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Sturm's Hunt:

A Short Story Based on the Painting "Homesickness" by Magritte

Natashia Piazza
August 5, 2003

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Prologue

Though ordinarily I would be somewhat concerned over the appearance of the lion - he is usually a harbinger of the advent of the curse that follows my every move - today I cannot allow my attention to wander. Today, I am tracking Sturm. And even as I follow Sturm, more trailing in his wake than actively in pursuit, so also does the lion follow me, half-heartedly pretending a fierceness he doesn't feel. We are all pretending.

Today, more than ever, I feel my age. And yet, I am not that old. It is only that I have been chasing Sturm, both actively and passively, for most of my adult life. Today, I realize the futility of it all. Even last night, tired, archaic eons ago, I was Peter, denying Sturm, refusing to follow plaintively, ghost-like, in his footsteps any longer. He draws things, you see, ancient evils I can't put to words. Ever since he entered my life, my existence has become a mere series of episodic installments, fragmented, dream-like. I can't remember life before him and I know there is no normal life after him. I don't even know what he is. Sometimes, like last night, it seems I am almost normal, like I almost can see the nasty, festering seed he planted in my mind. Invariably, however, the next morning, I am chasing him again, caught in an endless circle of quests and denials. As I stand here, on this bridge, I know that the only way to tell my story is to start with the past. And yet, which past? There are so many, all tangled and snarled, like a group of cantankerous pythons on the floor of some diabolical trap door. So many of the threads are broken, mere rubble of once-whole pieces of narratives. However, I suppose the easiest way to go back is to start with the nearest end of the thread, and pull it back to me until I reach the end, and then start on the next thread until finally they have all been unraveled.

So long ago that I am no longer able to clearly remember, there was a time with no lion. There was no Sturm, there was no distance between myself and others.

In looking back upon this time in my life, I am often surprised by the utter lack of solid, real memories from which to draw upon. It seems as though there has always been a Sturm, always a lion, always broken fragments of memory that can't be reconciled. To my mind, there remain only one or two crystallized morsels of memory, but these seem to sum up the whole of my existence prior to the advent of Sturm and the lion.

The first is some vague, distant, terribly poignant memory of a mother's touch; the soft croon of her song and the gentle peace of her arms linger behind her like the smell of too much to drink the night before lingers behind in the mouth of a drunk. This is somehow the most hurtful memory of them all. The second memory, you see is of the night they were killed, when they took their own lives in front of my very eyes. I always like to think that they meant to take me with them, rather than leave me at the mercy of the violent, underhanded figures that had begun to frequent our home. I survived, however, and to this day the only physical memory I have of them is the scar my mother's knife blade made over my heart. You mustn't think, however, that I blame them for accidentally leaving me behind, for not making sure before they killed themselves. They couldn't have known the life ahead for me; the night the village burned, the lion, and Sturm.

Childhood from there is one vague, indistinct blur, punctuated only by memories of great pain, but also memories of hope. The next clear-cut splinter of memory is that of the day when I was finally rescued from the hands of the people I now know to have been an invading army from beyond the great, blue sea. New people entered our village, loud, lurid people from the city, flocking inside in great droves. I came to idolize those from the city, particularly the daughter of one of the new families. I worshipped her; I lived only to wait on her hand and foot every morning, to hear her tinkling laugh at my uneducated accent and the rural notions in my head. I would have been content to remain at her side, a mere slave for the rest of my days, if only she hadn't rejected me. I have always been, admittedly, somewhat sensitive to being slighted. I had worked so hard, though, on improving my speech, my patterns of thought. I thought that if I showed her a better side of me, perhaps she could see me in a different light, as something more than a mere slave. I even broke one of my own cardinal rules and stole a suit for the occasion. Instead, she laughed and that great tinkling laugh grew in my mind until it became as thunderous and as deafening as the endless roar of a lion. From that day forward, I lost my desire for any sort of human contact, contenting myself instead with the loveliness of the suit and the sound of my own thoughts.

