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Authors: L.H Cosway

Painted Faces

BOOK: Painted Faces
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Painted Faces

By L.H Cosway

Copyright
©
2012 Lorraine McInerney

All rights reserved.

Cover image by Anatoly Tiplyashin.

Cover design by L.H Cosway.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

Books by L.H Cosway

A Strange Fire
(Florence Vaine #1)

A Vision of Green
(Florence Vaine #2)

Tegan's Blood
(The Ultimate Power Series #1)

Tegan's Return
(The Ultimate Power Series #2)

Tegan's Magic
(The Ultimate Power Series #3) (Feb. 2013)

Crimson
(An Ultimate Power Series Novella)

Painted Faces

For all the men who are women and the women who are men, the men who are men and the women who are women. And those of you who are a little bit of both. You colour my world.

..when in the fast embrace their limbs were knit, they two were two no more, nor man, nor woman – one body then that neither seemed and both.

- Ovid,
Metamorphoses
.

Table of Contents

 
Prologue
 

Christchurch, New Zealand, 1998.

He was eight years old when his obsession began.

He was so much more than just a boy in a dress. He had been doing this for six years, and still he managed to keep it a secret. He was an only child and his father was forever absent, so the secrecy came easy. Nicholas had been searching for his old cowboy costume in the attic when he'd come across the boxes, full to the brim with his deceased mother's things.

He had exactly three memories of her. The first was how her bright blue eyes always lit up and shone when she saw him. The second was how she would fill the house with pretty music when she sang and played piano, and the third was of her crying, always crying in the bathroom when she thought nobody else was around.

 

Nicholas had taken her dusty old possessions and made them his life. He would sing like she sang in the video recordings he had of her. He kept them hidden under his bed and watched them over and over again. He would wear her dresses and jewellery and spend hours putting her make-up on his face. In time his habit would evolve into a need to entertain; a desire to express his fascination with the female form by impersonating it. But for now, it was all about her. The woman who brought him into the world and died before he had the chance to get to know her.

Over the years he had come to realise that other people didn't do what he did; they didn't spend hours at a time trying to replicate the memory of their dead mother by becoming her. He wondered if this was what grown-ups referred to as grief. It seemed odd for him to feel sad for a woman he had only three memories of. For some reason he felt like he loved her inherently, despite never having truly known her.

But it was loneliness too that spurred his unlikely habit. His father was a cold man and only spoke to him when it was absolutely necessary, while Nicholas was a child who thrived on conversation, on attention. At school he acted out, making fun of the teachers and always interrupting lessons simply because he craved someone to acknowledge him, to have people know he existed. He found that if he behaved badly, he could be the centre of attention.

He was friends with all of the prettiest girls. The other boys would call him a queer, but he didn't care. He liked being around the girls too much to give it up. He loved how sweet they smelled and how soft their lips were when they let him kiss them and put his hands up their shirts. He relished how they told him he was the most handsome boy in the whole school.

He was twelve the first time he got beaten up. He lay on the ground and let the boys punch and kick him because he didn't know how to defend himself. They spat names at him like faggot and nancy-boy. That was one of the last times they got away with it, because he soon learned how to kick and punch back, how to use his wit as a defence to their name calling. He never bothered trying to show them that he was none of the things they called him. Bullies didn't care about the truth, they just wanted an easy target.

He was fourteen the first time somebody discovered his secret. It was a Saturday and he was alone in the house. He put his Karen Carpenter CD in the stereo and let it play on full volume as he twirled around in his mother's red velvet dinner dress and her black high heels with the silver buckles at the front. He tried to match exactly how Karen sang. His friends from school all listened to Backstreet Boys and The Spice Girls, but he thought Karen had the most perfect, sweetest voice in the world.

He was holding a hairbrush, which also belonged to his mother, to his mouth as a pretend microphone in the front living room of the house, oblivious to the world, when he turned around to find a man standing there watching him. It was Kelvin, a friend and work colleague of his father's. Nicholas felt like a bomb had exploded inside of his chest. He was caught. This would change everything.

He really didn't like Kelvin. There was something about him that made the tiniest hairs on his arms stand on end. Why did it have to be this man who discovered his secret? He was a bad man, Nicholas could feel it.

Kelvin was old and stern like Nicholas' father, and he wore his ever present business suit. He stood holding a stack of folders in his arms. He smiled at Nicholas just before he set them down on the coffee table.

