Each stroke felt deliberate, yet sloppy. There was precision to the movements, both the soft, slow caresses and the more rapid strikes, but there was a frenzied feel to each application of the brush, as if the executioner was entering each movement with a vivid image in mind, only to find themselves lost the moment the visual started to take form. There was something so strange about the relationship between the mind and the tips of the fingers; it seemed that no matter how nuanced or precise the work was at its mental conception, the body turned autonomous the instant it was beckoned.
This liaison was peculiar, however, in that it seemed exclusive to those creative endeavors that most required its absence. No such thing occurred with the menial, the lifting of an eating utensil or the turning of a doorknob, and yet it was positively pervasive as it pertained to painting. The Artist would stare at her fingers menacingly as she began to construct forms that though once rooted in her imagination, seemed altogether removed from her being as they materialized. Such was the case in this current work, this portrait that had deviated so radically, and so maliciously, from her intentions that she was compelled to set it ablaze even as she poured her energy and her focus into it unwaveringly. Though perhaps her resistance to such an idea was born more from consequence. Perhaps it was because she knew that doing so would only postpone it, for this next portrait had to be next, her fingers would allow nothing else, not from the moment they pressed the brush to the canvas. The head was starting to truly take shape now. Before it had been some oblong aberration floating in a sea of white, though now that the shoulders were nearly complete, the shape above had somehow taken a new form, one more indicative of livelihood. The face would be detailed next, before the extension of the torso and the legs, and this was what she dreaded most, for in all of her creations, that was always the part that incited the confrontations, and for this depiction in particular it was quite excruciating, previous incarnations of the figure had revealed to her this much. The canvas was roughly her size, though she was a petite thing, and thus it was suggestive of nothing grand. It sat on a battered easel though, the only one she’d ever used, and often, during her respites from such labors, she’d wondered if it was the easel that produced the strangeness of her paintings, for it seemed the only consistent apparatus in use, as she was forced to replenish all of her other supplies, canvases included. And yet, she had never once considered abandoning it; if it was indeed cursed, she thought, it was her curse to bear. Between her and the easel, there was little else in the way of occupied space in this particular room. What for any other person would have been a lovely sitting room in a medium-sized apartment had instead morphed into her studio over the years, far from intentionally but with no real desire for anything else. The floors and walls were stained, the couch where she slept was pushed up against a wall, blocking the dusty, curtainless window best it could, and boxes upon boxes of unidentifiable items cut off the route to her kitchen. There was only one other room in the residence, bar the bathroom, and it was the room that she ventured into least; the one wherein she kept her supplies—and her people. She allowed herself a fragment of a thought about them as she traced her brush slowly along the corners of the head, producing his ears. Still with no face to speak of, she took this moment to address him. “I’m going to do it now,” she announced to the patchy portrayal, her voice far more timid than she would have liked. “You- you remember what we talked about before.” The depiction gave no indication that it had heard, but she knew that it had. A moment later, she’d started to outline the eyes, and then, after a dip into the lightest of reds, she began to draw the lining of the mouth- “My legs! Where are my legs!” No matter how many times she heard his voice, the first instance of it was always enough to make her jump. Doing so caused her to drag the brush upwards less than a centimeter, though the effect was instantaneous. “My face!’ the portrait yet, as the speckle of red splashed towards the vague forehead she’d given him. “You’ve slashed my face-” “It’s just a scratch!” she pleaded, already feeling her heartbeat accelerate. At the next moment she’d brought her own lips to her thumb, and was then rubbing at the speck. “You can’t distract me like that-” “Where are my legs!” he repeated, and she grimaced. The effect that his prickly, uncivil tone had on her was unmatched by any other that her creations could produce. Some of them spoke sweetly, and warmed her heart, others with a sense of collection that made them feel quite distant, but his—his brought forth feelings of utter dread. She had witnessed his violence first-hand before, and when he spoke, his voice possessed that same rage that accompanied his actions. It would be a tremendous relief to finally complete him, a task that she had commanded of herself for this occasion. “What are you doing!?” he spat at her. “Just going to leave me floating here, again, before you kill me-” “I’ve never done that,” she reasoned, though she was only-half listening, for she’d given into his demands, as she always did, and started to work on his legs. “I’ve painted over you, that’s all. You’ve just needed a bit of work in my head first, that’s all,” she implored, and he sneered. “Liar!” he barked. “You like torturing me, that’s it. That’s