Saving Myles by Carl Vonderau

Author:Carl Vonderau
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Jasper’s studio door was closed. Fiona inhaled a long breath to fortify herself. She knocked and went inside. The room reeked of Jasper’s paints, the floor tarp covered with drips and slashes of color. Jasper wore his Hawaiian painter’s smock. Blue and orange and yellow paint streaked his hands. But it was the canvas on the easel that made her breath stop. An infant lay on cracked and dried desert ground. The boy’s incandescent green eyes stared out at her, his face sun-lined and ancient. Vultures flew over the sun-scorched sky and a snake looped around the borders of the canvas. It was as if Jasper had absorbed the cruelty and enmity around her house.

“This is the wrong place for you,” she said.

He pulled himself upright as if physically drawing back to her and the room. “I don’t understand.”

She circled her hand to encompass the study. Canvases, none of them finished, rested against the walls and moldings. They were supposed to evoke universal symbols, connections to a collective mind that was greater than conscious thought. She didn’t feel a part of any of them. “These don’t belong in my house,” she said.

He stared at her.

“I have to save my family.”

He didn’t look surprised. Some part of him must have expected this. He looked down at the paintbrush in his hand. When he raised his head his eyes looked both forlorn and resigned. “When do you want me to leave?”

“As soon as possible.”

He walked across the tarp and hugged her. She smelled the nutty odors of the oil paint on his hands, then his sweat. The bristles of his beard pressed down on her head. For a time, his music and his paintings and his body had made her so happy. But that happiness seemed distant now.

She knew what would happen. She’d go to work. By the time she got home, the house would be silent. All that remained of him would be the raw red walls in her living room and the vanishing scents of his body and his paints.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.