2023 Story Collection

Painter of Worlds IV

Aurora stood on the balcony, basking in the warmth of the late afternoon sun. She felt arms wrap around her, she smiles leaning into his touch. Standing there in his loving embrace made her feel like the luckiest woman alive.

"I miss you," his words brush against her neck as he speaks. She shivers in delight.

"How can you miss me when I'm right here, in your arms?" She chuckles. "Is this not enough?" She teases.

"But I can't feel you in my arms," he says. A drop of sweat rolls down her face. "Is this real?"

"What are you talking about?" She asks confused and suddenly very hot. "If your arms aren't around me, then who's are?"

Suddenly his grip tightens and she can barely breathe. The sun has grown so bright she can't see and so hot she can feel her skin burning. She screams.

It seems to last an eternity, the pain making her almost pass out. She is about to give up all hope when the sun begins to recede and her vision begins to come back. The pain lessening, slowly.

She suddenly remembers Samuel. She looks down at the arms wrapped around her. They are melting, like wax. The colors running down her clothes, smoking hot.

The heat of the hot wax melts through her clothes catching it on fire and burning her. She screams again but this time not from pain but from horror.

She jumps back and looks at the man she loves melting before her very eyes. His body has melted into the deck, burning the wood, his face slowly becoming distorted as it burns. She rushes over and hugs him, unafraid of the hot wax and flames. She holds him as he melts away, the wax burning her skin. She cries.

"It's all my fault," she holds him as the last bits of him fall through her fingers. "I should have been more careful, I should-"

Aurora wakes with a start. Breathing heavy, her hands shaking. She forces herself to sit up in her bed. She forces in deep breaths trying to calm her racing, broken heart.

She rubs her arms, her skin still burning from the wax. She looks around hoping to see Samuel there, but only finds her empty bedroom.

She falls back into her bed, her breathing finally returning to normal and lets the last of the nightmare dissipate.

"I hate nightmares." She'd been having them every night, which wasn't unusual but they had morphed, no longer random monsters and killers. Now they were filled with Samuel.

The first one he was a marble statue that was pushed off its pedestal and shattered at her feet.

Another he was a painting on the side of a building that got painted over as she sunk into the pavement, unable to do anything but watch.

Yesterday's Samuel was a drawing of chalk on the sidewalk that got washed away in the rain.

"This is too much," she holds her head in her hands. "I can't deal with this anymore."

It had been a few weeks and the full moon was approaching. Not fast enough. She thought. She might go crazy before she gets the chance to see her lover again. She looks up at the portrait of Samuel hanging on her wall.

She still wasn't quite sure how it worked. Does she just need to fall into the painting? Does it have to be an accident? If so how does she make it happen? What triggers it? Why the full moon?

She had tried to use the new moon but it appeared not to be strong enough. She could touch the surface of the painting and it would ripple slightly, but that was all.

She also tried when she was high on emotion-which seemed to be all the time lately-but still had no luck. The best was a leaf that got blown in through the painting from his world to hers. She was beginning to loose hope.

"I'll find a way," she says resolve. She looks into painting Samuels eyes, "no matter what it takes, I'll make my way back to you."

---

"That's it," he says throwing the sheets from himself. He sits up running a hand over his face. That was the third nightmare that night.

They all began nice, a moment of love that slowly shifted into disaster. It always ended with Aurora dying or leaving him.

He shook his head to rid the images of her dying in his arms from his mind. It didn't work but it did make him dizzy-which at least for a moment, distracted him.

Samuel stands and stares at the small stack of drawings she'd made that night. The one on top being the one she fell into.

She was moving quickly towards him, looking like a lioness about to pounce. But she'd slipped on the drawings she'd made the night before. Her face had shifted from fierce and daring to one of fear and surprise.

Samuel had jumped from the bed to catch her but was too late. She'd fallen on-or rather in-her drawing.

He'd tried to follow her through but nothing seemed to work. He'd cried that day. He was a mess for the first week after, blaming himself.

But he'd known that he had no choice but to continue living and just trust that she'd find a way back to him. He didn't want her to come back to him in such a pathetic state of wallowing and so he lost himself in work.

He wanted nothing more than to hold her again but the best he could do now is hold on to the memories they'd shared.

A few times he'd thought he might've gone mad and imagined the whole thing, but her drawings were evidence. Well that and her thin night clothes she'd left discarded around his room that now hang over the back of the small desk chair.

He sighs running a hand through his long black hair. The memory of her gently pulling it while kissing him comes back and makes him groan.

"God, I need a distraction." He walks out to his balcony, looking out at the town below, just as he'd done that fateful day when she'd fallen for him.

He was not the same man he was before he'd met her and he knew he'd never be the same again. It was fine by him, he'd never want to go back. That life now felt boring and pointless without her. Her presence had filled his life with the meaning and purpose it hadn't had before.

From the moment he first held her, she was all consuming. He wondered if she felt the same, if she'd felt even an ounce of what he felt in those moments. And that's what they were, moments. Far too short. She was something addicting to him. He knew he'd never be able to get enough.

Maybe that's what made being apart from her like this so hard for him? Maybe it was not being able to say goodbye? Maybe it was the idea of a future with her being ripped away in a moment?

He thinks of her that morning, naked. Her skin glowing in the morning sun. Her skin still speckled with bits of paint on it. She was not shy about it either, her posture had told him to look. So he had.

He groans at the memory and tries to think of other things but she was always in his head now, never leaving. He was filled with her memory.

He turns back into his room his heart feeling empty, mourning the loss of her. Yet his mind is so overwhelming filled with her.

Don't make me wait too long.

To be continued...

December 17, 2023