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Shadow on the Sun - Chapter Two

Chapter Two

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━

Once again, another masterpiece was waiting for Marie in the student studio. She had been on her way over there to work on her figure painting, which was her own rendition of Matisses’ Dance. As she had set her work down at the studio, bringing out her canvas from one of the back rooms, she saw it, staring at her with its unbridled glory. Another portrait, something more sinister. No. Raw. It was something so raw and real that it scared Marie. In a trance she studied it from afar; a woman was turned like a corkscrew, her skin tightened and weighed under the pressure, but it didn’t look like it was hurting her. Like it was just a pose she struck without thinking about it. The strokes of the underpainting shone up through the patches of rendered paint. Oil and acrylic mixing together to make a beautiful scene. It had reds and teals, a perfect antithesis of the other. It was reminiscent of early Picasso but also something a Baroque painter would have done. Something beautiful and dark.

As Marie drew closer, she noticed it had a distinct smell, almost metallic. The smell of rotting oil and something else she couldn’t quite place. Something that was along the lines of-

“Hello?”

Marie jumped as the voice came from behind her. As she looked back, it was the girl she always searched the crowds for.

“Oh, uh- I was just- This is, uhm beautiful.” Marie stuttered. “To put it plainly.”

She noticed the girl had a gallon of paint in her hands. She set the gallon down and walked closer to Marie.

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?” Her voice was just like how she remembered, sultry and sweet. She had her same hair, kind of wild but auburn, with its streaks of red and undertones of blue. She was wearing a plain waistcoat, with nothing underneath it or above it. Just the waistcoat and slacks. Pinstripe. A leather jacket was laying across a chair behind her.

“Yes, I think so. We’ve crossed paths like twice. You sat next to me in figure painting.” She stumbled over her words.

“Ah, that's right. You had painted your mom. Very beautiful underpainting on that one, I loved the use of the background being a dark yellow umber but the colors of the actual centerpiece were more blue. Brilliant.”

Marie was suddenly ecstatic. “Oh, wow… You’re just-”

“Brilliant? I know.” She extended her hand. “Eleni Castellanos.”

Marie took her hand in an awkward embrace. “Marie Fukumoto… or well Nachtnebel as all the teachers address it.”

“Is Fukumoto your mothers name?”

“....yes, it is.”

“Quite beautiful.” Eleni let go of Marie’s hand. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, well, a rendition of Matisse’s Dance.”

“Ah, I’d love to see that. Are you hungry?”

“Hungry?”

“Yes, Marie, hungry.”

“Sure.”

They had slid into a little cafe which was on the corner of the College way. They made themselves comfortable in the back by the fireplace, there was a chess mat and pieces left on the table next to them. Eleni moved to that table, to which Marie followed reluctantly. Eleni started setting up her side of the board, as Marie followed her movements almost to a perfect T. They were in perfect sync moving pieces across the board almost perfectly. They barely bothered to even eat, they were so focused on the game.

After a king was knocked, Eleni spoke up. “So,” She leaned back in the chair. “Who's your favorite artist?”

Marie thought about it for a long moment. “Probably Monet.” Marie sat on her hands to stop her from fidgeting with the edge of the chess mat or her hair. It had been a long long time since she had ever been around another person in a capacity such as this. Eleni then suddenly shed her jacket, leather bound and dark. She wore dark makeup that accentuated her features. Dark liner and blood red lips. Curly hair that spiraled down her back. Eleni smiled at her, like an afterthought.

“Rembrandt.” She said plainly. She reached into her jacket pocket on the chair and withdrew a carton of cigarettes. In her other hand she drew a lighter, she struck it and chewed on the edge of the cigarette before putting it in her mouth. She drew a breath and coughed out, in an almost embarrassing way, like she had never actually tried a cigarette before. Marie looked down at the carton on the table, this was the only cigarette missing from it. “I like how dark his paintings are. But yet, how beautiful the Baroque era was.” she coughed again. “And the Vanita Stills. Where they have rotting skulls and apples.”

