Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set Page 9

  And when the blood stopped flowing from his wound, the vision disappeared as well. But Leo had managed to capture most of its essence. And as he stumbled back from his canvas, dropping his brush and stepping into a puddle of his own blood, Leo wept. This was, he knew, his first great piece of art. Far surpassing anything he had ever attempted before, or, for that matter, could ever even imagine.

  But how had this come about? What had led to this masterpiece? Was it because of the blood? The pain? The shard of glass? Booze? Drugs? Or a combination of all the above? Leo didn’t know, but he was determined to find out.

  But first, he needed some fast cash.

  Over the next few days, he went around town shopping the painting around, hitting up familiar galleries and those who had shown some interest in his work in the past. To Leo’s amazement, there was real, honest-to-God excitement about the painting. More than excitement. There were offers. He sold that first painting for twenty-five hundred dollars. Exciting, yes. Even more exciting was that the buyer wanted more.

  Except Leo didn’t know how to give him more. After all, he didn’t have any clue how he had produced the first one!

  So Leo experimented. He tried drugs. Nothing. He got shit-faced and painted. Nothing. No visions. No beauty. No out-of-this world images. Just the same crappy shit he had always painted.

  Was he a one painting wonder?

  In desperation, Leo duplicated everything that had led up to the vision. He threw yet another party—and invited exactly the same friends. Hell, he even tried to arrange them around his little apartment so that they passed out in the same locations. He bought the same beer, ordered the same food, played the same music, did the same drugs. Nothing worked.

  Leo knew he was forgoing one thing in particular. It was the one thing that he hoped wasn’t the source of the vision.

  The following morning, like a condemned man digging his own grave, Leo methodically broke half a dozen beer bottles. He tossed the jagged shards into the Hefty trash bag along with the other trash from the previous night’s party. Already feeling sick, he headed out to the Dumpster.

  The morning was cool. The sun was bright. Leo, for once, was surprisingly alert considering how early it was. Of course, being terrified had a way of waking up even Leo from his morning stupor.

  I’m really doing this, he thought.

  Now he began swinging the plastic bag filled with broken glass. Hesitantly at first, but then higher and higher.

  I’m crazy. This is nuts.

  He could hear the broken glass clinking within. He continued walking along the narrow pathway between apartments. The rising sun, still low on the horizon, shone straight into his face. He squinted, and swallowed hard. The rising sun was a new site for him.

  He swung the bag more recklessly. Once or twice it hit his legs, ricocheting off, the sharp projectiles only grazing his skin.

  Leo’s mouth had gone completely dry minutes earlier. He was also trembling. In particular, his legs were trembling. He sensed he was going into a sort of pre-shock in anticipation of the pain and blood to come.

  I don’t want to do this.

  Yes, you do.

  On the next swing, he raised the bag up higher. At its apex, as it hovered briefly in space, something flashed in the morning sun. It was a shard of glass glinting in the sunlight, poking through the plastic bag.

  The bag started down again, picked up momentum, and slammed hard into his right shin. The pain was immediate—and intense.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!”

  Something—no doubt the glass—lodged deep into his lower leg. Leo’s blue eyes bulged. He doubled over. He could see now the dark little shards sticking through the black bag and into his flesh. The bag, however, had hit a different leg this time. His right leg. Right, left—did it matter? He didn’t know, but maybe, since there was no vision.

  Leo thought for sure that it had been the intense pain that caused the vision to appear.

  He was wrong, and now he was sickened by what he had done to himself. The glass, from all appearances, was lodged deep in his leg. Much deeper than the first time he had done this, back when he had accidentally cut himself.

  Leo wanted to be a great artist. Hell, he craved just to be considered good, let alone great. But that painting last week wasn’t just good or great....

  It had been a masterpiece.

  The vision had been his answer, of course. The vision had been his way out of mediocrity. The vision was what he had been waiting for all his life.

  And now it was gone. Damn.

