After the trees, he drew rocks and flowers he stole out of plant pots – of course these died, he’d picked
them and left them in the heat. He showed his pictures to Rose, and she took one, had it framed for her
wall. Then she asked if he’d like to paint her, so she could put that up on the wall too, next to the photo of
her husband.
The oils were the richest thing Miguel had ever touched. Painting took a week. Rose would come
peering round, chatting away, suggesting some tweaks to the palette or the angles. On the day it was
done, Miguel lifted it off the easel and brought it round to her armchair. It was just what Rose wanted.
A bobby-dazzler, she said. Something to celebrate. But getting up to fetch the tea things, the old woman
staggered. She pressed a weak hand to her head. On her fingers: a thick, oily, colourful blot. But Rose never
wore make-up, and she had no paint on her. She looked at her hand, perplexed, and then at Miguel.
And fell down awkwardly, and wouldn’t get up.
An odd, colourless pit marked on her temple, where her hand had brushed.
Miguel couldn’t believe he’d actually killed his neighbour. So he went on taking photos of shadows and
sun, sketches of fields that eventually withered into nothing. Trying to improve, since that’s what old Rose
would have wanted him to do.
November turned to December. Christmas was a blazing blur. Then January came, and his sister returned home from London with a Polaroid camera and some retro film. He posed her against the turquoise
wall of the house and clicked the big orange button with his thumb.
He’d only wanted a picture of her to have when she was away.
Up in the shack, Miguel drops into a deep stagnant nothing. He wakes, makes chicken ramen on the
portable stove. The day wears on miserably. He feels ill, alone, not sure how to sort the slurry of his feelings. Towards bedtime, the nausea really hits, and he takes his dry heaving outside. Pinky gold light, and
pink birds flying in the air.
Something big comes up from his stomach. It fills his mouth with mushy cold. He reaches in to clear it,
and pulls out a flower: a big pink puffball bloom, thousands of tiny petals, near perfect. Another comes up,
then a third. On and on he goes, puking up damp blossoms. Each one smells of linseed and the tang of oil
paint. They’re not roses, but he’s not sure what else they could be.
The next four are white, or blue. It doesn’t matter now. He sets them down on the dirt like newly-hatched butterflies. On and on, giant flowers of his body, like splashes of paint Thirty of them, two hundred. Enough for a wreath, enough now to load his bag, his pockets, and carry back down the hill, hollow
and stumbling, home.
Helen McClory is a writer based in Scotland.
Her fiction has appeared in 3 AM Magazine,
Necessary Fiction, Smokelong, and The Toast,
among other places. Last year she was an Artist
in Residence at the Banff Centre, Canada. She
tries to live in 1,000 words or less.