04 Jul I Found Out What My Girlfriend’s Been Painting

I met the love of my life on my lunch break.

I was cramming a BLT into my mouth while leaning forward on the painted wooden bench in the park near my office. The weather was perfect. Lush green leaves were swaying in the whispering breeze, but I felt like I was being watched. I glanced up from my meal, which had coated my hands in dripping mayo and bacon grease. I then noticed her on a bench to the left of me; a fair-faced girl in a ratty hoodie with the most stunning eyes I’d ever seen.

I gave a small smile and waved a grease-slathered hand, instantly cringing at how awkward I was. Though my coworkers find my impression of a drunken Orson Welles funny, charisma is generally not one of my strengths. The girl in the oversized sweatshirt just smiled at me. She was absolutely beautiful.

A pixie cut of dark hair peeked out from under the large hood. She had a dusting of freckles on high cheeks. A small yet elegant nose was reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn. Her graceful lips curled up at the corners, but her eyes are what sped up my heart in my chest. Wide windows of wonder fitted with beautiful brown irises. They were looking at me in curious fascination; not judgment, but intrigue.

As I gulped down a bite of my messy sandwich I felt butterflies stir in my stomach. I tried to swallow the large morsel of food before speaking.

“Nice day, I love this park,” I spoke, but the words were muffled by the large chunk of sandwich I’d attempted to force down. And then I felt the ball of bread lodge in my throat. I sipped my cardboard cup of soda only to find it was empty. My face felt hot, and I wheezed out but was unable to breathe in. I was choking.

She watched me for a minute as I staggered from the bench before taking charge. She then ran up to me and wrapped her slender arms around my torso, heaving up under my ribs as pain shot out from within me. On the fourth painful constriction, the clump of greasy bread was ejected from my gaping mouth: a cannonball of carbs that rolled onto the grass. She’d saved my life.

“Thank you,” I gasped as she led me to the bench by an elbow. “I must have tried to inhale my sandwich” came out. I’d battled with, and firmly decided against, a corny line about how she’d taken my breath away.

“Tina,” she said, extending a slender hand that poked out from the cuff of that sweatshirt. “Your drink’s empty.” She glanced at my cup, then back at me with her captivating eyes. “Can I… buy you one?” Her voice was like honey in warm water. Yes, a hundred times yes.

“I’d love that,” I said more sincerely than any other time in my life.

We went to a local bar and drank the afternoon away. I emailed work saying I had a health emergency, and Tina told me about her dreams of moving out of her parent’s house and becoming a famous artist. She was a painter, but between day jobs, and living with her folks at the moment while she sorted things out.

I told her about my mundane existence of coding for a communications company, and my passion for golden age cinema. I expected her to dash out of the booth and the pub’s door at any moment. Based on the looks of interest of other patrons, I wasn’t the only one who thought she was stunning. Yet she only smiled and widened her lovely eyes as she expressed a similar passion for classic films.

I was head over heels. With each word she spoke about the fast-lived romance Ingrid Bergman had with Gregory Peck, or about how Rock Hudson had been blackmailed for his closeted lifestyle, my heart rushed with blood. I tried to brace myself for it all to suddenly end. I expected her to look at the time and excuse herself, realizing her mistake, but she only watched me with wide-eyed wonder. As if I was interesting too.

After a few rounds of drinks, Tina looked up at me with her big eyes during a pause in our dialog.

“My parents are home and I really don’t want to be there right now. Can we go to your apartment?”

My mind shifted into worry. What if this was some long con? What if she was planning to rob me? I weighed these things, but my heart was already firmly decided. I nodded my head ‘yes’ and smiled, and though she offered, I paid our tab.

We then walked hand in hand to my apartment. We spent the evening on my couch, chatting about politics, pets and everything under the sun. Eventually, she leaned over and kissed me.

“Let’s go to bed,” she whispered coyly. I’ll spare you the details of the best evening of my life.

She stayed the night. I still kept waiting for it to end abruptly, but she stayed, naked and curled next to me. She seemed truly happy, just as I was.

We were together nearly every day that week. She’d wait for me in the park, a worn book in her hands as I typed through lines of code and daydreamed about her. My coworkers noticed my glow and even made some comments about how I must have gotten laid, but they didn’t deserve to know. Each day I stared at the clock, counting the minutes, the seconds, until I could go out and embrace Tina. I was well-aware after the fourth day we’d spent together; I was in love.

She was smart, an old soul with classic beauty. And she saw beyond my receding hair and belly fat. She was the only person who seemed to really see me for who I was, not just the superficial details everyone else always seems to fixate on. I even mentioned this to her one evening as we watched Hitchcock’s “Rope” cuddled on my couch.

She raised her head to give me a kiss on the cheek and said something that stuck with me. “We can change who we are on the outside. It’s what’s inside that counts. You can’t alter that.”

I found the statement a bit strange. Tina wasn’t one to wear makeup of any sort. It’s not like she needed to; she was stunningly beautiful. There were also a few other odd things about her that I couldn’t quite figure out.

Though I frequently expressed interest in seeing her paintings, she adamantly refused to share them. She also made it very clear she did not want her photo taken, mentioning often how photos never accurately depict people. She didn’t have Facebook or Instagram either and refused to join social media, despite me explaining that she’d need to get both herself and her work online in order to advance in the art world.

Secondly, she always seemed a bit nervous at the mention of her parents. “They’re very particular,” she might say, or “I want you to meet them but only when it’s the right time.”

