Mr Clement’s finger pointed at her in accusation; she closed her eyes, opened them and realised he was in fact directing someone her way. She tried to make herself small, to disappear behind the rack of paperback novels; she was in no mood to talk to people today. The crying hadn’t let her sleep.
The man’s smile drew her eyes. She couldn’t tell his intentions; if the smile had been smaller she might have but it wasn’t and left no room for anything else. Her hands played like curious children with the folds of her skirt, her dark eyes measuring the distance between them. What was his interest? She remembered the paintings, three remained.
His face hung before her; then words escaped, forcing her to focus.
“You’re the artist, right?” His head jerked towards the 16x16” paintings commanding the narrow area by the window. The easels wreathed in shadow, ochre light fanning out across the coloured canvases, blurring angles and form and their placement, one set before the other brought to mind headless and armless figures awaiting their turn.
She paid Mr. Clement, the charity shop owner, a small fee to keep them there; really, he should be grateful her work was the only reason people came in, either to talk about them or to buy. But he wouldn’t admit to that.
“Yes, Nora Thief.” He didn’t need to know her real name.
His head wagged eagerly, the smile still fixed but slipping like a picture crooked on a wall. She wanted to straighten it; she didn’t like that he smiled so much. What was there to smile about?
“Luke Emery,” he said, offering his hand.
Thief managed a brief fluttering contact before breaking away.
“I’m interested in the centre painting. How much?”
Her gaze went to the piece. He didn’t look like the type to be attracted to it; he wore happy colours; a blue shirt tucked into stonewashed jeans, his cherub-curled hair decorated his forehead and temples.
But appearances were deceiving, weren’t they? That smile could hide anything.
“It’s not for sale.”
The smile withered. “Oh.”
“You could have one of the other two,” she said, knowing what the answer would be. Once a buyer had settled on a piece and that painting was denied, they would leave empty- handed. Of course they always returned; that’s why she liked to refuse them the first time.
“No, I don’t like the others,” Luke said, his face growing slack without the grin, lending a puppet quality to his features. Thief scrutinised it; trying to uncover the anger that coiled beneath the skin. Now that the fake face was gone she might catch it.
“What’s the difference?” She asked. “They’re all the same, aren’t they?” She’d come to learn that people hid their true personalities behind masks. They didn’t know that, when they bought her creations, they were giving away what lay hidden. The ego’s need to see its secret reflection always exposes itself.
“The others are black. Who wants a black painting?”
“Isn’t the one you want black?”
Luke turned back to the middle canvas, his eyes jumping between all three. “No, there’s more to it. There’s a deep red towards the centre and if I were to touch it, it would burn...”
Confusion skittered across his boy-man face. They never could explain; it was as if their personalities were alien to them and the words to articulate it as illusive as shadows. At those moments, Thief felt superior; after all she had created each piece. From the preparation sketches to the finished painting; it was her dedication that brought them to life.
“The painting’s called ‘Rage’,” she murmured.
“Can’t we come to some agreement?”
There were always agreements to be made. When the buyers returned they were willing to give her something more and she was happy to accept. It had become a ritual to refuse at the beginning. But ‘Rage’ was different; it was her first.
“No, not really.”
His hands jumped to life, a mutation of the smile returned, sardonic. “How about I take you to lunch? If I can’t get you to sell, then I’ll leave you be. How’s that?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said. Turning away she caught the bird-like stare of a female customer. The scrutiny pecked at Thief; causing sweat to agitate her flesh
“Okay, you can sit while I talk?” He persisted, pretending not to notice her discomfort. Thief knew he was all too aware, because the smile had fattened, reaching his eyes, hiding his secrets.
What would he say to convince her? More like force her, there’d be no bullying here. She knew arrogance when she saw it; he was too arrogant by half, invading her world with words, his energy interacting with hers. Trying to find her weakness...it’d be she who tricked him!
“It’ll have to be somewhere close; I don’t like to travel far.”
She was surprised to see the smile stretch further. He would have felt the strain on his skin. She then understood his attraction to ‘Rage’; it consumed his features.
