Want to read from page one? <a href="https://steemit.com/writing/@jackaldon/story-it-s-just-a-room-part-1">Click here</a>.
<center></center>
<center>PART 8</center>
<i>02:46</i>
I’ve been thinking about what I wrote, about the noises, and how they all started after the power went out that time. But the power went out plenty of times, we never heard any noises like that except that first time.
Sometimes I hear noises in this room too. That buzzing, echoing in the back of my head. I hear the scratching too, just before I slip into a dream, I can hear that scratching on the door. I know there’s nobody there, but I want to get out so badly.
Chester never brought it up again, I think maybe he forgot about it or something, don’t know how he could, but I guess I wish I could forget about it too.
That painting is still here of course, every time I look away from it, I pray that it’ll be gone when I look back. I pray someone will just slip into the room, grab it gently, and carry it away from me, away from my room, my cell; but it’s still here.
I can still remember this one day, Freshmen year of high school, when Ches taught me about art. We were sitting in our art class, your typical high school art room; large tables covered in clay dust, easels all lined up against the side of the room, a kiln, wobbly stools, paint covering nearly everything, and a bunch of kids who couldn’t give a damn. Class had just gotten out, and Chester was doing his usual routine of calm silence. I started to gather my things when he tugged on my sweatshirt sleeve.
“Chuck, I want to show you something,” he had a look of desperation on his face and I knew he was serious. I walked up to our teacher, Mr. Henderson, a portly man who complemented the room, in the sense that they were both covered in a rainbow of paints.
“Hey, Mr. Henderson, could we stick around for a while? We’ve got some homework to do,” I told him. He furrowed his brow, but agreed to let us use the room for a few minutes. He left, but locked the door before propping it open, and told me to just close the door when we leave.
I walked back to Ches, and sat down at the table; the stool wobbling under me on the polished concrete floor. “So what did you want to show me?”
Chester pulled out an easel and a blank canvas from behind some other paintings on the back wall of the room. He set it up in front of us and grabbed some paint, water, and a brush. “See, we try to make things in straight lines, and perfect angles,” he said, as he began to paint a bright red fire hydrant on the empty canvas. He added detail to the sides, shadows, everything was perfectly geometrical. “We try, but we never really succeed. The thing is, life isn’t all straight lines and forced perspectives, but it’s rather dynamic, abstract… Life changes every second. For instance, you probably didn’t think we’d be here after class a few minutes ago, but here we are.” Chester began to add more colors to the canvas, the fire hydrant exploded outward with streaks of pink, green, blue, yellow, and orange. In my eyes, he was destroying the painting, defacing it with smears of different colors. But he explained, “Sometimes things don’t end up like we want them to, but it’s okay, because we can take a step back and see how beautiful this disaster really is.”
I did just that, and took a look at the painting. It was very… unique, that’s for sure. I don’t know if I would have called it beautiful, but there was certainly some kind of wild life to it.
“You know where the word disaster comes from?” He asked, and I shook my head. “It’s Latin for “ill star,” dis-aster. Like some kind of sick, shining beacon,” he told me, and I looked back at the painting.
“I like it.”
<i>03:00</i>
Chester and I were lucky, I suppose. I don’t think about it much, so it never really occurred to me just how lucky. Ches and I are identical twins, you see, so close in fact that nobody has ever been able to tell us apart without some kind of hint. We got the same haircuts, trimmed our nails on the same days, wore the same brand of deodorant, anything we could think of to keep it going, because Chester and I were lucky.
We weren’t blessed, mind you, but we did have an advantage that most kids didn’t in school; we could tag out. We had to go to the same classes obviously, but we were in different periods. While I was in Math, Ches was in Music; when I was in Science, he was in History, so on and so forth. Each night, we’d distribute the work load. He’d do the art projects, the music, the timelines; and I would take care of the Math, Science, and English homework. I was always better at the logical stuff, I can make sense out of things, whereas he’s more of a creative guy, an idea guy, he’s very brilliant though. Chester once painted an entire side of a house in one day, with an intricate mural depicting a beautiful forest. He got all the details, right down to the shafts of light spilling through the trees. He always made sure everything was consistent, and absolutely beautiful. I would stand there and critique every aspect, but no matter how hard I drilled on him, he always got it right the first time.
Well one day after school, we were dividing the work, and Ches held on to one of his English assignments.
“What about that one?” I asked.
“I want to give that one a shot. It seems like a fun project,” he said, maybe a little too quickly. I found out later it was an assignment to “write a 6 line poem based on your family, get creative with it!”
Get creative with it. Ches was certainly creative, hell that’s probably why he wanted to do it. I found out what the assignment was after I found it crumpled up, and in our trash.
“Wasn’t this the English project you wanted to do?” I asked him a few days later. I read through it, and I felt kinda bad for him; it made sense why he wanted to just get rid of it. The poem read:
<i>“My dad is big and strong,
But soft and cuddly too,
My brother is never wrong,
And always knows what to do,
My mom is long gone--”</i>
Written underneath the last line in bright red letters, “Not funny!” with a nice big ‘D-‘ above the poem.
“Ches, if you wanted help to finish it I could have helped you,” I said, not even bringing up the tentative last line. “You know I’m pretty good--“
“I didn’t want your help, Chuck, that’s the thing,” I could see his eyes were starting to well up, and I knew this was going to be a long night. “I wanted to do it by myself, you know? I wanted to figure it out, because you’re so darn good at it, I wanted to make you proud.”
I really didn’t know how to respond to that, so I leaned in and gave him a hug. Then the tears really came. In my head rang a candidate for the unfinished line, “Someday I will be too.” But I didn’t bother suggesting it to Chester, especially since it was such an emotional experience.
We were lucky, for a couple of kids who didn’t know what else to do but try to make life easier. We did what we were good at, but I guess in a way that made us suck at the things we already weren’t great at. I mean, I couldn’t paint a decent portrait to save my life, even if I was looking in the mirror; and I learned that day that Chester couldn’t write very well.
“Tell you what, Ches, I’ll teach you how to write better. We can practice by writing poems, and maybe work up to writing a short story or something. You’ll get the hang of it, I promise.”
He peeled away from my now soaking shoulder, and looked up at me with those lost, helpless eyes that he always gave me. Those eyes that said, “Come on Chuck, do you mean that?”
“I promise,” I repeated, then got up to turn off the light, and got into bed.
<hr>
<center><a href="https://steemit.com/writing/@jackaldon/story-it-s-just-a-room-part-9">Continue?</a></center>