Word Count: 4443

Derek W. Hinton

12 April, 2019

My house.

Derek360@live.com

(Colorized)

by

Derek W. Hinton

A pencil scrawls in barely legible chicken-scratch on the white-lined pages of a small,

faux-leather-bound notebook:

4/15/11

They say that that cold has been spreading a lot more lately! Dad says he had it when he

was a kid and that it’s a lot like chicken pox, you get it once and when it passes you

won’t get it again. But Mom says it’s better to just never get it at all. I don’t really get

what the big deal everyone else is making about it though, I’ve had a cold before and it

wasn’t that bad! It might get me out of school for a few days though… Hope Mikey

doesn’t get it!

Signed, Micky D.

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Closing the book with a smile, the girl presumably named Micky slides it back into her

desk drawer. Then reaching across to the partially ripped open package of printer paper, she

pinches a corner and drags the ream neatly in front of her. Reaching the other way, she grabs a

messy, plastic box. She pops the hinged lid open to reveal a couple of heavily eroded, colorful

tablets and some bristled sticks. Dabbing a brush tip into a nearby water cup she unprofessionally

grinds it into the nearly depleted light blue, swirling around until it dissolves enough to cling to

the synthetic hairs. With all the carefulness of a child she brings it to the blank sheet and begins

to paint a few stripes going down and arching out followed by two straighter lines on either side,

a pattern one could argue as a crude rendition of the dress she was currently wearing. Swishing

the brush back into the water she now goes at the chalky yellow, adding a few missing details to

the page, a couple of circles and lines coming from the collar and cuffs. An appearance that

would be accurate if she had jaundice, but when dealing with dollar store water colors you can’t

be that picky. With one last wash in the water she gets the final touches with black: the missing

details of her less-crude-yet-still-very-crude dress, her buckled shoes, the general shape of her

mess of hair, and lastly two black dots and a small curve to match her current expression.

Keeping that expression, she writes “MICKY D” across the bottom and with a piece of tape

sticks it to the wall.

She starts a similar process on her second sheet, the notable difference being a green

shirt, dark blue pants, brown skin, and much shorter and more curly hair on a figure clearly taller

than hers. This one was labeled “MIKEY” and placed along side her own. The third sheet was

another arguably abstract rendition of a man resembling Mikey but taller, in an open jacketed

suit, and labeled “DAD”. The fourth and final was a woman whose stature was between the two

previous and who shared her own’s Simpsons looking complexion albeit wearing a dark grey

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pantsuit and labelled “MOM”. All were given a face to match Micky’s own and placed side by

side on the wall. She gives herself a moment to bask in the glory of her work before she is

interrupted by the clearing of a throat:

“Looks like you’ve been busy, sweetheart.” Her dad said from the doorway.

“Yeah! I felt like painting, so I did some portraits of us!”

He steps closer and looks at the pages with the keen eye like that of a collector, “Hrm,

seems a little derivative don’t you think?”

Micky shot him a look of shocked disapproval.

“I’m teasing, they’re very nice. But…”

Micky’s eyes dart to the bottom left for a second in thought, ”But?”

“But, I’m pretty sure you were sent in here to do homework.”

“But Dad I was going to-“

“No buts young lady, now hurry up or your mother will get mad at us both.”

Without another word he closed the lid of her paints as she grabbed the assignments from her

backpack. He began to leave but was stifled by a small cough behind him. He looked back at

Micky still working, then turned and left.

The next day Micky was idly playing with the rainbow of marshmallow cereal remnants

in her bowl. Her sibling was sat across from her, brow furrowed in concentration and writing

something down in a composition notebook but at an angle that made it impossible for anyone

else to see. They also had a bowl, but it was lacking in cereal, these were the only bowls at the

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table. The youngest of the family spoke up first, ”Mikey, whatcha writing?” Mikey’s eyes looked

over to their sister while reflexively pulling the notebook closer, “School work.” Micky was

about to interrogate further if not for a woman’s voice intervening, “While I can’t condone

leaving your work until the morning before class, it’s good to know at least someone is invested

in their education.” Mikey gave a half-hearted smile and said, “Thanks, Mom.” Micky gave a no-

hearted smile and said nothing, her mind too focused on the sudden knotting in her gut to come

up with a sarcastic remark. “Speaking of which,” the eldest woman said in reference to nothing,

“I ought to be heading to work. Michael, be sure that Mikaela gets to school on time. Love you

both.” She was hardly finished talking before leaving the two siblings alone with their bowls in

near silence:

“So…whatcha writing?” Micky reiterated.

