vignette ~ Art Student

Someone wanted her dead. Katie Watkins didn’t know why, and she really didn’t know who, but this time they’d gone too far. She was an art student, for chri’sake. An art student! What the hell could be dangerous about an art student?! And this being on alert all the time was driving her crazy. Just as soon as she’d think she was ahead of the game, she found she was behind again. Dammit!

She angrily grabbed her backpack, threw in her three best pairs of socks, three pair of black high-cut cotton underpants, three turtlenecks, and two pair of jeans. On top of the clothes went her wool clogs, a hairbrush, a minimum of make-up, and her toothbrush. There was barely room for her pencils before she smashed the top down and tugged it shut. No room left now, not even for a bra which was just as well since she hadn’t been wearing one for months now. She’d just never had much bosom and not wearing a bra was pure bliss. Total freedom. Guys didn’t know how good they had it.

She shucked out of her pajamas, put on her boy-leg panties, her winter gramicci’s, a long-sleeved t-shirt, a fleece vest, her rain jacket, and her boots. Then she stuffed her interior pockets with breakfast bars, slid a bottle of water in each front pocket, slipped her pack on her back, grabbed a fleece throw from the couch and drew it across her shoulders, took the stairs to the basement, and exited into the alley.

Her night vision had always been better than 20/20 and she’d counted her blessings on that score many times in the last 13 months. 13 long months. That was how long ago it was that her nightmare started, right in the middle of the chemistry lab.

Everyone had three assignments to do and used the lab equipment to do them. Lindsey Rockford had gone in on a Saturday and set up her last assignment. It was pretty straightforward -- a little of this and a tincture of that. She’d only stepped away from things for a minute to go to the bathroom, when the room disappeared in a blast of heat and smoke.

She’d been terrified the whole building was going to collapse, like 9/11, and had beat feet to get away from that building and every other one close by. Her backpack had been in that room, which pissed her off because she knew the expense of replacing all that stuff would hurt her pocketbook. But she had pretty well calmed down by the time she got back to her dorm room.

She walked in, answered her ringing phone, and heard, “We missed you this time.” “Wha ... what?” she had stuttered into the dial tone. It took three seconds for things to fall into place, then she had grabbed her roommate’s backpack, hurriedly stuffed her important things into it, headed out, and never looked back.

It would never occur to an ordinary person to try and just disappear, but hey. Both her parents had been CIA and she took spook stuff seriously. They were dead, she was accountable to no one, and turning into mist in the night was no biggee.

The second incident had happened 7 months later. Becky Maye had finally found a pretty good, quite insignificant job slinging hash in a roadside joint down on old Route 66 somewhere west of Oklahoma City. The boss liked her attitude, her cooking, and her looks, and had thrown in, rent-free, the small apartment above the garage of the owner’s house next door. No questions were ever asked, and she put in more than her share of work. And even though the boss was gruff, grizzled, and grumpy, it was an arrangement which worked quite well for everyone.

Then one muggy summer day the air conditioner went on the fritz, and all the heat in the kitchen gave her a raging headache. Donny Joe, the busboy who thought he was a stud muffin, kept razzing her about her tight jeans and she finally had to get away. Telling the boss she was taking a bathroom break, she went over to her apartment, took three aspirin, and a number of deep breaths. The air was stifling even with all the windows open, and voices from the parking lot drifted up to her as she tried to relax her shoulders and neck.

“Howdy Hank, how’s the wife?”

“Carla, if I done told you once, I told you a thousand times, don’t twist your fingers in your brother’s hair!”

“Excuse me, have you seen this woman?”

“And I said to her, ‘Sugar, you can lick my popsicle stick any ole time you want to!’”

“Excuse me, have you seen this woman?”

“Mommy! Billy said he was going to behead my Barbie. Mommmmyyyyyy!”

“Excuse me, have you seen this woman?”

