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| [In Progress] Celebrity - Charcoal Transfers, 22"x20" |
A cold pinch ripples out from my shoulders and I’ve forgotten where I am. The dark spot in the center of my vision floats back and forth so I see the edges more clearly; the seam of the ceiling is a crisp line where two greys meet. A warm pressure settles over my ankles, the low thread-count sheets tighten and pull; I panic.
In a fractured second my heart pounds so fast it feels motionless. I flail up from my bed, swiping my hands downwards to ward off my attacker. The flurry of limbs and glowing yellow eyes stare widely at me – and with such contempt – as my swinging arms hit air and I kick my feet to free them from the sheets.
I feel the weight lift and hear a smack against the wood floor beneath me. I blindly grope for the lamp. Click. The yellow haze floods the room and I have to squeeze my eyes against it. I snatch the dull knife, flipping it open with a practiced twist of my thumb – another click.
I’m standing beside my bed,
Hot huffs of carbon dioxide push out of me as I slide towards the wall – inherently afraid of the gap between my bed and the floor. My long shadow grows up the green paint, my head contorting at the ceiling to look down upon me and laugh in silence. I flatten my body against the wall, ensuring nothing can come up from behind me. My breath is the only sound; raspy, wet and heavy air that has the beginning stench of morning-breath.
I stand still for one, two, three seconds. Ten. Twenty. A minute. My heart and breath slow. My knife hand drops to my side.
Meow. Those brilliant yellow eyes peek around my bed skirt.
“Fuck.” My shoulders drop. “You little…”
Of course it’s hilarious. If my tiny black feline could laugh he would cackle at me for the rest of the night, replacing the spectral sounds I was imagining with the piercing ups and downs of a cat-laugh.
“Dick.”
Snap. He lunges onto the foot of the bed – now a disastrous mess of sheets – and reaches out his front paws, stretching his un-cut claws and snagging my comforter.
I tap my foot, waiting for him to pick a spot. My life around that of my cat.
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We’re in the darkness again, the wet, multi-lidded eyes of my night watchmen are closed and I wander in the labyrinth of pre-dreams; one thought leads to another, one image to the next and yesterday’s memories to today’s. The rattle of my back door has dulled with the death of the wind, somewhere nearby a dog barks.
Sleep comes, it takes me. (I snore).
The noises are back, but they do not come from the floor; before me lie train tracks - rusted, in a field of sand. No train comes, nor do I see one in the distance, the cracks and creaks of my floor seem to just leak from the oxidized iron, dripping from beneath the spikes that hold the track to the earth.
I can feel my toes wriggling, the sand dragging between them and my weight pushing me down inches at a time. I sink.
The rest of my body is without feeling, the wind blows through me and stirs up the particles at my shins. My knees near the earth and I can see a black dot on the horizon, I can only assume it’s a train. As it approaches I begin to hear footsteps – heavy boots, solid soles and dragging laces.
The locomotive becomes visible in the distance and the footsteps become louder, their din drowning out the wind and shaking my bones – bones that feel so exposed. The sand is at my waist.
The splitting sound of old leather peaks out from behind the footsteps and the train rolls to a stop several yards beyond me. The sound of boot falls ceases when the train settles and its engine stills, my breathing is heavy as the sand approaches my shoulders.
I sink. The conductor door opens at the engine car. Someone walks out. The sand is around my neck, it tightens.
Snap. The pressure does not let up- my neck is being crushed from all sides. My great circle eyes cannot see in the darkness, the weight of the black still sits on my vision. I grope at my neck and my fingers close over leather.
Gloved hands.
I can’t pant, I can’t panic or gasp; my left hand tries to pry at the claws, the cold, dead, leather-covered claws. I thrash my right arm towards my lamp – it crashes to the ground – and my hand finds the phone. My brushing of the screen floods us in pale blue, the cold light outlines a broad-shouldered monster, someone in black. A human monster, a man in a jacket - a man in boots.
My fingers go through the motions, but I cannot see if I hit the correct numbers. A dark red closes in on my sight from the corners and I taste blood in my mouth.
A small voice comes out of my phone. I feel sand between my toes.
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