Bad Stacks Story Collection Box Set (14 page)

But he didn’t faint. And that’s when it happened.

For the first time in Leo’s life, inspiration struck.
And boy did it strike.
Leo literally stumbled backwards as a powerful and very elaborate vision
burst
into his mind. Searing into his thoughts like a scene from Heaven. Mind-blowing. Blinding. Now Leo really did fall back on his ass, but not because he felt faint. But because he was thunderstruck.

Leo scuttled back like a wounded crab, but the vision scuttled back with him. His frantic mind raced to understand what was happening to him. Had he taken drugs last night? No, he hadn’t. Just beer, and lots of it. Maybe someone had slipped him a Mickey or a roofie.

This was, after all, the mother of all hallucinations. And that’s when it occurred to him: It would make one hell of a painting.

My God, the colors,
thought Leo. And now he stopped crawling backwards, stopped trying to run from the image.

Instead, he found himself lost in it.

Before him was a beautifully detailed and completely original scene. The colors were vibrant and out-of-this world, arranged in a way he never thought possible. Or, more accurately, could never have conceived on his own. The vision was a one-of-a-kind burst of inspiration that Leo knew may never strike him again.

He scrambled to his feet and stumbled back to his apartment, leaving behind the spilled bag of trash...and a trail of dripping blood. Leo shoved aside his snoring free-loading artist friends and took up his brush. With shaking hands, he applied the right amounts of oiled paint to his palette. Next, he quickly transferred the vision in his mind onto the canvas before him, using all the skills he had ever acquired.

And when the blood stopped flowing from his wound, the vision disappeared as well. But Leo had managed to capture most of its essence. And as he stumbled back from his canvas, dropping his brush and stepping into a puddle of his own blood, Leo wept. This was, he knew, his first great piece of art. Far surpassing anything he had ever attempted before, or, for that matter, could ever even imagine.

But how had this come about? What had led to this masterpiece? Was it because of the blood? The pain? The shard of glass? Booze? Drugs? Or a combination of all the above? Leo didn’t know, but he was determined to find out.

But first, he needed some fast cash.

Over the next few days, he went around town shopping the painting around, hitting up familiar galleries and those who had shown some interest in his work in the past. To Leo’s amazement, there was real, honest-to-God excitement about the painting. More than excitement. There were offers. He sold that first painting for twenty-five hundred dollars. Exciting, yes. Even more exciting was that the buyer wanted
more
.

Except Leo didn’t know
how
to give him more. After all, he didn’t have any clue how he had produced the first one!

So Leo experimented. He tried drugs. Nothing. He got shit-faced and painted. Nothing. No visions. No beauty. No out-of-this world images. Just the same crappy shit he had always painted.

Was he a one painting wonder?

In desperation, Leo duplicated everything that had led up to the vision. He threw yet another party—and invited exactly the same friends. Hell, he even tried to arrange them around his little apartment so that they passed out in the same locations. He bought the same beer, ordered the same food, played the same music, did the same drugs. Nothing worked.

Leo knew he was forgoing one thing in particular. It was the one thing that he hoped
wasn’t
the source of the vision.

The following morning, like a condemned man digging his own grave, Leo methodically broke half a dozen beer bottles. He tossed the jagged shards into the Hefty trash bag along with the other trash from the previous night’s party. Already feeling sick, he headed out to the Dumpster.

The morning was cool. The sun was bright. Leo, for once, was surprisingly alert considering how early it was. Of course, being terrified had a way of waking up even Leo from his morning stupor.

I’m really doing this
, he thought.

Now he began swinging the plastic bag filled with broken glass. Hesitantly at first, but then higher and higher.

I’m crazy. This is nuts.

He could hear the broken glass clinking within. He continued walking along the narrow pathway between apartments. The rising sun, still low on the horizon, shone straight into his face. He squinted, and swallowed hard. The rising sun was a new site for him.

He swung the bag more recklessly. Once or twice it hit his legs, ricocheting off, the sharp projectiles only grazing his skin.

Leo’s mouth had gone completely dry minutes earlier. He was also trembling. In particular, his legs were trembling. He sensed he was going into a sort of pre-shock in anticipation of the pain and blood to come.

I don’t want to do this.

Yes, you do.

On the next swing, he raised the bag up higher. At its apex, as it hovered briefly in space, something flashed in the morning sun. It was a shard of glass glinting in the sunlight, poking through the plastic bag.

The bag started down again, picked up momentum, and slammed hard into his right shin. The pain was immediate—and intense.

“Son-of-a-bitch!”

