“The Muse” (2025)

A Flemish woman tried to kidnap me, and clearly it was her first time, so I decided to help her, because kidnapping is a male-dominated industry.

She brought me back to her house, where she’d made up a bed for me and put a flimsy lock on the door. I was supposed to be her model. I got dressed up and undressed, and sitting under the raw lights with my makeup slowly melting, I realized two things: she wasn’t a very good photographer, and these were pictures for others to enjoy. Halfway through I asked to see a few, and I looked like I had a fever. But then she looked at me with shining eyes and told me that I was going to be her muse. And that’s when I started posing.

From that point on, I got to do my own makeup, and then I practiced doing the lighting too. The images started to look more like the fantasy she wanted to portray. She sold more pictures. Some of them have my signature. I put my real name on them. Is that why I’m in here?

I was older than she wanted. She shaved my face every day, closer and closer, to the point of little dots of blood. She didn’t like my stomach either. My post-pubertarian body with its wear and tear affected the fantasy we were trying to enact. To console her over the fact that I was human, I would suck in my gut a little and pose a little more daring. She would clap her little fat hands and roll up the film.

We got married for tax purposes, and we spent the wedding night installing a new, bigger lock. It was my idea, I had figured out how to pick the old one ages ago. We were very drunk and very happy, grinding our teeth so hard we could hear it.

She still wouldn’t sleep with me, though.

When she died, I undressed her and arranged her body on the velvet couch. I set up the lighting, I blushed her cheeks rosy, and I did a tasteful series of Polaroids. Then I took the key from her pocket and exited into the Belgian autumn. The pictures got lost, however. Is that why I’m in here?