Marie just nodded, not totally sure what to say next. She watched as Eleni kept drawing on the cigarette. “Why’d you go to art school?” Eleni asked.

“Oh, well I had a scholarship.” Marie hesitated, determining what exactly she should tell her and what would be better kept a secret.”And I just decided to take it.”

“For what?” Eleni asked. She held the cigarette deftly between two fingers.

“I’m sorry?” Marie offered.

“What did you get the scholarship for? Orchestra or art?”

“Oh, Art.”

“What kind of art do you want to do?”

“Well, I… like photography.”

Eleni put the cigarette down and stared Marie in the eyes, full focused, brow furrowed.

“Photography.. Why?”

“I just think it's a lot more personal than painting everything, we have a device which can bring reality to a halt and I find that utterly fascinating. It makes a still image of reality a tangible, material object.”

“Does painting not exact the same response? You paint something, you’re spending more time with the subject matter, you get to know it personally; you know everything about what you're painting overtime, not with photos. If your goal is to make something that lasts, that's what painting is for,”

“Is that what you want to achieve? Something real, tangible?” Marie asked, she was leaning so far forward she looked hunchbacked. Eleni put out her cigarette on her boot as a waitress came up and told her to smoke outside.

As they reached outside, the rain had started to drizzle. They walked side by side for miles, until they reached an outlook over the coast, watching the cascading, jagged edges of the cliffs hit against the waves. Jutting out and towards them like an invitation inside the perilous ocean.

Eleni breathed deeply and sighed.

“I like you, Marie Fukomoto.” She said with an exhale, she said it so nonchalantly Marie thought she was dreaming. It was so fluid and real for someone to say something to her, something that acknowledged her existence other than a nod and a slight tilt of the head. It almost felt like a great relief for her reality to come to its sudden halt here, where the only person who mattered to her was right here. Who knew she was real. Material. Eleni shook her hand again and walked in the opposite direction in the drizzling rain.

With her evening plans disrupted and disturbed by the unknowing blossoming relationship with Eleni, she just made her way home. Leaving her things at the gallery where she knew it wouldn’t be touched until she's back to retrieve it.

“Marie, where have you been? You’re soaked.” Her father said as she came through the door, she slipped off her boots at the door.

“I was out.” She said plainly, trying to conceal the smirk on her face. But there was also something in the air when she had come in, something new and foreign to the household for a long time.

“Out?” Her father questioned, he rounded the corner from the kitchen and looked at her, like he would have been expecting some new sudden change in appearance- different colored hair, or a ghastly piercing in her nose. “Have you not been at school?”

“Well, I was for a little.”

“A little?” He reiterated as she entered the kitchen and took a jug of juice out of the fridge. She leaned up and got a cup from a clapboard.

“I was with…” Marie trailed. She didn’t know what to call Eleni.

“Don’t tell me it was a boy.” His voice was deep and scared.

Marie stared at him, “No, dad, no boy.”

“Oh, good.” He relieved.

“I was with a friend.” She said simply, plain and uncharismatic. “She was at the studio. She has her art in the student Gallery… She's brilliant.” Marie looked out the window, watching the rain patter against the glass so delicately it reminded her of Eleni. Delicate. Soft. But hard and rough on the edges. Hard to take in, but relentless when she finally is. She reminded her blankly as her old friend from Junior High, a young girl who always had her hair in a pixie, saying she wanted to look like Winona Ryder, but she paled in comparison. She was scruffy and had scrapes all along her knees and legs from going up and down trees and rocks. There wasn’t a single thing that was comparable between this forgotten girl and Eleni, but Marie would like to think so.

As she was lost staring out into the void of rain, her father had slipped away, as she would find him mostly. Gone and away, trying to forget elsewhere. Marie was going to ask where Philip is, but she imagined he was at a friend's house.

