Intaglio: The Snake and the Coins

by Danika Stone

  The amphitheatre and the shuffling of students and even Ava at his side had disappeared, Cole’s awareness focused entirely on the small space before the screen. He was conscious only of the power of the image, his sensory connections to this painting – smell, sight, touch – and of his breathing as he tried to take it in, swallow it whole and understand ‘how’.

  The power of the artist’s intention and message was overwhelming him. He was amazed and in awe. He didn’t understand.

  Without warning, the image flashed white as Wilkins changed the slide. The sudden brightness interrupted Cole’s thoughts as his consciousness returned into the present. It was like surfacing after diving, and he was momentarily disoriented. For the first time in this class, Cole Thomas had written absolutely nothing.

  Next to him, Ava suddenly rose and sprinted from the classroom, her metal chair clattering backward.

  Chapter 17: Into the Dark

  Cole stood up half a second after Ava bolted, his eyes following her as she ran down the aisle. Up at the front, Wilkins was open-mouthed, his jowls florid with anger.

  “MissBROOKS!” he roared, but she didn’t stop.

  Cole was running to catch up before he’d even thought about it. He left his papers and book bag behind, not knowing exactly what had happened, but realizing that she needed him.

  “She’s sick,” he muttered to Wilkins as he passed, heading out into the hallway. Wilkins raised his hand, but Cole refused to explain. He knew he wouldn’t be able to.

  Reaching the hallway, he glanced down one side. No Ava. Looking back the other direction, he saw the distant fire exit leading out to the rear of the building. The metal door's delay-hinge was just closing. Cole sprinted down the corridor, his mind on the panic and fear he’d seen on her face.

  Pushing the door open with a clang, he almost ran directly into Ava. She was on the stairs, arms tight around her knees, shaking with sobs. The image of the gruesome, blood-covered figure from the painting flashed through Cole’s mind. Ava's reaction terrified him.

  She startled as he slumped down next to her. Cole watched in dismay as she wrapped her arms tighter around herself, her chin down to her chest. She was trying to make herself as small as possible, folding herself up like a piece of paper against the cement stairwell. He shifted closer, hands raised, not wanting to scare her. Ava was rocking herself, Cole saw. The sight left his scalp crawling.

  He had never seen her so terrified.

  With gentle fingers, Cole reached out, easing her in against his side.

  “Shh… it's alright,” he whispered, “You’re safe… I’m here, Ava… okay?”

  He rubbed her back, feeling her uncurl in his arms. Her body was quaking with tremors, but slowly her motions began to have pattern and focus as if she was slowly waking up. All the while, Cole whispered to her – random, innocuous phrases of comfort – just wanting to soothe her. After a few minutes, she turned to him, tucking her head underneath his chin, her arms releasing her knees to wrap around him.

  “Fucking painting,” she hissed, the words vehement. “I hate it.” Cole let her body rest again his as the shivers slowly retreated.

  “Yeah...” Cole answered pensively. “Me too… It was dark.”

  “Awful,” she said. “Just awful…”

  They sat for a long time in the stairwell. Cole noticed new graffiti on the bottom wall by the exit door. He wondered if it was Ava’s, but the drawing style seemed wrong. Too rough.

  He continued rubbing her back, pressing kisses against her ear now and then. She sighed heavily, the last bit of tension releasing from her shoulders. Sitting up, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a wad of tissue, loudly blowing her nose. Cole smiled and brushed her hair off her face. Her eyes were red-rimmed and raw.

  “You want to talk about it?” Cole asked.

  Ava laughed harshly.

  “You sound like my dad,” she said thickly.

  “Okay with me,” Cole said, grinning in response. “Sounds like a pretty nice guy.”

  She nodded.

  “He is.”

  There was a long pause. Cole reached forward and placed a hand on her cheek, his face serious.

  “I’ll tell you my story if you tell me yours.”

  She glanced up at him, her eyes almost black in the dim stairwell.