  This crazy plan had really been his last hope. Now the very real, and grim, thought that he might have to actually give up his dream of being an artist weighed upon him. Standing there with the glass shard still sticking in his leg, feeling hopeless and stupid, Leo imagined himself getting up every morning to an alarm, relentlessly hitting the damn snooze button, working for some asshole in a suit and tie—and nearly wept. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Life was supposed to be fun and carefree.

  Yes, sugar mommas were still a valid option, but satisfying their needs was almost as bad as getting up early for work.

  Almost.

  Confused and lost, Leo focused again on his leg. The pain seemed to be intensifying. The glass was really in there deep. Mutilating himself for his art. Leo felt like an idiot.

  And all for nothing, too.

  There was still little or no blood, as the glass was basically plugging up the hole in his leg. He knew the moment he freed the glass, his leg was going to gush. Steeling himself, he reached down and gently took hold of the glass. It was still poking through the plastic bag. In effect, the trash bag was attached to his leg. The moment he touched the glass, white hot pain ripped through him.

  Leo nearly passed out just touching the glass.

  How am I going to pull it out? he thought.

  Just yank it out.

  But I can’t; it hurts too much.

  Yes, you can. You have to.

  I’ll call an ambulance. They can do it.

  And you’ll pay them how?

  Leo had no money for an ambulance, of course. Leo had already burned through the twenty-five hundred from the last painting.

  Just do it.

  Do it!

  And so he did. Screaming, he pulled the long and bloody shard of glass out of his leg. Screaming. Gasping. Fighting an urge to vomit. Fighting an urge to pass out.

  Out the glass shard came. Slowly. Bloodily.

  And then it was out completely and blood spurted free in a great crimson arch, spraying across the cement walkway, and even out into the grass beyond.

  And the vision that hit him nearly knocked him off his feet. So blinding. So powerful. So beautiful. Leo stumbled back, fell into the wet grass and felt joy unlike anything he had ever felt in his life. Groping blindly, he turned and found his feet and sprinted awkwardly back into his apartment, pushing aside the same slumbering lummoxes.

  That morning, Leo painted his second masterpiece.

  This time it sold for ten thousand.

  * * *

  That was four years ago.

  Now Leo Dershowitz lived in a beautiful artist’s loft in Brea, California. Museum directors (the same ones who sniffed haughtily at his past work) were soon pounding down his door, offering to pay him staggering fees to showcase his work. He granted permission to some, others he didn’t. In a matter of years, Leo quickly acquired that kind of power. He also had women over, too, but these were much younger and much prettier than the old hags he was used to date. And now Leo gave them allowances. That felt good to him. Really, really good.

  Lately, Leo’s best friend was his accountant, Larry Steingold. The two men had little in common except a love of money—especially Leo’s money.

  Leo had a need to tell someone about his bleeding. Up to this point—four years now!—he had kept his macabre painting habits a secret. He needed to get it off his chest. Leo suspected he would have been better off telling a shrink abo
ut it, but he wanted to tell someone he knew, someone he trusted, and then look them in the eye to see if they thought he, Leo, was crazy. Because sometimes—sometimes—Leo thought he was seriously going crazy.

  Leo was desperate to reach out, to explain, to connect. To be told he wasn’t crazy. To be told that his bloody muse was perfectly normal. Lawrence the accountant seemed a perfect candidate. He was reasonable, non-judgmental, and had proven to be a decent friend over these past few years. In short, Leo trusted him with his most trusted secret.

  And so one evening, when the two were sitting opposite each other at a posh L.A. sushi restaurant, drinking saki and eating raw fish, Leo found himself in a talkative mood. So talkative, in fact, that he blurted out his bloody secret. And when Leo was finished talking, blabbering really, Lawrence swallowed his last bite of food and carefully set his chopsticks across his unfinished plate of salmon rolls. The little man blinked once, twice, three times, and then looked Leo squarely in the eye from across the table.

  “This is a joke, right?” he said, speaking slowly and carefully, as he always did.

