Taking risks. The atmosphere was ripe for something to happen. In Paris in the early twentieth century artists and writers experimented with new forms of expression, many of which are now considered masterworks of modern art and fiction. Something less well-known was going on, a small bit of fun on the side, in which a group of Surrealists maimed a parlour game and created collaborative art known as le cadavre exquise or the exquisite corpse.
In the example above, Artist A begins the drawing, folds the paper so that Artist B, can only see the last bits at the bottom. Artist B connects to those bits and contributes the upper middle of the drawing, passing it to Artist C who draws, then gives it to D to complete the bottom fourth. An interesting outcome, no?
The catalogue notes of MOMA’s recent Exquisite Corpse exhibition, read that, “In a collaborative, chance-based drawing game known as the exquisite corpse, Surrealist artists subjected the human body to distortions and juxtapositions that resulted in fantastic composite figures.”
Later, “If art history reveals an unending impulse to render the human figure as a symbol of potential perfection and a system of primary organization, these works show that artists have just as persistently been driven to disfigure the body.”
Proposal: We collectively create a murder here on Open Salon. The fact that we cannot go in sequence because we all drop in at random times makes for exciting possibilities, a free-for-all that ends (or does it?) with a killing.
Contributions: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How. What do you like to write about? Describe places (where the murder took place, where the story began, where the characters grew up, where they have travelled), or the socio-political environment, or the media consumed by the victim or the murderer(s), food, old wounds, dysfunctional families, resentments, facts (medical? historical?), characters (main or peripheral: run long and wild), motivations and psychological aspects of the situation, romances, both failed and long-lived, financial background and implications of the murder. Or whatever you can do to fill in, round out, or continue the story.
Instructions: Read what has been described in the comments before, and add your contribution. The story will evolve bizarrely as life and murder are wont to do. Collaborate and contribute. Let’s see what happens.
I begin: Madame’s husky voice called from the window above, “At last you are here. Salvatore will come open the door. The buzzer has been disabled, so I have had to wait by the window for your arrival. Did you bring all the items we discussed?”
From across the street Detective Hugh Knott watched Madame and the figure at the door , knowing that his months of painstaking research on the strange case were paying off.
Image and notes from MOMA: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1256
© 2012, Emily Conyngham
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Comments
"That dam detective Knott is hiding across the street watching us."
blue and cold. Still
"Where the hell is the rookie?"
He depended on the punk to keep all his batteries charged on the damn devices. If they couldn't record these goings- on, they were sunk. These creeps would keep flaunting their criminal activity in all of Europe's face. Megacorp, damn them...
"Boss! I got here as soon as I could."
"Hey, boss! Do you like the car? And check out the sticker! I QR coded the logo at the metro station, ran a bar code underneath it, and created a parking permit in Photoshop. You know what the bar code is for? Twinkies! No one ever looks at those anyway. So, what are we up to?"
"Yeah, I got it right here. And it was right where you said, in the top drawer of that lady's dressing table, right next to her perfume and stuff, boss. You were right! Here it is."
The rookie took a carefully folded, Irish linen handkerchief out of his pocket.
"See, it says "KR" in the corner. What's it mean anyway? Is it a clue or something? I'm askin' ya cuz I seen this guy, tall guy, heavy, watching me when I went into her house."
Madame hadn't changed a bit, still perfectly groomed and toned. There was one change that did not go unremarked, and that was the scar under the left eye. Elizabeth remembered the night in Prague, when the two of them had clattered down the streets in their heels. She'd never forgiven herself for abandoning Madame who had stumbled just as the Megacorps van caught up to them. What had happened to the older woman that night in Prague?
"Oh, Kaline, why so blue? Oh that's right, you're dead." Elizabeth started playing with the slim diamond bracelet on her left wrist.
"Look, Knott's outside. We don't have much time. Where's the bag?"
"Ho!" shouted Det. Knot, "I mean, 'Yo! Ho! It's off to war we go!" He grabbed the rookie and shoved him forward, barking orders as the two men scrabbled across the street toward the mansion. "You'll be going through the door first, son, as it's time you learned to step up and be counted. You forgot your sidearm? Oh, well, shit, just cock your finger and look fierce. You are, after all, an officer of the court. I'll have your back, of course. Wouldn't have it any other way.
"Now then, into the breach we goooooooo..."
There at the bottom of the steps, Madame's stumble ended. She was out cold if not dead. The gun blast had sent her backwards down the front steps and into the gilded railing.
Two down, and not much time think.
She had been well trained, so she ran. After dropping the apple like object, the explosion would not be too far off. The Madame has always been quite the master of deception. It was nothing for her to indoctrinate her granddaughter, as she herself had once been, at the very same age. The art of war and conflict was, after all, not just a man's world. It would do nothing for a woman if she did not apply it to everyday criminal activities, especially those which could be construed as national interest. So there it was now. The explosion, just enough noise, smoke and dust for Madame to escape.
