‘Drawn’

Artist Thomas Riesner was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1971. He is self-taught, and has been intensively involved in painting since 1990. In addition to acrylic and ink paintings, dry-point etching is one of his means of artistic expression. It bubbles out of him spontaneously and suddenly, and his expressive, intuitive painting style is reflected in his archaic-seeming figures and image elements. His pictures exude an atmosphere of originality and spontaneity, although most of the motifs are rather dark.

Drawn

A blue shimmer surrounds the silhouette of a mountain painted black by the night as a parked car circulates stale cigarette smoke at its base. Blue and still running, its insides stink of warm leather and iron, and trash rustles in the footwell of the passenger side. Blood stains the leather on a back seat that has been pierced beyond its padding by long gashes. Grey scratch marks haunt the headrest. The alarm is screaming; no one comes to answer it. In the trunk of the car, a single box. Neatly packed. Worn fishing gear and a machete, fresh in plastic packaging.  Blood paints a new trail through the forest and a disturbance far off tells of a heavy object that breaks dry leaves as it is dragged. 

Detective George Thomas enters the room with a paper cup and a heavy frown. He pulls the chair out aggressively and sits taut, his hands crossed on the table. He reaches over and presses “record.” He introduces himself and Mr. James Howell.

"Can you tell me about what happened that night?" Across from Detective Thomas sits a hollow man with a bush of black hair on the sides of his head, but none on the top. Howell gives a quaint smile through a harrowed gaze, nods his head solemnly, and pushes his thick rimmed glasses from the tip of his nose to the bridge. Thomas returns a nod. "And, we were told you may be able to tell Ms. Wilkes's death? Is that also right?" Howell nods again, this time knowingly, "good, so why don't you go ahead?"

Mr. Howell eyed Thomas for a moment; his expression was stoic. Howell, on the other hand, holds eye contact with the table and does not raise his head as he speaks. "Well, George, it was a cold night for fishing. You know I go on Wednesdays and Fridays, everyone does. And there were very few there that wanted to bite. So I decided to pack up my gear and head to the store to get a pizza. Charles Dwyer's old place does them for three bucks a piece, but I forgot my phone down by the lake. So I set my stuff down and go get my phone. Then the alarm sounds and I run back to the car, it can't have been more than five to ten minutes. Then I had to go and get a signal to phone it in. By the time I got back I had found the blood and those gashes across my back seat.”

"What did you do when you got to the car?"

“Which time?”

“The first.”

"I went to call the police."

"You didn't go inside?"

"No."

“How do you know there wasn’t blood in it before you went to get a signal?”

“Well, I went in it, but I wasn’t “in it” in it, you know?”

“No.”

Skinny fingers grip the backdoor handle of the red Cadillac. The door swings open and a silhouette of a person scrubs the reddened seats frantically, occasionally dousing them in bleach, then returning to the scrubbing. Frequently, they pause for a noise or to back out the car and turn their head on a swivel. 

Behind Howell, a door swings open. Lieutenant Griggs, a short, stocky man with dark brown hair and three chins that he tries to hide under a neckbeard enters with a file in hand. He pauses as he comes to the side of the table. He fixes his gaze upon Howell.

“Howell.” Griggs passes Thomas the file, eyes unmoving from Howell.

Howell raises his head to Griggs and raises his eyebrows for a second, giving again that quaint smile. Griggs shakes his head and storms out.

Thomas takes a deep swig of cranberry juice from his cup and smacks his tongue from the roof of his mouth to echo a resounding clack throughout the room. Howell winces and momentarily jerks his shoulders forward. He fiddles his thumbs beneath the table. Thomas flicks urgently through the file with his index finger while he hunches over the table, head in his left hand, gripping his temple so hard that his fingerprints embed themselves onto it. His eyes glint as he finds what he was looking for. He removes the photo from the folder with overt care. Howell’s brow furrows as he notices the laminated paper.

“What can you tell me about this picture?” Thomas slides the photo across the table, Howell will not meet the lifeless, diamond eyes of Tonya Wilkes.

He does not look down. “Why have you laminated it?”

“Answer my question.” Thomas’s eyes bulge. Howell notices the bloodshot capillaries.

“Answer my question! That is not standard procedure for evidence. Why have you laminated it?” Howell raises his tone above a quaint, conversational one for the first time.

“It’ll be used for evidence. Now answer the question.”

Howell still does not look down. “That’s Tonya Wilkes. My girlfriend.” 

