“What a mess!” Desirée whispered beneath her breath, as she made her way up stairs littered with the debris of what had once been a quite stylish place. Even in the disaster on parade all around her she could glean enough to know that she was no longer in America, but someplace abroad most likely in Europe. Why had the Holy Spirit brought her here?
Unerringly her feet took her in a certain direction and before long the torn apart domain of an artist’s lair unfolded around her with a grizzly starkness of destruction, only made more so by the bright splashes of paint on the walls. The destroyed paintings were heart rending to behold, because in small unmarred spaces of canvas the original masterpieces still showed through in testament to what had once been.
She cast her gaze wonderingly at the man, who lay asleep across the top of the desk, on which sat a finished art piece. Eyes widening she glanced from him to the canvas.
Quietly approaching the table she lifted the canvas free from it. Glancing to her killer and back to the canvas she held she marveled again that such a thing was even possible.
How could a man that did what he did for a living yet have enough soul to paint in living color as he had in this portrait of her. He’d painted her in a pose reminiscent of how she must’ve looked to him before he had pulled the trigger.
It was eye-opening, as was the depth of his ability. Glancing once more at the painting she said out loud, “Not my fondest moment let me tell you, but not my worst looking one either apparently.”
The man reared back upright and with one glance at her he shot off in the opposite direction in a backward lunge, as if fleeing from her could be no higher priority. He slammed up clumsily against a chest of drawers that halted all further movement backward.
Standing there breathing as if he’d just been in a race he looked the picture of startled amazement. It had been dark before in the alleyway and she really hadn’t seen him that well.
Now upon her acute study of him she found him to be as strong as she had imagined and he was very handsome. Smiling warmly she gestured to the painting of herself, “Did my eyes really look like this?”