Splintered Souls

✎ | Silver Quill

; prompt #05 | flash fiction - Aim To Engage/2023

requirement: 500 - 1000 words.

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Father carefully examined his next painting right in front of my own eyes, relishing in the moment.

He had always had a keen eye for visual art since he was a boy. 

Though, at the start, he was a troubled babe; according to my grandparents, he cried for days and nights at an end. They had tried everything, spent their hard-earned wages on easing the young boy's turmoils, yet nought worked.

One day, grandmother was forced to take him to her rundown workshop.

My grandparents were poor. 

She was a talented yet undervalued artist, and my grandfather a crippled carpenter.

They could not afford a nanny. No, instead, they had to care for him in person whilst working arduous shifts to pay their housing bills.

From their account, it had been a cold month, with warm meals being no more than a scarcity. 

Father's repeated cries and shrieks slowed sales tremendously, but there was no other option. Most men would steer clear of grandmother's workshop, writing her off well before inspecting her work, deeming the delicate intricacies of art to be something incomprehensible for a mere woman.

Ah, how times have changed.

By a stroke of luck, grandmother had her first potential client in weeks - one whom Father nearly repelled. Though a pacifier had never had any effect, when grandmother offered a ragged paintbrush, Father's teary eyes dried, and his frantic crying plunged into the depths of silence - never to return again.

You see, at the tender age of eleven months old, Father had commenced his longspun path across the pigmented worlds - well before he could stand atop his own pair of feet. In due time, grandmother helped him further establish his keen aptitude - and as he turned six years old, Father's immaculate talent garnered great renown throughout the city.

Flash forward a dozen years; my family was no longer bound to the patchwork worker's cottage in the slums. Grandmother had been recognised as an incredibly talented artist, but more so, the person responsible for Father's rise to fame. After all, he had become a worldwide celebrity in the field of art, specialising primarily in oil-based painting.

His sheer genius and charm had the world spellbound. 

People flocked to his work, for they held a certain sense of magic.

Ah, such irony.

However, faith holds two sides of the same coin.

Although the last decade had been a golden age full of prosperity for my family, a ravenous storm loomed overhead. 

Father had barely reached his early twenties by the time my grandfather passed on. At long last, his failing health caught up to him despite the best care money could afford.

Grieving the loss of her late husband, grandmother had sold her old studio in favour of a two-story apartment on the other side of the world, somewhere along the breathtaking Manhattan skyline - and with a vulnerable heart all alone in a strange, new land, she -  too - ascended the grand pearlescent stairway not long thereafter.

Two deaths struck the family in the span of a few months. 

The newspapers were full of captions regarding the newly orphaned virtuoso. For days straight, his office's phone was ringing off the hook, pestered by overly ambitious news reporters eager to capitalise on Father's tragedy.

Father often briefly recounted his last few weeks with both his parents alive - a few tears prickling the sides of his milky chocolate eyes. He missed their presence during his adulthood. There was a void in his life, one that should have been filled with unconditional love and compassion.

It took Father four or five years to properly acknowledge he was alone.

He had never sought love in a woman, or a man for that matter. In their stead, he focused all his efforts on creating the crème de la crème among his works of art, a crown jewel of unparalleled magnificence known as his most outstanding achievement.

With a silver paintbrush engraved with his mother's initials, he began to work tirelessly.

Both day and night, he kept himself locked up in his studio, his unwavering attention firmly rooted in place.

For years, his paintbrush had become a conduit through which he splattered his soul upon the blank canvas - reaching for utmost perfection in his craft. And so, under the self-imposed need for exemplary results, Father's jet-black hair turned grey and thin. His face was now wrinkled below the white-peppered beard.

In the end, today, upon adding a handful of finishing touches, his heartfelt labour had reached its final conclusion: a flawless painting of a boy with an uncanny resemblance to himself - albeit distorted as if blended with an imaginary other half.

The content smile across his face was a marvellous sight, one I was thankful for.

He looked on at the painting, greeting me with a firm welcome.

"At last, we meet, my son," with those words spoken, I left behind my canvas husk. 

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- 04/11/'23