What did I miss? What did I do wrong? What are they missing?
A light hand fell on her shoulder, light and tentative. “Come on, Sam. Please say something.”
Samara squinted at the painting she had studied for countless hours over the last several weeks, seeking out an errant brushstroke or misdirected line. Horizontal streaks barred her vision, flickering with analogue static. Samara tried to blink them away, to adjust the tracking of her own sight and return to her meticulous search. The agitated lines remained, the girl no longer a subject captured on canvas, but a video nasty, a creature paused on VHS.
Meeting the eyes of the monster, Samara pulled her hand free of the pocket of her hoodie. The easy blade slid free, aching to be released.
“What are you doing? Gav? Gav, what’s she doing?”
Before anyone could interfere, Samara struck deep into her face with the knife, ripping the canvas open along a flickering, electric line. The nose that had taken her a couple of hours to get just right slid in two.
“Gav! Stop her!”
Hooking in the knife in a tight fist, Samara struck at the face of the painting again, carving diagonally, splitting a glistening eye. Another ripping across the top of the head. Another. Another.
She shared the same smile.
Her father’s large hand clamped onto her arm. Samara shrugged free and turned, still waving the art knife back and forth, uncaring if she struck canvas or flesh.
Past the shocked faces, she ran to the double doors, fleeing outside. The cold grey embraced her like an old friend, apart for far too long.
12.
Knowing the campus, Samara easily evaded her pursuers. Wiping her eyes with the back of her sleeve, she passed through the automatic doors and into the main building. Always a hive of activity, with the shop, office, and students waiting for the lifts, the ground floor provided Samara with ample opportunity to slip down a corridor unnoticed. She jogged past the foreign language classrooms, escaping both the dreary voices of the teachers inside and the call from Lily, who had entered through the main doors. Samara slammed through a fire exit and back out into the frigid afternoon. Turning a corner, she doubled back, reached the street, and crossed the road. Darting around the tall hedges that bordered the playing fields, she finally allowed herself a moment to catch her breath.
She’d left her bag back in the exhibition hall. After a second of panic, she felt the familiar bulge in the pocket of her jeans. Digging out the half empty pack of cigarettes, she plucked one lose, raising it to her lips with a trembling hand. Her lighter was poked inside the box.
“Fuckers,” she muttered around the butt. “Fucking goddamn…”
She lit up and returned it all back in her pocket. She’d need more smokes before the day was out.
Where now?
Her present and future all seemed behind her. The painting. Miss Jones’s inevitable shock, disappointment, and resulting grade. Her parents. Lily. The stares and comments from the good little students in her class. It was all done. Now only one question nagged her.
Where now?
Her wallet, attached to a shiny silver chain and stashed in her rear pocket, held nothing but her bank card. A little remained in her savings account. What else would she spend it on? More supplies? A fresh canvas?
She dragged long on the cigarette, almost laughing.
I’d slit a throat for a drink.
Samara started across the field, head down against the cold and the sight of the lone girl, who watched her from beside the far goalposts. She ignored the mud on her boots and tugged up her hood against the chilly breeze. Smoke curled about her numbed face as she exhaled through her nose. Yeah. A drink. A drink would warm her up just nice.
The Scholar would be the first place they’d look, so once Samara had made her withdrawal from the bank, every last penny, she headed to the centre of town. A forgotten relic from the industrial revolution, making its name from mills and canals, winding streets and alleyways composed its nucleus. Samara ducked off the main street and into one such lane, with empty beer cans smashed flat and a discarded takeout burger box blowing across the cobbles to ruin its nostalgic beauty. A flash of inspiration hit Samara, a piece of art ruined by the consumerist hunger of the modern world. She quashed the thought, envisioning the crippling cycle of creation and disappointment.
Another pub, one that she’d seen a few times walking past this alley, poked out of the haphazard buildings about halfway along. No one would think to look for her here. She wasn’t even sure if Lily even knew of it. A good, secret place.
Through the window, she spied a young woman who’d already started her day’s drinking. Sitting alone on the other side of the glass, she raised a shot to her lips, tipping back the clear spirit and demolishing it with a single swallow. Her long black hair hid her face, but Samara saw enough. The girl placed the glass on the table, and a second later, raised a second.
Samara stopped in the middle of the lane, watching the second shot hit home.
“I tried,” she said.
The bashful sun slunk behind the pallid clouds, slipping on its funereal mask. Premature darkness filled the narrow, cobbled street.
Samara froze from the caress drifting up her spine.
“You know how much I tried.”
The gentle touch separated, and slender fingers, ending in needle-thin ebony points, drifted over Samara’s shoulders. Even through the hood, she could feel the cold, foul tickle of breath at the base of her neck.
In the window, the girl tucked her hand inside her sleeve and wiped her eyes. A plump woman holding a tray of empty pint glasses stopped by her table. Face almost cracking with concern, she grabbed the girl’s empties and placed them on the tray. Asked if she was okay.
“I don’t need anything,” said Samara. “Other than a drink.”
The girl crafted of agony tightened her grip.
She had found the answer to her one question. Where? This was as good a place as any.
The barmaid released the woman’s shoulder and with a final reluctant glance, carried her tray back to the bar.
“I thought, if I showed the world, it would all come together. The fractured pieces,” said Samara. “There’s always been a schism between worlds, ours and theirs, and I hoped… I hoped that if they could see it laid bare…” She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “But it’s never about the art. Always about the artist.”
The girl in the window started to tremble, racked with sobs. From the empty bar, the older woman loaded glasses into the dishwasher, keeping an eye on her sole young customer.
The dark entity gripped tighter, resting her head against Samara’s back.
“To what you gave me,” toasted Samara. “My admission, my confession, my obsession.”
She lifted a shot glass full of vodka, grinned, and tossed the fiery liquid down her throat. Number three. She looked over her shoulder and through the window.
Outside, the lane was empty. Not many people ventured down this far.
Her grandmother’s money was all but gone, now safely behind several bars through town. She’d moved from place to place, always choosing establishments off the beaten track, those hidden away that would happily take her money. She’d slowed from the straight spirits to her usual bottles of Metz, but the taste brought back better memories, deceitful memories, of fun times back in The Scholar. She washed them away with a gulp from a flask-size bottle of cheap vodka, bought from an off-license, just small enough to fit in the wide pocket of her hoodie.