Running with the Daedra 8

Diary of a Madman

The Artist set up shop alongside the others at the Foreign Quarter Artisan Market, right in the Foreign Quarter plaza. He had brought everything he needed; easel, canvas, paint, brushes, painting knife. He found a nice spot between another painter and a stall of homemade pottery and made himself comfortable. He had chosen this spot earlier, but made sure to show up a bit late as to not raise suspicion. He wanted his view of the guild to be unimpeded, which would be difficult considering the Market festival was to begin in little over a week. Soon the canton plaza would be filled from end-to-end with artist, performers, hucksters, and the general public. A lesser spot would’ve been swallowed up in the crowd, but the spot he chose was as close he could get to the guild door without being conspicuous.

Careful inquiries around town had informed him that the Inquisitor had taken up residence in the Mage Guild after the Archmage’s murder. More careful inquiries had revealed his name and history. Gannicus Varro, disgraced Legionary and unwilling Inquisitor. It had taken the Artist a bit of searching to find out what an Inquisitor was. Apparently it was a mix of Legion duty and investigative work, usually for matters of Imperial importance but not necessarily having to do with espionage. Hilarious given that Morrowind was more or less a client state. Which meant that Mr. Varro’s position was explicitly meaningless in regards to Dunmer politics.

How the hell he managed to be put in charge of a murder investigation was beyond him.

The Artist began his work by spreading a thin coat of liquid white across his easel, lazy paint strokes texturing the canvas. He kept a careful watch on the door to the guild while more-or-less pretending to work.

He had dropped the letter off at the post earlier this morning, before retreating to his apartment to arrange his tools. No doubt the Inquisitor would, at some point, read his letter and leave to find that girl.

The Artist smiled when he thought of the letter. It had been a long time since he had done anything with as much passion as he had when he wrote that letter. It had been very cathartic. Pouring his heart and soul out onto the paper and expounding his philosophy on the Inquisitor had been almost orgasmic. Almost as good as when he fed his friend, although that was a different kind of pleasure.

“You still doing landscapes?” The potter next to him leaned out of her knocked-up stall. She was an obese Dunmer woman in her early hundreds, dark blue-grey skin and piercing eyes, black hair done up in a bun replete with fly-aways. Her arms were perpetually covered in a thin layer of clay and she rubbed her hands vainly on her apron. She had taken up shop at the market with him many times in the past and was familiar with his work.

“Yup,” He put his best fake smile on, “No portraits yet. I can’t get the noses right.”

“Well you’d make a killing!” She laughed. (She had no idea.)

“I suppose I would.” He laughed, although not in comradery. It was the honest truth she had spoken, though she hadn’t known it.

“Say, you’re not dating anyone are you?” She eyed him warmly. “I have a cousin you may want to meet. She’s siiinnngggllleee!”

“Perhaps I would.” He smiled. There was no warmth. “Like to cut her up and feed her to my friend.” He thought.

“Well it’s date!” She brayed loudly and slaps her knee. “I can introduce you after the market hours!”

“You got it you fatass Dunmer bitch” He thought and smiled his widest, most charming smile. There is no feeling though. For a long time the Artist has felt nothing, nada, zilch, zero. Where there was a face, a persona, there is an emptiness beneath. He smiles, he talks, he laughs; but if you were to look into his dead eyes you’d know that there is nothing inside. Knock knock, no one’s home.

He went back to the canvas, beginning his painting by spread a thin sheen of blue over the still wet liquid-white. He smiled and decided he would make a nice sunrise. Sunrises were easy and sold well. He kept a careful eye on the front door the Mage’s Guild, waiting for something, anything, to happen.

A crowd began to grow around the artisan’s market. Occasionally people would approach and eye his work. Compliments or bemused remarks usually followed, but he didn’t care. Once or twice he would make forced pleasantries with the people and consider the ramifications of running his painter’s knife through their throats. A child with a lazy eye lounged a little too long once behind him, and he “accidently” splashed a bit of paint on the child’s shift. It ran off crying to its mother, who scolded the child. Another time a woman with a scarf lingered beside him and touched his shoulder lightly, which gave him a tingling in his pants.

“I’d like to tear her chest open and eat her still-beating heart.” He smiled his patented disarming smile.

