There is a certain joy that the artist feels when they complete a work of art, a revelation that they experience when their psyche shifts from creator to audience. They bask in the afterglow of creation appreciating their own talent. It was the same for him.
He anticipated that feeling as he was putting the finishing touches on his work. The subject's plasticized trigger fingers and thumbs were placed in appropriate portions of the box, small shrine-like sections painted in golden warm tones.
He double-checked the numerous other artifacts, each in it's own compartment, to ensure that the story his box was attempting to tell shone through. He inspected the tanned tattoos on thin stands, raised above the top of the small compartments like flags, positioned as the stars on the Belt Of Orion.
Finally satisfied, he was ready to make the transition from artist to audience by performing that final sacred act, signing the piece. He stroked his brush confidently in satisfaction and pride. The signature was bold and confident....Siggy Jager. As a reinforcement to his ownership of the work, he impressed his thumbprint into a patch of wet acrylic below his signature.
Siegfried Jager was entranced by art for as long as he could remember. Even as a young immigrant of ten, all his time was consumed by sketching, molding, and thinking about art.
His parents were supportive and his life was good, despite the meager means of his family. As he grew, he developed a very strong sense of justice, no doubt instilled by his goddess of a mother, a woman of extraordinary will and a passionate sense of right and wrong. His father, a journeyman artist of moderate talent, was a man of drive and empathy. They were killed in a car accident three days before his eighteenth birthday.
He felt no bitterness or anger, only honest sadness. He also felt untethered, unrestrained for the first time in his life. He devoted all his waking hours and energy into becoming an artist of merit.
Though his parents weren't rich, they had both been heavily insured. This money, along with the money received from a settlement with the trucking company that was responsible for their deaths, guaranteed Siggy a life free from monetary concerns.
He purchased a sixty acre farm near Siler City, North Carolina, converting the failed tobacco farm into the perfect studio complex. The tobacco barn was reinforced and rewired to help transform it into his main studio space. Another smaller structure, away from the main cluster of buildings, would become his abattoir when he finally discovered his artistic path.
Siggy was never the most gifted of draughtsmen, it was never his destiny to be merely a painter. He knew that the measure of a masterpiece was not necessarily how realistic or natural a work of art appeared, but rather what effect it had on its admirers. It was about how well the piece spoke to the public and how that voice was used.
The vision for his work found direction early, when he discovered the art of Joseph Cornell. Cornell was a brilliant recluse, living his entire life in a small neighborhood in Queens, New York, on Utopia Parkway. He created countless small boxes, transporting the viewer to exotic and mystical locales, while simultaneously expressing his own view of existence. It was a revelation for Siggy. He felt the only thing Cornell was lacking was moral purpose, a desire to heal the world.
From this beginning, Siggy began to work in an all consuming flurry of purpose and experimentation. None of his early work satisfied him, except for a single piece that used the bones of a beloved pet to produce a work on loyalty and devotion. He realized it was the presence of dog itself within the artwork that raised it from decoration to relic. He had reached the Rubicon. What would it take to cross it? How would he find the courage?
The answer came on one of his trips to downtown Siler City for supplies. Downtown might be a bit of an overstatement in a town of 9000, whose main claim to fame was once being featured on The Andy Griffin Show, or perhaps that the actress who played Aunt Bee on the same show called it home during her lifetime. It was quaint and quiet, with most of its storefronts lining the single main street that ran through the center of town.
Siggy was returning to his car when the police drove by with sirens blaring. He asked several pedestrians what was going on. It was the town tow-truck operator who had the answers.
"Yeah, sounds right awful. I was listenin' on the police scanner and they got called out to some farm. They arrested a guy for beatin' his kid almost to death."
"How old was the child?"
"Cops said ten or eleven."
This information hit Siggy hard. He adored children, not in any unhealthy way, but as innocent thinkers who still had hopes and dreams. They were the ones who could one day redeem mankind.
He thought about it all night. Unable to sleep, he googled 'violence against children' and the results deeply affected him. He read about a priest from a nearby city accused of molesting altar boys and of a businessman in Charlotte being investigated for child trafficking. An idea was beginning to form, a piece of art was germinating.
He couldn't recall the moment he decided to incorporate the dead into his work. It seemed natural to him now, but for that first piece it was a leap fo faith, a certainty that had somehow come to dwell within his mind.
The hunting was nerve-wracking at first. Locating the priest, the father, and the businessman was easy enough, executing their abductions was not.
He read about curare and it seemed ideal. Securing the plant was less difficult than he anticipated, the internet was accommodating to all his needs, from procurement to actual recipes for the completed poison. He also purchased a dart gun and dart rifle from a farm and veterinary site, as well as the refillable darts to hold the curare.
Then came the actual hunt. The priest was easiest, he often took solitary walks around his house. It was during one of these perambulations that he disappeared, never to be seen again except as disembodied eyes and fingers in an unknown artist's work.
The father was snatched while out on bail and everyone simply assumed he ran. It was the same story for the businessman awaiting indictment. It all went smoothly, despite his nerves and doubts. So easy, in fact, that Siggy began to believe it was destiny.
When he finally finished that first piece and stepped back to observe it, there was no doubt, no second thoughts. He reveled in the deep guilt he felt, this was proof that he was still a good man. The joy he felt was because, at last, he was a true artist.