INTRODUCTION

Violins mixed with funky beats boomed from speakers in each corner of the art studio that once was a pole barn. It was dark, aside from the moonlight shining brightly through the windows. “Brandenburg” by Black Violin danced through the air. A woman sits in the middle of the floor, a myriad of colors of paint all over her body. She rocks back and forth to the beat, hugging her knees and sobbing.

Before her on a twelve foot by twelve foot canvas, her greatest masterpiece had been created. She had been painting for seventeen hours straight. No food. She only left her creation to use the restroom...twice. She drank nothing. She did not stop for sleep or to rest her eyes. The visions took hold of her and the paint spoke what she could not tell anyone.

She would not sell this one. This one would never be seen by anyone. Someone with a clear pineal gland and the spiritual understanding would see too much about the artist. They would know too much. They would know what she had fought all her life to keep a secret. She would not sell this one. No. This piece would be the first piece she would ever destroy. This piece, her greatest masterpiece, would have to burn.

Screaming out in anguish, she rose and lurched toward the painting, fighting for control over the pain found in each brush stroke. Grabbing it, she wrestled it with both hands from one end and began to drag it through the studio until she got to the automatic doors. Hitting the button, the bay slid open and the woman dragged the piece out into the field behind the studio. She ran back as if something were chasing her. She was hyperventilating and sobbing. She grabbed a can of gasoline and some rags. Running back to the nightmare of a beautiful creation that now lie in the field, she tripped. Gas splashed out onto the ground. She cursed, hoping there would still be enough to destroy her painting permanently.

She could hear the bass of 300 Violin Orchestra by Jorge Quintero booming from inside the studio. Wildly she began soaking rags in the gasoline, pouring it over ever inch of the canvas. She watched as the colors began to blend together and a kaleidescope formed before her. She stepped back, chest heaving and pulled a cigarette from her pocket and lit it... she stood there, sobbing, for what seemed like an eternity. As the crescendo in the music blared through the country night air, she took one last hit from the half smoked cigarette and tossed it onto the canvas. The infernal blaze ignited almost immediately.

The woman stepped back about 20 feet from the flames, lie down in the grass on her back, and screamed out at the moon. She begged for a reprieve from this life she lived. She needed to get away from this pain. She turned to watch seventeen hours of her life and 36 years of emotions form billowing smoke into the sky.  

Chapter One

Giselle Sinclaire

Long ivory legs of slime frame wrestled with the Egyptian Sheets tangled around her calves, climbing up each appendage like a vine. Deep red tresses clung to her face as sweat oozed from her pores. Her cries and whimpers were audibly heard, but she was the only one in the house aside from her sister, Giana; Giana had to take tranquilizers before bed each night, lest she suffer from the very same night terrors that were squeezing the oxygen from Giselle's lungs. The hopes of Giana waking up to rescue Giselle from her nightmares were slim to none.

Blood red moon. Like a super moon, drenched in blood, hanging ominously in the midnight skies. Flashes of large hands touching child like legs. Lifting a pastel pink nighty. The hands. Parting the legs of a fragile little girl to pillage through her innocence. Tainting her. At the door, Giselle watched in horror. She felt the remnants of dinner earlier in the night threatening to spew forth from her belly. Blood. Blood everywhere. Handprints smeared down the walls. Pools of blood everywhere. On the bed, in the bedroom and down the hallway. Her mother, Gulia, with blood all over her body. Blood smeared across her face and in her hair as she tried to take in the events while clinging to the sides of her head. The screams. Screams like daggers piercing the soul emanating from Giana. Gunshot. The smell of death. Death everywhere. Blood. Blood red moon.

Giselle's body bolted straight upright in the huge bed. Her breathing came in short spurts and she cursed the nachos she made at one in the morning. She had skipped dinner and she knew better than to eat so late at night. It seemed like every time she had a late night snack, the nightmares came. For years she had been trying to find the triggers so she wouldn't have to deal with them any longer. She found that she needed to keep her immune system high so that she didn't contract flus or any other viruses because the visions of blood dripping from her sister's pastel pink nightgown would plague her. Recently, she had begun juicing in order to keep her immune system built up. She had tried setting an alarm to wake her every two hours in order to avoid traveling into the land of REM sleep (the place where nightmares become so vivid it's as if you're reliving the entire experience). When she would wake, though, she would find it hard to fall back asleep and wound up getting out of bed to paint. Her artwork during those late night sessions was quite intense, but she discovered that the lack of undisturbed sleep caused her to become ill and if fevers came the nightmares were the most intense and she found it more difficult to wake up.

