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    Gorgesque
    Gorgesque
    Gorgesque
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    Gorgesque

    By Jon Jacks

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    About this ebook

    Soon Andraetra will be a privileged Gorgesque: half her face exchanged with that of a hideous person, to share the burden and ensure she recognises the truth that she can never be wholly good. But her ‘intended’ Courundia abducts Andraetra, hoping to reveal the lies surrounding her fiancé’s return to life after dying in the revolution. All that’s revealed, however, is that no one knows the truth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJon Jacks
    Release dateNov 25, 2015
    ISBN9781311383594
    Gorgesque
    Author

    Jon Jacks

    While working in London as, first, an advertising Creative Director (the title in the U.S. is wildly different; the role involves both creating and overseeing all the creative work in an agency, meaning you’re second only to the Chairman/President) and then a screenwriter for Hollywood and TV, I moved out to an incredibly ancient house in the countryside.On the day we moved out, my then three-year-old daughter (my son was yet to be born) was entranced by the new house, but also upset that we had left behind all that was familiar to her.So, very quickly, my wife Julie and I laid out rugs and comfortable chairs around the huge fireplace so that it looked and felt more like our London home. We then left my daughter quietly reading a book while we went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat.Around fifteen minutes later, my daughter came into the kitchen, saying that she felt much better now ‘after talking to the boy’.‘Boy?’ we asked. ‘What boy?’‘The little boy; he’s been talking to me on the sofa while you were in here.’We rushed into the room, looking around.There wasn’t any boy there of course.‘There isn’t any little boy here,’ we said.‘Of course,’ my daughter replied. ‘He told me he wasn’t alive anymore. He lived here a long time ago.’A child’s wild imagination?Well, that’s what we thought at the time; but there were other strange things, other strange presences (but not really frightening ones) that happened over the years that made me think otherwise.And so I began to write the kind of stories that, well, are just a little unbelievable.

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      Book preview

      Gorgesque - Jon Jacks

      Chapter 1

      This was the very first time I had ever seen photographs of the Gorgesque: I had seen innumerable paintings, of course, proudly gracing the rooms and halls of the homes I’d visited, but this new innovation, fresh from the mainland, somehow captured the sharp separation of beauty and ugliness with a starkness no other portraits had managed.

      Perhaps the chiaroscuro, the lack of colour, emphasised the sitters’ divine and grotesque natures. Perhaps sensing this, some of the sitters had insisted on the wearing of the half veil, something no Gorgesque would ever contemplate when having their portrait painted.

      In life, the half veil serves as a tease, awaiting the reveal of the horror beneath: yet here, of course, the veil can’t be turned aside, and so all we see is the sheer perfection, the view of their imperfections denied us.

      When I’m asked to pose, when I too have joined the Gorgesque, will I seek to hide my hideousness too?

      *

      ‘A shame, a true shame; the way they insisted on retaining the veil, don’t you think, Señorista Teresimo?’

      I’d become so entranced by the pictures displayed upon the wall that I’d failed to detect the approach of the photographer until he was standing directly alongside me.

      If Katerina were here, she’d be scandalised.

      I thought I was in this room on my own, that Katerina and her parents were in discussion with Señorat Holandros regarding organising a sitting.

      I’m lost for words.

      A male Grotesgeous is not supposed to approach, let alone talk to, a female of the Gorgesque (or even one, like me, a few months off from having the operation). They must be granted permission to do so: and even then, it would only ever be under the eyes of a chaperone.

      Yet this is a Grotesgeous with unnatural airs about him, a graceful manner, an elegant way of dressing. Obviously, his expertise in this new and much in demand innovation has granted him a self-confidence sadly lacking in most Grotesgeous.

      ‘I…I find them beautiful,’ I say, wondering if he knows that I’m lying, fearing his whole reason for approaching me is his observation of my admiration for the way his work had captured the horror of the Gorgesque.

      He nods, apparently accepting my lie.

      It’s hard to tell, of course, what he really thinks, the expression on one side of his face coming across as startling different on the other, with what appears to be a pensive frown on his right transformed into a doubtful, almost accusing grimace on his left.

