Bleakest House

                             Fiona Waters 11HD

Bleak House

Charlie put down the paintbrush and turned to look out of the window. The windowpanes were even grimier than usual, Charlie thought. That was good. The windows weren't what he was really looking at though, that was the jumble of old, dilapidated cars, which he'd dumped there after he had moved. Whenever he looked at them he saw an oversized puzzle, or perhaps an unfinished game of Tetris lying there abandoned. Abandoned, he liked that too.

With a slight sigh and a sharp jerk of the head, Charlie turned back to the canvas and took a fresh look at what he had produced. This one was even more miserable than usual. The grey of the lake was even more dull and despairing, and the tall, leering windows of the mansion were nothing less than menacing, grossly contorted and misshapen. Kind of like Charlie. The only colour in the otherwise lifeless piece of art was a wild spark of yellow in the corner, a bonfire. All of Charlie's pieces were like this, but they grew more disturbing each day, the shapes would contort further and the fire would burn with an increased fury at every stroke of the brush. They all met a similar fate as well. Charlie would carelessly chuck them among the cars and set each canvas ablaze. He would watch them burn as he wandered through the ashes of previously crumbled castles and destroyed dungeons.

Charlie took a final look at the now completed piece and shrugged. This one was certainly creepier than the last and inarguably of a more disconcerting nature than the first. He would burn it later. It wasn't exactly an obsession with fire that he'd developed, but the fixation was notable. It was hardly surprising really considering flames had engulfed his life as well as his face. Some people had commented on the cars, they said it wasn't healthy to keep them after what had happened to him, but Charlie was keen to embrace the enigma that surrounded his garden and his rundown hovel. There was nothing more interesting, he thought, than a reclusive artist with a permanent health problem. Nothing more worthy of sympathy, he'd discovered. Oh, the sympathy.

Charlie swirled his paintbrushes in the bucket he kept by the door and then, with the decrepit walk he'd mastered, stepped into his bathroom. He'd destroy the painting later. Charlie's bathroom was a modest affair; he had never cared for flamboyant furnishings, not since his racing days anyway. In fact it was unusually bare, the yellowing bath and toilet standing on a hard, stone floor. Charlie looked at the old wooden chest that sat silently on the side of the bath. The chest had been in the house long before Charlie had, and he would often wonder about its history and the history of the people whose homes it had been a part of. The dark chest gave off an air of mystery. Although Charlie's chest was invisible to the public, he felt it in some way added to the enigma now surrounding him and to the eccentric persona he had created for himself; that's why he had kept it. It was also why he hadn't thrown it on a bonfire months ago with the other valueless junk the previous owner had had the charming courtesy to leave.

Charlie lifted the wooden lid and admired the perfectly arranged contents. The stuff inside was what Charlie used to conceal his face; they were what he relied upon. The prosthetics themselves certainly hadn't been cheap, in fact it wouldn't be anywhere near a falsity to call their price extortionate, but nonetheless they were worth every penny he had paid to that bizarre old man who he'd made the deal with on the telephone. The truth had been a little too unnerving for Charlie to discuss, so he had stammered that the makeup was for a theatre production which, he supposed, wasn't too far from the truth. 'All the world's a stage', he had uneasily chuckled, 'And each man has a part to play'. It would also not have been a falsity to say that Charlie's part was a little more bizarre than average.

Charlie relied on this makeup for everything. He looked into the mirror above his basin and thought of racing cars, his father, and of course he thought of fire. A few minutes later, his face was covered and Charlie was ready to face his own stage and its plethora of characters. His favourites were the kind old ladies. The sympathy that Charlie felt towards him was enormous; it seemed almost twisted to him that injured, ex-racing drivers were regarded as heroes among the public. There really wasn't anything heroic about Charlie, nothing at all.

He would often drive into town, pretending both to himself and to others that he was in desperate need of an exquisite new paintbrush or perhaps a box of charcoal. That was what he liked to pretend. In fact, Charlie was rarely in short supply of these things, but what he subconsciously knew was that the sympathetic smiles of the little old lady behind the till, coupled with the occasional offer of a mug of herbal tea, was what he really relished. There was really nothing less exhilarating than a pile of wood, hair and charcoal.

