Ritual

An arching stroke here. Some shading there. A smudging of the pencil to capture there dirt smeared on the cheek. I was in the park, as always by this time, sitting in my spot beneath the cedar and the streetlamp and adding the final t ouches to my drawing.

Today’s model was a girl little more than a child, 15 years at the most. She was sitting on the ground under a tree maybe 10 yards away, a duffel bag in her lap, sleeping. I could tell she hadn’t meant to fall asleep from the way she was positioned. Her back was flat against the tree’s trunk but to allow her head to rest there as well, her neck was arched out, the skin pulled taut over the veins and muscles. In sleep, she had turned slightly toward me, illuminating her face. She had angular features and clear, almost translucent skin that I suppose might have been pretty were it not streaked with dirt. Even though she was sleeping, her eyebrows were drawn together in tension and there were bags under her eyes. The face was framed by strands of stringy blond hair that had escaped her messy ponytail. It didn’t look like it had been washed for a while.

She was dressed in the traditional garb of a New England street urchin which looked as worn as she did. She was wearing an old, grey hoodie, a pair of beat up shoes, and tatty jeans that were maybe two sizes too big with treed on bottoms.

Now I’m not describing her because I had a perverse interest in her or anything; I don’t do minors. No, the reason I am so descript is that to appreciate my art, it’s necessary to know everything that can be seen about my subject. That’s because I capture it all. I’m not bragging. It’s a simple statement of fact. When I draw someone, the person’s very soul peers up at me from the page. Everything about who they are in that instant is shown to me. It’s nothing that special, really. I’m just a rather perceptive person, but only on a subconscious level. That’s why I don’t realize I know something until I see it in what I’ve drawn. If I draw it though and the picture looks real, not plastic and blank, then I need no more proof that it’s…right. I draw what’s right…most times.

For instance, this girl. I’d never seen her before nor did I know anything about her. However, now that I’d finished drawing her, I knew for a fact that she was a runaway, though I suppose that wasn’t very impressive, considering the clothes she was wearing. She hadn’t had time for hygiene in a while and had little money for clothes; the ones she was wearing she’d had for as long as she’d been on the run which had been for more than a few days. She’d stolen the pants most definitely from a dump. I was certain. I’d drawn them with clean scissor cuts I couldn’t really see but now knew were there. Those were my jeans. I’d thrown them away last week after washing and drying them on the wrong setting and being forced to admit that if I wanted to retain the ability to have kids, I wouldn’t be able to wear them anymore.

I couldn’t see her arms or torso, but I’d drawn her with the bottom of her hoodie caught on her duffel, showing half healed bruises on her stomach and abdomen. I was certain they were really there because of how stifle she’d sat down when she’d first gotten here. The same for her right wrist on which I’d drawn finger-shaped bruises. I was certain she’d been beaten and that’s why she’d run away.

I stared at the picture long and hard, scrutinizing my work in search of errors in shading, lapses in realism, just errors in general. I found none. Naturally. I’m still not bragging; it is natural. Art has been my passion for as long as I can remember and it’s been a daily dose of Navane for me since I was sixteen. Why shouldn’t I be good at it? Still, I had to check. Part of me wished as I always did that there would be something wrong with the drawing so that I would have a reason to doubt the accuracy of what I knew would happen next. Every day I tried, and every day, I didn’t.

Sighing half-apprehensively, half-hopefully, I closed that sketchbook, put it in my bag, and pulled out another. This one was a bit tattered form where I’ve throwing it into things. I flipped to a blank page and began to draw myself. I didn’t use a mirror—damn, I hate those things—and I didn’t do it form memory—what memory was I supposed to use? I instead traced my face with my fingers, drawing the shapes my fingers found. I worked slowly; I didn’t want to miss any details. I wanted to—I had to—get this right.

When I was certain my fingers could tell me nothing more about my appearance, I stopped looking at my drawing in sections and studied the whole thing.

I hated it. Not that it was badly done, of course. It was as good as any of my other pieces. It wasn’t plastic, either, but the realism was part of the problem. That was not a nineteen-year-old sufferer of chronic paranoia staring back at me, but something else; something truly malevolent wearing the nineteen-year-old’s face. I guess it looks normal enough at a glance but after really looking at it, weird things that seemed subtle weren’t anymore. They screamed at me now, every time I drew myself. I can’t explain it exactly. It’s not really any one thing. The best I can do is say it has an “aura”. I didn’t even know it was possible for a sketch to have an aura at all, let alone an observable one. It made my skin crawl.

