The Soul Painter [completed]

-Chapter Twenty-

Location: Central

I have been out walking around the city for about an hour because Femi told me that she was going to paint something drastic. And that apparently I have to be gone because she doesn't want me seeing it before it's finished.

She must be crazy. There's no way I can leave her at home for more than an hour at a time. What if someone breaks in? What if she eats something and chokes on it? Then there's the whole other topic pertaining to that weird thing that happened the other day...

I shake my head at the thought and a pesky little chill runs up my spine. 

She's fine. She's fine. There's nothing wrong with her. She promised. 

I laugh at myself. 

As if someone can promise that they are perfectly okay, or will be perfectly okay. That's just ridiculous. 

My footsteps aren't as quick as I would like, because the bags of groceries that I'm carrying are beginning to cut into my hands, and I want to get home. To see that painting that she's working on, to eat a peanut butter sandwich, and to make sure that she's okay. Especially to make sure she's okay.

She'd hate it if she knew that I worry about her so much, but I don't care. Someone has to worry, right? There's not anyone but me for the job. 

I take the turn off the curb, stepping over the nasty muck in the deeper area of the gutter. Newspapers, snack food bags, cigarette butts. You name it, and it is floating in the standing water right there, next to the road. 

I grimace at the reek of raw sewage that's somewhere down the alley I just passed, from a busted pipe that will probably never get fixed. Not in this year, anyway. Anyone living nearby will have to eat, sleep, and live with that smell, and the people living in that alleyway will have to move. 

Busted sewage pipes are a big deal. 

I can see my place from here. Its freshly painted door is so bright that it almost scares me to touch it. Growing up in such a dull town starts to get to a person's head after a while.

I stop at the door, and after setting the bags of groceries down, knock repeatedly. 

"Femi! I know I'm early, but will you let me in?" I knock again, but there's no human noise coming from in there. Her symphonies are playing though, full blast.

"Femi?" I knock again. No answer. 

With my stomach beginning to do wild excuses for acrobatic exercises, I dart around to the garage door in the alley, silently hoping that I left it unlocked. I did.

With a grunt I slam the dented, scraped-up garage door to the ceiling. 

"Femi!"

I see at once what she was painting. On the largest blank wall in the shop there's the outline of a hummingbird, something that I've only ever seen in pictures, almost ten feet from the top of its head to the lowest length of its tail. It covers the entire wall. 

And I see her.

"Femi?"

She's sitting on the floor, her back against the wall, hugging her knees up to her chest with her face buried in them. She looks up when I speak, but her eyes are hazy with pain.

"Paris? You were supposed to be gone for a whole other hour." She groans and tries to straighten up. 

I fall to my knees beside her, take both of her hands, drop them, and then quickly feel her forehead.