Writes on Black Walls

Enter Eve

         Eve can hear her father on the phone from all the way down in the entry hall. He's engaged in a heated argument. She can't understand what's being said. It seems like all of his important conversations are in French. She could learn to speak French, she guesses, but what's the point? She'd never have any use for it.
         Approaching the door to the office, she takes off her backpack and clenches it tightly. She begins walking on the tips of her paint-mottled sneakers. Hopefully, he'll be too preoccupied to hear her. She tip-toes by the door, peering inside. He has a mess of papers spread across his drafting table and holds a few others as he yells into the receiver, gesturing emphatically in the air.
         No, wait, don't look at him. He might sense you're here. She hangs her head and passes by. Just before she makes it out of sight, she hears him put his client on hold.
         "Eve?" he calls.
She freezes in place, but says nothing.
         "Would you like help with your homework tonight, honey?"
Eve shakes her head. She drops her backpack and drags it along the oriental carpet.
         "Are you sure? I'll be done in just-"
His words cut off when she begins stumbling up the stairway.

* * * * *
Black Walls

         Eve steps through the studio's door and leaves her backpack just inside. The walls here are black, as are the ceiling and the speckles on the otherwise white-dusted floor. The window is simply a sheet of Plexiglas, filtering in sickly yellow light. Droplets of condensation have formed on it. A glass of water is set on its sill in a puddle of its own. The other window is replaced by a bulky air conditioner, and although it rumbles away, the air is thick and stale with the smell of paint. This room is the maid's unreachable itch.
         Eve wipes her face on the arm of her hoodie, leaving long black smudges of sweat and eyeliner across the white. She drops the jacket onto her backpack and walks to the window to take a sip of water. The girl stares through the window for a minute. She grabs an elastic from her pocket and ties back her jagged hair. This will keep the black, blue, and gray-mottled mess away from her paints. That is what she does here, after all. Paint.
         She flips on the radio in the corner and grabs the rag on top of it. She ties the rag about her wrist. The radio sputters for a second. She kicks it and the signal fades in. The tinny, crackling music is barely able to float through the thick air.
         A rickety end table leans beside her mattress at the room's center. Grabbing the knife stuck into its joint, she pops open a can of paint. She fills the tiny pail beside it half way, then sets both upon the table. There is a leash fastened to it. She uses the leash to pull the stand across the floor, the rusty wheels creaking loudly beneath.
         Eve grabs a small brush from one of the shelves, twirls the paint around with it for a moment, then touches the brush's tip to the wall. She resumes painting where she left off the night before.

         "He wouldn't visit her. He wouldn't ask what she did alone every night. That would disrupt
         her creativity. What a neglectful father. Who'd blame her for what she wished to do?"

         The story continues as such. Her fingers roll the pencil-thin brush just so, each white letter perfectly carved out of the blackness around it. Whenever the letters become faint, she dips into the paint again, and whenever she makes an erroneous mark, she wipes it off with the rag tied about her opposite wrist.
         One can easily see her dedication: her lithely muscled arms-her fingernails, worn and torn, barely covered with flecking violet polish-the way the letters reflect in the depths of her eyes.
         The room darkens as dusk deepens into night. She sets her brush and pail aside, and wipes her hands on the cloth. She withdraws a tapered black candle from the top drawer of the cabinet and twists it into the holder that wax has affixed to the cabinet's surface. She lights the candle with one of the matches strewn atop. It resists at first, but the flame eventually takes. Eve lets out a deep sigh. She reaches into her pocket and retrieves a tiny, white bottle. The words printed on the front are illegible in the dim light. She unscrews the top, raises it to her nose, and sniffs deeply. A moment later, she screws it closed and tucks it back into her pants, wiping her nose with the rag.
         Eve steps back and contemplates her work. It almost spans the entire wall. Even near the ceiling is covered, by means of the paint-splashed, foot-worn chair in the corner. Her eyes absorb the writing for a few minutes.
         She glances out the window, then back at her work. With as a sigh of distaste, she opens a can of black paint and spends the evening painting her work away.

* * * * *
Savor the Feeling

         "Was everything alright at school, honey?" Jon calls up the stairs.
         Eve drags her backpack through the door and slams the door shut, locking it behind her. Tears stream down her face. She pulls off her coat and her shirt along with it, throwing both on the floor in a tangled heap. The room is cold, the air conditioner having worked in her absence. She doesn't care. She wipes her lipstick and eyeliner off on her arm. Two more dark smudges, these contrasting against her ash-gray skin.
         Eve gulps down the water from the glass on the windowsill. It seems to dry her lips more than wet them. She pounds on the window with her fists. The world outside seems to shake. She pounds again, wishing the earthquake would become real and the earth would crumble apart. The window barely responds this time. The world is a sickly yellow through the tarnished plastic. She claws at the light for a moment before turning away from it.
         Eve preemptively kicks the radio before turning it on and popping open the can of black paint. She drags the tarp off her mattress and stuffs it into a corner. Closing her eyes, she takes a few steps backwards, touching the mattress's edge with her heel. She falls squarely upon it, lying motionlessly for a few moments. This is what it would feel like to die. She savors the feeling. Eve opens her eyes and reaches over to dip her fingers into the can of paint. Again, she writes, this time with her body as the canvas.