Then there was the facial expression.

Something, maybe the curve of the lips or the tilt of the eyes, implied malice. I know for a fact that when I was drawing, the only expression on my face had to have been one of concentration, or at most, one of frustration. There was absolutely no reason for a drawing of me to turn out like this.

But it always did.

I snarled in frustration, ripping the page out of the book and crumpling it before I’d really thought about what I was doing. I looked down at the balled up piece of paper clenched in my fist and then, sighing with resignation, proceeded to unball it, flattening it as best I could and putting it in my bag. When I first started doing this, after for the first time realizing how drawings of myself turned out, I would edit the picture, striving to keep the features the same but changing the tilts and their casts and shadows. The first time I spent two hours doing this, editing until there was no trace of malice. Unfortunately, by then, it had no trace of anything. I’d edited it so much that it wasn’t me anymore. It wasn’t anyone. The drawing had come out plastic. Perfectly drawn and completely nonthreatening, but plastic all the same.

I sighed and stood up. It was past six and I needed to sleep if I was going to pull a double shift for Kaeden tonight. I put my bag on my shoulder, stretched, and looked at the sky. The night had been clear and rather warm for October but now the temperature seemed to be dropping as thick clouds began to hide the sky, encroaching on the clear patches. I couldn’t tell if they would yield rain or sleet. I was hoping for the former. For the girl’s sake and mine; I had to walk several blocks in whatever it was. I reached into my pocket for my wallet to see how much cash I had left. 50. All the bills were paid for this month but I still wouldn’t be paid again for another few weeks.

The wind picked up, forcing the temperature down even more as I thought. I sighed, putting only 30 back into my wallet. I left the park, dropping 20 into her duffel on my way out for her to find when she woke up. That would have to do for the both of us.

It was a long walk home. As I’d thought before in the park, the temperature was dropping and even though the sun was coming up, the thick clouds kept warmth from getting to me. Then there was the discomfort that had nothing at all to do with the weather. Now that I was not drawing, all the thoughts I’d been too preoccupied with before were now pressing down on me with agitating persistence. I was now down 20, midterms were coming up, according to my psychology textbook, I was exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, and I was fairly certain someone was trying to kill me. I partly wished I was schizophrenic so as to have a rational explanation for what’d been happening to me. They have medication to fix those problems. As it was though, I was certain that my problems were not rooted in some mental disorder and therefore could not be cured by a drug or two and someone trying to kill me was in no way a paranoid delusion. Not that I’d had much hope of that to begin with. It’s a bit hard to lump being shot at on three occasions, being attacked out of an alleyway, and nearly becoming a stain on someone’s fender six times into the category of unfortunate coincidence, especially when they all occur in the same week. I didn’t call the police though. There was no point. I don’t exactly live on the best side of town and so much goes on here that they don’t even come anymore unless someone is found obviously murdered with the knife still in their back or something and even then if possible, the death is pushed off as an elaborate suicide. Most deaths here are results of gang violence—which no one on the police fore wants to get involved in, not that I can blame them—or your everyday low-lives like muggers—which the police don’t deem important enough to come over here for. In short, if I called them, they wouldn’t come to me and if I went t them, they would take a few notes, nod and look grave, and then tell me there was nothing they could do without proof. Basically, what it all boiled down to was that I would be dead and decaying if I relied on them to help me and once someone bothered to find my body, I’d be dubbed a gang war casualty and I and whoever wanted—and now had—me dead would be the only ones to know the truth.

I wondered vaguely what happened to dead people no one cared about. Did they get last rights and the funeral and all or were their innards just sold to the highest bidder on eBay while the rest of them is sold to a potato farmer in Idaho to be used as fertilizer. That was a depressing thought—Liver of Constantine Winters! This nineteen-year-old organ is in perfect condition, untainted by alcohol, cigarettes, or McDonald’s fake food! A steal at 5000! Body already sold but bids on kidneys, spleen, and lungs are open!!—but I couldn’t say I would blame anyone if that were my fate, even if I could as a dead person. Why should anyone care? After all, what the democrats say is completely wrong: it is impossible to care—truly care—about someone you don’t know. I guess that’s why I don’t truly care. Damn, it’s getting cold. I need a car.

