26. Levi #3
The paintings are very hard to look at. Ethan is nude and aroused in most of them, and while his body is beautifully made and beautifully painted, it’s rendered with shame and torment and rage.
He’s praying with a collar around his throat, his head tilting back as someone, unseen, pulls on the collar from behind.
He’s lying facedown with blood between his legs.
He’s gagged with one of those preacher shawls.
Others are worse, and my brain can’t process them.
There’s imagery of dark figures around him. There’s a knife stabbing into him in a way I don’t want to think about.
But it’s his expressions that make my eyes sting.
There are some where he doesn’t have a face or where a black stripe is painted roughly across his eyes.
But there are others where he’s screaming.
Crying. Begging. There are some where he’s so angry that he looks demonic.
There are some where he is demonic, with dark leathery wings and long, cruel claws.
And there’s one that’s just his face. There’s a hand in his hair and an arm that goes out of frame. His eyes are empty and bleak, and the bottom half of his face has been ripped away to expose bloody teeth and bone.
The work is beautiful and grotesque.
When I hear footsteps on the stairs, I don’t react. I can’t. I’m caught in some dark spell of the images.
That spell breaks when Ethan walks into the room. I blink, making tears spill down my cheeks. I look at him, as beautiful as in the paintings but with all the torment buried. I can see it, though, in his eyes.
Instead of being nude, he’s wearing a dark gray suit, which makes my mind glitch slightly, but it’s not what matters. What matters is that I see.
I know.
And I have to say it: “He was abusing you. That’s why you killed him.”
For a second, Ethan’s eyes go blank. Then he says, “I made him sin.”
Anger boils up hot and fast inside me. “Bullshit. He was fucking abusing you.”
Ethan’s voice is flat when he replies, “I was sinning too.”
My hands curl into fists. “You don’t believe that. You can’t.”
“I don’t know what I believe.”
“Ethan… no.”
He walks into the room. He’s beautiful and refined in his three-piece suit.
His hair is styled back, and his face is cleanly shaven.
He’s polished and perfected for anyone to see.
His expression is neutral, unreadable, but his eyes are like dark windows into a very different place. A very different person.
As he moves to stand behind me, I look over my shoulder, but I don’t turn. When he’s out of my line of sight, I look forward and see the paintings again. My eyes are caught on the one of his face, half gone, with the hand in his hair.
Behind me, he whispers, “These are my confessions.”
“A confession means you’ve done something wrong.”
“These are all wrong.”
“But not because of you.”
“You don’t understand.”
I see Ethan’s hand coming, but I don’t move. I let him lay his hand over my eyes, blinding me. I let him pull me back until I’m resting against him. I let him curl his other hand around my throat.
“What don’t I understand?” I ask.
Ethan’s fingers lightly stroke my throat. “I keep telling you that you’re not safe with me. Why aren’t you afraid?”
“Because that’s a lie. I am safe with you, and I always have been and I’ve always known it. If this is a room of confessions, then be honest. You would never hurt me.”
Ethan shudders so hard that it shakes through my body. His hands clench on me, squeezing my face, squeezing my throat, but then they soften. They fall away, sliding down to curl around me again, this time embracing me, holding tight. Ethan’s face presses into the crook of my neck.
My eyes are still closed, not to hide from the images around me but to feel the man behind me.
“I love you, Ethan.”
His shudders again. I feel his head shake no against me.
“I love you,” I tell him again.
His breath starts puffing harshly against my neck. I wrap my arms over his, holding him tightly to me.
He whispers, breathing out the words, “I love you too.”
Tears leak past my closed lids, spilling down my face. I turn in his arms. He softens his grip to let me. Then he tightens it again, holding me close, and I hold onto him too. I bury my face against him.
The horrors surrounding us seem to retreat. They don’t vanish. They can’t. But they draw back, at least for me. I hope they do for him too. I hope this tiny space that’s just us feels as safe to him as it does to me.
I’m not the one who hasn’t been safe. It’s always, always been him.
I feel anger stir in me again at the thought, but I make it subside. It doesn’t matter right now. All that matters is that I get him out of this room.
I tug at him. We draw apart enough to walk, but I take his hand and lead him out. I don’t dare look back. I just keep moving, even when he pulls the string and the light goes out.
We walk through the pitch black toward the strange, unpleasant light of the studio space where he’s constructed all these images, captured them in mirrors then in paint, speaking always only to himself, or maybe to God.
I lead him through it, then up the stairs. I lead him out.