“…School work.”

It was only a few days later when the nausea kicked in and her fever began to rise. Micky

groaned as she got up from bed far past curfew, exhaustion clinging to her mind begging her to

fall back to sleep. She passed by the half-empty paper packet and the half-full wall of taped

sheets. Each page depicting a unique variety of fantastical scenes: Micky singlehandedly piloting

a hot air balloon, Micky as a princess but with nunchucks, Micky and her family having a picnic

together, and Micky riding a rainbow-colored dinosaur. She headed out into the hall in hopes of

medicating herself with some children’s Tylenol but was distracted by some less-than-friendly

sounds emanating from down the hall. Curiosity overruling her throbbing head and swirling gut,

she peeked into the living room to see her parents producing some aforementioned less-than

friendly sounds, one could even describe them as words. It was her mother’s voice who rang out

first:

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“Well maybe if you actually pushed her to put in effort in class she wouldn’t be failing.”

“How is this my fault? I’m the only one of us actually home enough to spend time with

her.”

“Maybe because one of us has work to keep us from living on the street! I have to set a

good example but it seems like Mikaela is going to waste her life on doodles like you did.”

“I’m not trying to make her in my image, Estene, but come on, she’s only a kid. When

she realizes she doesn’t have what it takes she’ll quit it.”

“Hopefully. You at least wised up to see how the real world works. Eventually.”

The conversation continued but Micky refused to hear it. She couldn’t tell if it was the

content or her illness that was making the bile build up in her throat but she abruptly turned and

scurried away to the bathroom. The acrid, green vomit being expelled unfortunately only

relieving one feeling of sickness she had.

On the third missed school day she shuffled from her unkempt mattress to the seat at her

desk, crumpled pieces of paper haphazardly being knocked about at her feet. Slumped in the

chair she eyes the wall; it’s a chaotic mess of somewhat nice drawings and remnants of torn

pages that have lost their right to be there. She glared at the gap directly across from her. Her

family portraits halved in quantity, leaving only herself and Mikey, the eldest two likely in

dozens of pieces spread between the carpet and the trash bin. Scowling she goes to reach for a

new sheet of paper but feels nothing, all that’s left is the empty packaging. Grabbing it in her

fists, she crushes it and hurls it across the room before pushing away from the desk and heading

into the hall.

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Weakly trotting from room to room she searched for replacement paper, her will to draw

overpowering her intestines will to be ripped from the inside out. She checked the computer

printer for spares but it was empty: Mom has her own printer but she keeps her room locked and

Dad doesn’t really get computers. Her head was throbbing as she slammed the printer tray shut

and looked elsewhere. There was no paper in the living room beyond already filled magazines.

There was no paper in the bathroom except the obvious and she knows for a fact it is not a good

medium for watercolors. She even checks the trash can in the kitchen, finding various crumpled

scraps of paper, but they were of no use to her, filled with tiny print text and glaring red stamp

marks, it would throw off the entire composition. Running out of patience she let out a sullen

huff and turned towards the door at the very end of the hall: her father’s studio.

Her hand hesitated on the doorknob for half a second before she recalled what he had said

days prior. The vitriol in her veins pushed her onwards into the forbidden. The interior of the

room was dark and foreboding. Micky felt around the nearest wall until she found the switch.

The interior of the room was now well-lit and foreboding. She was barely allowed to be in here

while her father was working, and less so when he wasn’t. Fortunately, as far as she could

assume, he was probably at the store or something. He wasn’t here and the car wasn’t in the

driveway and to a child “the store” is pretty much the only place adults go to besides “work”.

With the house and this room to her sickened self she made haste. She looked around at the

partially finished works on expensive woven fibers, the squeezed tubes of paint made from

actual rocks and not some toy store knock-off, and the brushes which likely cost more than her

entire art supplies this year. With a grin she began imitating her father from what she remembers

the few times she’s been in here. She drags a big blank canvas over to the central easel and sets it

up, which is, of course, way too high for her. So she pulls a stool over to remedy that problem.