The lion had been shadowing us all afternoon.

It had joined us somewhere in the city, falling into step just behind and to the right of Sturm. We walked on, taking it simply as a matter of course; odd things often happen around Sturm. He doesn't seem to notice or to care anymore. When I mentioned the lion, he simply raised his eyebrow in a manner that implied derision for my concern. If he doesn't deign to notice it, that acerbic eyebrow stated simply, why should I?

Like all of Sturm's questions, it was an excellent one.

I had first met Sturm several years ago, on the night my village was burned. I had never seen him before, though we surely must have come across each other once or twice, as we had been living in the same village for quite some time. The night I met him was the night he lost the use of spoken language. Though I didn't know him, he may have known me, but I can't ask him, you see. You mustn't think, however, that this is due to the fact Sturm't tongue was cut out just before the village began to burn, because he always finds a way to communicate, even without the aid - or impediment - of speech. Rather, it is due to the fact that when I found him, he had, evidently due to the severe trauma of his injury, no memories prior to his awakening by my side. It makes Sturm oddly unique among all others; he is inherently incomplete, both physically and mentally, making him the perfect companion for my emotional deficiency.

Since then, we were as close to inseparable as two people can be when their entire relationship is based upon the pursuit of one another. Before Sturm, I had never been particularly close to anyone in my life, excepting the case of my parents and the disastrous matter with the girl. Although I had remained in the same village for most of my childhood, when I reached adolescence I had completely lost the desire for intimacy with another human being, or animal for that matter. Eventually the whispers and rumors about me grew among the villagers until it would have been impossible to initiate a friendship. Luckily, however, I never did gain a desire for the camaraderie and love so many live and die for. Nor did I feel the need to poison my body with the toxins others found so pleasurable. I performed only the actions necessary to my survival, made complete by my ability to detach. I believe that is what allowed me to survive the burning of my village, when no one else, except Sturm, lived. I had nothing to tie me down, nothing to rescue, no particular object whose safety I was eager to ascertain.

And so we came together. He, lacking a past, and me dead to all times but the present, inherently deficient, seeking to create a entirety. Sometimes, I found myself overwhelmed by the thought of total disintegration and nonexistence; I seemed to myself insubstantial, foreign, disembodied, and fractured. It was at those times that I dreamed he spoke, and when he did it was with the most beautiful, clear voice imaginable, and all the words he spoke were faultless and complete, and through them I found meaning.

The afternoon after I first met Sturm, the lion had far, far in the distance, stalking us, since dawn.

At first, I was slightly jarred by the appearance of the lion. He instantly conjured back the memories of the night before, the fire and the blood. However, Sturm seemed so calm about the appearance of the lion, so oblivious to the inappropriateness of it all, that I couldn't bring myself to get upset. Eventually, it seemed as through the lion had been following us since the dawn of time, rather than simply the dawn of the new day. It acted as though it belonged, and so eventually it did.

There was a time, you see, when there was no lion; that time, however, had long since faded into childhood. There are three victims in all, each of them, in their own way, the most precious and integral of the three. The first victim to the lion was my innocence. The night of the village fire was the first time I ever saw the lion; it was the night the first victim was slain; it was a night of red, red, heat and blood.

For so long, I had lived in the village, coinciding peacefully with the people I couldn't understand. I had always been different, but even then, I was still unbroken. Then the lion came and the world was crushed between two massive, oversize paws. Only endless, echoing screaming, crimson and scarlet tatters of cloth, and the jagged remains of the looking glass that hung over the bar in the town tavern remain with me to serve as memories. So much blood; the thick, viscous liquid was running through the streets of the village like water over, rather than under, a trampled cobblestone bridge, dying everything red even as it destroyed the red of the flames. Death was reflected in the silent flood.

Death was reflected in everything that night.