After being abused by the thief as a mere child, she wasn't about to let him have the last word again. Not now that the bag had been found.
The mayonnaise she had festered just for this occasion would soon 'kick' in.
Knowing his weakness for pork belly baguettes would be her exit strategy.
"Just like in the Opera." She purred as she floated past the mess.
She could see he was already sweating heavily.
"Oh. My. God.," blurted Det. Knotts's moronic rookie through the glops of clotting blood sliding earthward from the mangled remains of what had been a nose.
"What?" gasped the others in polyphonic unison.
The rookie tried to explain, but his words fell to the marble floor in garbled burblings. His boss, thus was compelled to assume the responsibility of taking the baton from his laughable excuse for an entry-level sworn officer of the law and said. "She's become...cough cough...a ZOMBIE!!! RUN! RUN! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!
But nobody heeded him. Knott simply did not have the command voice needed in a senior officer of the law to herd the citizenry at his behest.
But Knott thought to himself, " there will always be another Prague".
It was in the summer a couple of years after the Velvet Revolution had swept out the dying remnants of the corrupt Soviet supported bureaucracy out of town. You could still feel the hope in air, although it was already being tempered by the realities of having to recreate an economy from the ground up.
Knott had been working for one of the large security companies which swoop in like vultures every time regime change occurs. It was his first overseas assignment and he had been happy to get out of the cubicle maze of the New York headquarters. He was supposed to conduct due diligence on a number of light manufacturing companies of interest to US investors.
Five star hotel accommodations were hard to get as the major hotel chains had no yet moved in and the city was still in the process of sorting out ownership of the grand baroque and art nouveau buildings in Old Town and Mala Strana (Lesser Town) directly on the other side of the river across the Charles Bridge.
Knowing that he was going to be there a few weeks he had taken the attic apartment in a four story building. It had just been released into private hands by the government under its program of returning assets back to their pre-communist owners. A bit shabby it afforded great views of the monastery out the back and a small tree lined square out the front. The family that now owned the building was slowly converting the high ceilinged rooms into guest suites in the hopes of attracting tourists and their hard currencies. The attic was the last to be scheduled for repair. The rough aged wooden crossbeams and low angled ceilings gave it an air of an underground den yet it was suspended stories above the street.
He first caught sight of Kalene as he was walking by an outdoor café. She was waiting tables, her hair tied back with one or two strands falling across her face as she bent over to clear the remains of a pork, cabbage and dumplings lunch of an older German couple. She looked up and briefly made eye contact with Knott and flashed him a half smile before she disappeared inside of the café. That fleeting encounter was enough to burn her image into his psyche. He walked onwards down the street laid out in arcs of cobblestones.
That small opening contrasted heavily with the last time he saw her when she closed the door in his face at the home of Mr. Palika. It aborted the two days that they had spent together after he went back to the café to find her. Two days of excitement and bliss gone in an instant. What happened? Were those dream-like days actually a dream? Had he had the anti-Kafka dream? The one which afforded a reward rather than a punishment? How could she be related to Palika and where did she go after the door slammed and his repeated attempts to get inside failed? The memory and the abrupt end still haunted him. As much as he desired it there could not be another Prague.
He had memorized this phrase, having no idea what it meant other than that whenever he delivered it in the pursuit of his official duties, people within earshot usually paid attention to whatever he chose to say next. This now they did. Unfortunately, Knott had not prepared anything to follow his French phrase, and so he merely stood awkwardly rotating the "hard stare" he'd learned at the police academy from suspect to suspect and back again. He ceased waving the Webley-Fosbery when his arm grew tired and he feared his fingers would spasm and inadvertently pull the trigger.
She had no choice but to follow him down the dark staircase of the ancient mansion.
"That smell." She gasped, knowing the stench of decaying flesh.
Overhead the blast erupted, causing a flurry of crumbling plaster to rain down on their heads.
"I always knew that kid was trouble." Sally coughed out in anger. His grasp on her wrist tightened as he pulled her further down the winding stairs. Down and away from the the chaos.
"You can let go of my wrist, Sally. I'm right behind you." She pulled the Ferragamo silk scarf over her mouth and tied it up behind her neck, careful not to disturb her chignon. The smell rose to meet them.
It won't be long now, she thought to herself.
Salvatore's skin crawled from the stench. His stomach began to churn.
Evil has a way of trumping itself.
The blast hadn't released any zombie. True, the stench from the trap door was enough to make them all gag, but when the dust cleared, a battered Madame, very much alive, was stand amidst the rubble.
"What do you mean... We're all under arrest!" She spit out the words with disdain.
Still there were no signs of Sally and Elizabeth save that awful purple trench coat and this stinking hole in the floor.
That meant the pouch was missing as well. She had been scooped.
"What are you screaming at... you silly silly man." She barked back at Knott.
"There," pointing her battered and bleeding hand at the opening, "They've escaped down there. Fool you've let them escape."
to the catacombes
"Down into the catacombs?"
"Yes down... down you idiot." She slumped to her knee.