Grace in Green

A Collaborative Horror Story

Original painting by Layne Mercer, oil on canvas

First, this beautiful painting was conjured by Layne Mercer from nothing but a mental image, which is immensely impressive. We are so thankful he agreed to collaborate with us on this project, it brings it to life. Please check out his content, as he is also a top-notch fiction writer.

Second, this is a tag team story, written back and forth between the two of us. It is our second joint story, so check out Child of Clay if you enjoy this one.

She is my muse, my birdsong and blue sky. Not beautiful but beauty incarnate. I cannot create without her form in front of my eyes, my north star, guiding me into the heavens above. The canvas cannot contain her, nor capture her, try as I might, my mere hope is to convey her. If I could bottle her up, make a tincture of her essence, then I might finally create my masterpiece. I dream of her, in my dreaming and in my waking, I see her whenever I close my eyes. She does not know what she is to me, how could she, for she is everything. I cannot lose her, it is death to face distance of any kind. I do not love her. A love such as mine, sinful creature that I am, would taint her purity. I worship her. The last painting of her in the bay window was my greatest yet, in Holy yellows and bottomless blues. I must have her back, everyday, until this next piece is complete. When inspiration speaks, you listen. This time I must paint her in contrast, the vibrancy of life in the hue of decay, festering greens and wilting oranges, gangrenous blacks and moldering whites. I will not cease until the work is finished.

I wear green today. It is the green of fiddleheads in the spring, coiled and ready. Of new ivy, tender shoots climbing up and out, scaling the brick walls of old facades. The green of new leaves, brushing the sky.

It is the green of yearning and desire. Of freedom and escape.

But for all its vernal promise, this green–this dress–is a death sentence.

I study myself in the mirror. A bright angel of retribution cut from emeralds, the soft light striking each facet.

I tilt my chin. A muse.

I turn my neck. A murderer.

I smile. A monster.

The light doesn’t lie, unflattering in its clarity. But no matter how ugly this version of me is, it must be done. His obsession is suffocating. His worshiping wears on me. The figure on the canvas he toils before is an idol, an icon. A thing to be possessed. Held captive with each reverent daub of paint and obsessive stroke of his brush.

It isn’t me.

I wonder for a moment how it came to this. Where was the point of no return? I cast my mind back. To smiles in a smoke-filled room. Acid green alcohol running over crystal sugar. Grains dissolving slowly, inevitably, like so many hopes and dreams. Silk and velvet, the soft slip of wealth. The promise of something beyond the darkness of the demimonde that ate my girlhood.

I pull an orange rose from the latest bouquet. Orange for fascination. I tuck it into my curls. I’m ready.

In she steps, though she never left my mind. Her eyes catch my breath and pull it from me. She embalms me. I feel as the ancient Pharaohs of old, my very soul being extracted by hook.

We do not speak to each other, that was the arrangement, for how could I beseech a goddess?

She glides across the studio, not a murmur from the floorboards, and I have to wonder — can such beauty be real? And now with her presence, I cannot envision the scene without it, as though she were always here. All is contingent on her.

She sits gracefully upon the armchair I prepared for her, belonging there, filling the scene to its bursting completion. No, no not bursting. Too harsh. I am ever at a loss for words when she is near. No, she creates the scene, it unfurls from her. She is everything.

The armchair fabric is breadmold white, not blinding but quiet, with buttons of muted black. Her dress is green lakewater, undisturbed and serene. And in her hair, the flower… it is the sun over the lake. Perfect.

My hands fumble lightly to find my brush, errant, for I cannot look away from her. Her glance wrests control from me guilelessly, my hand moves not of my own volition, but of hers.

And I have to wonder. Who am I, blessed to paint such grace in green? Does the world not appreciate what it has in her? No, I dare say it is ignorant. When first we met, she was unseen. But I saw her. If they do not appreciate what they possess, then it is not for them.

I appreciate, nay, I worship.

I should possess.

By rights she is mine, I have captured her upon canvas and she has captured my heart, my whole self. I cannot let her leave again, I must paint eternal. The work must go on.

