Painting in the Dark
By Darthanu
She clutches a blood-red apple off to the side in one hand, and the other absently tucks her long hair behind her ear. Her dress is made of the forest—leaves and bark and blades of grass combined to make one garment. She gazes grimly to her left, red lips slightly puckered in a vague expression. The mottled sunlight glances off the strands of her hair…
But something’s missing.
In the dim light of the candle, Loan peers critically at the painting, the green of the woman’s dress and the red of the apple and lips staining his ever-colorful fingers. What exactly is wrong?
His life-size Apple Princess has taken days to paint, hours upon end devoted to the shade of her skin tone and capturing the effect of the light on her dress. Days before that, he was toning the background on the canvas to just the right shades of green and red. Not his most time-consuming piece of art, but not his least either. He’s hoping to be finished with her today, but some detail is eluding him; there’s something that can be done to make her look just right and he can’t put his finger on it.
Grumbling under his breath, Loan snatches up the bottle of green paint and pours some onto a pallet. He squirts a large dollop of gray into it and mixes with a new paintbrush until he has a nice, rich, dark emerald color. He holds it under the candle to see if it’s just right, and when he’s satisfied he grabs a fine-tipped brush and dips it delicately into the new color. He then turns back to the Princess and, with a careful eye, paints miniscule details of green into her otherwise ebony hair.
The candle flickers.
After a few minutes, Loan steps back to admire his handiwork. The Princess looks annoyedly off to her left, lips slightly puckered as if to say “You thought that was going to help?”
Loan scowls at her and sets the pallet and brush back on his desk, maybe a little too hard. “I’m trying, ok?” he snaps. He turns away from her and faces the rest of the room.
He insisted on there being a faucet inside, along with a little mini refrigerator. In fact, next to his twin-sized bed there’s a whole little kitchen area where he deals with all of his necessary meals. A door in the kitchen area leads off to his bathroom, which is as small and dismal as possible—how he likes it. And covering the rest of the walls are his paintings.
Field of Flowers leans against the side of the bed, the oranges and pinks of the painted sunset glowing slightly in the light of the candle. The endless wildflowers seem to stretch away into the distance, a never-ending meadow.
Gargoyle in Front of the Moon stands next to it, the brightness of the huge lunar surface broken only by the ominous statue silhouette. The little stars in the night sky are only noticeable when close-up to the painting, and the shadows of the crows on the balcony are almost invisible.
Loan’s only other painting he still owns at the moment is Cat Eyes, which hangs on the wall where the room once had a window. He’s had that window removed, of course. He works much better in semi-darkness, thank you very much. Cat Eyes is his most painstakingly detailed painting as of yet. Like all his other works, it’s over six feet tall and more than four feet wide. Two giant and mysterious black eyes are set into a wall of tan fur, and the reflection of a street lamp and two rows of buildings framed by a tree and the night sky is echoed in each eye. It’s really quite beautiful if you ask Loan.
These are not by a long shot all of his paintings—he’s sold over thirty masterpieces in the last few years, each created in this little room. They don’t pay quite as much as Loan would like, but he’s got Trent to pay for anything he can’t afford. Luckily though, someone has apparently seen a photo of his Cat Eyes and is willing to pay fifteen hundred dollars for it. Not bad.
And then there’s the door. Not the bathroom door, but the door that leads out of this room and into Trent’s, and behind that lies the outside world. Outside where it’s too bright and everyone’s loud and obnoxious, outside where people try to talk to you and criticize your beautiful artwork, outside where he would be expected to interact with humanity. He shakes his head disgustedly.
The candle flickers.
With a sigh, Loan walks over to sit on his bed, pulling off his socks before lying down beneath the comforter. He chucks the socks into the laundry basket next to his dresser—he’ll shove that out the door for Trent tomorrow morning. In the meantime, he stares at the Apple Princess beside his desk, wondering what on Earth is missing from her. He is still staring by the time the candle finally melts away and the room is plunged into real darkness.
