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 Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 5:43 am Post subject: May 2007 Contest Results |
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In May 2007, users were asked to respond to Claude Monet’s impressionist painting, “Impression, Sunrise” for the monthly contest. Indeed, the painting is the inspiration for the Impressionist art movement in the late 1800s.
Entries did not need to follow any specified form. Members were instead asked to simply respond to the artwork.
Judging were write me, Poor Imp, Jennafina and Claudette. It was a tough decision all around as all of the entries were excellent. However, we are proud to now announce the winners.
First prize goes to Trident for the flash fiction piece, “The Harbor.” Second prize goes to Sam for the short story, “[DORIAN’S Gray].” Third prize goes to Kylan for the flash fiction piece, “Burnt Sky.”
Their entries follow (Sam's is last due to the length):
Trident's "The Harbor":
See the warship so gallant in the fog. She's a good ship, they say; a strong ship. She fights a good battle. And when she comes to anchor here in Le Havre, the men always find a way to come to shore, even against their officers' wishes. I know this tender bit because I help ferry them.
What is her name? one may ask. Well, she has many names, and any of them will do. She comes several times a day, often more than one of her at a glance. In some cases, she is not even a warship, but a trader from a far-off land. She has no name, or an infinite number of names; we really do not care greatly. We call her 'her' and that is what truly matters. All we wish for is the pockets of her men to loosen and our women will do the same. Le Havre, the harbor; the haven; we call it our home.
And what does a simple ferryman know of warships and brothels? Everything there is to know. I've seen all types and they've all seen me, a pathetic man so lowly, yet so valuable. For a few francs, I take them to shore and for a few francs more, I take them back. When they need passage, je rame. I row. From the very moment that hazy orange glow rises above the horizon, and the purple sky and serene waters thrill and delight--and that superb and entrancing luminance!-- je rame, je rame, je rame.
Tortuous, back-bending labor it is. Gruesome and awful. Each morning I wake sore and worthless; I shave so to have at least some small dignity. By the end of the night, my calluses are bloody and my blisters are drained. The sting of muscles; the sting of salty sweat in open cuts and sores; the sting of hopeless struggle and wounded pride, or perhaps of no pride at all.
Mostly the seamen stay silent, wait out their ferry ride without a word. I'm content with those types as I can reflect on my own thoughts and not feel the uneasy need to entertain theirs. Some of the men of the lower ranks will jabber on about the whorehouses incessantly, as talkative as the little élèves were before they became whores. And some of the educated men will talk, too. Officers are well known to frequent our houses of pleasure and what better way to take them there unknown than my little boat and my little oars? When they do talk, though, there are few times they speak of whores. More often I hear of the economic state of France, of foreign politics, of French poets and artists; Baudelaire this, Monet that. One captain, if I recall his rank correctly, had even gone so far as to call me 'Charon'.
"And what might that mean?" I had asked.
"Isn't it obvious?"
When he saw my stolid expression, he said, "No, I would suppose not. Charon: boatman of the Underworld. Operated a ferry for a small fee. Took the dead across the river Styx. You've never heard of him? You really must catch up on your classical studies."
A fool, he was, thinking that a man of my position had the time or money to study anything other than the occasional flesh of a whore and, of course, my small boat. But I do think he may have been proper in one thing: when I take the men back to their ships, I just might never see them again. Warships tend to have the ugly business of getting into wars. And that meant dead men. If I truly did shuttle dead men, I didn't know it. None of them ever looked dead to me.
See the figure that looks upon me from shore. Quelle impression doit-il avoir de moi!
I do not think he believes me so terrible. Does he not understand the demands that Le Havre has had on us all? If not, he is the biggest fool of them all, for we are only partly what we seem. Our lives are blurred, dreamlike, uncertain. We are vague businessmen and women searching not glory or riches, but a life of our own. Miserable it may be, but it is our own. We are grotesque figures on a canvas, but it is our canvas and Le Havre is our home.
Kylan's "Burnt Sky":
The sky was burning.
Smog from the pent up pollution of the factories and nuclear reactor plants spread a blanket of haze across the morning sky, painting the clouds lead, smudging the sunrise. On any other day, in any other time, the sun rising from the east would have dyed the sky in hues of purple and pink and yellow and hints of blue. In any other decade, the heavens would have been breathtaking in the early morning. But not any more. The sun seemed to bleed an angry red. It was now a blood shot eye peering down at the smoldering ruins of London, reflecting violently against the brackish, opaque waters of the Thames. It illuminated the smoke curling from the city now in shambles, seemingly rekindling the fires which had roared furiously a week ago.