When all had subsided and I came to myself again, everything was gone, leaving a great nothing inside me where all had before been. That was when Sturm was suddenly there. One minute, I was alone, the vast void clawing at my mind; despite my claims to callousness to the foibles of the other villagers, I could not be unsympathetic. I am still not sure how he, or I, got there, outside the village. I must have stopped, unaware, by his unconscious side in order to study the village one last time before I left forever; I was so stunned by the destruction that I remained, as still and insensible as a pillar of salt, at the ruins. I probably would have remained there until the sounding of the last great trumpet, if Sturm hadn't recovered and begun to pull me away. His exhortations acted as a cool balm upon my mind, freeing me from the guilt of the survivor, opening up limitless possibilities of existence to my clutching wits. The lion was gone, but I remained, and so did Sturm.

And sometimes he chases me, and sometimes I pursue him, and together we keep each other whole, or as whole as possible after being sprayed with the debris of the village. Perhaps, someday, we will catch up with one another and, no longer able to tell who is pursuing whom, we will become as one, completing each other and realizing ourselves.

Still the lion has followed us all through the long years of my acquaintance with Sutrm.

The second thing I lost to the lion was... my inhibitions, I suppose. It is hard to say exactly what I should count as loss and what as gain. Everything about Sturm is like that; on the one hand I feel as though I should somehow be missing the civilization I renounced, yet on the other I feel as though I would have lost so much more if I had instead gone straight to the city after my village burned. And yet... Sturm draws things you see, draws them like one side of a fault draws the opposite end of the other side, creating friction that must ultimately be released in a cataclysmic explosion. I always feel this rigidity in the air around him as if all the forces of nature are trying to keep you from discovering something about him. He's got an inherent intenseness that I have never seen matched.

Despite all my years in the wilderness, I still like to keep up the impression of civilization, although I have never once stepped foot within the bounds of a city. Though the suit I stole so long ago has become ever so slightly tattered, it still sits on my form as well as ever. Though I have long since lost my hat, my hair is neat and well trimmed; my face is clean-shaven. Though I haven't spoken a word in some years, I am sure that the same cultured, beautiful syllables could still flow from lips. I have lost nothing by staying out here. And from watching Sturm, I have learned so much. It was he who taught me how to influence people simply by the sending out of a kind of magical thread, tying their mind and their wills to mine. It was Sturm who taught me the way to distract the searching, scrabbling demons that look to feed upon your soul. It was he who taught me the method of rearranging my face so as to convey no emotions, allowing nothing and no one to gain a hold upon me. Sturm is the only one I can trust, the only friend I have. I have lost nothing, you understand, nothing, by spending my life out here. I have gained everything.

And yet, at what cost?

The lion has been haunting us all night, somehow so close, and yet still invisible.

We entered the city some time ago. I have never been to the city before. It is not what I had thought it to be. It is full of shrinking, mumbling people who can see the fear and revulsion on your face. They send messages to the demons that feed upon such things. I am going to the bridge. I can't remember if I am following Sturm or if Sturm is following me. Still the lion hunts.

I feel as though, if I can just see the lion's face, all the destruction and pain that has haunted me every time I hear his keening roar will somehow become clear.

I had realized long ago, you see, that abnormal and peculiar things often materialized around Sturm. They were drawn to him, to Sturm's own strangeness, even as the horribly mangled lepers, begging outside the street gate as we pass now, are drawn despite themselves to the study of their own reflections. They are enticed by the bizarreness and repulsiveness of what they see, compulsively studying their own distorted countenances in spite of themselves; prematurely aged, abhorrent visages peer at us from the depths like doomed souls from the gates of hell. These are the people enjoy pain and fear; they feed on it. I try not to let myself be drawn in by them; I remain aloof, detached, putting on a grimace of calm. If they can't see the dread, they can't garner their vile nourishment from my body. The lion paces just outside the line of my vision. These things are drawn to Sturm, you see, simply as a matter of course; they are no doing of mine. However, Sturm has taught me that as long as you remain isolated and aloof, the foul beasts of the underworld that swarm around us can't penetrate your disguise, can't find the emotions they covet, and you remain safe, whole and unfathomable.

