Full Body Chills - POE: The Oval Portrait (2021)

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

"The Oval Portrait" by Edgar Allan Poe. Adapted by Jake Weber. 2021.Intro read by Margo Seibert. Poe is an audiochuck production.Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter:  @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllc

Poe is a 2021 audio chuck original made for our friends at SiriusXM. We hope you enjoy this exclusive content re-released for free on Full Body Chills. And for the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. They say a picture's worth a thousand words, but a portrait never speaks. Art, for all its splendor, captures the soul like a stuffed animal. A memory, shot and mounted and stitched with technique. Life may rest on an easel, but sitting too long it begins to dry, to die of thirst. And in this story paint is poison. A bitter toast of embalming fluid for those interred to the oval portrait. He was older than her by a lot. Sometimes you see couples and you just can't put it together.

I mean, does she really sleep with that aging hipster? I know looks aren't everything, but she was a knockout. One of those girls you look at and wonder what it must be like to wake up every morning and see that in the mirror. She was perfect. Porcelain skin, blue-eyed, with a blinding smile. You see movie stars with those kinds of smiles. They use them like weapons. They wield them on red carpets and talk shows and fire them at us mortals. But this girl's smile was not a weapon. It was pure, an expression of joy and kindness.

I couldn't get enough of it. I stalked her on the livestream feed from her hipster boyfriend's loft. I became obsessed with her. Where was she from? How did she grow up? And how did she end up with him? There was something wrong about a young girl

as lovely as her being with a dude twice her age who looked like he smelled of sebum and patchouli oil. He was an artist. He lived somewhere in Brooklyn in this wild bohemian chagrilla of a loft space. Huge ceilings like 30 feet high, plants hanging everywhere, frescoes and tapestries on the walls, and there was a huge clawfoot tub unmoored in the middle of the main living space, like just sitting there. It was his place, but she was over all the time.

And he had a livestream feed going whenever she was there. When the shaft elevator door opened, he would be there with a camera trained on her. He had a fuse spread out around the loft. When she was around him, her life was ours to share, but there was no sound, only a visual. We could objectify her, we could envy her, we could admire her, but we could never hear her.

This was the conceit of his performance art, I suppose you would call it. They would just do couples things. Watch something on his laptop, he had no TV, or listen to music and dance together. We would watch them watch something we couldn't see or dance to something we couldn't hear. Sometimes they would get high or just read or eat takeout or some veggie medley he put together in a blackened walk. They would talk or just eat in silence, and we were invited to watch them. Or her, mostly. We were voyeurs.

Is there such a thing as privacy anymore? Do we even exist if our every moment, even the most mundane, is not chronicled? I'm guessing these were the kind of provocative questions he was asking through his art, at least the live streaming aspect of it. I don't pretend to be an art aficionado. I work at Trader Joe's. I didn't go to college. I don't have a boyfriend.

I'm just kind of floating through life, biding time until something or someone happens to me. I do have a secret dream though. fighting time until something or someone happens to me. I do have a secret dream though. I write plays. I would love to have my plays produced somewhere. Doesn't have to be on Broadway or anything. I just think it would be really cool to sit in the back of a theater and listen to people listen to my words and laugh at my jokes.

That was one of the reasons I became obsessed with this couple, but her especially. I could put words in her mouth. He repulsed me, but he kept himself out of the way mostly. It was all about her. The camera would always favor her. If they were eating, it would be on a tripod perched over his shoulder. It was as if we were him watching her, and she was just too perfect for words, which is maybe another reason he wouldn't let us hear her.

This is all the perfection you can handle people. Objectify her all you want. That's all any of us can do, but you never get all of anyone. I could watch her all day. Every motion was graceful without a trace of self-consciousness. Hollywood would come for this girl, but she looked as if that would be the last place

on Earth she would ever want to be. More likely to find her living on a sustainable farm somewhere with a bunch of kids and a rugged husband working the land, her blonde curls untamed, her blue eyes brightened by the Montana sky. Montana. That's where I placed her, on a tractor, a couple of dogs running along beside, a fireplace at night and a wood-burning stove, living off the land, off the grid even. But first she would have to ditch the old guy, the vampire dude who wouldn't take

the camera off her. I structured my schedule around watching her. If she hadn't stayed over the night before, I knew she would show up around four that day, so I would make sure I was home by then. As I rang up my endless conveyor belt of groceries, I would think about her. What was she doing now? What was she thinking? What did she eat for lunch?

