5 Baz
5
Baz
That night, the dreams come back. Vivid, bloody, pulsing through my brain like a viscous poison. I wake up sweating, my cheeks wet, a hoarse scream caught in my throat.
Sometimes I can pretend it didn’t happen. Sometimes I manage to sublimate the memory for whole days before it breaks the surface of my mind again—an oily, dripping, clawed monster emerging from the ooze of my younger years.
Dorian reactivated that memory. So I can’t help hating him, no matter how charming he tries to be.
As a kid, I was forbidden from drawing people. My earliest memory is of my mother holding up a crayon stick-figure I’d drawn while at a neighbor kid’s birthday party, asking me desperately, “Who is this? Who is it supposed to be, Baz?”
She asked me over and over, in that shrill, panicked voice.
I shrugged. I hadn’t really had a person in mind.
She saved the drawing anyway—locked it up in a drawer for safekeeping. When she passed, I inherited a fireproof box of such drawings. It’s under my bed right now.
From then on, I was only allowed to draw under close supervision. All the pens, pencils, markers, and crayons in the house were secured until one of my parents had time to keep an eye on me. I could color fictional people in coloring books. But I could never actually draw anyone.
Mom didn’t explain why until it was too late.
After it happened, I remember her face, pale and freckled and gaunt. Her dry lips puckering around a cigarette between sentences. Listing the rules she’d been taught or had devised for herself.
Drawing someone from life, while they were physically present in the room, yielded the most powerful result, fully bonding a soul to a portrait. The resulting picture could absorb aging, injury, sickness, death…and more, leaving the original person unaltered.
Drawing the subject from a photo or another portrait was less powerful but still dangerous. It could shred the soul, causing a mental and emotional rift within the person.
Drawing a subject from memory delivered the most unpredictable results—a crooked, imperfect spell, a distorted reflection of the soul instead of a clear-cut transference.
And she explained the shittiest rule of all—that no one with our powers can paint their own portrait. It’s not just a guideline; it’s actually impossible. Apparently my ancestors tried countless times, but each effort at a self-portrait resulted in a mess of mangled lines. The magic doesn’t work for the artist themself or for anyone else with the gift.
Which sucks, because who wouldn’t want eternal youth, beauty, and invincibility?
Well…invincibility except for the great caveat of our powers: the vulnerability of the portrait itself.
I learned about that horrible fragility firsthand when, at age six, I found a stray crayon between the couch cushions.
My dad had fallen asleep while watching TV. He looked so funny, lying there with his mouth open, and I wanted to draw him.
I knew I wasn’t supposed to, like a child knows they’re not supposed to get a cookie without permission.
And like a child, I did it anyway. I found Mom’s shopping list, and on the back of it, I drew a portrait of my dad, fast asleep.
My dad was my idol, and I put that emotion into my simple crayon art.
When the portrait was finished, I stared at it, entranced, not sure how I’d managed to capture him so perfectly but wildly pleased with the result.
And then I heard the garage door open. Mom was back, and she’d be mad if she saw I’d been drawing real people.
So I ran into the kitchen, where I tore up the portrait, crumpled the pieces, and tossed everything in the trash.
I went back to the living room and found my father.
Crumpled and in pieces. Just like the picture.
Later, the police decided someone must have broken in, smashed all his bones, and hacked him apart while I played in the next room.
Only Mom and I knew the truth.
She blamed me, of course. How could she not? But she blamed herself, too, for not explaining the rules sooner. Until then, she had only warned me something very bad would happen. She hadn’t been specific about the risks.
The night I killed my father, she told me what we were. Leannán sídhe, she said. “And we must guard our secret,” she told me, her face pale and fierce. “If you obey me in nothing else, obey me in this—draw no one, ever again, and tell no one what you can do.”
After that, we both went to therapy until she couldn’t afford it anymore. It didn’t help me much, because before every session, Mom drilled me on what I should say, emphasizing that I needed to hide my ability from the counselor.
Slowly we withdrew from everyone. We didn’t have much family anyway—just my aunt, my dad’s sister. Aunt Jessie barely spoke to us after his death. I was shocked when she left me the house and the studio. Her gift was my chance to finally get out of Columbia, the city where I murdered my father, the city where my mom finally succumbed to her inner torment and ended her life.
It was nice of Mom to wait until I was in college, I guess. She held on just long enough, until she thought I didn’t need her anymore.
Sucky truth—a girl always needs her mom. No matter how old she gets.
Except for a handful of friends who’ve barely texted me since I moved, I’m alone. Maybe that’s why, even though Mrs. Dunwoody is kind of annoying, I don’t hate her. I guess I like to know that there’s someone who would notice if I didn’t come home one night or if I died in my house. Someone who could talk to the police if I disappeared.
Mrs. Dunwoody is drinking her morning tea on the balcony when I leave for the studio. I’m seriously dragging after the night I had—couldn’t fall asleep for the longest time after that nightmare woke me up. I kept seeing flashes of the living room of my childhood home, specifically the couch where chunks of my father were strewn in a slick of blood. The ugliness of a sight like that burrows deep into your psyche. No medication, no therapy, no amount of meditative exercise or weed or alcohol can destroy it. At best, you can hope to blur it sometimes. You can try to refill yourself with beautiful sights, with lovely things. But the image is always there, ready to flip to the forefront of your mind at the slightest trigger.
Dorian Gray is a trigger.
I try not to think about him as I sit on my stool in the studio, dragging my brush through a smear of paint, trying to finish the fucking beach scene I’m working on.
I can’t focus. Can’t find inspiration in this. Not like I did last night, when I created that man with the bronze muscles.
I’ve accidentally deleted or ruined work before, but those losses didn’t bother me this deeply. The picture of the red-haired man was exquisite, godlike. I can’t stop thinking about it and fretting because I know, with a sour, gut-wrenching certainty, I can never duplicate it.
Chewing the end of the paintbrush, I stare at the canvas. Maybe I need to get outside. Go somewhere and paint a landscape from life, not memory. Maybe then I can stop thinking about—
Fuck —I triggered myself—
A sofa upholstered in blood, with chunks of my dad strewn over it like pieces of a gory 3D puzzle.
The flashback is so painful I cringe, trying to physically shake it out of my head. Jumping off the stool, I hurry to the door and fling it open so I can feel the hot sun on my skin. The jingle of the little bell crashes against my sensitized brain. I pinch the bridge of my nose, squinting in the bright glare.
The sensory overload helps a little, sublimating the flashback.
I can’t be around Dorian Gray. I’m not sure why I’m having this reaction to him, but I do know he’ll only make this worse. But at the same time, I can’t dispel the idea that he knows something .
To me, knowledge has never been power. Knowledge is barriers and warnings and the awareness of greater danger.
If Dorian knows something about me, maybe I should find out exactly what it is. How dangerous he might be. How much risk he poses to the life I’m trying to construct from the shrapnel of my past.
Maybe I should go to this dinner at Circa 1886.
Swerving back into my shop, I pull out my phone. The card Dorian gave me is lying on my worktable where I left it yesterday.
With a sigh, I text two words to that number.
Fine. Tonight.