Code Name: Aries by Janie Crouch

28

Wavy

For three days, I had a showdown with my paintbrush.

I wanted to do the one thing Ian had asked of me, since it was such a reasonable request. The first day, I stood there in front of the easel for more than an hour, trying to figure out what color to use. Finally, I opened the nearest paint container, marked the canvas with something that could barely be called a stroke, and left.

The second day wasn’t much better. Except that I’d decided to forget about picking a color and went with black. Not having to worry about colors made it much easier. I painted a few strokes—nothing specific. I wasn’t trying to create anything. The paintbrush wasn’t awkward in my hand like I feared it would be. It felt natural—an extension of me.

As long as I stuck with black. As soon as I tried to reach for one of the colors neatly stacked all around me, I panicked. It was all I could do not to vomit and throw the canvas across the room.

I couldn’t use colors. Color had no place in my life or my painting. I was tired of fighting that.

What you need is what you need. Sometimes it’s not going to make sense.

Ian’s words came back to me. What I needed was to not paint colors. It didn’t have to be logical. I simply had to accept that it was my new reality.

So this morning, when I’d woken up before dawn in the guest bedroom, my fingers itching to paint, I’d gone back to the easel but stayed far away from the colors. Black was fine. White wasn’t a problem either. That gave me an endless array of grays to work with.

I set the tray out in front of me and let the brush do what it wanted to do—what my subconscious wanted me to do. Over the next couple of hours, I filled up a small canvas. The end result wasn’t particularly pretty to look at—it mostly resembled a thunderstorm. But I had painted.

“All forward progress was progress,” I said, echoing what Dr. Rayne had said to me more than once over the past two days.

She was younger than I’d expected but was definitely an old soul. Her eyes screamed that she’d seen things. She would understand whatever I might tell her. We’d sat down in the living room, since she’d flown out from whatever that ranch was she worked at in Wyoming.

Dr. Rayne had seemed content to do much of the talking. I’d tried to answer questions when asked, but when she’d asked me if I preferred not to talk, I’d nodded. I wasn’t ready.

She’d given me a gentle smile. “When you’re ready, you’ll talk again.”

But I did want to discuss one of the things that was bothering me the most. “I don’t remember.”

“All or parts?”

“All,” I whispered. Well, all except for the pain. I should be able to remember something about my captivity, but it was all a blank. No details, all blurry.

“The memories will come when they come,” she said. “Just like the talking, when you’re ready.”

“What if they don’t come?” I whispered, my voice shaky.

“Then they don’t come. You’ve done your part, Wavy. You survived. You’ve come out of this whole, or at least in big enough pieces that you’re going to be able to put them back together again.”

Somehow, that was the most encouraging thing she could have said to me, that yes, I was in pieces, but that they would fit together again to make a whole. I was holding on to that.

Every minute I spent here in the penthouse, I felt a little safer, a little less fractured.

Sometimes Ian was here, sometimes he wasn’t. He ate most of my meals with me, even when I ate them at weird times. Usually, he fell asleep on the couch, watching a movie with me, and I placed a blanket as gently as I could over him. He was still so tired, still concerned about me.

Now it was late. Ian had already gone to lie down in his bedroom, although he’d left the door open for me in case I needed him. My fingers were itching for the paintbrush again. As I walked toward the room I’d already started calling my studio in my mind, a flash came to me: medical beds lined up in a row. Machines beeping. My wrist strapped to the bed.

My breath faltered, but instead of forcing the thought away, I made myself breathe through it. To look around myself in this memory.

Is that where I’d been? The only hospital bed I remembered was after I’d woken up safe. But this wasn’t that. This was much bigger, like a dormitory. But my wrists and ankles had been restrained.

And then the vision was gone.

I stopped and looked around, getting my breathing under control. I was still in the penthouse. I was safe. I could hear Ian snoring lightly from his bed. I was okay.

I walked the rest of the way into the studio and picked up my paints. All derivatives of black and white, but I didn’t care. I painted a full canvas the way I would have before using colors: rainbow, but monochromatic.

I didn’t think, I just felt. Let my fear from the flashback bleed onto the canvas. My strokes were jagged, but I didn’t care. I let my mind do what it wanted to do.

I got lost in the painting, adding detail after detail. Details I hadn’t been aware of while using only blacks, whites, and grays.

But as I finished and stepped back, I realized it was beautiful in its own stark way. Ian had been right. I needed to allow myself to paint the bleakness, the fear, the anger.

I looked over at the clock and realized it was nearly three o’clock in the morning. I was exhausted. I cleaned up my brushes and left the room. I wanted to take a shower, but the shower in my room wasn’t nearly as nice as the one in Ian’s room. I would go in there and take a shower. He wouldn’t mind.

He wouldn’t join me either. And I wasn’t sure exactly how I felt about that. I wanted him to, I really did. But I didn’t know if I could trust myself not to freak out. What if something he did triggered something in me? Then we would both feel horrible. And he wouldn’t risk that unless I asked him to join me.

The shower felt good. The memories of all the times we had spent here felt even better, surrounding me and pouring over me like the water. It felt like one more piece of me was slipping back into place.

When I got out, I put on one of Ian’s T-shirts that I’d stolen before my captivity. I knew I should leave, go back to my room, but instead of doing that, I walked over to the bed. He was still lying on his side, but those brown eyes were looking at me.

“Doing okay?” he asked.

I nodded, then forced myself to use words. “Yes.”

Then I forced myself to ask for what I really wanted, even more than the shower I’d come in for. “C-can I sleep with you?”

He didn’t say anything. He just moved over on the bed and held up the covers. I slid in next to him and put my back to him so that he surrounded me. His arm wrapped around my waist.

“This okay?”

I pressed my hands over his. “More than okay.”

Another piece of me glued back into place.