Wet Paint and the Wrath of God (407 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 2 on 8 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by stardamage (View user info) at 2006-10-17 20:12:30 EDT
Adriaan leaned back against the trunk of the tree, still keeping a watchful eye on the goats but allowing himself to rest a little. The walk up here from the village on days like today could be strenuous, though he made it once a week to see his friends, collect his pay, and spend some of it on cider and more on food to bring back with him to the pasture where he worked as goatherd for Johnkheer van den Broek.
The heat curled its oppressive fist around him and he pulled his shirt off - none of the girls ever made their way up here and so he could afford the luxury - and tossed it down beside him.
The clouds hung heavy over the valley below him and the mountains beyond, and Adriaan felt trapped in the very air. He was thankful that he hadn't stopped to rest before reaching his destination - he would have found it doubly difficult to make the long hike. The goats were listless too, and simply lay in whatever shade they could find. Adriaan fished one of the loaves of bread out of his pack and tore a piece of one, eating it along with one of the fresh carrots he'd managed to find a woman selling on his walk back; he hoped it would rain soon.
He watched a few black birds fly by, all wings, and suddenly leaned forward to watch more closely. One of the birds had a wing that was more than twice the length of the other, and was dragging itself in fits and spurts through the sky. Its shorter wing thrashed and it pitched and tumbled in the air as it tried to keep up with the others.
Then, as Adriaan stared bug-eyed, the crow's large wing began to disappear, as if gnawed away by some unseen creature. It shrieked and flapped pitifully as the monstrously long wing grew shorter and shorter. The other birds circled it frantically and screamed at it as its head vanished, as if it had never been there. The headless creature landed in a heap on the ground a little way from Adriaan and he screamed too as it beat its one useless wing and threw itself in agonized cartwheels on the ground. Bit by bit the entire bird was devoured by something invisible and the wing continued to lurch uselessly until it too was gone.
Adriaan continued to stare, horrified, at the spot where the bird had disappeared. The heat was crushing and his heart beat wildly, pounding in his ears as he leaned over to throw up the bread and carrot he'd just eaten. He wiped his mouth and sat back, trying to process what he'd just seen.
The other birds shot away, wheeling crazily as they streaked away from the hillside and out into the air. Adriaan's eyes followed them numbly and suddenly he shot to his feet and scurried out from under the tree for a better look at the sky.
The clouds were heaving and churning as if under some great weight, rolling around and through each other. Adriaan felt sick again just looking at them but couldn't drag his gaze away - he'd never seen anything like it. As he watched, the clouds stopped moving and became eerily still, and then they started to sink, hanging lower and lower over the valley as if a great weight was pushing them down over the forest and village below.
Adriaan could no longer see very far down the mountain - the clouds blocked his view totally, as if they'd rolled into the valley itself. He knew it was impossible...and yet, there was a wall of black mist separating him from his home. He sprinted a little ways down the hill and saw the goats running in frantic circles, their terrified bleating barely audible over the rumbling of the clouds that Adriaan was sure he could reach out and touch if he wanted to, that were now terrifyingly close.
He scrambled back up towards the tree and up to the top of the hill again, clawing at the lower branches to swing himself up towards the top to see what was happening further down the hill - the clouds were not so close in front of him now but his view was still of a solid black mass of seething mist.
Directly over his head the clouds swung low, forming a solid barrier through which no light could escape. Adriaan clung to the branches near him, trying to catch his breath, and it was now almost completely dark around him. Being high up in a tree in near-total darkness was not where Adriaan wanted to be but he had no choice but to stay where he was. He still heard the goats bawling faintly below him and wondered if they were meeting the same fate as the lopsided bird had and he probably soon would.
Adriaan began in a tearful voice: "Onze Vader in de hemel, uw naam worde geheil-" but was interrupted by the gust of wind that came howling over the hilltop and crashed into him on its way into the valley. He was knocked from his branch and went tumbling down through the branches to land on the grass below.
~
Michael frowned at the paper - he knew he should have stopped with the birds while he was ahead. His hand always slipped or the damn cat always knocked into his ankle just when he was painting the second swoop of the V that was each bird. He stared resentfully at the mutant bird and plunked the black-stained paintbrush into his rinsing glass.
Reaching for the white he painted the bird out carefully; first one wing and then the other, and reached to put that brush into the waterglass too.
The damn cat ran into his ankle, figure-eighting around his leg and the table leg, and Michael jerked in surprise, spilling the waterglass full of acrylic rinsewater all over the table and soaking half his page in grey. The little village he'd just finished that morning was now swimming in it.
"Fuck!" he yelled, and shot out of his chair, knocking it backwards. The damn cat jumped and hissed as he rushed over to the counter and yanked a bunch of paper-towels from the roll that clattered to the floor behind him. Michael hurried back over to the table and began blotting all the grey water he could, smearing dark streaks all over the page.
~
Adriaan rolled over onto his back, feeling his right ankle begin to swell instantly from where he'd landed wrong. His left arm was bleeding freely and he'd been whipped across the face by some of the smaller branches on his way out of the tree. He was covered in scratches and bruises, his clothes torn and hair filled with leaves, blood all over him.
