emcess2036

@@@@@Not great, maybe, not Rembrandt (not even Norman Rockwell), but not bad It was a young man in jeans and a Minnesota Twins tee-shirtThe number on the tee was 48, which meant nothing to me; in my old life I used to go to as many T-Wolves games as I could, but I've never been a baseball fanThe guy had blond hair which I knew wasn't quite right; I didn't have the colors to get the exact darkening-toward-brown shadeHe was carrying a book in one handHe was Ilse's special newsThat was what the shells were saying as the tide lifted them and turned them and dropped them againShe had a ring, a diamond, he had bought it at - I had been shading the young man's jeans with Venus BlueNow I dropped it, picked up the black, and stroked the word ZALES at the bottom of the sheetIt was information; it was also the name of the picture Then, without a pause, I dropped the black, picked up orange, and added workbootsThe orange was too bright, it made the boots look new when they weren't, but the idea was right I scratched at my right arm, scratched through my right arm, and got my ribs insteadI muttered "Fuck" under my breathBeneath me, the shells seemed to grate a nameAnd something was wrong hereI didn't know where that sense of wrongness was coming from, but all at once the phantom itch in my right arm became a cold ache 130 I tossed back the top sheet on the pad and sketched again, this time using just the red pencilRed, red, it was RED! The pencil raced, spilling out a human figure like blood from a cut It was back-to, dressed in a red robe with a kind of scalloped collarI colored the hair red, too, because it looked like blood and this person felt like bloodNot for me but - "For Ilse," I mutteredIs it the guy? The special-news guy?" There was something not right about the specialnews guy, but I didn't think that was what was creeping me outFor one thing, the figure in the red robe didn't look like a guyIt was hard to tell for sure, but yes - I thought