SEVEN

After Christian called Gates and told him about the bodies in the dump and the picture in the paper, the shit hit the fan for about an hour.  Christian hadn't expected the violence of the other man's reaction, though on reflection he supposed that he should have.  In the end, despite his fears of everything crumbling about his ears, it didn’t matter. 

As far as their deal was concerned, nothing had changed.  Nothing, that is, except that Christian was relieved of more responsibility.  Gates would handle the bodies, once Christian was done with them.  It would be done his way, and that was fine with Christian.  He was an artist, not a killer.  Gates knew what he was doing.  Actually, to give the man credit, Christian didn't believe Gates had ever killed anyone.  He just knew how to do it, how to get away with it.  He knew the people and the places that made things happen, good things, and bad things.  It was his job to know.

After this had all been settled, and Gates had calmed Christian’s fears of discovery somewhat, they'd gotten down to the real issue; when the next photo session was and who would be the next model.

The preparations Gates had made were more elaborate than Christian’s spur-of-the-moment encounter with Lindy and Tony had been, and they were more demanding on his time and his emotional energy.  He was to meet his model in front of the “Shady Pines” hotel at 8:00 sharp.  It was only six, and every nerve, every sensory input Christian possessed, was afire with anticipation, and with the heat of what was to come.

He had several speeds of film in his bag, some different lenses, and a couple of carefully chosen filters that he had not used the last time.  This model would be more mature, and every face was different. There were a thousand details to consider. 

The lighting would be more important, since there would be years chiseled into her features that would have to be taken into account with either shadows, or makeup.  Christian’s mind whipped through the possibilities like an internal slide display, discarding some, filing others away.

The girl's name was Cherie.  She was new to Gates' firm, fresh out of some mid-western town in Ohio and very eager to please.  This was good.  The years would be there, but probably not the hard, cruel ones she might have lived in the city.  They might have been kind to her, might even flatter her.

Christian hadn't met the girl.  They'd decided this would not be wise, but he'd been present at Sid's when Gates had brought her in, showing her around the place.  It had all been set up for Christian's viewing, for his final decision.  She was perfect.

She didn't have Victorian beauty, nor did her face possess the classic lines that artists had sought over the centuries.  What she did possess was a down-home innocence, a childish way of glancing about her, taking in the world as if it were a big surprise laid out just for her that had not yet been scourged from her by the life she was choosing.

There was also a hunger in her eyes that reached out to Christian from across the room.  It was hunger for life, for the big city and all its wonders.  Beneath this the hunger had a sharper edge, and Christian knew this was Gates’ doing.  It was the beginning of the chemical dependency that was sinking its claws into her slowly. The drug, like the city, had only had her in its clutches for a very short time, but it was there.

Most of the other models Christian had known had lost this hunger and naive beauty years back, had cast it aside or hung it on one too many bedposts and been unable to fit back into it when they departed in the night. 

Christian's mother hadn’t possessed a shred of it.  Her hungers had been desperate, and her obsessions had not really been intended to satisfy, only to blunt the pain.

Now Christian waited, a half-full glass of scotch, which was slowly becoming a habit, sitting on the table in front of him.  He sat alone, in silence, watching everything, missing nothing, blending with the mask faces on his wall.  His thoughts were losing cohesion.  Slowly the room faded, and the memory of the girl's beauty played a solo performance across the screen of his mind.

He had new techniques to try beyond the photography, too.  Hiram had provided a small vial of the white powder Cherie liked so well, the Cocaine.  Gates insisted that it was better than the drops Christian had used in the scotch, and that the girl was more than willing to partake of it.  Christian knew about drugs, had known them, done them, and watched them eat away at his mother's already questionable sanity for years.  He knew little about Cocaine, though, beyond the fact that it was expensive.

"Give her a few lines of this, Greve, and she'll do everything you ask.  It's what brought her to me in the first place, her leash, if you will.  Don't use it sparingly, either.  She's kind of cute.  The least you can do is, well . . . I want her to enjoy her last night."

