The Artist and the Canvas [Pyper]

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse takes in their surroundings, just as Pyper does.

The interior of Larch Court number twelve is themed mainly in green. Green, for some reason or another, happens to be Jesse’s favourite colour; whether he picked it as a child or not, he doesn’t really recall. Whether there is some reason for it hidden in the deep recesses of his brain, he can’t be bothered trying to reach for it. Colour is important to Jesse. As an artist, colour fascinates him, the way it can be blended together. The way is symbolises different thinks. The way they can help to portray mood. Especially now, with preternatural senses, colour has gained a larger significance. He can seem more of it; his retina is capable of detecting the slightest changes in colour, so that some seem unnatural. Like pink. Is an unnatural colour.

Although the place is mainly tidy, there are things occupying the benches and tables. Random books and magazines, candles, even a stray knife. On the bench there’s a bunch of nail polish. Whose it is, Jesse doesn’t know. This is a house that has different occupants wandering through it every now and again. They leave things behind. They come back to collect them. But there’s no one there, at the same time as he and Pyper.

When she asks her question, he shrugs his shoulders.

“I can be,” he answers. He glances over his shoulder to the clock on the wall; it’s a digital clock. One that he’d bought from a Geographic shop in the mall. It doesn’t just tell the time, in its stark black letters. It also gives the temperature outside – the humidity, the wind speed. But also, down in the corner, it gives the times for sunrise and sunset. Sunset is far too close, and even the short walk from here to Veil Tower might be risky.

“Most likely,” he says, changing tack. He gestures for Pyper to follow, leading her down a hallway toward the bedroom at the back. Soon, there’ll be stairs in this bedroom that’ll lead down into a basement. Jesse has plans for the place. For now, there are no stairs. The room is lit only by lamps, and is occupied by an array of bunk beds. In the other corner is a main, King sized bed, cordoned off by book shelves.

“I’ll be sleeping over there,” he says, gesturing to the bigger bed. A couple of the bunks are unmade. But the majority of them are neat, with fresh sheets and blankets. “You can pick whichever one you want,” he says. He doesn’t have to sleep. Having once been plagued by nightmares, and the uncontrollable slippage into the Shadow Realm, he’d taught himself to stay awake, to resist the sun’s invisible anaesthetic. He’d still feel tired, but he wouldn’t pass out, like most everyone else.

There are no windows in here. All of the windows in the entire house had been removed and built over. They could have been boarded up or draped with heavy curtains, but there’s too much of a risk in that. No windows.

“Make yourself comfortable. I’ll go lock up,” he says, leaving Pyper behind in the bedroom while he goes to bolt the front door. No chains. The others have keys, and he wouldn’t want to in any way hinder their entrance should they be desperate enough to try to enter during the day.

[Pyper]

In twenty four years, most nights were spent lying awake. Hollering carried through the corridors, bouncing weak echoes to her room. It was something that all of the committed had to adjust to. After months of listening to the same barrage of shrieks and groans, most of it became white noise and it disturbed her more when there was a rare absence of it to eerily steady her with a lullaby. The words never mattered, the incoherent utterances themselves bled together to create a myriad of background noise. Latch Court emulated a quiet night at The Ward.

Things were strewn where they were, the objects catch her attention. It made her query about the owners. Who else came here? They passed the miscellaneous knickknacks to approach the channel to the area she'd make hers for the night. The ends of her nails held a urge to scratch the new pattern that sank deep into her tissues. It itched, Pyper put herself under the assumption that it might. If she didn't focus too much on it, it'd stop. A lot of the things that haunt people derive from the mind. Many years and interactions with a plethora of other patience Instilled an understanding of a loose concept of mind over matter. Her hands remained at either side of her waist, lifeless appendages swaying with each step.

Jesse spoke up. Standing within the perimeters of a militant set up of bunk beds, Pyper's eyes honed in to one placed in a similar position as the one she wad assigned for most of her life. The headboard turned a very specific degree away from the door. It was like an alternative version of home. Jesse's bed seemed too large. Pyper couldn't put together why a person would need a bed that size. The cushioning underneath them would swallow any solid form that dented its plush surface. "Should I, not sleep on my stomach?" Not only was she worried about swiping a defect across all of Jesse's hard work, the Altaire felt an anxiety of the ink just leaking out and staining the bedding. In her mind, it looked like someone emptying out an inkwell in thin streams.

The way a spider's legs felt around a branch acting as a conduit to its destination, so did Pyper's dactyls over the bed's fabrics. Peeling back the sheets from the right corner, she began her routine. The number of years this had been preserved, she lost count after five. The folds had to be straight to make a right triangle. One leg tapers under the sheets like a needle pushed beneath the very surface of the skin. Her form sprawls out and the rest of her slithered to center itself on the mattress. The nightmares made a worrying worm crawl through the cramped caves of her brain, uttering implausible circumstances.

The voice kept her company. It had always been there, for as long as she can think back to. When it was born, or more when her mind created the voice, it had no shape. She's never found the origin of the concocted speaker. Where she first heard the husky rasp, a monotonous drawl. It guided Pyper out of the hospital, away from The Ward. By that, could it be a malignant figure of her disease? No one would purge a beneficial tool from their possession.

The voice had to stay with her. It had to be secured, with a level of caution. Preserved and nurtured. Inside the swarm of inner noise buzzing within the walls of her cranium, she spoke back. Her thoughts formed a dialogue to answer the voice. This had been something Anais handled with the shocks; she wanted to completely eradicate the voice. Other people may want to do the same.

