#2024MakeAMonster
Art
It had been years since I tried to paint. Whatever joy I'd once felt in the process dried out drop by drop, until all the days when friends or family told me to 'Take some time for your art!' were something I dreaded. I'd stare at the blank page, and nothing I did to it would stop it being empty. There was a time when I could pick up a pencil or a brush and just start moving, and once there was a line on the sheet before me it'd come alive; I could play with it, follow its movement, turn it into something that really rejoiced. But things can die. Now when I tried, all I had was a blank piece of paper with some lines added to the top. No life in them; nothing I could make them do. It was a waste of good art supplies.
But people kept giving me more. They just wouldn't believe I was done. After a while - enough years of saying that this Christmas or birthday I'd like people to make a charity donation instead - they mostly got the message, but my friend Laurie just wouldn't take the point.
Laurie'd always been into the power of belief. We'd known each other since primary school - one of those friendships where you probably wouldn't be friends if you met today, and if I'm honest one of those friendships that would likely have faded if she'd put in as little effort as I did. But you couldn't stop Laurie. At five she covered her pencil case with rainbow stickers because someone told her that you couldn't have rainbows without rain; for about a year she was the Rainbow Girl who wanted to magic something colourful out of every bad day. At ten it was superfoods - she insisted on a blender for her birthday and made me share grainy smoothies out of her thermos every lunch. Some were delicious, really, but other days they tasted like a sink plug and she'd still insist we finish them: 'Taste is just a sensation! Think of all the good it'll do us!' She was into self-help and positive energy and manifestations and I-don't-know-what by the time we hit our teens, and she stuck to that with sparkly stubbornness no matter what. She was the kind of girl who'd have been called a witch if she didn't wear so much pink.
I loved to draw as a kid, and Laurie loved that for me. Or maybe she was jealous, but she was the kind of person who never admitted to jealousy; instead she had to translate it into her own language. So she called it a spell on the page, a manifestation of my own. I didn't see it like that - for me it was about what was in front of my eyes, not something I conjured out of my head, and so once my eyes stopped doing their trick my head was empty, and if it hurt too much to think about then that was my business. But Laurie just wouldn't let it go. I'd been friends with her because she was what parents call a 'nice little girl', but we weren't little girls any more, and the thing about me she'd loved was gone, and she wasn't willing to let it go.
One day I got so upset I was honest: I shouted that if she wanted to be my friend, she had to be friends with ME, not my painting. And if my painting was the only thing she ever liked about me, then she was wasting her time trying to be my friend any more. I was who I was, and if she wanted to paint she could do it herself, and if she couldn't then she wouldn't be any more of a painter by trying to force me.
Laurie doesn't cry, or not unless it's a ritual where you weep fertile tears for exactly ten minutes and then rise again refreshed. But she blinked at me, and then I could see her pull her face back into the expression she wanted. It was almost like watching a line turn into something under my pencil, back when I could do it. For a moment she was just wavering and lost, and then it all pulled together.
And then it was my birthday, and she insisted we go on a 'surprise experience day'. I had a bad feeling, but I felt guilty for upsetting her. She doesn't listen, but she really does mean well. Everybody says so.
The place wasn't as bad as I'd feared, actually. I'd thought she'd drag me to a life-drawing class or something like that, but in fact it was one of those pottery-painting places that take footprints of your baby and stamp them onto mugs, that kind of thing. Mostly for kids, but they let adults come and paint if they want to, and when you're done they'll fire the cup and you've got your hand-painted art.
I really wished she'd just let it go, but she was sparkling again. 'I've got a present for you!' she said.
Even before I opened it I knew it'd be art supplies. She just doesn't stop. And there it was under the glossy paper: a set of sable brushes.
Red sable's the most expensive paintbrush hair you can get. It comes off this animal called the kolonok, a kind of blond Siberian weasel that overkills in henhouses and, if you believe the Chinese legends, steal your soul: they want to get into Heaven but animals aren't allowed, so they take it out of your body and slip in their own, apparently.
I'd never used red sable. Partly it was too expensive, and partly I'm vegetarian; I don't know how they get the hairs off those little weasels but I didn't like the sound of it. And if I'm honest, I was put off by the idea of a brush that so precisely answered my hand, which is what kolinsky sable is meant to do: I'd always relied on my mistakes, taking accidents and turning them into something. I didn't feel comfortable with any tool so obedient.
But Laurie was blinking at me in delight, and it was just a pottery place, so I said thank you. I didn't have to be brilliant, I figured; all I had to do was take a cup and put a decorative pattern on it or something that didn't need to be alive. Probably I was rusty, but basic technical skills weren't beyond me, and then I could either give the cup to Laurie or, if she wouldn't take it, get a little clumsy one day and drop it hard enough to break.