Giselle had even gone so far as to hang paintings of apotropaic eyes throughout her home. The eyes were not always obvious in the paintings. She would paint the eyes first, then work her big picture around the set of ritualistic eyes. The eyes were utilized in ancient Egypt to ward off evil spirits from the home, thus protecting it's inhabitants. Upon walking into Giselle's home, one may think of her as a vain person, but vanity was definitely not in her makeup. The reason one would suspect her of being the type to stand in front of a mirror admiring her own reflection for hours on end is because her house had numerous mirrors in every room. She had read that mirrors would deflect the evil eye. That day, she spent the entire day traveling from thrift store to thrift store through the city of Indianapolis buying every mirror she could find. She also went to a craft store to purchase various sized opalescent bulbs that were used to make Christmas ornaments and filled them with silver beads. She hung them in every window of her home. She didn't have many visitors, but those who did visit thought it was an interesting and original way to decorate her home. Her reasons were, of course, to ward off evil spirits in hopes of keeping them from possessing her as she slept. Over her bedroom door, Giana's bedroom door, and the front and back doors to the house there were horseshoes hanging. She had been careful to place them upward since she had read that if you hung them facing down, all of your good luck would run out.

Some people had told her all she need do is pray to rid herself of the plaguing nightmares. They told her she need give her pain to God and believe that He would release her from the hurt she was experiencing and fulfill the Biblical promise of sweet sleep. Giselle could not bring herself to prescribe to the ideology of Christian doctrine, though. She had tried. She had started reading the Bible. She watched televangelists like Joyce Meyer. She tried to believe, but her analytical mind refused to allow her to believe in a religion based on a book containing so very many discrepancies. She had even taken an online theological seminary course in Apologetics. All this class did was served to push her further away from the theory of Christianity.

Untangling her legs from the sheets, Giselle cursed under her breath as she got up to open her window in hopes of cooling her down. It seemed as though every time she woke from the nightmares, she was drenched with her own sweat and a pool had formed on her pillow and beneath her. She stopped sleeping in normal pajamas and had gone out and bought tank tops and boy shorts to sleep in thinking that it may keep her from sweating as bad. The fear that gripped her as she slept never failed to cause her heart rate to rise, beating so hard she would wake feeling as though she had ventricles and aorta pulsating in her throat.

Pulling the window open, the beautiful lace curtains she purchased from the Goodwill and soaked to rid them of their yellowing began to blow with the midnight breeze coming through from the outside. She stood at the window and admired Luna. The moon had been a friend of hers, most of the time. She admired it when it was a bright and beautiful golden orb lighting up the darkness of the nocturnal hours. It was during the phase of the Blood Moon that she became uneasy at all times of the day, but especially at night. Sleep did not come at all on those nights. She was not one to give in to anxiety easily but during this phase of the moon, Giselle found herself prone to a constant sweating of her palms. She would walk around all day feeling like the weight of a thousand dead spirits sat upon her lungs. Tonight, though? The moon was glorious. She inhaled deeply as if she could breathe in it's beauty and fill her own body with the magic it possessed.

Walking back over to the bed, she sat on the edge. Lying back down was not an option unless she stripped the bed of the perspiration soaked sheets and changed her pillowcases. She decided to paint. Pulling off the dampened tank top and boy shorts she had on, she rummaged through her dresser and found a large t-shirt that she loved to paint in. It was an old Pink Floyd t-shirt that she refused to throw out. She tossed her clothes into the hamper positioned in the corner of her bedroom and she quietly made her way down the stairs to the back of the big farm house that she and Giana called home. She had added on an art studio when she purchased the house and began to refurbish it. This home was a good investment. She and Giana had peace here. The closest neighbor was almost a mile away. There was no one to get in their business. No nosy neighbors making speculations on the reason why her sister wouldn't speak to anyone. No one attempting to play private investigator and find out their back story. They were in their own little world on this plot of land. This was her utopian serendipity and she enjoyed being here. It was only work and shopping that took her into the city. Be it not for having to have the necessities and having to appear at art shows and galleries, she would not ever go into town.

