The Artist (Working Title)

The Artist

1
The Artist
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11:37 PM

The artist approached the big cement block. She kept wondering why she chose to pay two-hundred a month for the small studio she shared with five others. She pulled out her pack of keys. They seemed so opaque in the darkness of the night. She could never remember which silver key it was. So she tried the first one. It seemed to fit pretty well, she gave the knob of the big steal door a turn and there was a small but reassuring click. She pushed the heavy door open and once her green converses hit the cement floor, she closed it.

The artist was then familiarly greeted with the cement stairway. It was either up or down. For her it would be three more stories up. She liked watching her feet as she walked up the steps. There was something interesting about the pattern that she walked in. But in truth, she knew she didn’t look down for the pattern, it was for her fear. She would look down at her feet and count the steps. She tried to ignore the echoes of her steps. The first flight landed and she was approached with a silver door, marked “Floor One”.

The artist would often bully herself about why she didn’t rent on the first floor. It was on to the second flight. “Clank, Clank, Clank…” As she reached, probably the 27th step of the flight, her heart stopped in silence. She thought she heard something. She stopped on that 27th step, and waited for a moment, making sure. There were many studios in the cement building, but she had never come across any other people working as late as her. She continued up the steps. But as her clanking echoes began, she heard another and again she stopped, frozen. And again, that noise she heard stopped.

The artist had seen many of these shows, where the person thinks they hear something and it turns out that their just a lunatic. She started to question her own sanity. She knew her fear could get to her, so she left it alone and continued, “28, 29, 30, 31…” This time, she walked a little faster and her counting picked up tempo. And again she heard the other footsteps. She almost stopped but convinced herself to keep going. This time she became very fast. And as she became faster, the footsteps picked up tempo too. She stopped the counting. She soon speeded past the yellow door marked, “Floor Two” and was quickly up and taken off on flight three.

The artist reached the purple door marked “Floor Three”. And she stopped, pulled forward the handle. She paused with the door half open. The footsteps were still going. The artist leaped through that purple door, running through the cement hallways. Just hoping to get to that door marked “322” The artist soon enough reached that door, but the footsteps obviously had not reached their destination yet. They kept going.

The artist practically ripped open her bag, pulled out the keys. She flipped through them in a roar. “Gold or Silver?” She could never remember. She always tried to make the excuse that she had only had the studio for two months. But once two months pass, the excuse doesn’t work very well. She would often joke she was just bad with keys. She went with a silver one, turned it. Opened the wooden door, and snapped it shut. She reached for the light switch, flipped it, and locked the door.

The artist felt relieved. She could hear no more footsteps. Now it was just her canvas and paint. She walked up the latter to her room. Canvases scattered the walls and floors. Most of them had finger smudges, a couple were fully painted. She sat on her chair for a moment. Her breathing which had gotten heavy on the trip up to her studio, was now returning to normal.

11:45 PM

The artist put one of the fingered smudged, half painted canvases up on a rickety easel and took out her plastic rapped palate from two nights before. The smell of the oils quickly perfumed the room. She turned on the fan. And soon enough the squeaky noises came from it. It had been squeaking like that ever since she rented the place. She imagined her numerous notes to the landlord still sitting unopened in his small mailbox on the first floor. Whenever she took students to her studio, they’d always make comments such as, “It sounds like a big fat rat is up there!” or “It sounds like it’s about to break off!” The comments she hated the most, were when the students would say, “It would be so freaky to work here at night. It’s the perfect spot for a murder!” To that, she would always gulp and answer with a “Thanks.”

The artist began to paint more of the orange on. All she could think of was orange. Orange. Then as she switched colors her mind would re-set. Painting took her away. She could concentrate on a mark, a stroke, a color. After she finished with an area, she usually would climb back down the latter and take a peak at the work of the other artists she shared the studio with. And it would go on like this for a while. Slowly, the whole footstep incident vanished from her mind and it was just painting.