Hiram’s expression had been almost sentimental at that moment, but Christian had ignored it.  He took the vial and stared at it in fascination.  He remembered the drugs his mother had fed him, the euphoria, the warped way it had mixed up his vision, shaken his senses until nothing existed but her hands, her tongue, playing over his body, her mocking laughter as he reacted, just as she knew he would, just as he always had.

Christian smiled.  Now he would have the opportunity to see for himself what it was like on the other end of the leash.  He wouldn’t be using it himself, as his mother had.  There was no time for sharing pleasure; he had work to do.

In the past few days he'd busied himself with his normal tasks, doing a little extra business here and there when it presented itself and putting together several "special" packages for Gates, different sized prints of his first shooting, enlarged, wallet-sized, even one huge portrait.  It was the first taste of doing business for himself, not for others; it felt good.

It also kept him busy, but now the critical moment approached, and Christian felt the pressure. What if it hadn't been the girl's fault?  What if his mother had been right, that all he was good for was a laugh and a lousy nine-to-five job?  What if his vision was skewed, or marred by some inner fault he couldn’t make out through the cracked lens of his mind?

Could he have misplaced Lindy’s shoulder, missed the strand of hair in his excitement at the moment of creation?  Was his concentration truly up to the task?  He didn't know, nor did he really care.  The urge to create again grew with each tick of the clock.  His head pounded with a growing headache, and his mind was going numb under the weight of the anticipation.

When he could wait no longer, he rose, gathered his bags and equipment, and piled them by the door.  He saw the tumbler of scotch sitting before him on the table, forgotten, and he grabbed it, gulping its contents.  He stared at the bottle for a long moment, then grabbed it and poured another, downing that as well.  Somehow it seemed to help him concentrate.  It wasn't the euphoria of Cocaine, but the slow ride to success.  The scotch was becoming a part of his new identity, a part of his new life.

Christian grabbed his jacket and headed out the door, camera bag in one hand and a small satchel with the rest of his gear in the other.  He piled it all into the Dart and backed onto the street, barely remembering to look for oncoming traffic.  It was a night for chances.  There was no traffic.

* * *

She wore a light yellow top that clung tightly to the ample curves of her breasts and tucked into a short black skirt.  Her legs seemed to drop forever from the hemline, curving, then curving again, falling away to delicate ankles and finishing in white, patent leather pumps.  Christian's heart almost stopped when he saw her.

She was dressed like a streetwalker from a wet dream, but still she had the innocence, that quality he'd seen the first time around.  The clothes and the gaudy makeup all seemed false and somehow inappropriate.  Though she moved easily in the heels, tapping the toes and swinging slowly and nervously in a circle as she awaited his arrival, a cigarette dangling cheaply from the corner of her mouth, it didn't yet mar her inner beauty.

Christian saw through the facade; saw the lovely young girl beneath the glitzy trappings, the runaway daughter in the den of wolves.  It was true that she blended in, that the pack seemed to accept her, but she did not belong completely.  There was still an air of quiet streets and high-school proms that drew Christian to her and made him want to pat her on the head, or the behind, stroking the soft golden locks of her hair and pulling her close and safe. 

He knew the wolves would snap at it, ravage it, and rip it from her in little painful bits and pieces.  He would be saving her the pain and immortalizing that which was best in her.  It would be a tribute to days long gone and lives unlived.  True art.

He stepped from the car at one minute before eight and grabbed his bags.  Closing and locking the door of the Dart, he was intensely aware that her gaze followed each movement, and he blushed.  When he stood, he held the camera bag directly in front of him, covering his erection.  No sense in letting her know the level of control she'd already exerted.  He was taking no chances.

Plastering the best attempt at a confident smile he could muster across his features, Christian stepped forward.  He slipped both bags to his left hand and extended his right to take hers as he approached.  It was a mistake.  The point where their skin met sent an electric jolt through his arm, and he felt the blush return full force.

"Mr. Greve?" she asked, flashing him a tentative smile.

"Yes," he managed, "and you are . . . Cherie?"