The first time I came to the Painter’s studio, I sat in his bay window and fancied myself not a character playing a part, not a prop setting the scene, but a woman, real and flawed, at home within herself and the world.

What would it be to know such a place as this was mine, with everything fine and grand? I laughed a little for the studio wasn’t even his home, only a space to work. Yet, the idea set my imagination turning.

I remember my fingertips pressing into the yellow and blue of my borrowed dress. It was of the finest glacé silk, so smooth and lustrous that I thought it must be spun of fairy thread. What if it were mine? Really mine?

And as I watched the Painter work, I allowed myself to wonder—a dangerous pursuit, especially for one such as myself, always given to dark turns of logic.

I followed a twisted path into the deep woods of my imagination. And that wayfinding led me only to more questions. What had the Painter done to deserve all this finery? And more than that, what had he done to deserve all that space in his head? His brain wasn’t busy with survival, with the struggle of day-to-day life, and so he had room for fantasy, delusion, obsession. Space for control. And for possession.

Suddenly, the studio was no longer a home I might wish for but a prison I only wanted to escape. Suddenly, the colored silks under my touch felt tainted. The yellow was craven cadmium. In the blue I saw the malaise of manganese. Poison and sickness where only moments before there had been beauty.

And as I fled further down the path of my dark thoughts, I wondered, what if I were to wear green?

For hadn’t there been reports? Of children wasting away in green-wallpapered rooms? Of the silk flower makers dusting stems and leaves with green powder only to succumb to a disease that ate them from the inside out?

I eyed the Painter as I had now for weeks on end. Absorbed in his work, he brought brush to canvas again and again, fingers splotched with errant paint, as one might observe on the digits of even the most careful of craftsmen.

And when he ran out of paint, he returned brush to palette and then resumed his labors. But first, oh first, lucky me, he licked his fingers. A nervous habit mindlessly repeated. But with the right kind of paint smeared across his skin?

It was just an idea until it was something more.

And now, I sigh and adjust my posture as the Painter’s eyes burn and his brush dances across the canvas. And the green, bright and beautiful, goes to work.

My hands were made for this dance. With wooden handle held light like a prayer, horse-hair brush sliding across canvas, in this I am made whole. With the right muse the right pallet, a masterpiece can be found. This beautiful verdant paint, her gift to me, it is perfect. The color moves and leads me like the current of a river shimmering thick and bottomless. I sense the way and follow, placing the colors where they ought to go, where they need to be.

But this time is different. This time I am being pushed and pulled, the paints whisper, the canvas judges.

I paint carefully, agonizing over every stroke, but the colors tell me I'm wrong. I hear mossy voices whispering in my ear telling me I will ruin the work, that I am not fit to paint and they grow louder in my head buzzing and humming terribly.

I question myself. What I see, what I hear.

I feel… strange. Febrile.

I see faces in the paint. Faces with mouths open in wide white screams, moldering eyes leering from submerged sockets locusts crawling buzzing loud, always buzzing. I know they are not there, but I see them see them crawling on thin dark legs like bristles little fine brushes the ones for painting hair. The work must carry on but I can hardly breathe can't think but the work must carry on.

It’s started. The slow descent.

I can see it in his eyes. Where before I beheld burning embers, now I see a full-fledged fire in their depths. His skin, already pale, has gone ashen. A fine sweat coats his brow.

Yet still he paints.

He is a man possessed. But whereas once it was the spirit of beauty that moved the Painter, now it is something much darker that drives him on. The angel of death is on his shoulder, whispering sweet nothings. And even now, with his eyes on the canvas and his fingers on the fine-bristled brush, he turns toward her.

I wonder if he can see how much that angel looks like me.

I brought him the green in tiny silver tubes nestled in a little wooden box, grosgrain bow tied around the top. He took it from me with trembling fingers, pulled the ribbon like he was Lachesis, measuring out his life one taffeta inch at a time.