"Worthless"          "Forgotten"
           "Loser"                    "Invisible"
                   "Hopeless"
                               "Failure"

         It's amazing how perfectly the words fit her curves. They belong there. Maybe the black will seep into her and become tattoos. Then everyone will know the truth. She's just another useless girl. There are too many like her. Who cares about this one? Who cares about Eve? No one cares. It doesn't matter what her father says; she's hopeless.
         Eve rolls onto her side and reaches into the torn pocket of her tattered jeans. The safety pin that holds them together at the front snaps. She doesn't notice. She withdraws a little white bottle. The little white bottle. She opens it, and takes in another deep breath of its thick scent. It used to be terrible. She notices it less each time.
         Eve rises from her mattress and staggers over to the cabinet to pour herself some more white paint. The bulge in her pocket bothers her, so she removes it. The bottle's right there, so she takes another quick sniff and sets it down next to the candle. She begins writing again. This is a story that comes naturally to her.

         "To be lonesome is to suffer a special sort of pain, reserved for only the most worthless
         of people. Liars, cheaters, and even rapists are seldom lonely. This girl, she was worse
         than them all. She had to be. Loneliness was her plague."

         She grimaces. Her eyes hurt. It's getting a bit late. She grabs her bottle and breathes its substance to ease her headache a bit. Her throat feels dry. Her head is stuffy. She shakes her head to clear it, but stumbles against the wall. A pause. A breath. Okay, she's fine. Just a flash of dizziness. She leans forward to continue writing. Abruptly, she loses her balance, tripping, hitting her elbow on the floor.
         She groans. She would stand up, but the room is spinning around her. Eve closes her eyes to let it pass. Moving just enough to touch the brush to the wall, she writes:

         "I wish to be found."

* * * * *
A Soothing Voice

         Her radio is making the most God-forsaken racket. It is probably the reason for her throbbing migraine. She whimpers in protest. Her head really hurts. Her face is sore too. She rubs her cheek, feeling scaly paint dried upon it. Did she roll off the mattress? She opens her eyes and sees black.
         There is banging on the door. For the second time, she realizes.
         "Eve. It's almost eight. You'll be late for school."
Oh. It's just Jon. That father person. Again.
         She sits up and ow!, yanks away her hand. She leaned on the metal brim of the paintbrush.
         "If you-"
A cell phone rings.
         "Eve, I'll be out for the day," he says hastily. "Really hope we'll dine tonight before I return to Florida in the morning."
He answers the phone on its third ring.
         "Hello, this is Stryker. Good morning. Most definitely. Allow me a moment to glance at my schedule." Footsteps carry his voice away.
         Eve crawls across the room and yanks the radio's cord out of the wall. She squeezes her head between her palms, clenching her eyes closed. She sits there to recover for a moment, staring at the black paint that has worked beneath her nails and into the many cracks and crevices of her hands. At length, her eyes turn to the can of white paint across the room. The cover lies on the floor. She jumps to her feet and grabs it by the handle, running her fingers around the inside. It's practically solid. She grits her teeth, tossing the can noisily into the tarp left crumpled from the night before.
         The black paint: she checks it next. It's salvageable. There was more of it. Good. She still needs more white paint, though. She's about to dress when a glance at the wall piques her curiosity. There are the words she wrote last night:

         "I want to be found."

And the part that she doesn't remember writing:

         "'And so you have been,' spoke a soothing voice from the path ahead."

         Eve kneels down to inspect it. Weird. The letters are all smudged and squashed together. She was really out of it last night. She frowns. Headache.
         She rubs the ridge of her nose. Stupid school. Stupid father. She's playing hooky today. Sometimes, she needs a break from the stress at school. Idiot children born to idiot parents. There are only so many painful pranks and horrible insults she can suffer before she snaps.
         The bottle catches her attention from the corner of her eye. She remembers when she first began writing on these walls. She started using it then. She glances at it for a moment. She probably shouldn't, but just one more won't hurt. It'll make her head feel better. It'll relieve her stress. She sniffs it.
         Grabbing her sweatshirt, she throws it on over her bra. Her tank top wouldn't hide the writing on her arms. She drinks the last drip of water from the cup and departs to her father's modeling room to steal more paint.