So we started. And I had to admit that I'd never handled a brush like it: it suck up the watercolour like it was thirsty, and held a tip fine as a fang. I started on the cup, meaning to just draw a geometric flower. But there was something about the curve of the pottery; combined with the unfamiliar feeling of the brush handle I found my lines going faster than I'd meant them to, and the flower came out messy. I could have washed it off and started again, of course, but instead I thought I'd hide it: I added some leaves on top, and then some more, and then before I knew it I had the whole cup turned into something. It was dark on the inside and covered in leaves and greenery, and when I turned it over I saw I'd made a weasel burrow.
'See?' Laurie crowed. 'You just need a little inspiration!'
Well, I had to admit it was better than anything I'd painted for years. But I wasn't quite comfortable. Landscapes had never been my thing; I'd loved painting animals. I didn't know what I'd been thinking making that cup.
Laurie insisted I keep it; she said it should remind me that talent never went away. And it came out well when they fired it, but it smelled a little off - something musty in the glaze, I thought. So rather than drinking out of it, I left it on my desk and let Laurie's brushes sit in it. That way when she came to visit she couldn't say I wasn't grateful.
Once it was on my desk, though, I kept staring at it. I wasn't inspired; that's not what tools do. But it itched at the edge of my vision like the brushes kept tickling my eyes.
Laurie invited herself round for dinner, and I thought it'd be all right, but before I started cooking she insisted on having a look around what she kept calling my 'studio', even though it hadn't been that for years and was just the room I kept stuff I hadn't sorted yet. She was so disappointed I hadn't done any more painting, and when I said I hadn't had time and also that I really didn't think it was the right moment, Laurie sat down, glittering determined.
'You need to get the habit back,' she said. 'You're not cooking and I'm not eating till you've spent half an hour painting.'
I thought about throwing her out, but my eyes started itching again. It felt like I might be able to cry.
'Come on,' Laurie said. 'I know you can do it. You can't keep me out, you know!'
I had to laugh a little; at least she knew she was being pushy. So I sat down and picked up the brushes; it was only half an hour.
It felt a bit dank inside the cup, but the brush was warm in my hand. I just started painting, I didn't know what.
It had been years since I'd painted an animal, but I thought I'd try something simple. A mouse would be nice and small, so I tried a bit of a curve, and the brush followed it so fast that the curve of its back came out wrong: too hunched and tucked-in. Well, it could be a vole instead; I painted and painted and sure enough, a vole started to shape itself on the page.
Laurie was giving little giggles of delight, I could hear that, small squeaks at the edge of my hearing. But I wasn't happy. It looked like I was doing what I'd always done, trying a line out and then turning it into something unexpected - but the vole didn't really look like something I'd do. Its back was curved like a rainbow, and it should have been a merry little thing, but it wasn't. It had big, scared eyes, and what stood out wasn't so much the fur as the fragility. A tender throat, with the shading pooling so that you could almost see the jugular within.
Laurie was delighted, though. 'See?' she said. 'So sweet. I could just eat you up.'
'Eat it up, don't you mean?' I said, and Laurie laughed again.
She wasn't going to let it go, so when she was gone I looked up sable brushes. They do kill the weasels for them, though probably not just for the tails; other parts of the animals go to other uses. People kept saying not to worry, though: weasels are pests. They'll get into a henhouse no matter how much you try to guard it, and once they're inside they'll take everything that's there.
I dreamed of rainbows that night. Started seeing them when I blinked, but the optician couldn't find anything wrong.
It turned into a habit: Laurie would come for dinner on Thursday nights and sit over me until I painted. Animals started happening - moles, shrews, earthworms, tiny writhing things. Always, the brush picked out the shadows around their bodies where the skin was thin and the blood was near the surface. Once I even tried to paint a plain circle, but it got away from me: it turned into an eggshell, but the top was hatching and their was a naked, velvety little chick coming out, bulged blind eyes and crushable bones and raw, quivering meat.
'It's all right,' Laurie said. 'Let it come. You need to let it manifest.'
'Manifest what?' I said.
'You can't keep out what needs to come in,' Laurie said. She smiled so bright when she said it. 'Just trust the process.'
My eyes were starting to go strange. I tried the optician again but they said there was nothing wrong. Laurie visited again and again and her smile was full of sparkling prisms. But the rest of the time things were too pink. All I could paint was these prey animals, and I never painted blood on them; I wouldn't even keep red paint on my desk after a while. But when I looked in the mirror I saw the same thing: thin skin, and everywhere a vein pulsed near enough to bite.
I was tired all the time, these days. I didn't know why. Light was starting to hurt. I kept the curtains closed, and my other friends thought I might be depressed. 'You don't seem like yourself these days,' my cousin said, but I didn't know what to tell her. Laurie thought it was beautifully cosy in my flat, 'a lovely little burrow.'
So she made me paint, and the hair on the brushes drank down everything they touched.
'Laurie?' I said to her. 'If the weasels steal what's inside a person so they can put their own soul there, what happens to the soul they stole?'
Laurie smiled. Her teeth were bright and glimmering as diamonds. 'Don't worry about that, my pet,' she said. 'It's a beautiful cycle of nature. Everything goes to feed something in the end.'
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