At first he used the paint carefully, sparingly. And I wondered if this dark scheme was doomed to fail. But the angel whispered and he heeded her call. Painstaking brushes of pigment gave way to frantic strokes.

Soon green coated his fingers, streaked his face, smeared across his lips.

“Come again tomorrow,” came his breathless words.

And I did.

Day after day.

And still now he works until I’m sure there must be nothing on the canvas but viridian peaks and malachite valleys of heaped-up paint. Graceless. Grotesque.

But the angel of death hovers ever lower. And I will have my prize.

the damn paint slithers about never staying where I put it contorting into the faces horrible open visages verdant tortured in pain the crawling locusts buzzing in out of the mossy eyes with wings shimmering oily vibrating that awful ungodly grassy outdoor sound so loud my teeth ache from the clenching grinding bones and I sweat from the effort the pain the noise squeezing fists I broke another brush but the work my masterpiece it must be finished covered with cloth so the insects cannot chew and crawl and ruin it with their incessant biting on my neck arms face all over to where I am made a fool slapping dancing crying out staring at me all of the time with their horrid eyes dull glassy eyes reflecting me showing me my own sickly pallor hundreds of times over over and over each one accusing me judging the work whispering humming I will ruin it with my bumbling hands my lack of skill rotting away the paint peeling it back off from the canvas revealing showing the hiding trees behind branches beneath forests filled with nubile growth shining leaves swaying in unseen breath of some foul beast eaten teeming with the locusts on thin prickly legs twitching antennae segments trying to get out Get Out GET OUT OF THE PAINT GET OUT ONTO MY SKIN TO MY EARS INTO MY HEAD MY SKULL CLICKING CHEWING BUZZING CRAWLING INSIDE OUTSIDE TO STOP ME TO STOP THE WORK BUT I WILL NOT BE

When I enter the studio today, I don’t see the Painter.

He does not stand behind the canvas, watching with those ember eyes like when we first began this strange dance.

He does not pace back and forth with eyes like fire, ranting about insects, raving about finishing what he started, as he did as recently as yesterday. Green-coated fingers running through his hair, raking down his face, picking at his shirt, his skin.

I think maybe he’s gone home, although I’m no longer sure he could make the journey across town unassisted. And even if he were to attempt it, he could very well be intercepted on his way. Mistaken for a lunatic and carted away. Bearded and wild, thin and wan. By turns, his gaze glassy and faraway or frighteningly focused on some hidden world.

But there comes a moan, something low and animal-like, something that makes my skin prickle with the pins and needles of survival. And I realize what I had taken for a tangled lump of backdrops and drop cloths is actually the Painter, supine on the floor.

His eyes are black, sparking in the yellow light of the dirty bay window. He looks at me now, and for the first time I worry for my safety. He seems like a man possessed. Not with the spark of creativity or even with the sweet angel of death, but with something far darker.

Yet still I approach, green dress whispering around me, murmuring of murder, of just desserts, and sin.

I stand over him and he stares up at me, mouth working on words I’ll never hear, eyes envisioning terrors I’ll never see. And while his spirit may still flash and flare, flickering in the unknowable energy of madness. I understand I need not be afraid. He is beyond saving now.

And I know something like elation.

I’m no longer a muse. No longer a thing to be worshiped or possessed.

In this moment I am the Artist, a designer of death, a painter of nightmares.

I see her glowing darkly terrible radiant

that angel of death standing over me

framed by golden light from the chandelier

and if I could but reach my brush and paint then I would have my masterpiece

but I cannot reach the brush

and the colors recoil from me

and I know I will never finish

I will never complete the work

never paint my masterpiece

the world will forget me

so I weep

The Painter’s eyes glisten, the fire in them put out by tears tinged teal.

I take up a small brush from the edge of the easel, careful not to look at the green-choked canvas.

I kneel by his side, touch the tip of the sable hair to his face and let his weeping wet my brush.

And then I sweep it across his lips. A smile made of salt.

I stand back and look at my creation.

A study in sin. A painter painted. An artist made.

Grace in green.

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