The sky was burning.
Rush surveyed the scene from his broken motorboat solemnly, staring at the hollow, black ash wharfside ruins with a blank expression. He half wondered if he was the only survivor now. He half wondered if the bomb had destroyed everyone. He wondered why he wasn't bobbing in the Thames with the rest of the bodies, or lying on the street, burned so that he could only be identified by his dental records. Why had he been the lucky one? What had he done any differently when the bomb screamed towards the heart of London.
Cringing, Rush shoved a body floating in the dirty water out of the path of his boat with a broken pole. The corpses flesh was gray and shriveled – like putty – it's clothing singed off, it's eyes staring skyward blankly. Rush turned away. He felt like vomiting. The bodies leg bumped against the boat hull as it floated passed.
The sky was burning.
He wondered how long he had been floating up the Thames like this, and how much longer he would have to keep sailing with the bodies before he would meet others. There had to be others. He knew there were others. Rush's ears strained for the sounds of groans, but the watery graveyard revealed nothing. How much longer, he wondered. He hadn't eaten for days. The morning he had woken up in the boat shed had been three days after the bombing and any food in the vicinity had been either rotting or overtaken by rats and maggots. Rush was thirsty too, but the water available was tainted by death and rotten remains. Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink. His throat was dry and hoarse; his tongue swollen and warm - like a nightcrawler who had decided to make a home out of his mouth.
Rush managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth and smack his lips a few times. He needed to talk to someone. Anyone. He tried to swear out loud but nothing escaped his throat. His arms were exhausted. Poling up the Thames was a tiring affair. He needed a rest. He needed to find the others.
Sighing inwardly, Rush jammed his broken pole into the silt bed once more and shoved forward. The motor boat heaved a few feet further upriver and passed through a bloody reflection of the sun. Rush stared up at the sky, burning redly, wreathed in black and gray. This is what Hell is like, he thought to himself. And he was floating on a river of fire and brimstone...
Silently, imperially, the sun stared down on the wreckage of Rush's boat and London, a crater which had once been home to millions. It's ruddy glow pierced through the smog and the smoke and the grit. Rekindling fires. It's light seemed to bleed into the river - dying it like Moses dyed the Pharaoh's water - now the canal of the dead. And the river carried it's cargo of corpses gratefully. It carried them slowly, back to whatever ocean delta it emptied into. On any other day, in any other time, the sun rising from the east would have dyed the sky in hues of purple and pink and yellow and hints of blue. But not today.
Today, the sky was burning...
Sam's "Dorian's Gray":
Somewhere, deep in Dorian's mind, he was running through a forest.
He wasn't running for any reason in particular--it just seemed the
natural thing to do. Birds sang from the tree tops, and gaps somewhere
near the canopy let cheery beams of sunlight spill onto the damp
forest floor. His sneakers somehow carried him over outstretched tree
roots and over thick patches of mud, and the only thing he felt
against his legs was the tickling of bright pink daisies.
This was exactly when the Thing emerged from the trees--a fearsome
black object that leapt onto Dorian's back and slithered its way onto
his face, tentacles wrapping round his head. It began to shriek as he
desperately tried to tear it away from his face, but all of his energy
had been drained by the frolic through the woods. He was completely
incapacitated.
His hands flapped at it weakly whilst the Thing began to wrap itself
around his head, soft skin falling into his nose and mouth. Dorian
struggled for air, and felt what was to be his last breath escape into
its fur…
He shot up in bed, sweat pouring down his face and a thin lining of
cat hair covering the inside of his mouth. A book that had been
resting, opened, on his chest landed on the floor.
Both the cat (Freud) and the book (a dog-eared, school copy of David
Copperfield) seemed to be mocking him as he attempted to scrape the
fur off of his tongue with the corner of his blanket. Dorian rolled
onto his side, suddenly very aware of the rhythmic, painful pulsing in
his head. He desperately wanted to go back to sleep.
This was not to be so.
"Breakfast!"
Standing there in the doorway was his little brother, Clive- bedecked
in a chaotic ensemble of plaid and paisley. He wore glasses as thick
as his thumb, the mark of a true Rosten.
