Only several hours ago she had slipped into the darkness of sleep and had been comforted by her conviction that there were choices available, choices which would mean life.
Carmine is a calm, dignified reddish tone which requires the sacrifice of various female insects found on thistles.
Sandra left work early that night. With the ICU now more than half empty, the shift could be turned over to one other nurse, and Sandra could be released to be on call. The ubiquitous shift supervisor, Nurse Mitchell, told Sandra that she looked peaked, that she should be concerned with possible anemia. She seemed to be solicitous of the possible emotional effects on Sandra of seeing two patients die.
It was still dark when Sandra left. She didn’t bother to change her uniform in the nurses’ lounge. As she left Sacred Heart, she walked through a night which had become almost supernaturally dark. There was no moon, and no stars were visible. The normal smoggy glow of evening over the city seemed muted.
Sandra felt a sort of exhilaration as she walked away from the electric hum and fluorescent glow of the hospital. She had just watched two people die, had just touched two people who had died, and now she was walking away. She was alive.
When she arrived at her apartment building, she parked in her usual parking spot then, without giving the matter too much thought, walked across the street to the building where the painter had his studio apartment.
She took the elevator up to his floor. The door to his apartment was still unlocked.
She didn’t turn on the lights in his apartment. The muted glow of the city and the reflection of the city’s light on the moist full clouds which blocked the stars served as her only guide. This light shone through the enormous picture window of the studio and illuminated the scene as distant torchlight, giving the easels and stacks of stretched canvases and tabletops covered with paint in tubes and jars something of a menacing appearance, as one might expect from a medieval torture chamber.
Sandra picked her way through these obstacles to the door of his bedroom. This room had no windows, and he apparently had no electric clock or any other possible source of illumination. Still, a dim light plainly showed the painter in repose there, his arm and his leg reaching out to support him lying on his side, in the manner of a person in bed with a companion.
Sandra stood in his doorway, certain that if he woke he would see and recognize her by an unexplainable glow. She wore her nurse’s uniform, and thus was dressed entirely in white. Her skirt and blouse were a crisp polycotton blend, and fit snugly around her hips, waist, and bosom. She wore white panties and white pantyhose, as well as a white lace bra. Standing there she slipped off her shoes, then continued with the rest of her clothes. The clothes were repressive; they hid secrets she wanted to share.
The painter stirred slightly as she stared at him. She was now nude. Could not even a sleeping man perceive when his environment changed with the addition of a living, breathing, warm person?
He did seem to be slightly aware of her, but he stirred a little as if absorbed in a dream.
She stepped forward and slipped beneath the covers. She reached out and touched him with her hands, then closed her eyes and rubbed her palms over him. She felt as if she were entering a secret world; she concentrated her entire being into her hands. She tried to read every sensation there—texture, temperature, shape, the rhythm of his blood, any tiny movements in his musculature, any indications that he felt and was responding to her touch.
He stirred beside her. She moved her face closer to his, felt the warmth there. She softly pressed her face against the side of his neck and jaw, then opened her lips slightly to kiss him. She let her mouth rest there for a few moment, then moved her tongue between her teeth to taste him, tickle his skin.
He awoke and didn’t say anything. He reached for her. Between some people there are no secrets.
With the morning Sandra awoke intertwined with the painter. She rested there for a few minutes, and considered waking him. She decided not to; he looked peaceful. His face seemed less contradictory, less of a combination of the very old and the very young.
She slipped out of bed and put on her blouse. She left the bedroom and pulled the door almost closed behind her, leaving the sleeping painter behind in darkness.
She went to the bathroom and washed her face, then looked at herself in the mirror. And how many days ago had she looked out her window to see this man painting a naked woman? How many days ago had she stared at the sky and felt like crying under the weight of some vague, displaced sadness? She had the sense that her life was made up in fact of many lives, and that she was at a junction where one was ending and another beginning.
Her hair was a mess, and she didn’t have makeup on. (She never wore it to the night shift.) Still, the memories of last night gave her a look of warmth and vitality she hadn’t seen for years.
She left the bathroom and went back into his studio. The place which had looked in the dim light of last night like a torture chamber now looked like a typical man’s workshop. She looked around and felt teenagerlike feelings of infatuation—these are the brushes he takes in his hands; these are the colors he mixes to his liking.
She felt an urge to see his kitchen. She knew she was being silly, moving way too fast, playing little imagination games. She also knew that she deserved it. Her life wasn’t over.
His kitchen was clean. His cupboard held almost nothing, just a few simple juice glasses. They were all washed and set upside down on a square of white cloth. She picked one up, looking for signs of his lips on the glass. She would very much have liked to place her lips on that slick surface where his had been. But the glass (which was curiously colorless, like laboratory glass, unlike the ferrous or gold-based crystal most people used) had been washed spotless.
Sandra found no food in the kitchen, and found the refrigerator unplugged, its door propped open for ventilation.
The most disappointing discovery was that he had no coffee, no tea, nor anything which looked suitable for boiling water.
She went back into the studio. She glanced into his bedroom through the slightly opened door, and saw that he hadn’t stirred. He was worn out, she thought, and blushed.