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Next, she grabs one of his big messy pallets that she has to awkwardly hold in her comparatively

tiny hands. She takes a few tubes a paint and begins depositing them onto the tray: a sunny

yellow, a woody green, an empyrean blue, a vacuous black, a bone white, a blood red. She held

on the final of those for a while, watching it pile onto itself like a tube of viscera. When she was

satisfied, she grabbed the biggest brush she could manage and got to work. She mashed the

instrument into blue and dragged it across the tableau, pressing harder into the canvas than her

pulsing headache pressed into her head. Digging into other colors she continued her work: a cyan

dressed figure completed, standing triumphant. She swished the brush between the neutral globs

forming a disgusting gray before pushing it into the blank surface. The bristles fraying wildly as

her nerves did the same. Soon two figures were laying at her feet, each suited to their own styles.

With an inspired grin she finally swept into the heretofore untouched red, she carefully lifted up

a blob of it on the ruined brush tip before flicking and splattering it at the defeated shapes.

Aggressively repeating this process, getting red splotches all over the canvas and her own dress.

This would have continued had it not been for the sound of a door opening followed by a sudden

shout, “Mikaela!” In shock she turned to face the door, only for the stool to slip out from under

her from the sudden shift. Falling forwards she collapsed upon the easel, the supporting leg

giving way and bringing her and her work to the floor. Her masterpiece ruined and its remains

were coating the front of her body as if she had just murdered a heavily red-shifted rainbow. The

artistic rendition of Micky was similarly smeared and drenched in a chromatic cascade. Shakily

getting up from the mess she tried to prepare herself for what was going to happen next.

It was still stinging the next day. Despite the ketchup-like mark having dissipated from

her mustard-like face she could still feel it. She glared out the backseat window of the car, her

expression refusing to change since yesterday. She had lost the privilege to be trusted on her own

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at home. The broken easel, destroyed brush, complete waste of red was all a costly expense

according to the loud voices that stopped her from getting sleep last night. So now she was stuck

going to the Acquerello, the gallery her dad had the prestigious privilege to have art hanging in.

She normally loved going here, but for quite obvious reasons she wasn’t really feeling it today.

While stepping into the airconditioned, white halls of the building was a refreshing change from

the outside air, her feverish body still had to shiver a bit. Her dad looked down at her and spoke

firmly, “I have to do some business in the back, please try to stay out of any more trouble while

I’m away. They do have security camera’s here.” Had it not been for her bitter attitude and the

bitter bile in her gut she would have returned some bitter words to her father, but she held her

tongue as he walked off, leaving her alone in the crowded building.

She strolled around the marble-white halls of the gallery, looking at the various works of

art on display. They always had a good variety here: detailed realist portraits both self and

otherwise, impressionist landscapes and scenes of fruit, surrealist depictions of who knows what,

colorful modern arts and monochromatic inkings. It was truly a paradise in Micky’s young mind,

but like every heaven there is a hell somewhere, and as she passed by a sign bearing the name

“Philip D’angelo” she knew she had entered it. Various works of her fathers were on the walls

and centered in here. Nice natural images, those depicting himself at work, some sculpture here

and there. She could even see herself in some images based from his life sketches. A sharp pain

began growing in her gut as her legs hitched for a second. She caught herself and kept going:

depictions of her mom were there, Mikey also featured in a few too, images from outside the

house, images on his own, images labeled “Happiness” and “Compassion”. Her stomach rolled

again as her vision blurred, the pain growing fiercer, but her legs kept moving. Onwards to the

central piece, a work placed perfectly symmetrical in the hall to garner the most attention. Her

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eyes beamed at the smiling expressions, the four of them together in an embrace, the sickening

lie of an image burned her vision. Eyes trailing to the embossment on the label, sight warping in

and out of focus as she tried to make out the word. Finally, it became clear for just a moment, the

word, “Family” clear as day. Sour acid erupted from her mouth and onto the white floors,

garnering the shocked gaze and revulsion of the other patrons. She felt a mix of emotions as

toxic and unpleasant as the mix coming from her mouth. The ever-present greens and yellows

made their revolting return, but a new hue had entered the mix, streaks of vibrant red.