Relying on the weather, Charlie planned to make his trip into town later that afternoon. Relying on it being bad of course. There wasn't much more depressing to Charlie than hot sunny days. They were so full of hope, but nothing ever came of them other than the slow melting of the prosthetics down his left cheek. That he couldn't be having.

Charlie replaced the lid of the chest. His face was now perfect, perfection to him at least. There remained only one more essential part of Charlie's routine and that was the gaze he would fix on the picture of his father that he had taped to the mirror. He imagined the mirror had been there even longer than the chest. This rehearsed glare wasn't quite as consistent or effective as Charlie hoped it would be, this was because he never quite knew what face to pull, and he never was quite sure what he meant by pulling it either. Sometimes his look was of pity. In Charlie's more optimistic moods he forgave his father for everything. How his father had turned out, Charlie supposed, was hardly surprising, Neglect breeds neglect. Other times the look was of sheer hate. To Charlie it often seemed that it was his own father's fault that he had become a semi-reclusive artist, engulfed in both his love and hate for painting. He had never shown Charlie any sympathy. His father had painted the walls of Charlie's mind grey, so Charlie had painted the walls of his house grey to match.

On reflection, it seemed that his deficiency in affection had been made up for. But how he wished the sympathy he experienced now was as genuine as it could be, but more often than not he brushed the guilt out of his mind and out of his window. His concerns over this were perhaps a little ridiculous, as at the end of it all Charlie still got the smiles and the sympathetic looks that he had always wanted. Well, sort of.

After realising that a good hour had been lost through his pondering and reminiscing, a sigh fell out of his mouth as Charlie walked back into his studio. The painting stood there the same as before. Charlie was able to ignore the stench that the drying oil paint sent his way and again looked at the painting. He decided that the odour actually complemented the nature of the image; after all, what's a rundown house without a few foul-smelling skeletons in the cupboard? Charlie sure had a few of them. It was a creepy sort of smell too; it was mysterious and oh, how Charlie liked that too. Charlie's fondness for this piece had begun to grow, in fact it seemed almost a sin to destroy this one in such a nasty, brutal way, but destroy it he would.

As he emerged through door and into the front garden, he noticed that the gate had begun to swing on its hinges. Charlie smiled; hopefully the swinging would soon be coupled with a sinister screech, just to make everything perfect. A few moments later and the painting was ready to meet its end, just as Charlie was ready for the beginning of the fun. He had placed it in the only space now available in the sea of debris that lay before him, and that was a small spot next to one of his oldest, most fragile cars. It was at the side of his garden, which Charlie thought was such a terrible shame; he had hoped for a prime spot centre-stage for today's performance. But that was not to be.

Although Charlie didn't notice this, just as he was pulling the ever-present box of matches out of his pocket, a pair of children crept past the house. Charlie's house was too far off the beaten track for it to be en route to the local school, but the curiosity of the children to catch a glimpse of 'the burnt man' was far greater than their wish to run home early for tea. But the children quickly passed once their three daring seconds of gawking were over and just before Charlie struck his match.

Moments later the match had been dropped, and Charlie stared in a trance as the painting before him became part of the earth. The exhaust pipe of the car began to drip. Charlie watched in delight as the flames engulfed the painting further and further and the persistent, warm crackling of the flames became the only sound he could hear. The sight of the yellow, orange and red filled Charlie's eyes as the fiery shapes swirled around the canvas and nibbled teasingly at the rectangular windows. Charlie was sucked in. His face drew closer and closer to the painting. The prosthetics began to burn. He was so close. As Charlie dared to reach out a hand to the menacing fires, a vicious, violent whoosh of energy surged out of the painting. The explosion of flames screamed at Charlie and Charlie screamed with them. They pushed at him, tore at him, ripped at him. Charlie let out a primitive roar as he fell backwards and sank into the mounds of ash behind him. He raised his arms into the air, not just in agony, but in elation as he shook his head wildly from side to side. Oh, how it burned! The pain was awful and wonderful. Arching his back, Charlie made claw shapes with his fingers and shrieked again. Those fake prosthetic scars were now melted and they trickled down his raw, red cheeks. It was all real now. The fire was real. The pain was real. The accident was real. The burns were real. And now the sympathy would be real too.