There were whispers about me, you see, vague, nebulous things in the village that floated about the air on the depraved wings of demon insects, passing the message one bumblebee at a time. I have always been sensitive to criticism, you see. They spoke of my coldness and seclusion; they did not understand that the bad things feast upon their emotions. I must remain cold. I find I cannot remember ever seeing a single face in my life, including my own.

Despite the intense warning roar in my head, I am drawn to the side of the bridge. I must look at my reflection. If I can only see my own face, everything will be okay. I look down into the deep, black depths. Something is desperately wrong here. The sun becomes too bright and fills up the earth, leaving no room for anything else but the throbbing rays of the daylight. The world is full of color, of a deep offensive yellow, seeking to poison me before I can see my own face. All is motion and yellow, seeking to veil the powerful, reflective abilities of the water. Then, suddenly, everything stops and is still. For a long moment all I can see is the haggard, old-young, repellent face of a leper. A dark, clawing thing of panic is still working its way up my throat, blindly scrabbling to get out, unaware that it is only the face of the beggar after all; nothing to be frightened of, only something to for me to pity and shield myself from.

Yet even as I tell myself this, I grasp that this face is my own. But even as I know it for my own, I know also it is the face of Sturm, and it is the face of the lion.

Before the horror can reach my mouth, a heavy blackness overtakes me.

And so this is where you first joined me.

The lion is lying sympathetically behind me; his breath and purrs resound in my head like the churn of the waters below. And yet, even as I hear the lion and take note of his presence, I know there is no lion. There never has been a lion. And, even as Sturm gestures to me and I feel his voice speaking, beautifully and clearly in my head, I know there is no Sturm. The world is yellow with the noxious poison of both his words and my doubt.

I feel so old.

It seems as though this story has been told before. I should have known the ending long before the beginning, but somehow I lost reality the night the village burned.

The night the village burned.

The water below is backlit by the setting sun. Staring at the old, leprous reflection in the water, I can see that all this time the world had been lying to me; the water s not the cleansing blue of the sky, the deep, lovely blue of tears. It is instead red; every color in the spectrum from the red of rubies to crimson to burgundy is shifting, writhing in the depths.

I have this one moment of clarity, this one chance for redemption. I could rise up, right now, and make a great leap into the red pits below. Though my mind, my emotions, and, now, my body have been polluted by Sturm, the soul is immortal. I could sprout adulterated wings of an angel and stay in this moment forever.

It's just... I feel so old and so afraid of death.

I stand in the middle of two great chasms. On the one side there is death and salvation through death; perhaps the damned, awful waste of my body could be redeemed. On the other side, there is Sturm and the patiently waiting lion, both of who beckon to me, without fear or hatred or resentment for my doubt.

Is there a choice? Has there ever been one? It seems as though no matter which route I choose, the result will be the same. I know, even as I feel the cobblestone pavement under my feet, that I am not actually on this bridge. I am somewhere, light years away, safely tucked in my own insanity, unable to recognize my true surroundings. Even if I were to cast myself into death and possibly hope, what guarantee would I have that I wouldn't return to this crossroads again some day, over and over. I wouldn't have the strength to make the decision again. Perhaps, after all, I'll just remain here, on this shrinking crust of land and certainty between the two abysses, until finally the skin is gone and I fall into what I will.

The uncertainty decides me. All my life, I have been terrified by meaninglessness, by the thought of becoming completely disconnected and simply floating. After all, I was not unhappy chasing Sturm, with the lion following behind. It would not be hard to dismiss this all as a dream and continue living, blissful, in my insanity until finally my body somewhere decomposes enough for the heart to stop beating. It is not such a hard decision after all.