Random acts of Violence: Episode Eight. (final)

She sat there staring into space, a splattering of a million stars spread out in front, the palette of colours subtle blending from purples and pinks into the deepest blues that bordered on black.

All of that space in front calmed her, it was what was behind that scared her. Life, people and the responsibility she had long been avoiding, but that time was over. She had finally come to the realisation that there would be no one coming to save her, no one to reach down into the darkness and pull her into the light she could not see herself.

It was time for her to take a step, time to venture into the darkness and reclaim what was hers, time to take life by the throat.

She could feel the cool of the concrete gallery bench she was sitting upon like she had dozens of times before. Her eyes transfixed on the painting she adored, a massive watercolour of a galaxy spinning on its axis, Andromeda. She loved it because when it was frozen in the painting, one could not know if it was exploding or imploding. It was her life on a canvas.

Today was special, it was not like the other times she had sat here staring into space, today she was meeting someone, it was her first step into the darkness and the anticipation filled her with excitement and fear. She had never done anything like this before and was very patient to find the right person to bring her back into life.

He was perfect, they had met online and he had quickly shown an interest, not only that, it was a real interest. They spent months talking, chatting and getting to know each other. They discussed life, death and everything in between. He knew more about her than anyone else that had ever lived. Today, he would learn what makes her so unique.

It had been a long road to get to this point, to be able to work up the courage. Life had not always been easy but it was her personality that brought the most suffering and she knew it. It felt like her life was being spent in a continual loop of failure and overcoming, failure and overcoming and her emotions were continually getting in the way.

She had reached the conclusion though that she couldn't help it, she was emotional and rather than vainly attempt to harness them, she would let them run free, wild and untamed. He would be her first, the real first to see who she was.

People generally saw the girl who sat on a concrete bench to stare at a watercolour. The long blonde hair carefully brushed hair that fell down to the small of her back and the china white skin, untouched by the sun. They would make their judgements based on their observations, beautiful, feminine, sensitive, lonely, broken. Were they right?

Perhaps they had been but things were changing, she could feel it. Rock bottom has that effect on people when they realise that they must act. It brings strength, a surface to push off, the realisation that there is still power in the legs to press off the stone and stand. The descent down to the bottom had been fast, the time spent there slow. Enough was enough, time to stand.

He had helped her, he had supported her, it was him that made her realise that she must accept her past to become present. It was his words that stirred her soul in the darkness and let her see what lay inside, the strength and power. He had guided her to look within herself and become her own support, he had inspired her to walk into the darkness blind.

He had told her that they would journey forever together and see what lay in the beyond. And she believed him, even though they were yet to meet in person, she believed that destiny was at play and this would be the turning point where the dark was broken by the light.

She breathed deeply and scanned the painting again, she knew it so well and knew every star by heart. The artist had spent so much time, so much effort, so much of themselves into painstakingly revealing each star one by one, It was as perfect as it could be with each major cluster of stars positioned as precisely as possible. She knew how much work it took for it was hers, she was the artist.

The stars had always called to her as she always felt she did not belong on earth, did not belong with these people that were so much like her, yet so far from her. She never fit in but with so many stars out there to reach for, there may be somewhere that she clicks into perfectly, a place she could really call home.

She knew it would never come in her lifetime but thinking of having an unreachable home somewhere spinning in space comforted her more than any glass of wine or cup of tea, although they were much more practical comforters. Home was somewhere she longed for but had never quite found on earth. There was always too much tension involved to say that anywhere was where she belonged.

The pressure had nothing to do with others, it was an internal force looking to explode outwards but the structure of the world continually kept it contained and threatened to crush it wholly. Maybe that was the truth of Yin and Yang, rather than complimentary forces working together for balance, each was looking to dominate the other, an eternal power struggle where one day the victor would finally decimate and engulf the corpse of the defeated.

Was it her destiny for her sensitive soul to become the consumed corpse eaten by a world in which she did not belong, or would it be her place to consume the world?

She smiled as her eyes landed on a group of stars on the painting. A feeling washed over her and she softly whispered to her self 'That is not home'.

It was at that moment that she was interrupted but she did not mind. He was here. She lifted her gaze, her straight back barely twisting, her legs still crossed. The skirt she wore showed more of her leg than she had intended but in this moment, it didn't even come to mind. He didn't speak, he just looked down at her with a soft smile. 'Boop.' she playfully said.

His smile widened a little more and he took a seat next to her and looked at he painting that now looked to consume them both. Into the unknown together, she thought.