Ohmygod. What she was hearing finally fought its way through her headache, and she grabbed her billfold, stuck two breakfast bars in her back pockets, and hurried down the back way. She tore through the owner’s yard at a run, then flew down the alley. Behind her the datdatdatdatdat of machine gun fire and sounds of screaming and crying caught up with her.

Two blocks farther down, the northern highway went right past the alley. Pulling up at the street she hesitated, breathing hard, took in the traffic at a glance, then deftly swung up into an empty horse trailer as the traffic light on the corner turned green. Both of the town’s police cars went screaming by, sirens blaring and lights blazing, before the trailer started moving. She wished she didn’t know what had happened.

And finally Katie Watkins had thought she was safe. She had a nice roommate, HAD had a nice roommate that is, a good job down by the bus and train stations, and was taking a parks department art class. She loved the art class. She’d never done any drawing. Doodling, yes, who didn’t? But never any serious drawing.

And she had discovered she was good at it! She’d sort of listen to the instructor, then her hands would just start doing their own thing. She was amazed and delighted at this funny little skill which seemed to get better by the day. Anytime she wasn’t working, she was drawing. She drew buildings, plants, people; she drew what she saw around her and what she could dredge up from memory. Hands were supposed to be the hardest to accurately reproduce, so she mentally stored up visual snapshots of people’s hands in all different kinds of poses and motions, to be called up later so she could give them a try.

One day she found herself humming and feeling happy, and that was the unfortunate start of letting down her guard. And now Shelley was dead.

Katie had been restless all day, antsy and grouchy, and didn’t pick up on what might be coming. It had been raining, then sleeting, and finally snow was coming down hard. It didn’t help that the wind had picked up and the wind chill was currently -21*.

Shelley had come home just exhausted and wanted nothing more than a warm bath and hot soup. When she realized there wasn’t any soup, she was determined enough that she borrowed Katie’s dry full-length, black down coat, said she’d be back in a minute, and headed for the corner store.

Katie didn’t hear the silencer, but something grabbed her attention. She shot into the dark living room, hurried to the curtained window, and carefully peeked outside. In the evening shadows she saw a large lump sprawled on the sidewalk. A large black lump being quickly painted white with a thick amorphous pond of dark color under the lump. Katie threw up on the curtains.

After throwing up, her thoughts cleared a little, enough for anger to take over and help her get her stuff and get out of there. They thought they’d gotten their target so maybe she had a little time for once.

She headed down the alley a little ways, then cut through a yard, across the street in the middle of the block, through another yard, and down an alley which turned and twisted a bit before ending at the base of a hill on the edge of town.

It wasn’t easy to get up the hill, especially with the snow getting deeper by the minute, but her boots were good ones, the only investment she’d made for herself in the last two years. Well, except for her pencils. They were an inexpensive investment, but they’d given her more pleasure than anything else had in a long long time.

At the top of the hill she stopped and looked around. It was dark, but all that snow lit everything up pretty good. She’d never explored out here and there were huge pine trees everywhere so she couldn’t see for any distance, but she knew where town was and that was where she wasn’t. And it was going to stay that way.

She headed deeper into the trees, away from the town-lights-glow on the sky. Keeping it to a fast walk to conserve her energy, she marveled at how much the trees impeded the storm. It wasn’t nearly as windy here so not as cold either, and the snow didn’t pile up as much. And as big as the trees were, their graceful branches drooping down to the ground, she figured if she had to she could do the homeless thing and park herself at the base of one of those trunks to wait out the storm. It would be cozy, although on second thought, not very warm.

She tromped on. She knew she was fit. It had been years since she’d had the money or interest in having a car so she walked everywhere. Or took a bus or hitched a ride. But walking was good for a gal, plus she watched what she ate. And now it was paying off.

