03 Sep Illustrations

Posted at 11:00h in Strange and Unexplained by CreepypastaStories.com 1 Comment

📅 Published on September 3, 2020

“Illustrations”

Written by David Feuling
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on CreepypastaStories.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed, adapted to film, television or audio mediums, republished in a print or electronic book, reposted on any other website, blog, or online platform, or otherwise monetized without the express written consent of its author(s).

🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

⏰ ESTIMATED READING TIME — 4 minutes

Rating: 7.75/10. From 4 votes.

Please wait...

For the rest of my life, I’ll remember Tali. I didn’t know her personally, but her art permanently changed my town. Our community never recovered and it probably never can. I distinctly remember so many of her illustrations. There was always such surreal and vivid detail. She drew things that I never thought I would see. I think it was always her intention to provoke us in that way. Tali wanted to create something that truly couldn’t be forgotten. In that way, Tali succeeded.

Tali devoted herself to a niche form of drawing that she herself invented. It’s hard to describe exactly how she did it, but it’s true enough to say that Tali was a master of forced perspectives. She could make a flat surface teem with implied depth and height. Beyond this mastery, Tali’s subject matter was highly focused. She chose only to depict gruesome injuries.

The isometry of each drawing was perfect. When Tali finished a piece, it really seemed as though the pages had been stabbed, slashed, gouged out, and made to bleed. She sketched and colored every scene in loving detail. She wouldn’t stop adding or erasing until every image was virtually perfect in its realism.

Even a flat sheet of paper could tell a story in three dimensions. There was a convincing depth and range implied by everything Tali created. When a person’s eyes met the canvas, it looked as though some jagged edge had truly cut into something alive. With brushes and pencils, she perfectly imitated weapons diving deep beneath the surface of every page.

I’ve always believed that Avrum was jealous of Tali. Maybe he resented how she became our town’s most controversial (and thereby famous) artist. Avrum clearly wanted to be that person instead. They were both creators, but Tali was possessed by a muse while Avrum had no such vision. I wonder whether he killed her out of pure selfishness.

The whole situation makes me more than just “wonder,” in fact. I suspect that Avrum hurt Tali because she was tarnishing the local scene. She was turning visual art into more of a taboo subject than he preferred. Avrum was the type of artist who fawned eagerly for patronage. I think he realized that Tali’s illustrations conflicted with his own aspiration.

People started to feel confused by the realism of Tali’s work. That’s how it seemed to me. The symbolism of the illustrations became too direct, and people started to lash out against the artist as though she were really committing the crimes that she depicted. They cursed at her and tore up her drawings. I heard at least one man admit that he felt sick after destroying one of Tali’s illustrations. “I felt like an accomplice,” he said. “It was like I was hurting the person she had drawn.”

Others began to destroy Tali’s work, too. The shopkeepers stopped selling Tali paper and drawing supplies. She wasn’t even allowed in some of the stores. Soon, we had torn up everything that Tali ever tried to share with us.

Tali met our aggression with more drawings. Our resistance only encouraged her to improvise. She made black from charcoal and red from wild berries. Purples, blues, greens, and yellows came from tinctures she created with her sundry home supplies. Everything she could scavenge immediately became new art. Tali began to graffiti the whole town.

As the drawings became magnified in scale, Tali’s sick attention to detail grew more imaginative. There were broken sinews that were drawn such that they appeared to be hanging delicately in the air, right in front of the observer’s nose. Lost bits of flesh and congealing trickles of blood were rendered in even greater specificity than before. Tali wouldn’t be stopped. It didn’t matter whether people tried to attack, cajole, or beg her. She continued to draw.

There was a final argument that ended Tali’s career as well as her life. I remember the way the sun was fading, and the drizzle of rain that was coming down. Tali was applying an oil varnish to her latest illustration. The rain had been falling all day, and so Tali worked to protect her depiction from the water that was coming down. I didn’t clearly see the face of the man who approached Tali, but his proportions and posture reminded me of Avrum. There was a quiet exchange of words and then a physical scuffle. I wish it all had ended there, but it didn’t.

Suddenly Tali was screaming, but the man kept suspiciously quiet. He reached with one hand to muffle her mouth, and put the blade concealed in his jacket between her ribs with the other. Tali kept screaming and tried to defend herself. I heard her beg for help, and I also know that others heard her. I was afraid to step in, and I hate myself for that. For others, it was easy to put on deaf ears because they saw Tali’s assailant as a hero. He was putting a conclusive stop to the drawings. Whether they admit it or not, many people were glad to see that happen.

We all let her attacker withdraw. I feel especially guilty for this, because I never hated Tali’s illustrations. Nevertheless, I was afraid to intervene, and so I became complicit through my inaction. Not a soul intercepted the attacker, and so I can never prove that it was Avrum. I’m sure of it, though, even despite that. Only Avrum could have treated her with such brutal animosity. The blade hadn’t been put into her ribs only once, or twice. It had been twisted and slashed all over her. Tali had prepared us all to find her that way, and so nothing on her body shocked us anymore.

We were desensitized by everything we’d seen, but we still treated Tali’s body well. We buried her and marked the place with a headstone, exactly as we would do for any other member of our community. Although we destroyed her, we solemnly honored her life when we committed her to the earth.

The worst part of all was what happened the next day. There was a boy who watched us bury Tali. He was just a child, and I never learned his name. The boy took an unfortunate interest in the murdered artist, and he started drawing in Tali’s gruesome style. I left town soon after that. I couldn’t stand being there anymore.