Death Song (Tales from the Tarot)

4. Charlie

Chapter four

Charlie

I can’t do this anymore.

My head is spinning as I sit on my wooden stool, arms weary from holding onto this brush in my hand. My knuckles crack as I grip it tighter, tracing a line of blood from the mouth of the man I’m painting, and I hate this.

I hate this.

I am filled with memories that aren’t mine and faces that I don’t recognize.

Except for one.

I have his name now.

Rex.

There is no comfort in knowing what he’s called or that he’s a real thing. Nothing about the surprise introduction to him at the gala has eased any of my dreams or given me a reason to stop painting him over and over again. In fact, everything has ramped up to a fever pitch, the dreams more vivid and persistent in their refusal to simply let me rest. I’ve found myself bargaining with this unknown force as the cracks in my mind have started to splinter open, spilling tears onto the pajama pants I wear as I beg for mercy and for rest.

Please, just let me rest.

I am waiting for this change The Owner said was coming to knock at my door and put an end to this, but it’s been three nights and here I sit.

Three long nights of broken sleep.

His chamomile and valerian root tea suggestion did nothing to ease this. I drank a bucket of it before turning back to my bottle of sleeping pills, but not even they are helping anymore. The bottle sits empty on my nightstand, the handful I took before bed having not even bothering to stop the dreams from coming to me and forcing me here.

My sleep doesn’t belong to me.

My arms, my mind, and my paint don’t either.

I have nothing left that is mine. All I can paint is his face. All I can see are his tears and all I hear is his mournful song. I can’t even find energy to create my own things during the day anymore. I haven’t touched a canvas outside of painting him since I bolted from the gala, leaving him behind.

As if I could leave him behind.

All of me is him.

I am so tired.

“You look like shit,” Finn comments as I slide into the chair across from him.

“Thanks, good to see you too.”

He sighs, then stands up from his desk. I track him with tired eyes as he heads for the coffee machine he keeps by the door, then returns with a huge mug. He sets it down in front of me and I reach for it, not even caring that it’s piping hot and will likely burn the roof of my mouth.

“Maybe you do need a doctor,” he suggests, as I practically inhale the caffeine. It’s my fifth cup this morning, but it’s only nine and if I say that out loud, he’ll probably drag me to the clinic himself.

“It’s just been a long couple of nights.”

Finn eyes me carefully before sighing again. “It couldn’t hurt.”

Yeah, it could. How do I even start explaining the reason I can’t sleep a whole night through without ending up locked away in the psychiatric unit of the hospital for an extended stay? The dreams won’t be stopped by that, and away from my paint, the pain of being unable to bring what I see in my sleep to the canvases will kill me.

Finn gives me a look, and I offer a shrug, forgetting what he was talking about. My memory has gone for shit since these sleep issues started and the days have started to blend together. I’m lucky I even made it here for this meeting.

“You really don’t look good, Charlie. Are you sure you’re up for this?”

I nod, because I am ready, and I also look terrible. He isn’t lying. I know it. I threw up twice before I left my loft, and I have a headache starting behind my eyes. I’m wearing the same sweatpants I’ve been wearing for the past two days. Or is it three? I can’t remember. The T-shirt I’ve thrown on is one I plucked from the floor of my room, and it’s covered in crusty old bits of paint and glue. I did shower before I left because I’m not a total slob, but I will admit that I look like I rolled out of a dumpster and that’s just fine by me.

Rex wants to commission a piece from me? This is what he gets.

The shitty part of me thinks it’s fair that he gets to see me looking like this when he’s the one causing it, but the rational side reminds me that’s absolutely insane. He can’t possibly know that he’s haunting my dreams and that every moment I spend awake centers around him. All of me is him, but maybe if I accept his commission and create what he wants from me, whatever these dreams are about, will leave me alone.

It makes sense in theory, but my brain resembles mashed potato soup these days so I can’t really be sure. The huge amount of money he’s proposed will help, at the very least. With the sum he’s suggested for a single piece of artwork, I can pay my mortgage for the next six months in full, and a loft in the downtown core isn’t cheap. Bowman told me he’s old money and that he’d paid more if I asked for it, but I’m not a crook. What he’s offered is more than anything I’ve gotten for a painting, and it already feels like robbery.

“You ready?” Finn asks as his phone lights up with a text. “Rex just pulled into the underground parking lot and is on his way up.”

“Ready as I can be.”

I stand, wobbling a bit on my feet. That’s another thing this lack of sleep has given me. Or it’s leftover remnants of the sleeping pills clinging to me. Either way, my balance is shit. Finn reaches an arm out and steadies me, concern written into his eyes.

“Charlie, this isn’t okay.”

“It’s fine. I just need some sleep, maybe I’m coming down with something. Lots of people at the gala, lots of germs.”

“Charlie.”

“Finn,” I say, turning to face my best friend. “I promised, okay. I promised. Please, let’s just get this over with so I can have a nap.”

Finn gives me a look like he doesn’t believe me at all, but nods, adding a sigh for good measure. He heads for the door to his office, and I follow, stumbling like a newborn baby deer for the first few steps. I soon find my balance and rhythm as I head down the hallway, biting back the yawns that don’t seem to ever stop. When we reach the conference room at the back of the gallery’s office space, Finn makes quick work of rushing in and closing the blinds that are streaming sunlight into the room. I watch in amusement and confusion as he pulls down shades that click to the window frames somehow.

