Magpie Tales #78: Paint

     She was almost done. There… and there… and there. Finally! She wiped her forehead with the edge of her hand and set the paint roller in the tray. Backing into the doorway to get a better look at the bathroom, she was already shaking her head at the color.

     “Damn. I really thought this was it.” She reached over and absentmindedly scratched behind Calliope’s ear. “Lichen,” which had seemed subtly soothing when it was just a dot on the lid of the paint can, now bounced between the walls in the small space, intensifying the pale green to the color of chewed spearmint gum.

     “Maybe light blue?” Zoey sighed. “Or maybe I should just give in and paint it white.” Calliope blinked once, slowly, her lichen eyes glowing spearmint in the bathroom. She raised her tail and stalked from the room.

     Zoey sighed once more, just so she could fully appreciate exactly how tiring the whole thing was. She dumped the tray, roller, and brush in the bathtub and turned the faucet on the whole mess. Fatigue struck a blow between her shoulder blades and she sagged, turned off the faucet, and left the tools percolating in grassy bathtub soup while she went to bed.

     When she woke in the morning, she rolled over to face Calliope who was blithely licking her front paw.

     “Look at you,” Zoey said grumpily. “You get to lounge around all day, and I have to paint it all again.” She thought about going to look at the bathroom. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. But when she closed her lids, she felt fluorescent green glowing behind them. She pulled on her favorite yellow sweatshirt (“maybe pale yellow?”), slid her feet into a pair of clogs, and took her purse off the hook.

     “I never want to see green again,” she told an unsympathetic Calliope as she closed the front door.

     When she returned, a safe if boring gallon of “Buttermilk” in hand, she didn’t notice anything at first. It was as she was trudging down the hall to the bathroom that she saw them. Little green paw prints, phosphorescent against the dark wood floor.

     “Noooo…” she breathed softly, setting the paint can down. She followed the prints to the bathtub, where everything was just as she left it last night. Other than the footsteps, which led from the sickly pea soup, over the bathtub’s edge, and down the hall. Multiple times. She turned back to the hall, noticing now that there were several trails. One led into her bedroom, across the white carpet (“honestly, what was I thinking with white?”) and up onto her petal pink duvet. She followed another trail into the guest room up to the window seat, where leafy paw prints decorated the ivory pillows. The last trail she tracked down the carpeted stairs and across the living room floor, over the new armchair and to the new couch, where Calliope curled obliviously, nose tucked under mossy paws.

     “At least I’ll have something to remember you by after I kill you,” Zoey muttered. Calliope cracked open one eye, an infuriating sliver of impassive green. The unconcerned eye disappeared again. Zoey turned her drooping shoulders toward the stairs and followed the paw prints to what was left of her weekend.   

Mr. Bilson - Part II

The hall creaked with each step under the brown carpet as I followed Mr. Bilson into the depths of the house. It smelled like old man in there, like hairless skin and arthritis cream and dentures. He asked if I wanted a cup of coffee and I said yes, partly because I wasn’t allowed to drink coffee and partly because I wanted to bury my nose in the cup. He went in the kitchen, where he disappeared like a chameleon against the yellow-and-brown color scheme. I turned back to the wall and forgot about the smell.

There were all kinds of knives. The card underneath each knife said what kind of knife it was, who made it, and the year it was made. Some cards also had names of places and years next to those. There were some really old ones. The oldest one was also the biggest. It said it was an Argentine Modelo short sword from 1909. It had a pretty long blade, but it was old and nicked. It wasn’t rusty, though, like a couple of them were.

“Which one’s your favorite?” Mr. Bilson was back. He handed me the coffee. It was in a Denny’s mug, and I wondered if he’d stolen it. I took a sip and tried not to make a face. Even I could tell it wasn’t good coffee, and I’d never had any before.

He was still looking at me, waiting for me to answer. I studied the wall. I pointed to a dagger, all open ends and decoration, with a ridged, rusty blade. It looked like it would fit in my pocket, and if Mr. Bilson didn’t have those watchful eyes I might have tried.

“The Indian Katar dagger, hmmm?” He plucked it from the wall and thoughtfully felt its blade. “It isn’t dated, but it’s an old one.” He handed it to me.

I felt uncomfortable with the knife in my hand. He just kept looking at me, and I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do with it. I felt the blade like he’d done, nodding a couple times awkwardly as if I knew what a good knife should feel like. I handed it back to him when I thought the right amount of time had passed.

“You’re one of those boys doesn’t speak much, huh?” he said, placing the knife back on the wall. “Too busy playing your computer games, I suppose. Forgot how to use your voice.”

“I talk.” My voice sounded rusty, like the blade. I took another swallow of coffee. “How did you know I played computer games?”

“That was my job, to get close to people. To notice things. It’s the height of summer, and you’re white as a fish. When I handed you the cup, I saw the callous on your index finger from clicking that mouse button all the time. It wasn’t too hard to figure out.”

“What was your job?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. He just looked at the wall of knives, so I looked too. How come it was okay for him not to talk?