The man painted himself in all the wrong colours. He drowned himself in whiskey and found his likeness in the bottom of a mirky glass. He quarrelled, waking to a mirror of black and blue remember me bye’s, hiding his true features behind inky stains. He didn’t wash this rugged face and scarcely bathed, sitting in a tub seemed a rotten thing, his black hair matted and course against his skin like some poorly groomed dog, though this man had house and home. He found foul persuasions about himself, cast them out so that they trumpeted about, soaking into the curtains and the walls, making their shades more grey. It dripped into the foundations, and he heard those same doubts playing back to him in the creaks of floorboards, as if they a real thing and not a product of his own imaginings. You see our protagonist had lost himself in that worst of sicknesses, the belief that he was a worthless thing.
Empty of having accomplished anything in his life, and therefore unworthy of the love of the man dying in the room next door. His father had filled the world with a great empire. All he'd done was fill his room with paintings that were sapphires in the evenings but soils in the afternoons.
The final moment of proof came when he entered his father’s bedroom, his lawyers like vultures around his bed discussing his inheritance, he could barely speak, but as our man entered and his father noticed he took the trouble to whisper three little words “not my son”.
Bright hues of amber flickered in his eyes just as if he’d caught a firefly zooming past him in the dead of night, whispering of the wild inside. The same look he’d had in his eye when he saw the way light traced beneath doorways in his yesterdays as he wandered through the house at night as a child. The enchantment in his eyes as he fell in love anew each night as he started to paint, though he forgot his love in the drowsy sorrows of the morning. But he didn’t notice these things nor put them in his self-portrait.
Father surrounded by doctors as he gasped his last breathes and failed to mutter words of meaning our man left the bedside for the solitary tavern. Lost in drink he found himself stumbled upon by an old man, a sailor with countless wrinkles bearing testament to bracing voyages he’d faced, lightning struck outside the window as stumbling on his last legs he intruded upon our man’s solace. For some reason he reminded him of his father. But once he’d found his stable purchase he whispered a tale of such delights our man simply could not resist.
He told a tale of how he’d been wrecked at sea, lucky to come back alive at all, but before his ship had wrecked he’d spotted the island they’d searched for, a paradise with no man’s footsteps, where it is said the goddess of luck herself makes her den, and any that find her might chance upon her fortune. Lost at sea he’d been picked up by a passing ship but none believed his tale and found his map a fancy, but not our man, out of desperation alone he was enraptured by the passionate telling and paid what little left he had for the map. That very night he set to sea, in a small boat just big enough for one, out alone out upon the treacherous black ocean sway.
After weeks he came across an island that was a visage. A great rolling shore, long beaches of light yellow sand so fine you could pour it out your clenched hand like waterfalls of dust. And beyond that a triumph of nature, a jungle of trees so tall they were fit for giants, so dense you could scarcely see a few steps in before it became engulfed in shade. And beyond that a symphony of a thousand different birdsongs, together in harmony so loud they drowned out the sound of the sea, making our man gape wide like a fool as he stood on the beach his breathe was stolen away with the seduction of its overwhelming glory, an orchestra fit for the gods, assuring him his journey had not been in vain.
He cut his way through the dense jungle, so little light peering through the canopy he could easily have gotten lost in there forever. But at last, a great temple that stood tall above the trees, carved into the mountainside appeared. It’s guardians two giant monoliths of jaguars yawning wide, and between them a shadowed doorway that entered into the mountain. That orchestra had followed in his wake, low beats and thrums from gentle birds chests darting through the trees, heard but never seen, painting blues and blacks, sensing sorrow and waxing lullabies betwixt footsteps, he’d found their company strangely soothing, had burst into a cacophony of violence, whether from excitement at him finding where he needed to go, or a warning to leave, he could not tell. Hot rain poured from the heavens, drenching him and the world around him. He looked at the rain, the dark green leaves, the steam rising off the ground. The fangs of the jaguars that seemed to warn of violence and threaten to move despite being built of stone. He had come to far to turn back now.
The light of the doorway had disappeared behind him long ago. Suddenly great torches blazed on the walls and he was welcomed by a symphony of a different kind. Men and women, young and old, came up to him begging him for a little food or water, they looked the worst sort, without house or home left leaning against the foundations of the mountain like those that who lean against the steel foundations of street canopies. These were the halls of the damned, all those who had fallen on lady lucks misfortune.