***
The next morning, Loan awakes to bright light streaming through the cracks of his door. With a grimace, he blinks sleep from his eyes, gets up blearily, and lights another candle at his desk—one of the gigantic ones he always uses to last all day. He shuffles to the fridge and glances inside. There’s nothing except for a half-full gallon carton of milk and a few apples. Rolling his eyes, he snatches one of the apples and takes a bite out of it, leaving a mental note to remind Trent to buy him some more food as he closes the fridge door.
He leaves the apple on the counter before he enters the bathroom. He brushes his teeth, takes a short shower, and does everything else people normally do in the mornings. When he leaves the bathroom feeling slightly refreshed, he notices a note resting in the light beneath the door. Shaking his head in irritation, he strides over, picks up the paper, and skims the letter.
Loan,
I know you’re dead set on staying in there, but I’m going to ask you again to please leave your room, even for just a day. There’s more to life than just painting. People haven’t seen you in YEARS. Even I haven’t seen you for a few months, and we live together. The only reason I know you haven’t DIED is that I hear your running water. So I want you to come out. I’m not getting you any more food or supplies until I see you step outside that room, and I won’t be doing your laundry either. And if you want to sell that creepy animal eyes painting then you’re going to have to talk to the buyer yourself this time. I mean it. I really miss you, and I need you to come out of there.
--Your little brother
Loan rolls his eyes and crumples up the note, throwing it in the laundry basket before he quickly opens the door and kicks the basket out before closing it again. If Trent is anything, he’s a softie. He won’t be able to keep his word about not assisting Loan in getting what he needs from outside. And Loan is busy with his painting—he doesn’t need to see his brother now.
The candle flickers.
Loan makes his way over to the desk and plops down in his chair, scrutinizing the Princess speculatively. Maybe she needs… nail polish? An extra splash of red will really help with the red-green contrast, Loan reasons. He mixes together a nice crimson and applies it to a rather small brush, and sets to work on the Apple Princess’s hands. Her right hand is positioned in a sassy “I cannot believe this guy’s nerve” way as it seemingly flips her hair behind her ear.
He glares at her. “Just let me paint, maybe it’ll look better.”
But a few minutes after, when he’s applied red paint to her nails, she still doesn’t look right. In a frustrated frenzy, Loan applies detail after detail to his painting, trying to make her more realistic. Unimpressed, the Princess doesn’t even look at him, focusing on something off to Loan’s right instead.
“Don’t be like that. I’m trying, I really am.”
But hours and hours later, Loan still can’t figure out what’s wrong with the Apple Princess. The candle has burned down to almost a stub, notifying Loan of dinner time. He storms over to the kitchen counter and ferociously chomps on the same apple he had for breakfast, finishing it off. It’s all that he’s eaten since he woke up, but that’s alright because—as he notes with grim amusement—an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And thank goodness, because doctors are so annoying. As are people in general.
Loan flings the door open and yanks the laundry basket back inside, then slams the door closed again, noticing with a kind of triumphant satisfaction that his laundry has been washed and folded. There’s no food, though, and he again makes a mental note to notify Trent of his almost empty refrigerator.
Sour because of the day’s lack of progress, he flops onto the bed, scowling at the Princess across the room. What is missing?? What detail could have possibly slipped his mind that is bothering him so?
He vows under his breath that he’ll solve this puzzle even if it takes him an entire year.
The candle flickers.
***
The next morning, he again awakes to the light of the outside trying to break through his door. With a yawn and a stretch, Loan stumbles out of bed and trips to the bathroom. He emerges a bit later, feeling revitalized until, as he’s lighting yet another candle, he sees the Princess next to him, looking to her left and puckering her lips and fixing her hair and clutching her apple. He scowls and stalks over to the kitchen, slamming the fridge door into a cabinet as he opens it. He takes out another apple and is angrily devouring it when something hits him.
He looks at the apple in his hand.
He looks over at the apple in the Princess’s hand.
Can it be? He throws his apple on the table and darts over to the fridge again to get an unbitten one, then races over to the painting.
He looks at his apple, then looks at her apple.
He holds the apple up to the painting to compare.