All in the family--excepting Dorian--wore them. All in the
family--excepting Dorian—were color blind and saw clearly just
slightly over two inches in front of their faces, two facts that were
very puzzling to Dorian when he considered that the two elder Rostens
were art collectors. They made good money, and the house was nearly
filled to bursting with work they had collected, from original
Picassos to copies of Da Vinci and tributes to Van Gogh. Everything
was hung on the wall and protected with a heavy sheet of fiberglass,
and in such quantity that nspectors who came to the house warned that
the walls might someday collapse in on themselves if the proper
supports were not built. Mr. and Mrs. Rosten thought his warning
frightening, but kept forgetting to call someone to come and fix the
problem.
Dorian groaned. "Tell Mom and Dad I'm sick," he said. "I'm going to
stay home from school."
Clive smirked and repeated this, yelling down the staircase at his
usual Broadway-singer volume. A reply echoed back. "No, he's not!
He'll eat breakfast like a civilized human being!"
Sighing in such a fashion that Freud began to moan in harmony, Dorian
pulled the sheets off of his legs and stepped onto the floor, hearing
the spine of David Copperfield snap in half beneath his feet as he did
so.
He kicked the mangled book to one side and decided to add that to his
growing list of reasons why he shouldn't have to go to class.
The hardwood floors were shiny and slick, owing to someone who had
zealously polished them the day before and who had neglected to wipe
up the remains. The lemon scum stuck to his feet, and in order to
avoid tripping he had to use the railings to lift himself down the
stairs. All the while he felt dizzy, his head still pounding.
Everyone was already seated. Their forks clinked and knives hacked
into pancakes and bacon in a strange chorus, the beat occasionally
interrupted by someone who had stopped to take a sip of orange juice.
Dorian plopped into his seat and simply dragged swirls through his
syrup with the end of his spoon.
"Who died?" asked Sharon, his older sister, ever blunt. Her own
glasses were framed with hot pink, which clashed nicely with her
candy-corn orange sweater.
"I...I'm not feeling well. I think I have a fever."
Mrs. Rosten's hand, whose nails were painted sloppily in the same
color as the sweater, slapped against his forehead. "Doesn't feel like
much, honey."
Any other parent would have instantly fallen for a swoon and the
moaning of the words, "But Mother! The pain!" His parents, Dorian
decided, were as far from other parents as it was possible to be. The
tricks of the trade couldn't be learned on the playground--he had to
develop the techniques all by himself.
But today, he would do anything to avoid the fight and the unavoidable
use of a thermometer to prove his condition was really as bad as he
thought he felt. Likely, the search for such an object would take
several hours and they would eventually find an old glass thermometer
with a bit of the top chipped off, mercury threatening to spill out if
it was held at any other angle. As the incident with the inspector and
the suggestion of wall supports had shown, the Rostens were very
health-savvy, but never felt the impulse to replace anything.
If it was good once, it would be good twenty years later.
___
Third period meant P.E.
Dorian approached the racket with such a posture that he could have
been mistaken for an alligator wrangler, had he been sporting the
necessary Australian accent and impossibly tight khaki shorts.
His constant internal struggle with the badminton racket was puzzling
to him- he had only done kindness towards it, and it had returned the
favor with missed shots and injured wrists. It was blatantly unjust.
He was interrupted in his efforts to effectively corner it when his
shoulder was firmly shaken. "Want to be my partner?"
Dorian turned to face where the voice had come from--James.
James had never actually spoken to him before, so he assumed it was
out of pity. James was athletic and coordinated and had taken the
state title in wrestling for two years in a row--certainly a boy who
was not fazed by a simple game of badminton. "Uhm…sure."
He allowed himself to be led across the gym to a net. Through the
squares of yarn a pair of girls- their opponents- could be seen. They
were sitting cross-legged on the floor, talking about something or
other until James began to pace across the court, back and forth.
One of them gave him a black look. "Do we have to play?"
James nodded and shrugged and grinned his usual good-natured grin, an
act that got them to stand up. The girl who had spoken earlier was the
one to serve first, and after missing several times, she managed to
get it to limply drop over the net. Dorian hid himself in the far
corner of the court and let James work his magic- running to and fro
and whacking it back with great confidence.
On James' first shot, it sailed like a bullet across the court and
landed in the girls' blind spot, directly behind them.
Dorian smiled weakly at him, his partner returning the gesture with
much more exuberance.