The house was quiet when she entered. She slammed the door to rupture the silence. Her eyes lifted to the ceiling; evening shadows mated with fading light, creating an alien world around the light fixture.
Putting her sheepskin coat on the banister she took the stairs. The darkness opened like a gash; silence returned heavily. Didn’t he feel like crying now?
Thief watched him from the doorway; his posture like that of someone meditating. She noted there were more sketches today – that should be enough – she could begin painting.
“Hungry?” She asked.
He should be after all those pictures. All that energy finally dwindling, all that she sensed from him now was residual, he was running on empty. In the beginning after she brought him here, after she reduced his medication until he no longer had it, he’d been something to reckon with. Bad enough for her to dose him with sleeping tablets until, through the cotton wool haze, he’d understood what she wanted.
She knew him better than anyone else, he began to realise that, trusting her in his delusions. She was used to handling such creatures; her strength was equal to theirs because she absorbed what they gave out. After the first month, with his weight diminishing, he’d been easier to manage, the sleeping tablets were no longer needed and after accepting the graphite pencils and paper she gave him, he began to draw.
“Hungry?”
The room was too dim; maybe she should open the curtains. Shadows filled corners and thickened the floor, blurring the familiar shapes of stacked canvases and a standing lamp.
“No. Here.” He offered a wad of sheets. His fingertips and hands blackened from where he’d wildly blended one image after another.
Thief shook her head at his ungratefulness, but she didn’t care if he didn’t eat; it’d be less work for her. His thinness was showing. Bones protruded like deformed limbs, his skin pulled tight like a canvas. The irony amused her.
Taking the sketches, she held them close to her face. The images were conflicted; the hooded face surrounded by daggers told her this. It was to be expected though, from a schizophrenic. She’d seen facets of herself depicted in his visions; huge dark eyes covered many of the sheets she’d collected, endlessly staring; a coldness to them that permeated the mind. There’d been one that made her angry. Amongst a crowd of screaming faces, there was a figure that had no features at all and it seemed to shiver in the centre of the mass. She had known herself in that image.
Truthfully, she liked that his madness recognised her, had woven her into his dark and broken illusions. Now, he only regarded her with mournful detachment. She sighed; she had enough material to understand the personality that would enter the painting.
“Nothing left now, is there?” She observed obliquely, watching his face for the last gasp of rebellion.
His shoulders bowed, a lethargic breath escaped. “I’m tired, go away.”
Thief watched while he shuffled himself comfortable. Sullied light penetrated the thin curtains and corrupted the paleness of his flesh; resembled bruises where thigh met hip, his collar bones deep basins hoarding shadow. He lay breathing shallowly; refusing to face the blank canvas propped on the easel.
“Think of this as therapy,” she smirked. The crying had made him tired; he should have thought about that; serves him right for keeping her up all night. She sacrificed her comfort by giving him her room and he repaid her with tears. He wouldn’t like it very much if she made him spend the remainder of his stay on the lumpy sofa.
She departed, pondering what title to use for the painting. ‘Paranoia’ or ‘Conflict’...not to worry, the right choice would come to her once the work was completed.
“What made you paint?” Luke asked the following afternoon as they sat outside a cafe. He was eating delicately as if he were afraid his fry-up would choke him.
Distracted, Thief twitched her eyes from the workmen gutting the road; their yellow jackets violent splashes. It would be much better inside, away from the glare and noise of the square.
“I’m in therapy,” she studied his reaction. It was none of his business really, if he didn’t like it he could leave.
The smile grew sympathetic. “My girlfriend’s in therapy, too.” He looked away. “How’d that get you into painting?”
Too curious for his own good, curious people were always out to trick; if he wanted information he would have to part with some. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Self-harm,” he said simply, as if it were perfectly ordinary.
“Does she have to draw pictures?” Thief asked, her voice peaking with interest.
“She doesn’t talk about it.”