Yes, it’s definitely different. The Apple Princess’s apple is too dark, and too round, and too dull. The real apple is brighter and shaped more irregularly and catches the light of the candle. Could this be it? Could the apple be what’s been wrong with the painting the whole time?
Loan looks up at the rest of the Apple Princess, and it strikes him just how many things could also be wrong. Are women’s hands actually that big? Is her face too flat? Too circular? Is the light catching in all the places it should be? All questions that he somehow overlooked yesterday.
And, he realizes with sudden panic, all questions that he actually does not know the answers to. When was the last time he saw a girl? A leaf? Sunlight? Could it be that his memories of these things are just as warped as the apple he painted?
He whirls to his other paintings. Are the flowers’ sizes receding at the right rate as they fade into the distance? Is that the correct pattern of craters on the moon? Shouldn’t the reflection in the cat’s eyes be more warped and bent, because the eyes are convex and not flat?
With a cry of despair, Loan sinks to the ground. What has he been missing? In his determination to stay in here, it never occurred to him that his images of nature would turn out to be incorrect. What if every single painting he’s sold was unrealistic in some way? Is that why he’s not selling things at good prices?
“No no no no no no no,” he whispers. “This can’t be happening, this cannot be happening…”
Tears begin to fall from his eyes. What has he been doing? He hasn’t left this room in years. All his paintings are of things he’s visualized through the warped lens of time. He’s made so many mistakes for no good reason.
The candle flame is calm and steady.
Loan looks up at it, and with a sudden surge of initiative, he stands up and grabs the candle, holding it high above his head. He gazes at the four paintings through eyes filled with tears. For a crazy second, he thinks about throwing the flame at the Apple Princess and watching his paintings burn away.
But then the moment is gone.
Loan wipes his eyes and puts the candle back down. He grabs hold of a paintbrush, dips it in some wet paint, and snuffs out the candle with it, plunging the room into complete darkness.
Complete darkness but for the cracks of the door leading to Trent’s room, which beckon to him with their light. He walks toward them, and he thinks about all the ways he’s been mistreating his brother as of late.
And he leaves his room.
She clutches a blood-red apple off to the side in one hand, and the other absently tucks her long hair behind her ear. Her dress is made of the forest—leaves and bark and blades of grass combined to make one garment. She gazes grimly to her left, red lips slightly puckered in a vague expression. The mottled sunlight glances off the strands of her hair…
But something’s missing.
In the dim light of the candle, Loan peers critically at the painting, the green of the woman’s dress and the red of the apple and lips staining his ever-colorful fingers. What exactly is wrong?
His life-size Apple Princess has taken days to paint, hours upon end devoted to the shade of her skin tone and capturing the effect of the light on her dress. Days before that, he was toning the background on the canvas to just the right shades of green and red. Not his most time-consuming piece of art, but not his least either. He’s hoping to be finished with her today, but some detail is eluding him; there’s something that can be done to make her look just right and he can’t put his finger on it.
Grumbling under his breath, Loan snatches up the bottle of green paint and pours some onto a pallet. He squirts a large dollop of gray into it and mixes with a new paintbrush until he has a nice, rich, dark emerald color. He holds it under the candle to see if it’s just right, and when he’s satisfied he grabs a fine-tipped brush and dips it delicately into the new color. He then turns back to the Princess and, with a careful eye, paints miniscule details of green into her otherwise ebony hair.
The candle flickers.
After a few minutes, Loan steps back to admire his handiwork. The Princess looks annoyedly off to her left, lips slightly puckered as if to say “You thought that was going to help?”
Loan scowls at her and sets the pallet and brush back on his desk, maybe a little too hard. “I’m trying, ok?” he snaps. He turns away from her and faces the rest of the room.
He insisted on there being a faucet inside, along with a little mini refrigerator. In fact, next to his twin-sized bed there’s a whole little kitchen area where he deals with all of his necessary meals. A door in the kitchen area leads off to his bathroom, which is as small and dismal as possible—how he likes it. And covering the rest of the walls are his paintings.
Field of Flowers leans against the side of the bed, the oranges and pinks of the painted sunset glowing slightly in the light of the candle. The endless wildflowers seem to stretch away into the distance, a never-ending meadow.