Giselle's agent and best friend, Dallas, had recently talked her into securing a lease at a premier apartment complex in downtown Indianapolis, Artistry. The upper floor of the city block wide complex contained state of the art apartment units, along with an exercise room and a pool and bar on the roof. The lower level of the complex contained various businesses including art galleries. Dallas convinced Giselle she needed to start entertaining, and she knew that Giselle would never allow all of those people to come into her private home. Giselle reluctantly agreed. The apartment had been leased for two months and she had yet to even step foot in it to see how Dallas had decorated it. That would change in three days. She would be hosting a cocktail hour before the showing of her latest collection of paintings and sculptures. The thought of being around all of those people and having to store up enough energy to pretend to want to be there overwhelmed her.

Upon opening the french doors leading to her art studio, Giselle stopped and inhaled the essence of creativity that thrived within those walls. The layout was impressive. Rows of windows measuring 10 feet by 10 feet made a view of the outdoors possible. The moonlight flooded in. One of her greatest pieces, entitled “Luna's Love”, was inspired during a late night session. The next morning, she woke up asleep on the floor, paint brush in hand and was amazed at the astounding beauty she had produced. At times, she felt as though another being possessed her when she created. It was as if there was a definitive difference in the artist, not just in the art.

Giselle loved the feel of her naked feet on the hard wood floors. Often she would reminisce to her childhood when she had dreams of becoming a ballerina. At one point, she entertained the idea of putting a barre in so she could recreationally limber up her body with some of the moves and positions she still remembered. It would be an easy way to explain the line of mirrors covering the wall that paralleled the windows. Eventually, she nixed this idea though, deciding it may deter her from focusing on her work when she needed to. Art usually was not work for her. She would lose herself in the indulgence of creating. The gift she had received inherently from her father to be able to express her emotions through the outlet of art supplied her with joy. She felt free when she was drawing, painting and sculpting.

Giselle was one to become easily angered by the injustices the world seemed to endlessly supply. She had a heart for the unwanted of society. The unlovable. She would always stop when she saw someone panhandling and would make up that person's history in her mind as she dropped whatever change she had into their hand. Whenever she received a “God bless you”, she would respond “It depends on who your God is.” On many a trip into the city, she would look into the faces of the people that the media liked to call “indigent”, some would even refer to them as the “outcast”, and she wondered if the day would come that she would see her father, Oscar, begging for change in order to feed his alcohol habit. She hadn't heard from him in almost a year. Eleven months prior, he had contacted her to please sell some of his paintings at her show. He said that he would allow her to sell them as her own, since he did not wanted to get mixed into the politics of having to meet and greet the influential of the city and state, or even the nation occasionally. She agreed to feature him as a guest artist and promoted him under his street art name “Oz”. She informed him that it would make his work all the more valuable since he had become notorious, almost on the level of Banksy, for his socio-politally themed graffiti.

Giselle smiled, sitting on a tarp in front of a canvas, as she recalled the morning she woke up and ritualistically sat the pile of newspapers that were delivered in front of her only to see her father's signature logo on a piece of his work that was pulled off in the city of Detroit on the side of St. Andrew's Hall gracing the front page of USA Today. She hadn't spoken to her father, but she knew that he was outraged by the fact that tax paying Americans were going without the necessity of water in the city. Oscar had made his way to Detroit, somehow, and painted a picture of a family with human bodies and fish heads. The family was lying on a sidewalk he had painted and each body had crime chalk drawn around it and there was crime scene tape surrounding the entire family. The smallest child was holding his mother's hand. Leave it to her father to point out the criminality of this nation in such an extravagant way.

Giselle decided she would paint for herself today. She would paint in honor of Oscar, and it would hang in her art studio to inspire her. As she began to paint a cityscape lit up by skyscrapers and various lights, she stopped. Squirting a blob of yellow and white onto the canvas, she mixed them around with various sized brushes, creating a super moon shining down upon the building and all it's inhabitants within her painting. As it dried, she finished the buildings. When it was almost finished, she copied Oscar's signature: “Oz”. The z always slashed through the O, not unlike Zorro. She sat back and smiled, wishing she had a way to call Oscar and tell him about it; to invite him to her home to see it hanging in her studio. But she didn't.

