His Obsession by Ava Lore Page A

salty sea wind caught the pages and flipped and fluttered them, back and forth.
    Stunning sketches flashed before me, each one shocking in the life it exuded. Slowly I knelt down and watched the images fly by. Me as a butterfly. Me as a mermaid, swimming in the sea, my hair floating around me. Me as Ophelia. Me lying on the couch in the sitting room, snoozing in the sun like a cat. Me arching, twisting in the throes of ecstasy. Me, me, me, and every one almost technically perfect.
    But he was right. Something was missing. I couldn't put my finger on it.
    "Have you taken classes before?" I said.
    My voice jerked him out of his enraged stupor and he glanced at me, his eyes cold. "No," he said. "I told you, I am good at everything." A hand ran through his hair, fingers tangling. "Except this!"
    He turned and stalked toward me, and I saw immediately that he meant to toss the sketchbook into the sea as well. I did what I rarely did now and defied him. Wrapping my arms around it, I curled over, protecting it with my body. His bare feet came to rest beneath my eyes as he loomed over me.
    "Give me the book, Sadie."
    "Don't throw it away."
    "I can't get it right. Sketching isn't it."
    "Isn't what?"
    "My masterpiece. I will never make a masterpiece with... with pencils and paper!" Anger burst out of him, raw and humiliated. "Perfection is impossible with imperfect materials!" He knelt down in front of me and put his hand on the sketchbook as he tried to tug it from my grasp.
    I was too interested in what he had said to protest, and he took it from me. "Perfection?" I said, sitting up as he took the book and coldly, precisely put it in order before closing it. "Why does it need to be perfect?"
    His cherrywood eyes met mine, and I shivered, they were so hard and cold. "What is the point if it isn't perfect? I must leave behind perfection. I lived my life perfectly, and my masterpiece must reflect that."
    If you lived your life perfectly, I wanted to say, then why are you so miserable?
    But I didn't. Instead I just said, "Perfection isn't the goal of art. You'll drive yourself crazy if that's what you want."
    "I should be the first," he said. "The first to reach that goal. I'll live forever if I could just—get it— right!"
    And as he spoke he stood and flung the sketchbook overboard.
    Like a dying bird it flew through the air, its pages struggling to catch the wind like broken wings. Then it fell to the sea and sank beneath the waves.
    ––––––––
    "You're really drunk, Malcolm."
    "I certainly hope so."
    "No, I'm serious. I'm worried about you. You haven't been eating and now you're downing the scotch like water. You're half way to dead."
    "I've been worse."
    "Yeah, I have, too. Coming back isn't fun at all."
    "Your throat."
    "...Yes. My throat."
    "Someone slit your throat."
    "Yes, they did."
    "Then why am I the one who's drunk instead of you?"
    "Because you are acting like a child. Get up. I'm putting some food in you."
    "Not waffles. Anything but waffles."
    "No, not waffles."
    "Good, I love waffles."
    "You told me you hated waffles!"
    "I told you that so you would feel better about murdering perfectly good waffles. What you do to waffles is a crime against humanity."
    "You know what? Now you're getting waffles."
    "No... no, don't..."
    "Yeah. Bet you wish you weren't too drunk to resist my magnetic wiles now."
    "I never can, anyway."
    ––––––––
    I made him waffles. They were atrocious.
    He ate them anyway, to make me happy.
    ––––––––
    "Sorry about those waffles."
    "They are with God now."
    "If by God you mean the fish, then yeah, that's where they are."
    "Even the fish, I think, will not eat bile- and Scotch-soaked burned waffle bits. Only the Lord will have pity on them."
    "Yeah? You think he'll have pity on you when you kill yourself?"
    "...A shot across the bow. And no. I don't deserve it."
    "So to Hell, then?"
    "The devil knows I'll take over. I will wander the world as a hungry ghost.