Nightmare Fuel Redux

Second draft of the sec­ond story from my Night­mare Fuel 2011 batch.

Any­thing For Art
By Eoghann Irving

A cool breeze from the air con­di­tioner raised goose­bumps on Jeff’s arms and he shiv­ered as he folded up his clothes, plac­ing them each in a neat pile on the chair. He was stalling of course. But who wouldn’t. Talk about putting in the work. He just hoped that she would pay­out at the end of it.

When Vanessa had asked him to par­tic­i­pate in her art project he’d said yes of course. He’d been try­ing to impress her for months after all. Of course she hadn’t said any­thing about him strip­ping down and play­ing statue for an entire date

Mind you he’d been want­ing to strip in front of Vanessa for months as well. But her weird arty friends hadn’t been part of the fan­tasy. Still, at least they were let­ting him wear some speedos. It wasn’t a lot of cov­er­age, but it was something.

Steel­ing him­self, he stepped out of the chang­ing room. He felt strangely let down when barely any­one paid him any mind. Yoohoo… nearly naked guy here! Vanessa gave him a big smile as soon as she saw him though, and sud­denly this didn’t seem like such a dumb idea.

She guided him to his spot behind the fake brick wall that some­one in the art group had con­structed. He was relieved to see he would be able to kneel on a chair at least. Vanessa’s hand pressed against the back of his head as she guided it through the hole in the wall.

“I’m afraid this is going to be a lit­tle uncom­fort­able for you.” Vanessa smiled at him, show very lit­tle in the way of actual com­pas­sion. “But I really need you to stay as still as pos­si­ble so we can cre­ate the mold around your face. It’s impor­tant to the message.”

Jeff smoth­ered his irri­ta­tion and smiled back at her. If she wasn’t so damn hot this really wouldn’t be worth the hassle.

Vanessa’s hands were cool and soft as she care­fully smeared the vase­line over his face. He’d watched enough behind the scenes movie doc­u­men­taries to know this was so that things wouldn’t stick to his face.

She was chat­ting to one of her weird friends. Spiky hair and too many pierc­ings to count. Who knew why she asso­ci­ated with the freaks. Tun­ing them out he took the oppor­tu­nity to sneak a glance or two down towards her chest which was con­ve­niently posi­tioned just a lit­tle below his face and won­dered how her hands would feel touch­ing the rest of him.

He was brought sharply back to real­ity when some­one grabbed hold of his ankle and duct taped it to the leg of the chair. He grunted out a sur­prised protest caus­ing Vanessa to turn and smile down at him.

“It’s just to make sure you don’t move. You know how impor­tant that is.” She reas­sured him. “Relax. I really appre­ci­ate this you know.” She leant down closer to him but he forced him­self to keep his eyes for­ward. Maybe this would be worth the effort after all.

Whichever weirdo was behind him, quickly taped him to the chair one strip of duct tape at a time, until he could barely move at all. How could he protest with Vanessa there smil­ing and thank­ing him? She fin­ished smear­ing the vase­line over his face and placed a rub­ber cap over his hair.

She worked slowly and pre­cisely, wind­ing strips of sticky wet cloth around his head. It felt cold and clammy, but he dis­tracted him­self by sneak­ing looks at her cleav­age to remind him­self why he was let­ting her do this to him.

“Close your eyes.” She said in a soft voice as she started to wrap the ban­dages over his face. He did as instructed, not want­ing to get the goo in his eyes. Now he was sit­ting in dark­ness. He could feel her pres­ence next to him and her hands on his face as she con­tin­ued to wrap ban­dages around his head.

Sud­denly his hands were sweat­ing and he fought down a sud­den urge to strug­gle. The dark­ness was affect­ing him more than he expected. Per­haps real­iz­ing his dis­com­fort she started talk­ing to him. Just telling him what she was doing. Her voice calm and sooth­ing as she applied more and more bandages.

When she reached his mouth, she placed a spe­cial tube in his mouth to help him breath. As he sucked air through the tube, Jeff real­ized just how help­less he was. Immo­bi­lized and now silenced. He had no real way to com­mu­ni­cate with Vanessa or any­one else.

Some of the ban­dages were start­ing to dry now and it itched. Instinc­tively he went to raise his hand to scratch the itch away, only to be reminded that he couldn’t move. The itch­ing grew steadily worse, mak­ing it hard for him to think of any­thing else.

“There, that’s the first layer com­plete.”  Vanessa announced with obvi­ous sat­is­fac­tion in her voice. Jeff would have loved to protest at the idea there might be more than one layer, but at this point, he really couldn’t.

For­tu­nately the sec­ond layer went on quicker, despite the increas­ingly painful cramp­ing in his arms and legs. It was strange to feel her touch through the dead­en­ing layer of ban­ages that had already been applied. He won­der how they would extract him from the mask once Vanessa was done. Did they just slice it open, or what.

“Here we go, final stage.” Vanessa whis­pered in his ear. “This is going to look so good.”

He had lost track of exactly how many lay­ers of ban­dages she had put on him by now. Too many cer­tainly. The lay­ers so thick that he couldn’t feel much of any­thing any more. His head felt hot although at least he could breath eas­ily. With­out Vanessa’s steady chat­ter he was pretty sure he would have fallen deep into some sort of claus­tro­pho­bic panic. He could feel it lurk­ing at the edges of his mind.

From her mut­tered com­ments it sounded as though maybe she was dec­o­rat­ing the out­isde of the mask in some fash­ion. He ground his teeth in frus­tra­tion. Couldn’t she take care of that stuff after she’d got him out of here? His cramp­ing mus­cles had gone beyond dull aches to con­stant pain.

“And done!” Vanessa exclaimed. Jeff felt relief flood­ing through him. Dis­com­fort and moved on to pain. He knew he couldn’t take much more of this. Finally they would get him out.

“Put the back on the instal­la­tion and we’re all set.” She instructed her team. Jeff frowned. Stop mess­ing with the fuck­ing art and get me out, he wanted to scream.

“You were right.” Another voice spoke. “There’s an ele­ment of real­ism to this approach that would be miss­ing from a mold. How did you ever get him to agree.”

“Well when I explained my project to him, he said it was worth it for art..” Vanessa said in a happy tone. “All right every­one tidy up. The exhi­bi­tion begins in an hour!”

Jeff strug­gled fran­ti­cally to move, but the mass of duct tape on his body defeated him. Blind, he could still feel as the moved the instal­la­tion around him, trap­ping him inside the fake wall. He tried to remem­ber how many hours the show was to run.

His face, held in place by the mask, wouldn’t allow him to even form a scream.

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