I would make a dialogue in my head, imagining conversation she might be having with someone, a stranger even. She was like a chiron running all through my day. I will say one thing for the old dude, he must have been funny. Because she laughed a lot when she was around him. At least early on before she had to sit for the portrait. So I would make up jokes between them. They were characters in my play, waiting for my words, and her life took over mine. I had no interest in dating and going to the gym. I lived vicariously through her.

I created conversations between her and her mother. I had a whole life created for her while I neglected every part of mine. I wasn't about to call my own mother, my lonely mother who worked as a court stenographer. I didn't speak to friends. I didn't want to see anyone or go out for drinks or hang out with friends from work. I just wanted to watch Alison.

That's the name I gave her, Allison. After a song my dad used to love before he died by a guy named Elvis, not that Elvis. This Elvis was a dorky guy from somewhere in England. He has this song about a girl he's in love with who is with the wrong guy and is treated badly by the world. And that's how he felt about the aging hipster dude and his artist layer and the beautiful girl he had put under his spell.

I was starting to hate the guy. I wanted Allison for myself. The idea of his hands on her was just so wrong. Not saying I wanted Allison sexually, I didn't feel lust for her in the carnal sense. I just wanted to be next to her, to smell her, to feel her body against mine. And I wanted to save her from this guy and from a world that would never love her and appreciate her like I would. I named hipster dude Spike. Like his real name was probably Jeff or something totally bland, so he went by Spike because it was cooler.

Anyway, Spike was a really good artist. There was a realistic bust of a woman in marble, in like the Renaissance style, and also more abstract sculptures in wood and different metals. And he painted. He painted the walls, but also had a traditional easel and oils. I guess people either paint with oils or acrylics, and I think these were oils because they look like the paintings from Rembrandt and the Old Masters.

He was painting Allison like an old-fashioned museum painting, and she looked the part with her soft curls and her full lips. But the thing is, she was miserable. She was miserable sitting for him. I knew her by now. I could read her every mood, and she hated sitting for hours on end. She was lonely and bored. It's odd to think that she was lonely because she was the center of his attention. I mean, he was absolutely focused on her, but not really on her, just on pieces of her.

He was painting a realistic portrait, so he wasn't looking for her essence, or whatever Picasso was doing when he painted those cubist women with their boobs in the wrong places or their faces on backwards. No, Spike was working in a meticulous fashion to capture an almost photographic representation of Allison's features. And he was good. It did look like one of those old masters. And she would sit there patiently, holding that maroon textile over her breasts, but I could see behind her eyes a sadness. I had seen it in fleeting moments, but her grace and spirit usually took over. But when she was still like this, I could see she was sad.

And I just wanted to kill him for doing that to her. For using her and objectifying her. I know I was doing the same thing, objectifying her, worshipping her, but I wasn't some puppet master manipulating her into being something for me or whoever else was watching and who was eating her from the inside. Let her up, let her dance, Let her speak. Let her laugh. Put her in the bath. Let her be happy. Let us bathe in her light, you twisted old man. Well, it wasn't going to happen until he was done with the painting. She was going to have to suffer through it. I thought, if I can see she's unhappy, why can't he? But of course he

could see, he just didn't care. All he cared about was his precious painting. She would try to engage him, flirt with him, get him to laugh. She would get fidgety and goofy because she was just a young girl full of spirit and joy. But she would get nothing in return, and I could see the light going out of her eyes. A little more each and every day. He didn't give a shit about her. He was just using her, sucking the life force from her so he could have his stupid painting. I would yell at my screen, don't let him use you like that. Come to me, come to me for love.

I have so much and no one to give it to. Come to me, Allison." Were there others like me? Others madly in love with Allison? Was there an army of lonely women and men smitten and obsessed? Maybe, but no one could love her like I did. No one would understand her like I did. I had a dream plan in my head. I would move to New York.

I would find her. I would scour the streets of Brooklyn with her photo and steal her away from Vampire Spike who was draining the light from her eyes and the blood from her cheeks. She was getting won. He was literally sucking the life force out of her. I would find her and say, Allison, I know you don't know me, but I know you. I know you better than you know yourself.

But isn't that always the case in love? Come with me, Allison. You have to leave this man. He's taking more and more. Piece of you every day. Every day you get weaker. Every day you're with him, the less of you there is. He has cast a spell on you. You can't see it, but he's dangerous.

He will destroy you if you stay. Come with me now, Allison, and let's begin a life together, away from toxic men like Spike. I'll be a celebrated playwright, and we'll come into Manhattan for my premieres, but we'll live far away from this dirty city on a farm, far, far away from the rat race. And at night, we'll cuddle on the sofa in front of an open fireplace, and we'll each have a book from which we'll read to each other in pithy sentences or funny phrases, and we'll have an old chocolate lab named Charlie, and...

