Stanislaw Had A Box For Everything – Part 4

Without warning, but just as the good psychiatrist had once predicted it would, the office erupted in a cacophony of noise: glass shattering as words long repressed burst screeching through the screens and broke into a thousand fragmented letters, an escaped Fear Bird squawking in bewildered terror, a beach-hatted figure – whom Stanislaw recognised immediately as his old enemy Sub – baseball batting scarred nursery tunes off the violin he had once loved.

“You locked us away, punk! You locked us away!”

The voice was disconcertingly close, startlingly familiar. Stanislaw turned and gasped in horror, not so much at the sight of the pistol protruding from the screen as at the realisation that the hand holding it was attached to his ten-year-old self.

“Why did you do it, Stani? Did you really think we’d never get out?” The face behind the mask laughed mirthlessly and the hand pulled the trigger. Stanislaw felt his mind and body dissolve away.

This ongoing story, "Stanislaw Had A Box For Everything ", is based on ipad fingerpaintings by Matthew Watkins and Cédric Philippe.

http://www.watkinsmedia.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthew-watkins/
http://cedricphilippe.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41631388@N02/

Matthew's Fingerpaintings will be on display from June 18th - 26th at the Sala Murat, Bari, Italy.

Stanislaw Had A Box For Everything – Part 3

Precisely when Stanislaw had blacked out was not clear to him, but he sensed he was now waking into one of the old nightmares. Like when he was in the clinic and they were drugging his porridge.

From somewhere close by, in the dead tones of a hostage imprisoned in an interminable loop, a vaguely familiar voice was repeating the refrain: “Good evening, this is the news. You can’t box up emotion.” Cold-sweating, Stanislaw looked around him. His cartons had morphed into battered TV sets with screens striving primordially to burst into life, and hellish green swamp vapours were rising from the floorless depths of the Box Chamber. He shuddered.

The voice suddenly dissolved into eerie laughter that caused Stanislaw to start. The bad psychiatrist! Terrified now, he looked up, but the face on the screen was not the one he so feared. It belonged to a wild-eyed macaque which, as it caught his eye, broke off its cackling and enquired facetiously: “How you gonna cope wi’ life as a dwarf penguin, man? You got yourself a cool box wi’ fish?”

This story, "Stanislaw Had A Box For Everything ", is based on ipad fingerpaintings by Matthew Watkins and Cédric Philippe.
Matthew Watkins:
www.watkinsmedia.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthew-watkins/
Cédric Philippe:
http://cedricphilippe.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41631388@N02/.

Stanislaw Had A Box For Everything - Part 2

“One of the boxes is open.” The thought raced back and forth unchecked like a crazed moth across the uncluttered whiteness of Stanislaw’s middle-mind. Seconds, perhaps minutes, passed before – as the good psychiatrist had assured him it always would – the darkness of reason began to exert its calming effect on this latest mental intruder.

“Impossible,” he told himself. “The vacuum-locking system CANNOT fail.” Clutching the table, he blink-breathed to a count of thirty, then straightened up, relief exploding magically in his belly. “Unless…”

Panic-stricken now, Stanislaw pulled the table aside, fell to his knees and wrenched open the door to his Box Chamber. The bad psychiatrist had once punched him so hard in the solar plexus that he had felt like he was drowning in air. This was worse: the hands on the pressure gauge were swinging dangerously towards the vertical, the blue safety lights at the back of the Chamber were out, and there was no sign of life. He felt the hair he no longer had prickle terrified on his head, but there was nothing else for it. Stanislaw slid forward into the dark stillness.


This story, "Stanislaw Had A Box For Everything ", is based on ipad fingerpaintings by Matthew Watkins and Cédric Philippe.
Matthew Watkins:
www.watkinsmedia.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthew-watkins/
Cédric Philippe:
http://cedricphilippe.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41631388@N02/.

Stanislaw Had a Box for Everything

The first one had been the hardest. He’d been young then, of course, but the memories of trying to hold that lid on were still every bit as real as the smell of freshly cut cardboard in the operating theatre. Sometimes at night, amid the muffled hubbub from the rowdier prisoners in the upper boxes, it seemed to Stanislaw that he could make out the higher pitch of that first victim’s squeal.

At the moment, however, the office was unnaturally hushed. And that was not all. No sooner had he emerged from the theatre than Stanislaw saw that his desk was not as it should be: the boxing schedules and progress reports were no longer in their neat rectangular pile, but scattered haphazardly here and there, while three of the “souvenir” pigeon holes were darkly empty.

Stanislaw laid down his surgical towel and plunged into deep reflection. Of a sudden, his ears pricked up. The sound was unmistakable. One of the boxes was open.

This mini-story was inspired by "Stanislaw Had a Box for Everything", an ipad finger painting by Matthew Watkins. Matthew's Fingerpaintings will be on display from June 18th - 26th at the Sala Murat, Bari, Italy. Website: www.watkinsmedia.com