"Yes," she nodded, her hair bobbing prettily and her smile widening.  "Mr. Gates said you'd meet me here, but I was beginning to worry.  Do you know that five different men have tried to pick me up since I got here?"

"I don't doubt it," Christian said, smiling again.  He drew inward, remembering the other night, remembering the look of terror in the boy, Tony's eyes, the trembling of Lindy's lips.  He focused on the sensations those moments had created within him, and he felt his power returning. 

"Well," he said at last, realizing he'd been staring at her for too long, "I must say that Mr. Gates has impeccable taste.  I believe we can create something special together, something memorable.  Shall we go inside?"

Nodding shyly, Cherie followed Christian past the desk in the lobby.  Gates had already provided him a room key, and the receptionist barely glanced up as they passed.  It was not one of the cities city’s nicer hotels, but it was one of the more discreet.

"Has Mr. Gates informed you as to the uh...peculiarities of this shoot?"

"Oh," now it was her turn to blush, "he explained it all, Mr. Greve.  I don't have any trouble with nudity, you know?  I think if God gave me this body, who am I to keep it all to myself?  He said you were doing something called Ladies of the Evening?"

"Exactly," Christian agreed, fumbling the door to the room open as he talked, trying to remember exactly what he and Gates had discussed.  "I want to capture the darker side of San Valencez' night life, but I want to capture the beauty in it, the – how can I put it – more seductive qualities.”

"I'll be happy to do whatever you ask." Cherie's voice sounded less certain, less confident than before, and Christian turned.  He set his cases down and grabbed both sides of her chin to hold her face still.  There was a tentative promise in her words, a release of control.  He almost felt the puppet strings snap into place.

"You are perfect for this, Cherie," he told her.  "There is something about you, something, innocent, that I want to capture.  You are part of the life here, but it is not all that you are, not yet.  I want to capture the last of the little girl that you were."

She seemed mesmerized by his words.  Her cheeks were flushed, and it was obvious that his attention made her feel important.  Maybe the memories of her childhood were important to her, as well.  Maybe it was his comment that she was becoming a part of the city that excited her.  It didn't matter.

Turning away from her again, he reached into the satchel and drew forth his bottle of scotch, two glasses, and the small vial.  He wasn't going to have any of the drugs, but he would have his new bottled courage handy.  He set it all casually on the dresser, grabbed the bottle and opened it.  He filled two glasses carefully.

"There is no rush," he said, smiling at her as comfortingly as possible.  "Maybe you’d like to relax first, to loosen up?  We want the natural you to come forth for the camera, no illusions. 

"That is the problem with most photography, most models.  They pose like trained monkeys.  Your legs should be just so, your hair has to flow over your shoulders in the same way as all other models – you can’t have an ounce of meat on your bones.  It’s all drivel.  True art exists in the images around us, the real images."

She took the glass of scotch willingly enough, but her gaze was glued to the vial, and Christian saw a very different quality surfacing in the depths of her eyes. To him the drug had been another chain, a restraint, something to rob him of even his desire not to participate, making him a plaything.  It was hard for him to understand her hunger for it.

Cherie shook her head and dragged her gaze back to meet his, but at the same time her awareness of the vial had not diminished.  It was fascinating, another stolen image, and perhaps one he could work with in the earlier part of the evening, the part where she was still a functioning partner.

Moving to the dresser, he took up the vial and offered it to her.  "If you would like?" he asked.  Her eyes lit up with a fire he would not have believed they possessed, an almost obsequious surrender to his simple gesture.

She took the vial in trembling hands.  She placed her purse on the dresser slowly, but the quick, furtive movements of her hands and the scurrying of her fingers gave away her need.  She pulled out a small mirror, a razor blade, and a dollar bill.

She turned her head to smile up at him.  Her expression seemed almost an apology – or a mask of shame.  Maybe she was apologizing to her own mind, or to the mind that she'd left behind, the life she'd forsaken. The other half of the expression was unbridled appreciation.  She was grateful; another emotion Christian was unfamiliar with. 