I think we all know how that conversation would have ended. Allison would have looked at me as if I were nuts and bolted for the nearest exit. And that evening, I would watch them make fun of me and laugh over tofu and bean sprouts at the crazy woman who was obsessed with their livestream feed and how some people should really get a life. I saw a movie once about an actor who pretended to be a woman so he could get a part on a soap opera, and he falls in love with the leading actress. And she tells him, girlfriend to girlfriend, she just wanted a guy who could be up front

with her and not play games and say, the truth is, I'm confused about this too. I could lay a big line on you, we could do lots of role playing, but the simple truth is, I find you very interesting, and I'd really like to make love with you. Well, that actor runs into the actress at a party when he's out of his woman disguise, so he's a stranger to her. And he repeats back what she said and she throws her wine in his face. That's pretty much how it would have gone with Allison and the crazy stalker chick.

So no, I wasn't going to go to Brooklyn to find Allison. I was going to stay here in a suburb of Indianapolis and bag groceries until I could figure out what to do with my life and pine for and worry about lovely Allison, who, in all honesty, was not looking so great. It wasn't just that her spirits were low, she also looked weak. Not that shithead Spike noticed. He barely looked at her, only at his painting. Occasionally he would snap her to attention or impatiently move her head if it drifted.

He was starting to get rough with her, and she would try not to cry, and it was hard to watch. Hard to watch someone you love being manhandled and treated so badly. Is that what it takes to make great art? You have to be a total SOB? The painting was good, but the camera stayed mostly on Allison. Anyway, how special could it be? There was a real human being really suffering in front of you so you can create an image of someone suffering.

Whoop-de-doo, what a genius you are. Allison was trying so hard to be everything this man wanted, but what she wanted was to enjoy him and their life together and just do simple things like go for walks and get stoned and dance. And screw, I suppose, although that's not an image I want in my head. After a while, I couldn't take it any longer. I had to stop watching.

It was just Alison looking weaker and sadder by the day, taking the occasional bathroom break and dutifully forking some tofu medley into her lovely mouth. I had to stop. It was messing me up. I was miserable and getting bad tempered at work. You're supposed to be cheery and super friendly at Trader Joe's. Like, don't even think about coming to work in a shitty mood. Every day is happy in your workday. Think about it. Have you ever

been at Trader Joe's without good music blasting and a smiling staff all around you? You practically expect everyone to break out into a dance routine while stocking shelves like the halftime show at the playoffs. If I didn't get Allison out of my head, I was going to be working at Farmer Jack soon. I took a 10-day break, but eventually I couldn't resist. I had to check back in on Allison. But when I went to Spike's streaming platform, the live feed had been taken down. What the fuck?

So that was it? No more Allison? No more Spike and all his boho bullshit? I kept checking morning and night during breaks at work. Nothing. Until finally, three weeks later, there it was. Up again. The live stream feed and the oil portrait of Allison front and center.

The camera was locked off on the portrait and Spike would mill around, doing his thing, puttering about, getting high, listening to music, dancing maniacally like someone who just won the lottery, or eating, or working on this or that. But always, front and center was the finished portrait. But where was Allison? Then one day, a woman showed up. Another beauty, but a redhead this time, covered in freckles. And it all started again.

The seduction, the jokes, the cooking, the easy times. Spike was totally composed and relaxed, moving slowly, slower than most men do around this young beauty. Soon he took the portrait of Allison off the easel and leaned it up against a wall and started sketching, furiously sketching studies of this new subject from all angles, his hands moving quickly, cataloging her features, her curves, every one of her angles. She was lovely, no question, but she was no Allison.

Not the Allison who had beguiled and fascinated me. Where was she? How would I ever know? Had he dismissed her when the portrait was done? Have they broken up? Did she get sick? Did she need help? I knew nothing about her, not even a name.

Something was wrong, I could feel it, but what could I do? The only way to find her would be through Spike, but I didn't know his real name, and his streaming platform wasn't linked to any social media presence. I contacted galleries in Brooklyn and Manhattan, but no one recognized him or knew his work. I even called the police, but without an address and a name, they didn't even know what precinct I should contact. No, there were no missing persons reports matching her description that they knew of.

Then one day, there she was. There in the New York Times obituary section was a small picture of her. Tessa Marie Sykes of Waterville, Maine, beloved daughter of John Sykes, a veterinarian, and Ashley Sykes, a nurse practitioner, had been found washed up in the upper New York Bay in an apparent suicide. I, Allison, had boarded the Staten Island ferry but never disembarked. Poe is an audio Chuck original. This episode was read to you by Ashley Flowers. So what do you think Chuck?

Do you approve?