After two months of dating, I asked her to move in with me. She told me she’d agree if her parents did, and asked me to join them for dinner at the end of the week. I nodded, dabbing the sweat on my brow. I’d never been in a full-on relationship before. Meeting the parents sounded intimidating. I got a haircut and a shave and purchased a crisp, new dress shirt for the occasion.

When Friday arrived, I skipped my morning cup of coffee; my heart was pounding the entire day. When I finally left the office and met Tina in the park, she assured me with a sweet smile and a soft kiss that they were very agreeable and there was nothing to be concerned about. She held my hand and guided me past the park to the streets, and we began walking.

She led me past the block after block of businesses to a residential area filled with rowhomes. They were colorful and quaint, albeit less upscale than those in the surrounding areas. I was surprised she spent so much time at the park near my office, as she lived a good 20 minutes away. Soon enough, Tina was tugging my hand up some concrete steps to a home that looked to be a bit of a relic; old, peeling paint on wooden siding likely installed in the ’60s.

“Stop being nervous!” she smiled that beautiful smile and led me through the threshold into the house. “Mom! Dad! We’re here!”

A musty odor filled my nostrils as she led me across old carpeting, deep into the long, narrow home. It was a railroad-style house, and the decor was bizarre. Old porcelain dolls festooned every available surface. Ceramic figurines once popular in the ’60s smiled and watched from the mantles and dressers.

It was unnaturally humid in that dimly-lit residence, and I felt the dampness cling to my hands and face as Tina led me through room after room of endless dolls until we reached the entrance to a dining room. I could soon make out two still figures seated at a table, watching us intently.

Something was very wrong with them. Some uncanny valley effect that triggered some primordial fear within my brain. As Tina’s gentle hand led me into the dining room and closer to them, I understood what was wrong. The seated, life-sized figures were not flesh at all. They were dolls; painted with flesh tones and eyeballs and rosy, smiling lips. Two mannequins watching with unnerving painted eyes.

“Tina, what’s going on?” I asked, hearing the crack in my voice.

“Meet my parents, Ron and Barb. I’ve been telling them so much about you,” Tina sounded genuinely engaged in the charade. I smelled it then. The sweet stink of decay emanating from the seated figures whose waxen, painted hands rested on the table. There was a dark stain on the tablecloth under each hand. The figures had been leaking.

“Don’t be rude, say hello,” Tina whispered under her breath.

“I-I’m—” I gasped, realizing then these figures were not simply mannequins. A wave of nausea and horror washed over me as I fully comprehended what I was seeing. They were, in fact, Tina’s parents. Dead and glazed over, with a thick shell of paint as they decomposed from within. These were Tina’s paintings. I gagged, unable to hold back my reaction.

“You’re just like the rest,” Tina sobbed from behind me. I twinged in agony, at feeling a sharp sting in my shoulder. I pawed at the aching muscle, and my hand brushed across the slim plunger of a hypodermic needle. My vision blurred, and I immediately understood that Tina had injected me with something.

“It doesn’t matter, really. After a coat of primer, you’ll be a fresh new canvas.”

My heart pounded as my eyesight dimmed, and I staggered out of the reeking dining room as terror washed over me. I was going to die here.

I fought to stay upright as I waded through the dark rooms in a panic. Tina was complaining and accusing me of something, but her words were hazy, phasing in and out so that only a few were intelligible. I was lost, all sense of direction gone as the array of closed doors on every side left me trapped. I reached one and twisted the knob, feeling my rubbery hand slip and fumble before finally opening the door.

A wave of nauseating stench caused me to retch. My blurry vision struggled to make out the looming figures in the room, all watching me with painted, lifeless eyes. It was a room of men, some seated and some standing. Painted-over corpses of those who’d come before me.

“Please don’t be jealous,” a bodiless voice spun around my head. The seven posed bodies all watched me with unsettling smiles as my vision darkened. This is where I would die and rot, I realized. A painted carcass among the rest of them. The adrenaline finally kicked in.

I blindly swung a numb arm, connecting with Tina who emitted a yelp, and I stumbled back through the spinning room to the other hazy doors. I tried to speed up but my body was barely obeying. I felt a sharp sting on my bicep and looked down to see an open gash leaking red. Tina had a knife. I struggled to get away from her, staggering through the stained, carpeted hallway back towards the murky entrance.

“Don’t worry, I can paint over the cuts,” Tina’s calm voice stated from behind. I raced to a door emitting a sliver of daylight through the cracks. Another stabbing pain in my back hit me as I tripped out into the evening’s dark sky. “Get BACK here!”

I stumbled down the few stairs, collapsing onto the street with a fleshy smack. I lay there, unable to move a muscle. I was totally paralyzed. Yells and shrieks called from outside my view. I stared at the branches above me until they dimmed and the world went black.

I woke in the hospital to see a concerned-looking nurse hovering over me. She informed me gently that I’d been rescued in the street by a UPS worker. He had fought off a knife-wielding woman that had to have been Tina. My blood contained a mix of GBH and Tetrodotoxin, and the nurse explained I was very lucky to be alive. If I’d arrived a few minutes later I likely wouldn’t have made it.

The disturbing details of the investigation came in snippets during my recovery. Tina had fled on foot and her home had been raided. The rotted bodies of seven missing men were discovered within, painted over with thick layers of oil paint and sealed with polyurethane.

Tina was still missing, but not just her. Her parents were not in that home either. The only signs that they had been there were the dark stains at the dining room table, and two sets of fetid black footprints leading across the rotted carpet and outside into the street.