It was light enough that I almost didn’t have to fumble with my keys when I made it to my apartment. In the grand scheme of things, the trek wasn’t that far, but I was still exhausted and dragging my feet. Man, I felt like crap.

“Molly?” I called when I stepped through my door. I’m home. Here kitty.”

She ignored me, as usual, but I knew she’d come greet me when she finally felt like it. I amuse her sometimes. I’m also the only one who feeds her, so…

I hung my jacket up on the door after closing and locking it and then walked over to the phone where a red light was flashing, signaling messages. I checked them out of sheer habit; no one ever calls who I really just want to call back. An electronic female voice informed me that I had five new messages as I walked into the kitchen to search in the refrigerator for something to eat. I’m saddened to say that it was pitifully stocked. I didn’t even consider the spaghetti. It had been too salty, too peppery, and overcooked to clumpiness two weeks ago. I shuddered to think what it would taste like now. Hell, I was kind of scared to even take off the lid. I took out the Chinese take-out I’d sprung for last week, sniffed it tentatively, and then gagged, tossing it into the trash can. I would not be trying to ingest that.

Accepting that I would have no luck finding in my refrigerator anything that would not start moving, growling and/or try to strangle me, I closed the door and opted for a frozen dinner tray. I really wished I could cook.

I put the “food” in the microwave and then went back into the living rom. My first message had been from Hannah and she was still talking when I reentered the room so either she’d left a really long message or she’d left several. Either way it was creepy as I was fairly certain I hadn’t given her my number. My unlisted number. She had apparently been calling because she’d received an invitation to her family reunion and wanted me to go with her.

“I would’ve asked in person,” she was saying, “but you were gone by the time I woke up yesterday, so I didn’t get the chance! Anyway, say yes.” How about not. “It’ll be a great chance for you to meet my mom, dad, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles; well, you get the idea! It’ll be fun!! I’m going to RSVP us tomorrow, so call me, ‘kay!! Don’t take too long though, or I’ll have to come looking for you! Tee hee! Bye!” I blinked. That was incredibly disturbing. I’d met her yesterday, and she already wanted me to meet her family? Her extended family? Like I said: disturbing.

The next message was from Kat. “Hey babe,” she said. “I haven’t heard from you since the other night. Call me, okay?”

The next call had come while I was still at home; I remembered ignoring it. “Hey, Bailey.” It was Amanda…maybe. “It’s me.” That’s helpful. “Just wondering where you’ve been. I haven’t heard from you. Call me, please. Okay?”

Hmm…I really didn’t think that was Amanda but if it wasn’t, I honestly had no idea who she was. Whoops.

“You know what, Winters?” The next message had started. “Fuck you. That’s all I have to say: Fuck. You.” Fuck you, fuck you, I did fuck you. That was Fatima. I smiled slightly. I definitely remembered Fatima.

“Next message. 8 pm… Bailey?!” Jasmine. “Bailey, are you there?! Pick up, dammit. Look, I get it. You’re like every other guy and that’s just fine; I don’t know why I expected otherwise. But still, instead of letting me call you over and over until I was forced to admit that you’re all the same, you could’ve stopped stringing me along, stopped avoiding me, and told me up front that your sorry ass isn’t interested in more than a physical relationship. We’re not in grade school anymore. You can’t hide from me on the playground. It’s time to step up and stop acting like a kid. Good luck with that, Bailey. I hope you find your way; at this rate you’ll be doing it alone. Good bye.”

I arched an eyebrow as she spoke; avoiding her? Stringing her along? I’d done no such thing, nor had I ever feigned interest in anything but a “physical relationship”. People were always assuming things despite that annoying saying. Just because I listen when a girl’s talking and look into her eyes even when she’s not doesn’t mean I’m not aiming two to two-and-a-half feet lower (assuming, of course, that she’s not extremely tall in which case it might be three feet lower). She also assumed that that made me like other guys, a notion I would have found laughable if I didn’t sorely wish it did.

My fifth and final message started, breaking off my thoughts.

“Hey Bailey. It’s Craig. Look, about Wednesday night. I know I had tutoring and I’m sorry I missed it. It’s just that something came up. Anyway, I’ve got my first midterm next week and I could really use your help. Do you think you could meet me at the library day after tomorrow for a refresher? I promise I’ll show this time. Thanks and sorry.”