The silhouette has made its way toward the tree line and becomes the trees. As the figure emerges into a small clearing before the lake, he does so while snapping his fingers and bobbing his head. He jives his way toward the lake shore where a body lies. The figure drops to its knees and begins a slow rolling of the body into the water. He wades crotch high into the depths and the body begins to sink, water filling loosely cut holes.

"Why were your clothes wet when officers arrived at the scene?" Thomas digs his nail into the pad of his thumb now, close to the point of drawing blood.

"I told you at the scene, I waded in while I was fishing," Howell answers in a simple, but not aggravated tone. Thomas's mouth gives a twitch and his eyes narrow. He curls his toes into the hard leather of his shoes and feels a nail begin to splinter. "Can anyone confirm that story?" Thomas responded with a whisper of a jeer in his tone.

"Who could do that?"

"You work here, James. Why are you playing these games?"

"You know I didn't do this, man."

In the lake, the silhouette stares into the river and relishes as warm ichor corrupts the cold. The figure watches mushroom clouds of blood grow into the water. He cups his hands and bathes themselves in the blood. Teeth shine through the darkness and turn red as the water flows over them. 

Thomas wraps his twig-like fingers around a paper cup and takes a deep swig of cranberry juice and a gash under his wrist flashes at Howell.

"What happened to your wrist?"

"I'm not the subject of this interview, Mr. Howell. Why did you not have any fishing gear on you that night?"

"What do you mean?"

"When we arrived at your car, there was no fishing gear."

"I told you already, you've got to believe me. I forgot my phone down by the lake. I got back and my car was broken into and the alarm was still blaring. I don't know where the blood came from, but I’m sure that it wasn't there when I left to find a signal. I walked back up that trail." He clicks his sausage-like fingers. "Lair O' Bear, I left my fishing stuff in the trunk, my machete wasn't even open when I left. I got back and there was smeared blood all over the back seat and the .”

“How do you know that it was blood?"

"I work here."

"So?"

"So I know what blood looks like in most states."

"Fine. If it wasn't you, do you know anyone who might have wanted to hurt Tonya?"

"Well, yeah."

"Who?"

"George, you really shouldn't be doing this. Get someone else to ask these questions."

The body has been drawn. Its guts spill outward into the lake like ice spilling from a cooler. The figure strokes the face of Tonya, caressing her, running a finger across her eyebrows, straightening them out. He kisses her gently, and then he kisses her passionately. The figure’s dark hand reaches inside of its prey and leans toward Tonya’s ear, moaning, but still not satisfied.

“You followed her everywhere, George. Everywhere. And you begged her not to tell anyone when she confronted you. And she didn’t, even when I told her to, she didn’t. She called you harmless.” Howell is shouting now. The calm demeanor he had been holding quickly melts from him. 

Thomas’s face pulls taut. “The suspect has requested a different interviewer. This interview is being terminated at one-thirty-am, November nineteenth, twenty-twenty-five.” He reaches to the “record” button hastily and pushes it. There is a tapping on the double sided glass to Howells left. Thomas, Howell sees, realises that he has been pulled from the interview. Howell gives a wide toothy smile.

“Hope I didn’t get you in trouble, Thomas. Didn’t declare your conflict of interest?”

Thomas whispers across the table. “You never deserved her, you know that.”  

“You son of a bitch. I’ll kill you, George. I’ll fucking kill you.”

“You won’t survive prison.” Thomas gets into the face of Howell and gives a single rich laugh and maneuvers past Howells chair towards the door. Howell seizes his chance and rises. He charges Thomas’s back, pushing both of their weight against the door. Sliding his forearm under the throat of Thomas, Howell begins to choke him. There is a bustling of noise outside while George claws backward at the face of Howell— who is behind him— to try and push him away. Howell ensures that he is pushing both of their weight against the door as it is banged against from outside. He listens to Griggs’s pleas for mercy echo through the corridor and then chooses instead to relish in the hollow choking sounds creaking away from Thomas. Howell begins to laugh. As the noise begins to die, so too does the murderer. And, only as Howell feels the esophagus collapse against his forearm, does he relieve the pressure of his forearm and drop the body to the ground.

Shane O'Callaghan is a writer and a student at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana, originally from Ireland. He’s primarily a horror fiction writer, who came to America in search of an education and an adventure about which he could write. But, better than either of those things, here in America is where he met his wife.