The Box TV was off in the kitchen.

Months had passed since they first met, the summer semester turned to fall. And eventually the snow started to fall and pass everyone by, especially Eleni and Marie. They began to spend all of their time together, calling each other late at night. Marie twirling the chord around the bend of the wall and standing with her back to the stairs, smiling to herself as they whispered back and forth.

Something unspoken was between them, something not so foreign. Marie’s father noticed a change in her, an alien change that shook the house and its foundation. He found himself disgruntled at the fact she had found someone while he still struggled to move past. Philip just let go, wondering when this mystery girl would ever show up at the dinner table, with stoic silence crowding the air and muffling their lungs until it was too unbearable Marie would leave, with Eleni, of course arm in arm.

They were walking to the Gallery after their shared figure class when Eleni asked. “When can I meet your parents?” She was a couple steps ahead before she braced the question to the air.

Marie was still shocked in the middle of the sidewalk. This question had never really arose in her previous life. Never was this shot out at her like a bullet. It never struck so hard. Something deep in Marie realized, this was real, tangible, honest. Honest. She repeated.

“You really don’t need to.” Marie said simply.

“Maybe I want to.” Eleni responded, reaching for her arm, but Marie had backed away at the thought.

“I don’t know Eleni,” Marie said. Inside she had already decided that she wouldn’t want Eleni to meet her father no matter what. If they met then something serious must have happened to lead to those events unfolding. She didn’t want the perfect thing to come crumbling down when she meets the person who banes her existence. It wasn’t that she was embarrassed, it was that she was cautious. As anyone would be after a life altering experience which results in the collapse of everything near and dear. Marie just decided to drop it, Eleni didn’t.

“What’s the harm? Is your dad like a serial killer or something?” Eleni joked with a pop of her gum which would always get caught on her teeth.

“Can we just drop it, please?” Marie all but begged.

Eleni stopped walking as Marie did, she traced her steps back to where Marie stood, she braced for something to happen as Eleni closed the distance.

“Of course.” Eleni said she took the gum from her mouth and threw it in the road next to them, inches from Marie’s face; they were so close Marie could feel her breath fanning her cheek. It was cold and sweet. But her mouth turned into a fine line as the muscles in her jaw folded over each other. Eleni turned away and continued walking with a long, harping sigh.

Their figure classes were more lively as Marie found herself participating even more in class activities. Eleni was focused so intensely onto the figure in the middle of the circle, Eleni never held her pencil up like the pretentious kids did in class, she studied the curves of the person, watching diligently how their chest moved up and down with every breath and movement when they shifted their weight between their feet. One day, Eleni had stayed after class to talk to their professor, Marie waited in the hallway shuffling her feet watching as the other students trifled out from the door, walking down in their tedious tidying up of their bags or hair.

It had been longer than Marie expected, for Eleni to be meeting with their professor, she was starting to wonder if something was the matter. But when Eleni came out, with a smile on her face she wasn’t sure what to think.

“Come with me.” Eleni said, taking Marie by the hand down the hall. Eleni seemed to be the happiest she had been, not that she wasn’t normally warm and bright but that there had been some sort of change in her this specific afternoon. She didn’t dare spoil the surprise for Marie by mentioning anything until it was ready.

Eleni had taken Marie down the street from the art building and into the closest bus stop. She recognized this place as the spot where she and Eleni bid goodbye most nights. It was the last time she would see Eleni for a couple of days if they didn’t have classes or if they didn’t make plans to meet until class. They waited for the bus under the glass awning, Eleni while they waited patted her cigarette carton against her hand, took the one cigarette and crumpled the box back into her bag. Her bag, in this case, as it changed with every outfit, was a leather knapsack, it had pins on it with band names and religious symbols like the pentacle, when she wore her pentacle necklace, they got weird looks from the Mormons in the halls with her dark makeup and outwardly rough exterior. As the bus came, they boarded in silence, sitting in the back of the bus as she continued to smoke her cigarette; she shoved the bus window down and puffed the smoke out of the window, watching as it passed them by and fluttered away.

