My dearest Eric,

I hope this letter finds you well and that it may help make the recovery from your sniper wound less unpleasant. I hear the trenches on the Spanish battlefields are not suited for your considerable height and you were, in consequence, regarded as an easy target. It is with deep concern that I heard of your mishap, which made me regret not insisting more that you stay here with your wife Eileen. I was beyond reassured when I learned that you had survived and were on the mend. Alas, I hear that it is only a matter of time until the Falange will seize Barcelona and outlaw your Marxist Unification Party. Ever since being unintentionally martyrized by his execution, José Antonio’s power seems ever on the rise.

Political debates and future history book anecdotes aside, I am writing to address an event that has recently transpired and has left me questioning my moral beliefs as well as shaken the very foundation of my sexual convictions.

I got invited to a most curious and obscure vernissage of artistic photography. While you may argue that since the emergence of the 35 mm Leica II a few years ago, photography has become such a habitual commodity that it has lost whatever remained of its appeal or artistic value, I promise you that this account will be worth your while. Albeit not exactly being what our society, blunted by trite Art Déco, would acknowledge as palatable diversion, our sadly departed Howard would have certainly appreciated this exotic night, yet, as you certainly heard, he has, at last, succumbed to his chronic belly pain. His physician, so I was told, diagnosed a terminal cancer of the small intestine just weeks before his passing.

In the end, it was his unjustified fear of doctors that bested him. Perhaps he followed the beckoning call of his Great Old Ones he had created in his many amusingly ghastly scripts. Certainly a better outlook than the rise of fascism that is haunting the European landscape at the moment—and may keep doing so for the years to come. It is a constant fear that has been tormenting us ever since that angry Austrian mustache model was elected German Chancellor. Elected!

Enough of the trivial banalities. Instead of further boring you with my ramblings, I shall proceed to more interesting matters.

With the curator’s speech opening the night, the glasses clinked. Charpentier Brut. Pre-prohibition vintage. Wherever in times of civil war and general unrest this had been sourced from, it gave the evening the necessary air of decadence. Possibly just a particularly well-staged fugue from the loom and gloom of our daily lives. The past decade’s great depression can still be felt in so many ways that every little escape from such dark thoughts offers a much-needed rest for the soul.

On the stage, next to the curator stood the artist. Miss Takashima Sensei, they called her, a formidably attractive woman from the land of the rising sun. I later learned that she too seeks to escape the political intricacies of her country and China. Truly, the entire world seems to dwindle into yet another cataclysm of human-made mass-butchering of gargantuan proportion. From which recesses of the human abysses, I wonder, does such perverse pleasure from suffering and pain come from? I am once more digressing.

At a bit of a distance from the curator and artist stood two other figures. These two had their faces painted in white and a black bar drawn over their eyes, shoulder-length ginger hair pomaded back. Both were wearing a traditional dress I heard them call kimono that was in complementary colors to the artist’s and completely covered their bodies, except for pale forearms dangling from their sides. The make-up gave their eyes a piercing intensity without giving away much of an expression.

Here, I shall try to reproduce bits of the curator’s speech, for it gave an excellent explanation of the exhibited art.

“Thank you, everyone,” she spoke, “for joining us for this exclusive night dedicated to celebrating Takashima Sensei’s new collection of masterpieces: Dissection. In her anatomical studies, rope mistress Takashima Sensei worked with two models whom she tied and suspended in her workshop. By superposing photographs taken from her empty workspace and the tied models, she subtracted the ropes from the pictures, giving them the appearance of body parts floating in space.

As if on cue, both models disrobed and let their kimonos slide off their shoulders to the ground, revealing a female and a male body, both equally athletic, emanating a breathtakingly majestic aura, clad in only scandalously skimpy, skin-tight underpants. As revolting as this blatant display of public indecency was—especially the woman’s overtly presented bosom, neck and ankles—the general riot was nipped in the bud when everyone’s eyes were drawn to what looked like body make-up to the untrained eye. In fact, their bodies were covered in bruises and rope marks that could not be older than just a few days and gave an impressive display of their dedication to the art.

To be completely honest, it was only when the female-bodied model looked down in my general direction from the stage that I realized she had everything save for her private parts revealed. Her near-nudity paired with that coldly confident allure gave her an air of unapproachability. At the same time, it was evident what the make-up was for: it objectified the models as mere actors in photographs.

As much as I attempted to remind myself to follow the curator’s babbling, though short as it might have been, there was no escaping from the spell I was under. Only when one of those modern radio-grade grammophones started playing did I get shaken out of my reverie. To that point, I had only heard that the Radio Corporation of America had developed a revolutionary disc made from synthetic polyvinyl chloride rather than the fragile shellac, capable of playing just over twenty minutes of music without interruption per side. Truly, this unstoppable technological advancement is bound to send us to the moon one day.

