Chapter Three
I woke up in a cold sweat. After work I came back to my small apartment and crashed. I felt like an old man at twenty-six, but it had to be from all the early mornings. Rising before the sun, then working well into the afternoons.
Then painting as the light changed and the sun set. I loved working during the golden hours of the afternoon.
The single biggest perk of this apartment was the proximity to the beach. It took me seven minutes to walk from my front door to the shoreline. I had a beach bag set up just for drawing, so I could sit in the sand while I sketched the waves and whatever creature had my interest at the moment. Once I spent the whole night on the beach with only a lantern, because the sound of the waves urged me on to keep working on a sea turtle piece. I sold it online and paid rent for the next month because of it.
I tried to recreate the turtle–one that I could keep just for me–but the eyes were always wrong, like it didn’t have the same soul as the other one. Like the ocean didn’t bless it, so it would never be the same. Still beautiful, but my heart didn’t feel full when I looked at them .
But today I didn’t paint or even reach for my sketch book. My fingers itched to draw, but my heart wasn’t in it. Anything that came out would have the same soullessness as the second turtle, and that was worse than not creating at all.
I’d slept through the golden hours anyway, and needed to eat. My stomach growled, and it was another reminder that I’d forgotten yet again to go grocery shopping, so instead I placed an order for Thai food from the place down the street. In twenty minutes, I’d have enough food to last me for the next day and knowing that I had leftovers coming made me relax back into my bed. The apartment felt extra stuffy, and I realized it was because I forgot to open the windows when I got home.
Two full breaths of sea air and my nerves calmed. Glancing at the mermaid painting made my chest ache. She was next to the window, and I tilted the painting so she could face the sea too.
She really was exquisite. It was hard to believe that I created something so beautiful. Art lived and breathed in my heart like nothing else in the world, but something about her eyes was haunting. Familiar and kind. I imagined that this was what falling in love must feel like–the longing captured in her expression and the way it tore through me. I’d never fallen in love, and until I saw this fictional woman, I’d never thought I could.
What is there to love about you, Owen Harper?
The ringing doorbell broke my thoughts, and already I could smell the thai basil coming from my noodles. It would linger in my home for days, and I loved the way it seemed to cling to everything around me. I ate on autopilot, my eyes glued to the open window, and I knew another sleepless night was on the horizon for me.
Flashes of pink and purple caught my eye as the sun set more, but it was the colors of the sun reflecting off the painting that made me stare at her again. Her. I talked about the painting–mere canvas and paint–as if she was a real, breathing person .
My stomach gurgled from eating too fast, but I knew the real reason my stomach was in knots.
I had my stuff packed in record time. The beach bag was always ready and I grabbed three canvases and my sketchbook just to be safe. By the same I made it down to the sand, the waves were chaotic. They broke angrily against the shore and my heart raced. Each crest and break broke something deep in me.
All of my supplies laid in the sand as the waves seemed to call to me.
I plopped in the sand and just felt the energy of the ocean. My hands moved on their own and I gave into the drawing. This was the closest feeling to bliss that I ever experienced, and when the feeling came–the muse, the ocean–I let everything go. My vision blurred and I drew and drew.
The sketch came quickly. It was rough lines, scribbled and sketched in record time. The first outlines came into view. Her tail. The mermaid that haunted my thoughts. I traced the lines of her fins, adding a few more details to bring them to life. With a few more flicks of my pencils, there was movement to the piece. Her tail came into view, and soon I’d add the color to it. The rest of her tail came easily and then I paused as I got to her waist. It was just an intimate thing to draw–the curve of where her tail met her stomach, the swell of her hips. My cheeks flushed as I sketched out some more, up to the curves of her breasts and rounding up around the shoulders. The hips were more intimate than even her breasts; something about imagining how she became more human made my heart flutter.
Her arms were up like she was dancing, and I saw the placement of each finger. I wanted to give this woman a name, but what if I got it wrong? What if I named her and it ruined the piece completely?
My hand cramped and I took a minute to stretch it out, pulling each of my fingers until the joints cracked, stretching my palms and rubbing at the knots I felt but couldn’t see .
She was still headless, and for the moment, she needed to stay that way. Once her eyes were on the paper, the mermaid became more than just a drawing. So I sketched out her home; a small cave with seagrass growing around her. Colorful stones and shells that lined the wall, and fish swimming by to see what the commotion was about.
