[CW13] The Fallen Paintress

Preface

Maybe warnings for implied domestic abuse and adultery, violence. Not the way you might think though.

The Fallen Paintress

As long as I can remember I have been roaming the streets. The elder sometimes told me this place used to be a clean and lawful place, but I never got to see it in that state. Ever since I was small I was scouring the street for opportunities to acquire a meal, or something I could trade for one. Ever since I was small I had to watch the privileged from the shadows, see what crumbs they drop and hurry to lick them up.
Growing up I learned to align myself with the shadows and its inhabitants, those living in the big houses, castled from the realities down below I look down on. I could never understand how they could all just life their lives uncaring of what was happening under their noses.
So I became one of the “criminal elements plaguing the city”, I stole, I threatened, I vandalized. For a days worth of food I’d scribble whatever obscenities on the walls of those that wouldn’t even look at me, I took whatever I could and survived.

One day someone new was turning up, swept in with the rainwater to the gutters of society. But she wasn’t like what the cat usually drags in, I still remember the energy in the air from all the adults around that must have known who she was when she first set foot into the boss’ domain.
Never before have I heard the intricate noises the hinges of the lairs door make, so silent was the room when the adults spotted her. Her eyes were cold and her clothes were drenched from the rain. They were stained from the mud of the street and whatever abuse she must have suffered that day. She just walked past anyone too shocked at who just walked into the door up to the boss and… asked for work.
I was too young to understand who she was, I only knew how everyone reacted to her, the distance they kept from her, the judging looks they thrown her that I only knew from the rich people walking the streets looking at me. However her skills were known as well, so she got the job and has ever since.
Since nothing ever happens down here I kept my eyes out for her work, for the walls she painted and the jobs she got. And oh boy did she do work, harder than I saw anyone else. I mean she had to proof herself, had to proof she could pull it off, but even that must have limits.
I saw her pull stunts like paint an entire bridge in a night, with a fresco mocking the policy and line art so particular it was practically her signature. One of her early jobs and likely an effort by the boss to drag her down to us, to make sure where she had fallen to she would remain.
But I never knew who she was, nobody would say, only the old knew and they wouldn’t say. And I was too young to talk back or to go against what everyone done. So I too had thrown her looks, but I didn’t even knew what about. In a way it was kinda freeing for once having someone socially under you you could kick, someone even lower than the lowest that you were. But the older I got the less enjoyment that gave me, and the more I started to wonder who she was.

So this morning I stayed around HQ and saw everyone coming in and out picking up jobs for the week, when I saw her walk in like usual, pick a new project like usual, and walk out like usual.
However this time, I followed her. Not in an obvious way since I was still scared of being dragged down by associating with her, but I followed intending to find out.
I saw her head straight down the side-alleys to the one supplier that would sell her paint, and only for performing work for the boss. I saw her swipe food from a stall with a skill rivaling my own, I saw her creep the shadows like she grew up here… but she didn’t.
I tried to keep my distance but I was never good at stalking people, there was no way I would be unnoticed. But I also knew she is probably used to it? Like I cannot be the first trying to keep an eye on her, I know how many people distrust her. So I just followed along, till dusk when her work shift was about to begin.

