Art’s Work

By Thomas M. Malafarina

In a home filled with his late wife paintings, Arthur seeks peace but finds only torment. Her murderer may have escaped justice, but Arthur’s chilling masterpiece ensures some crimes never fade.

“A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.” – Michelangelo

“A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.” – Pablo Picasso

“True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.”– Albert Einstein

Arthur sat quietly in his spacious living room, looking from wall to wall at the various works of art hanging on the walls like in a museum. They were of so many different and varied styles, yet all seemed to fit well into the decorating scheme of the place. He remembered how his wife Sonia loved these pieces and often would spend hours showing off her art to their guests. These were her artwork, not works of the famous or the infamous, but the work she had created herself. Perhaps they were not museum quality or even worth attempting to sell, but they had been hers, making each irreplaceable to him.

Sonia was a true artist, a creator. Not only could she come up with her unique styles and artistic methods, but she would also often scour the internet, looking for new and exciting techniques. Then, she would use these techniques to produce almost every piece of artwork currently displayed in their home. Arthur would often assist her, but unfortunately, he didn’t have much imagination and always felt he had no artistic talent whatsoever. 

But he loved Sonia with all his heart, and as he looked around the room, he felt proud that he had at least been able to contribute in some small way to the beautiful pieces hanging on the walls. However, studying his beloved wife’s work was always bittersweet. It made him extremely happy to see the fruits of their combined labor while shrouding him in a black fog of melancholy. What else should he expect now that his beautiful Sonia was dead, her cremains spread among her flowers in their garden?

He looked over at one particular painting, a black and white geometric patterned piece on the far wall. It was six feet by six feet in size, resembling a design made by a giant Spirograph machine he had once played with as a small child. The painting’s bright white, elliptical shapes overlapped and flowed in and out of each other, standing out incredibly against the coal-black background.

Sonia had gotten the idea to create the piece from a video she had seen online of a couple doing similar work and decided she wanted to try the technique herself. So, as always, she recruited Arthur to assist. First, he cut a six-foot square of plywood with one side smoothly finished. Next, he brush-painted it flat black. Anticipating the final geometric patterns, Sonia had instructed him to apply the paint in a circular, swirling motion so that when observed up close, any brush strokes would help to enhance the elliptical patterns. That was another reason Sonia was the artist; she always thought of things like this. Arthur covered their garage floor with a plastic tarp and suspended a quart can of white paint on a rope from the ceiling, hanging about six inches directly over the black square he had painted. Again, at Sonia’s suggestion, he offset the can somewhat from the center of the square. 

Now, it was time for Sonia to take over. She held the can away from the square while Arthur first drilled a small hole in the bottom of the can. Then, as Sonia covered the hole with her finger, he drilled another hole in the top of the can, allowing a thin stream of paint to begin flowing once Sonia removed her finger from the bottom. Sonia took careful aim and sent the can slowly flying in an arc over the tarp and black square. They watched in amazement as the swirling paint created geometric results on the black canvas below.

That was two years earlier and one of the last few pieces she had made before… before the unimaginable tragedy. Arthur had been away on business for a few days when that low-life bastard had broken into their home, raped and beaten his precious Sonia to death, then robbed their home of whatever he could find. They were not wealthy by any means, but they had a few nice things of value. The murderer had even taken a few of Sonia’s works of Art.

That was how the man, John Steven Harding, had been caught. Police had apprehended him after he had attempted to pawn Sonia’s jewelry and her paintings. The pawnshop had sensed something dishonest in Harding and had immediately contacted the police. Not to suggest the owner opposed purchasing less than legal items, but there was something so far off about Harding that the owner said just being in the room with the strange man made his skin crawl.

Eventually, Harding was arrested, charged, and brought to trial. Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case, Harding was released on a legal technicality, which Arthur didn’t quite understand. It drove Arthur mad with rage, realizing the man who had raped and murdered his precious Sonia could be walking the streets as a free man. 

As he sat in the silence of their home, Arthur’s memories switched focus, and he recalled the night several months ago when he finally got his revenge. After carefully planning, he had captured Harding, brought him to his home, and dragged his unconscious body down the steps to his basement. The hours that followed were so brutal and savage that Arthur could scarcely believe he had been responsible for such a blood bath. He had tortured the bound man relentlessly for hours, doing things he would have never imagined himself capable of doing. Then, after bringing unimaginable agony to the murderer, Arthur ended his barbaric session by unceremoniously slitting the man’s throat. Being the neat and organized person he was, Arthur had spread a plastic tarp on the floor to catch any evidence. This proved especially helpful when he began systematically dismembering the corpse for proper disposal. There had been so much blood, quarts of the stuff, what seemed like gallons.

Arthur recalled sitting on a chair staring at the bloody tarp and how he and Sonia had made that black and white geometric artwork. It felt so insanely surrealistic for him to be sitting in a room full of his victim’s body parts among buckets of blood while thinking of the beautiful piece of art he and Sonia had created. Then, he was caught completely off guard by a revelation. Arthur found himself inspired by an incredibly creative, artistic idea for the first time in his life.

Now, months later, he sat in his living room, a man alone with nothing left in his life but Sonia’s artwork and his memories. The police had never found Harding’s remains and never would; Arthur had seen to that. They had, of course, been suspicious of Arthur, not that he cared as he felt he no longer had any reason to live anyway. They had even stopped by many times to question him and have a forensic team search his home but had never found a spec of evidence. He had to chuckle at how close the police had come to the evidence they so desperately wanted, enough evidence to send him to the death house, yet they never even saw it.

On the wall next to his and Sonia’s black-and-white geometric work was another similar work. It was on a matching six-foot square, but this painting had a bright white background instead of a white pattern on a black background. The similar Spirograph-like pattern was once a deep ruby red; now, it seemed to have faded to a reddish-brown color. Arthur had to smile whenever he looked at the result of his only artistic inspiration, what he liked to call Art’s work.