Radio Waves of the Macabre [On Hiatus]

Chapter 21 - Charcoal Memories

David arched over a monumental drawing desk, sketching furiously in an equally large Strathmore sketch pad, its neon yellow cover bent back under its own bulk. Dark smears of charcoal enveloped his hands, and he could feel beads of sweat trickling through his hair. He needed to fix the window unit, but that was yet one more expense he could not spare. Instead, he hunkered down sketching, the ceiling fan providing the only comfort from the sweltering afternoon heat.

Even so, he barely noticed the near triple digit temperature that had settled upon the interior of his meager studio apartment. No, instead his mind wandered far away paths, filtering through fragmented memories and shards of dreams half-forgotten.

David grabbed a discarded bottle of Ibuprofen, doling out four pills and swallowing them all with a swig of lukewarm water. The throbbing in his head had continued unabated all day, relentless in its ruthless jackhammering. He had tried to fight it off, but with no avail. It had proven just as elusive as the memories he had been battling to recover.

No matter how hard he tried, he could bring no great clarity to the previous evening, still clinging to the same meager morsels that he had uncovered that morning at Erika's.

He remembered returning to the bar, to Grady's, and he could recall sitting down for a drink, then the evening went dark until he returned to Erika's, stumbling through the doorway; and while the dreams of the evening had become slightly less obfuscated than the memories, he had still failed a complete recollection of them. He knew now, with absolute certainty, that he had been dreaming of the old man from the bar. His eyes had stared out at him from beneath his flat cap and above that grizzled chin and its thin white beard. They had bored through flesh and into his soul, unflinching and burning with a cataclysmic heat; yet it had not been that fierce stare that had seared into him, leaving an unshakable sense of unease. No, it had been the black.

An inky void had lapped against the old man, like a vertical sea upon which he gently floated, only there was no separation of sea and sky, of ground and ink-hued waters. There was only the man and the darkness, lapping in a gentle rhythm, calling to him, asking David...

Asking what? He could not remember.

The dream visualized as more a state of being than a narrative arc, a constant whose full picture could not be realized in the light of day. Eventually David had turned his mind to other matters, but the second dream had proven more elusive.

Metal and wood. Splintering and yelling. A spray of blood and a rod through a skull. Glazer's undying eyes, his brains and blood flowing and pooling upon the counter. Buying him a drink. The images appeared in no tangible sequence, all linearity gone - merely flashes of laughter and violence, of peace and rage.

David dropped the charcoal block letting it slide down to the pencil-catch at the bottom of the desk. He stood, pacing the cramped apartment. He had maybe four hundred square feet of living space, though it felt like less. His entryway consisted of a narrow hall and kitchen combination that emptied into the common area, dominated by his art desk and easel. A small alcove formed off this main living space roughly where the hall-like kitchen and the common area met, consumed almost entirely by his bed and a small end table. The only privacy to be found in the apartment was in the bathroom, this hidden just off the bedroom alcove, parallel to the kitchen-hall combo. Buckingham Palace, Chez Li was not.

While he had decorated as sparingly as he could, little open space remained. Art supplies crammed into every possible gap, pouring off shelves, from under the couch, and out of his bottom dresser drawer. Additionally, since his current artistic fever had hit that morning, a scattering of a dozen or so sketch pages lay scattered on the open surfaces, covering both his bed and the couch.

He saw it all in passing, the scattered detritus of a fit of mania, and yet, it all blurred - now not due to his fading vision, but more to the all-consuming nature of the obsession taking hold.

He couldn't explain the violence and darkness that permeated the previous evening's dreams; that flashed before his eyes every time he shut them and with every throbbing pulse from his aching head. All he could picture were those nightmare visions, and no matter how much he tried to exorcise them he found himself failing.

Afters hours of sketching and pacing and wandering the fragmented remnants of memory, he had reached no tangible conclusions. He knew that something needed to be done, but what? The thought of seeking a therapist had crossed his mind, yet he had barely been able to afford to see a specialist for his eyes, and that victory had only been realized with a loan from Erika. He couldn't possibly afford the cost of therapy. 

He was getting nowhere.

David stopped pacing and returned to his art desk, ripping the previous sketch from the pad and beginning anew. As he did his phone began to ring. He didn't need to glance down to know that it was Erika calling. Very few others rang him on anything resembling a regular basis, and even those friends that did remain in contact typically texted. No, that was definitely Erika on the phone.

He let it ring.

Sure, he wanted to tell her; he wanted to open up to her and take solace in her comfort, but somehow that thought was even more frightening. Despite his desire to do so, David had no inclination to let Erika know of his recent violent imaginings. He loved her, but he had never understood why she loved him back. The last thing he wanted to do was to give her ample reason to realize her mistake.

Of course ignoring her calls, probably wasn't helping either. This was far from the first time that she had rung.

He'd ignored a couple follow-ups from Glazer as well.

They all just needed to leave him alone.

With a sudden ferocity that took even David by surprise, he ripped the current sketch from the pad, and moved on to yet another sheet, gripping tightly to the diminishing block of charcoal. His hand moved frantically, sketching and smudging black smears across the page, creating streaks of shadow and light with a rapidity that was wholly unlike his usual art. Overall, the page seemed nothing more than grandiose swaths of dark against the stark white of the page, abstract, organic combinations of positive and negative space. Then, just as fast as he had begun the page, David finished. He couldn't say how he knew the work was done, yet deep down the knowledge remained.

At last he stood, the swirling vortex of his thoughts calming, glancing across the scattered pages, each just as abstract as the last. Only a tiny nub of charcoal remained, and once more he let it fall to the pencil-catch as he took in the totality of his work. A pattern had emerged.

Ever so carefully David cleared his bed, smoothing the sheets, then grabbed each sketch, one by one, and laid them out upon the mattress, and then upon the floor below as they spilled over the edges. Still they flowed, and tearing away strips of clean, white artists' tape, David expanded the image up the walls, until in all over two dozen sheets came together - each a singular piece of a larger whole.

He had known from the start what he had been doing, even if he hadn't admitted it; yet denial could not hold as the picture crystallized. Before him, gazing out from the deep, lapping black emerging from the interlocked images was the old man.

As David took in his work, the throbbing finally settled, fading and drifting away until a sense of deep peace overtook him. He knew what he had to do.