It was the silent girl's turn to serve. She did so carefully and
precisely, but ended up swinging the racket through air, leaving the
birdie to land at her feet. She tried again.
The following chain of events happened in perhaps three seconds, but
seemed to slow to an eternity in Dorian's mind. There was a clearly
audible whoosh as the birdie was hit, and it seemed to arc in a way so
that it would head straight for James' racket. Just as it hit the
highest point, it curved sharply left.
This was where Dorian was standing, frozen with fear. He knew he was
supposed to do something with his racket- hit the birdie, presumably-
but his arms remained stiff and useless at his sides. He raised his
arm to swing at long last, but then felt a sharp pain on his eye,
followed by momentary darkness.
The racket clattered to the ground and both hands were quickly clasped
over his eyes, which felt oddly- like it was pulsating.
"Oh, my God! We're so sorry!"
Ambassador Girl, the type who was overly nurturing, rushed under the
net and put her arm around him. "Are you all right? Please, please,
please be okay."
"I'm all right," murmured Dorian.
She stood back a moment and looked him over. "No, you're not all
right. You need to go to the nurse."
"Okay."
He began to walk in which direction he believed the door was, but his
shoulder was quickly seized and he was pushed into a forceful march.
His leader was Ambassador Girl, who had once more changed her mind
about his condition. "You'll never make it up there alone," she said,
harried. "You'll run into walls and people and lockers…and stuff."
He wondered what made her so qualified to say such a thing, but kept
it to himself and instead tried to focus on the pain in his eye. A
good description of the horrible pain and suffering he was feeling
would ensure a one-way-trip home.
It wasn't for the reasons he was originally expecting, but it would have to do.
___
The nurses' office, as usual, harbored its unique medley of odors-
that of antiseptic and the plastic sheets that covered the cots in the
corner.
Nurse Beth was on duty today. She was a burly woman of sixty with a
very low voice and an affinity for plaid and holiday sweaters,
depending on the occasion. These items were usually covered by an
apron that was so old and stained that she looked to be a butcher, a
sight that wasn't quite comforting to the younger, more suggestible
students who came in. All that was missing was a cleaver.
"What happened to you, kid?" she barked, still seated in her favorite
swivel chair.
As Dorian's vision came back into focus, the first thing he could make
out were Nurse Beth's gargantuan legs bursting out of tattered nylons.
He quickly covered his eye once more.
"Dorian injured his eye in badminton," Ambassador Girl said, making it
sound as though he had wounded himself in battle, rather than
something embarrassing like being pelted with a birdie.
Nurse Beth heaved a sigh as she got to her feet and wrenched Dorian's
hands from his eyes. Ambassador Girl's arm was also pushed off his
shoulder with a disapproving grunt. "Eh, he'll have a shiner
tomorrow," she concluded.
Obviously miffed at being pushed away so rudely, the girl went into
nurturing overdrive. "He wants an ice pack."
Nurse Beth snorted. "He does?"
"Yes. And it's school policy that you must take his temperature and
not deny him ibuprofen."
The nurse seemed not to be listening as the girl continued her tirade.
Instead, she was prodding the area around his eye- checking for
fractures. That, in any case, would have been impressive…albeit much
more embarrassing.
"…and if you don't follow those guidelines, as denoted in your School
Health Handbook, you could be sued. Or fired. Or-"
"Read much, kiddo?" asked Nurse Beth.
"Hmmph," huffed the girl. "Yes, I do, as a matter of fact."
"It's bad for you. Makes your eyes go blind- don't want those pretty
things worn out, do you?"
Ambassador Girl said nothing.
Soon after, however, the cool tip of a thermometer was shoved under
his tongue and when it beeped, there was a moment of complete silence.
Dorian got the feeling he was being looked at strangely. "Your
temperature's 102, kiddo. Mother Goose was right to worry about you."
___
It was around midnight when Dorian emerged from his pile of blankets
and cold compresses and carefully went downstairs in search of food.
The kitchen was lit eerily in the moonlight- small swaths of light
shone onto the appliances and cast tall shadows of the chairs in the
center of the room. The linoleum flooring, a muted olive of a
seventies vintage in the daytime, became a solemn, shadowy gray.
He opened the refrigerator door, squinting from the sudden light. A
vast array of bottles and bags of vegetables lay before him- as well
as a bowl of three-day-old soup, which he promptly grabbed and shoved
into the microwave. The machine whirred and hummed for several minutes
whilst Dorian hopped onto the counter, heels gently tapping against
the drawers beneath.