She looked at her portrait, nearly finished, sitting on the easel. Her experience of looking into the mirror a few minutes before paled beside her sensations as she glanced into the canvas panel. The flesh tone held, upon close scrutiny, myriad colors of the spectrum, blended in swaths of contradiction and complement. As she looked into the eyes she felt a sudden dizziness, as if she had just glimpsed a great distance, or, more accurately, had glanced downward from a great height.
The textures of her body, ranging from the wet slickness of the eyes to the smooth-wool place between her legs, were all captured perfectly. The temperature of a living body, the warmth, was also captured through his cunning use of undertones and glazes. Looking at the large forms and musculature of her thighs, rib cage, shoulders and breasts, one could see that the pulsing internal structures of night blood indigo had been suggested through an unexplainably skillful use of color.
She broke her gaze away from the image on the canvas. She didn’t feel any of the satisfaction, the ability to name and remember, which a person could usually get from studying a picture closely then looking away. She felt as if she still had some bond to the portrait, some need to look at it. With this feeling of some important thing left undone, she walked away from the easel, almost feeling as if the eyes of the picture (her own eyes) were on her back.
The apartment consisted of the studio, with its enormous windows, and four other rooms which could all be entered from the studio. She had been in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom, and now there was one door through which she hadn’t walked. For a fleeting moment she felt like a busybody, but she immediately discounted that feeling. She didn’t consider that he might want to keep anything secret from her.
Besides, she wanted to keep occupied until he woke up. They could go out togeth
er for some breakfast, or maybe he would want to stay in together for awhile, perhaps even go back to bed, before they started work again on the portrait.
She opened the door to the small room. Her first impression, in the dim light, was that she had entered a room full of strangers. It was as if the light she admitted into the small room (not much more than a walk-in closet, really) startled the people there, revealed them somehow, caught them in some private, not-to-be-shared act. She felt numerous eyes looking at her, expressing an almost unbearable pleading.
But there was nothing strange in that room, nothing for her to fear. There were other portraits, pictures of other women, arranged around the walls and shelves of the small room in rows and tiers, unceremoniously hung or stacked from floor to ceiling. This arrangement was partially to blame for Sandra’s initial impression of entering some chamber occupied by numerous trapped people, the impression of entering a dark prison, of offering pitiful people a glimpse of light and life normally denied them.
“What are you doing in there?”
Sandra jumped, startled. He was awake, and had put on a pair of khaki slacks and an emerald green shirt.
“I was just looking around. How long did it take you to do these?”
He took Sandra by the wrist and—gently—tugged her back from the room and shut the door. As the door closed, Sandra glanced over her shoulder and had the illusory impression that the eyes of the women in the portraits hardened, narrowed with pain and envy. She felt tired and needed some breakfast. It was amazing how susceptible a person could become.
After the door closed the painter led Sandra over to the “subject’s chair.” He looked calm but preoccupied. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I was just looking around.”
She sat down, slipping her wrist out of his grip. “This isn’t a very nice way to say ‘good morning.’ ” She reached out to put her hand on his chest.
He drew away and she had a sinking feeling. It was all wrong. She’d acted like a horny, love-smitten kid, had forced herself on him, and now she was coming on so strong she scared him. Enter love, exit dignity and common sense.
He walked over to the canvas. Sandra had the weirdest feeling that she was unimportant, that his real interest was in the painting. Tears came to her, and with blurred vision she watched the painter speak to the canvas. “You shouldn’t have done it. You should not have done any of it. Forgive me, please!”
Sandra walked over to where he stood. She reached out to take him in her arms, and did so, but he stood unyielding, and seemingly didn’t even see her. His eyes remained locked onto the eyes of the portrait. He stood as rigid as a corpse and felt cold against Sandra’s chest through the thin material of her uniform blouse.
She let him go. He seemed to be totally absorbed with the portrait. Well, so be it, Sandra thought. Even if that is his sole interest in me, I can live with that. It could be infinitely worse.
She turned away and went back to the subject’s chair. The sunlight gave everything in the room a crisp, almost unreal appearance. “Will we finish the portrait today?” she asked.
When he answered, he answered the portrait. “No. I’m not going to complete you. I will not, I will not ...”
Sandra felt as if something was tearing inside. “Please don’t be that way,” she said.
Somehow—Sandra could see no lighter or matches nearby—the painter set the canvas afire by reaching out and touching it.
The effect on Sandra was both horrifying and immediate. She felt as if she were burning from the inside out. She dropped to the floor and clawed at the air. Sharp teeth of flame clamped on every surface deep inside her body. Her skin crawled and ached like water thrown onto a white-hot iron surface. Yet the feeling was an illusion; she could see that her arms, her fingers, her legs remained smooth and unhurt. Knowing this didn’t help her as eldritch pain caressed her flesh.
Her vision clouded to a distant and dignified red, and she watched the next events unfold. She became a passive observer, thinking weakly, I’m going into shock.
The painter took the off-white cloth which he had used for background on his subjects. He spread it on the floor beside her. Then he disappeared into the bedroom, quickly returning with a pair of his trousers. He gently put them on Sandra. She didn’t resist. The pain had subsided.