12:20 AM

The artist picked up her Odwalla from two nights before. She had a habit of leaving food and drinks in her work space. Often she would work through the night without eating a thing. Sometimes she would come, feeling hungry, and happily find a whole box of Chow Mien left over from the night before.

The artist went back to her painting. She dabbed her brush back in the muddy water and realized she needed some clean water. It was times like this, she would have paid three-hundred for the room with a sink. She picked up her set of keys that layed on the wooden side table and put it in the pocket of her black sweatshirt. She then did a checklist in her mind. She did this a lot.
The artist walked down the latter, one hand gripping onto the wooden handle, the other tightly holding the glass container, where water became waves in a sea. When she got down, her sore hand rested the glass container. Suddenly her eyes fell upon the lock of the door and the trip up to the studio flashed in her mind. “What is this?” she said to herself. “Some crappy horror film.” She felt foolish, but nevertheless she put her ear to the door, listening for any footsteps or noise. At first there was only the sound of some kind of wet substance dropping to the floor, dripping slowly but steadily. That’s when her imagination took off. Her mind took her everywhere from a dead corpse shoved in the big pipes on the ceiling to a dead body, hidden in one of the stalls in the bathroom.

12:22 AM

The artist unlocked the door and pulled it open. She stood, standing there alone in the middle of a cement hall, on the third floor of a cement building, in a neighborhood where all are asleep, on the outskirts of San Francisco. Her arms shivered as she walked through the cold hall. She became aware of the dripping again. It was coming from ahead of her. In no way did she desire to be Nancy Drew and solve the mystery of the dripping liquid. She kept telling herself it was a leaky pipe but unfortunately she was not a very gullible person.

The artist reached the bathroom marked “Ladies Room”. She opened the unlocked door. The lights were on, nothing seemed suspicious. She could still hear the dripping but it seemed to be coming from around the corner and further up the hall. She poured out her muddy water and turned on the faucet and began to watch the glass fill with clean water. As the water ran she suddenly heard the sound of somebody urinating in the stall next to the sink. She froze. She was unaware that there was anybody in there. When she looked down at the bottom of the stall, two feet were facing the toilet.

The artist put down her glass, slowly, being careful not to make a sound. She was just hoping that whoever was in there had not heard her but somehow she felt like that was an unlikely chance. She swung the door open and ran. She began to fling through the hall like a runner on steroids. She took out the gold key, turned, flung the door open and banged it shut and turned the lock.

12:24 AM

The artist just stood there. Her heart was beating hard. She felt as though it was going to pop out, if it kept beating like that. “Who the hell was that guy?” She never considered the fact, that he could have actually rented a space at the building and just had gotten lost. It had to be, he was a murderer out to get someone. She climbed back up the latter. She began to prance in a circle around her small room. She wanted to leave, but didn’t feel like risking her life going down to her white Chevy and driving home. So she picked up her cell and figured she would call someone.

The artist made it clear to herself that calling the police would not be an option at this point, after all, she wasn’t 100% sure that he was actually a murderer. She looked through her address book, none of the numbers would seem to be helpful, except that perhaps of her therapist. Ignoring that thought, she eased herself into the chair that sat in the corner of the small room.

The artist scanned the room for anything that would take her mind off of the man in the bathroom. The small room seemed to be a deserted desert of canvases. She took her bag and searched through the used tissues. She laid her hands on her cold, metal ipod. She picked it up and jammed the small little headphones into each ear. She turned it on and started draining herself with electronic 80’s music. This is how she hoped to spend the rest of her night.

12:27 AM

The artist unfortunately forgot to look at the power bar at the top of the screen of the ipod. For if she had she would of seen that it was quite low on battery. The lit up screen quickly turned off and she sat up from her beginnings of a nap. She cursed at the ipod and shoved it in her bag. And as she sat her bag back on the table, the empty Odwalla bottle fell to the floor. She didn’t even bother picking it up. She was frustrated, scared, alone, and there seemed to be some kind of murderer after her. “What could be worse?” She thought. But this wasn’t the kind of “What-Could-be-Worse” situation. This was the kind where you’re just praying that you will make it out of here alive. And after the dropping of that Odwalla bottle, there seemed to be no noise to be heard.