He dangled a set of keys from his hand. “Your dad asked me to drop these documents by today, he gave me the key to the front door,” said Kelvin.

Nicholas was mortified as he stared at the man.
Leave
, he silently begged,
can't he just leave and pretend he never saw any of this?

The end of his happiness was upon him. Kelvin would tell his father what he had caught Nicholas doing, and his father would call him an abomination, burn all of his mother's things and throw him out onto the streets.

His throat was dry as he managed a reply that was barely a whisper. “I'll – I'll tell him you came by.”

Kelvin nodded, but still the stupid man wouldn't leave. He took a seat on the couch and crossed one leg over the other.


So, what exactly are you supposed to be doing?” he asked, his eyes gleaming with an intention Nicholas couldn't quite pick out. A single tear spilled from his eye and ran down his face.


Please don't tell my dad,” he begged fervently, as more tears followed.


Oh, of course not. I wouldn't dream of it,” Kelvin replied. “Now, come and sit with me. I'm sure we can come to some kind of an arrangement.”

Desperate to convince Kelvin to keep his secret, Nicholas took a deep breath, wiped at his tears with his fingers, and went to sit down. His beautiful secret, the one that had brought him so much joy, would never be a happy, childish thing again.

Chapter One
 

Can I Call You Viv?

Dublin, Ireland, Present day.

The mascara stings my eyes as it drips down my cheeks. It's a good thing I'm not wearing lipstick or I'd look like some sort of circus clown. A lunatic escaped from the asylum perhaps. I could certainly give Alice Cooper a run for his money.

A sudden downpour of rain is soaking through my clothes, leaving my skin full of goose pimples, my curly hair a soggy mess and my boots squeaking with the liquid that has gotten inside. I'm the picture of a modern woman who doesn't own a car and doesn't possess the forethought to carry an umbrella.

This is what we call summer in Ireland ladies and gents. One minute the sun is beating down on you, making you all sweaty, and the next it's lashing rain. Either way, you're going to end up damp. I'm carrying what feels like about a million plastic shopping bags, though in reality it's only three. The bags are most likely adding to my appearance of being an escaped psychiatric patient. Is it just me, or do the psychologically unstable always seem to carry plastic bags around?

I live in an apartment block just off Aungier Street. It's a bit of a dive truth be told, but at least it's central. I fumble for the keys in my handbag which is slung over my shoulder, as a couple of the local kids walk by me, snickering at my struggle. I want to tell them to go fuck themselves, but of course societal rules prevent adults such as myself from swearing at children. I suppress a snort at the idea, it would again add to the façade I'm unconsciously cultivating of being off my trolley.

Finally, I manage to retrieve the keys from their hiding spot at the very end of my bag - wouldn't you know - beneath a half empty bottle of spring water and a half eaten bar of chocolate. I live on the third floor and the building doesn't have an elevator. I have to trudge my way up the stairs, soggy clothes, plastic bags, open handbag (since I'm too lazy to zip it back up after finding the keys) and all.

As I mentioned, the block is a bit of a dive and I don't have the nicest of neighbours, so I always tend to hurry getting from the front entrance up to my apartment. Just as I'm slotting in my keys, the door from the recently empty apartment next to mine flies open.

I'm curious to see who my new neighbour is this time. A single mother with three little brat kids who'll make an unholy racket day and night perhaps? Knowing my luck it'll be something like that. Only it isn't, instead a very smartly dressed man emerges. He has a crisp white shirt on, the first two buttons casually undone, expensive black trousers and black dress shoes. Well, well, well, perhaps Nora and I are going to have a respectable neighbour for once.

Myself and my best friend Nora have been living together for almost three years now in our two bedroom apartment in the city.
Not
as glamorous as it sounds, let me tell you. In those three years we've lived next to a junkie couple, a single mother with two obnoxious children, and a young husband and wife with a baby who, when the baby wasn't crying the building down, would have noisy rows at two o'clock in the morning. The couple moved out about three weeks ago, providing myself and Nora with some much deserved peace and quiet.

The man I'm currently staring at looks like he belongs in this place about as much as an Indian tiger belongs in the Dublin Zoo. He has jet black hair, sort of midway between long and short, ice blue eyes and a classically beautiful face. His physique is lightly muscled in that kind of athletic way, and when he smiles at me politely his whole face lights up. His eyes are all shines and sparkles.

BOOK: Painted Faces
9.29Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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