A shrill beeping alerted him to take the food out of the microwave,
and he sipped it greedily from the edge of the bowl, far too tired to
fish out a spoon from the silverware drawer.
In mid-slurp, a hint of light at the edge of the partly closed door to
his father's studio caught his eye.
His father was a Morning Person- the type who got up at five o'clock
to do yoga and who believed that having pancakes for dinner was not a
perverse notion. Certainly not a person who would be up at midnight,
working.
Dorian set the bowl of soup down on the counter and padded over to the
studio door. He held it ajar with his foot, and looked on.
His father's reconstruction tools- glinting and silver, like surgeon's
scalpels- lay on a soft cloth at his right hand. On his left, several
steaming cups of coffee lay, and in the center, the most intriguing
painting Dorian had ever laid his eyes on.
The paint strokes were loose and disjointed, its irreverence merely
hinting at the portrait of a harbor it was supposed to represent. All
of the colors were muted and drab, except for a bright orange dot
amidst the gray sky- the sun.
The sun was bright and overpowering, casting a zigzagged reflection
upon the murky water.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" remarked his father, holding a brush with what
seemed to be only four bristles.
Dorian jumped. "W-what? Oh, yeah…yes, it's beautiful."
"Impressions of Sunrise, Claude Monet." He paused to take a sip of
coffee. "The beginning of the Impressionist movement, when all of the
avant garde painters in France decided that they were done with
Realism- with gory portraits of the Passion of Christ and historically
accurate portrayals of the great battles of French history." With a
shrug, he concluded, "Instead, they were going to paint like slobs.
Paint children and everyday life like slobs, nonetheless."
"So, it's a very important painting?" (Dorian was still trying to take
in its every detail, and in his focus didn't really mind if he sounded
stupid or not.)
"Of course! Didn't seem so at the time- Monet himself had no idea what
to title it, and a noted art critic remarked that wallpaper patterns
were more artful than this. No one knew how much it'd be worth so
much." The swivel chair spun so that the grin on his father's face was
clearly visible, and Dorian noted he had mixed a blue Hawaiian shirt
with orange shorts the color of yams.
"How much?"
"Three, four million."
Dorian's jaw dropped. They had had several paintings worth a lot of
money before, but never this much…"Why don't you sell it, then?"
The swivel chair completed its rotation, and the fragile brush was
held up against the edge of the loosely sketched boat near the bottom
edge of the frame. "It's my pet project, I guess. Been working on it
since the eighties, trying to make it perfect…" he drifted off. "It's
interesting."
"Hmm?"
"Oh, a trick of the eyes…see that sun?"
Was it possible not to? Dorian wondered. "When you take all of the
color from it- by that, I mean grey scaling- the sun and its shadow
completely disappear."
___
The next afternoon, Dorian was completely alone.
He sat in the vacated family, room, flipping through daytime
television- a cartoon, a talk show, a soap opera.
A banner at the bottom of the Oprah Show read, "Russian Refugee Tells
Tales of Courage and Survival", the sort of thing that popped up in
the news quite frequently. It was something the broadcasters went to
when it was a particularly dry time for new material.
The United States had been locked in a war with Russia for decades.
Perhaps even centuries- Dorian's history was quite shaky.
"Well, I was walking across my street at home, and all of a sudden
they are shooting. Dangerous, I think, and so I sneak to America…"
Something twinged in Dorian's eye- the sore, purple one that had
swollen impressively. He covered it with his hand, and when it had
stopped, he pulled it away. Momentarily, Oprah's stately pink outfit
had faded to a dull, grayish red.
____
Dorian felt as he had recovered more or less and returned to school,
but as usual, he felt completely drained on the walk home. His feet
merely set themselves in front of each other, the muscles even too
tired to burn.
The sky was dull and yellow, and the surrounding scenery looked to be
something out of a sixties film- muted. He took his breaths
cautiously, fully expecting to choke on dust, but oddly it was as
clear as it normally was.
He blinked, fully expecting to feel grit. There was none.
At four o'clock in the afternoon, his shadow would normally be very
long and dark, but today, it had completely disappeared in the haze.
Feeling a bit dizzy, he stumbled up the front porch, dragging all of
his belongings into the kitchen, where they landed with a thump. "Hey,
Mom?"