“Well, that’s what happens. You draw what’s inside you.” She wouldn’t drink her tea, not while he was watching. He might try to take her unawares. Get the answers he wanted. He better not ask where she went for therapy; that would be too bold – there was no common ground between them, no matter what he might think. She’d leave; there’d be no name-dropping here.
“Why draw?”
“It is how the doctors get hold of your emotions. They expect you to be able to put everything that’s filling you onto paper. There was a boy who drew New York by night; I think he didn’t quite understand what was being asked.” She shrugged; a blonde dread-lock scraped her cheek. “Another drew a face with a door in the forehead that stated No Entry. Not everyone is willing to be laid bare. The doctor smiled at that. Then this girl, using a black crayon, scarred her sheet until the white was obliterated.” Thief realised she was smiling at the memory.
“So the girl gave you the idea?” Luke held her gaze; sunlight had turned his eyes to black discs.
She frowned. Was he saying she didn’t have any ideas of her own? That she had to steal other peoples? Well, he didn’t know anything and he wouldn’t, she wasn’t that foolish. She inhaled, tasted hot pavement, exhaled.
“I saw how everyone reacted; it affected them in different ways. The doctor liked it the most; he took it home with him.” She licked her lips, tasting salt. “The girl inspired me. I used her first.”
“You don’t use crayons though, do you?”
More questions, he wasn’t satisfied. Wasn’t he supposed to be cajoling? Trying to get her to sell? Maybe he wasn’t really interested in ‘Rage’ – he wanted to know how she did it, that’s what it was. How she transferred emotion onto canvas. Thief bristled.
“No, I use oil paint.”
“So it’s all about the technique?” He shook his head as if she amused him. “How can technique make the piece so powerful, huh? Is it just technique and paint, or something else?”
He didn’t know anything. It was all three but only a privileged few had the ‘something else’.
Thief found his blatant curiosity revolting. He’d revealed his true intentions. Not even the fake face could conceal them now. “It’s a secret,” she answered, voice flat.
“And you won’t tell. Right, I get it artistic eccentricity.”
Jokes wouldn’t help him regain lost ground, she wouldn’t let it happen. He’d wasted enough of her time. She scraped back the chair.
“Hey, before you go. What did you draw in therapy?”
Her lips twitched. “I left the paper blank.”
That evening Thief took the first step in preparing the paint. Her frustration was palpable; it clung like tar to her skin. She’d planned everything around the boy, believing a week would be enough, but his thinness had tricked her. She’d have to work quickly to meet her deadline.
Yesterday, two paintings had gone, leaving only ‘Rage’. The empty easels needed to be filled; their nakedness irked her. She intended her next piece to be in no later than Tuesday, but the way things were going it didn’t look like that would happen.
Lately she’d considered moving away. The countryside offered promise. It’d be much easier to make her paint there, somewhere on the outskirts, away from curious eyes. Really, it was time to move on; it wouldn’t be long before someone started causing trouble, would see a link between certain hospitals.
And you couldn’t burn a person in the city – even a small one; not on a regular basis anyway. Some had, but they possessed egos that made them daring and tripped them up. Instead, she was forced to do it the hard way. She recognised the irony in stripping away flesh and sinew, the very things that concealed intentions. But the mess...she despised it.
As she yanked flesh from bone with the aid of a scalpel, the smell of steaming meat crept behind her mask. Skin and fat that resembled pig left her hand reluctantly, its weight slopping it into a bucket.
Almost done, her eyes crawled over his corpse drooping in the bathtub like a loose-limbed dummy. Even dead, he’d been sneaky; slapping her in the face when she repositioned him, his feet trying to encourage globules of fat down the drain. That wouldn’t do, everything had to be collected, dumped.
Her movements were accompanied by the sound of plastic that draped the walls and covered the floor. She had to be careful as she walked; it would do no good to slip.
An hour later she deposited the buckets outside, between the back door and disused toilet, for burial later that night. No plastic bags; she wasn’t stupid. Better to let the worms do their thing – she’d never understood why criminals wrapped up the bodies. Didn’t they know they were simply preserving? Too caught up in the drama to think, well, that wasn’t her way.