Gargoyle in Front of the Moon stands next to it, the brightness of the huge lunar surface broken only by the ominous statue silhouette. The little stars in the night sky are only noticeable when close-up to the painting, and the shadows of the crows on the balcony are almost invisible.
Loan’s only other painting he still owns at the moment is Cat Eyes, which hangs on the wall where the room once had a window. He’s had that window removed, of course. He works much better in semi-darkness, thank you very much. Cat Eyes is his most painstakingly detailed painting as of yet. Like all his other works, it’s over six feet tall and more than four feet wide. Two giant and mysterious black eyes are set into a wall of tan fur, and the reflection of a street lamp and two rows of buildings framed by a tree and the night sky is echoed in each eye. It’s really quite beautiful if you ask Loan.
These are not by a long shot all of his paintings—he’s sold over thirty masterpieces in the last few years, each created in this little room. They don’t pay quite as much as Loan would like, but he’s got Trent to pay for anything he can’t afford. Luckily though, someone has apparently seen a photo of his Cat Eyes and is willing to pay fifteen hundred dollars for it. Not bad.
And then there’s the door. Not the bathroom door, but the door that leads out of this room and into Trent’s, and behind that lies the outside world. Outside where it’s too bright and everyone’s loud and obnoxious, outside where people try to talk to you and criticize your beautiful artwork, outside where he would be expected to interact with humanity. He shakes his head disgustedly.
The candle flickers.
With a sigh, Loan walks over to sit on his bed, pulling off his socks before lying down beneath the comforter. He chucks the socks into the laundry basket next to his dresser—he’ll shove that out the door for Trent tomorrow morning. In the meantime, he stares at the Apple Princess beside his desk, wondering what on Earth is missing from her. He is still staring by the time the candle finally melts away and the room is plunged into real darkness.
***
The next morning, Loan awakes to bright light streaming through the cracks of his door. With a grimace, he blinks sleep from his eyes, gets up blearily, and lights another candle at his desk—one of the gigantic ones he always uses to last all day. He shuffles to the fridge and glances inside. There’s nothing except for a half-full gallon carton of milk and a few apples. Rolling his eyes, he snatches one of the apples and takes a bite out of it, leaving a mental note to remind Trent to buy him some more food as he closes the fridge door.
He leaves the apple on the counter before he enters the bathroom. He brushes his teeth, takes a short shower, and does everything else people normally do in the mornings. When he leaves the bathroom feeling slightly refreshed, he notices a note resting in the light beneath the door. Shaking his head in irritation, he strides over, picks up the paper, and skims the letter.
Loan,
I know you’re dead set on staying in there, but I’m going to ask you again to please leave your room, even for just a day. There’s more to life than just painting. People haven’t seen you in YEARS. Even I haven’t seen you for a few months, and we live together. The only reason I know you haven’t DIED is that I hear your running water. So I want you to come out. I’m not getting you any more food or supplies until I see you step outside that room, and I won’t be doing your laundry either. And if you want to sell that creepy animal eyes painting then you’re going to have to talk to the buyer yourself this time. I mean it. I really miss you, and I need you to come out of there.
--Your little brother
Loan rolls his eyes and crumples up the note, throwing it in the laundry basket before he quickly opens the door and kicks the basket out before closing it again. If Trent is anything, he’s a softie. He won’t be able to keep his word about not assisting Loan in getting what he needs from outside. And Loan is busy with his painting—he doesn’t need to see his brother now.
The candle flickers.
Loan makes his way over to the desk and plops down in his chair, scrutinizing the Princess speculatively. Maybe she needs… nail polish? An extra splash of red will really help with the red-green contrast, Loan reasons. He mixes together a nice crimson and applies it to a rather small brush, and sets to work on the Apple Princess’s hands. Her right hand is positioned in a sassy “I cannot believe this guy’s nerve” way as it seemingly flips her hair behind her ear.
He glares at her. “Just let me paint, maybe it’ll look better.”
