The Forever Muse

Micaela Arenas

They locked eyes during the performance, when blue light bathed the stage and children trembled.

The contortionist’s shoulder was under his torso, head flat on the floor, legs cast up and over in a sickening shape. He had been born in a similar position and promptly thrown to the street as the nun who delivered him moaned with horror. 

He was feared in every town, whispered about in harsh tones. They said he was a demon, the devil incarnate. Fed on newborns, they said. Brought illness and plague. 

One night, an artist had come to his show and seated himself in the front row to watch. A slow smile tore across his face as every vertebra clicked into place, as every joint bent and detached.

The artist proclaimed, “This is my muse!” and stole away to where the contortionist resided the moment the curtain fell.

Having never been so flattered, the contortionist accepted the role gracefully; his form replicated in every dimension, with every soft-lit color and waxy pastel.

When the circus packed up and left town, the contortionist was folded up and tucked into a trunk. He bounced along in the luggage car as they drove through bumpy terrain. The sound of this was recorded for future use in a mixed-media exhibition. 

The artist spent hours watching limbs twist without snapping, as tension ran through toiling muscles and blood coursed inside popping veins.

The artist sketched so much that his hands turned black with ink. 

Relentlessly, the contortionist carved his knees and elbows, stretched his tendons like toffee upon a hook in his dressing room. He limped about as the artist slept, an arm over each shoulder and three veins braided around his wrist. Before the sun rose, he was put together again.

From city to city, people averted their eyes, bent over with nausea. The artist never looked away from the stage, the planes of an abdomen suspended by four pale branches, an endless plateau. He sewed his eyelids open with a golden needle, not wanting to miss a single moment. 

  They tied their souls together; pulled taut with every swell and push, twist and curve upon a narrow platform. A trapdoor threatened to burst open under the weight, the same one that the contortionist fell into after every performance. The rusty old latch always held. 

Painting in the dark of the circus tent, blue oil filled the artist’s eyes, blinding him.

Feeling along indents and ridges of smooth muscles, serrated with cleavers and bread knives, shapes formed in darkened corners, beneath eyelashes that brushed his cheek. The artist still painted, smoothed, and scored—sculpture after graphite after pastel—by touch alone. 

Smelling burning flesh, one night, the artist and his contortionist fled. Smoke mingled with evening clouds, sinking mist onto the ember-toned landscape. When the taste of popcorn-flavored ash faded from their tongues, they stopped and lay to rest.

The artist lamented for what was now charcoal: a fleet of memories etched by his hand, his vision, the stage he longed to gaze at once more. Wiping his oily tears, the contortionist chose to put on one last show in the clearing, under blue stars. 

The audience groaned and grimaced as he folded. There were chattering creatures in the bushes that emerged, only to run away. Freshwater curdled and evaporated. Bark rotted on trees that refused to bear fruit or witness.

Still, the contortionist twisted, tucking a thigh under the nape of his neck, dislocating a shoulder to thread it through the eye of a long cut along his calf. Ankles popped as feet were removed and reconnected under a limp jaw, crushed teeth. Tearing his spine in two, he curled up into his own chest and came out the other side. 

Tied into a complex knot, the contortionist went still and never moved again. 

The artist cried, delighted at the masterpiece. He cast what was left of the contortionist in resin and watched him until his ears turned to dust.