* * * * *
Verge of Failure

         Eve returns, clicking the lock closed behind her. She shivers. It's freezing in here. She can see her breath. And the radio's picking up static again, crackling and screeching with the screaming between frequencies. She sets the paint down beside the wall and kneels in front of the radio, spinning the worn dial to find her station. Or try to. She can't find the frequency. Eventually, she gives up, leaning over and tugging the plug out of the outlet. It falls onto the floor. She stares at the mangled cord. Mmf. She rubs her head.
         The girl takes a small, faded photograph out of her pocket. A pretty woman smiles at her from the tarnished surface. She found it laying on the table next to her father's paints. He doesn't need it. It was all his fault, anyways. He never paid attention to her mother. That's why her mother went crazy. That's why she's going crazy.
         Eve stands up and walks over to the windowsill. The glass is empty. The light from outside is nauseating; it drills into her forehead, reinforcing the pain between her eyes. She sets the picture down behind the glass and solves the problem with a candle and a few strokes of black paint. Her creativity is nocturnal, anyways.
         Before she puts her paint away, she'll take care of the wall again. Her eyes quickly scan over it, searching those shallow, meaningless words for phrases novel enough not be forgotten. The very last word catches her attention. She approaches the wall and reaches forward to touch it.

         "Versager."

Eve rubs her eyes. Versager?

         "'And so you have been', spoke a soothing voice from the path ahead. Versager."

         She didn't write that. She knows she didn't write that. She wasn't even in the room. Her father's gone. Mary-Lynn was cleaning the pantry. No one was in this room. No one else was in the entire house.
         Quickly, she sets up her cabinet and prepares her paint.

         "Are you my muse?" she writes on the wall.

Suddenly, quotation marks appear around her words, and the letters begin to write themselves.

         "...,' asks the girl with hesitation in her voice.

         'I have always been but a step behind you. Waiting.
         Now, you need only wait for me.'"

Eve moves her hand to catch her balance.

         "'But now I have been found..." she writes.
         "...by my Versager. The one who sought me all along, even after I gave up on myself.'"

         And so the true story begins. For the first time in her worthless life, her words hold meaning. The story literally takes on a life of its own. It is as though, after so long without, passion has finally found her. This will be her masterpiece-the vessel for her dreams. This will finally prove to everyone, to her father most of all, that she isn't worthless.
         The words seem to flow through her out of nowhere. All of her fantasies and fears expressed in this glorious piece. Bethany, the beautiful maiden, and Versager, the noble knight, surviving the most bloody of battles and persevering through the most terrible of ordeals. Living to become legends, together.
         Her head continues to suffer, worsening, the throbbing now rising to the point that she can feel the pulse like a cataract in her brain, strangling the flow of thoughts. She stares at the wall. Versager waits for her prose. She reaches over and pops open the bottle. Two deep sniffs and she sets it aside. Nothing can be allowed to stop the process-the flow. Nothing can be allowed to hinder her from expressing her art. Not her headaches. Not her worries. Not her father's disappointment. She isn't a child here. She's a goddess.

         "There was but one shadow that still loomed over her, the maiden Bethany," she wrote.
         "Her father, the lord of castles - he could not appreciate that her art was subtle. That it
         took time. If he had not lived to be so great, Bethany would not have been a
         disappointment. If he died, her family would appreciate her for what she was. They
         would no longer measure her beside him."

         "This shadow would loom no longer," appear the words.
         "Versager would pay him a visit."

         "Bethany knew that under Versager's kind care,
         she would find her `happily ever after.'"

* * * * *
Artist's Sacrifice

         Light streams through the crack between the air conditioner and the top windowsill. It's morning. It must be Saturday. Jon hasn't come to wake her up.
         Three of the room's walls are filled with writing. Eve's fine, sharp letters, woven with Versager's thicker, bolder letters. The letters are beautiful together.
         The room is filled with the radio's static. She must have turned it on again last night. She doesn't remember much of the night. Instead, she has memories of verdant lands and regal horses, and plots so skillfully designed that they could only be wrought of a master. Or this girl named Eve. No, not Eve. It is too brilliant even for her.
         Another deep breath of that sweet white aroma.
         Her fingers ache. Her wrist is numb. Blood is caked in around her nails. It doesn't matter, though. All artists make sacrifices. What matters is her story. What a story it is!

         "The gates were open. Everything was ready. Versager would come for her soon."

         She watches the words scratch themselves onto the black. There is more paint in her room. She doesn't remember retrieving that either. Most of the cans are empty. They've been used for a purpose.
         She continues to write. Lovely, beautiful words. She doesn't even know what they are anymore. She doesn't see the words. She sees pictures.