  “Fair enough,” she said wearily, “but I’m going to need a drink before we start.”

  : : : : : : : : : :

  They sat in the corner booth at the Crown and Sceptre, their school bags, which Cole had retrieved from the empty classroom, thrown onto the vinyl seat beside them. It was still light outside on the street, but inside, it was a comforting twilight. Ava had several empty shooters beside her, and Cole sipped a glass of beer. She wasn’t quite ready to talk about it yet… though he’d seen her break down and had been beside her since then.

  ‘So that’s good,’ she thought, her mind hazy with alcohol.

  She imagined her father next to them, tapping his foot impatiently. He knew the story, of course, and she knew he’d push her to just ‘spit it out’… not make more of it than it deserved. She smirked at the thought, almost able to hear his voice.

  “What?” Cole asked.

  “I should just say it… but I don’t know how to begin.” Her eyes sidled nervously over to him. “It’s just really fucked up.”

  She sighed, picking up another shooter and tipping it back.

  “I’ll start then,” Cole said.

  “Okay.”

  He slid over so that he was sitting next to her, taking her hand and rubbing gentle circles against her knuckles. She glanced down, noting the slowly-healing skin of his hands. It had been more than a week since that night, and Cole’s calm control had been back in place ever since. She had almost forgotten the need to talk about it.

  “My parents weren’t really happy for a lot of my childhood,” Cole started. “Dad could be really hard sometimes as a parent, lots of discipline. My mom had… other issues. They fought a lot when Hanna and I were kids.”

  Ava glanced up at him, face anxious.

  “My mom was a disciplinarian too. She was… harsh.”

  Cole nodded, waiting for her to say more. When she stayed silent, he slid closer still, his arm moving around her shoulders before continuing.

  “My sister ended up kind of doing a lot of the burden of parenting after the divorce… my mother just…” He winced. “Didn’t. So Hanna picked up the slack. She made me dinner… kept care of me. You know… things a mother usually does. My mom really relied on her.” Cole’s eyes settled on the empty glasses on the table. Ava saw his face ripple with emotion before pulling it back under the mask of control. “My sister was my mom’s favourite,” he said tightly. “Everyone knew. I don’t blame her, really. Hanna was a really good person.” He shook his head. “Easy kid to love, you know?”

  Cole reached out, absently tracing the sides of the empty glass as if drawing.

  “Hanna was always a pleaser,” he muttered. “Wanted everyone to get along. She was a great sister, actually. You would have loved her, Ava… everyone did. She joined the military for my father. Wanted to serve because that sort of thing was important to Dad.” Cole’s fingers tightened around his glass. “He’d enlisted because his father had served in Korea. Dad served in the Gulf, so Hanna felt she owed him the same.” Cole sighed again, his eyes closed as if in pain. “Like I said, she was a pleaser...”

  “That had to be hard for you,” Ava offered, but Cole didn’t answer, just continued.

  “She was just out of high school when she enlisted. Fast tracked with the war effort in high gear… Hanna got shipped overseas a few months before her nineteenth birthday.” Beside him, Ava nodded, dropping her hand to his lap. Cole’s voice took on an echoing quality, as if time and pain were pulling him away somewhere else. “She was on her very first mission,” He said bitterly. “Not even out of the country for a full fucking week… and her group's transport helicopter got shot down.
Everyone dead on impact. When we got the news, my Mom just couldn’t go on. She just fell apart…”

  “Sorry,” Ava said, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  “My dad came home on leave for a while afterwards, to try to help with everything, but their marriage broke down… Couldn’t handle the pressure of losing Hanna. Mom always felt my father had caused Hanna’s death… that he was to blame somehow. Things were just… out of control.”

  For a moment, Cole seemed lost in thought. He’d stopped tracing the glasses and his hand lay in a tight fist on the tabletop, the arm around her shoulder tensed. Blinking, he turned back to Ava.

  “Your turn.”

