The Painter
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By: Amber Funderburk
(http://ofmonstrousgods.blogspot.com/)
By: Chase L. Currie
“It's time . . .”
“Time for what?” I asked but it
was a question that was pointless and oh how I knew that. I wanted to
ask it again but I couldn't. My mouth wouldn't open. Maybe, it was
out of fear or maybe, it was out of sorrow but it did not matter. The
time that I had, it was now over, and the face in front of mine must
leave my sight. I sat there, not saying a word, not moving, just
looking, dazing into the eyes. It's always the eyes.
I sat in the dark of my studio, in
front of my canvas as the world outside fell into darkness. The night
brought the cold of the winter to my windows and for a while the
glass did its job. It stops the icy air from breathing down my neck,
creaking at my hands, and chilling my toes. But soon the windows
failed and the cold came rushing in.
I don't mind the cold when I am
working. There something about the icy air that rips the thoughts
from my mind, and my hands in a desperate attempt tries to get the
idea quickly onto the canvas. I guess that is why I love the cold so
much; it makes me stop thinking and just work.
But that night, something was awry.
The cold wasn't from the outside; it was from the shadows in the
room. My candle’s light fought against the darkness but the flames
were quickly dying. What a sad thing to see, a candle giving up on
life. What a sad state of things to watch the flames fade. But the
light somehow always seems brighter in those moments of death. I want
to say I understand it but that would be a lie.
My hands work their magic. They paint
like demons, as if I wasn't their master. They painted something I
didn't want to face . . .
It was the darkness, the things in the
shadow, the man waiting for me. He watched me as I painted. He peered
into the very thing that I am, the very thing the paints said about
me. They told my story, a story I wished never to write.
My hands moved around, quickly, taking
up deep reds and warm blues, blending them together in the
background. Then my hand took up another brush, and carved out a head
from the blues and reds with a deep harsh black line. They moved in
to fill the head with color, giving it life, with every yellow, every
green, and red with a hint of blue giving the man in the painting
more life. He wasn't alive though, at least not in this canvas.
Normally, my paintings are more of a living person than the people I
know but not this one.
This one was once alive but now is
resting under a cold gravestone. Maybe that is why his eyes became
gray, a harsh dull gray that send tears from eyes. They flooded down
my cheeks like rivers rushing to an unseen ocean, as I add the most
insignificant of details to his eyes. I painted them over and over
and over . . .
With every touch of the wet paint,
every mark made in those eyes, traps a soul in them. Was it my soul?
Only God knew.
When I was done, it was late, and the
paint was still wet. I sat there in horror at the face in front of
me. A man, I have never faced. A fact of life I ran from every day. I
sat there, weeping like a child in the cold dark. I weep for a warm
hand, wrapping around my body, telling me I was safe. Safe. Safe to
come out of the darkness, to crawl back out from under my bed. The
monsters in the night were gone, just a bad dream and I, the man in
the painting, am here to save you. I wept.
For hours, until my eyes couldn't
bleed anymore tears, I wept.
Then a calm came over me. Like the
passing of some storm at sea, I was still. I looked at the eyes. They
were once loving or that is how I remember them but now they are cold
and dead. Cold as stone and dead as the candle beside me. That wasn't
right. He's eyes were not like that but why did my hands paint them
that way? That was the question. A question that had to have an
answer in my mind. I sat there for hours, asking him why his eyes
were so cold, but he never told me.
Then, I smiled at him. It has been so
long, so many years that I had almost forgotten what it was like to
see him. I smiled and told him everything I've always wanted to say.
He listened to me for hours.
Soon the sun rose, I could smell it,
almost feel the heat from the burning star. The last moment of the
night fading away like the candle that died hours ago. The sun rays
wastes away the cold night. But the cold, it wasn't from the night,
it was from him. Then another hand landed on my shoulder, squeezing
hard against me and he said, those words I wish never to hear, “It
is time.” It is time for me to let go, time for him to take the
painting away, time for him to tear the man away from me again. Time
for him snatch the last moment of joy in my bright burning room.
“No,” I wept. I fell to the floor,
my hands running down the wet painting of the canvas, destroying the
man's face. I looked at the color, now staining my fingertips, and
throw myself back in horror. I look at what I have done. It was my
hands that destroy him, not the hands of Death. I couldn't believe my
eyes. I didn't want to see. I tried everything to block out the
smeared paint but nothing worked. I sat there looking in horror, at
what I have done. Screaming to the Father above, why I was a fool!
“I can no longer be the painter for
Death,” I said as the black cloak moved around me. His boney flesh
hands picking up the painting, studying the lines running down the
paint where my fingers had made a mess. His scythe lays against his
body. “I can't do it anymore.” I told him, but the words fall on
deaf ears. I could not see his face, if that is what he had, but I
knew there was a smile across it nevertheless. He loved the painting,
why, I cannot tell you.
I yelled the same words as he stood
there. As the angel of death with black wings stood in my studio
smiling at the work I had done. He always, always . . . made me paint
the dead. He loves seeing them in color, loves seeing the people in a
different light. For I imagine, he dreads the idea of always seeing
them in their last moments. Hearing their cries, and fearing his
wings. They never understand, he is not an angel of evil or wrath or
hate but a loving, caring angel, one that wishes to rip you from all
the pain in your life and show you a new kind of joy.
How I wish in that moment, on the
floor, he would rip me from my pain. But Death and I have always had
an odd relationship. I was meant to die when I was young but I never
did. I was saved and maybe, I was saved by him. He knew I would grow
up to be an artist. For Death wears the Crown of Knowledge and knows
all things to come.
“This is the best work you have done
so far, my friend,” he whispers or yells or just speaks like a
normal man. His words echo in my ears while at the same time sit on
my heart like a stone. “Until next time.” In a flash of
glimmering darkness he was gone and I knew, as I stood up . . .
I am forever in his debt.
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