She was washing dishes in the sink, a few spots of melon-scented soap
clinging to the thick lenses of her glasses. "Yes, Dorian?"
His backpack sagged against his leg, and he could feel where the bulk
of his social studies textbook was poking a hole in the fabric.
"What's going on outside?"
"There's nothing going on outside, honey," she said, her head bent low
over a particularly sticky piece of grime.
"But it looks like…a dust storm, or something."
Her head popped up. "A dust storm?"
Dorian nodded solemnly.
She was grinning, fully ecstatic. "We'll go to Dr. Larsen right away, then."
___
Dr. Larsen was the Rosten family's optometrist. He had been the only
one in the entire state who had been able to figure out their unique
vision problems- a terrible mixture of astigmatism and colorblindness.
A soft bell rang above their heads as Dorian and his mother entered
the office, alerting the receptionist, who was playing Sudoku on the
counter. There was a fountain jutting out of the wall- supposedly
soothing- with cherubs dancing in the middle. Someone had put glasses
on them.
"Rostens!" she exclaimed, pulling out the sacred Appointment Book.
"You might have to wait a few minutes, Angeline- Dr. Larsen has to set
up after his current appointment is finished."
"It's for Dorian," Angeline said, smiling fondly and rubbing his head.
"Not me."
The receptionist, who Dorian referred fondly to as 'Tina', looked
surprised. "For Dorian?"
"Mhmm."
Tina gave him an apologetic glance. He knew her quite well- he spent
at least an hour of every week in here with her, listening to her tell
him all about her boyfriends. When he felt like talking, he would
grudgingly help her flip through catalogues to look for gifts for said
boyfriends, until Tina gave up and said she would bake a cake instead.
That was probably why none of them had stayed very long- they had
gotten sick of eating cake.
Angeline selected a magazine from the coffee table at a far corner of
the room and sat down to read it, holding it a few inches from her
face and licking her index finger every once in awhile to turn the
page. Dorian started out watching Tina solve a Sudoku, but she got
sick of doing that and insisted that he show her how to do it.
The numbers and boxes blurred before his eyes as he did so.
At long last, Dr. Larsen appeared, and beckoned Dorian back into the
examination room.
"So, the last Rosten to evade my chair…please, have a seat!"
The seat implied was a black chair up on a stand, surrounded by
several evil-looking machines and a rack of medical instruments.
Dorian gulped as he did so, and tried to focus on a bright "So You
Think You've Got a Cataract" poster on the side wall.
Dr. Larsen set up his things and eventually began to read letters
upside down, in a test specially designed for the Rostens. They had
been through the office so many times that each of them, even little
Isabella, aged five, had memorized the sequence. "M…X…T…Y…" he read,
looking at the top line. The letters were two inches high at that
point, and directly below it, the letters were only slightly smaller.
He couldn't read those.
Dr. Larsen smiled, and handed him a circle filled with green dots.
"Find the R," he directed.
Dorian stared at it for a very long time, but couldn't for the life of
him find the R. He sighed. "It's huge, right in the center," Dr.
Larsen said, almost taunting.
"I…can't find the R. I'm sorry."
The smile grew bigger. "My dear boy, you need glasses."
____
Several hours later, Dorian shifted his heavy glasses on his nose and
walked into the dining room. Today was the dinner his parents had been
talking about for weeks- the dinner where potential art customers came
to look at a few pieces from the collection.
Dorian's tie cut into his neck as he sat down at the table.
He resisted the urge to fidget with it right at that moment, and
instead focused on the group of seven paintings to be sold- all of
which he didn't recognize, except for one. His father's precious
"Impressions of Sunrise". They were propped up on easels, each with a
little spotlight shining upon them and the fluttering price tag…
Dorian's jaw dropped. He looked to his father for an explanation, but
he was preoccupied- he was showing each of the three guests to their
chairs and shouting something into the kitchen.
The dining room table was set elegantly, with black cloth napkins and
gleaming silverware artfully placed upon the table. A Mrs. Smith of
Chicago sat at the far end of the table, with Mr. Hawthorne of London
to her left. At the other end of the table sat the Russian.
Mr. Prokofy was a very quiet man, despite his English fluency. He sat
with his head bowed, perhaps in prayer, whilst the others at the
table- including Dorian- looked him over with great curiosity, taking
in his mustache and tweed coat with the pockets bulging.
