Last Display...

 Art
The Crypt Keeper
Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
First Thursday

Tabby sat on the floor of the vault with the collection of her nightmares around her. After her conversation on First Thursday she knew, or at least has a strong suspicion that every piece Ian painted was someone's nightmare. Actual nightmare. 

What she didn't really understand is how he did it. She had thought of a number of logical ways. He could be a therapist and he painted what patients told him in session. He could be a bartender and painted what the stressed out drinker at the end of the bar shared. He could be someone's brother, or uncle or friend and he painted what they had shared. He would have to be the linchpin person for a dozen or so of her patrons and herself. 

It could happen. Portland was a decent sized city but it wasn't massive. And there would be a lot of overlap between her patrons on where they went and who they knew. All of that was plausible. 

Except she had never shared her nightmares with anyone. Had never told anyone about the yellow car that had followed her her entire life. Dreams that are terrifying to you are never that scary to other people. And, honestly, nobody wanted to hear about your stress dreams. You just had to mention you were having them and people's eyes would glaze over. Oh please, don't share the details of your dreams...

But here they were. Five paintings now. All nightmares she had had. Nightmares that she had more than once. Her recurring stress dreams. The ones that had started when she was a child, had kept up through school, through disastrous relationships, through economic downturns when she thought she might lose the gallery. Always the yellow car. The crash. The various ways it was going to go out of control. And here they were. 

And they were beautiful. 

Terrifying, but beautiful. 

She had decided that she was going to display them. They would be a series running along one wall. And she was going to really look at his other pieces and see if she could tell if they were related. Those would go up together as a series as well. Then the rest would hang by themselves. This was going to be the next theme night for First Thursday. She was going to call it Nightmares; One Night Only and hang them all. 

The idea thrilled her and filled her with terror at the same time. How many patrons would recognize their own panic on the walls? How would she explain that they were seeing what they really thought they were seeing? How would they react? And should she let them take their own nightmares home? She had never sold art off her walls, but really didn't people deserve to own their own fears? 

"Tabby? We need you to sign off on the inventory."

"Be right there." She took a deep breath and shook off her own unease. 

"...and you really can't read it at all?"

"What can't you read?"

Their new bartender looked a little embarassed. "I can read. I just can't always read cursive."

"Really?"

"Yeah, we didn't learn it when I was in school. We used tablets and keyboards from kindergarten on so I've never had to."

"But I've seen you read order notes left that were written in cursive?" 

"I can sometimes figure it out. Like some of the letters are really similar, so if I can get enough of those I can just sort of fill in the rest. When it gets tricky is when someone has really ornate cursive. The more flourishes, the harder it is to read."

"Hunh, what do you do about signing things?"

"I write my name. Just print it out. I mean for most things they make you print your name anyway since nobody can read someone else's signature. Most of the time they just look like one capital letter and a squiggle."

Tabby laughed, "That's true."

"And like you, you do this sort of mix of print and cursive when you write anyway so it makes it pretty easy to figure out."

"That's true, I do. Mostly kind of linked printing at this point."

"That's where it's the trickiest to figure out. The linking. Like some letters look the same if they are standing alone, but when they are linked in a word they get odd. And then some letters are just hard. Like r looks like n, n and m look similar but n looks like m sometimes and m looks like you just forgot to stop making the letter..."

"So you just figure out what all the other letters are and hope you have it right?"

"Yeah, usually, it's like sounding things out when you are learning how to read in the first place. But if it's a lot of cursive I just ask someone to read it for me. It's faster that way. And sometimes I am just glad that I didn't say what I thought something was until I hear someone else say it."

"You mean like words you've only read but never said out loud? We all have that, cursive or print. Like segue. The first time I realized that was how you pronounced it I was was shocked."

"No, not like that, like when you get the letters crossed. Here, like this..."

He walked over to one of the pieces on the wall and pointed at the signature. "I didn't know this was Ian until I heard you talking about it. N in cursive is the same as M in print, right? And he does the same print and cursive mix you do, Tabby. So I thought it was I am. Not Ian."

Tabby stared at the signature. I am. 

I am U

.........

"Tabby had always wanted to own and display art that spoke to her. That moved her. That made her feel something. She just didn't realize what it meant to open the gallery of your dreams....In the Twilight Zone."