The tide was coming in, and I needed to move back before everything got wet, but I wasn’t ready to move. Each wave crashed a little closer, and for a second I thought maybe the ocean should have this sketch, because everything I drew belonged to the sea.
At the last second, I scooped up my stuff, slinging the sketchpad under my arm and scooted up the shoreline. A white and pink conch shell washed up on shore, and it caught my eye. I ran back down, racing to get it before the waves reclaimed it. The shell was perfect–no breaks or cuts, no inhabitants. I held it up to my ear and heard the rocking of the waves, forever to echo inside the swirls of the shell. It smelled like salt and dripped on my clothes, and I loved it. When I sat back down with my sketchbook, I drew the shell into drawing. The mermaid’s dancing arms and hands were too busy to hold it, so I placed it at the edge of her cave-like home as a welcoming beacon. The points on the shell were still intact too, and I did my best to capture their likeness. Coloring in the subtle pinks would play off of the mermaid’s eventual locks of hair. I smudged in some scales, looped a few more lines around her shoulders to show the movement of the water surrounding her, before I started on her neck.
Her face and head shape came easily. At this point, it was like drawing her from memory. The details of her face were etched into me–the shapes of her eyes and the bow of her mouth–and I drew them automatically. Her eyes were closed in this piece, because she was joyous and moving, something stirring the music in her heart. Her upturned lips would shimmer once I started the shading, but for now the simple shapes made them seem gentle. Everything about her was gentle .
I put my pencils down, and watched the sea again.
I hated this stage of art, when the illusion fell away and I was left alone again, just existing in a world where she would never be.
The drawing showed me a woman that lived in the moment I’d captured, dancing and swaying to a song that didn’t exist, in a world that didn’t exist past the depth of my sketchbook. The alarm from my watch beeped, and it was already time for me to get going. If I didn’t watch the time, it would be dark and I’d have to stumble home without so much as a streetlight to guide me.
The ocean grew darker now too. After the golden hours, there was still some time to enjoy the beach before it truly became night. I still needed to pencil in the rest of her face, but that would have to wait until I was home.
A loud clap of thunder pulled me out of my daze and I moved quicker. The darkness in the ocean made sense now–a storm was coming, and it would roll in fast. Densely packed clouds lined the horizon, dark and heavy. My unused canvases were still in my bag, and I dropped my pencils in the beat up case and flipped the sketchbook closed before I got sucked back into the piece again.
By the time I made it home, the rain started. First a drizzle and then it down poured, thunder clapping through the sky, and I saw a flash of lightning as I opened my front door. It felt like for a second that the sea chased me away, but I shook that thought off and dug into my now-cold dinner. My small TV hummed aimless background noise, and I told myself that I needed to be content. I survived seven foster homes, I had a decent job even though the hours sucked, a home that was actually mine, and enough money leftover each month to splurge on my ever increasing art supplies.
If I pretended that I didn’t miss the sea like it was a physical part of me, everything was fine .
The storm grew louder and it brought me back to the window. Lightning flashed and danced, and it illuminated the water. Was that a flash of pink? It couldn’t be–
I leaned against my window, trying to see as much as I could through the rain, but something glittered on the beach. Something pink.
It wasn’t logical. It couldn’t be. I was hallucinating, or just finally losing my grip on reality.
It didn’t matter though, because I was already running out the door, and heading down the steps. I took them as fast as I could, racing back toward the beach. Where was it? The pink spark was directly in front of my window. So if I just kept my apartment in sight, I’d find it. I’d see whatever washed up on the shore.
The storm was in full force, and I couldn’t fully open my eyes against the rain and the sea spray. The baseball cap I got from some event at the boardwalk flew off, and my only rain shield was gone. I didn’t grab a jacket. I only had shoes because I hadn’t taken them off yet.
But the beach was empty, except for me, the only one dumb enough to run toward the ocean in the middle of a storm. The water churned with aggression, lashing and breaking against the shore so hard it left bubbles and foam on the sand. Lightning lit up the sky, but my feet were planted in the sand, and I felt the call of the sea. This had to be what pirates and sailors felt in fairy tales–that irresistible pull until they finally caved, jumping in and drowning.
Soaked and cold even in the days turned to summer, I headed home once again.
It was just my imagination.
She wasn’t real, and I needed to get that through my thick skull.