Dinner was eventually served- veal with a side of sauce that it had
taken Angeline a day and a half to make.
When the clinking of silverware had subsided, Dorian's father (looking
a bit nervous) stood up and went to each painting briefly giving the
name and artist. Mr. Prokofy stiffened when he got to "Impressions of
Sunrise".
"This piece is meant to represent a morning scene at Le Havre- it was
done in the 19th century by Claude Monet."
At the end of the presentation, all the guests clapped politely-
except for Mr. Prokofy, whose hands shook in the air but didn't come
into contact with each other. His eyes were wide and bloodshot.
"Mr. Prokofy, are you all right?" Dorian's father asked, looking more
shaken than he had at the beginning of his introductions.
Mr. Prokofy cleared his throat, his gaze still fixed upon the picture.
"That painting was stolen."
Everyone at the table gave a polite, well-bred gasp- but really,
inside, all they felt was glee. They had come for a night of boredom
and spending large sums of money, but had gotten a show as well.
"It was…what?"
"Stolen. From the Hermitage, where I worked as a guard for forty years."
Forks were neatly placed at the tops of plates, as the guests prepared
to watch the drama unfold. "The painting, you see, was bought by our
government from the French, much to the American collectors' chagrin.
It is very valuable, no?"
Dorian's father nodded his head gravely.
"And so, they say, "Mr. Prokofy, will you make a device to keep it
safe?"- And I do. I develop a virus; contained in a glaze I created
specifically for its restoration…" he trailed off. "I have a sense of
humor, you see."
He waved his hand in Dorian's direction, beckoning him to come closer.
"This boy has eye problems, yes? From looking at the sun- that is what
all the parents say, but the children never listen."
It took them all a minute to figure out what he was talking about- and
indeed, the glowing sun on the painting shone innocently at them from
its bed of gray. Dorian, heeding the collector's gesture, warily got
up from his seat and stood awkwardly at the man's side, staring down
into his glass of chardonnay.
"This virus acts a bit like the painting does- it takes away light and
shadow and leaves in its place defunct cone cells and, as for the
optical nerve- that is what it feeds on." Dorian stared at him, vision
unsteady in the new glasses. "It isn't incurable, you see…"
Mr. Prokofy reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a handgun- a
small pistol no bigger than a fist- and pressed it to Dorian's temple.
In response, Dorian's stomach dropped horribly and he continued to
stand there, awkwardly- now with a strangely cold feeling on his skin.
Mr. Rosten flew out of his chair, glasses slipping off his nose and
falling to the ground- where they shattered- and seized the
collector's hands, wrenching the gun from his grip. "Dirty Russian!"
he spat, chest heaving. " I should have known better, should have
known you'd try to pull some sort of stunt- and on my son, no less!
What has he-"
Mr. Prokofy flexed his hand. "The virus is put at bay by adrenaline.
You wouldn't have been able to do this-" he pointed to the deep
scratch mark on the back of his hand. "-without the aid of your
glasses before, would you? It's only temporary, though, I'm afraid.
You'll need special treatment if you want to be…normal, once again."
Dorian felt faint and quietly slipped back into his seat, whilst his
father stood there, hands poised to strangle, dismember, or otherwise
cause harm to the man. "Cure us, then."
The collector looked almost amused. "You stole my painting. I'm very
sorry, Mr. Rosten, but I would appreciate an apology first."
"An apology? After what you did? Hah!"
"I didn't fire."
"Oh, you would have- and my son's probably developed some sort of
psychological disorder, a fear of dinner parties and lying Russian
men…"
"It'd be much less expensive for me to take him home with me and fix
his eyes. I'll do it for free."
A child, in Russia? All present paled at the idea.
"Certainly not."
Mr. Prokofy calmly folded his napkin and stood up. "I see that I'm not
welcome, so I will leave- thank you, Rostens, for your hospitality."
His footsteps were measured and careful as he crossed the room, as
though this was the final act and he, the grand finale. He paused at
the door. "Eventually, the cone cells will die off and you won't be
able to see color, nor shadow, no matter your prescription. As for
Dorian…" Dorian lifted his head up slowly at the mention of his name.
"Dorian Gray. Hah. Who would want to have a name like that?"
They exchanged weak smiles, both fully aware that the elder Rostens
and the collectors were shooting harsh glances in their direction.
Dorian sighed, and waited for the front door to click open.
Who, indeed, would want to be stuck with a name like that? |
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