Immortalized

When I had painted her irises I had struggled to capture the light of the stars reflected in their depths. The strokes visible on the canvas interrupted the emotions I tried so hard to convey, their streaks ruining the softness of her eyes that I’d engraved into my mind on that day. My paintbrush held aloft, I’d stared at her features.
Every line was constructed so perfectly, the curve of her cheeks, the flourish of her lashes and brows, the wide grin upon her lips, her face tilted upwards, cradled by the arms of the moonlight. Such meticulous detail which I’d remembered, and yet she didn’t look alive. That little glimmer of starlight and life within her eyes was missing, and I couldn’t place it quite right. I never did find a way that could show that shine as beautifully as my heart remembered it so.
Mother had been looking up at the sky on a warm summer’s night, sitting among a field of tall grasses, enveloped by the thrum of grasshopper’s songs, and the rampant wind running through her brown tresses. Here in the realm of my memories and dreams, I could see her expression as I’d never had the ability to capture with paint.
Here in my memories, she was still alive and her heart beating, her lungs breathing, her laugh still resonating in my ears.
Although she was gone from the Earth, she was immortalized on the canvas which now resided on a museum wall. I didn’t want her to be here, but they kept insisting that I should let her smile upon others too. They said it would help me heal. But here she was alone and surrounded by unfamiliar gazes that would see an imperfect version of her for years. I’d let them take her into their collection after their relentless pestering. I still don’t know why I ever said yes.
And now here I stand alone looking into her eyes in an empty edifice. Her overhead light is the only one on in this wing, as it is after hours and I’ve been gifted a key to come visit her whenever I want to look upon her. Below her frame I see a plaque with my name Josephine engraved on it, next to it read “In loving memory of-”, but I look back up.
I let myself linger on her hair for a while longer before my curiosity of the other arts in the wing drove me away.
Directly to the right of Mother, I see a lengthy painting with what seems to be ravenous piranhas chasing after hastily swimming human skeletons, a trail of human bones left behind swirling in the current. The blood in the water and their devilish eyes send a shiver through me, and I switch my focus to land on the plaque instead. A sudden flick of a fin brings my vision back to the lower corner of the canvas, where a piranha previously stalking its victim is now hungrily eyeing me. A prick of uneasiness trickles down my being and I dismiss any beliefs at having seen a moving canvas.
I step away from the large frame and come to a rather imposing art of flowers. Except they aren’t flowers. The center of the flowers themselves were eyeballs, all of different hues staring down at the observer, and the petals were sets of thick, thick eyelashes. The stems were red, veiny nerves, reaching down and joining into one center nerve which grew from a skull’s empty eye socket. I look back up and find an iris the same color as my mother’s, yet even more devoid of life, and move away.
My sights are then set upon a monolith of pure white marble set upon a pedestal just as regal. A horse is sculpted with monumental muscles capable of killing in a single strike. The majestic creature rears, front hooves raised upwards towards the ceiling, muzzle open in a silent call. With the light turned off, its hooded eyes are dark and menacing. The hair in its mane and tail curls beautifully, frozen in flight. It must weigh an unthinkable amount.
Lastly in the wing is an empty frame, a beautifully engraved frame in fact but entirely devoid of any art. It was just the simple layer of empty white cloth within and nothing more. Could this be an attempt at modern art? I find that the sign above the frame has no name, and so I walk to the next work and find her vacant eyes again. I hadn’t realized I had circled back around to dear Mother.