Our man could not resist, he gave what food and drink he had left out of his parcel, not saving any for the journey home. When that was gone he gave his shoes, his shirt, he tried to insist on keeping his jacket for the warmth. Until he saw a stray dog chained up alone, abandoned, its fur a mess, in places patchy and removed, and wrapped the jacket around it, it trembled at his touch, in its dealings compassion was the stranger sort. Those unfortunate souls surrounded him, begging for more than he could give, until for fear of being drowned and stamped beneath their clumsy crowd he pushed through them and fled gasping for air into the next room.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Escaping the chamber he entered a great hall. Great pillars carved out of sand rose to a ceiling so high you could not see their end, and all around him the world was filled with mountains of gold and jewels. Shipwrecks of pirate kings lay on their sides and spilled precious gems across the floor. At the far end of the hall, a throne stood upon a mountain of gold, made of broken and bloody crowns belonging to kings fallen by the wayside.
She purred her laughing way down a pillar in arches of black smoke. Formed like a shadow along the ground until she curled around him, her fur blue and gorgeous as her black eyes, her womanly figure bizarre with her jaguar like fangs and tail and ears, carrying all the mischief of the world in the palm of her hand, in the twinkle of pure black eyes.
She pressed herself against him back to back, leaning on him she took him in, then morphed again until she was in front of him, rolling teasing fingers through his hair, along his forearm with fingernails that left scratches in their wake he barely noticed, coaxing answers out of him she whispered in hot air in his ear “what brings such a young man seeking his fortune in my halls? Uncommon that the ocean sway allows me visitors, and one so handsome too” A voice of honey, with all the fire of its most violent guardians thrumming against his chest. She smelled of rain steaming off a campfire.
She was beyond enamoured with his eyes, leaning far forward onto a desk that had appeared between the two of them from somewhere and looking fascinatedly into them as he stared back equally intrigued by the blackness of her own in a world that was filled with gold that neither of them had much interest in in that particularly moment.
He explained his quest. She already knew her price, she’d given her own game away the moment she’d seen them “I will give you what you seek, but you must pay a heavy price. You must give me your eyes”
The throngs of the damned in the entry way outside not ringing loudly enough, nor the cacophony of violence those song birds performed causing enough reckless disturbance on his peace to cause pause. Without my eyes I cannot paint. No, that didn’t matter. “Without my eyes I cannot get home”
She laughed and it came out in purrs so low they made the room tremble, his heart beat faster in his chest and dust fell from the ceiling as she held his hands in hers “No need to worry darling. Simply head to sea, leave your ship and map behind. Fortune will favour you and see you stray across a ship that will take you home. Along with what you seek I’ll give you a twenty thousand, plenty for fortunes passage”
“And I want the dog I gave my jacket to in the entry way, and assurance it survives the journey too”
Smiling she leaned across the table grabbing his chin and squishing his lips “You are just adorable, consider the dog my gift to you, he’ll have a basket to keep him afloat, but you must keep him tied to you, and leave all rafts aside, take your trust in me, and in the open sea”
Our man paused. She strove to hide her lust for the deal, Jaw lolling, salivating, she longed to see the world through his wild eyes. Her hungry eyes already black the rest of her skin was turning to coal, growing larger, turning giant, becoming engulfed in shadow, turning into the jaguar within, jaw lolling wide the flame inside started burning in her eyes.
An accommodation of fiction; sycophants and vultures circling his bedside for weeks, growing more confident each day his health waned and son was gone. A commotion outside the room at the front of the house, the maid racing concerned tones, the racket of things knocked by something stumbling about.
A small dog came running into the room, a scraggly thing with a chirpy demeanour like something loved, the sycophants were about to kick it out when leaning on the maids arm he came walking through the door. His eyes were covered in a thick, dirty green rag and his clothes and hair were soaking wet and stunk of the sea. He dragged the ocean into the room in sea shoe foot prints.
“Leave us” his broken voice rasped, who had vultures who had fallen silent quickly scurried passed his imposing frame in the doorway out the room.
The dog had started playing, chewing on the bottom of a chair in the corner of the room, not quiet yet a tamed thing.
He found his way with his hands. He found the corner post of his fathers bed, and ran his fingers along it softly. He found his fathers leg and softly felt how thin it had become beneath the bed sheets. He took a few steps further to the head of his fathers bed and fell to his knees before him.
“I know your disappointed, that I’m not like you. I brought you something to prove you wrong”
He raised the little black book in front of himself with two hands and presented it to his father, who had regained some of his awareness, though not enough to take in the peculiar state of his son. He turned the page and opened the book and looked at what was inside. Our man sat back on his heels and waited for his verdict, the ocean still dripping from his hair onto the carpet. “Oh my boy, that’s all you ever needed to be” He turned and looked at his son. “My boy? What has become of you?”
“What is it....what does it say?”
His father’s confused face grew more concerned, and he turned the book to face his son. In it was a painting of our man. So accurate and pure it could have been a photograph taken in false glass. And in it he was painting, his brown eyes lost in the love of what he was doing.