why you do this, you give me life, give me vision, breath, just so you can take it away and return it to me at a whim. You’ve made me your plaything, that’s it, you—what is wrong with my foot!? What have you done, you talentless imbecile, hm?” “I’m sorry!” she said, and she meant it. She had ruined his left foot, making it far too round. “Oh I see, you don’t want me running, that’s it, very clever, oh yes, hm, yes, very clever, perhaps not an imbecile, merely a monster, that’s all-” “I’ll fix it, I will, I will…” He ignored her however, and was now making little “tsks” at each of her strokes, however light. These noises of contempt persisted well into the detailing of his features, and by the time that she’d converted smears of white into hollow cheekbones and droplets of grey into a wispy, balding head, his very sneers were audible. “My word, I’ve aged quite a bit, haven’t I!?” he barked rhetorically, and, his foot now fixed, he started to pace. She merely sighed, unsure of how to respond, though silence proved worse than anything she could have mustered. “Trying to kill me without my noticing, are you? Hm? Yes, that’s it, that’s it, you’ll wipe me away again tonight and when I return I’ll be bones, won’t I!? A lovely pile of bones, like you!” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she answered him flatly, and despite her sudden nausea she still found herself adding to her work; his all-blue coat now had white buttons, and a simple design on the sleeves. “Oh I doubt that very much,” her creation said in a heavy, mocking voice. “You think I don’t remember? That we don’t remember? So young and pretty when you started, yes, and we were young then too, weren’t we? But now you sag and slouch and would have us suffer the same miserable fate as you! And where are they!?” he added, his tone shifting from one of contempt to pure authority. “Where are my subjects?” She swallowed, now finally withdrawing her brush for longer than a second. She avoided his eyes as she answered. “I got rid of them,” she said. “Burned, all of them,” she added, but he’d started to laugh before she’d even finished the sentence. “Liar!” he cut himself off abruptly. “Where are they? Bring them here! They belong to me.” “They don’t belong to anyone-” “What’s this here?” he interjected, now lifting his right leg and staring at his suspended foot, his voice again shifting away into the more inquisitorial. “What—is this dirt on my pants!?” She cringed, though thankfully, her creation seemed so appalled by the blemish that he didn’t catch sight of her expression. She recovered just as he was turning his attention to her. “Not dirt, no-” she lied, but he didn’t give her the chance to continue. “Fix this! Fix this at once! How will the others think of me, hm? Seeing me grubby and tattered!” The Artist placed her face in her hands for a moment, then turned and stared at the canvas defiantly. “It’s a smudge,” she insisted. “That’s all-” He made a noise somewhere between a growl of rage and a whimper of discontent. “If it is just a smudge,” he started, stressing each word, “then you can fix it!” “I don’t have any of that color anymore!” she argued, examining him up close; she’d used a dark, regal purple that had taken quite some time to mix perfectly. He stared at her hatefully, his eyes two silver scythes that seemed poised to dig into her own. “Then go and get some,” he finally demanded, after a moment. She rose from her seat heatedly, the screeching of the chair’s legs a distant cry in her ears. Electing to not look back at his face of smug triumph, she slid through her cramped abode in a dream-like state, passed the musky, barely opened cardboard boxes that lined her walls and through through the kitchen that reeked of unwanted life, buzzing and writhing. Only when she was facing the door to her storage room did she straighten herself and focus, heaving a sigh before she turned the knob. The moans of despair erupted the moment she entered. “Help us-” “Don’t let him-” “Kill me!” She turned her nose upwards at once, desperately trying to avoid them, but failing. The room was cramped—she probably could lay two of herself down in it, in any direction—and the clutter was more vertical than horizontal. Tall, rusted racks occupied it mostly, home to all manner of sloppily arranged items, from loose scraps of paper to cutting utensils to the clumsily labelled cans of paint that she sought now. The rest of the room was comprised of her other creations—those that had survived his wrath, that now needed to be hidden. She caught sight of some of them as she perused the racks, her insides twisting with each observation. There was the mother on the farm, curled up, crying, her dead son slouched against the barn, the red of his innards clashing so poorly with it that he seemed some odd extension of the door. Above this canvas sat another, balanced precariously and facing skyward, depicting the last being that she had brought into existence before her current toiling, the most recent to feel his wrath. He was a seasoned sailor, his hair as white as sea foam and his beard bristled smoke on his chin, the exterior of his ship in the background. He was one of the few in the room standing, though it was only his dignity keeping him erect, for she knew that he was wounded quite badly. She watched him straighten his posture for a moment before returning to the matter at hand, though she traced a few empty spaces on the rack nearest her until she caught sight of the portrait of a drunken, cantankerous fellow who was producing most of the noise in the room. “Give 'em here, give 'em here, I’ll