Eleni looked back to Marie with a big smile. Something unrelenting and excited in the curve of her smile. Marie smiled back, awkwardly.

It was like Eleni had been alive a lot longer than she looked, she was so natural. She talked to people without a care, charismatic beyond belief, charming anyone with the flutter of her lashes if they could look past the smell of cigarettes.

The bus had come to a grinding halt as it melted the ice under its wheels. The doors opened with a creak as the two stepped off without looking back. Marie wondered how far they had gone away from the college to be on the edge of the woods, overlooking the coastline, and the lights fluttering in the distance. The waves, as usual, crashed against the rocky cliffs.

“Ready for a hike?” Eleni braced her.

“What?” Marie asked, hesitant. Eleni hurried on ahead of her, skipping with her boots splashing the mud up underneath her.

“Come on.” Eleni called out behind her at Marie, who was standing where the bus had dropped them off. Marie, nervously, lightly ran to keep up with her.

The trees were paramount and towering over them, so high it felt nauseating. Marie tried to not look up as much as she could. Waiting for them to eventually get where ever it was Eleni was destined to take her. Dragging her along the woods in search of something.

Eleni looked back as she entered into a clearing in the forest, a small pebbled path made clear in front of them as the trees cleared. Marie saw giant spires and flying buttresses curving in to make what must be an old Victorian mansion from the eighteen hundreds.

“Holy shit.” Marie gasped. “Its-”

“Beautiful.” Eleni finished. Eleni grabbed Marie by the hand and guided her around the side of the house, it was less a mansion and more of something gothic, but the word house seemed boring in comparison. Mansion, too extravagant for the type of structure it is.

“How did you even find this?” Marie asked, staring up the side of the abode into the third floor windows.

“I live here.” Eleni said plainly.

Marie stopped. “No you don’t.”

Eleni let go of her hand, “I do, actually.”

“Well, then let’s go inside.” Marie started to walk towards the front side of the house, with its giant awned porch.

“No, Marie, not yet.” Eleni was fast as lightning as she stopped in front of Marie even though from her memory, she was behind her. Eleni pet the side of her head, taking her hair in her hand and twirling it between her fingers. “I’ll show you when I’m ready for you to see it, we’re here for something else.” Eleni backed away from Marie, her fingers ghosting along the palm of her hand as she walked towards the back of the house. Marie, after a moment of silence, followed after her.

They kept walking through the backside of the woods until they came to another small clearing. Wrought iron fences lined a small patch of grass with two crosses buried in the dirt, fresh looking mounds that had been dug up and put back.

“Eleni, what is this-”

Eleni was quiet, she opened the gate to the wrought iron, self made cemetary. There was a rusty, old and broken shovel laying in the grass next to the graves. Eleni started to dig, until she had dug up all of the dirt surrounding one grave. Marie came up behind her, slowly creeping in through the gate, there were no names on the gravestones, or dates. Nothing. Just empty.

Eleni stood up, “I talked to Professor Lauder about what our next painting class should be, I approached with the idea of a communal Vanita Stills. I get the things to have in the class, and we paint it.” She said it so simple and matter of factly Marie thought she was joking.

“And you’re going to use- Human skulls?”

“Rembrandt used real skulls of animals. It wasn’t uncommon to use a more familiar sort of bone structure.”

“Eleni, this is crazy. I mean you’re desecrating a grave- do you even know who these people are?” Marie held herself, her hands clenching tightly at her sides.

“What's the difference?” Eleni dropped the shovel haphazardly and made her way towards Marie. She held her hands out, delicately embracing Marie in some sort of familiar and sensual embrace. Eleni withdrew and held Marie in her hands. “Its for our progress as artists. Without this, we’ll be the basic bitches who paint flowers and butterflies. The macabre is how we welcome new things. And,” Eleni drew in closer to Marie, holding her so close her breath grew cold on her ear, “Who would know the difference between fake and real?”