Wiping her gloved hands down her apron, she trudged back inside. The skeleton with its wisps of hair waited. Without eyes it still watched her, trying to get beneath her skin; like the silly man in the shop.
Quickly she dismembered. Collecting the bones, she carefully placed them in the two sacks at her feet. Later she would feed them to the fire and while they charred she’d empty the buckets into the holes dug along the length of the garden wall. In the early hours the bones would be ready.
In the disused toilet Thief completed the last stage of paint-making. The process was long. She had to grind the bones to a fine powder and, never one to waste, every bone was used. The more paint, the better the texture of the finished piece.
By Wednesday morning she had fifteen bowls of bone pigment into which she poured the necessary amount of boiled linseed oil; once mixed it was time.
It took her the remainder of the week to complete the first three layers of the painting. Already it had begun to take on the characteristic enamel-like surface. She titled it ‘Paranoia’. By the time Monday arrived, the painting was virtually done, although it wouldn’t be ready by Tuesday. She could endure the two extra days it would take.
The emotions caught within the 16x16” painting spoke eagerly; their undertones were morbidly twisted, dark and seething, the surface a weak illusion woven from shades of pale. It tickled her to wonder who would relate to it, who would barter relentlessly.
Sprucing up the bedroom, she opened the window to allow fresh air for the first time in months, chasing away the boy’s male smell. She covered ‘Paranoia’, protecting it from the sunlight. Now, there was only one more easel to be filled.
“My final attempt!”
Thief started. The book she’d been placing on the shelf threatened to slip from her fingers. They clutched; her nails lanced the polished cover.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
That’s exactly what he’d meant to do, she wasn’t a fool. Why turn up now, after almost a week?
“I’m busy.”
She edged passed, returning to the stack of books that needed shelving.
Luke moved with her, his persistence coming off him like a sly odour. Her nose wrinkled.
“Look, I brought my girlfriend. She wants to know what all the fuss is about.” His lean face didn’t seem equal to holding the smile.
“Show her the painting then.” Thief gave him her back.
His hand tugged at her elbow. He wanted her to lose her temper so she’d slip up. He’d have a long wait.
“I want you to meet Lucy.” Luke jerked his head at a small woman standing just behind him. Her blonde hair, darker than Thief’s, had the lustre of dry leaves; the sleeves of her jumper rode her palms. Thief grew still – self-harm he’d said. What were the scars like beneath the material? Were they heavy and knotted, or those trial cuts that come before desperation kicks in and the blade sinks deep?
The woman turned; her gaze unsettlingly obscure. “It’s black. What’s the point?”
Not everyone reacted to the paintings; some people inspired them. Thief felt Luke’s indignation, saw the smile falter. Good.
“What? Don’t you see the depth? The heat?”
Shoulders shrugged, wrists rubbing together as if stemming phantom blood – deep scars itch. Thief knew she did it often, that the habit had become part of her nature. She would be a good subject, but good enough to relinquish ‘Rage’?
Irritation at his girlfriend’s disloyalty marking his voice, Luke said, “Come on, you keep it here amongst second, no third rate crap even though there’s someone willing to buy it. Don’t artists improve with time? You’ll make other paintings much better than this one.”
“How badly do you want it?” Thief was thinking quickly. If she did this she’d have to end her voluntary work at the charity. It was the only place Luke knew to find her.
“Double what you’re asking.”
Her breath pinched in her chest; he didn’t understand. He was too involved with the piece to think about its origins. But, he would in time, after a while all their thoughts turned that way.
Her eyes plucked at Lucy. “Give me your girlfriend to use and you can have it.”
A fair exchange. “Hey, Lucy, you’re gonna be a muse.”
Lucy regarded them silently. Her grey eyes seeming to dull with each heavy lidded blink.
“I’ll need your address,” he gushed.
Laughter bubbled in Thief’s throat. He was still trying to be tricky. “No, have her meet me at the cafe on Thursday.” Canting her head, she smiled indulgently. “We’ll go from there.”