But a few minutes after, when he’s applied red paint to her nails, she still doesn’t look right. In a frustrated frenzy, Loan applies detail after detail to his painting, trying to make her more realistic. Unimpressed, the Princess doesn’t even look at him, focusing on something off to Loan’s right instead.
“Don’t be like that. I’m trying, I really am.”
But hours and hours later, Loan still can’t figure out what’s wrong with the Apple Princess. The candle has burned down to almost a stub, notifying Loan of dinner time. He storms over to the kitchen counter and ferociously chomps on the same apple he had for breakfast, finishing it off. It’s all that he’s eaten since he woke up, but that’s alright because—as he notes with grim amusement—an apple a day keeps the doctor away. And thank goodness, because doctors are so annoying. As are people in general.
Loan flings the door open and yanks the laundry basket back inside, then slams the door closed again, noticing with a kind of triumphant satisfaction that his laundry has been washed and folded. There’s no food, though, and he again makes a mental note to notify Trent of his almost empty refrigerator.
Sour because of the day’s lack of progress, he flops onto the bed, scowling at the Princess across the room. What is missing?? What detail could have possibly slipped his mind that is bothering him so?
He vows under his breath that he’ll solve this puzzle even if it takes him an entire year.
The candle flickers.
***
The next morning, he again awakes to the light of the outside trying to break through his door. With a yawn and a stretch, Loan stumbles out of bed and trips to the bathroom. He emerges a bit later, feeling revitalized until, as he’s lighting yet another candle, he sees the Princess next to him, looking to her left and puckering her lips and fixing her hair and clutching her apple. He scowls and stalks over to the kitchen, slamming the fridge door into a cabinet as he opens it. He takes out another apple and is angrily devouring it when something hits him.
He looks at the apple in his hand.
He looks over at the apple in the Princess’s hand.
Can it be? He throws his apple on the table and darts over to the fridge again to get an unbitten one, then races over to the painting.
He looks at his apple, then looks at her apple.
He holds the apple up to the painting to compare.
Yes, it’s definitely different. The Apple Princess’s apple is too dark, and too round, and too dull. The real apple is brighter and shaped more irregularly and catches the light of the candle. Could this be it? Could the apple be what’s been wrong with the painting the whole time?
Loan looks up at the rest of the Apple Princess, and it strikes him just how many things could also be wrong. Are women’s hands actually that big? Is her face too flat? Too circular? Is the light catching in all the places it should be? All questions that he somehow overlooked yesterday.
And, he realizes with sudden panic, all questions that he actually does not know the answers to. When was the last time he saw a girl? A leaf? Sunlight? Could it be that his memories of these things are just as warped as the apple he painted?
He whirls to his other paintings. Are the flowers’ sizes receding at the right rate as they fade into the distance? Is that the correct pattern of craters on the moon? Shouldn’t the reflection in the cat’s eyes be more warped and bent, because the eyes are convex and not flat?
With a cry of despair, Loan sinks to the ground. What has he been missing? In his determination to stay in here, it never occurred to him that his images of nature would turn out to be incorrect. What if every single painting he’s sold was unrealistic in some way? Is that why he’s not selling things at good prices?
“No no no no no no no,” he whispers. “This can’t be happening, this cannot be happening…”
Tears begin to fall from his eyes. What has he been doing? He hasn’t left this room in years. All his paintings are of things he’s visualized through the warped lens of time. He’s made so many mistakes for no good reason.
The candle flame is calm and steady.
Loan looks up at it, and with a sudden surge of initiative, he stands up and grabs the candle, holding it high above his head. He gazes at the four paintings through eyes filled with tears. For a crazy second, he thinks about throwing the flame at the Apple Princess and watching his paintings burn away.
But then the moment is gone.
Loan wipes his eyes and puts the candle back down. He grabs hold of a paintbrush, dips it in some wet paint, and snuffs out the candle with it, plunging the room into complete darkness.
Complete darkness but for the cracks of the door leading to Trent’s room, which beckon to him with their light. He walks toward them, and he thinks about all the ways he’s been mistreating his brother as of late.
And he leaves his room.