Diorama

Diorama

This world within a world is not all that it seems…

Perched on a swivel stool on the left side of the room, clothed in a white scrub tunic, clogs and a printed bandana. Her glance was one of awe and disbelief directed at the table where stood the practitioner exuding a maniacal persona baring a steely countenance. His chest and arms were flanked by bottle green drapery, his hand appeared mottled and wet under its latex sheathe, clasping tightly the cutting blade with fresh traces of blood banked on its hilt. His eyes crazed by perspiration trickling from his crow’s feet into the squint of each eye. It appeared hot in there.
A small incense burner worked away quietly in the far corner where the light was difficult and detail was diminished beneath the concrete flight of stairs leading away and up to a splintered wooden door that was precariously ajar. The light from this source had an orange glow and the haze of its own aura was shared with the lower room ever so menacingly.
A keeper of handcrafted rods adorned the near wall, notable for its incompleteness. Those in attendance stood still like toothpicks dipped in robins-egg powder. The chunky turned legs of the table supporting the infirmed appeared under little stress as the anaesthetized pursy subject lay exposed from the midriff upwards, his milky white torso lay resplendent and peaceful. If he was to display pain, he was never to be heard despite the attention shown by another practitioner holding a cloth over his nares. A bottle of salts stood idle next to his head on the manicured green matting. The over-light hung slightly askew, as if it had recently been bumped and was caught on a half swing, its frayed edgings creating combs of shadow at the borders of its intensity.
The incision was clean yet remarkable in its account, agape with two half circular notches at the midline of each side. The sliced edges slightly pouting with a definable ringlet of raised trauma around the entry site. A silver dish rests neatly on - but not sunk- in the middle pocket, its contents robbed from view by the high beveled rim, only the smear of claret within, an indication that it carried a particle its host had unwittingly conceded.
The attendant on the chair remained fixed in her gaze, her clothing and checkered trousers bearing stains noted usually without persecution on a butchers apron. The rigid practitioner’s mission was all but sewn. Only in the aftermath would his clients’ predicament be known. How could it be known ? The staircase without a banister fettered its own sense of danger, on and beyond its apex. The smoke created from the incense burner spiraled upwards offering pirouettes of meandering sinusoids before reaching their diffusing point and fading out, as they ascended to the top of the painting.


By: Paul Delbridge