         "He knew where she waited, atop the pinnacle of her crystal tower.

         The radio crackles to life. The sounds of police talking over their intercoms. It's funny, hearing their voices in the elaborately adorned castle. There must be lots of them, but they're all invisible.

         "A murder took place. And it was done just so."

         A murder? The plot thickens! Eve is filled with excitement. Her body trembles uncontrollably.
         The police are breaking into someone's home. A man was found dead. Stabbed through the heart. Murdered during the night. Found by the house staff in the morning.
         She wonders what color robe the man was wearing when he died. A generic red, or something more exotic, like green or yellow? She imagines yellow. It would have looked more dramatic to have the king wearing yellow.
         The door's locked from inside, so they have to kick it down.
         Christ! The radio's too loud. She should turn it down. She will, right after this one scene.
         Where would the assassin be hiding? No, the assassin probably wouldn't hide. Just stabbing the king like that, leaving him in plain sight on the kitchen floor-they wanted to be caught.
         The radio's volume continues to rise. Before she realizes it, the radio is blasting. Dammit! It's breaking her concentration!
         Eve has something small in her hand. A bottle? She sniffs it.

* * * * *
Heartbeats

Thump. The radio is off.
           Thump. The window is gone.
                       Thump. The walls are empty.

           Her hair is down. She can feel it. It's long and beautiful.
           She's wearing a gown. It's violet, of course. It's beautiful too.

Thump. The door creaks open.
           Thump. A silhouette stands at the threshold.

           The candle's light doesn't reach his face. It doesn't need to.
           She can recognize him from the sound of his breaths. Her heart flutters.

Thump. He steps forward and extends his hand.

           She reaches to accept it, but he's holding something.
           He passes it to her. A knife.
...
           Eve stands before the dark figure.
           She longs to be taken into his arms.
           Peace waits for her there.

           His arms open to her.
           She steps into them. She's ready.
...
           Spark!
           The candle flares.
           Versager's face is illuminated.

           Eve screams!
...
           The fleshless face grins at her.
           Skeletal arms grasp onto her.
           Hollow eyes lust for her.

"Versager"

* * * * *
Drying White Paint

         An explosion sounds as the studio's door is kicked open. The sturdy oaken form careens a can of paint into the opposite wall. The officer catches the door before it slams shut in front of him.
         He leans inside, scanning the darkened interior with his naked eyes. It is completely unlit, save for the faint rectangle that glows gray amongst the blackness of the other side. When he turns his flashlight on, its beam reflects oddly from the freshly-painted white walls, spawning ghastly shadows that seem to lurk further into the light than they rightly should. Resting upon a decrepit stand is a candle, its wick still host to a slithering coil of smoke. Strewn about the room are numerous empty cans of paint.
         Bits of paint and plaster crush beneath the officer's boots as he enters, the sound magnified by the chamber's hard surfaces. A small radio in the corner hisses eerily. The air conditioner whirrs, chugging on the air so thick with the scent of paint that the man instinctively covers his mouth. Rain rattles loudly on its metallic frame. The tip of a gray tarp flutters in its current.
         His assistant steps into the room behind him.
         The officer focuses his light upon the mattress at the floor's center. An aged picture of a handsome woman is lying upon the boards beside it.
          "It hardly seems habitable in here," the assistant rasps.
         A small object momentarily flickers through the air before thudding heavily to the planks below. Both men snap their beams over to focus upon the source. A knife lays parallel to the boards, the bit of the blade not covered in paint glimmering in the light. The amorphous gray mass in the nearby corner abruptly comes to the man's attention.
          "My God!" he yells, hustling towards it. It is the girl crumpled into the shadows, the back of her sweatshirt merging with the surrounding walls.
          "We need medical support," the assistant yells into his handset.
         The man drags her by the shoulders and lays her in the center of the room beside the mattress. He sets his flashlight upon the stand. Pausing only a moment to check for a pulse, he tilts her head back, the paint-mottled hair crackling sickly, and he pulls her shirt up. Her skin is still warm, but her lips are quickly fading to blue.
         He begins thrusting his fists into her chest and giving her mouth-to-mouth. Her skin is rough to the touch and the color of ash, and he has to pause to spit out the taste of paint. After a few minutes, he presses his ear to her cooling chest and lets out a heavy sigh. "No heartbeat."
         The officer stands, shaking his head sadly, then notices his assistant's gaze focused into the paint can nearest to the knife. Within it is a single crimson swirl.
          "I'd go crazy too, painting my walls white all day," the assistant whispers.
         The officer notices something on the girl's stomach, and grabs his light to focus the beam upon it. One word is written, perfectly articulated in white:

"Failure"