Once the last light faded she moved so much faster it was hard keeping up. I see her turn a corner in the distance and run after, worrying I might loose her, what if she wanted to loose me? I almost trip when rounding the corner hastily… and then almost run into her??
There she stands, staring at the wall lost in thought. I look to the side, it’s just another wall like any other. I guess this was today’s assignment? Looked unremarkable, not like the usual stuff the boss commissions off of her.
“You wonder why, don’t you?”.
I reflexively jump back like someone pulled a knife on me, I somehow forgot how close I stood to her now: “uh.. huh… I guess”.
“Do you know who lives here?”. I do not.
I look up the wall, the fancy windows, the house is huge — the inhabitants have to be wealthy, one of the wealthiest on this street even. But for all that fancy it lacks security… what an odd place… It never really caught my attention before.
“You’d think it would be robbed every other day, right? But nobody around would ever do that”. Fine, she got my attention, I play the game: “So.. why don’t they? And why do you have job for this place today then?”.
Her look wanders down, the cold in her eyes goes below zero: “Boss’ never can just… let me be. It’s never just a job like everyone else.. I have to be reminded on the regular of my place”, she raises her head and gives me something I would have least expected: A smile. “Probably scared I’d ask for a higher pay some day, eh?”.
I burst laughing, the tension got to me. How dare that silly woman cut it with such a crude knife. But I’m only human… and I guess she is too. But I still want to play: “You didn’t really answer your own question yet: who lives here?”.
She looks off to the side so I can’t see her eyes. Her voice is quieter than just now but the city is growing quiet itself anyway: “So the adults really do not tell you… do they… I wonder why”. I didn’t really came here looking for more questions, she could at least give me something: “Yknow they’d say it’s rude to answer a question with a question”.
Her eyes snap back at me, a raised eyebrow — so much for me putting pressure on her. She lets out a sigh I can’t read: “Yknow… You can still turn back. Carry on like usual, look at me like the adults do without knowing why. Do you really want me to give you a reason to hate me?”.
Was that a threat? It doesn’t read like one… but I guess I’m the cat in this play so let’s see what curiosity gets me, I already wasted my day today that I could have spend on earning my keep: “I’m getting too old to hate on people for no reason — give me one?”.
That strange smile again, I wish she would stop that. She pauses, contemplates. Is it for her sake, or for mine? Another sigh: “The boss usually pays me to deliver my own unique style when painting for him, so everyone in the city knew it was me. But for this one… even if I were to try to hide it, they would know it’s my hand”. She stares at the can of paint in her right hand, it is a generic black that only someone like her can wield in a way that makes you wonder if the merchant sold you the same stuff as her. She looks up the building and I do too: “Most people ‘round be paying the big bucks to have their place be watched by the corrupt protectors of this place. But they never had to, they didn’t walk the streets kicking the dogs and throwing stones at the people beneath them. So while every other place here had to pay themselves out of the consequences of their actions… this place was unharmed”.
She opens her bag and grabs another can of paint, each hand now with one ready she starts painting lines on the pristine white wall, cutting through the serenity of it with precision. I don’t know what she came here to paint, and I’m not entirely sure she is either, but I just watch her put line after line on the wall before she breaks the soft background of the swish the paint bottles make in use: “When I was little mama used to say never kick down, never insult those you can and see if you can those you can’t. I don’t think she was just that good a person, I think she just wanted to ensure she wouldn’t suffer the the same wrath when the guiltiness come out”.
I don’t comment, I just watch and listen, to the squishes and to her story: “I guess you could say I’m the black sheep of the family now, eh?” she says that while drawing what I first thought was a cloud… but I guess not. So that’s why she only needed black and white for this one.
“I listened to her advice, yknow? Not out of the goodness of my heart but because I figured ‘hey, what if you end up down there one day yknow?’. Didn’t save me in the end did it..?”, she chuckles: “But maybe it is what saved me after all… the boss could also just have kicked me out, let me starve on the street. Guess I should be thankful?”. The sheep on the wall is joined by another, she draws them so fast I can barely keep up with her story. The longer she draws lines in silence the more the swishing of the can feels like the reeling of a fishing rod, and I bite: “so how’d you end up here then?”.
“Simple.”, she pauses for a moment and looks at me: “I fucked up, royally so to speak”. She looks into my blank face, not the reveal she had hoped for: “I guess you already guessed that… but I can’t stress enough how badly I messed up”. She’s right, she can’t: “Paint me a picture then”.
She faces the wall again, her voice bounces off it like splatters of paint: “The family wasn’t really good people, they were pragmatic people. Kiss the hands above and smile at the ones below and hope to be sat at every table and overlooked when the pitchforks come out. I got the latter part, but I failed the first”. A third sheep joins the wall as her grip on the cans tightens, and her lines become more erratic: “Yknow I thought I was smart, I was young and I was smart. I thought we didn’t have it all, and I wanted to fix that. We were complacent — in my young eyes — so I wanted more for us. I wanted more for me”.
A can is empty, she throws it down the street with unjustified strength, pulls out a new one, red: “My hand was given to some man of some family, so I thought well if I’m already being sold I might as well make a profit, right? I didn’t even like that man.. I don’t think I ever liked one, so having to hold his hand was all the justification I needed to be horrible to him. I extracted whatever I could out of him, and I never really asked nicely. Poor bastard probably never even wanted my hand to begin with, but what did it matter to me, he was the one trapping me in his house right? So whatever I did was retaliation, retaliation against evil, so whatever goes right? So I took what wealth I got, I took whatever I could get my hands on, I never gave anything back, I got information out of him and his families business and sold it to others for way below market value. I walked the streets at night and made his family suffer the rumors, he became the one who couldn’t handle his partygirl wife. He was weak and I became cruel. While he had to sit on the phone with his mother justifying why another necklace disappeared I slept with the maid a few rooms over.. and she wasn’t very quiet when I had my hands on her I tell you”.
Her voice became less muted, I’m starting to worry she is gonna wake the people inside, but her drawing just gets faster the louder she gets: “So there I was, taking from him, taking from his family, taking from whatever poor woman I found on the street at night, taking whatever goodwill my heads-down family had for me”.
She stops.
I look at the wall… a black sheep with bloodstains in its wool, next to it three sheep, dead. Guts hanging out. I don’t think I ever saw her draw something this… crude.
She turns around to me, the smile from earlier joined by a craze in the eyes: “You know one day his mother came up to me, asked me when I stopped all this and would give her family an heir? Yknow what I did?”. She looks back up the wall, so do I.
I don’t have to ask what she did. She let’s out another sigh: “I was too young and stupid to get away with something like that, so I was thrown to the street. Guess my mans family didn’t wanted to deal with the legal system and hoped I’d just starve or be picked up by the riffraff and become their plaything. Too bad for them people didn’t think that highly of me here either”. She packs her leftover cans in her bag and starts walking down the street, I follow.
I walk just a few steps behind her, I really don’t wanna be seen with her… especially now. But I was still curious: “So what’s the plan now? You just gonna humiliate yourself every other day like this?”.
She stops, I walk just a step closer, two steps between us. She turns around with those familiar dead eyes, but the smile: “What do you mean? I get paid to paint whatever, I don’t have to hold no mans hand, and I can tell you the shadows might not even take my money, but the red lights down the street gladly accept my patronage… and the booze now tastes the same as it did back then when it was in fancy glass cabinets”. She turns around and starts walking, with a more playful and mocking stride: “What now? I’m having the time of my life kid. I get all the party and nobody ever expects anything of me anymore”, she laughs.

I guess I really asked her to give me a reason to hate her, and I got what I ordered. Although I can’t help and wonder if she is just giving a dishonest smile to a miserable life… but in a way, I at least understand now.

[CW13] The Fallen Paintress