Her mother retrieved the remaining dishes from the kitchen, always sorting herself out last. She dropped into the chair to Samara’s right, out of breath. She’d probably come in from work just before Samara had returned from college, not having a moment, heading straight into the kitchen to prepare dinner. The lasagne might have been oven ready, but it was hot, and the carrots and broccoli had been thrown on almost as a healthy apology, restoring balance. Her mother sighed and finally allowed herself a few minutes to eat.
“Do you really have to do that at the dinner table?” she asked, jabbing her knife towards Samara’s work in progress.
“It’s homework.”
“When I was a kid,” chipped in her dad, “we’d do stuff like that just to get in trouble. Draw dicks in the margins of our maths books, that kinda thing.”
Samara’s fingers tightened around the charcoal; the tip threatened to snap against the smooth paper.
“What about you, Brenda?” he continued. “Were you any good at art back at school? I don’t know where she gets it from.”
“I didn’t do much,” replied her mother, chasing a stubborn slice of carrot around her plate with a fork. “Just the basics. Art wasn’t…well it wasn’t something people did back then.” She pronged the illusive vegetable. “Wasn’t much work in it.”
Silence descended on the dinner table, which Samara attempted to keep at bay with a frantic scratching of the charcoal. Add to the eyes, the glistening obsidian orbs. Use the method Miss Jones had taught her. Consider the source of light, the curve of the eyes…
“Still no work in it if you ask me,” said her dad.
And there it was.
Had her mother done it on purpose? Lit the conversational fuse that often ended in an explosion?
“I wouldn’t waste my time,” said Kelly, always picking her battles. “I mean, what can you do with it? Not like artists make that much. You can’t really call it a career.” She placed her magazine aside and continued to thumb through the pages, scanning the articles on hook ups, break ups, and as far as Samara was concerned, fuck ups. “I’m going into sports science. Or education. Plenty of time to decide.”
“But please, Sam, put that away now,” said their mother. “Not while we’re eating.”
“Like I said,” Samara growled. “It’s homework. I have to plan around my final presentation.”
Her heart stepped up. The discourse regarding the career opportunities for a young artist was a regular occurrence over dinner. A recent addition to reluctant conversations was Samara’s final presentation for the year, to be held at an art show at the college. Her family’s attendance had been up for discussion of late. Why the hell did she have to mention it now?
Her creation, movement captured so vividly it seemed to float and waver in the paper, leered up at her, revelling in her misery. It was yet another face of the beast that roamed the dark space between her and the rest of her family. She would always be on the outside looking in, as if they sat in the lounge, watching television or playing a board game, one big happy family. Samara would find herself out in the cold night, watching the light that spilled from the windows of her house, projecting the happiness within. The entity circled the house, blocking her advance towards the welcoming sights, the smiling faces. Through its darkness, the faces inside would stretch and skew, their excited conversation becoming strange and alien. Samara simply couldn’t understand, failed to grasp the meaning. What existed between them that she could no longer see, removed by the shadow of the prowling fiend that sat between, an ethereal guard dog, sealing off the family inside?
“It’s always monsters,” said Kelly, flicking over a page. “You’re not even that good.”
“Come on,” pressed her mother. “Let’s put it away and enjoy our dinner, eh?”
Her dad certainly wasn’t allowing her work to put him off his food. He cut a slab of lasagne free and shovelled it into his mouth.
Samara stared into the eyes of her mocking black and white sketch. “Why do you always take her side?”
“What, dear?” Her mother popped a piece of broccoli into her mouth. Her left cheek bulged as she spoke around it. “I haven’t taken anyone’s side. There aren’t any sides to take!”
“I can’t do my homework at the table, but she can read her stupid magazine. You think I’m wasting my time doing art at college but she’s barely passing high school.”
“I am not!” Kelly spat, finally looking up from her magazine. “I’m going to university and doing education.”
“The only thing you could teach kids is putting a look together.” Samara smirked. “You’re not even that good.”
“Better than looking like you,” her sister returned. “Dressing like a freak. Oh, look at me, I dress in black because I’m so different—”
Their father’s fist slammed onto the table. The plates clattered.
The charcoal snapped between Samara’s fingers.
“Will you girls knock it off? You think your mum and me work all day to come home and listen to this shit? Eat your damn lasagne. Both of you.”
Samara stared at her broken piece of charcoal, weighing up her next move. The demon in her sketch pad, caught in its amusement, pulled at her attention.
Finish it, she thought, selecting the longer of the two pieces and resuming her frantic, dark cuts across the page. You’ve come this far. Finish it.
Her father huffed. “Sam.”
She ignored him. Work on the eyes. The claws.
“Samara.”
The blood dripping from its chin, and curve of its breast. It’s a her now. I see it. Add more teeth—
“Samara!”
“What?” She slammed the charcoal onto the page, causing a dirty smear as the implement snapped further, sending dark powder across the paper.
“This,” he growled. “It’s all this. The attitude. The…” He flapped a hand towards the ruined picture, struggling to find the words.
Samara readied herself to leave the table, finally succumbing to their demands but on her terms. She closed the sketch pad. She couldn’t sit back and return to a pleasant family meal now.
“So you’d rather I be more like her?”
Squeezed between the pages in her clutched sketch pad, her creation nodded its approval. Some monsters are invincible in the darkness. They needed to be dragged out into the light, kicking and screaming.
Her mother sighed, placing her knife and fork on her plate, and resting her chin on interlocked fingers. “Don’t try and turn this into a popularity contest between you and your sister,” she said, steel entering her voice. “I won’t have you two at each other’s throats all the time.” She swallowed, taking a pause to plan her route. “We don’t prefer Kelly over you, although that seems stuck in your head. We just… It’s not normal, hiding in your room all the time, watching those…watching the kind of films that you watch.”
“Need to throw all that rubbish out,” said her father, subtle as a sledgehammer and tucking back into his food. It takes more than this to come between a working man and his dinner. “You’re bang on, Brenda, bang on. It’s not normal for an eighteen-year-old girl to be into all this macabre guff. You want to be out there, making friends, having some fun. Living life.”
“And whose life is it, Dad?” Samara stood, almost knocking her chair over. Kelly had returned to her magazine, happy to help throw fuel on the fire but seeking shelter from the heat.