Then she turned back to the mirror and went to work on a small portion of the Cocaine.  He was reminded of a squirrel trying its best to get through the skin of a reluctant nut.

Cherie sifted a small amount of powder onto the mirror, smaller than he would have liked, and chopped at it with the razor blade, slipping it first to one side, then slipping it back, all the while grinding it into a finer powder.  What Christian had at first assumed to be a very small amount spread out as she worked, expanding, until finally she had three long, slender lines of the powder.

Turning to him, she offered the mirror, but he shook his head.  With a quick shrug, she took up the dollar bill, which she rolled carefully into a tube, and dipped her head, her hair bobbing almost daintily as she inhaled first on one side, then on the other.  She leaned back, inhaled the powder deeper, and waited to be certain none would fall free. Then she dipped to the last line and split it between both nostrils with a deft toss of her head.

Christian was fascinated.  During the moment of inhaling the drug, Cherie was oblivious to her surroundings.  Anything could happen; anything would be fine, as long as the powder made it to her nose, and to the blood that pulsed beyond. Christian wasn’t curious to feel what she felt.  He did want very much to know how she felt. He didn’t want a drug – he wanted her.

He wanted to feel her tremble as the Cocaine streamed through her body, to sense what she felt through the warm touch of her skin.  He wanted to be a part of her hunger, to be part of the cure for her need.  His own hunger was growing, demanding that he satisfy and feed it.  It was an intoxicating rush, and he rode it, feeling it slide over and through him. 

Christian stepped closer.  He put his hand gently on her hair and tilted her face up to the light.  There was a dusting of white powder around her nose and her upper lip.  Her lips were parted slightly, and she licked the roof of her mouth, and then slid her tongue out to run across her full lips and nearly to her chin.  Fascinating.

It was her eyes that held him, though.  Deep, soulful eyes, eyes that spoke of dark green grass and campfires, of school dances and early bed times, of years now lost and abandoned.  He felt her inside, wanting out, taking the easy road to adulthood, the road paved with stones and pitfalls, the dead end of drugs and the street.  He yearned for his camera, yearned to capture the moment, lost it.

She reached up and put her hand on his.  She didn’t pull away, just stared at him.  Christian stepped back, took both of her hands in his and helped her to her feet.  He turned her then, like a model on a runway, studying her carefully.  He didn't speak.  An aura of tension wove between them, fueled by emotion and bound by his vision and her flesh.

Cherie felt it as well as he did, and she moved with it.  She tilted her head, spun her hips, and lost herself in his eyes as he slid them across her skin and searched her soul.  She followed the invisible puppet strings in his fingers as though he owned her.

Christian wondered fleetingly how he had ever had problems with models before.  There was so much he hadn't known.  It didn't matter.  They would still have ruined his work.  It was not Christian that was flawed.  The drugs shouldn't be necessary; the sexual tension was a distraction.  He had to be strong and maintain his vision.

He sat her on the edge of the bed, opened his satchel, and removed the makeup case.  Cherie watched him, eyes wide and interested, eager.  As he worked, he gestured again at the vial and raised an eyebrow questioningly. She moved without hesitation, and he felt it again, the undercurrent of shame in at her need easily overpowered by the bite of her addiction.

He waited patiently as she repeated her performance with the mirror, blade, and dollar bill, watched her muscles ripple beneath the tight material of her blouse.  The light from the room's one dim lamp danced through the highlights of her hair.  She finished quickly and glanced up at him again with an easy, sleepy smile.  Christian sat down beside her, opened his case, and framed her face in his hands again.

"Don't move," he instructed her, reaching down for the cleansing pads and the cold cream.

"But...my makeup?"

"Is very attractive," he finished, dabbing the cold cream softly onto her cheek, "but not quite appropriate for what we are trying to achieve here.  You just sit still, let me do this and we'll just be a minute.  I may be a man," he smiled at her, "but there are a few things I can do with makeup that I think you’ll like.  Relax, and you won't be disappointed."

