A gust of wind whipped across the field, making the wheat ripple in golden waves. I pulled my sweater over my exposed shoulders.
Kellen’s long hair dipped down as they looked at me. Their face was angelic, framed by the blue sky above, their long lashes drooped over their blue eyes like they were half-asleep. Whenever we made eye contact, it was like peering through a window into another world. Glimpses of otherworldly beauty that made me want to climb inside and see the world how Kellen did.
But then their eyes flicked away and the connection dimmed.
“You’re thinking about someone else,” I pouted, pinching Kellen’s thigh.
Kellen smiled. It was never an accident. They took such deliberation in their every action, it often felt as though they could see how their actions would affect the world ahead of time, that’s how carefully they moved.
“It’s nearly ready,” Kellen said gently, scratching my leg in a spot that I liked. Their long nails really got through to my skin.
I shivered as a strong gust blew over us. “Do you have to finish this one?”
“Of course.”
“Today? Can it wait? I have another courier job tomorrow. We should spend the time we have together.”
Kellen cupped my chin and stroked my cheek with their thumb. “That’s why it has to be today. I want us to do this together.”
I struggled to say the words. Kellen’s expression told me that they already knew how I felt, but they would never address it unless I spoke out first. “I’m not sure I want to be there when it… I guess I just don’t understand..”
Kellen looked over to the house that sat on this plot of idyllic countryside, a long driveway stretching far into the distance, empty roads in all directions. We were in a beautiful piece of nowhere.
“I know it’s hard. But good art is difficult. It challenges the soul, forces it to face itself or risk stifling itself like a flame without air. It’s important to me that you face this.”
Kellen gently lifted my head out of their lap and stood, dusting their pants off. They held out their hand to me. “Come. It’s time.”
“Okay,” I whispered. I took their hand and let myself be led to the house.
The screen door swung open with the wind, banging against the interior wall. Sunshine streamed through the windows and bounced off of the many picture frames that hung on the walls, leaving multi-coloured spots on the white walls like shards of a kaleidoscope broken and scattered.
The smell of fresh paint made my head hurt.
Kellen led me up the steps, their bare feet sliding on the wood of each step with the grace found in a pianist’s wrists. On the third step, the stair creaked loudly and a man’s voice rang out from above.
“Don’t come up here, you bastards!”
Kellen ignored him and ascended the stairs anyway. They let go of my hand as they turned at the landing and stepped into one of the second-floor rooms. The man inside began to cuss Kellen out, shouting every slur in the book, plus a few I hadn’t heard before.
I took a deep breath and followed Kellen inside.
The man was a pot-bellied farmer in his sixties, stripped down to his underwear. His hands were tied above his head and attached to a hook hanging from the ceiling. He turned as he struggled, feet barely touching the floor which was painted a pure white.
The paint had rubbed off on the bottom of his feet slightly. We’d had to paint around him.
Buckets of paint of every colour sat in a perfectly spaced circle around him. As the owner of the house spit expletives at us, he thrashed and swung, trying to kick over the buckets.
They were just out of reach.
I felt sick.
“Kellen, can we just let him go?”
“No,” Kellen answered, staring at the belly of the man. They managed to somehow speak smoothly and still be heard over the angry shouting. “I promise it will be over quickly. But please, never close your eyes.”
Kellen then raised their hands, as if quieting an applauding crowd. Fingers quivering. A maestro waiting to begin.
The man’s protests were cut short as he gasped in pain. Something moved underneath the skin of his belly. He hadn’t been so round when we had first came to his home. Sweat ran down his legs and dripped off of him. Another violent movement in his stomach and his eyes bulged.
Kellen raised his hands higher.
The movements became sharper, more erratic. The man’s mouth hung open and he let out a deep gurgling sound.
Then came a noise like ripping leather. His belly split. I flinched as blood drops hit my face.
Kellen sent me calming waves of emotion.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think as something living pulled free from its birthing sac. It chittered with a mouth that had many tiny arms waving around it, tasting the air. Its body was slim but tall, with a carapace covered in long hairs. Compound eyes gave off a chromatic sheen as it viewed the world for the first time. Six clawed legs scrabbled clumsily on the hardwood floor. Three slender tails waved, shaking off flecks of blood.
