A Night to Remember by Brea’n Thompson
Swallowing Beauty
She used to sleep in a sad little alley, wrapped in her favorite heap of trash bags. Everything changed when Mr. Mayor invited her to tea. Said an uncle she never knew gave her inheritance. Said from now on she had to pay taxes. Said he needed a token of appreciation too. Before this, he never cared about her. When she had told him that she really needed to swallow beauty, he just walked by. Now he smiled and said that he’ll do everything in his power to make it come true.
She always wanted to swallow beauty. When she swallows, she wants to see only beautiful things, for swallowing is the same as consuming. Try as she might, she can’t control what she sees. Sometimes she glances at something, and, at the same time, her throat muscles welcome new saliva—she has swallowed ugly again. Swallowing ugly makes her feel like vomiting. To stop the vomit from rising up, she clicks her tongue on the roof of her mouth, pops her shoulders repeatedly and counts 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 12, 13, 13, 14, 14, 15, 15, 16, 16, 17, 17, 18, 18, 19, 19, 20, 20. It always works. It’s her anti- vomit mantra, but even if she is cured from the vomit, she is not cured from the ugly. She still feels dirty. She knows that the only thing that will cleanse her is to swallow beauty.
She arrived at the house that she inherited and was surprised to see a mansion. There were staircases upon staircases and lots and lots of shiny glass. She swallowed and felt considerably better, but this still wasn’t beauty. She could still see the work of human hands. Imperfect—obscure but undeniable.
A man brought Mr. Mayor’s gift around noon, and the man said it was koi. She never had a koi before. It came in a small glass bowl that Mr. Mayor’s deliveryman placed in her kitchen. Said looking at them will bring her peace. He gave her a bottle of vodka and said the Mayor would like her to celebrate. She said she’ll celebrate once she’s seen beauty. He left looking a bit scared.
The koi was happily swimming in its pond when she decided to stoke it. She remembered how it felt like to touch the stray dogs and wondered if fish would feel the same. As she took it out of the glass bowl, it tried to struggle free. She was sure that it felt nervous. It was their first time to meet after all. To calm it, she put it straight back into the glass bowl, opened the vodka bottle and gave it some. It became sleepy and it stopped swimming. She took it out again and stroked it. It was slimy. She flushed it down the toilet to release it back to sea.
A knock. It was a knock five days after receiving her inheritance. She opened it, and a man wearing fancy clothes greeted her. Said he was Gerald, her cousin, only child of the uncle that gave her the mansion. Said he just wanted to clarify that if ever she was hearing a rumor that he had ill feelings because his late father chose to give away his rightful inheritance to a random relative, out of spite for his son for leaving the countryside, he said she shouldn’t believe a word of it. Said he’d never do anything to her just so he can legally acquire this property. Said that as long as she gave him a part of the inheritance, she would never see him again. She just hung her head, and said she never heard any rumor. He noticed the empty fish bowl and inquired about it. She told him that she got rid of it because it was slimy to stroke. Said it was ugly, when all she wanted was to swallow beauty. Swallow beauty? He asked perplexed. When she told him all about it, his eyes flashed a shade of green.
She was standing on a cliff, overlooking a dark pit. Gerald was at her side. Said that was the entrance to beauty. All she had to do was jump in. It looked very dark and very ugly, but Gerald said that only the entrance was ugly, but what’s inside of it wasn’t.
She was falling. Falling into darkness, and she shouted asking Gerald if it was still a long way to go.
About the author:
Jasmine Cruz is a writer from the Philippines. She studied Creative Writing in Ateneo de Manila, graduated Cum Laude, and received the Creative Writing Program Award. She published a poem in the Cultural Center of the Philippines’ 39th Ani Journal, and short stories in an American online literary journal called Cheat River Review and Philippines Graphic. She was a playwriting fellow at Ateneo de Manila’s 2018 Henry Lee Irwin SJ Professorial Chair for Creative Writing Endowment Fund. She has also written numerous articles about the visual arts, theater, and other topics for Manila Bulletin, Philippine Star, Philippine Daily Inquirer, BusinessWorld, Rogue Magazine, Art Plus Magazine, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Spot.ph, Coconuts Manila, etc. She blogs at ageofthediary.wordpress.com.
In the artist’s words:
Brea’n Thompson’s work explores the emotional and psychological connection between music and spirituality in futuristic, pop-surrealist oil paintings.
Each piece is a visual representation of the ghost that lives in her home, “Jane,” and the way she reacts to certain types of music. These ethereal portraits are meant to transport you to another dimension that walks the line between uncanny valley and a spiritual oasis. Over the years, Jane has steadily morphed into something life-like and has begun to take on a personality of her own. Each portrait of Jane is like a secret message that needs decoding, which she has yet to do. We often have a very narrow view of the world, and for the past few years, she has been exploring how every individual’s sensory experience differs from my own. She uses elements of her synesthesia, which is a condition where one sense, such as hearing, is simultaneously perceived by one or more additional senses, such as sight. Her process is mostly experimental.
Using oil paint as her primary medium, she is given the freedom and ability to manipulate the paint to give her a depth in texture and fluidity, creating the swirling patterns that comprise Jane’s facial structure and clothing ensemble. With a background in geology and many late evenings practicing cartographic skills, she is quite literally mapping out Jane’s “humanity,” which closely resembles a topographic map. Essentially, she is building the anatomy and facial structure of Jane. Throughout her body of work, you can see Jane begin to take a more lifelike structure, begging the question, “Are the spirits that move us all that different from who we are?”