Two hours later she was wishing for a car. Or a snowmobile. Or a horse. She was sick of trudging through this white stuff and needed to take a break. Her trek had been slowly uphill and she figured she had to be a good five miles out of town. Yeah, yeah that wasn’t very far away from bad guys, but they couldn’t yet know they’d shot the wrong person, and since her footsteps were swallowed up within ten minutes of her passing, they couldn’t track her. Could they? Well, shit. They’d been tracking her somehow, why would a little thing like a blizzard keep them away?

Oh great. Now she was becoming snidely delusional. She had to stop and rest. Taking a good look around she realized there was a large, dark something a little ways off to her right. She looked all around once more, then changed course. It was a house. A large, 1920s woodland hideaway. And it was beautiful! And dark.

There were no lights on, no vehicles sitting around, no ruts or indentations to show someone might have been there. Of course the snow had done a good job of obscuring everything, and it was much harder to push through the stuff out here away from the forest. The snow was almost up to her hips and the only reason she could make any headway at all was that it was fine and powdery.

Once she got to the grand old porch, she made it up the steps, then almost collapsed by the front door. Stand up, stand up, don’t sit down or it’ll be the last thing you do she insisted to herself. Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and knocked on the door. No answer. She opened the screen, knocked on the beautiful, oval-windowed front door, and it drifted open.

Well shit. What did that mean?! Oh screw it. She was too tired of running and too tired of walking to give much of a rip whether she was in more danger or not. She poked her head inside and said, “Hello?”

Tapping her boots against the door jam to knock off the snow, she stepped inside and said again, “Hellooo ... HELLO?!” All was quiet. And dark. And, interestingly enough, non-threatening. She stepped back to the porch, slid her pack off her back and shook the snow off, brushed the snow off her person, then brought herself and her stuff inside and shut the door.

Oh. My. God. She was safe. From the storm if nothing else, and she had almost passed right by the place! With the ethereal reflection from the snow, she had enough light to take a good look at her surroundings. The curtains were wide open, but there were Holland covers on everything. That was an oxymoron. Like you’re at home and gone at the same time. How quizzical.

Since there was a small rug close to the front door, she dumped her pack on it, took off her boots to line them up next to her pack, and slid off her rain jacket. There was an old-fashioned hall tree standing dignified in the corner by the stairs, but there was nothing to catch the drips so she just laid her coat on top of her boots along with the fleece throw.

Stepping away from the entryway into the living room, she sighed. What a lovely house. The windows were large with cut-glass sections at the top, and a magnificent fireplace graced the far wall. Everything had kind of a Frank Lloyd Wright feel, but not quite. Still, she could imagine living there without any trouble at all. She continued through the living room and elegant dining room, and through the short butler pantry hallway into the kitchen. It was to die for. Ahem, but no, she’d rather not.

The kitchen was huge, running the full width of the ample house, with two sinks, a Viking stove, a huge refrigerator, two islands, and a large table at the far end. She opened the door to the refrigerator, expecting nothing, but it was fully stocked! It just didn’t make any sense. And even though she was starving, she quickly looked through the rest of the house to make sure she wasn’t infringing on someone, and that she didn’t suffer any surprises.

Finding nothing and no one, she headed for the kitchen and that full refrigerator. First she drank a small glass of orange juice, then pulled out everything she could find for a salad. There was a small pot of something that smelled like clam chowder tucked in the back of the frig, so she put it on the stove to heat up.

All the greens were washed, so she made quick work of romaine, radishes, carrots, cheese chunks, a green onion, a tomato, some zucchini chunks, a bit of yellow squash, and topped it off with capers and a glop of what smelled like gorgonzola dressing. It was heaven, just heaven. She daintily wolfed it down, then dished out a small bowl of the warmed-up soup. Another form of heaven. She was in clover!

Finished with the soup, she managed to put everything away, then washed and rinsed her dishes and put them away before she made it back out to the living room, gently dropped to the couch, pulled the cover over herself, and passed out.

She slept like a rock, but woke up several hours later with a feeling of nervous energy pulling at her. She wondered at it a bit, then walked to her back pack, took out her pencils and some paper, then sat down on the couch.

