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...
"God. Look at you. What a pathetic mess. How'd you think this was going to work? You could never make it to the water after taking all that shit. You should've taken it on the dock. Duh. But don't worry, brother, I'm here to help."
Hands flip Skad over onto his back. Ed's face, lined and lean, looms over him. Twelve-years-old and sixty at the same time. He scrunches his mouth in determination for a second before seizing Skad by the armpits and hauls him across the lawn.
The universe has become untethered. Celestial objects move in erratic and unsteady orbits. Light bends and twists, refracts and splits, as if every molecule is a prism. Every drop of moisture a lens, making distant objects macroscopic and ones nearby minuscule. Questions drop from the sky like caskets, the pine boards splintering on impact, releasing their corpses. The leperous cadavers pile up in his mind fighting one another for predominance, clawing and wrestling to be in front. Skad is bombarded by a melee of carcasses and does not know what to ask first.
"Wha-wha-wha?" Ed mimics. "And pops thought you were the smart one. Shows what a dumbass he was." He's breathing hard and can't talk without panting every few words. "Parlor tricks. If you didn't think the world revolved around you, you might've gotten suspicious. Hell, if you bothered to pay attention to what came out of that big mouth of yours, you might've recognized those calls from old radio interviews. You can find anything online nowadays, You'd know that if you weren't such goddamn Luddite." He gasps and it's almost a sigh. "Going to be a long night. Lots of cleaning up to do. You might not be able to spot hidden cameras in the wall paneling or speakers in trees, but the cops might. Even the bumkins they have around here."
"Why? Money?"
Ed laughs again. This time it's fresh, boyish. "Is that what you think this is about? I got another investor weeks ago. It didn't take long to sell someone on the new design. The industry might think our products are obsolete but the technology is sound. Hell, you were utterly taken in by the older model I used, weren't you? Once we get the new lasers, we'll be back in the game."
He keeps talking, rattling on about his company and philistine gizmos and gadgets. Skad stops listening to the dull patter that blends in so neatly with the other night sounds. At this moment, he can care less about his brother's work with holograms. None of it matters anyhow. He speaks nothing but lies. Ed could never understand. He never understood. His comprehension of the world is myopic, a nearsighted perspective on inconsequential subjects. He has never lived grandly, never known the sweet tang of life, or felt the ever-encompassing embrace of love. These are feelings for a king, not an engineer.
Skad's heels dig trenches in the mud and a soft splash of water comes from above him. Or rather, ahead of him. Ed is grunting with effort. Cool liquid seeps across Skad's back and he floats.
The lake. He's arrived.
He tries to call out. "Evie."
"That poor girl. I tried to tell her what a shit you were. But she only had eyes for you. At least, she listened when I told her how hard being a single mother would be. You know, I almost threw out the film I took of her a dozen times. It disgusted me watching her beg someone who didn't give a crap about her. Glad I kept it now." In a tone of sudden relief, he says, "There. That should be far enough. So long, Bobby. I hope you rot in hell."
A minute ticks by or an hour. Time is a fleet owl riding unseen air currents. Updrafts sending it soaring and down gusts speeding it along. Its course, fickle and capricious, unknowable by human senses.
Mosquitoes swarm Skad's face as it buoys above the surface. He attempts to blow them away with his feeble breath, until they begin to speak.
"She is coming," says one haloed in moonlight.
"You will be together forever," another says close to his ear.
"A wedding. A wedding," A chorus of them cry.
A smile breaks across his face like an ancient fault line rupturing a continent.
From boyhood, Skad has known the magic of Lake Sauvage, perceived the ruleless wonder of the chaotic world by the water, felt the anarchic freedom of it all. But now, here in the last stage of his life, he knows that the real magic lies beneath, where the cold hands of his love clutch his ankle and draw him downward.
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