Marie let go of herself, she withdrew from Eleni and looked over her shoulder, before Eleni moved herself and watched as Marie grew closer to the grave; inside were in fact the decaying remains of some old broken human. Could be however old. Hundreds, decades even. So close and so far. She saw some sort of comfort in watching these bones rust and deepen into the soil, for a split second she wished she was the skeleton instead.

Marie, with utmost courage, got down to the grave and pulled the skull from the vertebrae, which had barely been holding it on the spine. It was almost completely brown and smelled of sulphur and some other chemical balance she wasn’t sure what.

Eleni came inside the grave beside her, and grabbed a femur. It stained her hands with a horrible umber that stayed drenched in her hand.

“For paint.” Eleni added. Marie did a double take.

“For paint?” She asked.

“I make my own paint. Grind pieces up with oil and you can make your own paint. I do it with everything.”

Marie found herself grappling in towards Eleni with such a fervor and grace they both fell in the grass beyond the graves. The mud was staining their back, seeping in to their skin. Marie had fallen on top of Eleni. Eleni looked on, not with fear or indignation, but with admiration.

“I’d love to paint you.” Eleni said, suddenly. Marie leaned onto her back and let Eleni get up.

“I’m sorry, I-” Eleni lunged forward and took Maries face in her hands and kissed her with such a violent fervor, there could have been a mark where their foreheads met.

“I don’t care, Marie.”

They laid on the grass together, enveloped in the mud that surrounded them.

“I have one question,” Marie started, she took her hand in Eleni’s and brought it to her lips in a passionate kiss. “Who are these people?”

Eleni smiled, like she knew this question was coming. She took her hand and traced along Marie’s jaw. Her thumb resting on her bottom lip. “Don’t worry about it.” She kissed her delicately as she got to her feet. Marie followed without hesitation. Eleni picked up the shovel and started placing dirt on the graves. Marie stood on the other side of the fence and watched.

Eleni, when she was finished held the skull in her hand and the femur in the other. Marie quenched any unwell suspicions about what these bodies even meant and why they were even here. She looked on through the trees, the setting sun cascaded through the trees and cast everything in a dreamy orange glow. The fresh rain from the night before glistened under the sun. Eleni walked past Marie, she held the femur out for her to grab.

“We need to scrub these with sulphur again, to get the smell off. So no one suspects anything.” She added for good measure.

Marie only nodded.

“We can keep the grime to make it seem authentic. Without much suspicion. I’ll gather moldy apples from inside and I’ll see you tomorrow.” Eleni concluded it with such a nuance it was hard to jest if she was joking or not.

“What? I’m just leaving now?” Marie stared agape at Eleni as she started to walk towards the house. She turned around, the skull’s jaw barely attached.

“Yes. What else would you do?” Eleni said like there was no possible alternative. “Do you want me to walk you to the bus stop?”

Marie straightened out. She wiped the mud off her pants and jacket. “No. I can manage.” She stated plainly. Eleni didn’t bother to stop her in the slightest. They went their separate ways when they reached the edge of the house, Eleni stood on the steps of the porch, and watched as Marie disappeared between the trees. The sun was becoming cold and the night had blossomed into its maturity by the time Marie made it home.

That night Marie, staring at her ceiling, watching the oblong shadows cascade onto the ceiling from the moonlight outside. The trees creaked and groaned outside her window. Marie thought back to earlier, the bodies in the graves, she thought she had imagined it all in a hazy daydream. When she sat up in her bed, sweat dripping down her back, she knew it was as real as a sickness. Lingering in the back of her throat. She took her thumb and traced her lip where Eleni had hours earlier. She fell back on her pillow with a soft thud. She laid there watching out her window. As she started to doze off and away into her haze, there was a sudden crack against her window which jumped her back into reality. Her heart racing, she silently made her way to the window and looked out across the backyard, in the depths of the trees and the broken moonlight, a woman in a white gown stood. Her dress billowed behind her in the wind. In the depths of night, the woman looked almost identical to Eleni.