She fell silent, leaned back slightly and closed her eyes.  Christian leaned very close, working deftly, laying a basecoat and then detailing, eyebrow pencils, mascara, just the slightest hint of blush.  He wanted to draw out the little girl in her features, but he wanted the cheap, tawdry look of the streets as well.  He would have to be very precise to achieve the proper balance.

It wasn't as easy as one of the porcelain masks.  Cherie’s skin, though smooth and unlined, was softer, rougher in texture. It was more difficult to achieve the continuity of his lines, the subtle blends of hue that accented one another across the palette.  As he worked, he smiled, humming a song under his breath. 

Then the unexpected happened.  Cherie moved.  It was subtle at first, only the gentlest touch of her skin, brushing against him.  It began with a casual sweep of her fingers, perhaps a mistake.  Then she arched, and there was the taut tip of her nipple, the soft fabric of her blouse, sliding against him, pressing into his skin as he worked. 

Next her hands returned more insistently.  The desire that flooded him was instantaneous and powerful.  Cherie felt him stiffen in her grasp, and giggled.

"We have all night," she whispered, drawing her face closer and smearing the makeup in a lurid stripe across her brow.  She giggled again and melted into his arms.

Christian had no defense against such an assault, no will to defy her.  She pushed him back, then lost her balance and rolled across him, pressing the length of her flesh against his as she did and smothering him in the scent of her perfume. 

His mind instantly conjured his mother's face and replaced Cherie’s sweet, floral scent with that of heavy musk.  He growled softly and let his hands stray to her blouse.  He tugged it up and off over her head, hopelessly smudging the makeup he’d spent such care applying.

He rolled her to her side, and rose to gaze at her from the height of his arms, then slid over her and pressed down into her flesh.  She lifted her torso from the bed and helped him slide her skirt down over her hips.  The room swirled, and Christian lost himself in her, only vaguely aware of his surroundings.  His mother’s voice rose to whisper to him, but he pressed her back with vicious, grinding thrusts of his hips, and she grew silent.

Christian's heart, mind, and body were wrung dry.  He lay atop her when he was spent and let his surroundings come back into focus.  He saw the light on the dresser first.  Focusing on it, he slid his gaze to the side and he saw his camera bag – his satchel.  He raised himself on his elbows and looked about the room.

There were articles of clothing and bed sheets everywhere. Two of the pillows lay on the floor, and Cherie lay beside him, softly fondling herself and watching him through sleepy eyes.  Her expression had a lost, vacant quality.  Stoned, he realized.  She was stoned out of her mind.

He rose from the bed and dressed, watching her carefully.  He searched each movement, each shift of her expression, for the qualities he sought in his masterpiece.  They were there, buried more deeply now and layered in a fresh coat of depravity, but still there. 

He finished dressing, grabbed the vial and turned back to the satchel.  It was time to get to the work at hand before another opportunity was lost.

Christian slipped the Coke into the bag and drew forth a second vial.  This one, like the other, held Cocaine, but there was a difference.  The contents of this one were pure and uncut, enough to put a horse out of its misery.  He turned with a wicked grin on his face and brought her the vial, handing her also her mirror and implements.

"I want you to have a good time," he told her, sitting beside her on the bed.  His mind flickered back across the days to Gates' comment.  They both wanted her to have a good time.  

"You have a bit more of this, and then we have work to do.  You enjoy yourself a little more, and I'll set up the lights.  Then we'll get you ready, eh?"

She nodded dreamily, her gaze once more locked onto the white powder.  Before she had even managed to sit up, she was reaching for the mirror and blade.

Christian shook off the haze that had shaded his thoughts and moved around the room, setting a tripod here with three lights, a clip on lamp above the dresser.  Each had to be placed just so, and he’d lost time.

He took out the backdrop he'd planned for her, blue velvet to set off her blonde highlights, pink borders and ruffles to enhance the innocence he sought, the perfection of her image.

He had planned on a few shots of her clothed before moving on to the nudes, but that was obviously out of the question now, so he improvised, running images through his mind, processing them, changing settings on his camera as he went and adjusting the lights again and again.