Behind the painter the easel was a framework of flame, and bits of the canvas had turned to ash and had drifted through the air. On his palette table a container of turpentine or some similar solvent puffed into flame. The ceiling started to blacken as the flames grew.
After he had put the trousers on Sandra, he placed her gently onto the off-white cloth. He wrapped her up, leaving only her face exposed, and lifted her. He appeared to be totally calm. He also appeared to have no trouble lifting Sandra. The studio was now filling with smoke, and flames covered half of it.
He carried Sandra out the door and down the hall to the elevator. He held her while they waited for the car. After the door opened and he set her inside, he looked into her face and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll watch the display from up here and make sure you get to the ground floor. Somebody will get you there. If something happens, I’ll come get you.” He leaned over and kissed her lips.
She tried to speak, thought that she was able to say, “Don’t,” but watched him walk off anyway. As the elevator doors slid shut she saw him walk back into the flames. Alarms were ringing as she descended.
Ivory Black is prepared by charring bones.
The city absorbs strange experiences; the most traumatic and outlandish events are noticed, reported, assimilated, and quickly forgotten. The pressure of human experience, the sheer weight and gravity of human emotion forces individual lives into a flatness, a smoothness of interaction.
A studio apartment is gutted by fire; a crying woman is found wrapped in what appears to be a funeral shroud in an elevator; a mysterious man—reported by some as old, by others as young, by still others as deformed—is seen slinking away from the scene of the fire bent under an immense black silk bundle.
He disappears; she resumes her life; the apartment is repaired.
And the events are forgotten.
Caput Mortuum is a variety of brown which derives its name from some mysterious connection to the skulls of early Christians which have been found in Roman catacombs.
In an ancient land, there is a castle in ruins. It was once a stone and beam tower surrounded by a wall. Now the parapets have been chipped and broken, the buttresses have shifted and now sag, letting some parts of the roof collapse. In the twilight the ruins suggest a cloaked and armored warrior slumping forward, perhaps dying and perhaps already dead.
Within the ruins one immediately has an impression of wrongness, of some small detail being amiss. Eventually it becomes apparent. No pigeons or doves have nested here to paint the stones with their droppings; no lizards scratch or scramble over the rocks; no rats can be seen or heard within the dirty crannies of the place; there are no spiderwebs in these ruins to catch the dew or to close up cracks in the structures like gauzed bandages over wounds.
It’s as if the place were somehow patrolled by some larger predator, or as if the place were somehow shunned.
A man approaches the ruins. He is bent beneath some great burden, carrying an enormous bundle tied to his back. The man looks pitiably small here. He scrabbles over the stones like an insect, perhaps like an ant in the service of its royalty.
The man carefully takes his bundle to the recessed entrance of a corridor leading to the structures beneath the ruins. He descends a long unlit passage of narrow, uneven steps. The walls around him are close and exude a warm, moldlike dampness. The air moves slightly, rhythmically, not unlike the breathing of a sleeping beast.
The man’s feet disturb faded brown chips of some substance which scrape and crunch underfoot.
From the donjon below comes a sound. The man is expected. As he continues his descent, he recognizes sou
nds of rustling, as if some dried, dessicated thing were resettling, almost collapsing in on itself. There is also the scrabbling of hard instruments, or claws of some sort against damp stone. There is the persistent sound of wheezing and sucking, although it is arhythmic in nature, and thus bears little resemblance to the sound of a living thing.
The man enters a chamber lit by the dim flickering of a distant torch. Somewhere water or some liquid is dripping. The floor is broken, exposing dank earth through which ice crystals often grow in unearthly formations, irrespective of time of day or season of year. The man sets down his burden and removes the black silk wrappings. He glances around as he arranges the stretched canvas squares around the chamber. Although it’s damp and cold, the man sweats.
There is the sound of a great bulk being dragged over stones, and the sound of metallic or bone claws digging into the wet, crumbled floor of the chamber, gaining purchase. The torchlight dims as the space of the chamber is nearly filled with the arrival of the Master.
The portraits arranged around the walls of the room are all of beautiful women. These are undefinable things, products of an unexplainable creation. These portraits show an extraordinarily vivid command of color and light, and portray the wet lustrous eyes and warm pulsating blush and tender, meant-to-be-private nipples and thighs and secrets of these women.
The forms in these paintings are monumental. They portray the curves and nuances of feminine bodies more fully than most people would think that bodies could be captured, even through the normal skin-to-skin-and-beyond contacts of intimacy. The figures give the impression of being full.
The faces can never be seen moving, but nonetheless their eyes, and the tendons of their cheeks, and their lips seem to respond with fear and a sense of entrapment.
The Master, the Count, drags himself around the chamber to each one of the portraits in turn. His slick eyes drink in the color and form of the women. His gaze profanely burns the spirits there in those pictures. Some of the portraits are tweaked and ever-so-lightly torn by the razor tips of his bone claws. Others are clouded by his acrid breath. Still others feel the rasp of a meaty thing which had once been a human tongue.
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