I sighed and debated on whether I felt accommodating or not. Concluding that I was too tired to think, I decided to think about it later after eating and getting some sleep. First, though, I picked up the phone and called Hannah, Kat, the girl who may or may not have been Amanda, Fatima, and Jasmine, and said the same three sentences to each before hanging up, whether I got their voicemail or not: “Look, I’m sorry if I misled you in any way but I’m really not interested in much more than a sexual relationship right now. Sorry for the confusion. Bye.” I turned off the ringer afterward.

The frozen dinner had exploded in the microwave, and knowing I’d hate myself when I had to clean it later, I left it there and headed to bed. Eating, I decided, was vastly overrated.

I dragged myself to my bedroom and threw myself onto the bed, not bothering to get undressed or under the covers. I was too tired. Lately, no matter how much sleep I get, I’m always too tired.

I closed my eyes and in the brief moment of darkness, I saw his face: thin, pale, and more malevolent than a clown armed with a chainsaw and a cuckoo clock. My eyes snapped open and my heart rate spiked. Irritated with myself, I made myself calm down. I needed to sleep. Forcing my eyes shut again, I kept the image of a blank canvas in my mind, and then proceeded to paint a picture there, using the same painstaking care as in reality,. This was my calming exercise. I fell into it, into the task of painting, no longer thinking of anything else; nothing else existed. My body relaxed, no longer receiving the signal to be tense. After all, what was there about a small house in the middle of a field that should make someone tense…

I hadn’t realized it, but this was the same picture I’d painted a few months ago to show Avery where I’d grown up.

“This would be the perfect setting for a movie about a government conspiracy.” I gave my friend a look.

“What? That makes no sense. It’s a house surrounded by a field in the middle of nowhere. A flowery field in the middle of nowhere. I promise you, nothing of note has ever happened there. I should know; I lived there for eight years.” Avery was undeterred.

“Maybe so. But you didn’t live there during the years after World War III. Wait, wait!” he said, holding up his hands, sensing rightly that my attention to his latest film idea was waning. “Just listen. So some nut in a country no one really paid attention decided to use nukes to—I don’t know—pave the way for the coming of God or something—don’t give me that look, I’ll iron out the details later—and start nuclear warfare. So everything’s going crazy, the radioactivity’s killing everyone in the cities—”

“So we’ll be fine here in this pipsqueak of a town.”

“Right. The only places that will be okay will be the smallest of towns like here and really out of the way places like this house. Of course, there will still be some radiation, but not enough to cause significant damage.”

“So all the small towns will have to worry about are the rabid three-headed lizards.”

“Winters.”

“Sorry, sorry. So where does the conspiracy come in?”

“A small government faction gave the nut the nukes so there would be a distraction when they staged their coup. Some people don’t like the new rule, though, and they’re planning revolts in little houses like these.” He tapped the painting, looking pleased with himself.

“Avery…” I said. “That makes no sense. Why would the people staging the coup do anything to endanger the country? I’m sure they’d want to rule more than a radioactive wasteland. Giving nuclear weapons to the neglected country would make them crazier than the nut.”

He looked at me, annoyed. “Well fine then. Shoot down my idea. Kill my drive. I’ll drop out of school and become a plumber or something now.”

“Yeah right. Film Studies is only your minor. If you can’t write a decent screenplay, you’ll turn to your future M.D. for comfort, become a surgeon, and cut people up and get paid for it. Meanwhile, I’ll be the rich tormented artist painting pictures of three-headed lizards and dedicating them to you.”

“You’re loathsome.”

“You’re lifted.”

“Your point?

I grinned. “All I’m saying is that I’d have less to make fun of you about if you’d come up with ideas down here instead of those reefer-induced plots you shout down to me from cloud 9. …Ave? Avery?!”

I looked around the room. It was a wreck, and not in the way all of Avery’s things were. It was more than messiness; it was as if there had been a struggle. Chairs were overturned, papers were everywhere, and his phone and mp3 player were on the floor. All of his stuff was here but it was clear that Avery Collins was not.

