FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #6

"Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son." Our tour guide told us as she stopped in front of the fading brown and yellow portrait in the middle of the exhibit. I sighed and looked around as she droned on and on about how ironic it all was. I was bored out of my mind, the only person on the museum tour that wasn’t bored was our history teacher, and she was the reason I was being forced to endure this horror in the first place. I looked at the picture, two men, on looked like he might be my age, except his eyes were older, deeper somehow. The other was older, in his fifties maybe, no beard, and his skin was smooth, even though it was weathered. They didn’t really look much like each other, but something about them was the same. I stared for a minute, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“What do you think?” I asked my best friend

“About what?”

“The guys in the picture?”

“Who cares? They’re just dead guys now.” He walked away from me, and I stood for a moment, lost in my thoughts.

“The boy seems intrigued, Leon.”

“Yes, he does.”

“Do you think he can tell?”

“He would be the first in a long time.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we wait, and see what he does.”

I stood there while my classmates moved on to the next piece in the exhibit and I could hear the murmur of the tour guides voice as she described the next picture. But I wasn’t any more interested in that than I had been in any piece before this one. There was just something about those faces, they were over a hundred years old and yet, they seemed so alive, not faded like most of the pictures from way back when. They were almost creepy because they were still so….vibrant.

“Josiah! Come on now, dear, or you’ll get lost.” My teacher called back to me. I took one last one look at that portrait, and hurried to join my class. At the end of the tour we went through the museum gift shop, and they had post card sized prints of all the pictures in the exhibit. I bought one of the two men.

“Well, Leon?”

“He seems promising. He could be the one.”

“He bought the print.”

“Yes, he did.”

When I got home, my parents were both still at work. Typical, really, they were never around when I wanted to talk to them. So I went up to my room, and took the picture out of the museum bag and sat down on my bed to stare and think. Who could they be? I wished I had paid more attention to the tour guide, but it was too late for that now. Maybe I would go back tomorrow and talk to her. I flipped the post card around in my hands and lay back on my bed. I wasn’t intending to, but I fell asleep anyway and while I slept, I dreamed.

Two men were running up a wooden dock, their feet pounding on the planks. They were laughing, the tall one was holding up his pants. Behind them was the sound of a woman crying. I looked at the men as they ran, debating which way to go, and I wasn’t alone. An old woman stood hidden in the trees directly across from me, on the edge of the river. Her face was withered and dark, like dried leather. She wore a brilliant purple shawl around her shoulders, her back was bent into a hump, but her face spoke silently of beauty long past, and her eyes were full of sorrow, she seemed broken, and I reached for her.

I woke up to the sound of my mom slamming the front door. She didn’t call for me, she never did. Sometimes I wondered if she would notice if I didn’t come home at night. I looked at the clock, it was 6:30pm, still early. I stretched myself and sat up on the edge of my bed. I put my face in my hands and closed my eyes, and I could still see her face. So sad, and yet, the more I thought about her, the more I saw of her, she had more than sadness in her eyes, they were hard to, like she had a purpose, like she didn’t care how long it took, she would stick it out. I shivered, and looked down at the picture of the men that was still laying on my bed.

“Ok, I think he’s the one.”

“You do, Leon?”

“He had the first dream.”

“Already? How can you tell?”

“Look at his face, he’s thinking of her.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll have to work fast.”

“When do we start?”

“Next time he picks up the print.”

“That soon?”

“We can’t let him get much farther in the dream, or we’ll be lost.”

Dinner that night was the usual, awkward affair. Mom didn’t feel like cooking, so dad picked up Chinese on the way home. For some reason, my parents insisted on sit down family dinners, so there we all were slurping noodles in relative silence. No one ever talks to anyone in my family anymore. I hurried through my orange chicken and went back to my room. Since today had been a field trip day, I didn’t have any homework to do, and I had beaten Super Mario Wii a few days ago.  That meant I didn’t have anything to do, which was fine with me, I’d rather pretend I did than spend more “quality” time with my parents. So I sat down on my bed again, and there it was.

I picked up the picture again. The more I stared at it, the more it started to creep me out, something about it was just, different than it was before. The men almost looked alive.  I shivered and put it upside down on my nightstand. I knew that it was early, but for some reason, I was just exhausted. I laid down and looked at the clock, 7:13p.m., then I closed my eyes…

Her eyes still stared into mine in the dark. My hand was outstretched to her, but she waved it away. The two men were gone now, but I could still hear the crying. I turned down the dock and headed towards a small house boat, the closer I got, the clearer the sobs came.  I stepped onto the boat, afraid to make a sound and I could still feel the eyes of the old woman boring into me as I went. There was a torn curtain across the doorway, I pushed it aside and looked into the room.  There she was, crying, bleeding, her shirt ripped open over her caramel colored skin. She clutched herself around the middle, not bothering to cover her breasts. She was sitting, bent over herself, legs out in front of her, skirt still hiked up around her waist. The blood came from between her legs. I looked at her again, this time noticing the mottled skin on her thighs and shoulders where bruises were starting to form. I followed the tear streaks from her cheeks to her chin and saw her broken lips, trembling against each other. Her dark, open curls fell down from the yellow scarf in her hair, and she looked up at me. Through me. With eyes that I knew.

