Dear Paper Frankenstein,
The time of my first exhibition finally came. And it was an absolute, humiliating disaster. I am furious, Frankie.
I am writing from my favourite desk at the campus library, secluded and near the window, trying to steady my hands. I am not shaking from guilt. I am shaking from the profound frustration of a ruined aesthetic.
Marcus Thorne has been successfully curated out of the collection… yes. But it turned out to be a pathetic and chaotic butchery.
I should have known that the equipment stolen from the university lab wouldn't be enough to effectively synthesise the Clostridium botulinum extracted from my mother's care package.
What frustrates me even more is my own incompetence. I am a curator, after all, not a biochemist. My extraction was impure. The dosage was flawed.
It should have been liquid silence, but instead, it was liquid pandemonium.
It is utterly maddening. I planned, thought, rethought, and double-checked every tiny detail. I assumed I had controlled for every variable. But I was deeply, overwhelmingly wrong.
Maybe if I lay it all out on paper and then read it again, I can find the loophole. I don't know what to do, Frankie. I'm panicking… which I think is more than evident since I'm trying to seek comfort in a stack of recycled old fine arts notes. Sorry, Frankie, I didn't mean that as an insult.
I'm holding my breath for a moment longer than I should. Just to see if it changes anything. It doesn't.
Regardless. Let us begin.
As with every Tuesday morning, I made my calculated entrance. As always, I arrived half an hour early, carrying my coffee from home in a thermal tumbler, ensuring I secured my preferred vantage point.
I waited for my prey to make his entrance while rehearsing the whole curatorial process in my head.
Then, at 9:45, the insect walked in with his disgusting detox smoothie. I didn't even need to look at him; I can recognise him from a mile away by that buzzing, grating hum of a mosquito.
After a cordial "good morning," he left his belongings at one of the front desks (he needs to be as close as possible to the lecturer, otherwise his little tricks wouldn't work) and started wandering around the corridors looking for either a professor to flatter or some girl to fool.
That was my moment.
So, I stood up and slipped a few concentrated drops of the extracted compound into that green shit of his.
I had chosen my seat that morning carefully to have the perfect view of the spectacle: Marcus drinking his aesthetic end during our morning class. Or so I thought.
I sat two rows behind him, anticipating the quiet, beautiful flaccid paralysis. I expected him to simply fade into the negative space, slipping into a peaceful, unnoticed cardiac arrest.
Instead, the impurity triggered a violently asymmetrical reaction.
The paralysis hit his pharynx and vocal cords first, but not his limbs. Marcus suddenly clutched his throat, his face turning a grotesque shade of purple. He couldn't breathe, but he was entirely conscious. He panicked. He stood up, knocking over his desk with a deafening crash, thrashing wildly as his lungs desperately tried to pull air that couldn't pass his paralysed throat.
The room erupted into screaming and panic, mirroring Marcus's own frantic display. The "white cube" I had envisioned was entirely shattered by noise and chaos.
Then, the true aesthetic failure occurred. Marcus tripped over his own chair and fell face-first onto the concrete floor. The sickening crack echoed off the acoustic panels. His nose shattered. A deep gash opened across his forehead. Blood—so much loud, aggressive, violently red blood—began pooling on the pristine grey concrete, mixing with his froth as he convulsed and finally choked to death on his own fluids.
It was messy. It was disgusting. It was exactly the kind of loud, raw ending I despise. That's why I don't watch popular true crime bullshit.
While the professor screamed and students scrambled away in horror, I remained in my seat, utterly disgusted by my own flawed curation. To my pleasant surprise, though, only a few girls who had been hypnotised by his money earlier ran out of the room in desperate search of medical help. Marcus was even more pathetic than I thought. Ha.
But as I scanned the room, I noticed I wasn't the only one sitting still.
As the screaming crowd poured out of the doors, a shadow remained firmly rooted in place.
Three rows down, sitting on the aisle, was a pale, gaunt student wearing a cheap, slightly worn velvet vest. I recognised him from the campus grounds. Adrian Dragan. A chronic, eternal medical student who had been failing his clinical rotations for years. He's practically an eponym for failure.
Adrian wasn't panicking. He wasn't calling an ambulance. He was leaning forward, his dark, hollow eyes completely fixated on the expanding pool of blood around Marcus's head. He looked mesmerised, almost hungry, tracking the viscosity and the exact hue of the crimson liquid.
When Marcus finally stopped twitching, Adrian slowly lifted his gaze. He didn't look at the body. He looked directly at me.
Through the chaos of the screaming students, his dead eyes locked onto mine. He didn't see me doing it, but he knew. Nobody else in the class was as calm as I was, except him.
He didn't speak. He simply gave me a slow, knowing smile that made my skin crawl, and then quietly slipped out of the back doors before campus security arrived.
I spent the afternoon being interviewed by the police as a "traumatised witness." They suspect a sudden, severe allergic reaction or an aneurysm caused the fall. They are blind.
But Adrian is not.
Two hours ago, as I was walking out of the rooms the university lent to the police for interviewing students, he was waiting for me under the campus oak trees. He was smoking a vintage-looking cigar, the smell mixing awfully with the metallic scent he seemed to exude naturally.
"The methodology was crude," he said, his voice wet and gravelly, skipping any pleasantries. "But the intention... the intention was art. You just lack the proper paintbrushes."
"I don't know what you are talking about," I replied coldly, keeping my distance.
"I am a failure in medicine because I care more about the ink than the patient," Adrian murmured, stepping closer, his eyes glinting. "But you... you don't care about either. You care about the frame. I know people in the city. Real collectors. People who appreciate an immaculate white cube, and who have the resources to ensure you never have to deal with a messy red spill again. A man named Mirov."
He handed me a sleek, matte black business card with a single address in Chelsea printed on it.
"Tomorrow night at ten," Adrian whispered. "Bring your portfolio."
I am looking at the card right now, Frankie. I failed today. My art was noisy and vulgar. I thought it would be a great start, but one has to learn. And to become a master, one must endure an apprenticeship. Tomorrow, I will go to Chelsea. I will meet this Alexandru Mirov.
And I will learn how to make the world truly, perfectly silent.
Vera