Giselle stretched her long body out on the tarp, her head resting on her left arm and gazed at the moon through the windowed wall. Where was Oscar now? Was he warm? Was he safe? She knew he had the ability to make the money to maintain his own apartment, he had had the same address since he left her mother when she and Giana were very small, but the question was whether or not he was even sleeping in it. A few months back, the landlord contacted Giselle and said that her father had paid a year's rent, but he had not seen Oscar for two months. He said that he got notice that the electricity had been turned off in the apartment. She paid the electric bill by convincing the landlord to put it in his name and she gave him enough funds to cover at least six months of electricity. She informed the landlord to please maintain contact with her. She didn't know that Oscar had listed her as his emergency contact until that day.

Her father was a wanderer. He loved to meet new people and in the process of doing so, he had a propensity for giving to the point of leaving himself lacking. She remembered being on a visit with him, one of few, when her mother was still alive. They had gone downtown to the lighting of the tree at Christmas time. Giana wanted hot chocolate, and Oscar gleefully agreed as he tossed Giana's small body up onto his shoulders. As they were making their way over to the vendor to procure their warm velveety drinks, a panhandler caught Oscar's eye. The woman was sitting, her forehead rested upon her knees and her shoulders heaved, letting those around her know that she was sobbing but no one seemed to care, except Oscar. He put Giana down and told Giselle to hold her hand. Oscar went over and sat down next to the woman. The sign in front of her read: “The court has taken my children. I am homeless. Please help me get a home and a job. All I want for Christmas is my family.” Oscar put his hand on the woman's back and began talking to her. Giselle could not hear what he was saying amid the din of the crowds surrounding them. After a moment of conversation, the woman collapsed into Oscar. Her face was buried in his chest as she sobbed hysterically. Oscar stood, and helped the woman up. He walked over and ripped her sign in half and tossed it into the garbage. Giselle could remember the four of them getting hot chocolate and the woman joining them for the lighting of the tree. Afterward, Oscar took the woman to a Motel 6 and paid for a room for her for a week. The next morning, he got up bright and early and took Giselle and Giana with him to pick out Christmas gifts for the woman's children. He bought a small table top Christmas tree for the woman to decorate. He then made a stop at his landlord's office where he put an apartment in his name for the woman and paid the rent for one year. He took Giselle and Giana with him to deliver everything to the woman and gave her the keys to her apartment. Her rent was more than his, but he did not hesitate to help her. The woman sobbed once again and thanked him over and over. Oscar informed her that he would pay her to clean his apartment once a week and that his landlord had agreed to be able to give her at least 30 hours a week doing cleaning for him as well. Her name was Jamiee.

As Giselle lay on the tarp in her art studio, she made a mental note that when it was a more suitable hour she needed to call and check on Jamiee. She did, indeed, get her kids back. Three out of four of them had graduated from high school and were in college. Her youngest was a senior at Broad Ripple High School and was featured in the local newspaper after going to audition for “So You Think You Can Dance” and making it into the finals. The child was poetry in motion when she danced. Giana and Giselle had attended “The Black Swan” when she starred in it. It was breathtaking. The night was made even more memorable when Oscar showed up. She threw her head back and her laughter echoed upon the walls of her art studio as she laughed heartily remembering him showing up to a high school rendition of “The Black Swan” in a tuxedo with black Converse All-Stars on.

Giselle's eyes got heavy and she contemplated on just sleeping there in the moonlight, but the floor was getting incredibly hard beneath her. She stood and looked down at her painting, and smiled. Walking to the window, she again looked out at the moon. “Oscar, where are you? I need to know you're alive. I need to know you're okay. Paint something, Oscar. Send me a message and let me know you're still out there.” A heavily distressed sigh rushed from Giselle's parted lips as she turned to return to her bedroom.

