In a voice I didn’t recognize, a woman spoke to me. “Indeed, my wonderful child. My Red Son. I am your mother. Your true mother.”
The darkness of the room retreated from the woman’s eyes, in which I could see my premonitory dream of her, all flowers and fire. Her embrace seemed doubtful, like the clutch of shadows. She whispered my name. As it passed her lips, processed through the darkness of her body, it seemed almost biblical.
From somewhere nearby, I could hear the strained breathing of my father, whose throat was still in the giant’s hand. The twins were nowhere in sight, but I could feel their smiles at my back, burning like fallen angels.
A single candle was lit, no doubt held by one of the girls. The woman’s hands drifted to my shoulders, slowly turning me to meet the bloodshot eyes of my father. The candlelight created a soft bridge between us, and I could see that my father’s gaze, while afflicted with no small amount of pain and hopelessness, retained its glint of lethality and poise. His eyes made me unsure of my saviors—even in the grip of such a monster, he was still a beast of many heads, each one possessed of skills sharper than stilettos.
My father was finally released, and he fell to the floor, gasping. I knew the sorest injury he’d suffered was to his pride. He carefully returned to his feet, even taking time to straighten his collar, unfazed by the monster at his back. He looked beyond me, returning the heated glower of the strange woman. “You just took your doom by the hand, woman. I’ll die having at least that satisfaction.” My father’s words shot across the room like spears, but they were immediately deflected by the woman’s smile, which shone like darkest night.
“What a shame,” she said. “Here stands your greatest work, and you’ve grown all but dumb to the fact. Luckily, I don’t share your foreshortened senses, artist. It seems to me you’ve been the one holding your doom by the hand, and for quite a few years, at that. It would only be in keeping with a sort of cosmic propriety that your son be your doom—here, in this gallery, tonight. There’s still art to be had in that, isn’t there, artist?”
My father’s eyes didn’t so much as twitch. “That would be an honor, of course. But don’t look so smug, woman. It’s not like you’ve tapped into the unseen world by seeing him for what he is. I’ve known this day would come. I’ve known since the first time I saw myself reflected in those coal-black eyes of his. And now you’ve seen them, too. You know, now. Pray you last as long as I did.” I had no idea what my father was talking about, but something secret seemed to shift within me, somewhere deep in the pits of my stomach.
“Vincent, tonight you will become an artist,” the woman said matter-of-factly, still locking eyes with my father. It didn’t seem as if I would be given a choice. I simply smiled up at her, my new mother.
The giant reached out with a single hand and broke my father’s neck. Yet somehow, he still lived. My father collapsed to the ground, never again to rise from it under his own power. The creature then bore my progenitor’s limp body to one of the work benches and laid him on his back.
My new mother turned me again, this time to face the wall of my father’s tools, all of them barely discernible from the twisted shadows they cast in the trembling light. “They all belong to you now, Vincent. You have the remainder of the night to make your father into that which he was always meant to be.” I knew almost immediately what I would do.
When I heard the last of my saviors exit at the top of the stairs, I wasted no time drawing preliminary sketches for how I would transform my father. It took only a few hours for me to gather the materials I needed. Next, I began organizing my workspace. Through all of this, the gaze of my father never left me. I could see pride welling in his eyes as I prepared my utensils with the grace and speed of a seasoned master.
After I pinned the last of my sketches to the wooden wallboards that lined my work area, I stripped my father of his clothing and thoroughly washed his body. The only question remaining was—how should I kill him? Death was no mercy here, merely a requisite work condition. Any unwanted movements or mistimed rictuses could ruin the mood I was attempting to cultivate.
I had no idea how to feel regarding what I was about to do. My father was always a source of fear and wonder to me. But my affections always lived in the conjurations, never the conjurer. I brought him to a seated position, propping him up against my worktable, looking him in the eyes. He winced for the first time—and the last. His breath was weak, yet I could see he was trying to say something. I waited patiently for his rasping attempts at speech to cohere into intelligible words. Just before I could wait no longer, he spoke. “A graveyard with flowers . . . is far better . . . than one without.” I nodded, and my blade passed through his right eye.
The most difficult part of the undertaking was the draining of all my father’s blood. I finally accomplished this through the painstaking process of positioning his body such that pressure forced it from his veins. Replacing his vital liquids with paint proved a much easier task to achieve, and I was careful to use every color, every shade and intensity I could evoke. Next, I removed all his major organs, delicately replacing them with artist’s tools. Each item was placed in corresponding importance to the organ it substituted. I used my father’s skin to replace the hemp of my canvas—he was a traditionalist, of course—and then re-skinned him with the aforementioned hemp. Certainly, the eyes were essential to my piece. Natural eyes had a nasty habit of decomposing, so I procured a set of the most beautiful glass eyes I could find.
Finally, there was the staging of the piece. It took me some time to affect, but I arranged the entire gallery so my father was the black sun around which his dark worlds wheeled. I situated all the heads of his works such that they seemed to look upon him, perhaps thanking him for their transformation.