      When he’d spoken of ‘shame’, was he speaking aesthetically, believing as many do that true beauty lies in the celebration of complete opposites, the ugly and beautiful made one, not two? Or was he referring to the shame of the sitters, their refusal to freely display this merging of opposites as a reminder that good and evil lies within each of us, no matter our outward exterior.

      As part of the creed states, ‘We should show with spiritual pride that we have cast aside material pride.’

      Señorat Holandros has no veil. Grotesgeous are not expected to wear one, for they have gained in the transference, receiving beauty. His donor no doubt wears his veil proudly, displaying every now and again his share of the ugliness Señorat Holandros had originally suffered.

      ‘Andraetra!’

      Katerina is scandalised! I can tell by her tone of disgust and anguish.

      Ironically, as Señorat Holandros and I both turn to see her standing in the doorway, he’s the one who manages to retain his composure, I’m the one who whirls around excitedly on the balls of my feet, as if still a child.

      Like me Katerina still retains her natural beauty, her birthday almost as far off as mine. Of course, until she’s welcomed into the ranks of the Gorgesque, her dress has to remain plain and unflattering, despite the wealth of her parents.

      ‘I beg your forgiveness, Señorista Delmestra.’

      The young photographer remained calm, despite Katerina’s scolding frown. He gave a slight, demure bow of his head by way of an apology.

      ‘It was just that Señorista Teresimo appeared intrigued by my works, and I simply meant to offer her an explanation of the process, if any were required.’

      He ever so fleetingly glanced my way, doubtlessly hoping I would take his side and spare him a scandal and the subsequent opprobrium of the island’s society.

      ‘This is true, Katerina,’ I lied. ‘I find it quite remarkable, don’t you, the way he has so accurately captured life on nothing but ingeniously treated glass?’

      Within Señorat Holandros’s eyes I caught what I thought was a grateful glint.

      ‘Then Andraetra, I fear that you’re the one who’s acting irresponsibly!’

      She swooped across the floor towards me, the base of her full length dress swishing across the polished wooden boards like urgently drawn drapes. With a final admonishing glower at poor Señorat Holandros, she wrapped a protective arm around my bared shoulders, leading me back towards the doorway by which she’d entered.

      ‘Don’t worry: my poor brother won’t hear of this!’ she hissed tearfully in my ear.

      *

      Chapter 2

      As we exited Señorat Holandros’s studio, a cooling wind was coming in off the sea, rippling through the thick, almost rubbery leaves of the trees. It was a wind that also sent the vast white sails of the ships billowing, scudding clouds against the black smoke erupting from the tall, dark chimney of a paddle steamer.

      Will Pavro be returning soon on one of these ships?

      He’d been studying on the mainland, but he would have to return soon to prepare for the transference. Very few people left the island again once they’d undergone the transformation; a conversion not just of our physicality, but thereby also of our very souls.

      The illumination of our better natures through the recognition of our lower selves.

      Of course, few people from the mainland understood or appreciated the spiritual depths of our version of the faith: they were, rather, usually horrified by what they witnessed on our island, to the extent that few people visited anymore. They found both the Gorgesque and the Grotesgeous equally repulsive, incapable of perceiving that one had sacrificed beauty, whereas the other had received it.

      Naturally, the island’s alien fauna and its many, overly large insects also dissuaded visitors to our shores. I had always presumed that, in these terms at least, our island was much like any other tropical island, but apparently our insects were terrifying, our trees and bushes bizarre at best, disconcerting at worst.

      Personally, I found the startling iridescence of the blooms, blazing against a setting of dark greens, more pleasing than any items of jewellery. Even the insects, with their sheens of glistening emerald, of ruby, of sapphire, were gorgeous if admittedly dangerous.

      Taking a cue from the spectacular colours of our island paradise, the carriage awaiting us was every bit as gaily decorated, its innumerable and elaborately enamelled carvings of saints and their religious exploits making it the equivalent of any church altar.

      It was a bravura display of wealth, of good fortune, both of which the Delmestra dynasty had had in abundance, almost from the day they’d alighted on these shores.

      Accordingly, the interior was one of sternness and darkness, austere in its simplicity of poor leather and barely padded wooden seats. It was deliberately uncomfortable, such that many ladies

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