Her consciousness had faded in and out over the next few days. A few days spent in

thought over the few days before that. So much seemed to have happened in such few days. With

a groan she shuffled her way to her desk and pulled out her journal:

4/30/11

Everything sucks. Didn’t dad say this usually passes faster?? I miss my friends at school.

I’m still out of drawing paper and mom says I’m not allowed to get anymore until I show

responsibility or something. I didn’t even do anything!! At least Mikey seems to be doing

alright, he’s still a cool bro.

Signed, Micky D

Sliding it back into her drawer she realized she hadn’t heard much from Mikey the past

few days. They’d been really focused on “school work” she guesses. “Mom must be riding

Mikey pretty rough…”, she would think to herself. Deciding that the best course of action would

be to apologize and maybe get some shared parent-bashing in with her elder sibling she slides

her frail body from the desk and cautiously makes her way down to the door marked “Michael’s

Room”. She rapped on the door weakly and waited, but there was no response. “Miiiiikeeeeey,

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you in there?” She pounded on the door once again, “Mikeeey? This is the police, open up!”

Nothing. Feeling a sense of irritation, she decided to make the recurring choice of entering

someone else’s room which she has no permission to be in.

Mikey’s room was an organized mess. The type of room where the owner of it knows

exactly where everything is but any guest would assume a tornado was their roommate. There

was something missing from this room however and that was Mikey. Perhaps they were in the

bathroom or out with a friend? “Does Mikey have friends?” Micky thought to herself. Snooping

around for the heck of it she started to reminiscence a bit. She spied their family’s unfinished

game of Monopoly, everyone’s money and pieces presumably still wrapped in pristine order.

Mikey always played the dog and Micky the shoe, she liked the shoe, she always lost though.

Her version trailed next to the game console sat on the floor, a Nintendo. She thinks about all the

evenings the two siblings spent playing Mario Kart. Micky always went Rosalina, she had a blue

dress, what more could you want, Mikey tended to go Daisy, their argument was Daisy was the

coolest of the girls, Micky disagreed. She gave a light laugh which triggered the swirling in her

aching gut. Clutching her midriff in one hand she went over to her sibling’s desk to sit down. She

looked over all the papers strewn there. Assignments and tests and essays: boring, boring, boring.

“Why’d mom have to make you into such a stiff?”

Flipping through stacks of unimpressive paper she hears a thud midway. Quirking a

brow, she shifts the papers over to reveal a rough composition notebook. Micky always sees

Mikey carrying this around, why was it under there? Was Mikey hiding it? It’s just school shit?

She slides it out and places it in front of her. She hesitates to open it. Her body stopping her as if

she were about to sully sacred ground, but the curiosity of a young mind was too much. She

quickly spread the book to a random page and began scanning it:

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…with a resounding clang she swipes her blade through the demon’s crimson flesh! A

screeching howl bellows out as he reduces into ashes at the divine knight’s feet. Raising

the Quadro-swords to the sky, Emaya cried a call of joyous victory!!

Micky had to pause for a second, as this was not at all what she was expecting. Mikey

writes stories? Why didn’t they ever tell her about it? She began flipping to other pages, more

and more words were revealed showing exciting battles and regal balls but all having a common

thread. All of these stories focused on this one angelic warrior named Emaya. Piecing bits of

description together Micky started to get an idea about her appearance:

…a fit and valiant warrior with a beautiful body carved by the divine…

…stood above those on the battlefield like a beacon of hope…

“Big, strong, and really pretty!”

…two pairs of feathery wings…

…each of the four blades gripped in her armored hands…

…with three sets of piercing eyes no demon could escape her sight…

“Ooo, cool! And weird!”

…short curls of gold contrasted with her ebony skin…

“Black with short curly hair!”

Despite all this description she couldn’t find a single image in the entire book which,

disappointed her greatly. This character seemed way too cool to not have art for her. With

inspiration pushing her to her feet way too fast she quickly scrounged through the sheets on

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Mikey’s desk before finding a suitably blank one. On shaky feet and a bright, pounding head she

ran to her room and got to work. Pulling out her art kit once more she dabbed into depleting gray

and drew what she believed to be really badass looking armor. Her head started feeling heavy.

