The Painted Rain
By Dennis DeRyke ©1996
Will thrust the brush into the jelly jar, glaring at the thick ochre fluid as it seeped up the fine hairs like blood welling from a tiny gash. Then he swiped the canvas -- then again -- thrusting as if the brush were a fencer's foil, leaving dual swaths of color dripping like wounds. He knelt, plucking another brush from an old milk carton on the floor, and rose, whipping his arm in repetitive arcs, cutting narrow streaks of brown into the wet yellow splotches. He took a step backwards, then another, holding the brush low in front of him, and warily measured the blurs of color against the keen imagery in his mind. Then he resumed his fervor.
The ochre swathes became barren hills -- the brown streaks: dying weeds leaning at precarious, thirsty angles. Thirsty like a young boy, who had just got home from school, dull from drudgery and eager to find some amusement or outlet. Seeds fell dead from the stalks, wafting on the burnt wind as the boy drifted through the large empty house, drawn by the only sign of life: the rapid-fire clatter of the adding machine in his father's den. He quietly pushed the door open, reluctant to interrupt his father but needing to talk, to hear another person's voice, someone talking to him and him alone, apart from the anonymous mass of students who had crowded the sweltering classroom. His father was hunched at his desk, his shoulders stiff as one hand held his pencil, poised in rigid, white-knuckle expectation. The other hand drummed the keypad with a relentless, asynchronous rhythm. The boy could see the wet areas on his father's shirt as he drew closer; sweat beaded on the back of the man's neck, between the tightly trimmed hair and his sharply pressed collar. The boy reached up to touch his father's elbow, unobtrusively, innocently, with the harsh consequences of shattered concentration -- a faltering of the keystrokes, and a false digit in the ledger. The dead seeds fell, spent on the rocky soil.
"Look what you made me do!" Will gaped at the dismal scene, ruined by a misplaced highlight -- a streak of white paint where none belonged -- as the echoes of his father's shout died away among the random numerals, choked out by the vindictive echo of the keypad that hadn't faded though a decade had passed.
He found himself sweating, his muscles tense from the frenzied painting. The cellar's single bare bulb resembled the relentless sun on the canvas, scalding the ground with bitter heat despite its dirty dullness. Will took a step backwards, to the periphery of the bulb's glare. His naked chest burned by its light, while the taut muscles all along his back quivered in the chill that midnight had finally brought to the cellar . . . midnight, and a sudden, icy breath wrested up from dead lungs.
Will spun, aghast, and saw nothing. His racing heart softened its pounding as he fidgeted back and forth, calming his feverish mood with a deliberate effort, shaking his arms to shed the tightness. He knew he needed a reprise, but the hunger ate at him -- the burning necessity to continue. Plucking a pair of brushes from the ruffled, paint-speckled newspapers that covered the cold concrete floor, he renewed his manic creation.
He had trouble gauging the passage of time while he painted, not that he really tried. Rather, he relished the isolation of his toils in the cellar, away from the impassive faces that had haunted so much of his life. And he hid here also from his own visage, as he would see it reflected in their glazed eyes . . . The hours passed uncounted in the corner of the cellar, away from watches and clocks and the tell-tale passage of the sun.
"Death," he pronounced, as he surveyed the finished canvas, with its tangled weeds shedding stillborn seeds and the cloud of bloodstained dust bourne on a lone, desperate breath of wind.
It was effective. It captured what he had envisioned. He collapsed onto the wooden crate at the perimeter of the bulb's glare -- it must be 2 AM by now -- to rest his exhausted mind, and contemplate his painting. He took no notice of the chilling breath he imagined on the back of his neck again, until an icy hand fell heavily upon his naked shoulder.
He whirled -- his eyes took desperate moments to adjust to the darkness beyond the illuminated ring -- then squirmed out of the frigid grasp of the hollow figure that towered over him. A cloak of rotting grave cloth hung on its tall, gaunt frame, and it held the archetypal scythe in withered fists. Will barked, "Who are you? What do you want!" The thing drifted closer, like weightless ashes bourne on a graveyard wind.
It hissed a venomous reply, gloating awkwardly through a skull bereft of vocal cords. "You know what I am. You called out to me. Now I am here!" Death.