Fatigue cloaked her as she walked back up the stairs to her bedroom. The open window had created quite the chill in her room. Being that she felt as though she could sleep, she erased the fear of another nightmare from her psyche, moved the still dampened pillows to the other side of the bed and transferred dry pillows over for her head to lie on and laid her bedspread over the top of the sheets that her entire body had wept on hours before. She flopped down on the monstrous bed like a child throwing a temper tantrum and within minutes, she was asleep. 

Chapter Two

AJ Todd

He tossed and turned as he kept staring at the digital alarm clock shining from his nightstand. Why was he awake at 3:04 in the morning? Tossing the blankets from his body in frustration, AJ rose to pull the blinds on the bedroom window closest to his bed. The moon was shining so brightly, it was like sun shining directly on him in the morning. Sometimes he liked the moon, it could be a tool of romance and could be utilized beneficially. But, when he was trying to get some much needed sleep it only served to severely annoy him.

Heaving a sigh of extreme agitation, AJ lay back in bed and cocooned in a burrowed cave beneath his feathered comforter. Squeezing his eyes tightly together he attempted to will himself to go to sleep, but ended up just feeling angry as he hollered out “FUUUUUUUUUCK!” 8 AM was going to approach quickly, and he needed desperately to be prepared for this meeting. He had an appointment with the owners of a new apartment complex that was being built in a town outside of Indianapolis, Fishers. He was one of five landscaping companies bidding on the job of doing the landscaping for the entire complex. This was his first commercial bid he had ever made and his nerves were getting the best of him.

AJ emerged from his cocoon like an angry giant and began pacing the floor next to his bed. He stopped, looking down at the carpet beneath him and cursed under his breath as thought of Carrie. That bitch bought him that rug when they moved in together. He had always loved area rugs and wanted an authentic persian rug. When Carrie left him, he couldn't bring himself to part ways with the rug, so he kept it. At that very moment, at 3:23 AM, he promised himself he would move the rug into the dining room. He never ate in there anyway. The room was just for show. He convinced himself standing there, staring at the rug, that the reason he had been plagued by insomnia was because his bed rested upon that lying cheating bitch's gift to him.

Resuming the pacing, AJ decided to head to his office and look over the proposal he had carefully prepared for the meeting. As usual, he had procrastinated and was going to have to stop by Kinko's in the morning before the meeting to pick up his presentation boards to properly and professionally depict his vision for the grounds of the complex. He had mulled over what flowers and shrubs to choose that would be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, would not cost him much, but would optimize how much he could make from this job while still keeping his bid aesthetically pleasing to the board he was going to be meeting with.

Sitting in his office with just his desk light on in nothing but his boxers, AJ began to shuffle around the papers laying all over his desk. He mumbled to himself while letting a string of hushed profanity fly off into the ethers as he complained about his piss poor organizational skills. His company would definitely be doing better if he could just do the work and hire somebody else to run it for him. But he couldn't afford to pay someone to run the company for him, since he was so disorganized and some days didn't want to face the business aspects of his business in order to get more business, thus staying in business. AJ squeezed his eyes tightly together and shook his head from side to side in attempts to erase the thought of his looming bills from his brain as if he were a child attempting to erase a picture from an Etch-A-Sketch. It didn't work. He got up and walked over to the sofa that he still had no idea why he thought he had to have in his office, and plopped down on it. There were six empty cans of beer lined up perfectly on the coffee table, all the labels facing him symmetrically, from his session of anxiety earlier in the evening before he retired to the bedroom. He chuckled at himself as he noticed how every can was in the exact same position. “If this isn't proof that I've got a problem, I don't know what is. I can anally line up my empty beer cans, but I can't organize my bills and presentations. At least I'm not a sloppy drunk.” He inhaled deeply and then sat up on the edge of the sofa and furiously ran his fingers through his hair and hollered out, “AND NOW I'M FUCKING TALKING TO MYSELF!”

He rose and made his way to the kitchen, mumbling to himself still about needing to get a cat or a dog. As he pulled another Budweiser from the refrigerator, he then chuckled to himself as he audibly said “Hell, a cat will be the ONLY way any pussy lives in MY house ever again!” The amount of animosity that surged through his body when thoughts of Carrie came creeping over his brain like tar had begun to bother him. Why couldn't he just let it go? If he were ever going to have the courage to start something with another woman any time in the future, he'd have to get over the way that whore shattered his heart and then force fed it to him when she married his (now ex) business partner.