She used the brown and added a head and face to the figure on the sheet. She ignored the

yellowing of her hands. Some green, some blue, some yellow, she wanted to make this drawing

perfect. Ending it off she added a smiling expression and a characteristic capitalized label. The

sickness was stabbing her in the gut. She got up once more to go find Mikey and give them the

gift she had made. In the hall she heard footsteps coming and turned to see, her vision wobbled a

bit but she was able to make out the shape of her sibling:

“Mikey!”

“Micky? Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“Well... I was but then I got bored but that doesn’t matter because guess what I made

something for you!”

That sentence took a lot out of her. She stumbled forwards a few steps paper in hand.

Mikey quickly caught over to her to make sure she didn’t fall, but was interrupted by a paper

thrust into their hands. Mikey looked at the crude depiction of Emaya, it took a moment for a

reaction to come. Micky watched as their elder went from confusion to surprise to bewilderment

and finally to a sort of saddened joy.

“She seemed really cool, I thought you’d like it,” Micky felt her legs weakening again.

“I do, I do. It’s just…” Mikey would have continued their thought if Micky hadn’t just

collapsed.

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It was Mikey’s suggestion she gets taken to the doctor. Slipping in and out of the waking

world Micky’s mind hazed and blurred all the images of the past month together. Filling her wall

with art work, breaking the easel in her dad’s study, puking in the gallery, reading about Emaya,

all of these blended together in the swirling vortices of her thoughts.

In a second of consciousness she saw her mom at the side of the hospital bed. A serious,

stern woman as always. Micky resisted the urge to scowl, feeling her yellowed hand clasped with

the olive of the older woman’s. All she could feel however was her mother’s concern. Oft

misguided, but present. Her vision refocused for a second to see the immutable figure still

standing there.

Her gaze shifted to the tall man on her left through half-lidded eyes. The foggy outline of

her father shot into her brain. The stinging on her face came back, the pain in her gut, the bile in

her throat. In a flash she was in the Acquerello again, all of her father’s lies on canvas and in

sculpture for the world to gawk at. She stood there for a while, expression softening over time.

Sight drifting from one gold plaque to another, she began to see the colorful remnants of

someone who was too much like her. She blinked to reality again, still looking at the bristled

texture of his face, the crafted brushwork of his jacket.

Looking past him was another familiar face standing silently and blurrily at the bedside.

She remembers sitting beside Mikey, playing video games and laughing as usual in the elder

sibling’s bedroom, long before her symptoms ever started showing. She couldn’t look away from

the screen but she knew they were there; a worn notebook just visible in her peripherals. That’s

all she really needed to know, that’s the only place their sibling truly was. The glinting of metal

and ruffle of feathers brought her mind back to the present, her mind less and less cloudy.

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Her eyes slowly set on the only person left in the room. She looked down at her sickly

arms and body, stuck in a soiled hospital gown under plain white sheets. She blinked her eyes

and was in her room, wearing her trademark soiled dress in somewhat tacky blue sheets. Lifting

the covers, she got out of the bed and looked to the far wall. The utter forest of papers that

blanketed her wall filled her vision; the churning of her abdomen started up again. Figures of

herself, her sibling, her family were layered over each other like a pile of fallen leaves. The

crumpled failures dotting around her feet. She lurched over and clutched her gut with a gag. Her

emotions, her thoughts, her dreams were all there, ripped from her body onto the page. Green

and red began dripping from her mouth, staining the loose sheets on the floor. She looked ahead

at her original self-portrait, her eyes dimming and darkening as they tried to keep focus. She

stumbled over her feet as she approached the facsimile, she could feel her flesh being rent from

her bones beneath her skin but she continued on, more greens and reds and yellows dribbled

from her face. Leaning against the desk for support she grabbed a corner of the paper and peeled

it from the wall. She looked into the drawings crude gaze for a moment, before a drop of cyan

dripped onto the page. She wiped the tears from her cheek, but found a blue smear as she pulled

her hand back. The corners of her lips curled into a smile, as the reds and greens dribbled past

her lips. As they built in volume, blues and cyans further streamed from her eyes. Then yellows,

magentas, oranges, pinks, blacks, whites, all cascaded from her face, coating her drooping dress

and dripping skin. Beyond that, soaking into the papers on the floor, the pages on the wall

peeling away and falling to her, becoming an opalescent collage at her feet. Then finally, she

collapsed with a resounding splash.