  “I wish it were,” said Leo.

  “But...but why do you do that to yourself?”

  “I told you why, Larry. I have to. I have no choice.”

  “But you do have a choice. You just stop.”

  “If I stop, then the visions stop. If the visions stop, the paintings stop. If the paintings stop, the money stops.”

  “You have plenty of money.”

  “Are you recommending I stop?” Leo asked, somewhat surprised.

  “Well, I care about you. I’d hate to think you’re hurting yourself.” Lawrence, after much restraint, finally looked at Leo’s left arm, his non-painting arm. His bleeding arm. “Would you mind?”

  Leo didn’t mind, and as he showed Lawrence his mutilated forearm, he studied his good friend’s expression closely. Lawrence sat forward and pushed up his wire-rim glasses. Leo didn’t have to look at his own arm to know what his friend was seeing was seeing. Leo had looked enough.

  A small sacrifice, he always thought. A blood sacrifice.

  The accountant’s face froze, and, as if someone had pulled a plug from the base of his skull, the color drained from the man’s face. Lawrence looked up sharply, and Leo had his answer.

  He thinks you’re crazy, thought Leo, calmly rolling down his sleeve.

  Maybe I am.

  Leo and Lawrence never talked about the subject again.

  * * *

  Three months ago, Leo woke up from a dead sleep and knew he was going to die.

  It was in the middle of the night and his heart was racing madly. In his dreams he saw a fragmented image, the sort of image that only occurred to him when bleeding. A vision. Leo quickly realized the relevance of this.

  A vision had come to him without bleeding. This was big.

  No more bleeding!

  Now, if he could just grab hold of this elusive image trying to make its way into his conscious thoughts from his dreams—or from wherever these vision came from. So he lay there in bed and tried his hardest to grab hold of the amorphous vision.

  No good.

  The harder he tried, the more it slipped away. He likened it to a photograph held just beyond his peripheral vision, a photograph that was slowly burning. And the more he strained to look at it, the faster it burned.

  Still, from what he was able to see, it was clear that this scattered picture, this kaleidoscopic hint of beauty, would be greater in scope than any of his past work. It would be, he was sure, his life’s masterpiece.

  Leo got out of bed, lit a cigarette, paced his large room, and tried with all his might to grab hold of the chimerical image. But now it was nearly indefinable, taunting him from the edges of his imagination, as if daring him to fully summon it.

  And that’s what scared Leo. One way to fully summon this vision, this powerful glimpse of Eden, he would have to bleed, and he would have to bleed a lot.

  A very troubled Leo went to bed three hours and a pack of cigarettes later.

  * * *

  The vision stayed with him for most of these three months, haunting his dreams, calling to him, mocking him, challenging him. The glimpses he saw were nothing short of spectacular, nothing short of Heaven.

  Leo was terrified.

  In some ways, he fell in love with this incomplete jigsaw puzzle of Paradise. In the mornings, when the vision was still fresh on the periphery of his dreams, he would weep at the heartbreaking beauty of its promise. But with each passing minute of consciousness, as the noon sun burned in through his second-story window, the vision would dissipate like the early morning mist. And Leo would weep again because he was never certain the image would return.

  One night, upon waking from a particularly powerful dream, he called Lawrence. On the third try, his accountant finally answered in a barely intelligible mumble.

  “Leo...is something wrong?” asked his friend.

  “Yes.”

  The mumble disappeared. “What is it?”

  “I’m going to die.”

  “What do you mean?”

  So Leo told him about it. Lawrence listened quietly, or perhaps fell asleep. Either way, when Leo was done, his accountant said, “Well, you don’t have to paint it, do you?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I don’t paint it, I’ll never paint again.”

  “That’s preposterous.” His accountant liked to say words like preposterous and astronomical, even, apparently, when half asleep.

  “No, it’s not,” said Leo. “Think of it this way: this painting, this vision, is the next in line. It’s this one or nothing.”