There was a sudden scream which woke Marie with a start. Sweat once again dripping down her back and neck, it clung to her skin like a curse. She immediately got up and washed her face in the bathroom, where Philip stood in the doorway as she pushed him out to put her head in the sink. He brushed his teeth watching her with his brows furrowed. “What’s wrong with you?” He asked. Marie looked up at him with deep circles under her eyes. When she didn’t answer he kept going. “No breakfast this morning, dad’s still asleep.” Marie nodded at this and walked away from the bathroom to the end of the hall where his bedroom was.

She didn’t knock or even acknowledge the fact she was going to enter her fathers room. She cracked the door and peered in through the sliver, he was sleeping on top of the covers, his work boots still on, a bottle of beer discarded on the floor and rattled pills around the edge of the nightstand. She closed the door as softly as she could. Trying not to stir him too soon.

Marie remembered why she woke up as she passed the bathroom door, Philip washing his face in the sink, “Did you scream or anything like a couple minutes ago?” Marie asked.

Philip looked at her agape like she just slapped him. “No..?” He said, not sure exactly what she was talking about. Marie only nodded and walked down stairs into the kitchen.

As she loaded bread in the toaster, she remembered yesterday with a striking clarity. She tried to forget what she saw, but it was no use to try and quell the dreariness. She remembered Eleni kissing her, or the other way around. They kissed. She remembered the way her lips felt against hers, the way her fingers careened along her jaw. She remembered the comment about paint, the fact she made her own paint. Marie began to question if she had been using her own paint this whole time and how expensive it must be to get all of those ingredients.

The bus ride was long and solemn. The first sign of winter had come in the night with the drop of temperature and the long thick sheet of ice that coated the roads like a blanket. Marie gazed out the window of the bus watching as the houses and neighborhoods passed by, her walkman sitting on the seat next to her.

As she opened the door to her figure painting class, she was smacked in the face with the smell of sulphur. Eleni was standing by Professor Lauder on the edge of the circle of students with their easels erected like statues in front of them. Eleni had a smile on her face, a smile of genuine happiness, something Marie had yet to see brandished on her face.

Eleni watched as Marie sat at the furthest canvas. In the middle, as she expected, was the remains of the skull, which looked like it had been painted with some sort of garnish to exacerbate its decay. Next to the skull, placed so delicately it looked like it could fall into ash with the lightest gush of wind, was a rotting apple and half of a pomegranate; its seed spilling out from its insides. There was a vase of rotting flowers, red roses and black dahlias, there was an odd number of the dahlias to the roses. Eleni stood at the edge of the circle with a proud smile. Marie watched on as she made her way to where her bag was situated, where it normally was in the middle side of the circle next to Marie.

Eleni brought out a small wooden box from her bag, it had a beautiful engraving on the sides like swooping flowers and harsh weeds. Eleni opened it and inside where her paint tubes with crude looking brushes that seemed to be splitting at the seams. Marie never remembered seeing them before now. Marie took her paint and brushes from her bag and placed them at the folded table next to her, a palette had been set on the table in pristine condition. It was glass, new and untouched.

Marie looked over to Eleni for a split second, but Eleni was already placing down the underpaint. She didn’t notice but the Professor was explaining the exercise for the class. The Vanita Stills that Eleni had proposed the other day. Eleni looked so focused on the sketching portion of the painting, Marie peeked over her canvas and saw the raw marks of the brushes on the canvas.

They had met in the Studio after class, Eleni had to drop something off in a different class from her portfolio folder.

The Studio was damp and cold.