He looked on for several seconds and then spoke of the painting. 'It is you. The colours as they blend in and out of each other and the swirling light that forms the core is your spirit and your core being bound by the darkness that bears down from the edges. Frozen, the stars become fragments of you that are being pulled outwards into space or sucked by your gravity into your center. The battle rages whether you will be shattered into a million sparkling pieces or come together to be made whole, complete. Who are you when all those stars become one?'

She didn't look at him for she knew he was now looking at her and he would see that she was again laid bare by words she had heard before, a thousand times, a million times before. The words were her own and no matter how much she worked, how many times she turned them over in her mind, that question remained unanswered. 'Who am I?'

He was an artist himself of sorts, a writer who's own journey explored the darkness of the world. This is why he was able to understand her, connect to her personal struggle and read her like one of his stories. His stories covered her life from different perspectives, emotional moments torn apart by violence. When she read them she was scared. Not by what was written, not by the murder and blood or the loss of innocent victims.

What scared her was that she could not identify fully with either killer or victim. She could feel the victims pain, feel the tragedy but she could also understand the killer, she knew why it must be done. There must be balance in this life, the struggle between beauty and horror was a fine line that must be managed.

Too much horror and beauty is unimaginable, too much beauty and people forget that life will always find a balance. The dance of the in between has and must always continue for to tip too far either way is to upset gravity and plunge headlong into the void.

What seemed like minutes passed by while he watched her intently and she purposely avoided his gaze. Finally, she looked at him and her eyes pierced through the layers of who he was and saw him completely for what he was. And he returned the look and she knew he had glimpsed what was inside of her.

They drank each other in until he placed his hand on top of hers and said, 'Come, I have something to show you.'

It was the first time they had actually touched and it felt filled with all of the electricity of a brewing storm on the horizon. She looked at his hands, a writer but with the hands of a painter, the hands of someone that knew how to use them with precision. He stood and gently pulled her from the bench and she followed.

A heavy curtain hung against a wall to the side of the painting and he pulled them through into a service tunnel of the gallery that likely ran to a storeroom. It was dark with only a sliver of light peeking through from the edge of curtain.

He turned to her and the beam of light lit a thin strip of his face leaving the rest in shadow. All that could be seen was his right eye, dark and intense and the edge of his mouth, the corner of which curled into a slight smile.

'What did you want to show me?' but she already knew what was coming, they had gone into the darkness together. Still holding her hand he pulled her in towards him so that she had to step forwards and now it was her turn to be hit by the light which made her hair look like it suddenly bust into flames.

They looked at each other in the near darkness, eyes shining like nocturnal animals in the moonlight. He slowly ran his hand down her side and at her waist, spun her around so she faced the wall. Her head tilted back and she breathed deeply as if after surfacing from diving under water. His hand slid down her thigh and onto her bare legs as her own travelled up the other.

In the depth of shadow, her skin rippled at the touch as his voice whispered and his hand began the journey upward, The stories I write, the horror the misery, the innocence lost, the victims are real, the victims are mine.'

'I know.' His hand stopped its ascent and then quickly withdrew. She turned and saw in his other hand the shining blade he had intended to plunge into her again and again. Her own narrow knife protruding from his leg and with an artery sliced, he would not last long.

He looked on in part disbelief, part awe as he stumbled backwards against the wall and slid to the ground as he let the knife fall from his grasp. 'I see you finally, the real you. Welcome to the real world where the illusions are gone and all the fragments of stars have come home to be one.' he said.

She knelt in front and smiled as the blood poured from his leg. 'I owe it to you, I discovered who I am through your words, I now know who I am. I am not the victim, I am not the killer. I am the raging battle that must be fought, I am the scale that keeps balance. I am not the light nor the dark, I am the in between. And I am taking life by the throat.'

With that she picked up the knife he had let fall and sliced cleanly across his throat.

She stood and looked as the sliver of light shone directly across the body and made the red of the blood burn like a dying sun. She knelt again and dipped two fingers into the pool and raised them to the light to inspect closer. Perfect, she thought.

She pushed through the curtains to find the room of the gallery still empty. She walked casually over to her painting of Andromeda and found the group of stars she had identified earlier. Bending, she gently brushed her bloodied fingers over the group smearing the small patch of white a red that would soon turn a purplish brown as it dries.

'That is not home. But, there are many more stars to explore'.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]

This is the eighth and final in the Halloween series: Random acts of Violence.

This is dedicated to @m31 who is someone I have come to know well and who I respect a lot at Steemit. So much so, I just couldn't bring myself to kill her. Perhaps, Andromeda will have a spin off series as I really enjoy writing these.