I talk to her about the new boy across the street and how I like to look at his long hair in the breeze when he rides his motorcycle along the street. I tell her about her flowers and how they’ve been blooming anew after the arrival of spring, how the thunderstorms have been nourishing them, and the sun feeding them. I act out how I spilled coffee all across my floor after I tripped over a pile of invisible clothes last night. My spring dress flits all about me as I move here and there vividly re-enacting past moments. My voice echoes all across the space of tall stone pillars and marble flooring, rising and lowering with the stories I tell. She listens and listens and I know she’ll never reply, but I can’t help but hope that maybe one day she will. Even though I couldn’t get her eyes to look as incandescent as I remembered them, I perfected her smile, and I can pretend that perhaps it’s directed at me. I quieten down, and I take small steps back to her and gaze at her once again. Those eyes still don’t fit. I close my own to picture her face perfectly and tell her I miss her, and that I’ll love her eternally, all with a wavering voice I wish I could strengthen.
“Oh, my darling…I love you more than your heart could ever imagine..”
My eyes startle open yet I can’t see, my heart jolts in my chest, my lungs halt mid-breath. I’m utterly petrified. Her voice- I had just heard her voice. I haven’t heard it since that last summer night underneath the wide expanse of dazzling shooting stars. But she was gone to another world! How did I just hear her? Am I hallucinating or did her painting just speak?
“Why so quiet my dear? Have I not granted a wish by speaking to you once more?”
In the low light, I try to gain back my bearings and tell myself she’s right. She’s really here and I’m wasting the few moments of time I have left with her. I steadily will breaths back into my lungs, I slowly readjust my eyes to see again and tilt my head upwards and away from my chest. My hands struggle to still as my vision rises. An ivory-colored wall, a golden frame engraved with cherry blossoms, vibrant leaves, and baby birds. Up to the beginnings of a white dress rendered blue under the midnight sky, rising and falling with breath, up to an embroidered neckline shrouded with mahogany locks swaying in wind that wasn’t there. Upwards to a pointed chin and rounded cheeks, to rosy lips slightly open with the remnants of speech, to an upturned nose. And then to bristling lashes, whites of eyes, and pupils staring right back down into mine. A strange glint present in them, yet present nonetheless. I drowned in the light I had tried so desperately to paint, the sparkle now perfectly represented. I could believe a soul rested behind those eyes. This was Mother. She looked… alive. She looked as I saw her in the domain of my memories, dreams, and deepest desires.
She blinks.
I blink too.
All composure leaves me at once.
I crumple to the floor, knees hitting the marble roughly. I keep contact with her gleaming eyes, the only thing keeping me from screaming out loud in pure grief and sorrow. Tears upon tears fall from my eyes, piling onto the yellow tint of my dress and the skin of my palm. My cries stutter repeatedly, and I gasp and struggle for breath. Still ceaselessly looking into her eyes, I see her stare down at me with pity, and something else lingering behind those eyes.
“Josephine? Please rise and speak with Mother dear”, she calls.
At her voice I slowly rose back to a wobbly stand, and strode up to her, reaching a hand forwards to dare and touch her. I wept more heavily seeing her eyes trace over my face as if seeing me for the first time in months, which I suppose it had been. Upon seeing my face I noticed her smile lift at one end, near to a smirk, and her eyes gleam brightly in what seemed to be admiration of me.
“My, you truly are your mother’s daughter! My little girl has grown to be such a beautiful young woman! I nearly mistook you for a portrait, my darling”, she exclaimed.
I could only look at her with love in my eyes, I hadn’t had someone compliment me or call me such endearing names ever since she had left me.
“Mother I, I truly don’t understand but, I- I’m so unbelievably glad to hear you again”, I croaked out tearily. It truly was her, those eyes, the voice, her endearments, they were all completely her.
“Josephine, love, it must have been the work of God to be given the chance to see you again”, she softly says.
“Yes Mother it must be, I can scarcely believe my eyes at this moment. I never dreamt that I’d hear you speak again.” I gained more composure as we slipped into familiar conversation, I wiped my tears away and my chest began to calm.
It was odd, the way she moved in her painting. I could see the brush strokes swaying and slithering across the canvas like snakes at every movement. When her hair danced in the wind I saw the paint traveling all around to form her hair. The way her gown’s neckline fluttered in the air disrupted the paint at her neck, sending it running upwards in ripples. Even the stars themselves were twinkling and winking down at me, moving as if in a stop motion film. The piece as a whole had come to life to accurately depict her in that starlit field.
