Leo

Leo's body shook, his mind closing up like a large intestine, shamelessly shooting out bile, his stomach whipping around. Images splashed all over him, making his skin pucker up, cold and dry in the desert of unknowing, this place he always seemed to be jerked back into when he had these visions.



He saw, he felt these cold winds...and he was up on a hill, a big, big hill, and he could see all of Jerusalem (he knew it was this city), and he could see a man, all bloodied up, carrying a large wooden cross...this meant the worst death, Leo recalled, and he would be tortured before everyone in the city.



And Leo watched as the man (there was something spectacular about him, with his blood and his whipped back) as he trudged up the hill, guards following close behind, yelling in his ear and spitting in his face.



Rain splattered the man's gnarly back and he kept going up, step by step, the large cross secured with his bare arms. The man had a long beard, Leo now saw, and it was parted, tied with beads at the end.



Then, that spectacular man with the cross, all bloodied up and walking up the hill towards Leo, actually saw him, and whispered something that only Leo could hear....



"Learn to swim."



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Leo awoke, his heart skipping several beats. His breaths were sharp. He was alone in the studio, the wooden floor cold against his bottom, an empty bottle of rum in his leather-like palm...yes, it was morning. He could feel it...the cool-warm light on his skin, the new dust smell, the clay-like paint on the canvases.



Yes...the canvases. All of them were separate visions. Some were of large apple trees...and, of course, the following day, when he went to watch the news, he would see an increase (dramatic one, yes) in test scores for highschoolers.



Some were more complicated. Some were paintings of old men (their faces all different), and...well, when he turned on the news the following day, he'd just see that man in the stands at a formal Presidential Speech. And there would never be anything special about it.



But lately, he'd been having these abnormal visions. Of what he thought to be Jesus and Mary Magdalen, of the burning cross, of floods and famine, of the end of the world as we know it.



And, upon having another vision last night, he was to do what he always did after: pick up a brush and a paint-dish and begin to paint.



But the phone began to ring, suddenly. He shuffled over to it in his gray, cotton socks and lifted the receiver.



"Hello?" He said, his voice still a bit gruff from the vision he'd had.



"Hello, Leo." Daniel said. "I was wondering if you wanted to go for some coffee this evening?"



"Coffee in the evening?" Leo argued.



"We're going to be up late again. I really need to talk to you."



"Fuck, about what?"



Daniel paused for a moment.



"Er, well...it's about Judith again. She left last night."



Judith and Daniel had been married for only a year now, but fussed and fought like a devoted 20 year get-a-long.



"Fine. At the Starbucks."



"Agreed. Eight o'clock?"



"Agreed."



Leo set down the phone on the hook and padded back into his studio where he'd begin to paint his vision.

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Leo began to paint around noon, still somber and bearded in his sweatpants, the paint dish cold in his hand...he looked out the window when he took short breaks, the Autumn sunlight washing his rugged face. The studio was still as quiet as ever, the smell of dust still swimming in the air.



Nothing too appealing was drawn upon the canvas yet...only the outline of the cross on that man's wounded back, a bit of blood smeared onto the paper (his own, slit out from his fingers with a dagger), and the rainy black sky hovering high above them. Then there was the grassy hill, and the guards spitting in the man's face. And the city far out there.



He never drew out himself in the painting. He just never saw himself, there as a physical being, but he knew somehow that he existed at that time. He knew that he was Leo at the time period of the vision (which, from the use of common sense, was probably a very long time ago). But he never knew what he looked like in any vision he ever experienced. He was simply there in the first person, merely observing what was happening and the people involved.



Quickly, he dabbed his brush lightly onto a puddle of red-black on the china plate and brought the wet brush up to the surface of the canvas, making a long, thin stroke down on the man's back to indicate a whip-burn. He made several more of these little grasses on the man's back.



An epiphany hit him.



His chest tightened up as the thought crossed him, but he knew it should be at least thinkable. He knew it was a possibility, always, that the man with the cross who'd said "learn to swim" was actually...well, it just made sense.



Jesus....