The Ideal Form

The steak sits in front of her on the plate—huge and purple and bloody. She pokes at it with her fork, watching the meat quiver slightly as if it was, again, a living, breathing thing. Red juices seep from the browned exterior and flow towards a heap of mashed potatoes piled high on the other side, staining them a deep, fleshy pink. A tongue, thick and lumpy. 

She stares at her plate until she goes cross-eyed. The steak and potatoes blur and swim, overlapping within her field of vision until, no matter how hard she tries, she can’t untangle the two. They’re part of the same creature, the steak and mashed potatoes, a heaving body and a lolling tongue, bleeding all over the white porcelain. 

Even if she was hungry—which she’s not, she hasn’t been for days—she couldn’t bring herself to eat the monstrosity on her plate. There are too many competing textures, too many consequences to consider. Say she starts with the safer of the two choices, the pink-soaked mashed potatoes. It’s simple, isn’t it? To simply shovel a quick bite into her mouth and gulp it down without a second thought. But it’s much too late for that: the mashed potatoes are a tongue and she imagines the feeling of this slippery organ, fattened with blood and butter, in her mouth, filling her throat until she almost chokes, before, finally, it down her esophagus. It lands with a solid thunk in her stomach, sits there growing cold. 

Now the steak: it’s muscle. This is a fact. And muscle is chewy; it’s heavy and dense. Steak refuses to go down as easily as mashed potatoes: there’s a forced repetition involved in its consumption. You chew and chew and chew and it’s like an infinity; you’ll never be finished. There’s too much time to think about all that muscle passing between your teeth grinding up and down, up and down. And what about what’s underneath? If the steak is not just meat but a body, won’t there be bone, fluid, organs on the inside? How would it feel to digest this all, this veritable feast before her? 

When she was seven years old, she saw her father shoot a horse dead. It was an accident, but she saw it all the same. They were staying at a ranch in Colorado for the summer so that her father, a sculptor, could gather inspiration from the rugged mountain landscape for an upcoming project. On the last day of their visit, one of the horses, a chestnut mare with a white star and big, trusting brown eyes, broke her leg. “There’s nothing to be done,” a ranch hand told them after her father asked what they could do to ease the animal’s pain. “It’s the ol’ girl’s time.” 

Her father bent down next to her and gripped her slender shoulders with his calloused hands. His icy blue eyes fixed hers in a piercing stare that sent a chill slipping down her spine, and she squirmed in his grasp, twisting to get away. “Daddy, let go.”

Although he relaxed his grip, his gaze never faltered: it bore into her with an intensity she only ever saw when he was at work in his studio at home. It was the look of a man with a singular purpose, one so narrow and clear to him alone that anything else was but an obstacle to his success. 

“Cassandra,” he said. She stopped moving and met his eyes hesitantly. He used her full name; this was serious. “Cassandra, be a good girl and run back to the house, okay? Daddy has something he has to do.” 

Blinking slowly, she looked from the mare to her father, not understanding. He attempted a reassuring smile, but his eyes burned the blue of a fiery young star and it scared her. She managed a nod before running back to the house and slamming the door behind her. Dashing to the living room, she leaped onto the couch, her small body sinking deep into the leather cushions. She wanted to stay there (she wishes she had), buried in the safety of the couch like the warm hug of a friend. But there was a magnetism drawing her to the window; she peered over the back of the couch and out through the curtains.

Out in the distance, she watched as her father climbed over the fence and stepped into the corral with the mare. He approached the horse, careful not to make any sudden movements that would frighten her. From the window, she saw him reach out a steady hand to stroke the snowy star on her forehead. The ranch hand, a rifle clenched in his left fist, touched her father on the shoulder. It’s time to go. 

But instead of climbing back over her fence, as she expected her father to do, he shook his head and pointed to the rifle, mouthing something. The ranch hand’s eyes widened and he glanced down at his hip where the rifle rested, hesitating. Finally, shaking his head, he passed the rifle to her father and stood aside to give him enough space. Her father leveled the rifle, aimed, and fired. Bang. 

She stared in horrified silence as the horse screamed, reeled back, stumbled on its broken leg, and collapsed. When the screaming didn’t stop, her father fired one, two more shots into the mare’s forehead. The horse’s enormous muscles heaved and shuddered: then, nothing. Even from so far away, she saw dark crimson patches spread from the bullet wounds, staining the mare’s perfect white star. After the ranch hand knelt down next to her and confirmed she’s dead, her father dropped the rifle in the dust and turned towards the house. She dropped down onto the floor, out of sight, racing up to the bedroom she shared with her father. As she heard the front door creak open, she slammed the bedroom door behind her. Bang. 

He never mentioned a word about what he had done, and she never told him what she saw. It’s this horse that she thinks of as she gazes at the steak and mashed potatoes. She sees the horse’s form in the shape of the steak. 

“Cass, you going to finish those?” Her father’s voice rips her from her thoughts, and suddenly she’s back at the dinner table. 

“Huh?” She shakes her head to chase the rest of the memory away before looking across the table to meet her father’s frozen gaze. “What?” 

In the center of the table, an exquisite bouquet of sunflowers bursts from a tasteful vase of her father’s own design, so grand it nearly blocks her entire view of her father; only his head is visible above the golden petals. The contrast is enough to make her stifle a giggle behind her napkin: her father, the epitome of the serious, stoic artist with his piercing blue stare, thin-lipped smile, and measured tone, framed by a delicate collar of flowers. It isn’t a very flattering look. She relishes even this small moment when she can catch her father off-guard, out of his usual perfectly manicured state that he presents to the crowds who flock to see his work, to see him as he truly is, a human capable of error. 

