“Mum, come on! I have my things in there!”
“Nothing your father hasn’t seen before, dear. That card isn’t going to work.”
Her father grunted and turning towards her, lifted out a packet of pills, the foil shiny.
Samara smirked. “Read the label. Aspirin. Or is that an offence too now?”
He dropped the packet back into the drawer and continued the search.
“This is bullshit,” said Samara, trying to shrug free of her mother.
Exhibit B was a folded-up piece of paper. Her father plucked it from the clutter and began to unfurl the tight wad of paper.
Think, she screamed at herself. What’s on that paper? Some awful poetry I’ve written? A torn-out journal page?
What ammo has he found?
Her father examined the opened paper with a grimace. “More of this shit,” he said, showing his wife.
Another early test of Samara’s painting. Instead of opening up her ribcage and reaching for the heart trapped inside, the forlorn girl had started to strip away the skin from her face. In the grey of pencil, the injuries didn’t pop as much as the final chosen method of abuse, and Samara had decided that she wanted the face unmarked. Despite the gratuitous damage on the finished piece, it was the face that showed the pain as an emotional construct, and she needed it untouched, the feeling exposed to her audience.
Her father tossed it on the desktop like a piece of rubbish.
“Now,” he said. “What have we here?”
He lifted out a white unsealed envelope.
“That’s private,” said Samara, fighting the grip of her mother once more. “You can’t do this! You can’t go through all my personal stuff!”
Her father slid a piece of paper from inside. It had been folded once.
“I’m not on drugs, for fuck’s sake,” Samara barked, stepping forwards and reaching for the envelope.
Slipping her arms around Samara’s body, her mother held fast, watching her husband spread the paper.
A small metal object, glinting in the light from the lamp, fell to the carpet and landed silently.
“I don’t know,” said her father and sighed. “I don’t know whether we need a bloody head doctor or a priest…” He also showed the next masterpiece to his wife, but Samara knew what resided on this page.
A more literal depiction of Woe grinned from the paper. No wistful sadness, as displayed by the girl that would ultimately become her final submission. The creature revelled in its pain. Her jaw was stretched beyond breaking but somehow remained in one piece, threatening to split down the centre of her chin. Tiny enamel pins poked from glistening gums, pointing inwards to catch and hold her prey. Black orbs, with a dash of white paint for wet reflection, were set in the narrow, ashen face, almost a skull with skin so tight. Finally, her hair, turbulent about her head, reaching inky tendrils, a black anemone in swirling waters.
The small painting was marred by grimy brown slashes, like streaks of rust.
Her father reached down to retrieve the fallen object.
“What the hell is this?”
He brought it closer to the lamp, careful not to slice open his fingertips.
The sharp edge of the short razor blade shone gold in the light, stained at the corner.
“Why do you have this stashed away?” said her father, the hard determination gone from his voice. Realisation had drained his momentum. He’d come looking for drugs, and had his raving lecture prepared. “What…what have you been doing, Samara?”
“It’s…” Samara scrambled to find the words, grip the explanation that might worm her out. “It’s just…art.”
“Art?” screeched her mother, snatching her daughter’s long sleeve before she had a chance to jerk it away. She tugged it down, revealing the pale skin of Samara’s forearm. “Is this art?”
Gavin, a simple man who drove a cab by day and liked a bit of television at night, stared at his daughter’s arm. What the razor had threatened, the flesh confirmed.
“I…” He closed his eyes, pinching them shut with one hand, the razor still clutched in the other. “Jesus Christ. Oh, love. What have you done to yourself?”
8.
The words had flowed, more from her mother than her father. He’d always wanted boys; more suited to offering advice on playground scuffles, football, shaving, and sex…though Samara wasn’t sure he’d have the fortitude to handle the last one sensitively. More likely to crack a joke and consider the job done. Her father had very few areas in which he’d consider himself an expert and depended on traditional family roles to scurry and hide away from the others. She wasn’t sure her father knew of her periods of the last five years. It had never been raised. Her mother had dealt with the eventual pubic awkwardness that milestone evening: ready to share her own products and experience. Samara had emerged from her room sometime later that night changed. Her dad, of course, had been watching the football, or rugby, or horseracing, and had barely looked up. Full on ignored her, in fact. She never knew if her mother had divulged the latest developments to him, but either way, that was the first time she had felt separated from the family. Contaminated. A bleeding leper.
No. He’d never wanted daughters. He worked. If you wanted something, speak to your mother. The avoidant style of parenting.
Samara was laid in bed, curled up on her side, the glow from the television in the dark room beginning to give her a headache.
At least he’d not taken the aspirin.
She replayed the evening’s performance in her mind, watching but not seeing the brutality on screen as Woe despatched more character fodder. Unfamiliar comfort took her by surprise: her father had actually cared about her. It couldn’t be attention that she craved, feeling more at ease in her own company, slapping paint on a canvas. Perhaps the slightest touch of a connection…? Sometimes a spark can flare between two separate live wires. She thought back to Vicki’s goddamn painting. Perception. Outside and looking in, the home warm and welcoming, but Samara always trapped beyond as the observer. Had one of the painted figures beyond the window looked up from their humble yet content existence and seen the cold figure out there?
Not quite. He’d inevitably left the deep and meaningful to her mother, who was in no mood for such pandering. This latest offense was yet another on the long list of insults. A new depth of weirdness beyond which her mother could handle. Both parents had left the room, taking the razor blade to stop “any more silliness”, and slamming the door behind them. If not for the embarrassment and awkwardness they’d locked inside with her, Samara would have been grateful for the alone time.
Living above the lounge, she’d heard them discuss the matter, muttering not quite loud enough to make out the words. The occasional raised voice sounded as a point was forced across.
Samara had started the tape just to drown them out, to distract herself with a tale of horror and carnage, where those that deserved it felt the pain, and she who was different found her place.
On screen, the female lead and soon to be romantic interest were fleeing down a dark alleyway, jumping over piles of trash and hiding behind dumpsters. In the far background, the lurching figure of Woe stepped into shot, limbs trembling in a seizure, her body metamorphosing.
Samara understood the suffering of the entity. The demon blossomed in the kill scenes, finally shedding its human skin and becoming something purer, something authentic. Its human form held a certain emotional weight onscreen, always in the grip of an internal struggle: the truth fighting from within, and the outside, forcing it into this conforming shape. Woe only killed in the retaliation of rejection.