Another angel, not quite perfect. Carol snatched the canvas off the easel and balled it up hard. She flung her creation into the fireplace and watched the devouring flames turn wings black.
Like a dead weight Carol sank to the carpet, then lay on her back and shut her eyes. She tried to shut out the world.
That evening, after some television news and a bite to eat, she was compelled to place a new white canvas onto the empty easel. She stared at the blank space. She dipped her delicate brush into silver.
As usual she began with the angel wings. Her strokes were precise, slow.
The most difficult part was always the eyes. They never came out right. Angel eyes were a puzzle. She would do them last.
A knock at the door.
“Come in!”
It was her new friend Monique. “I’m sorry–I didn’t know you were busy–here’s the jacket you left in Tony’s car. I’ll leave you here to your work.”
“No! Please stay for a minute! The apartment can feel so empty. It’s nice to have some company for a change.”
“What’s this? You painted all these?”
Carol laughed. “It’s my hobby, I guess.”
“Seriously? It beats making tin foil Christmas tree ornaments, or any silly thing I’ve ever attempted. I didn’t know you were an artist! They’re absolutely beautiful!”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
“Wonder what–if they’re beautiful?”
“If they’re as perfect as angels should be.”
“They’re angels. How can they not be beautiful?” laughed Monique, wandering slowly about Carol’s small apartment, turning right and then left. She gazed with increasing wonder at a dozen silvery canvases on easels. There was such a clutter of angels that it was difficult to maneuver.
Monique looked quickly at each canvas. The heavenly paintings were exquisite but something about them was odd. They felt unnatural. Something vital seemed to be missing. And there were so many. She didn’t want to say anything. That would be impolite.
“You might have noticed that none of my angels have eyes,” Carol remarked, trying not to sound embarrassed. “Not yet.”
“Oh my gosh! I was just thinking there was something kind of strange about them. Now I see why! They’re absolutely wonderful but the faces are wrong. So you’re waiting to paint the eyes on all these? Are they difficult to do?”
“I always have trouble with my eyes.”
“Me, too,” smiled Monique. “That’s why I wear glasses.”
They both laughed.
. . .
Carol rolled in a nightmare. It was another lucid dream of Hell.
Blackness swallowed her. She was spinning, drowning in an infinite void, suffocating in ungraspable nothingness. There was no light, not a trace of substance or form.
A tomb.
In the blackness she struggled to find her hand. She was desperate to lift her hand and touch something, feel anything. She could find nothing. Spinning, spinning, she was alone, less than nothing in the consuming nothingness.
It was a Hell without flames, without demons or evil, without time, only emptiness. A devouring nightmare that had erased her entire world.
No hope.
Panicking, she strained in her mind to remember some known thing. A face, a ray of sunshine. Something in a vanished life she understood. Something near. Deep in her mind she tried to grasp at anything, a momentary spark, an atom, to cling to, to push back the black, ruthless, eternal Nothing.
Nothing.
In the blackness she caught a glimmer.
She woke.
Her dark apartment was strangely aglow. She lifted her head from her pillow. All about her were living eyes. Eyes of pure light, living light. Warm light.
Carol jumped out of bed and flipped on the cold apartment light.
She began painting eyes.
Short Stories by Richard 