Prose: The Lucent Shadow (1)

I am almost easily fascinated by anything. My wife Dalia would say I am bullish, well I could be in a sort of way.
I once made a mural out of wet shoelaces I picked from dumpsters.

She became endeared to me when I made made a painting out of the coffee she spilled on the table on our first date.

 ‘I am so sorry I made a mess'

 She said as she tore frantically at the paper towels but I held her hand, placed it on her lap as she squeezed the towel tightly, then I drew the most beautiful coffee panda.
She blushed like a school girl and felt so bad when the squirmish sales girl wiped it off from the table.

She barely saw me frown at anything and five years after saying ‘I do' just the two of us, at the beach with our feet buried in the sand as the minister pronounced us husband and wife, we have been stuck in that beautiful memory, full of optimism and full of hope for our beautiful twin girls.

I am a Fine and Applied Arts Professor at the State University and I would call myself a very relatable person.

My students referred  to me as Peter instead of Professor Peter  because I believed  that  it would help create a less dense learning environment and it did.

I encouraged my students to see beauty in everything and they reciprocated with beautiful paintings, my class was definitely a breathe of acrylic fresh air.

But that  was until Marian, a transfer student came into my class.

She pitched herself at the end of the room, her face blank and expressionless. She was average height with a pale skin and wore her hair in five cornrows. She had little makeup on her face, just a shinny lipgloss and her full brows arched perfectly. She often wore a ripped jean and a T-shirt , sometimes an oversized floral gown with a jean jacket and her woolen knapsack strapped across her shoulders​.

 I was used to a certain kind of attention from the girls in my class because of my looks and charisma. I started off as a teen playing basketball because of my height but a torn ligament ended that dream, so I focused on the second best thing in my life, art.

I was a charmer as a bachelor but I loved Dalia too much to ever hurt her so I kept everyone at arm's length and silently basked in the flirty conversations.

But Marian didn’t care at all...

She barely flinched when I walked past and was always less concerned in volunteering to head projects.

I must admit, in a way, I felt neglected.

Mariam had a gift, it was dark and her art always casted a shadow to the work of others.

A collage of puppies, lovers in the rain, a fashionable woman snuggled in bed, a Nubian goddess in full regalia and then there was Marian’s shadowy work of art which was either made from a lot of red or etched with a lot of dark colors.

Basic psycho stuff.

Her art was dark, heart wrenching, bordering on dellusional but it was tempting, I never knew how tempting it could be until the day I came a little closer.

To be continued...