The door to the studio smacked open and closed in an instant, Eleni came rushing inside, unsure if Marie would still be waiting.

“Sorry I took so long.” Eleni said, breathlessly, she placed her bag down on a stool by her most recent portrait; half finished, the underpainting shining through the half baked rendering. It was the woman corkscrewed around herself. The tone of the painting had changed from the last time Marie had witnessed it, the colors had a dramatic change in undertones, blues instead of reds.

Eleni had returned to the easel with a new canvas, she had placed the corkscrew painting on the wall, facing in the other direction. It frightened Marie, to think that the paint could be moving around because of the pressure on the wall.

“What did you ask me here for?” Marie said, straightening out her jacket.

“I want to paint you.” Eleni remarked plainly. She had brought out her sample paints she made for herself. She looked up at Marie from her stool. She got up and grabbed Marie by the hand and guided her in front of the canvas where she croaked another stool over. Marie sat down without much care. She followed Eleni with her eyes, she moved so effortlessly and gracefully, it was like watching a ghost transverse between reality and dream.

As Eleni sat down on her stool, her eyes lingered on Marie’s, a small ghost of a smile graced her jaw and disappeared as she did behind the easel and canvas. Marie just sat there like watching out the studio window, as the world passed by in a blink, it was dark and gloomy; the only illumination left was from the streetlamps. As the day turned to night, Eleni kept painting in almost pitch dark. Marie wondered how she could even see in front of her as she found it hard to even make out and trace the edge of the canvas from where she was sitting.

Eleni suddenly got up from her stool, her paintbrush and palette discarded to the table next to her. She approached Marie like a wolf would its prey, methodical and effortless. Eleni had stopped in front of Marie, her legs touching Marie’s knees from where she sat. She looked up at her, Eleni peered down for a moment; her hand crawling up Marie’s side to rest on her shoulder.

Her finger extended and gracefully traced the curve of her neck, then her jaw, stopping just at her chin to tilt her face up to meet Eleni’s again. Her piercing grey eyes lightning in the dark, Marie watched as her finger traced the other side of her jaw, up the side of her face, tucking stray hairs behind her ear. Eleni leaned down, as Marie’s heart seemed to beat faster, heating up into her ears, bracing for something more and different to befall her in this moment, but was left with the sudden embrace falling short just as it started. Eleni had already let go of her and repeated her footsteps back to the easel.

Marie could hear the delicate sound of scraping of the palette and tubes of paint colliding together, she was packing up. Ready to leave at a moment's notice. Marie had begun to stand, when Eleni peeked over the canvas.

“No.” She demanded. “Stay there.” Her voice echoed in the studio like a strike of thunder.

Marie felt her ears flare hot. She sat down folding her hands on her knees. Waiting. Waiting for something to happen to lurch her forward into Eleni’s embrace; but nothing came. Marie closed her eyes and tried to focus on her steadying heart. It was beating at what she could only describe as a mach five speed. Going so fast she was sure it was to rupture in her chest. Painting her bones with a beautiful macabre splatter; something she was sure Eleni would appreciate.

It was a weird concoction of affection and decadence. She wasn’t sure which one would be her immediate downfall into this perilous path of devotion to a woman she had barely known. A woman who followed her everywhere, laid herself at her feet, but held herself so high it was an obnoxious whiplash. Marie wondered to herself what Eleni would think about her father, her brother. If Eleni even had a family Marie would ever be privy to. If Eleni would let her sink herself deeper into her private affairs, her private life she kept so separate from Marie. Except for the times she let the gate open just a sliver into the perilous life Eleni seemed to live. The cemetery, the graves dug so deep and fresh, but the bones so archaic. Marie found herself always coming back to the graves. The wrought iron fences which looked so old and rusted, but so new and contemporary. She tried hard to not let her imagination run so wild and unnoticed that it would frighten her down the line. When those thoughts seeped into her lungs and spilled out of her mouth completely on accident, as it happened with her father.