The artist sat on the chair in silence. Silence seemed to be a big change from the so called “Normal” commotions of this particular night. And as she sat there, she tried thinking of other happier things. But every time she went off thinking in one direction, those two feet from the girl’s bathroom flashed in her memory.

The artist convinced herself that when she got out of the building, if she ever did, she was definitely going to become an art therapist. She had been thinking for quite a while about shifting the direction of her career. She already worked part time at a psychiatric hospital about 20 miles north of the cement building. But now she was thinking of not just changing careers but changing lives. She started to focus on her new life. She kept telling herself she was going to move as far away from this building as possible. It seemed to be a kind of childish thought, changing lives, but at the moment it was the only thing that could occupy her.

12:40 AM

The artist still sat in the chair half asleep, half awake. She just kept trying to squeeze time out of that one thought. Surprisingly, that one thought seemed to have kept her attention for about a total of thirteen minutes. It was actually a pretty impressive thought at the moment, to have kept her thinking of other silly things for a period of time such as that. But now there was no more juice to squeeze out of the thought, and again she was left in utter silence. And that is when she became aware of the horrifying fact that her fan had stopped making the squeaking noise. At first, the fact didn’t seem so horrifying to her. Maybe it was just a janitor who was there, fixing up things around the building. The problem was that she soon realized the fan wasn’t even on at all.

The artist came to the conclusion that either a crappy janitor was trying to fix it or the murderer was fiddling with the fan. And of course she chose option two, the murderer. Her heart began to feel like a smoothie just out of the blender. Her hands began to shake as if she had Parkinson’s. Her fists clenched. All she wanted to do was go home. She wish she could be like Dorothy and tap her heals together and say “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

The artist felt unsafe, like a scrap of meat in the middle of the forest. Thoughts seemed to pound through her head as if she had a mini Niagara Falls in there. And somewhere through the mist of thoughts she heard a cell phone ringing. It was hers. Stuffing her hand back into the bag, she found it. The screen read “Unidentified Caller”.

The artist was in no mood to become a part of a Stephen King novel, so she let the phone ring. Everything seemed to be going by so slow. When would it be morning? When would the building begin to fill up like normal? She felt as though she was stuck in the beginning pages of a novel. The poor thing is trying to get to the end but it seems impossible, so she sits on the word “Sigh”. Once she gets started on a thought, she takes it all the way. Before she knows it, she has created a ballet in her head. Dancing through words such as “Petrified, Frustrated, and Murderer”.

12:57 AM

The artist woke up from the ballet trance. She began to feel as though her sanity was fleeing from her ears and pouring out onto the floor. The first thing that hit her was a particular episode of Dr. Phil. She knew Dr. Phil was a jerk but she would tell her friends “It makes good entertainment!” On the particular episode, Dr. Phil was giving the audience a sermon about how different people handle fear in different ways. Her mind immediately transported her to the movie version of Chicago which had came out a year or two ago.

The artist, not willing to waste eight bucks to see garbage such as that, she decided to barrow it from a friend once it came out. She remembered watching the director’s comments, listening to him talking about, whenever the emotion was too hard for the character to handle, it would cut to song. She felt it was the same for herself, except instead of song, it cuts to ballet.

The artist now just stood there standing at her green converses. As she stared into them, she felt the urge to paint them once she got out of this insane asylum studio. The whole night seemed to have turned into a game. It was about if she could keep herself occupied and thinking about something else but the events of the night.

The artist soon imagined herself in a nursing home, packed with loonies who thought the lamp was the doctor. She imagined herself at a table with a group of old woman, saliva dripping from there mouth, unable to move. Carefully telling them the story of this horrible night she currently was experiencing. She would tell it as if it were such juicy gossip; the talk of the town.

The artist never had asthma but now as she sat there in the chair looking down at her feet, she thought it was very likely she might after all. Her mind began to get back in reality. Suddenly she began to lose the game and the image of the feet from the girl’s bathroom flashed back in her head. She felt like the wicked witch of the west melting. The numerous references to The Wizard of Oz was due to the fact that she had been watching it the night before.

