Page 101 of Misery
Three hours of remembering the last words I said to him.
"I needed my father. Not the Road Captain. Just my dad. And you weren't there. You're never there when it actually matters."
The palette knife slips, gouging a line through wet paint that looks intentional but isn't.
Nothing's intentional anymore.
Everything's just a reaction to catastrophe.
I add yellow—bile, fear, cowardice.
My cowardice for not going after him myself.
For sitting here painting while he's God knows where.
The yellow bleeds into the red, creating orange that reminds me of fire.
The garage fire at their house. A distraction while Thiago took him.
Thiago.
I know his name now but it doesn't make him less terrifying.
It only makes him more real.
A man with a name who sat at my bar, who knew about my paintings, who's been watching me sleep.
The yellow becomes more urgent, violent slashes across the black.
"My little artist."
The words make my hand clench around the palette knife.
I stab at the canvas, leaving deep impressions in the heavy paper.
Each strike is something I can't do to him.
Each mark is an act of violence I'm not allowed to commit.
White next. Innocence lost. Purity destroyed.
The dove he left at the door.
Everything clean that's been contaminated by this life.
I mix it with the red—pink like diluted blood, like evidence being washed away, like trying to pretend everything's fine when it's not.
My hands are steadier now.
This is what painting does—takes the shaking and turns it into something purposeful.
The fear becomes texture.
The rage becomes composition.
It's not healing, but it's management. It's survival.
Green enters the painting—sickly, poisonous green.
