MicroHorror

One was for the sky and he used a soft, powder blue the color of her eyes. In slow, lazy strokes he crisscrossed the top of the page and covered all the ones in an azure haze. It was soothing after the morning’s work. The grass below was green and the number two would be as dark and deep a shade as the ribbons in her hair. Her hair, alive with the scent of flowers and yellow like spun gold braided to her scalp. Three, the sun was stark white in the far left corner of the sky. He dipped his brush in the paints then globbed a golden orb into the white circle on the page. Carefully he swirled it, inking yellow into a two-dimensional vortex on the page. The birds were next and the number four on his key suggested they be painted tan and gray. He ignored the suggestion and looked to his muse, finding inspiration in the pale flesh behind her faded freckles bridging her nose and cheeks.

Five was for the lake, a mirror in the center of the dark green grass to reflect all the world that he had created. He tapped the brush to his chin, smearing a dark rainbow under his lip. What color, what shade reflected his world, what made the artist’s heart bleed onto the page? The question gnawed at him every time. The heavens had stretched out from her eyes, her hair making the sun burn. Her skin like snow had given the birds life and now, from the pool spreading ever farther from under her lips and chin he had it. He dipped his brush into the slowly congealing crimson beside his colors and stroked it once, lightly into the chasm in the center of the world, admiring for a moment before filling in the lake.

Carefully he hung it from the clothesline in his blue studio alongside a dozen identical copies of the same scene. Each one had dripped red into his carpet, forever forming a lake in the thick green shag.

“Perfect,” he whispered to the head on the table, her eyes staring vacantly up at the gallery. “Should we do another?”