The artist sat again, in total silence. This is the time where the artist wished her mother and father had raised her to be a truly devoted orthodox Christian. She truthfully longed to believe in God, believe that God would not let her die. But unfortunately it was too late to force silly thoughts like that into her head.

The artist had no books to pick up and occupy herself with either. Not that she was any kind of avid reader, but an experience like this would have forced her to be a big reader. Now she began the battle over whether or not it was worth it to try calling a friend at least to comfort her. She never joined the debate team in high school but she imagined she would have been quite good in it.

The artist kept going over the list of people she could call in her head. A plan dragged itself out of hiding and strongly announced itself: If she heard any other noise during the night she would call a friend. And that was it. And again, she sat in the comfy chair, in total silence and the game started back up.

12:59 AM

The artist watched her thin shadow on the floor in front of her. The lighting in the small room was unusual but somehow there always seemed to be a shadow coming from you, no matter where you would stand. With her eyes, she traced the edges and felt anorexic as she noted how fat she looked. And of course shadows always inspired her to start a whole puppet show.

The artist stretched her long, lanky hand out and began to make, what she hoped to resemble a bird. At first she just made the bird talk but eventually it was doing a whole follies number. When the hand she started with got tired she would end the number and make a new animal to go and perform. It went on like this for what seemed like a while. It was quite entertaining. Noah’s Ark: The Musical.

1:10 AM

The artist now sat there twiddling with her hair. Tying, braiding, and straightening were all techniques one needed to learn when trying to occupy one’s self with hair. The artist never quite learned all those skills except knotting. So she sat there, knotting all the strands she could get her hands on into one big gigantic hair ball. Almost an hour and a half had passed at that point since she arrived at the big cement building.

The artist pulled out her Motorola V300 Camera Phone. How she longed to get rid of the crappy phone. And she just started a photo shoot. The first subject was merely her green converses which would make slight movements for the camera. Then came the blank wall, which stood directly opposite of her. And finally, the dirt-layered, black floor. Everything became so interesting in such a boring world.

The artist was now sitting in a comfy chair, straight up pink. She had found it at a pawnshop a couple years ago. Before this it would lay in the corner of her living room and eventually, soon after she got the studio, she just decided to throw it in there. Behind the pink chair, sat a big book shelf that spanned the surface of the wall. Most of the slots were empty and the massive shelf was more just to fill up some space. The floor had various spots of red and yellow tape, but other then that it was just another studio floor, Canvases stuttered all over it.

1:18 AM

The artist finished her photo shoot and now she began to twiddle with her thumbs. “Ooooohh Gooooooodddd!” The tantrums inside her head began.

The artist was so caught up in multitasking the motion of twiddling her thumbs and of ranting tantrums to herself that she had not noticed the small pile of red blood, growing only an inch and three quarters away from her clenched foot. If she still had her retainer from seventh grade, it would be shattered to pieces by now from the force, which she was pushing on the roof of her mouth.

The artist felt like a poor stick bug, lost in a dried out log, stuck in a dreary dessert of humidity. And that is when her eyes came upon the blood. The red overflow of thoughts that choked her up and made her heart win the losers derby. The hemophobiac was now in the corner. There she sat, utterly stunned and the blood, a lake Eerie in itself. Its own environment; a slob of scary paint. She broke down.

The artist now became a faucet of tears, which inside emerged a face. The tears blinded her and now she could only hear. So she listened and she heard drips. Blood, still dripping. And dripping. And dripping. Connections began to make themselves without her knowing it. Could this dripping have anything to do with the dripping in the hall? Again, it was only a game: Question and Answer. Right side of the brain- off. Left side- ON. Now it was only mathematics and science, reasonable and explainable means.

The artist was a bundled string ball, just waiting for a cat to come and unravel her. She could only think about the present and the past. The future seemed to be off limits. Whether it was because of the fact that it held too much uncertainty or whether it was because she would probably be dead before the night was up, she did not know.