborate set of pulleys and ropes, he managed to get the block horizontal on a large metal table where it was clamped down and squared up perfectly. Then the laser sprang to life at the touch of a button.
Monica was to be sliced into sections, each two and a half centimetres thick. She had been in life only 156 centimetres tall, but this would require over sixty slices once her hair and the thin sheet of plastic beneath her feet had been included. The artist set right to work.
The laser moved rapidly across the table and a sheet of Monica's block fell into the artist's waiting hands. Fortunately, the laser was equipped to deposit an invisibly thin layer of plastic on both exposed surfaces. Thus, Monica did not fall out of the block as she was cut. The laser had cut Monica's soles right off her feet, and the slice now in the artist's hands contained a cross-section of her feet, including all of her toes. He set it aside and caught the next slice as it fell into his hands.
This continued for several minutes, and fifteen slices had chopped Monica's legs up past her knees. The artist took a short break and continued on to her hips. In the next several hours the artist continued at a cautious pace, but his excitement drove him on. Now her internal organs were exposed in each successive slice. Eventually her small breasts were showing their insides in the same slices that contained her heart and lungs. On the laser went and her arms shrank to her shoulders and then her neck was being severed. Her pretty face also fell victim to the remorseless laser, and by the end of the day, sixty-four slices of Monica lay in rough piles all around the room. The artist retired exhausted but in a giddy state of elation.
The next day he gathered up the pieces of his masterpiece and reassembled Monica in the proper order. Each slice seemed tough and durable, which allowed him considerable freedom in displaying his creation. When he had stacked her up and aligned all of the corners, Monica appeared like any other portrait of a beautiful young nude woman. It took a close examination to notice the parallel horizontal fault lines made by the laser. It was important that she should be able to be reassembled in this way, but the artist wanted her to be much more than the state of the art allowed. Thus, he randomly slid the slices a little bit one-way or another until Monica was in a carelessly piled stack that made her look like a cubist creation. It was in this way that the artist first displayed her in the gallery. She made quite a sensation, receiving both popular and critical acclaim, but it was nothing compared to what the artist had in mind for her.
In due time he had the apparatus he had dreamed of ready for his faithful Monica. It was a monstrous robotic steel creature in which he mounted each of the sheets of Monica. Once in place, the frame somewhat obscured the view of Monica from the sides, but what was lost from those angles was compensated for by the gains in forward and reverse viewing. The machine could display Monica in the two ways she had been previously seen: orderly as a conventional portrait or disheveled as the cubist Monica. In addition, each slice could be pulled out and examined as if it were a drawer. This lent Monica immense value as both a work of art and as a teaching tool for anatomy. But the shuffler was what made the onlookers stare in amazement.
That was the thing that made the artist a household name. The shuffler was designed to, as the name suggests, shuffle the slices of Monica. People watched in amazement as Monica's lower and upper halves were separated and then reassembled in alternating layers. After one shuffle, Monica's hips and genitals were in slices alternating with those that contained her head, and her legs alternated with her torso all the way down. It was a bizarre but wonderful effect. Then the machine shuffled her again, and the result was even stranger. People watched in wonder as the original Monica was reconstituted after six iterations.
Never again would art be the same, and the smiling face of Monica gazed out upon its transformation. The artist felt a certain love for all of his creations, but Monica would always occupy a special place in his heart.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is perhaps my oldest story. It didn't get written until 1997, but the idea has been in my mind since long before I wrote Krystal Eyes. Even before I was a theoretical cannibal, I have always been obsessed with the preservation of beauty. The problem of beauty, at least the beauty in a human body, is that it will fade away all too quickly. But perhaps it would be possible to preserve the beauty in some way. This presents another problem, however, as it would have to be done when the beautiful person was still young and beautiful. So you either have to murder people to preserve them or find ones who would willingly give their lives to remain beautiful. I long ago thought of the idea of embedding people in plastic for this purpose, although I don't know why it struck me as it did. I, of course, realize that this would not work at all well in reality. The best you could probably hope for by this method is something that ends up looking like an Egyptian mummy, and that is far from the goal. In any case, I preserved a few people here in this story finally. I don't know why this story took so long to write. The slicing bit was also an old idea. That came about once when I was a child and found in some obscure corner of a natural history museum somewhere several centimetre-thick slices of human bodies there on anatomical display. I took great and eerie satisfaction in looking at those displays. Here it finally is, and I hope it was an enjoyable story.