The youth shrank back, towards the wall, somehow stopping just before his bare shoulders touched the wet canvas. He glanced around at the fresh painting, inches from his cold, sweating skin. There was something about the painting -- some promise that was yet to be revealed, a lifeline of hope against the sudden appearance of the predator.
Will licked his lips, wide-eyed, desperate to stall the inevitable. "You want my life, of course -- that's it, isn't it? But it might be better if you waited a minute -- uh, there could be a better moment coming up . . ."
Will faltered. The mouldering skull hovered above him, revealing no expression -- even the bony arms that held the scythe were completely immobile, waiting. The young man stammered, desperate to prolong its frozen pose, making up the words as he went. "You could take me now, of course. But then, that would be just another death. One of a million insignificant, unmentioned deaths. Just another obituary in the local paper. Or you could have something better . . ."
The dark form hovered there. Will had no idea whether the apparition was really considering his frantic entreaties, but he kept talking, the words flowing unbidden from his lips.
"Isn't it the life that measures the death? Doesn't the color and intensity of the thriving life give it merit -- the weight by which the tragedy of the death is measured? Isn't it better to take a vibrant life -- a consciousness on the verge of its greatest creation, than to spirit away a limp, shallow dullness of an abandoned soul?"
He ran out of words. There was a silence, then the apparition crooned, "Yes! Yeeeesssss! You understand. You have thought about your demise carefully before calling me, have you not?" Will gaped dumbfounded, then nodded. The Dark Angel continued, "You want your life to come to its tragic close at the eve of your greatest creation! You want to join the ranks of those wretched malcontents whose works only gained them glory after they were no longer able to receive it -- dead!"
Will reached slowly for a brush, feeling that any sudden move might bring the rusty scythe down upon his naked, shivering torso. The chilling voice droned, "Go ahead! Paint! It will be delicious for me . . . the candle of an artist's soul burns the brightest before it is quenched."
Uncertainly, Will smeared the brush across the dented cookie sheet he used for a palette, and pressed the sable against the canvas. It was almost a sacrilege -- to add more to a painting after he had deemed it whole. But the icy shadow that fell across his shoulders drove him with a desperation he hadn't known before. Except maybe one day, years ago, when he was still a little boy . . .
Death looked on. As Will dabbed at the painting, his mind raced. What could he do to escape -- not just to prolong his agony but to be free from the vindictive spirit that bided its time at his back? A feeling of hopelessness struck him like a guillotine, driven home by the overwhelming sensation of aloneness. The solitude of the cellar had become the isolation of a cell. Will was surrounded by death -- unliving concrete and timbers, the dusty stairs leading upward into the large, empty, lifeless house, where only a keyboard chattered . . . a keyboard! Will held his breath for a moment and froze, pretending to survey his work, but actually he was listening . . . listening to the faint but undeniable echo of typing in the crypt-like stillness of the house.
Another image sprang to mind -- a single, brilliant beacon promising the desperate chance of salvation. His father might come downstairs eventually, and what would be of the apparition then? Logic offered that his old and stooping father was no match for the scythe-wielding demon, but a competing vision overbore the rationalization. Would not Death rely upon isolation -- the one lone victim, singled out from the body of humanity and therefore weak against despair? And wouldn't a single other human presence shatter the loneness?
Will's mind spun as terror fought to overwhelm his aspiring hope. His father took no interest in his paintings, and had not invaded the sanctity of the cellar for years . . . why should this night mark a reprieve from his indifference? But what had the apparition said? You called out to me. Perhaps his desperation might summon his father, this one time, just as the fervor of his grim creation had brought on the Reaper. It was a tenuous hope, but the youth needed hope to guide his brush.
The young man swallowed, then dragged his forearm across his sweating brow. He knelt again, squeezing globs of hue from the paint tubes, mixing them into a flesh tone with his palette knife. He stood up, and in a deft series of strokes his father's face appeared in the sky, like an angel looking down from the foreboding clouds. If only he could buy enough time.
Fatigue tugged at Will's eyelids, weighing heavily upon his elbows -- the brush moved sluggishly. Sleep offered consolation, dimming the periphery of the canvas, making the dark bricks of the cellar crawl with swirling patches of duller darkness. He shook his head angrily to rouse himself. The only reprieve that sleep can bring is death, he thought bitterly, as he formed an ethereal staircase amidst the stagnant clouds. His father was there on those misty steps, just as Will envisioned him on the cellar stairs. He had painted himself into the scene, as a young boy wading through the tangled weeds, even though some primeval instinct had decried it. But he needed to continue with the painting, to span as much time as possible, until he would hear footsteps on the cellar stairs and turn and see his father coming down to scold him about being up so late, and the demon would vanish.