  Sighing deeply, she leaned back, letting herself focus on Cole’s arm around her as she talked. This was the place she didn’t like to go inside herself and today things were too close to the surface. That painting had brought it back. Ava picked up another shot glass, tossing it back and feeling it burn its way down. She cleared her throat and began to talk.

  “Like I told you, my Dad played in the symphony – even back when my parents met. And when I was a kid, he was on tour a lot. Mom grew up in the city. Her father was a dock worker… they were poor. Rough life. She graduated high school… barely. Worked as a waitress, which is where she met my dad. The two of them just...” Ava paused, frowning for a second. “They weren’t well suited, I guess. They married because Mom was pregnant. You know… that whole stupid story.”

  Ava fell back into introspection, forehead crinkling. Cole spoke.

  “What kind of mom was she?”

  She closed her eyes. The feeling from this afternoon – the bloody figure with the dark eyes – was back.

  “Oh god, Cole...” she muttered in a low voice. “She was just… bad.”

  Cole ran his fingers up her arms, not speaking. She knew he was waiting for her to keep going. This was the part of the story that the school counsellors and the therapists had always had to fight to get her to release. She lifted the last shooter, drinking it in a single gulp.

  “What happened?” Cole repeated.

  His words hung in the air, and she turned her face into his shoulder so that she didn’t have to see him as she spoke.

  “She was always a really strict parent, but when my father was gone – sometimes for weeks and months at a time – she just got worse and worse. Anything I did wrong earned a new punishment. It started with little slaps and things, but every day Dad was away it got harsher.” Ava took a sharp breath through her nose, nausea rising. “Mom couldn’t cope with being left alone. Started drinking. Sometimes she’d leave me by myself in the apartment. I think I was four… maybe five at the time.”

  “Shit,” Cole muttered. Ava squeezed her eyes closed as the darkness intruded.

  “To punish me, she’d sometimes lock me in a cupboard… sometimes forget to let me out until she sobered up. She was...” her words disappeared, strangled by memories. She swallowed hard, as if the word was gagging her. “She was abusive. And an alcoholic. Horrible and… and I still fucking hate her most days.”

  “Oh god, baby,” Cole said, kissing her forehead. “I’m so sorry.”

  Ava coughed, abridging the story in a rush.

  “So then when I was in kindergarten, my teacher saw some bruises… and Child Protective Services got involved… and Dad broke his contract to come home… and then, um… they divorced and I didn’t see her again.” She ran a shaking hand over her face, her words a low growl. “But the things she did… they fucked me up for a long, long time.”

  She didn’t say anything after that. The two of them huddled together in the dim bar. Outside, the winter sky darkened, the lights of the Crown now gleaming by comparison.

  It startled Ava when Cole’s voice interrupted the reverie.

  “A year after Hanna died,” he said, “Mom and Dad divorced. I went with Mom like most kids do. Dad was away a fair bit, so it seemed… for the best. Mom had a hard time with the end of the marriage though, especially when Dad remarried a few months later. It just seemed to… break her.”

  Cole stared at the far wall, his face so tight with grief that it left him looking far older. The expression reminded Ava of a dream she’d had, and she couldn’t for remember why.

  “She had issues… lots of them, but I was in high school, so I kind of managed on my own… But she was in a dark place. Depressed. Angry. Irrational...” Cole closed his eyes and took a slow breath, “...used to say some pretty awful shit to me sometimes. Things about Hanna being her ‘girl,’ her favourite. That it shouldn’t have been Hanna who died. Things that just sort of drove a wedge between us when I was trying to hold it all together myself.”

  “Oh Jesus, Cole,” Ava gasped, twisting to see him. “That’s really fucked up.” The darkness he carried around made more sense now.

  “I just kind of… withdrew,” he said with a sardonic laugh. “Didn’t notice how bad things were getting. I was seventeen by then… Had my own life and friends. With her being so out of control, there wasn’t really a hell of a lot holding us together.”

  “That must have been awful,” she said quietly. “To have to see that happen.”

  His forehead crumpled before smoothing once more.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, “it was...”

