Missives from Isolation #5 – Character
This week’s Curtis Brown workout was a fun one, and I’d definitely recommend giving it a go. It was a bit of speed-writing from a prompt (about a graffiti artist), as usual, but this time I was given 10 seemingly random words that I had to incorporate into the story, in a random order, one every minute. Some of the words were a little weird (what’s ‘soup’ got to do with graffiti?), but it was a nice challenge to work them all in.
The idea was to just let loose, then look back at the writing and see what I’d accidentally revealed about the character I’d just spawned; hopes and fears and family life and all that sort of thing. I ended up with far more answers – and questions – than I thought I would.
If you’re writing at all, go over to the CB site and check this one out. It’s an exercise I think I’ll probably use again when I’m starting my next project, just to get the character balls rolling.
Anyway, if you want to read what I ended up with, here it is. I’ve bolded the prompt and the random words so you can see what I was working with – I carried on writing after I’d used them all to finish things off. Enjoy.
Spike was shaking as he wrote, the hiss of the spray-can sounding far too loud in his ears. The street was dark, the lights broken or dulled with age, and there was nobody out and about at this time of night – but still his hands trembled. He focused, tightening his grip on the can, coal-dust black forming gentle, sweeping curves as he played it across the old brickwork. There was faded paint already on it, the remnants of artwork past, but it was pretty much invisible now, all detail erased by many attempted cleanings. He didn’t need to fear some other artist’s retribution for covering over their work.
He did still fear the appearance of another person. Don’t rush, he thought to himself, finishing the curve, his hands operating independently of his brain as he tucked the black paint into his sports bag and pulled out a deep and rich red. Take your time. You’ve got plenty, in the grand scheme of things. His offhand went to the cord around his neck, where a long-dead insect trapped in amber resin hung, a gift from his mother long ago. He should look in on her, he knew. Maybe tomorrow. He’d told himself that almost every day for the last month. Maybe tomorrow he actually would.
He didn’t use much red, a few sparing highlights around the edges of the curve, bringing out the shape of the black. The line-work was the most important part, he knew. He tucked away the red and pulled out white, keeping to a limited palette but steering clear of the red areas for now, not wanting to make a pink and soupy mess of the wet paint. Carefully, he started filling in the line-work, knowing he could go over it again in black but still not wanting to. Societal guilt and personal fear were still making his free hand shake. His painting hand, at least, was now steady as a rock.
He heard a car pass and cut the spray, flattening himself against the other wall of the alley – he’d kissed wet paint before and didn’t fancy it again – turning himself into just another ragged shadow. The car didn’t stop, noise and headlights passing by. He waited a moment longer, then stepped out and continued. He moved a little faster now, filling in with broad strokes, knowing it was late and that despite his best efforts he did have lectures the next morning. His degree had probably already gone up in flames, but he might be able to salvage something from the ashes, if he actually put some work in. At least I’ll have this, he thought. No matter how poor his written work was, nobody could fault his practical skill. A diamond in the rough, he’d been called, though it’s very, very rough. Still, he chafed at having to work in the prison of the classroom. He’d never been happy with any art he hadn’t made out here, in the streets and the night – and of course he could never show that work to his professors, given that it was very much illegal. Thus his grades suffered silently. He didn’t much care. Numbers counted for nothing, in his mind.
Spike stepped back, and looked at what he’d done. Naked bone gleamed pure white, bound only by the linework that defined its grinning shape, the gaps between the tombstone teeth glimpses into the void. The eyes would have been as well – but they were blossoming, vibrant red, petals spiralling and spilling out in twin blooms, roses as perfect as any grown. The skull smiled down, its flower eyes seeming to see cosmic joke that Spike, despite the fact that he’d designed and drawn the thing, knew he would never get.
He considered adding twisting thorns, but decided against it. The green stems would ruin the palette of black and white and red. He liked it as it was.
Spike pressed himself back against the other wall of the alley, pulled out his phone, got the skull in frame. It was too dark to see properly, but he waited patiently, knowing that soon enough – Yes. Another car came past in the opposite direction, and as it did the light of its headlamps spilled into the alleyway just far enough to light Spike’s artwork clear as day. He snapped a photograph, looked at it. His timing had been perfect. He looked up at the skull again and nodded to himself. Good.
If it had hung in a gallery, people would probably have tried to ascribe all sorts of meanings to it, to the choice of colours, the significance of the roses, the shape of the skull itself. Spike would have liked to hear their questions. He didn’t have the faintest clue what the answers were. He never did. He just saw them in his mind’s eye, all the tags and murals and little doodles. He didn’t stop to think about what they meant. What mattered to him was that they were made.
A siren broke the night – distant, faint, but enough to jolt Spike into motion before he’d even really heard it. He slipped out of the alley, closing his bag tightly and arranging the old clothes inside on top of the cans of paint, setting off towards home with the measured speed of someone who wanted to be off the street, but not so fast that he looked like he was running away. He needn’t have worried. But he always did.
Someone would find the skull and roses in the daylight. They’d either ignore it with a sigh or phone the police in outrage, or set to scrubbing it away themselves. Whichever way, eventually it would be erased from existence like all the paintings that had gone before it on that mouldering stretch of wall.
But it would have been there, if only for a night. And that was all that mattered.
Spike walked away, and left his painting grinning at its own unknowable joke.