It had to stay with her.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse hears the question from out in the living area. He doesn’t call out across the space. There’s something that discomfits him about shouting, or raising his voice above a subtle rumble. As if, if he were to do so, it would break completely, and be lost to him forever. Eternity. But would that really be such a bad thing? There are plenty of times that Jesse thinks he’d much rather be mute again. It’s a selfish want. Because with a voice comes a responsibility, an obligation. To always reply to people, even if they ask stupid questions. To be expected to initiate conversation. Words are fickle things; they have a mind of their own. They seem fine in the speaker’s mind, until they are spoken. And then they are misunderstood and misconstrued. Drama ensues. Ever since he’d regains his vocals, Jesse has only really been inundated with frustration.

He prefers the quiet darkness of his corners, where he can watch and listen and not be expected to participate. But he’d cornered himself into a spotlight rather than into a shadow. There are responsibilities that he has, and he cannot shirk them. Communication is key. And he has discovered that he cares to too much to be painted in a bad light.

If only it were possible to be like a silent guardian angel; stepping in to fix things without ever having to say a word. To lurk in the background, always watching. Not expected to read minds. But whatever. It is not to be. People have expectations and he’s got to try to stretch to meet them.

He returns to the doorway of the bunk room to see Pyper nearly comfortable in the middle of one of the beds, sitting up with her legs beneath the blankets. It is a fair question, but he wonders whether she might not be fully healed yet. And, if she isn’t, it shouldn’t be too far off. The ink shouldn’t leak, it won’t be given the chance. He’d normally warn those who invest in large tattoos to be careful of their bedding – to expect some kind of leakage and staining. He shrugs.

“Sheets can always be replaced,” he says. “It won’t harm the tattoo, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he says. At this point, he himself can begin to feel the effect of the sun. He can’t see it, of course, but the presence in the sky outside is like a magical beast blowing poison over the vampiric population. They’d begin dropping like flies, soon. It would almost be amusing to watch, if they were all out on the streets. Almost.

“You’ll heal quick. There might be a few scabs come tomorrow night, but they should drop right off,” he says, before sauntering over to his own bed, pulling back the sheets. There’s a lamp beside his bed, lighting the way. The only light in the room, now, besides the dim light filtering through from the bathroom, which Jesse will leave on for the guest. But Pyper’s view of him would be obscured by the bookshelves. The only thing she might see is a random arm every now and again as he removes his tank top and steps out of his track pants. He’s not going to sleep fully clothed. He never does that, unless in odd circumstances. His shadow will dance across the floor. The covers whoosh as he opens them up and slides inside, the cool sheets falling enticingly over his bare skin.

“Goodnight, Pyper,” he says, his voice a rough whisper. He waits for a response – or to see if she has any other questions – before he’ll turn off the lamp.

[Pyper]

The off white translucence was a blended purple from the fitted pink insides and the blue webbing of interconnected veins. A curtain closed, blotting out the vision of the right side. As the rim rose up from the first, the latter half faltered and sank to reunite and grant a kiss of relief to the surfaces of the wandering eyes that weren't finished their sweep of the room. The bizarre, internal alarm clock inside the impaired twenty-four year old patient carried broken, indistinguishable, hands. The counterpoise had been disrupted, the weight tipped off the scales. It was the conception of a maladjusted girl-minded female, two decades worth of macabre, science fiction. The chiming rang in the hollows of the disease in her brain, when it pleased.

Sleeping before, never came with a welcoming, maternal touch. The mellow drift off into a peaceful rest for other people was a perpetual falling sensation to her. It nullified the required amount of unconscious brain activity she needed. More holes burned through the overextended mind. Lucretia counted them when it was lights out according to The Ward's time. Any nights she went under for more than a few hours at a time, were the same nights she elicited the encouragement of medication and afterwards, found herself rendered incapacitated. Orally administering any tranquilizer ended on the same night she chewed off the uppermost joint of a faculty member. Her file stated adamantly for incoming transfers and training staff that oral medications were not to be used in regards to Lucretia Mercy Thisben. The files updated a few months later, suggesting that the needles should not be visible to the patient and the potency of the drug was under scrutiny.

The waters crushed her from there, even the dreams were black pits.

She sunk quicker, clawed for prolonged periods of time to cut through to the surface.

Upon waking, the effort put into opening one's eyes seemed an improbable feat not worth expending the energy on. The higher the dosage, the longer the recovery time. Four days and three nights had been her record; that knowledge came from Dr. Proulx later on, in one of her sessions when she demanded the information. It deeply upset something inside of her that other people had been more cognizant of what was happening to her - even other patients - when she had been wading through a heavy sedative. It confused reality with the partial daydream states she entered to avoid things. Or to understand them in a way that made the most sense to her.

Since her turning, the sun took the place of the clear, unmarked solutions taking the lines and smearing them. The effect it had passed through walls as if the density of them were only ideas and not concrete physical structures. The bedframe fuzzed, a halo glowed and swept out through the crossover of eyelashes. It was the reflection off the fine hairs from the light of Jesse’s lamp. He said she could sleep what way she liked but as people treated her, she saw the ink as a fragile thing to be nurtured and deprived of the chancey situations that would bring damage to the flawless detailing. Pyper Altaire flattened herself, she spoke inside. A reminder to control the tossing she has exhibited.

There were plenty of things she could find to talk about but the rush from the session itself wore off. Other nights would come, and if he was still here by the time she woke up, they could speak then.

“My tattoo, is my treasure. Goodnight, Jesse.”

When there wasn’t any fight to see the blurred fog of light, the lids clasped shut and the blonde plummeted into a heavy sleep. The dead’s sleep.