The Color of Blood

by Mona Kabbani

I hope to witness this corruption firsthand.

This is both my release and my curse. A release because what better expression of oneself is there than art? A curse because the colored pencils never get it right.

They’ll never be vibrant enough,

never expressive enough, to revea...

“Thank you.” I’m smiling. And I’m flattered. Really. Because, to be quite frank, I hate this piece.

But seeing it up close now, it’s breathtaking. A shade of blue I rarely see.

So light and airy, as if coy.

When I ask her if she wants my number, I’ll take her phone and make sure all location data is turned off. If that doesn’t work, I’ll simply vanish. It would be a shame, but no color is worth the risk.

The name I tell her does not matter. It is not real, of course.

I am, in fact, a professional artist. A painter, to be precise. I am quite good at it and have made a fine fortune

My inspiration comes from my unique comprehension of the world, my ability to perceive what I have coined as the divine spectrum, something no one else can see but all can feel when gazing upon my paintings.

A play with the unknown.

An invitation for viewers to dare gaze upon something with no guardrails.

If the torture of never being able to truly know, to accurately express oneself, drives one to create.”

She is thinking of all the ways she can help me. Fix my soul like her therapist fixed hers whilst keeping me damaged enough to still be a success. But she doesn’t know. And I can’t fault her for the ignorance, can I?

A soul needs to exist first in order to be fixed.

I’m around her like a petal-veined snake, hypnotizing her, sheathing her in decadence.

So with her assent, I run the edge of the knife across her throat, splitting the skin, the muscles, the cartilage.

I am a blank canvas. A nothing person. A void that can be decorated and designed but never filled.

But no color is worth the risk. Not even this one.

I’m a paranoid artist, I told the consultant. I don’t want a single soul laying eyes upon the art I decide to throw away.

This close, that color, that divine, unprecedented color, brings tears to my eyes.

“The boardwalk,” I breathe. “What was that?” “The boardwalk. I’d take you there. If you’d like.”

mesentery

She sticks her tongue out and I ponder how much pressure it would take to bite the muscle off. If I could use her own teeth as a paper cutter. To truly feel her tongue against mine could I swallow it whole? Would I? How would it feel to consume a piece of her?

And perhaps if you hadn’t laughed, your face would still be intact.

And the thought passes me so sweetly amidst this world-shattering violence: If I am a void, then she is utter totality.

“What are you?” I ask, unaware the question ever formed in my thoughts. She bites her bottom lip, eyes large and hypnotizing. “I’m yours.”

It’s from the reality of sitting across from a girl who defines her life as mundane despite apparently being unable to die.

“The truth is I have no idea why I’m like this. Why I can be cut and bled but never die. It feels good. It’s the only time anything ever feels good.”

They want transcendence intermingled with a corruption that will leave them impossibly ill. Psychological violation.

I don’t want to make people uncomfortable. I don’t want to scare them away. I want them to accept me. To love me. I want to lurk amongst them, truth hidden. I want to be seen as an artist, not a monster.

It was like dipping my hands into a vat of liquid gold. Everything about him was wonderful: soft where I was rough, curved where I was sharp.

I wanted to touch him forever.

Alas, the spark I had been dreading. The ember to commence the fire that would destroy us both.

“You killed him?” Zahra says, bewildered. “You asked me about my first.” She frowns. “But you loved him.”

“What was his name?” “I don’t remember . . . just that he was number one.” A lie. His name was Alexander.

I stop painting, step back, and look at her. “Can you love something you’re only intent on killing?”

“I don’t think you look at it that way. I think you immortalize them.

I think the way you think about it is that you’re turning them into something greater than they could ever be alive.”

I hope I am not forgotten. I hope my art bleeds through these tarps and stains my floors. I hope Zahra’s color becomes a permanent installation. I hope I bleed into her and she into me. I hope we can combine to create something cataclysmic.

Not a body composed of parts, but a dream. A cataclysmic vision. An event horizon.

I’m inside a god. And this god is filled with everything.

Did you know what’s inside of you? Did you know that there are entire worlds inside of you? The snails, the snails, oh god, the snails.

On the way back to my studio, to Zahra, I tell myself it’s nothing serious. Just a game I like to play. A god with his ants.

Oh, you know. Tortured artist and all that.

I see nothing, but it’s me. Void, that empty space.

He’s since stopped screaming. But his body is still so warm. So fucking warm.

This is mine. This is my story. My design, my making, my— A soft voice. “Void?” I open my eyes and look up. I see. I see it all so clearly now. Zahra stands before me,

I have died every day since without you.