On the bed behind him he heard the first sniff of the drug finding its mark, and he turned to watch her.  The Cocaine would hit fast, so Gates had said, and he wanted to see the seductive drug become the violent lover, the terminal lover.  He wanted to see the arch of her body as the thing she most wanted ended her need and finished off her craving.

Cherie was weaving a little, but still determined, wanting that last grain of Cocaine, even though she must have known she was nearly unconscious. 

Without stopping to think, Christian leapt to his camera, focused quickly, and snapped off a series of shots, moving to the floor and angling up into the empty pools that had been her eyes, focusing on the powder caked around her nostrils, on her lips.  She keeled over to one side, and he moved to her, taking the last of the powder from the mirror and putting it on his fingertip.  He ran the finger between her lips and over her tongue.  She swallowed once, coughed, and then licked her lips a final time before rolling onto her back.

She was gone.  Her body twitched several times. Christian watched her breasts as they wobbled limply from side to side, then became still.  He laid his hand softly on one of them, rubbing the nipple between his thumb and forefinger idly, but there was no response.  He looked down at the camera in his hand, and he smiled.  He'd been quicker this time.  It was not a lost image, merely a last one.

Satisfied, he rose, retrieved the half-spilled makeup kit, and set to work.  He only had a couple of hours remaining until daylight, and he had to be long gone by then.  He hadn't planned on distraction, he'd only been thinking of the girl as an image to be captured.

Cherie wasn't very heavy, and Christian had little trouble positioning her.  She was a mannequin, a play-doll model that would bend to his every whim.  He set her against the blue velvet drop cloth carefully, arranged her limbs and brushed her hair.  Then he cleaned and made up her face. 

She could have been the girl next door that every man dreamed of, sexy, provocative, without a clue.  The only differences were the makeup and the eyes.  She was beyond men now, a vision to be sought, a dream to share with oneself at night, but never to be attained.  Death lent her a far away, ethereal beauty she had lacked in life.

Christian moved about the room, taking shots from different angles, some pristine, some bordering on pornographic.  In a couple he set her blouse back over her, wrapping dead fingers around the cloth to hold it in place demurely, in others he spread her limbs wide and placed her thumb between her lips, her tongue lolling across it and her head slung back – lurid, wanton, and inaccessible.

When he was satisfied that he'd done all he could and that there was nothing more to be drawn from the moment, he began his second task, the task set him by Hiram Gates.  He ran over the details carefully in his mind as he worked, his practical, logical self taking over, as it did in his downtown studio, performing mechanically and precisely.

"If the police want another psycho," Gates had said, "Give them one.  If the girls are going to die anyway, let’s give the papers something to scream about.  They have no way of coming back on you, Christian, but we have got to give them something to chase."

It made sense.  Christian didn't like it, didn't like the feel of the thing, but it made sense.  If he didn't want to be the hunted, he had to provide them with someone else to hunt.  It wasn’t the same as the photographs, but it was an art. 

The central element to Gates' solution was a poem the man had concocted.  It was to be smeared on the mirror of the room in Cherie's own lipstick, but Christian modified the vision to suit himself.  He would use the lipstick she was wearing now.  It was more artistic. 

On her lips it was soft and lustrous, but on the mirror he knew how it would look; it would be cheap and lewd, out of control.  The way she had ended up.  The way she had wanted to end up, though for all his soul Christian couldn't fathom why.

He worked quickly, leaving the drop cloth in place and dropping an empty film canister in the corner.  He had to be certain they would put together the photo angle, that they would know it was the same person as the first time.  If he wanted to lead them away from his doorstep, he needed to make the image complete.  They already had the developing fluid, so if he didn’t want them to pinpoint a professional photo artist, he had to give them an artist of a different kind to seek.

The rest of his equipment he put back in the bag and the satchel, leaving out only the first vial, the regular-strength Cocaine.  He slipped it into Cherie’s purse after wiping it carefully in case his prints were on it.  It didn’t matter that they found his prints, only that they not find them on the drugs.