I stepped through the hall, drinking in picture after picture. True to the curator’s words, they displayed severed limbs floating in thin air that looked as though taken from an anatomy book. The cuts were clean and of an uncanny elegance. They emitted an irresistible pull to the watcher’s eye, unable to look away from the horrific scenes captured. To give you a better impression of the style, I shall say that the photography technique bore a striking resemblance to the print copies from Méret Oppenheim’s debut exhibition that I sent you a few weeks ago.

Despite my initial resentment, the pictures resonated within me so deeply that I caught myself double-checking my own bodily integrity on several occasions. It was a shockingly excited sensation that befell me every time I beheld a new piece of body seemingly levitating. This sense of eroticism got only emphasized by the facial expressions of the models, whenever present: mouths agape, moaning in blissful pleasure so well captured that I thought I could hear them.

It intrigued me how such ecstasy could be induced by something so absurd and painful. I remember reading about women and menfolk alike reaching new heights of enjoyment through corporeal punishments but had always dismissed those reports as exaggerated or springing from the devious minds of degenerate souls. At this instant, however, I gazed upon a distinct profile portrait picture. The head was severed from the body at the neck—the mental image of having a rope strung around mine alone gave me excited shivers. Just under the nose was another cut, only leaving the full lips of a mouth open wide in pure rapture, tongue stuck out with webs of phlegm connected to the teeth. It was a perfect display of absolute joy.

Absurdly enough, I felt my loins respond to this visual stimulus in the most peculiar ways, warming my underbelly to the point where an uncontrolled gasp left my mouth. I tried to suppress the blush that rose to my cheeks and preserve the little decency a person of my status still possesses.

Nevertheless, the most disgraceful of those pictures was the final one. It was only when I reached it that I realized I had been—save for the curator, artist and the models—utterly abandoned. Everyone else had left the hall, most of them angered by the revulsion this 'vulgar display of violent pornography' had evoked in them. I could not blame them for preferring less crass art of the likes of Sophie Täuber-Arp that, although equally thought-provoking, does not require quite as stable a mind to endure.

Upon beholding this final picture, my mouth went dry and fell agape, as I could not help an unflatteringly shrill shriek. It displayed two limb-and headless bodies engaged in copulation. The legs were severed at mid-thigh while the arms were cut directly at the shoulders. The necks were stumped just below the Adam’s apples while the heads were floating above them, faces contorted in orgasmic euphoria. In that photograph, the actors wore the same black line across their eyes. Since they were closed, the eyes disappeared completely from the picture, giving them an appearance of non-existence as if they had been cut from the picture, leaving only an uncomfortable void.

“This one,” a female voice right beside me startled me, “was taken just three days ago.”

She was standing so close to me that I could smell her scent, and yet I had not noticed her approaching me. I turned to find the model standing right next to me, stroking my forearm with an air of unexpected familiarity. Despite the intrusion of my personal space, I found her gesture quite comforting, which, in retrospect, strikes me as most strange, given her state of undress.

“Truly, it was the climax of our collaboration with Takashima Sensei,” a male voice right behind me made the hairs on my nape stand up. I could feel the lips whisper the words right into my ear, the warm, moist draft sending shivers down my spine. At this point, I was unsure whether it was out of bone-chilling horror or belly-warming arousal.

I’ve heard it said that dread and excitement have their source in closely located areas in the brain. In fact, the brain being the largest sex organ, mental stimulus unlocks the highest of pleasures. It was not until this exact moment, nevertheless, that I fully understood what this really meant. I was, in equal measure, terrified and enthralled by what I had witnessed, unable to form words, cursing my loins for so easily betraying me and unmistakably flaunting my urgent need for release.

An approving moan escaped my mouth before I even realized what was being done to me when his fingers closed around my throat and pulled me back. Through his thin undergarments, his impressive erection found the crack between my buttocks, leaving no doubts about his intentions. His co-actress flashed her teeth at my lewd display of zest and approached me in a swift motion. Her lips landed on mine, swallowing another surprised gasp from me.

Distracted by the models, I failed to register the rope that the artist herself was already tying around both my wrists to firmly lock them behind my back. It was only when I tried to free myself from my predicament that I noticed I had already been tied to an anchor hanging from the ceiling.

My situation left me no choice but to surrender to the anticipation of unprecedented lust I was experiencing and let these three people use me as their source of sexual satisfaction.

I found that I could not possibly imagine a more gratifying way of being worshiped.

Unfortunately, as sensations become so overwhelming and overpowering without precedent, the mind blurs out the events, and all that remains clear is the profound feeling of love and care that was shared with me. This and the singular feeling of thorough fulfillment that filled my heart.

As of now, I have joined the little group of rope artists on their travels as a model, as I am afraid they may have infected me with their affection and fondness for Far Eastern intimacy, and I would develop a craving for the rope that cannot be fulfilled should I be deprived of it.

With this, my dear friend, I shall wish you a quick recovery.

All the love, kind regards, yours truly, yadda, et cetera, et cetera.