“I said, are you going to finish those?” Her father gestures vaguely in the direction of her mashed potatoes. Although they’ve been sitting at the dinner table for half an hour now, eating in silence as they typically do, she hasn’t touched her potatoes. He hasn’t noticed. 

Shrugging, she slides her plate across the table and bumps the vase. It wobbles slightly, threatening to spill its bountiful contents, but her father reaches out a hand to steady it. He peers at her as if to ask Are you an idiot? but focuses his attention on newly arrived mashed potatoes at his side. Scraping them slowly onto his plate with his fork, he clicks his tongues. “Be careful next time, Cassie. You wouldn’t want to break your own father’s masterpiece, would you?” 

You don’t know what I want. But she can’t say that of course, so she chokes down her response and forces out, “No, dad. I’m sorry.” 

He grunts his approval and grins at her, revealing the tiny pieces of steak caught in between his teeth. Horse meat. Her head swims at the thought; the room spins and she grabs the edge of the table to balance herself. This feeling, the one of nausea rising up her throat and of her heart palpitating in her chest off-beat, has gotten worse, especially since she has stopped eating. She likes the control it gives her, the ability to make herself disappear piece by piece until she’s invisible as her father makes her feel, but the effects of a fading body are exhausting. The act of creating a non-existence is no easy feat. 

Her father touches his napkin gingerly to his lips, wiping off a bit of leftover mashed potato. “Cassie, I’d like to show you how my work’s progressed once you’ve finished eating. I need a pair of fresh eyes.” His gaze burns brightly; she can see the obsession consuming his mind. His work is everything. There’s no use saying no; there never is. 

“Sure, dad. I’ll clean up and meet you in the studio in a second, yeah?” 

He nods, tossing his used napkin onto his empty plate. “Yes, I’ll just set everything up then.” 

After he leaves, she carries the dishes to the trash where she slides her entire untouched steak off her plate. It lands with a satisfying thunk in the bottom of the bin. She smiles a small smile of victory—her father is none the wiser to her act of rebellion—and places the dishes in the sink for later. 

When she enters her father’s studio, her eyes fall on his work station littered with sketches and tools of various shapes and sizes. In the center of the room, covered in a large gray tarp, is a formless object. Her father stands beside it, tracing the outline of his masterpiece with a lazy finger, letting it dip and dive over the ripples in the fabric. The way he studies the tarp as if it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen, she can tell he’s distracted, itching to share his genius with her. That’s all he ever wanted. She clears her throat awkwardly to get his attention. “Uh, dad?” 

“Mmm, what? Oh yes, I didn’t see you come in, Cassandra.” The hairs at the back of her neck bristle at her full name. This is serious. 

He coughs once and begins again. “Cassandra, now I want your honest opinion on this piece, okay? No holding back this time. I need to know if it has gravitas.” 

It’s all she can do but stop herself from rolling her eyes at the word that he likely stole from a thesaurus. Instead, she just nods. 

With a dramatic sweeping motion, her father flourishes the tarp aside, revealing his latest creation underneath. Her stomach drops to her feet and her heart soars up and out of her chest at the sight before her. “I call it ‘The Ideal Form’,” he whispers, in awe of himself. Six feet of white marble tower before her, roughly the same height as her father. The middle section, a simple pillar shape, juts out at harsh angles level with her father’s hips and chest. Even before he explains what’s before her, she already knows what she’s looking at. It’s the same thing she sees when she stands, naked, in front of a mirror each and every day. It’s a human body, an abstract human body, but it’s her body. Those hips are her hips, the skin pulled taunt against protruding bones. And that chest is her chest, sinking in, the collarbones on the brink of collapse. 

Suddenly, she’s too aware of herself; the air in the studio is too thin and she can’t get enough. There’s dust settling in her lungs, filling her up to the point of bursting. It’s too much. I’m killing myself, I’m thin enough to pass through the eye of a needle, and he thinks it’s perfection. The studio sways in her view, blackens around the edges. Heartbeat lurches forward, out of sync with her breath and her racing thoughts. She opens her mouth to speak but the words are cut off by her crashing to the floor. On the way down, her forehead catches on the edge of the sculpture, ripping a wide gash. Her wound seeps blood around the base of the sculpture and stains the wooden floor a rich velvet red. 

Next to Cassie, her father watches the whole scene pass in eerie silence, remaining a statue himself as he witnesses his daughter’s collapse. Inside, though, he’s bursting with joy: to see someone, his own daughter, react with such uncontainable emotion that they faint at the sight of his brilliance manifest is more than he can bear. But his daughter has provided him with the perfect final touch. Carefully, as not to wake her, he kneels beside her and dips his hands into the blood flowing from her skull. And in a delicate, practiced script he writes “The Ideal Form” down the middle of his masterpiece. Years ago, a dying mare provided him with the inspiration necessary to kickstart his career as a budding artist; the lifeforce of a beautiful creature draining away before his very eyes fascinated him, made him hungry to create. How poetic that Cassie should provide me with the same motivation, he thinks. Although his daughter is turning cold as marble beside him, he takes a moment to admire his finished masterpiece. He smiles. His work is complete.

About the Author

Abby Worthington is a junior double majoring in English and French and Francophone Studies. She loves writing short stories and hopes to publish a book of her own someday.