He was halfway through his painting, dipping his brush in a bit of orange and yellow to make a nice mix when he noticed an Ordinator in full mail knock on the door of the Mage’s Guild. A moment later and the Argonian bitch that worked there opened the door and took a letter from the Ordinator. The Artist grinned, guessing at what the Ordinator had come to tell them. His guess was proven correct when, not ten minutes later, the Bastard Inquisitor, the Argonian Bitch, and the old Ordinator rushed out from the door and out in the direction of the bottommost tier of the canton; the girl he had left down there, as well as a nasty little surprise for the Inquisitor.

He frowned though when the Argonian woman took a few brisk steps and attempted to wrap an arm around the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor looked at her unsurely and seemed to accept the embrace after a minute. They exited the main plaza out the south side door and stepped into the sunlight, out of his sight.

The Artist focused back on his painting and tried to push the thought out of his mind. Light-red, like flesh blood, kissed the canvas. He tried his best but the thought didn’t leave.

How long had it been since he come to Vivec? Since he met his friend? Since he thought of her? Of the past.

He let the vision of the canvas blur, and his mind leapt back through the years of his life.

Ald’ruhn. A city of honor, of martial prowess, of warrior poets. The Artist was none of these as child. Sickly and weak, dominated by his father, a ruthless arms-dealer who didn’t belong in Ald’ruhn himself. Not that it didn’t stop the bastard from putting on airs about his place in Redoran society. No, his father would not be denied his own self-image.

His one joy had been his mother. She was everything his father was not. Kind, respectful, supportive. She’d draw him close when his father would go on his binges and together they would bear his berating and beatings. When his father would call him a bastard, an ill-born, a mistake, she’d take his face in her hands and whisper, “You are no mistake. You’re my happy accident. There are no mistakes in this life.”

As a child his father influenced every aspect of his life. From sun-up to sunset he was derided and mocked; judged and critiqued; made constantly to feel inferior. His father had wanted him in the family business, buying and procuring arms and armor for Ald’ruhn’s forces. When the young Artist had shown an aptitude for painting, his father had quickly quashed any hopes of that.

That had been a mistake too. He distinctly remembered the first inkling of artistic ability when he would idly draw shapes in the ash-dust in his home. Further on, that had developed when he began to draw on scrap pieces of paper, and finally when had spent the first of his hard-earned coins to buy a paint brush and a couple tubes of paint. It had been a picture of a flower he drew for his mother, beautiful and fragrant; amateurish now in his later years, the product of a starved imagination and not enough practice, but something he was proud of. It was his pride; that is until his father had destroyed it.

“For your own good.” His father had drunkenly said as he threw his son’s first painting into the fire. “You’ll learn you worthless pup! There’s no money to in that. No money in paintings, but plenty in weapons! You’ll learn!”

The beatings had driven home the lesson that day. For years afterwards his son had never created a thing. No drawing, no art, nor writing. Eyes forward, head down, eat, sleep, study. This was meant to be. No escape, no future. Only what his father had decided was for the best.

His mother had left shortly before his fifth birthday. She was done with the beatings, done with the cheating, and just plain done with everything. She hadn’t even said goodbye. One day she had packed her bags and, according to his father, left for Vivec city. His father said she’d left join the other whores in Ebonheart. “There’s good money in selling yourself to the Legion boy!” His father grumbled, “If I had half a mind I’d sell you to them for their pleasure. Shame I’m such a good father!”

The Artist had gotten an extra beating that day. Just because.

When he was ten, his father got remarried. A Dunmer lady with her twelve year old daughter moved in. If things were bad before, they got only worse.

The Dunmer woman, a haughty beauty, had been sold to his father in exchange for a large-shipment of weapons that the Imperials had conveniently “lost.” Normally not a trade that a noble Dunmer family would make with a weapons dealer, but the woman’s status in Dunmer society had been marred by the birth of her daughter, a bastard born out of wedlock. The mother, a bitter old bitch if there ever was one, was resentful of her daughter. Her daughter in turn, a slut slut slut slut slut slut slut, was a presumptuous bitch who should’ve choked on her own birthing cord. It would’ve made the mother’s life easier, but alas, she was alive well into her teens and dragging her mother down into marrying an abusive drunk.

The Artist ground his teeth loudly, but the sound was lost in the drone of the gathering crowd.