It extended a tentative leg, probing forward until it bumped one of the paint cans. Its legs curled inwards, as if recoiling in pain.
“Go,” Kellen said to it, flicking out their fingers.
The thing chittered and jerked forward, legs moving madly now. It crashed over the paint cans, sending red and green spilling out over the floor. A blue can got stuck on its leg during its hurried escape and it hit the door frame, cracking it slightly.
I listened to it crash into a wall out in the hall and then the sound of its legs struggling to gain traction.
It felt like all the air had left with it. My heart pounded in my head.
“Kellen,” I said in the quietest voice.
“What is it?”
I didn’t dare look at anything but the floor. Trails of black and blue mixing with the slowly spreading pool of red. The merging made it all become a gray sludge, steadily getting darker as the man bled into it.
“You just killed him.”
“Yes. And yet life was not diminished. One soul has replaced another.”
I flinched again, as that soul crashed down the stairs, crying out at the strange new world it had found itself in.
“You think that thing has a soul?”
“It may breathe differently, but it breathes all the same. My work doesn’t extinguish life. It’s cyclical, it’s regenerative, it’s reincarnation.”
I shut my eyes, headache pounding as the creature screeched downstairs.
“Chiara, look at me.”
Their voice was everything. I looked.
Kellen’s eyes didn’t have an ounce of guilt with them. Their emotions were pure. And yet for the first time, I was stricken by how differently I felt.
The sounds from below began to peter out into light scratching against wood.
Kellen took my hand again and led me.
Streaks of paint ran along the wall and dotted the floor in staccato notes like bursts of fireworks. The lines were incredibly varied and the sunlight gave even more depth to the combinations.
Kellen and I descended the stairs, careful not to step on the newly painted path. We followed Kellen’s creation through the dining room where it had upended the table and into the kitchen.
There it lay, twitching on the kitchen tiles, paint beginning to dry on its pointed limbs. Kellen hummed softly as we watched it slowly die, unaccustomed to the strange environment it had been brought into.
“Was that contradictory of me?” Kellen asked. “Is the worth of a life weighed by how long it lived? Or is worth determined by its accomplishments? This child had little of either and yet I can’t help but feel as though it’s life was worth just much as the farmer’s. Coalesced and intertwined, crushed into a single dizzying note, such a thing of intense being.”
“It’s ugly.” It slipped free from my mouth.
“You can’t polish just one side of a coin. Beauty is ugliness. Both are enhanced in the presence of the other.”
I stared at the wings on the creature’s back, fluttering. They were too small, there was no way it could have ever flown.
Kellen stroked my head. “You promised when you became my Wolf that you would accept every part of me. You think it’s ugly and I love that. I accept that part of you.”
The limb of the bug scrawled yellow lines in jerky patterns and the more I stared at it, the more the patterns looked like a face.
“Looks like we’ll have to eat dinner in the living room. It knocked over the table and it’s a part of the piece now.”
It felt like a piece of lead had lodged itself in my chest. Heavy. Stifling. My lungs had to work around it and I never felt like I could take a proper full breath. The stink of paint seeped into my skin.
It took everything I had to tear my gaze away from the sight. Kellen’s hand fell away as I backed up.
“I’m going for a run,” I called out. “I’ll be back before dinner.”
I fled before getting a response, out the open door and out onto the driveway. The long stretch of flat road never looked more enticing.
Stretching down, I touched my padded feet, then bent my knees.
I breathed in deep and launched into a run.
The air whipped past as I outpaced the wind, my translucent second eyelids protecting me from any contaminants as I ran faster than any human could. Air pumped in and out of my lungs, driving out the bad air. I felt the pleasurable buzz that only came with fulfilling the purpose of my Shape.
The countryside became a smear of colours, like one of Kellen’s pieces and that only drove me to go faster.
I ran until my legs ached and my lungs burned. I slowed, coughing. My heart was still racing and it wasn’t from the exercise.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
Why did life have to be so complicated? I just wanted things to be simple. If I could just stop feeling this way for a bit, I feel like I could gather my thoughts, maybe find the explanation behind Kellen’s actions. Something that proved what I felt deep down, that Kellen was a beautiful, thoughtful person.