In the light of the few candles by which I worked, my father’s true self was dimly exposed. He was art incarnate. He was the hand that held the brush, the paint that fell to the canvas, and the very canvas that held his dream. I had inextricably fused my father with his craft.
In the darkness of the extinguished candles, I whispered my father’s new name, the name of my very first work of art. “Red Ouroboros.”
Through the medium of my small hands, guided by dreams dimly guessed, I’d cultivated the truth buried beneath my father’s flesh. I kept in mind, of course, one of my father’s principal lessons—truth is merely the fleeting property of a dream, caught momentarily at the scale of the universe, not to be confused with permanency. Still, my tears came as never before. They had been well earned for the first time. My father’s gaze joined my real mother’s, both sweeping across my face, searching for my eyes. But as they no doubt hoped, my eyes had slipped the world to wander and wonder. And my hands, while still of the earth, would now repair the way back—from death into dream. My brother and sister also looked upon me, glad for their place in the gallery. Together, united in dream and slaves to nothing, my first family celebrated my second birth—between two worlds, artist to both. It were as if the universe shrunk to the size of my purpose, narrow but infinite, every shadow a signpost, leading to forever. There was song in me that night.
It was dusk when they returned to gaze upon my work. The twins were at my side before I knew it, their wild hair playing all around me as they held me in the quiet of my first piece. I knew they were pleased. Their laughter sparkled in the dark, twinkling and turning in the blackened air of the gallery. I held their admiration inside like a last breath, not wanting to exhale. Then came the giant. When he looked upon my work, his thunderous laughter filled my tiny body with everlasting strength. I knew, somehow, his strength would one day be my own. My smile grew wider.
Then she came to me, my new mother. Gliding from the darkness, endless with mystery. She stood revealed in the smoldering debris of day. Her eyes followed mine beyond the solidity of the world, joining them in the gallery beyond the gallery, where vision was the property of th
e mind. “Your work is the light the sun pretends at bearing,” she whispered. “Your brilliance shines only to enlighten, never to expose. Your art is the voice of a dreaming god, Vincent. And you need never again want for a family. You could have all of this, in us. You have only to say yes, and we are all of us, yours forever.”
“Yes,” I whispered to her, choking back tears.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Finally, the recovered memory took its lasting place within my mind, even as it burned into murmuring ash. I placed my father and my grinning sisters onto the floor. Before I could speak my mind, a familiar presence invaded the place of my second birth, for a second time.
“We were gonna wait till you were napping again,” the invader dressed in an all-concealing cloak said, “but then you laid down your weapons. This is quite the little freak show you’ve got down here, by the way. Who’s the star of the show?” He pointed to the Red Ouroboros. “Is it a friend of yours, maybe?”
He said we. I scanned the darkness and found others lying beneath the shadows with malice aforethought and weapons aplenty. Before I could take up my sisters, a figure rose from the stairwell and kicked them away. Another shape leaked across the stones of the ceiling, raining bullets down upon me. I leaped behind a nearby worktable, disappointing the swarm of bullets chasing me.
“We’re social animals, aren’t we, big man?” the speaker continued. “So, how better to win this contest than to mobilize some help? And just in case you’ve got escape on the brain, don’t bother. I’ve got guys all over this place. You’re all done, big fella.”
More shadows poured into the room, bearing blades, guns, and arrogance. Sparks leapt from the walls from additional bullets. Lights and shadows played all around me. An explosion to my left, then fire and pain. More explosions and fire everywhere. My father’s gallery—my gallery—began to burn. I heard laughter within the flames. “A life’s work up in flames, eh, Family Man?”
I saw the eyes of my once forgotten family reflecting the flames within their perfect glass eyes. My father, clothed in fire, began to bow to the conflagration. I would see those eyes no more.
Something stepped in front of me. Knives and the eagerness to use them glowed in the orange light. My naked hands reached out and began parting ribs, lungs, and at last the spine. I covered myself in his cooling blood, threw his skin around me like a cloak, and challenged the ravening flames. The fire was cold to the touch as the rage within me humbled the heat without. My eyes returned to the world bearing killing dreams.
The murderous shadows fell upon me as I breached the inferno. Blades traveled the roads of my body, bullets sped into the house of my spirit. My hands became monsters, devouring and killing and crushing everything close to me. My teeth came together within throats, and I howled into the flames, blood, and death.
I was almost to the stairs, but my family, both, lay behind me in flames. I turned around. A firing squad opened up, washing me in lead. The stone pillar nearest me came away in my ruined hands, and I crushed the firing line beneath my crumbling weapon.
The speaker called out to his minions, this time no longer laughing. “Take him! He’s only one fuckin’ guy, fer Christ’s sake!”
My eyes defied the smoke and blood that filled them as I peered through the flames, seeking the leader of the gang of shadows. I saw him wrapped in a peal of churning smoke, conducting the violence, doubt and disbelief filling him up. I stepped without the maw of the inferno and addressed the other shadows. “Bring him to me, and you can all live,” I shouted above the roaring flames, pointing to the slim killer who once vanished like smoke. The army’s loyalty began to crack. I could see gun barrels and knives begin to consider the emaciated killer. Yet before the revolution was complete, another explosion belched fire and force from behind, smashing me into the marble archway. Still I drew up, even as my broken bones ground against each other while others tried to flee through my skin. Before I could properly right myself, the mutiny collapsed, and they fell upon me with all their numbers.