Right after the incident unfolded, so new in their minds so traumatizing it was a hole that still was being dug out. There was a silence that festered at the dinner table, Philip who could only stare at the pattern on the cloth with big eyes and a slightly opened mouth, his jaw tensed every so often to show he was holding back everything he didn’t want to. Her father, who had just returned from the Police station, still brandished his work jacket over his dirtied collared shirt from working at the Mill. He smelled constantly of wood chips and freshly chopped pine. It mixed into a horrible concoction with his cologne. Which at the dinner table, wafted down the table to Marie and caught in her nose and made her gag, fighting back every urge to run to the sink and vomit the little food she had eaten through the day. She sat on her hands, watching her fathers chest move up and down in an uncorrelated fashion, erratic and frantic.

The line of losing those so close had made his face wrinkle with stress instead of age. His hair had started to wither and turn gray at thirty. Philips young complexion started to show its growing age as the erratic life he began to grow folded into itself tenfold. Losing a sister and a mother within a year of each other. Nine months and some change.

The first tragedy struck so potent and gritty it caught everyone by the scruff of their necks and hurled them into the darkness. An unfurled sickness caught in her lungs so soon. So fast. So effortless that it took her within three weeks. The amount of money they spent on trying to stop the growth, trying to keep whatever it was at bay, only for it all to come back and hit them in the face months later when the funeral bill and hospital bill came in the mail at the same time.

The next was only a result of further tragedy. It was, however, stuck to only one casualty rather than the intended four. A catalyst of events paralleled those that you’d hear in books or on the radio only to have it hit you over the head with a fast, swift strike. You’d open your eyes to see only the remnants of disaster. How everything changes in an instant, how the life you lived you could only look back on it like it was something that had never happened. Something that was only mentioned in far off dreams and never to be spoken of again. As the tragedy affected them and reached over them like a sickness, seeping into every crevice of their lives, there was enveloping darkness in Marie, that her father had periodically noticed.

She began to keep to herself, things grew colder and distant. Marie had gone through a period of silence, where she only threw things out when she felt a period of genuine happiness, which was few and far between. Until she snapped, and the waking world blended in with the dreaming.

Marie had been so lost in herself she didn’t realize Eleni had left. She broke free from her caged thoughts and tried to read the clock on the wall. Something between ten and eleven. As she started to stand from the stool, the door opened, Marie tried to peer over the easel to the door, but she knew who it was without having to look. She could feel her presence wash over her like a wave. Eleni emerged from the darkness, where the lamp post from outside shone in through the window and cast her in an orange light which flickered with the passing snow.

“What are you still doing here?” Eleni asked, her bag was wrapped around her as was her leather jacket.

Marie didn’t know what to say at first. So she didn’t say anything.

Eleni walked forward out of the pale orange and into the purple dark, she took Marie by the hand and led her out in the hall.

She stopped her in the hall, and pushed her against the wall. The corridor was quiet and cold, a damp emanating from the walls and sunk into her skin. Eleni studied Marie’s eyes, which seemed to be a glossy white. Eleni reached up and pushed hair out from her face. Marie watched on with a questioning glance.

“You just left.” She said blankly. “Why did you leave?”

Eleni smiled at her with innocence, like she knew Marie wouldn’t understand something bigger than herself. “I just had to get some fresh air.”

As she said this, Marie forgot why she was even in the studio in the first place. The painting.

“What about the painting?” Marie asked. She felt her hands grow cold and hot at the same time, a collective numbing.

“It's put away, do you not remember? I put it in the rack to dry and wait, I put my name on it so no one will take it.” Eleni said like consoling a child. And like putting your name on it finally solidified something as your own.

Marie looked past Eleni and out the window. The snow was falling with a fervor. Marie felt her eyelids grow heavy on her eyes and her limbs grow into a collective mass which was weighing her down.

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