Demon Stories: Vol. 2

Belleza: Painter's Eye, 1480, Spain

Belleza

Painter's Eye

1480, Spain

A tiny pin prick of cold blesses my skin and I am awake. Slowly, awake. His breaths. They are slow. The pin moves, soft. Little flourish, a precious turn of the smallest hairs. Horse hair, cut so small they are impossible. He made this.

It disappears, the sound of a gentle splash, not too hurried. The pin prick comes again, but it is not a pin prick.

It is a brush, coldest paint because it is coldest in here.

"What are you painting on me?" My eyes do not open, he is concentrating. Slow beats, his heart. So he is concentrating this much.

"Don't look."

"I won't look."

"Fall asleep again."

"I can not."

"Then don't move."

"I won't move."

He doesn't answer, as is his way. I do not question it. He is always quiet, hardly ever saying a word. A fierce creature, hardly human. Who is he? I don't know. But he is here, as I am here. Existing close to one another. I don't know him.

"Your skin breathes."

Yet I know him, from such few words.

"I breathe," I reply to him, turning my face to him without looking.

"Hm."

He's acknowledged this, yet it wasn't the meaning he meant. I know this. Though of such few words, his words speak more than others. No others. I don't want to think of them. I want to stay in our world, where only the two of us exist. Where only he exists.

I wonder what he is thinking of, or if he thinks at all. In my head, I can see the skin white of him, the snow white skin and the purple eyes. The red-purple that is so complex. I can see his white-blonde hair, so white it might not be blonde. I have never studied it too closely, as his eyes I haven't. He never lets me. Always staring at me as a hawk, and his nose is beak-like, too, giving him the look of a white hawk. A lonely white hawk.

"Your skin is melting it."

"Oh."

He says a word I don't know. I pain to know it, but I don't know it. So he doesn't get an answer, and I know he wasn't searching for one. He never is. If he were to have it we never speak, it would be. Yet I speak, so he gives the smallest bit here and there. It is a gift.

I can feel his deft hands looping tiny bits, the cold paint becomes warm as it stays.

A long streak of the brush brings what I wish is color to my belly, away from my chest. And now I know what this is a preparation for. Without words, I know.

The brush would be playful if he were playful, yet he never plays. He is as cold as the brush, yet there can be a warmth. A warmth, when the paint melts into skin, when the brush prods the hot skin and the pain goes away.

"Open your mouth."

"Why?"

"Open your mouth."

As cold as a doctor. My lips part, ripping apart the edges as the cold has dried them and fused them.

"Red."

I don't answer, patiently with an open mouth.

"Don't move."

I don't.

"Now."

Now what- and warmth floods, choking and the air rips from me as the mouth skin ripped and I'm moving and I can't stop moving but he is laughing and oh, his laugh. So rare, so deep. The red he said is flowing down my body, down my neck and to my nethers as I shoot up, sitting up in the bed with my hands over my mouth. The red bleeds through my fingers, down my hands and my arms.

Blood, hot and fresh. I can smell the flesh, young and sweet.

My eyes are open, and I can see him. Smell him. The young and sweet smell is on him, but it is not his smell. It's her's. He's sitting there, calm and collected. His large hands are on his knees, nails pale as milky blind eyes.

He is so cold.

"I will paint you. Now."

My air rushes into me, I hold my throat trying to grasp it well.

"Stay there. Stay, hold yourself and close your eyes."

Close my eyes. Yes.

"Don't move."

I won't move.

Brushing movement, ripping against ripping. A small movement of my eye, a peek.

He has a large white canvas on his knees as he sits on his crude wooden chair, the paint on the rough table beside him. He is staring at its whiteness, all white. His purple-red eyes study, sharp. Sharper than his painter's knife, sharp as how he must be to survive.

"I told you not to open your eyes. You've ruined it."

Biting words, like the Winter's wind outside.

"They are closed."

No answer. A scratching sound, only little scratching sounds. I relax, hold my neck for him.

He is sketching, the time for words has passed. As tiny, and cold as they are.