His thoughts took him to Giselle Sinclaire. When he moved after he and Carrie split, he started investigating local artists. He decided he wanted a piece of art to go over the mantle in his family room. After visiting three different art galleries across the city and hearing her name in every gallery, he decided to wait on his purchase and went straight home to get on the internet and see what this woman's work was like. He was completely captivated when he got to her website and saw her picture. Her image drew him in so deeply that he found himself studying her features rather than even attempting to look at any of her paintings. When he finally tore himself away from the beauty of her red (almost auburn) hair hanging like the silk of a kimono over her shoulders and from her emerald green eyes that seemed to entrance him, he found the souls of millions of spirits screaming out from within her artwork. There was pain. There was ecstasy. He heard laughter in some, tortured howling in others. There were stories in each framed piece of work she produced, the ending left open to the eye that beheld her mastery. He was intrigued.

Since that day a year ago, he had been to every showing she had in the city (plus one he made up a reason to travel to New York to attend). He had begun to feel a bit like a stalker. Giselle seemed a bit startled when she recognized his face at the showing in NYC. He played it cool, walked over to her when their eyes locked, and informed her that he had been dining at the bistro across the street when he saw he recognized her work in the window of the gallery. He went on to explain that, since buying the piece that hangs above his fireplace (which he could definitely not afford but purchased anyhow), he had been following her newest works of art and would recognize her notable style anywhere. She did not seem impressed. She thanked him and turned to walk away. He had seen her once since then at a local art show. This time, he made it a point to catch her attention first rather than her spying him out as if he were some sort of creep hiding amongst the crowds in hopes of catching an inhalation of her perfume. He found her immediately and made his way through the mingling meeters and greeters and touched her elbow. With the aggression of how swiftly she turned to look at him, he thought about asking if she had injured her neck.

“Hello, Miss Sinclaire. I assume you may remember me? My face anyhow, I don't believe I've ever formally introduced myself to you, my name is AJ Todd.”

AJ smoothly held out a single rose with a small card attached. Giselle grinned. He had caught her at a good moment.

“I know your name, Mr. Todd. After all, I tend to remember a man who writes me a check for ten thousand dollars.”

AJ almost choked at the reminder of the amount he forked over for the painting that he purchased more for the desire to impress it's creator than to possess the painting itself. He swallowed the inclination to wince at the pain his checking account was still experiencing and regained his composure by flashing his charming smile at her. “I simply wanted to come by this evening specifically to tell you that I have a great appreciation for the hands that created the masterpiece that hangs on my wall, and to have the opportunity to see you smile. Have a wonderful evening, Miss Sinclaire. I wish you great success.”

On that note, AJ turned and walked away. He was confident that once Giselle opened the card and read his invitation for dinner and drinks he would hear from her the next day, if not that night. That was months ago. She never called. He actually hadn't even seen any news of any new work coming from her since, until he received an invitation in the mail. She apparently had leased an apartment at Artistry and was hosting a private cocktail hour for her ten top purchasers in the past year and somehow he had made the list. He wondered how one painting got him there, and then he remembered it was one very expensive painting. The thought of hob-knobbing with the elites who were spending ten times what he spent on art made him quiver. But this was his chance to see her again. This time, she would know he had an interest in her. He was sure that she had to approve the guest list, so she must knew he was invited. He had RSVP'd almost immediately. He talked to someone named Dallas. She was boisterous and talked way too fast for his liking. Completely the opposite of Giselle.

He grabbed his phone from the coffee table to see what time it was. 4:37 AM. If he went to sleep now, he would very likely be late for his meeting. He needed to win this bid. Especially since he was now in competition with Carrie's husband, Josh. AJ smiled as he rose to make his way to the shower and get his day started. He said aloud to himself, “I guess there's one good thing that came from all the bullshit she put me through. I found all the motivation I need to not allow that jackass to steal a single bid from me.” As he vigorously showered, he strategized on how to make his presentation better. He went over the entire speech in his head and worked his mind to think of every possible question they make ask him. He would be ready. He would have to be ready. His entire financial future depended on landing this job.