But the ache wouldn’t go away.
I just wanted to run and to laugh and to fall asleep holding someone I trusted.
And…
Tears welled up in my eyes. And I don’t trust Kellen anymore.
I loved Kellen, but I would never be able to accept this part of them. That seemed crystal clear for the first time. But I couldn’t fight them. It wouldn’t work. It never had before. I would run away like I always did and then I would come back and compromise and apologize, because I just wanted to feel good for a little bit.
I was bound in an invisible rope and there was only one way to cut it.
So that was it.
Only one question remained: Do you have the will?
The next hour was a blur as I traveled to town and back, finally arriving at the front steps of the house.
Kellen sat in a chair on the porch, drawing in a sketchbook. They looked up and smiled.
“Stew should be done any minute now.”
“I’ll go plate it,” I said, sweat running down my back. “You can stay and relax.”
I walked hurriedly towards the front door.
Kellen caught my hand as I walked past.
“Did you enjoy your run?” they asked.
My heart tried leaping free from my throat. I swallowed. “Yeah.”
They examined my expression for a moment, then let go, returning their attention to their drawing. “That’s good.”
I went to the kitchen, stepping cautiously over the corpse to get to the bubbling pot on the stovetop. I stuck a finger in and tasted it. Then I searched the drawers for spices. Finding them, I took a handful out and shook them generously into the pot. I paused, then added some more. Then I got two bowls out and ladled the stew into them.
My hand crept to my pocket, my pulse beating against my fingertips as they closed around a small packet.
“Need any help, Chiara?” Kellen called out from the living room.
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t turn back from this. I shakily ripped the packet open and emptied it into the bowl, then stirred it thoroughly.
Kellen’s gaze followed me as I brought the bowls into the living room. I gently placed a bowl in front of them on the coffee table, then sat on the other end, folding my legs awkwardly.
Kellen smiled and gestured at the paint cans that they had gathered and stacked along the wall, paint oozing down the sides.
“Sorry for the smell. I opened the windows, so it shouldn’t ruin our meal.”
Sweat dripped from my brow. “Uhuh.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to shower first? I can wait.”
“Nope. No. I’m so hungry.”
Kellen watched me, then closed their eyes and breathed in. “It smells wonderful. Did you add something?”
“Yeah, just some spices. I don’t even know what.”
Kellen nodded, still not picking up their spoon. “Chiara.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“It’s so obvious that you’re panicking about something,” they chided me with gentle amusement. “You can’t hide anything from me. Let’s see. It has something to do with the food. Did you put something in you shouldn’t have?”
“Yes,” I said, opening my eyes. I found myself paralyzed by their stare. “I just want to know. You asked me to accept every part of you. That goes both ways, doesn’t it? Will you accept this part of me?”
Kellen bowed their head. “Yes,” they said and picked up the bowl to take a long drink of the broth. I watched their throat move as they swallowed once, twice, and then set the bowl down.
They sighed appreciatively. “Delicious.”
All the nervous tightness inside of me dissipated in a single word. I had made the right choice.
“I poisoned you.”
Kellen looked down at the bowl, expression unchanging. “I see.”
We sat in silence. The wind rustled the wheat outside and the wind chimes clanged.
I braced myself for the moment Kellen would lash out, a vindictive retaliation, a lover’s revenge, dragging me down with them. It would only be fair. I would embrace it wholeheartedly. Even if a bug burst from my stomach.
But Kellen just sat there, looking at me with a faint smile on their face.
“Aren’t you going to kill me?” I asked between shallow breaths.
“No,” Kellen said. They raised a hand and I saw how shaky they were already. “I would rather you lived. I think that will be punishment enough.”
They leaned over and plunged their hand into a bucket of sky blue paint.
Tears ran down my face, landing with audible plops in the stew.
“I’ll miss you!” I sobbed.
Kellen’s pale dreamy face was full of joy.
“I know.”
They stood and halfway to their feet, their legs gave out. They toppled, hitting the wall with their shoulder and slumping down, dragging a streak of paint across the white surface.
I sat and cried.
If only I could forget this moment. If only I could let this all go and drift into a thousand pieces, waiting for a new age where I could start over, with a new face and a new hope. I just want to stop feeling guilty.