Among gallery owners and collectors, Skad is known as The Atrocity Artist for his transgressive paintings depicting zombified people fused with transistors, vacuum tubes, and circuit boards. But his true masterpiece, his ultimate atrocity, has been...
The harsh rattle of the bell grows abstract with repetition, the echoes morphing and distorting into the cry of metal vultures overhead, the wind banging bleached bones together in an endless desert, beetles clicking and clacking as they writhe over one another, their alien mouths keening in grief.
It's three a.m. and the phone has rung more than forty times.
Skad has wrapped his pillow about his head, his fists pushing it against his temples. A headache has bloomed from his jaw's furious clenching. Visions of tearing the world in two seep up from his subconscious. Stopping the ring isn't enough, all-out planetary devastation is required.
He flings the pillow aside and is in motion before the full awareness of the action has registered. The house shakes as he storms down the stairs. He has no thought or plan other than stopping the accursed ringing now.
"I'm going to kill you, you son-of-a-bitch," he says, lifting the receiver.
In a calm, even voice, he says back to himself, "There are too many men who are nothing but walking corpses. They should have the good sense to lay down and die. Only then will their debts be paid." The line disconnects and he's left with the hum of empty air carried over copper wires.
Skad goes back to bed but after a few minutes leaps up again and reaches for his robe. He dons it as though ripping the skin from a dead rabbit: with a single, swift jerk. The rough terry towel scours his arms.
Air. He needs air.
And he needs to move. He can't keep still. The anger seethes from within, fighting to find a release, firing spasmodic charges through his joints.
The night is clammy but chilled. A sweat breaks on his skin and he shivers. The lake stinks like a rotting lilypad and the odor seeps across the lawn like ground fog.
To clear the rank smell from his nose, he lights a cigarette. The water mirrors both the moon and the wispy clouds it's dressed in. The ripples around it shimmer with a spectral glow.
Magic exists in this place. He knew this long ago. When everything was dark and quiet, Lake Sauvage stopped being a shithole. He escaped to this secret realm when he no longer could to take the animal den where he lived. When darkness brought no sleep, the smell of the evening meal still clung to the air, and his father's snoring drowned out the sound of whimpering. It was here, by the water, where the world declared that beauty and peace still existed.
His first childish attempt at drawing were studies of this view. The lake at night done in a thousand crude variations. Most of these he burned before they could be discovered by anyone. Had his father ever learned of them, the big man would have done his best to kick the fag out of him. His mother and Ed would probably have complimented him on them, which would have been ten times worse.
They were personal. Perhaps the most personal things he ever put out into the universe. It would have been easier to be stripped naked and scrutinized by strangers than to have people he knew see those pictures.
Only Angelina had ever been given the chance. By that time, Skad was reasonably sure they weren't shit, and he had the strangest urge to gift her this knowledge of him.
A heavy cloud blocks the moon and the lake turns dark reminding him of its dangerous depth.
He's down to the filter of his smoke. It quivers in his lips.
An ungodly light comes on behind him.
Over his shoulder, the flying saucer is lit up for take-off. The band of windows issues dim amber light, bright in the surrounding darkness. From where he stands, not much can be seen: copper lamps hanging from a white ceiling broken up with black beams. The joists bend at angles, insect-like, as they follow the curve of the dome. A figure steps up to the glass. The lights behind him turn the shape into a crisp shadow of a man. He must see Skad or the orange glow of his cigarette before he snuffs it out, because he waves. His right arm rises beside him, hand out as though waiting to catch a ball.
Its the same puerile wave his father gave to boaters speeding past the shore.
Skad raises his own hand to the window, his middle finger erect and heavenward, then goes back inside.
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