He didn't notice any of this, though, as he opened his eyes and stared upwards.
In the time it had taken him to fall out of the tree and roll onto his back, the sky had changed again. There was a great light growing behind the clouds and spreading across the sky like water and Adriaan could track its progress as it stretched from above his head down towards the forest and soon stretched as far as he could see.
The black wall that had seen so impenetrable minutes before was weakening, Adriaan saw as he pulled himself up into a sitting position. The light was still pale but Adriaan somehow knew that this was because of the thickness of the clouds - without them the light would be bright and terrible, much more than the sunlight he was used to, and he found himself wincing as he watched helplessly, tears running freely down his face.
The clouds were thinning further and further and the sky was growing lighter, and there was a terrible growling from the sky in the east, down near the village.
~
Michael paused in his blotting and reached out for the black paintbrush. It fell through his wet fingers, spattering even more paint in a black streak onto the wet page. He moaned and scrambled for more paper-towels.
~
Suddenly the noise grew to a deafening level and Adriaan clamped his hands over his ears as there was a terrific series of booms and ear-splitting cracks. He screamed wordlessly as a huge black crack appeared in the light-strained clouds and a white river came gushing out. Adriaan threw his hands up in front of his face to protect his eyes and fell onto his back, howling.
The molten sunlight dropped in a blazing sheet from the ruined sky and blew a star-shaped hole in the forest that spread until the forest and village were both alight.
~
Michael had mopped up as much of the mess as he could and now he came back into the room with his roommate's hairdryer. He glared at nothing in particular as he carefully dried the paper. It settled in waves on the table though he'd tried his best to flatten it out, slapping angrily at it a few times as it dried but eventually giving up.
~
The smell of burning wood reached Adriaan's nose on the wind that suddenly blew hot and fierce out of the valley. It scorched his skin and the sharp smell undercut with the smell of burning meat made him vomit again, curling on his side in the grass as the ground itself heaved under him.
The light grew and grew until he couldn't open his eyes anymore but huddled, trembling against the tree and hid his face from the terror all around him.
Behind him the light and heat grew stronger and ever stronger until Adriaan was screaming with the agony of it, his hands still over his face to protect his eyes. The wind and light faded away as quickly as they had come and left the skin on his back red and inflamed - he didn't dare sit back against the tree again but once again got to his feet to survey the damage.
The forest and village were completely gone. A thick white mist, as thick as the black clouds had been, had fallen in the valley, but as he watched it was replaced by the swirling grey fog that had given him relief, the grey tendrils of smoke seeming to rise out of the ground instead of falling from the sky. There was no sign of the lake of sunlight that had been in the valley minutes before, and there was no sound but Adriaan's ragged breath. Somehow the silence shook him more than the cacophony of sound he had just lived through, and Adriaan stared for a long time, unable to do anything but stand and breathe and gaze on the wreck of his world.
~
Michael returned the blowdryer ("Thanks, I'll explain later") to Sarah and then worked on painting white over the parts that the grey had ruined.
He painted out most of the trees and the sodden village and stood back to look at it again mournfully. "How the fuck am I going to finish this before tomorrow?" he wondered out loud, glaring at the damn cat that was washing its face with its paw on the windowsill. He'd already used the "spilled water on my painting" excuse far too many times for it to be plausible another time; his professor would never allow it. He'd probably get a zero on the assignment, again.
Fuck.
Michael stared at the ruined painting a few more seconds and then crumpled it up savagely and threw it in the garbage bin.
~
Adriaan screamed again as the ground itself rumbled and then folded up fiercely around him and the withered tree he'd been huddling against tore itself up by the roots, falling with a terrific crash away from him. Somehow the hill that had been behind his was now looming above him, and Adriaan tumbled sideways, which was now down.
A yawning crevasse opened at the bottom of the slope he was sliding down and he scrabbled at the grass and the rocks. The tree he had been climbing in was also sliding towards its doom, as was a bloody, broken goat that maa-ed feebly as it bounced off the ground that was rolling and shifting sharply under Adriaan's body.
The hill looming above the goat and Adriaan shook and finally folded in on itself, and crushed him, the goat and the rock beneath them to powder and the darkness and silence were total.
User Reviews
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2007-03-28 16:22:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-10-18 15:36:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
BOB ROSS WANTS HAPPY TREES!
But this was awesome, as usual
Submitted by stardamage (user info) at 2006-10-18 14:34:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I was trying to convey old-timey Holland with the names but yeah, maybe a little overboard.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-10-18 13:16:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was good, but goddamn, man, be careful with those names.
I kept hearing Rocky Balboa screaming, "Adriaaaaaan Adriaaaaaaaan!"
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-10-18 02:22:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-10-17 22:45:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I see stardamaged people.
Submitted by GodChicken (user info) at 2006-10-17 21:01:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 stardamage sighting
Submitted by bob (user info) at 2006-10-17 20:57:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
good stuff
hey there!