“Magnets,” he offers as he rushes around clicking the shades down to the window frames. “Rex is allergic to the sun or something. I don’t know. Bowman said they have to be down and sealed or he can’t come inside.”

That should be strange, but what hasn’t been strange these last few months? Rex being allergic to the sun or whatever is the least of my concerns at the moment. Now that I know he is actually on his way up to this darkened room, my stomach has started churning with nerves. I can’t bolt this time. Not from a meeting I agreed to.

Why did I agree again?

Finn gives my shoulder a squeeze before fussing around with the coffee machine along the wall. I sit at the long wooden table and trace the lines in the top of it with my fingers while he scoots around the space, double-checking the windows. The machine sputters and pops as the scent of coffee fills the room, but when he puts the cup in front of me, I glance down to see that it’s shockingly green.

“Green tea with jasmine,” Finn whispers, placing another steaming mug of the same green liquid across the table from me. “Trust me. You need it.”

I look up from the mug, confused as to where the smell of coffee is coming from if what’s in my mug is tea, but as I see him, I understand. Rex has entered the room, bringing the same rich, dark roasted coffee bean scent with him that I smelled on him at the gala. He isn’t wearing a suit today, as he was then, but the jeans and creamy white button-down clings to him just as much. Could he be any more enticing? It’s bad enough that I’ve seen him naked in my dreams, adding skintight clothing in the real world to the mix isn’t helping matters.

It’s a wonder how he looks the same both here and when he appears in my sleep. I know the angles of his face and the small scar beneath his left eye. I know his lips and his fingers as well as I know my own at this point. Maybe even more. I have studied his body endlessly as I’ve painted every inch of him into canvas, his skin and muscle not as foreign as it should be to someone who hardly knows him.

But that thought feels wrong.

I do know him even though he is a stranger to me, and that knowledge sits inside my brain as I watch him move to the opposite side of the table with the same grace and poise he moves with in my dreams. Then, he pulls his shoulder-length blond hair back into a low ponytail with practiced ease, securing it in place with an elastic band from around his wrist to reveal a tattoo of a tiny red rose on the side of his neck, just below his ear.

That is new. I don’t know that part of him and I find I’m secretly delighted to learn something new about the handsome man I’ve painted with his hair down time and time again.

As he heads for the chair across from mine, I rise from my seat carefully and extend a hand to him across the table. His palm meets mine, and as his large fingers wrap around my hand, my heart starts beating a rabbit pace behind my rib cage. I suddenly get the sense that I am prey, and having painted him hunting before, I now understand how small those he killed in my dreams likely felt. His concerned eyes scan my body as he gives my hand a gentle clasp, and he frowns as he slowly lets me go.

I slightly regret showing up looking like I rolled around in Oscar the Grouch’s closet before coming, but on the other hand? Yeah, you ridiculously handsome life-ruiner, this is what you get today. This is what you’re gonna get until you stop haunting my dreams with your sad, lonely memories of blood and death.

“Are you well?” he asks, sitting down in the spot across the table from where I stand.

“The life of an artist,” I offer with a small smile. “Up at all hours of the night and always lacking sleep.”

He hums softly under his breath like he can sense my lie, but I keep that smile plastered on my face. Finn glances between me and Rex, then comes to stand at the head of the table.

“It’s customary for me to leave you alone to discuss your terms, but if there are any questions or if you need anything, please come find me.” He says this as he looks directly at me, and I roll my eyes, sticking my tongue out at him like a five-year-old would. His professional smile falters for a split second as he sticks his tongue back out at me, but he recovers quickly when he notices Rex is looking his way. I bite back a laugh as he turns to the door and rushes out of the conference room, cheeks burning pink.

And then we are alone.

Rex picks up his mug and takes a sip of his green tea, his fingers curling around the ceramic. I follow suit, but I find the tea too bitter when all I can smell is his coffee scent from across the table.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” he asks, placing his mug down. He does seem genuinely concerned, and I offer a nod and a smile back.

“I am. Why don’t you start by telling me what you’d like me to paint for that huge pile of money you’ve offered.”

Rex smiles, leaning back in his chair. “I knew that would entice you.”

“You honestly don’t have to pay me all that,” I confess. “My commissions usually come around a couple of thousand, depending on the size of the canvas and the intricacies of the piece.”

“What if I told you that I want you to paint whatever comes to you in a dream?” he asks, pitching his voice low like he’s revealing a secret.

My heart rockets in my throat and my hands start to shake. “What do you mean?”

“The cottage. I want you to paint the cottage again, but without the spray paint on it. Exactly as it was in your dream.”

“You really like that place, huh?” I ask as my nerves start to settle.

“It reminds me of better days,” Rex says, wistfully. “A time when everything was good, and life hadn’t taken away everything I once held dear.”

The red-haired man in my dreams. He has to be speaking of him. I’ve painted him often enough to know that I’ve painted his death. I’m still uncertain how much reality is contained within my dreams, but there has to be some grain of truth in the things I’ve seen. I mean, Rex is the star of them and he’s very real. Sure, when I paint him he sometimes has vampire fangs and I often am pushed to paint him with blood dripping from his mouth, but maybe that’s all real too. Who knows anymore? Those lines blurred so long ago it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that this Rex across from me is exactly as he is in my artwork.

“I can do that for you,” I say, biting back a yawn. “I will paint the cottage as I saw it in my dream.”

And maybe in doing so, I will earn my rest.