Another week has passed and I
really feel as though I am losing my mind. I just don't know what to believe
anymore. I need to speak to Leonard but I suspect that I have seriously offended
him and I doubt that he will ever want to see me again. All that I have left of
our friendship is our first framed portrait and a handful of postcards. I am still
storing my sitting clothes separate from my everyday clothes in my wardrobe and
I check the letterbox each morning for a postcard or letter from him. But
nothing arrives and the phone never rings.
A friend of mine took some professional
photographs of me earlier this week and although I adamantly insisted that the
working environment was identical to that at Elmfield House and he complied
with my uncompromising demands, his work had a skin-deep glamour sheen and my
soul was entirely absent from the pictures. I knew instantly when looking at
his photographs that I will never sit for anyone but Leonard again.
But it is not only Leonard
that I am missing, I need to see Luke too because I have so many questions that
I must ask him. Yes, I am worried that I will be frightened or even repelled by
him, but I must speak with him at all costs and, most importantly, he must know
that I understand the significance of his teachings and I am ready to believe. ‘Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum.’
It was my overwhelming desire
to see Luke that drove me to visit Elmfield House yesterday afternoon on my way
home from university. It was getting dark and I felt terribly rude visiting so
late in the day, but Leonard had once mentioned that he holds regular evening
sessions with Luke and so I hoped that I might find them both at the house. The
neighbour’s dogs barked and wailed as usual when I passed through the alleyway so
I knew that Leonard had been alerted to my presence and my hands were shaking
as I pressed the bell then took hold of the knocker and knocked loudly three
times. There was no answer but I persisted for some time in case Leonard was listening
to music or he was outside in the garden with Hooter. I knew that he would hear
me banging on the front door at some point. That’s unless he was dead, of
course. The thought that he could be slumped lifelessly over his drawing board
was justification enough to peer through the front window, but I couldn’t see any
movement through the muslin curtains and there were no lights on in the
workroom. The house was in complete darkness.
Perhaps it was the late hour, the eerie twilight of a dark winter evening
or the sense of isolation upon finding myself completely alone so far from the
main street, but there was an odd atmosphere in the vicinity of the house that
I had not experienced before. I felt detached from the house somehow and...well…unwelcome.
No matter how intimidating the noises and shadows in the workroom have been at
times, Elmfield House has always accorded me a warm welcome and it has been a
second home to me this year, but for once I felt like I was trespassing on
unfamiliar ground. The sense of rejection was so overwhelming that I could not
bear it for one second longer, so I left the house and resolved to visit again early
next week.
I shed a few
tears as I walked along the main street - out of frustration more than anything
- and then, as I headed past the student houses towards the bus stop, I became
aware of a powerful scent in the air. It was the most delicious smell and it
stopped me dead in my tracks. At first I thought that it was smoke from a fire,
but it was much stronger and meatier, like the smell of cooked sausage. The
crispness of a November evening deadens down common street smells and filters
out warm ones like smoke and cooking aromas that rest on top of the chilled air,
so I paid little attention to it and assumed that the smell was coming from the
kitchens of the terraced houses or - since it was 5th November - a Bonfire event
was taking place at the university. I tried to put it to the back of my mind
but as I continued to walk along the street I noticed that if I opened my mouth
then the smell intensified tenfold and I could almost taste it on my tongue and
it did not appear to emanate from one location but it came over me in waves as
though every third or fourth house on the street was cooking exactly the same
meal. There was something very familiar about this salty-smoky scent too and I recalled
smelling it before, once or twice in late-summer which ruled out the recent
bonfires. As I continued walking I realised that upon catching the scent I
immediately and without fail encountered someone walking nearby - it was as
though the smoky smell was emanating from their clothing and it was at its most
intense when they came closest to me, so I held my nose high in the air and
gasped in huge gulps of air as each stranger passed by, even taking a five
minute detour so that I could play a guessing game and predict when someone
would come into sight.
I realise that it sounds insane, but
I honestly believe that I can smell the people around me. In fact I have been
experimenting with this new-found ability today and I have discovered that the salty-smoky
odour is a concentrated distillation of the extremely addictive, craving-pacifying
smell that I recreate with the old pennies in my pocket. It is the most
satisfying smell and I cannot liken it to anything that you might have smelled
or tasted. It is perhaps comparable in oenological terms to consuming a glass
of the finest and most complex bottle of Amarone, unless it is spiked by the
cheap vodka of bad aftershave that is! If I could bottle this smell - or rather
the rapturous effect that it has upon the senses - then the entire world would
be addicted in a second and I would become a billionaire, but I realise that I must
guard against indulging my desires and sharing them with others. Luke says that
I will be increasingly drawn to you because my body will seek out the divine
spark in whatever capacity it can find it and I know that my attraction to you is
symptomatic of this inevitable progression, but no matter how painfully alluring
the temptation may become and how desperately I may wish to indulge myself, I promise
that I will keep this particular stimulum carnis under control. I will not allow myself to self-medicate
because I am not a monster.