As I slowly began to lift their combined mass from my body, the thin man walked through the flames toward me carrying the hammer my father would often use to drive his massive chisel. He rained blows down upon my skull. I caught a glimpse of my sisters strewn across the floor, all but buried in debris. I could hear them weeping. With one last blow from my father’s hammer, I heard no more.
There was no dream, only nullity of time and space. Yet there was experience, if only the rawest and least imprinted type. It was an almost ephemeral means by which I could deduce the passage of events, the inexorable movement of cause and effect—dragging my body from the burning house of my youth, where my first family smiled through fire, long dead but forever vital.
My body had been reduced to a smoking ruin, yet it lived—as did my attackers’ intent. Another fire, well-fed and ever-fattening, bellowed in my wrecked guts, waiting to burn the world for what had been done to my family—both of them. Still, there would come a time for burning, but it was not now. Now was the time for waiting, reveling, wondering.
In this minimally vital state of mind that clung to the dimmest of lights, there was a presence, coiled and lethal, previously unknown to me. I held out my mind to it as an offering. Nothing. Only the coldest sleep, taking in the ages with nary an upward glance, touched my damaged awareness. It dressed in the scales of a monstrous snake, each one smooth as polished glass, shaped for the purpose of killing. There was the slightest intimation of identity. The thing was old and sharp, like a knife left to rust in a hidden place, ever dreaming of ripe tender flesh for the cutting. There was a size to the thing, too. It unfurled to the very borders of my understanding, and likely beyond them. It was a leviathan asleep on the floor of my mind, waiting. With the curiosity of a child, I made to poke the thing. I wanted to see it move.
Before I could rouse the sleeping giant, the world broke in on me, and my eyes were made to open. I was immobile, cold, and confronted by a lean shadow. “And so it rises. Hello, Family Man. Welcome to your last stop on the journey of life. I hope you like it.”
It was the voice of the thin man, filled with a familiar confidence—a confidence that I was growing rather accustomed at dispelling. Before I responded, I took a moment to absorb my surroundings, which were initially rather spectacular. From all appearances, I was in a monstrous, ancient castle. Yet when I looked more closely, my accommodations were revealed to be nothing more than a replica, horribly overdone with thick and clumsy flourishes of the medieval and gothic, making the place appear more caricature than castle.
I could see my captor growing impatient with my silence, so I spoke. “Thin Man, I have not enjoyed your disrespect for me and mine. This will not go well for you, but please tell me how you think things will end before I show you how they actually do.”
“You’re a mouthy cuss, aren’t you?” replied the thin man. “Well, you’re draped in about two hundred pounds of steel chain, and the Red Dream seems to have faded between us, so I’m fairly sure you’re not going anywhere.”
“That’s your mistake, Thin Man,” I said. “Whenever has a fact flouted a dream, let alone a nightmare? But I’ll leave you to your folly, for now.”
The thin man was then joined by a second, identical thin man. “I think we’re gonna be just fine. We’ve fried bigger fish than you, big man.”
I shifted my gaze to the newcomer. “Wrong on both counts, I’m afraid.”
“You don’t seem at all curious as to why you’re still alive,” said the first. “Doesn’t that strike you as the least bit odd?” He was growing visibly annoyed by my indifference.
By the conclusion of our time together, he would be begging for my indifference. I made no outward show of my anger, but I was in immense pain from the rage that ate away at my innards. I could still hear the weeping of my sisters. Even now, they were alone, without their brother, buried in the smoking ashes of my past. An
d my father’s rage and indignation—I could feel it, scorching and dreadful.
“You see,” continued the first, “my brother’s been studying all this supernatural hoodoo. And the way he figures it, if we keep you here, like bait you might say, we can pick off all the killers that come for you, one by one. You probably also noticed that we took out quite a bit of insurance in the form of some hired men. They’re the best money could buy, my man. So, whoever comes lookin’ for us is gonna have a small army to fuck with. We’ve already nixed about seven names from our list, so far. Unfortunately, the last fish swallowed our bait, so we had to find another worm. That would be you, in case you were wondering. Not a bad play, huh, big man?” He was desperate for me to feel desperate, but all I felt was the weakness of the chains I’d been wrapped in and the loss of my family.
A third thin man joined the previous two. “I see you’ve been speaking to my brothers. Please, don’t let their crudity give you any confidence in the prospect of surviving us. You’re here until the wheels fall off, I’m afraid.” Clearly the leader, he stood there waiting for me to marvel at the fact that he was one of an identical triplet. These three were in the habit of surrounding themselves with admiration, so I gave them none—not that I truly had any to give.
The third continued. “You don’t recognize us, do you? Pity. The glory of being three men sharing two singular identities is obviously lost on you. Or perhaps you’ve been lost to the wild too long to recognize the fabulous David Shadowes, the greatest living illusionist this side of the Great Darkness.
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