When he was ready to leave, he took the lipstick dispenser and set to work, making the letters flamboyant and striking.  The script was not at all like his personal scrawl. He found this all nearly as exciting as he had the woman.  He also found that he was enjoying this new image, this vision he was creating.  He could picture himself as the man who left poetry on mirrors and took women when he wanted them.  He wrote:

"I had her white, I had her black,

I had her on her naked back,

 I drugged her up and in the sack,

Now, is she live, or just Kodak?"

The verse was childish and pointless, but he wrote it just as Gates had given it to him.  The very idea that it was nothing like Christian himself would have created added to the deception.  It was an image he was after, not a masterpiece.  The poem was only one, gaudy addition, one piece in the puzzle he scattered about.

He stood back and studied his handiwork.  It looked like something from a horror movie, but very real.

"You don't want them to think the psycho is smart," Gates had said.  "You want them to think he'll be easy to catch, that he's snapping.  It will infuriate them when they fail.  They'll have every porno pirate and shutterbug loony in for questioning within the hour.  They'll have them back on the streets in another one.  Nothing there to find, and they end up nowhere near you, and nowhere near me."

Christian glanced around at Cherie once more.  His emotional link with her had drained away and transferred itself to the film.  She was an object, a still life, and a compliant rag-doll.  There was no animation in her curves, no vitality in her eyes.  Nothing.  He had drawn it out, like a psychic vampire, stolen her innocence, her lust, and her need.  She was an empty shell, and she was still beautiful.

He left the room and locked the door to gain extra time with the cleaning woman in the morning.  Then he turned and slipped off down the hall.  Gates had arranged for a back door to be open slightly, held by a small block of wood.  No witnesses to his departure.

It was exciting and very clandestine.  His mother would have approved, he thought, maybe for the first time in his life. It was so much like something she might have done, or something she might have wanted to do.

Christian stepped into the alley behind the hotel and out to the street.  He looked both way and saw nothing.  He made it to his car without seeing a soul and slipped behind the wheel.

As he closed his door and reached over to put the key in the ignition, he heard sirens.  They barreled through the night, racing toward him at breakneck speed, and the air was alive with the flashing of lights, the roar of engines, and the squeal of tires.

Christian clung to the steering wheel, his eyes wide and staring, his fingers turning red, then white from the pressure. Every inch of his body shook, and his bladder released.  He felt the slow trickle of warmth down his leg and over his seat.  It was over.  They were here to take him away, to put him in a small room with no art, no faces or makeup, no vision.

Then the cruiser flashed by.  It didn’t even slow at the hotel, but raced off into the night.  A moment later Christian became aware of his heartbeat, thundering with the retreating wail of the sirens, crashing in his head and pounding behind his ears.  He heaved a huge, wrenching breath into his lungs and sat back, weak and shaking miserably.

The stench of his urine finally dragged him back to awareness, invading his nostrils with the acrid aroma of ammonia, and he reached out a shaky hand and turned the key.  He moved slowly and cautiously, not wanting to fumble around or waste time.  He flipped on his headlights and, without thought or memory of passing time and distance, he pulled into the streets, wove around the few bits and pieces of traffic he passed, and drove home.

When he had parked the Dart, staggered into his apartment, and locked himself inside, he leaned back against the door and slumped to the floor, still numb and trembling. 

It was a long time before he moved, and the sirens still played tag in his head, ricocheting and caroming from side to side, throbbing in pain.

He placed the film on the counter in the darkroom, staggered to the bathroom, and cleaned himself.  It was a ritual cleansing.  The fear had robbed him of his strength, and he did not want to face his creations soiled. 

He returned to the darkroom naked, not even bothering to dress in clean clothes.  As the sun rose beyond his walls to claim the new day, Christian worked, cutting, dipping, drying, and waiting. 

He passed out, kneeling on the floor, kneeling before the beauty he had wrought, kneeling but not seeing.  Lost in dreams and images as masterpieces formed of his vision hung limp and unnoticed, forgotten in the darkness.  Patiently they waited for his return.