  His voice was vacant, his expression shattered. For a moment they sat in silence. Unexpectedly, Cole’s voice started back up. Ava had been certain that he was done, but there was more to it.

  “There was a night one summer. I’d been overnight at a friend’s house and I came home late… much later than usual. The house was quiet and it smelled just… weird. I didn’t think anything of it until I went to the kitchen to grab something to drink, and saw the note...”

  Cole was breathing hard now, his body gripped by something. The image from the art history class that bothered Ava so much – blood and flesh and darkness – appeared in her mind, only this time, it wasn’t Shay’s rage, but Cole’s mother’s despair that it showed.

  “My god...” Ava whispered, watching Cole struggle, the tormented words coming out in starts and stops.

  “She was in the bathroom… she’d… she’d been there for almost a day, or at least that was what the coroner said. She’d slit her wrists...” Cole turned and burrowed his face against Ava's neck. His next words were almost lost. “My father took her death hard. He has always blamed me, Ava, for being there… and not finding her in time to save her.”

  Chapter 18: Incentive

  It had been two weeks since her panic attack in the Art History classroom and Ava still couldn’t look at the image without revulsion. She knew she should study for Friday’s final exam, but every time she opened her art history text book, she found herself focused on the horror of Bacon’s image. It was too much to deal with right now… so she didn’t.

  She procrastinated instead.

  Reaching the page, Ava traced the luridly coloured print with her fingertip… the screaming face with the bloody sides of beef behind it. ‘They look like wings,’ she thought in disgust, unable to will herself to look away. She continued to stare down at the tortured face. ‘Lifeless… already dead… or worse...’ she thought, snapping the book closed before the rest of her thought could finish:

  ‘Death itself.’

  She’d had that thought more than once lately, especially in the dark hours when she’d awoken from the nightmares the painting gave her. The imagery was the same every time: a terrible storm on the ocean, her body battered by broken flotsam, pounded by waves. Ava winced, remembering. Bloated corpses floated around her, the sea riddled with them. There was something with wings there too, like the image in the textbook… though she could never remember exactly what it was once she awakened. She just knew that the image of it meant death to her, and seeing it always left her terrified.

  The winged figure’s appearance meant something.

  Ava had talked to her father about the nightmare late one night when she couldn’t stop thinking about it; the two
of them tried to unravel the recurring dream for an hour. Her father believed in signs like this, (he thought maybe it was a throwback to her childhood and the trauma from her mother’s abuse), but Ava disagreed. This felt more like a sign of things to come… a warning. When she didn’t respond to her father’s suggestion, he’d offered to read her teacup when he got home. Oliver didn’t do it often – it tired him – but he was very accurate when he did.

  Ava smiled, remembering the offer.

  “Yeah, Dad, I’d like that,” she’d said softly.

  “But don’t forget, Ava...” her father had answered, his rumbling voice low and serious. “No matter what I might see in your cup, you always have a choice about it. Nothing’s ever set in life… there are always decisions to be made...”

  Today, the choice was to force herself to work or not. Tossing the book onto its side, Ava glanced across the table. Cole was reading silently, his face a study in concentration as he red-marked her essay. His essay, of course, was already done. Chim had gone through it with him the day before and he’d printed off the final copy this day. She, on the other hand, had delayed completing hers, as she did with everything else.

  With a sigh, Ava reached for the growing pile of mail in the center of the table. Flipping through the bills, she came across an envelope with the header: R. Simpson, Agent and Promotions, Spirit Galleries. Tearing it open, she skimmed the typed columns of numbers on the single sheet of paper. Ava blinked, rereading, then swallowed hard.

  ‘That’s a lot of money!’

  Kip Chambers had sweetened the deal for the mural-sized painting to forty / sixty without any pushing on her part. Though she didn’t quite understand the why behind his decision, she wasn’t questioning it. Sometimes you had to balance your own uncertainties against the reality of the world. This would pay for her bills for next semester… and she’d still have some left over.