“Yes, yes dear. Now, tell me whatever you desire, we’re short on time after all.”
“Oh! Of course, well I-, um I’ve been thinking about whether or not I should cut my hair? I’ve had it long for such a while and I’d love to have it at the shoulder. I’ve desperately needed a mother’s advice in areas like this”, I gratefully exclaimed, beyond happy at being able to ask a small question of my mother as every child should.
“Absolutely not child. Long hair suits women best, Josephine. I will not have my daughter ruining such fair hair to make a change”, she stiffly said.
My thoughts spluttered. She had never spoken to me in such a way, I’d only ever been treated with calm responses even when asking the dumbest of questions. I deeply looked into her eyes only to see an unfamiliar gleam lying there. A fit of anger I’d never seen before, crossed her brow, narrowing them dangerously, mouth posed in a grimace. The wind blew even stronger with her anger, hair flying, oaks and grasses moving erratically with the breeze. The peaceful hum of the grasshoppers gone. This wasn’t the face of my mother. This wasn’t my mother. Perhaps I should have asked more questions when a painting started speaking to me. I was hurt beyond belief by her words and distrust started growing in my gut, but I continued my speech with her. I could have been wrong.
“I apologize, my thoughts just got carried away there Mother! I promise I won’t ask to have it cut again”, I said, waiting out her reaction.
“Idiot girl! No apology can suffice for such a question! You’d ruin your life, your beauty gone! I didn’t raise you to become just as hideous as any other girl on the street! You are not a man. You are art, my dear! To damage yourself so, is to tarnish the museum’s reputation!” she shrieked.
Her voice rose to dangerous levels, the floor beneath my feet rumbled with the mere volume of her screams and I found myself inching backward and away from her frame. Covering my ears, my own screams went unheard beneath her unshakeable anger. The vibrations born from her yell streamed through walls, pillars, and floors, shaking the building with a supernatural force to the point the building was audibly groaning. A strange wind appeared in the air, whirling my tresses all about my face, every yell of hers heightening the power of the draft. Gale and rumbling combined, the marble monolith and paintings began to shiver in their places, clacking against the walls. Yet her painting stayed remarkably still, immune to the forces racking the wing.
Above the whistling of the wind invading my ears, above the magnitude of her continued screams, I stared her right in the eyes with renewed confidence born from this betrayal and let out a yell of my own.
“What does the museum’s reputation have to do with my appearance!”
“What does the museum’s reputation have to do with your appearance? It means everything! You will fit beautifully on these walls! You shall let others smile upon your beauty!” she roared. Her eyes left my complexion for the first time only to greedily land somewhere behind me, I swiftly turned around to see the empty canvas framed on the wall. I felt my heart drop to my stomach.
Out of nowhere, I felt chilling stares on me, from all across the room. The rattling of the paintings attracted my attention. I turned back around to see every single piranha abandoning the skeletons to lay their sights on me, their teeth bit in my direction, their glowing red eyes fixed onto my flesh. Their relentless attack at the invisible wall separating them from reality was working, water started to pour out from the portrait and onto the marble floors. The carnivores spilled out and plunged into the never-ending stream of black water towards me. The skeletons didn’t have eyes, yet I could feel something watching me through their deep black orifices. One who had lost its skull in the piranha chase was positioned towards the work of the lone skull with the bouquet of eyes growing out of its socket. They emerged from the layer of paint they were trapped in, grabbing onto the frame for support, and clacked their way to me. The headless one didn’t, it limped towards the flowers.
