Samara closed her eyes, stifling a cry. Tears, hot and salty, cascaded down her cheeks and across her lips.
Lily offered no more explanations and accusations. Samara could feel her moving away. One more, perhaps her last, who had given up hope.
Samara wiggled the blade up and down, sawing through a particularly stubborn patch of flesh, an old scar perhaps, or fresh skin unwilling to give up its virginity. Blood poured from the deep wound, dripping from the underside of Samara’s forearm.
She could almost see Lily heading back through the gardens to the stone arch, casting an anxious look over her shoulder, feeling the eyes on her back.
“I see you…” Samara hissed.
Great strobes of static flickered past Samara’s eyes. She blinked them away and somehow found herself in the archway, blocking Lily’s path.
Her friend stopped. “Sam? Thank Christ. I thought I saw you go in there.” She jabbed a thumb back towards the garden. “Look, can we talk?”
Samara remained locked in place, staring at Lily, a slight breeze agitating her hanging black hair. Her arm still buzzed with electrical sensations from the cutting. The current flowed through the wires and circuits of her bones and blood, sparking in her fingertips. She raised her hand before her face, grimacing from the pain.
“Sam?” Lily tried once more, daring a step forwards. “Come on, mate. This is stupid. We can talk about this.”
Blessed agony kissed a fingertip, just under the nail. Samara brought the offending digit closer still. A hint of shiny silver emerged, poking through the crimson drop of blood that bulged from the distal edge of her nail. Samara smiled, her mouth opening wider and stretching low as more slivers of metal were born from each fingertip. Sharp steel triangles sprang forth in dark geysers, ripping through skin and splitting fingernails.
“Sam?” said Lily. “What are you doing?”
Brandishing two sets of fully protruding claws, Samara raised a lethal fingertip and tapped her bottom lip, contemplating her decision. Her friend had no idea of the grotesque changes taking place in the darkness of the archway. Just as Lily had changed, trying to keep it in the dark, away from Samara. Just as the golden lights of The Scholar had led her to the deception like a beacon, so too would the welcoming glints from her blades offer Lily the same revelation.
“Sam, please. It’s cold. Come on. I’ll buy you a drink—”
Samara pressed the sharp tip onto the moist surface of her lip and with a hard-downward thrust, parted her face down to her chin. Blood poured from the wound and splattered the ground, a sudden gory rain that caused Lily to step back.
Her true face wriggling free from underneath the mundane, Samara glared at the silhouette before her, silently begging Lily to see while relishing the moment before the hunt. Lily had been the one; the closest to seeing through the everyday and knowing the real Samara hidden in the skin, the Nirvana t-shirts and the eyeliner, the secrets and the desires.
As Samara swept towards her, Lily stared in horror at the truth, her mouth opening to scream before a flurry of blades descended. Her gargled chokes echoed from the underside of the stone arch as the transmuted tore through her throat. Both girls tumbled back in a glistening heap; Samara’s hooked fingers striking, tearing, ripping. Her pale face melted and sloughed from her skull, revealing her authentic self.
Lily had seconds to see the monstrous visage before the blades, having carved out her throat to the bone, plunged deep into her eyes.
11.
They had spent weeks working along to the local radio piping out of the old stereo in the corner of the studio. Now Miss Jones had opted for something a little more cultured for the visiting parents, college staff, and local dignitaries. Classical music played softly in the background of the exhibition hall, accompanying the quiet mutterings of those perusing this year’s offerings. Rows of perfectly arranged seats faced the stage at the front of the hall. Behind, partitions displayed weeks of hard work by the graduating art class.
Samara failed to recognise a single face. They drifted either alone or in pairs; parents trying to look informed, holding narrow flutes of sparkling wine, pointing out certain parts of each painting; the self-proclaimed connoisseurs, silently studying each piece, judging its worth. Most students stood by their project, happy and eager to chitchat with anyone who ventured too close. Jones had encouraged such interaction. Art does not belong in solitude, she’d told them, but exists as an extension of the artist. Let them know you. Tell them the story behind the art.
Holding the opposite view from her teacher, Samara stood in a corner clutching her own glass of wine, her third already. It was free. While she differed from her parents in countless ways, she too couldn’t afford to pass up a freebie. The alcohol helped to take the edge off, and who knew, a couple more might allow her to actually talk. In the meantime, she was content to hang back and watch from afar.
Miss Jones, as this was her big day, drifted between groups, students, and parents: a butterfly flitting among flowers in another of her long, loose, colourful dresses. Hard to miss, but Samara guessed that was the point. She headed over to Vicki’s parents, shaking hands with each, eyes widening behind her designer glasses. Too many pleasantries, too much small talk. Too much heady perfume to tickle the back of her throat and make her head swim. Samara returned her attention back to her own painting.
She had arrived at the exhibition early to check the paint had dried from the previous day of reworking. The overhead beams glistened in the picture, the college not providing any form of flattering lighting. A cursory dab of her thumb found the new face of her subject completely dry. Satisfied, Samara had stood back to inspect the painting had been hung straight, and that her information pinned beside the piece was correct.
The Varden Gleave Art Prize 1998 entrant
Outside
by Samara Mathers
The hall had started to fill with latecomers filing through the door, seeking out their sons and daughters and a glass of sparkly before wandering over to the waiting works of art. Months of labour, mounted for the most cursory of glances as parents passed. They were keen to see the masterpiece created by their own offspring.
Samara watched with pride as one woman glanced at her painting and stepped away from it, as if the picture and the area around it were tainted. With no parents of her own to gush over her artwork, Samara noticed that “Outside” stood strikingly alone in a room full of sycophants.
However, one figure stopped before it, meeting the now tortured eyes of the model as her real face fought to emerge from the canvas. The girl with the dark hair stared up at the painting, unblinking and motionless. Parents and staff passed by, ignorant to her presence, perhaps only scowling as they spied the painting from the corner of their eye. The girl ignored them, consumed by the agony presented in oils.
Samara drained her thin glass, placed it on a nearby table, and meandered through the various guests to stand beside her sole audience. The girl wore the same clothes Samara had selected that morning: black jeans and a hoodie to hide within. She wondered if her counterpart also gripped an art knife in her pocket, hand sweaty from her tight grip. In silence, they both considered the art before them.
“I’m supposed to talk about my work,” Samara muttered, “to tell someone the reason behind its creation. This…torment. It’s my obsession.” She sighed and turned away, unable to look at her own work a second longer.
Next to the doorway, Dale leaned against the wall, watching her. She figured he’d come. Considering himself one of the creative elite at the college, and with the predominantly female art students here in abundance, Dale had to make an appearance. Samara stared back, challenging him to come over, daring him to try. He stayed put, his glasses precariously perched on his smashed nose. The blood had decayed to black, like tar had oozed from the carnage at the centre of his face. His head sat atop his neck at an odd angle, the vertebrae of his spine destroyed and unable to support the weight.