His eyelids fluttered open just before he pitched forward. He clenched his fists, barely saving the palette from clattering to the floor. Stay awake, damn it! He wondered if the spectre had noticed his temporary swoon, then wondered how it could not have seen -- he had left a smear of white at the edge of the canvas where none belonged, and it trailed off, onto the dirty bricks. The hairs of his brush were caked in the dingy black dirt of the cellar wall.
"You are stalling," hissed the toneless voice. "Your last painting is complete, and now you are mine!" Will spun around to see a bony hand heft the scythe, and implored the eyeless skull, "No! I am not finished . . ."
The dread in his pounding heart told him it was useless this time but he blurted out, "This is a new medium -- the wall is a part of the piece!" The scythe was poised; Will could almost feel its sting, tearing through his ribs, but he stammered feebly, "The entire wall will be my epithet, a mural -- a painting that holds a painting!"
He shivered against the emptiness the thing before him promised with its void eye sockets and rotting teeth. Long seconds passed; Will could hear them ticking away on some great, unseen clock. But no -- that was really the distant clatter of the keyboard! And the Dark Angel remained poised in mid-lunge. Will closed his tired eyes, and tears ran down his trembling cheek.
When he opened his eyes again nothing had changed. Death was still there, waiting. With shaking hands, Will knelt and laid down his palette and brushes, and dipped one of his rags in the rinse jar. He turned, and began washing the wall beside the canvas' edge, digging the dirt from the little crevices and indentations in the bricks. Thin mud streamed down the wall, to puddle on the floor beside the tackle box. Will recovered his brushes and began painting again, the oils smearing against the moist bricks.
Will's heart froze when he raised his eyes and saw the staircase floating in the low sky, where only the blackened cellar beams should have been, and he knew that he had lapsed into dream. His father was a mannequin in a business suit poised frozen on the stairs.
Though his view of the cellar was completely suffused by dreams, his hearing had grown unnaturally acute. The silence was deafening when the keyboard's chatter abruptly ceased, and the chair legs slid backwards across the hardwood floor in the den upstairs. Will shook his arms, trying to force himself awake, to keep painting and prolong the faltering, desperate minutes of his ebbing life.
The Reaper's hiss resounded in the vacant plains of his dream. "The time has come." The sky cracked open and Will had the sudden comforting hope that rain might spill down upon the strangled weeds, moistening the spent seeds, but then there were only thick wooden beams above him. The dream shattered as the brush clattered to the floor and Will snapped awake, swaying on his feet before the hideous mural. His father's steps resounded directly overhead, nearing the cellar door. A fleshless hand reached out for Will's throbbing heart. "No!" he barked. The chilling wind that was the demon's breath wafted against the youth's face as it spoke. "You can prolong it no longer. Yessss! Feel the terror! I drink your fear like nectar."
Desperately Will dodged to the side, pleading again that his work remained unfinished. He snatched a white-flecked brush from the carpet of newspaper and pivoted, dragging sparkling streaks of rain through the stagnant clouds. "I care nothing for your painting, mortal. Your hours alone in fear have sculpted your death into the treasure that I crave, not the pathetic arts of humankind."
The door swung open at the top of the stairs to admit light, like the clumsy, golden rays of sunshine that the youth hastily dabbed against the murky horizon to break the fetid clouds and scintillate through the desperate rain. Then the entire scene was blackened by the shadow of the fiend that swelled like a poisonous bubble, blotting out the light from the kitchen upstairs and the bare bulb overhead.
When the shadows fell away and the youth could see his painting again the perspective was skewed. He was looking at it as if through a hazy, fish-eyed lens, from above. The pleading visage of himself in the painting was vibrant in comparison to the pale body that lay half-naked among the paint-splotched newspapers, with a brush still dangling in its lifeless hand. The father raised his shocked eyes from the body of his son to the bizarre mural surrounding a vivid, turbulent painting depicting dry sterility being swept away from a barren landscape by the gentle rains of sunset. The rain fell, but the weeds and seeds were already dead. Too late.