The eyes of the flowers glared at me, their pupils had become large and heavy, all attention fixed on me. Their lashes rustled in the gale and yet they unflinchingly stalked my increasingly terrified expression with an unabated glee. The skeleton reached them and stuck his bony fingers into the oil painting, clenched the skull, lifted it out, and placed it onto his vertebrae with a click. It reached upwards to rip an eye flower from its veiny stem and stashed it harshly into its opposite eye socket. The eye flowers all simultaneously spun when the sole one did, and then fixed their focus on me once more. The skeleton and its many eyes gazed at me and continued its trek. I traipse backward, closer to the empty canvas.
A whinny interrupts the unfathomable noise in the room. My steps falter when I see a beast of great white marble inching down from its pedestal, eyes glowing with red embers I can feel burning me from within. Eyes reflecting in the dark water at its feet, hair majestically flipping and undulating in the hurricane. Hooves hitting the floor with a clunk, I see it rearing back, preparing its muscles, contracting its hind legs to charge directly into me and strike me down.
I have nowhere to go. I’m completely and utterly cornered. The empty canvas is at my back and the creatures before me are piercing their glares into my soul. I see their desire to push me into the canvas in their scarlet irises. I’m shaking, hunched over, and clinging onto the lone frame, the endless pouring water has reached my waist and I start to feel the excruciating gnaws of the piranhas. Endlessly famished, the swarm of them push my legs back into the canvas and pin them in place as their jaws continuously bite. I scream and yet you can’t hear a thing. The skeletons are wading in the red waves just behind them. The one with eyes lifts its pearly white arms and holds my arms against the canvas, placing them in a pose reaching up towards the sky. Each individual finger is held aloft by its flower’s stems, curling around my fingers and forcing them to look dainty and aloft in flight.
I wonder whether my tears have added to the growing ocean reaching my chest now. I keep fighting and pushing, trying to rip the eyes off of their stems, to kick at the scaly monsters with legs that can barely move anymore. I get ready for one last kick when I feel a particularly deadly gaze staring me down from above. Its marble eyes reflect my appearance, and I see what has become of me. Tears mixed with a horrible grimace, hair wet, dress torn to shreds, eyebrows turned upwards in a silent cry for help. I falter at seeing the great horse and the steam emerging from its wide nostrils. I fall limp and cease all movement. It rears once more and rams my head into the canvas.
What’s left of my eardrums hears screams and laughter, among them I hear, “Yes! Pin her down! Keep her pose ethereal! Don’t let her move, that’s the pose I need! That beautiful face is all I awoke for!”
My back starts to lose feeling as it merges with the world inside the canvas, I watch as my legs cross the border of canvas and turn to paint, watch as they cross nicely on a stone bench that wasn’t there before. I let out shrieks as my hands are pushed with immeasurable force into the white cloth, and as I see them disappearing down under the surface, now grasping a branch of green lush grapes hanging down from vines. My chest feels heavy, I feel hooves pressing down with all their weight, surely leaving marks as I feel my back give way into the other world. My dress is repaired and vibrant in the portrait, flowing nicely over my legs and stockings. My hair is pushed lock by lock, down into the painting by the skeleton’s fingers, turning a beautiful auburn laced with golden sunlight. The side of my face is crushed onto the portrait. I give one last scream, the loudest I can muster as I lose vision in one eye, and watch it turn into a beautiful emerald littered with honey. My wretched scream is cut short as my freckled nose is painted by invisible hands, no longer able to breathe. I feel my opposite cheek drown in the canvas, and then my remaining eye, along with my mouth still open in a soundless scream. Right before the rest of my head is lost to the world of paint, I feel thin fingers rearranging my scream into a gentle smile, feel two pokes that give me dimples, and hands smoothing out the tension in my forehead and brows.
They can’t fix the fear in my eyes, I think, as the remaining part of me is forced inwards. I know I look beautiful, just as she does, but the life in my eyes is missing just as hers always will be. I look up at the empty golden plaque just as I’m losing consciousness. It says, Josephine. Immortalized, I think as I turn to paint.