I woke up shivering. The clock on the wall said it was 11:40p.m. I shook my head, trying to clear the dream. Her eyes, they were the same. That girl in the boat, she was the old woman on the shore.  How is that possible? I wanted to forget all about the dream, but something tugged at me, something strong, from the inside of me, and I knew that the dream was done with me. That woman, that broken woman, she needed something from me. It was in her eyes. I lay down again, still shivering, and closed my eyes.

 

She was waiting for me. On the dock this time, she regarded me with those cold, broken eyes, I noticed they were grey. I could still hear the sobbing of the younger woman in the boat. My skin tingled as I stepped forward.

“That’s you, isn’t it?” I asked her, pointing toward the boat.

She nodded her weathered head.

“How? I don’t understand…”

“I have the will to endure.” Her voice was thin like paper, but strong enough to carry, and I knew that when she spoke, no one paid attention to anything but her.

“I have the will to endure my personal hell, as many times as it takes to see satisfaction.”

“Satisfaction?”

“Justice.” She shook her fist against her skirt.

“Who are you?”

“I am Vienne. I was a dancer, engaged to the leader of my caravan.”

“Caravan?”

“Yes. My people, Roma, are what you would call Gypsys.” She spat the word. “Always looked down on and feared. Never welcomed, always watched. Especially by men. Those two men, they watched me dance on the river for money with my sisters. My sisters were better dancers than I, but what I lacked in skill, I made up in beauty. They were so jealous of my face. They longed to be looked at by men the way I was. If they had paid attention, they would have known that beauty is a curse, and that they were lucky to not be burdened with it. They found love. Not me. I found pain, degradation. Dishonor and shame. When men take virtue from a woman, they take her soul and she is no longer wanted. By anyone, not by herself, or by the people that once loved her. She is lost, alone, unwanted, pitied, tolerated, but she is less than what she was. She is without a soul, she is no longer human.”

“So, those two men, they took your virtue?” I asked, confused

“Aye. And in return I took their souls. But to possess another this way require great sacrifice. So in order to punish them, I also punish myself. It is a trap, an unfair price, but it is the bargain I made.”

“Can’t you just leave?”

“No. If I let go, then they will have peace. I will never have peace, and so, they shall not have it.”

“But, if you can’t let go, then you have to stay here forever?”

“Not forever.”

“How long?”

“Until someone sets me free.”

“How do you get set free? Could I do it?”

“Les les frais de liberte c’est mort.”

And then I was awake.

“How far did he go, Leon?”

“Not too far.”

“Far enough?”

“Far enough.”

“Well, go on then, Leon.”

As I lay there in my room, trying to figure out what Vienne had said, I heard a rustle.  I turned onto my side and saw the picture, it was flipping itself over. I sat up, startled, and grabbed for it.

“Careful there boy.”

“Who said that?” my voice came out low and airy with fear

“I did.”

I looked at the picture in my hand, the tall man winked.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Leon.”

“You hurt Vienne.”

“Yes.”

“I should hurt you.”

“Yes. To do that, you have to release us from the painting.”

“I can do that.”

“I’m sure you can.”

The man in the picture fell silent. I don’t know how long I stared at him.

“Well, Leon?”

“He’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Did you tell him how?”

“I don’t have to.”

“Why not?”

“He already knows. She told him.”

I got out of bed, picture in hand. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I would do it at the museum. I slipped into my shoes, and snuck downstairs. The museum wasn’t that far from my house, I would run there. 

By the time I got to the museum, I was out of breath, and my side was cramping. I could still see her, broken on the floor, and hear her old voice. I looked up at the glass doors. I knew they would be locked. The front of the building was lined with rocks and bushes, it took me a while, but I found a rock that I could throw.

I walked back to the doors, and set my feet wide apart. I raised the rock in both hands and lobbed it as hard as I could at the doors.  It hit, with a sound like ice under water, as the glass cracked, but did not break. I retrieved my stone, and threw it again.  This time, there was a sound like chimes as the cracked glass gave way and shattered to the floor.  The break wasn’t clean, and it was barely big enough, but I knew I could squeeze through. I stepped through one leg at a time slipping on the glass shards that littered the ground. I almost fell, but I caught myself, slicing my hand open in the process.  Bright red drops of blood pooled in my right palm before running in tracks to the floor. I shook my hand, it stung, but I was in.

I ran to the painting, and tore it from the wall. My hand smearing blood across their faces. They licked it. My eyes widened as I was the tall man stick his tongue out and taste my blood. He smiled. The painting was getting heavier, and I dropped it. He stepped out.

“Thank- you boy. I believe you wanted to hurt me now? To make me pay for hurting the woman?” He sneered at me and spread his arms as if to welcome me.

I was frozen. My eyes wide, mouth open, throat dry. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.  He stepped towards me, opened his coat, and in one movement, unsheathed a knife and plunged it into my throat. The blood gurgled up and out around the blade, my vision flashed in and out. He grabbed me and threw me on the ground over the painting.

“The price of freedom is death. You should have listened when she told you.”

 I began to cough, my body convulsing. I saw her there, in the dark, her grey eyes, cold and triumphant as she smiled sadly. He yanked the knife out of my throat, and I felt my life ebb, in a burning flash of heat and wet.

 “Well done, Leon.” The shorter man said as he stepped out of the painting.

“Freeze!”

The two men looked around, surprised to find that they were no longer alone. Security and Police officers surrounded them and the dead boy. Leon raised his knife and ran. Gun shots rang out from all sides and the two men fell. The blood from their wounds ran out slowly, like paint.

back to Contest #6