kill ‘em, I’ll kill ‘em-” Two portraits down was the only one not making noise. It was a young woman, dressed as though for a ball, only she sat upon a stony floor, her eyes just barely opened and her mouth agape yet sagging, staring as though all of eternity were within her sights. The Artist lingered on her for a moment, her heart heavier than she could remember it being in quite some time. And then she averted her eyes, continuing in her search, until she’d found the can of the desired purple-constituent, and then she left, the wails and admonitions dying the moment she closed the door behind her. “Hurry up!” She hastened the moment he’d said it, hating herself passionately for doing so. Not a moment after she’d seated herself once more did he return to his fussing. “That’s much too light!” he said, sternly, a moment after she’d opened the can. “I’m going to mix it,” she assured him, already dolloping the goopy substance onto her palette, where it immediately bled into the fanciful gold she’d been using for the carpet. “My doublet is very dark,” he said, softly, though through his teeth; it was as though he was lecturing to a petulant child. “I’ll look very top-heavy, so you know.” “I know” she said, somewhat relieved that he’d lowered his voice, even if she understood the reason why. “But I won’t let that happen-” Knock knock. She jumped, so much so that she ended up juggling her wooden slate in the air. The paint sloshed off of it, staining her fingers immediately, though she didn’t care; she’d instead turned to gaze at the opposite side of the room, where the door was. “Be careful!” her portrait shrieked. “You nearly got that on me!” She barely heard him. Her focus now was almost entirely upon the door, and already, she was doubting what she’d heard. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a visitor. If there’d ever been one at all... Knock knock knock. She gently placed her equipment down beside her, then rose to her feet, though she’d only completed a single step when a voice boomed behind her. “Where are you going!?” It was his most abrasive tone yet. She turned, not knowing if she should plead, negotiate, or do something somewhere in between. “I- someone’s knocking,” she stated. “Obviously,” he snapped. “What does it matter to you? They clearly have the wrong place, no one wants to speak to you. You’d disappoint them the moment you opened the door.” Knock knock. “I- there’s a man downstairs who I see sometimes, he- he may have locked himself-” “Sit down!” “Someone might need my help!” “Sit. Down. Now!” Her upper half jerked itself towards the door, but her legs rotated fully; it took a great deal of effort to not fall. A moment later, she was back in her seat, her ears perked up… Nothing. Whoever it was, they were gone. “My pants?” he reminded her, though he didn’t have to. She’d already returned to mixing the paint, and a minute later, she was applying it to the portrait. For the next several minutes she worked in silence, though she was unable to truly appreciate it, for her mind had left with her torso, and stood now firmly at the door. It wasn’t until she’d finished fixing his pants, and touched up his gleaming seat of power, that she was torn from the scenarios playing in her head. “‘Need your help’”, he crooned, mockingly, followed by a hearty laugh. “They would have said something then, wouldn’t they have? You old oaf. Is it any wonder no one visits you? ‘Need your help’...” he repeated again, now rolling his devilish eyes. The artist felt her hands shake with fury. The brush, which she’d just dipped into the gold, was now quivering as well, sliding slowly into the crimson that she’d used for his shoes. “Honestly, you’d have just made a fool of yourself. Where would you be without me, hm? Well? Where- augh!” His gasp had coincided with her most recent stroke; a streak of red just across his chest, from shoulder to hip. “What...what are you- what have you done!?” he squealed, clutching at the wound, which had turned into an ugly splotch at his touch. She didn’t answer him. She couldn't—she felt more spectator than actor, the relinquished control of her fingers that she usually maligned now a blessing the likes of which she’d never encountered before. She watched her movements as though from a distance; saw an upwards strike upon his perfect right leg, watched him stumble to the side as his knee exploded with blood under him, and soon, he was clutching his gorgeous seat for support. He looked up at her then, his usual facade of dogged arrogance having transformed into a piteous caricature of itself, and the word that he uttered next, for a reason that she didn’t understand, sent her into a frenzy. “Why!?” She slashed the brush over him again, and then again, his screams a music that she’d never heard, and then she threw her brush aside, electing instead to wipe the whole of her palm on the palette. Her fingers now coated in red, she smeared her hand over what remained of his thrashing body, muffling his wails of agony as she did so, going as far as to scratch at the canvas itself, until she couldn’t tell if the red was her blood or his, and then she smacked at it with both of her hands, until the red had overtaken the entirety of the cloth, and she didn’t stop until long after the screeches had ended, when she was sure that nothing more would be said.
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About MeVekin87 is the author of the Albus Potter Series, a 7-book continuation of the J.K Rowling's Harry Potter books. The Things I Write While You're Asleep |
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