  “Well, can’t you paint it in bits and pieces? Say over the course of three or four sessions? Do you have to, um, bleed all at one time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because once the vision comes to me in full force, it will never come to me again. I get one shot to document it, to paint it, to record it, and then it’s gone.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “Yes, it is,” Leo agreed.

  “What are you going to do?” asked his accountant.

  “I don’t know, but I need to do something. The dreams are becoming less frequent, less vivid. The image is leaving me. I fear it might someday leave altogether.”

  “Good. Let it go.”

  “Then I may never paint again.”

  “You have made plenty of money, Leo. Your investments are through the roof, thanks, in large part, to me.”

  “Painting is who I am. Even when I was bad, it was my sole identity.”

  “Then go back to being bad.”

  Leo had thought of that, and he knew there was no going back.

  “The vision is quite beautiful, you know,” he said idly.

  “Then paint the fucking thing. Bleed like a bloody ghoul into your disgusting bucket and paint the damn thing. But just know I am fully against this.”

  Leo hung up and smoked another pack of cigarettes, then got up from bed and walked calmly downstairs into his art studio.

  * * *

  Months ago he had prepared for this moment.

  He had placed a big fifty-by-thirty inch canvas onto the heavy wooden easel. Twenty-three different tubes of oil paint were lined neatly on the poker table in front of the paint-encrusted palette. He had put in a new light bulb in the adjustable light, and Bach was in the CD player.

  Leo changed into a favorite paint- and blood-stained sweatpants. He put on a fresh T-shirt. He seated himself on his rickety stool before the blank canvas. He pressed “Play” and Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier performed on a Flemish harpsichord filled his spacious art studio.

  Now, with a rare German Quillon double-edged dagger he had purchased for ten thousand dollars at auction for just this occasion, Leo proceeded to open a familiar scar on the inside of his right forearm, just below his elbow. As he did so, his tongue stuck out like a kid carving h
is first Jack-o-Lantern. Except, in this case, Leo was carving himself.

  Blood welled up immediately from the wound, almost eagerly, as if it, the blood, had been waiting all these many months for sweet release. It hurried excitedly down his arm like a child at recess, pausing briefly at his wrist, then building up momentum and burst over the padding of his palm. It corkscrewed playfully around his middle finger and finally dripped free at his nail.

  Leo watched it all, fascinated.

  And only when that first drop of blood hit the bucket, as the ping of it reverberated within the plastic walls and echoed up to his ears, did the vision come to him in full force.

  The entire vision.

  The complete vision, with nothing left out or merely hinted at.

  And it was breathtaking. If ever there was a heaven, this was surely it. Hovering right there before Leo’s eyes, waiting to be painted.

  Hurry, he thought, knowing that this epic painting, this masterpiece-in-waiting would take hours to complete.

  Could he bleed for hours? Leo didn’t know, but he was about find out.

  With his left hand bleeding uselessly into the bucket, Leo used his right hand to squeeze out the various colors he would need and used his thick sable brush to mix the colors to his liking—all the while blood dripped-dripped steadily into the white bucket.

  The bucket itself was certainly a ghoulish sight, and Leo himself generally preferred not to look inside it. Looking inside for too long always made him queasy and sick. And now was not the time to be queasy or sick. The vision was here, and Leo’s time was limited, literally, by how long he could remain conscious.

  Now, with masterful swipes and guided by the vision, he completed the background to the painting in a matter of minutes. Already, the bottom of the bucket was covered with Leo’s fresh blood.

  An hour into the painting and Leo’s left arm was cold and numb. He had to knock scabs away twice to keep the blood flowing. He always knew his blood was coagulating because the vision before him would start to fade, wavering like a distant mirage.

  The hours marched on. His stomach growled off and on throughout the day, a lonely sound that went unanswered. His left arm had long ago turned deathly pale, as it usually did when bleeding. Leo ignored his left arm. It had one purpose and one purpose only: to bleed.