Samara slipped inside, stepping into a room that spoke in scents of various sprays and perfumes. Soft toys filled a bookcase, soaked in the stench. Various eyes mounted to the wall watched Samara proceed towards the sleeping form in the bed, all members of Boyzone and Backstreet Boys silent witnesses, their posters pulled from magazines and fixed haphazardly about the room.
“Kelly…”
Her voice, strange in the silence of the house, caused her to pause, startling in its depth.
The risk was over. Only her sister remained in the house, and a younger sibling posed little threat compared to their parents. They both laid in bed, half-gazing at the ceiling, grinning wider than they ever did in real life, new smiles beneath their chins.
An active antagonist, her sister would be offered no merciful end. Their mother and father were merely the preparation, the practicing and perfection of a new technique. Now came the moment for real art, and real art required appreciation.
9.
The table bore an art history more personal than any textbook. Stained with the dark, rich smell of oils, wearing slips of paint that refused to shift and cuts that ran too deep, it had housed the creation of hundreds of projects. How many stood in this exact spot, Samara wondered. How many stared through this very window to study the grey world beyond, with its grimy aluminium sky. Ashen buildings, blemished by smoke and stained by soot, lined the quiet road leading past the college. Each piece of unique architecture shared a palette that smothered them into a single dreary entity.
Samara lowered her gaze back to the infinitely more vibrant tabletop and the open envelope she clutched between her fingers. She had removed the contents, four neat and perfectly square pieces of paper, just a little rough to the touch. Having lined them in a precise row, Samara scrutinised each one in turn.
More students entered the studio, shaking off the cold from outside, and shrugging out of heavy coats. They drifted to their workstations, pulling back sheets from canvases, squeezing thick and colourful worms of paint from foil tubes, or arranging brushes like surgical implements. The background noise gradually rose to a grating chatter that tried to force its way into Samara’s head. She felt the pressure and forced it back, filling her head with the rich smells of art and the brutal images seeping out from four squares of neat and perfectly square pieces of paper.
She closed the envelope and slid it into the back pocket of her combat pants, before anyone spied the smudged fingerprints adorning its surface.
The four images, caught in a moment of inspiration the previous night and delicately captured in fine charcoal, showed the face of a teenage girl. The first emphasised the fight of deniaclass="underline" eyes staring out from the picture, fixed and defiant, on the observer. Pristine white teeth clenched. The second? Acceptance. Gone was the challenge, and she looked inward, as did the viewer. The picture formed a vortex, pulling one into the dark depths in which the girl now resided. A tear, growing in weight, at the corner of her eye. Teeth now hidden behind pressed lips. A wrinkled chin pulled taut by trembling muscles under the temporarily intact skin of her face.
Samara knew she’d been a fool. The torment of her subject, captured in painstaking detail on the large canvas behind her, had been all for shock value. The blood seeping through her talons as she rendered her own flesh, and how she’d captured the shine of exposed and sallow cartilage, all to make them squirm. But the face…the expressionless pout as replicated from the model in the magazine, how…arrogant. The artist had created an image of agony, and while the subject exposed her own beating heart, and strained to scream out the shadowy terrors that lurked in her throat…her eyes betrayed her. Samara had tried to hide the pain and confusion with the cold stare of indifference. This simply would not do. The current expression of the girl suggested that even she had found some small way to cope with the horror. Samara wanted all who viewed her work to have no such solace.
“Okay everyone,” came the call across the studio. Miss Jones had finally made an appearance, late as usual. Breezing in through the door, the short woman still carried a ghost of her fiery auburn hair amid a mass of grey curls. Today she had opted for a loose lilac dress, the dangling sleeves flowing as she walked. Her heels came to a stop with a hard thud on the tiles, and the teacher surveyed the room over thin spectacles. “As you are all very aware, this is your last session before we hang these masterpieces in the exhibition theatre. Exciting times, eh?” She pressed out her cheek with her tongue and raised an eyebrow. Some idiot laughed. “So at the end of the day, make sure your work is clearly marked as yours, people! We’ll cart them all over and make sure they look perfect for your families to admire.”
Samara turned back to the window, meeting her own eyes.
“And pleeease,” said Jones, drawing her attention. Samara glanced at the teacher’s reflection in the glass. “Minor touch ups only today! Paint needs time to dry, you know.”
Already a small group had formed around the teacher, jostling for attention on last minute problems and ego boosts.
Samara scoffed. True art was no popularity contest, and those parading in front of Jones, desperate for her approval, were wasting their time. Effort should be invested in the work. The work would speak for itself. Art should be judged in isolation. Art should not be judged by the artist.
Two girls approached from either side, and Samara watched them both in the reflection of the window. To her left, Vicki threw her long blonde ponytail over her shoulder. With neighbouring workstations, she was never too far away. Thankfully her entourage were nowhere to be seen today; perhaps warned away with Jones’s probable appearance. On the right, the silent member of the class drifted to Samara’s side.
“Hey,” said Vicki. “How’s it going? I won’t be long today, so feel free to spread yourself out. Your picture looks awesome. Not quite something I’d hang on my bedroom wall, though! Scares the shit out of me. Sure the judges will love it.”
Samara stared at the grinning dark-haired girl beside her, slender teeth piercing both lips, effectively sewing her mouth shut. Her long, filthy nails clattered against each other as her fingers twitched. Samara realised it was her own fingers that were thrumming against each other. She squeezed her hand into a fist. “Oh yeah. Thanks. You too.”
“And what are these?” Vicki smiled and looked down for a closer inspection of the four neat and perfectly square pieces of paper. “Oh. Oh!”
“I’ve been going about it all wrong,” said Samara. “The expression…it’s all…so invalid. And these,” She tapped the last two pictures, “these will be the true face of the piece.”
Vicki stayed silent for a moment, transfixed by the quartet.
“Don’t…” She shook her head. “Aren’t you afraid of upsetting people?”
Samara refused to look the girl in the eye. Instead, she gazed at the streaks and scratches of the tabletop: generations of souls trying to speak through art, successful or not.
“It’s horror. It’s meant to upset people.” She slid the small sketches together into a pile and placed them in her pocket with the soiled envelope.
Her mind focussed on the work at hand, she turned from Vicki and the girl that hovered beside her and headed for her workstation: the canvas, unveiled and waiting, the selected paints and brushes, the tools of meaning. The babbling voices of the students around her and the faint din from the radio fell into silence with every step. The other works and the bustling bodies, the blazing light from the overhead tubes, and the grey haze from the window, became swallowed by darkness.