As I frantically scanned the room, the painting of my childhood home seemed to grow bigger and bigger until I was in it. I looked at the sky; it was getting late. School had let out an hour ago but I’d stuck around, roaming from club to club, watching my classmates, trying to learn. I didn’t especially mind walking home, but I knew I should’ve caught the bus. Aunt Riss would be worried. Not too worried though; I did this often. I sprinted the rest of the way to the house.

“Aunt Riss?” I called when I entered the house. “Uncle David? I’m home!” I dropped my bag by the door and walked toward the kitchen, stopping only when I heard my uncle murmuring, whimpering, in his and Aunt Riss’s room. “Uncle David?!”

I ran to the room but halted in the doorway when I saw something no sixteen year old should have to see. My uncle was on his knees by the bed, crying, cradling Aunt Riss’s hand against his cheek. My aunt’s skin was deathly pale and the absence of the rise and fall of her chest was painfully apparent.

I wanted to run to her, to wake her up, to make her look at me and scold me for being late. I wanted to run to my uncle and comfort him or maybe cry beside him. I wanted to run far away from here, from this place of death. All this I wanted to do but couldn’t. I couldn’t move. Something was shattering inside me and I was afraid that if I moved, I would literally fall apart.

“Aunt Riss…?

My uncle turned to me, his glare venomous and accusing. “Get out.” His voice was quiet but laced with hostility.

“Wh-what?!”

“LEAVE!!”

I turned and ran, coming apart at the seams as I did so, falling to pieces with each step. And he was enjoying it. He was laughing at me now more freely than ever before.

“What’s the matter?” His voice came from all around me. “Don’t you like our hand work?”

“Leave me alone!” I shouted. “Let me go!” My vision was blurred by tears but they couldn’t blind me to what I was seeing: my father hanging by his neck from the stair railing. A.J.’s mom wouldn’t let me run to him; she held me tightly, telling me to calm down in an ineffective, hysterical tone. Couldn’t she see I didn’t want to calm down? Couldn’t she see that I all I wanted was to run to him and wake him up so he could smile and hug me as he’d done for all the nine years of my life? Couldn’t she see? “Dad!” I closed my eyes, hoping that when I opened them, the scene would change.

I opened my eyes. Where was I? I couldn’t remember what had happened. Where was my dad? I looked around. This room was as empty as it was unfamiliar. The only thing in it was the cot I’d woken up on and a wall long mirror. I looked into it and froze, confused. It looked like a mirror—the room was reflected—but it couldn’t be. Where a five year old should have been sitting, a man was glaring back. His age was hard to guess: he could’ve been anywhere from twenty to thirty-five. Really, he had sort of an ageless quality. The only thing that allowed him near the elder end of the range was his physical state. He was skinny, not slender, but emaciated with a drawn face and bony features. He was pale too as if he’d suffered from a draining, long-term disease. Despite his thinness, no veins were visible beneath his skin and he didn’t seem to be breathing. His skeletal arms were folded across his chest and his face held a cold expression of contempt and confusion.

“Um…hi,” I said. “Who are you?”

Ignoring me, he held up his hand and looked at it flexing his fingers. Then, without warning, he thrust it toward me. He didn’t move from where he was standing but his hand stretched through the mirror as if the glass wasn’t even there and grabbed me by the throat. I coughed and tried to scream but he was crushing my wind pipe; all I could make were feeble wheezing sounds.

“I can’t be held,” he hissed, leering at me. His voice seemed to echo inside my head and out. “You can’t hold me.”

I struggled for air, pulling at his icy fingers but my five year old self was too weak to throw the man off, withered as he was.

I found out a moment later though that my nineteen year old self wasn’t up to the challenge either. In fact, I did worse.

The man’s face broke out into a grin and I wasn’t certain I didn’t prefer his sneer. “You’re mine.”

I sat up violently, gasping for breath, now somehow tangled up in the comforter on my bed. The sun was now completely up but also completely covered by clouds, the light filtering in through the window gray and flat looking. It pooled onto the floor beside my bed and convulsing slightly, I threw up in the middle of it.

Author's Note: Hey, guys. If you're reading this, then I'm going to assume you read the chapter. Hope you enjoyed it. Also, this is probably the most of this I'll post until next summer. Sorry. This is really just a side product. My main focus right now is Shard of Anima. Go read that one; I'm sure you'll like it. If not, well, I'll see you in June. 'Til then, may your sword stay sharp.