She wanted to draw. No, she needed to draw. Right here, right now, in the middle of danger, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night. So she just went with it. Her mind saw a sunny valley, with a stream running through it and lots of wildflowers everywhere. Her hands drew that valley. She saw soaring eagles, a sheer cliff and a mountain goat. Her hands added those things, along with mountains, and lots of trees. She saw a stone structure built into the side of the cliff, not far from the stream but well-protected from the elements. She imagined smoke coming from the structure, a horse in a pen nearby, and chickens scratching the yard alongside. Her hands recorded it all. She saw butterflies, heard honey bees buzzing, smelled sage and mint. Everything was folded into the picture which was emerging on that paper.

Suddenly .... no, NO! They were here, she knew it! How did they find her? How could they possible figure out where she was?! She ran to the window as snow mobiles shot over the ridge in front of the house. Quickly she threw on her coat, thrust her feet into her boots, and grabbed her back pack and throw. She almost ran for the back door before she felt it ... the picture.

She stopped, then turned. The picture she had drawn of her valley was calling for her attention. Curious, she stared at it, knowing that something important was happening. Feeling urgency, she walked back to it, picked it up, and looked at it. Looked deeply, became one with it.

And then she was.

She felt a quick dizziness, a distortion of something, and then she was in her valley, holding a picture of the dark living room she had just been in. Not at all sure of what was happening but quite mesmerized by everything, she watched. And listened.

She heard the pounding of footsteps onto the porch and saw the front door thrust open. Three very large men burst into the entryway and farther, into the living room.

“Search everywhere!” The largest man shouted. “Find her quickly!”

“She’s gone,” said a fourth man, short of stature but radiating power like a small sun as he entered the house. “I can feel it. She’s discovered the secret. We’re too late.”

“But boss, she hasn’t had enough time. We’ll find her. She can’t be far.”

“Call off your dogs, Bender. She’s gone. You messed up, not just once and not just twice. That doesn’t set well with me. Now gather your men and let’s get out of here. You just made my job a thousand times harder.”

Still holding her picture, she watched them leave the house. At least they had the decency to close the front door. She watched them get on their snow mobiles and leave. Watched them as they headed down the road, watched them as they made their way back to town, to the airport, into their jet, and off into the night. It was pretty interesting how she could watch them wherever they went, kind of like being in a balloon that was tied to them. Tied to the short man at any rate. She could watch him and listen to him and hear everything he was doing and trying to do.

Finally she was going to be able to get some answers. It was such a relief. She lifted her face toward the sun, dropped her pack, throw, and coat, then turned, splashed across the stream and headed toward her new home. She was safe here; she felt it. Wherever ‘here’ was.

Could it be that easy? Could she draw some place she’d like to be and just go there? She laughed. And then, startled by the sound, laughed again. It felt so good to laugh and it had been so long. “Wheeeee ... I’m freeee!” She twirled around and around, laughing and feeling lightness such as she hadn’t felt since she was a child.

She stumbled and landed in a heap on the grass. Drawing a deep breath behind a relaxed smile, she watched the clouds move from left to right, heard the bees busily doing their work, and felt a butterfly investigate her forehead.

I’m one with this Universe, she thought peacefully, wondering what else she could do by drawing. There would be so many places she could imagine, could she go to them all? Did she have limits? Was it possible for her to be followed by those men? So many new questions, and now for the first time in what seemed like forever, she had time to relax and enjoy. Time to recover from her recent past. Time to renew her spirits and gather her forces for whatever strange future was coming her way.

Ha! Stranger future was more like it. She’d been living ‘strange future’ for the last 13 months. Regardless, now she had some breathing room and she intended to make the best of it. Right then a puppy bounded up from nowhere and started licking her face. “Wait! Stop,” she sputtered and laughed as she sat up. “You little rascal. Where did you come from?” she asked the pup as she took him in her arms.