Something—no doubt the glass—lodged deep into his lower leg. Leo’s blue eyes bulged. He doubled over. He could see now the dark little shards sticking through the black bag and into his flesh. The bag, however, had hit a different leg this time. His right leg. Right, left—did it matter? He didn’t know, but maybe, since there was no vision.

Leo thought for sure that it had been the
intense pain
that caused the vision to appear.

He was wrong, and now he was sickened by what he had done to himself. The glass, from all appearances, was lodged deep in his leg. Much deeper than the first time he had done this, back when he had
accidentally
cut himself.

Leo
wanted
to be a great artist. Hell, he craved just to be considered
good
, let alone great. But that painting last week wasn’t just good or great....

It had been a masterpiece.

The vision had been his answer, of course. The vision had been his way out of mediocrity. The vision was what he had been waiting for all his life.

And now it was gone. Damn.

This crazy plan had really been his last hope. Now the very real, and grim, thought that he might have to actually give up his dream of being an artist weighed upon him. Standing there with the glass shard still sticking in his leg, feeling hopeless and stupid, Leo imagined himself getting up every morning to an alarm, relentlessly hitting the damn snooze button, working for some asshole in a suit and tie—and nearly wept. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Life was supposed to be fun and carefree.

Yes, sugar mommas were still a valid option, but satisfying their needs was almost as bad as getting up early for work.

Almost.

Confused and lost, Leo focused again on his leg. The pain seemed to be intensifying. The glass was really in there deep. Mutilating himself for his art. Leo felt like an idiot.

And all for nothing, too.

There was still little or no blood, as the glass was basically plugging up the hole in his leg. He knew the moment he freed the glass, his leg was going to gush. Steeling himself, he reached down and gently took hold of the glass. It was still poking through the plastic bag. In effect, the trash bag was attached to his leg. The moment he touched the glass, white hot pain ripped through him.

Leo nearly passed out just touching the glass.

How am I going to pull it out?
he thought.

Just yank it out.

But I can’t; it hurts too much.

Yes, you can. You have to.

I’ll call an ambulance. They can do it.

And you’ll pay them how?

Leo had no money for an ambulance, of course. Leo had already burned through the twenty-five hundred from the last painting.

Just do it.

Do it!

And so he did. Screaming, he pulled the long and bloody shard of glass out of his leg. Screaming. Gasping. Fighting an urge to vomit. Fighting an urge to pass out.

Out the glass shard came. Slowly. Bloodily.

And then it was out completely and blood spurted free in a great crimson arch, spraying across the cement walkway, and even out into the grass beyond.

And the vision that hit him nearly knocked him off his feet. So blinding. So powerful. So beautiful. Leo stumbled back, fell into the wet grass and felt joy unlike anything he had ever felt in his life. Groping blindly, he turned and found his feet and sprinted awkwardly back into his apartment, pushing aside the same slumbering lummoxes.

That morning, Leo painted his second masterpiece.

This time it sold for ten thousand.

* * *

That was four years ago.

Now Leo Dershowitz lived in a beautiful artist’s loft in Brea, California. Museum directors (the same ones who sniffed haughtily at his past work) were soon pounding down his door, offering to pay him staggering fees to showcase his work. He granted permission to some, others he didn’t. In a matter of years, Leo quickly acquired that kind of power. He also had women over, too, but these were much younger and much prettier than the old hags he was used to date. And now Leo gave
them
allowances. That felt good to him. Really, really good.

Lately, Leo’s best friend was his accountant, Larry Steingold. The two men had little in common except a love of money—especially Leo’s money.

Leo had a need to tell someone about his bleeding. Up to this point—four years now!—he had kept his macabre painting habits a secret. He needed to get it off his chest. Leo suspected he would have been better off telling a shrink about it, but he wanted to tell someone he knew, someone he trusted, and then look them in the eye to see if they thought he, Leo, was crazy. Because sometimes—
sometimes—
Leo thought he was seriously going crazy.

Leo was desperate to reach out, to explain, to connect. To be told he wasn’t crazy. To be told that his bloody muse was perfectly normal. Lawrence the accountant seemed a perfect candidate. He was reasonable, non-judgmental, and had proven to be a decent friend over these past few years. In short, Leo trusted him with his most trusted secret.

And so one evening, when the two were sitting opposite each other at a posh L.A. sushi restaurant, drinking saki and eating raw fish, Leo found himself in a talkative mood. So talkative, in fact, that he blurted out his bloody secret. And when Leo was finished talking, blabbering really, Lawrence swallowed his last bite of food and carefully set his chopsticks across his unfinished plate of salmon rolls. The little man blinked once, twice, three times, and then looked Leo squarely in the eye from across the table.