His “mother” as he was forced to call her, was equally resentful for her doe-eyed, milquetoast step-son, for whom she took everything out on. When his father came home drunk and gave a beating, she passed her bruises down to him. When her daughter back-talked and stole, there was a beating. When the sun rose and the wind blew, there was a beating.

The only reprieve, his dream, his mind paradise where everything was bright and holy was Vivec City. On the days where he worked with his father he would overhear the caravaneers speak of a shining city by the sea, a place where everything holy and good could just be. A place where he would be accepted, loved, even encouraged for what he was. Everything that Ald’ruhn wasn’t, he imagined that Vivec City would be.

The Artist would close his eyes and imagine, and it was as if he was there. He hoped beyond hope that when they opened again that he really was. Calm, peaceable, sedate Vivec. A happy city, a happy life. It was not to be.

His childhood had ended soon after he began to dream of Vivec. His step-sister saw to that. His step-sister started and finished it all. His salad days of youth had died when he killed her. When he had wrapped his hands around her beautiful slut neck.

His sister had started puberty, and with that a time of promiscuity blossomed. Her first nub-like breasts began to swell and she would begin to parade herself around the house either naked or half-naked. Her mother protested but that only made her want to do it more. She was utterly fascinated with her own body. It didn’t help that he too was beginning to grow out of manhood. Whenever he saw her nudeness his manhood would rise, and if she took notice then he would be endlessly mocked. Sometimes she’d twist his ears and whisper seductive nothings into them, daring him to do something.

The Artist shifted now and tried to focus on his painting. His erection swelled painfully, but he hid it beneath his painter’s smock.

“You want this don’t you?” She’d whisper; but he’d be paralyzed with both longing and fear and she’d kick him after he wouldn’t answer.

On occasion, after nightfall, she’d sneak into bed with him. She’d saddle up behind him and forbid him from moving. Rubbing him and releasing him from his longing, she’d insult him and pinch him repeatedly. Sharp fingers-nails digging into his skin, fingertips grasping his flesh and twisting until he was sure she’d take a chunk off.

“You little shit don’t you know no one likes you? Look how pathetic you are you little pup, fuck you, don’t you know? Just die already so we can stop looking at you every day. You’re just a mistake, just a useless mistake.”

Occasionally he’d tried to reach a hand behind him and grope for her breasts but she’d slap his hand away and hiss in his ears.

“Not for you, never for you. Little shits don’t get to touch me do they?”

For two years this went on until he was twelve and she was fourteen. He had known for at least a year that the one who touched her was his father. It didn’t matter. Eyes forward, head down, eat, sleep, study. This was meant to be.

Things had only gotten worse. His father now expected more out of him and the Artist despaired that his fate was sealed as a second-rate arms dealer. No future save what his father decided.

The one ray of hope came when his step-mother died.

She had been at the river, beating their clothes against the rocks, when a particularly powerful gust of wind had thrown her off balance. From the other wives, they said she had slipped on the rocks and hit her head. The river had taken care of the rest. They’d later found her body downstream, lungs full of water and her eyes torn out by slaughter-fish.

This ray of light marked the beginning of his step-sister’s final days.

His father had commanded that she and the Artist were to stay home while he left with the others to bury his wife, her mother. The Artist remembered vividly because that day had marked the beginning of a powerful ash storm. It was wonder they were to bury her at all, but Dunmer tradition demanded a prompt burial.

That night he lay in his bed, half asleep when the door cracked open. He had figured this would happen, his sister was no doubt upset her mother’s death.

The storm raged outside and the girl slid into his bed and wrapped her hands around his bare chest, fingers working down to his waist. They stopped for a moment and his step-sister whispered in his ear.

“It’s all your bastard father’s fault you know that?” She whispered angrily, “All his fucking fault my mom’s dead. He did this! He did!”

“How can it be his fault?” The Artist trembled, “She slipped.”

“I don’t know how but he did.” She whispered back, “He’s going to sell me to pay off his debts you know that? Now that she’s dead he can. He’s going to sell me off, but not before he touches me first. Mother wouldn’t let him sell me but now she’s gone.”

“How though?” He said, “How could he of done it?”

“I said I don’t know!” She twisted his left nipple so hard it made tears spring to his eyes, “Maybe he prayed to his strange gods to kill her. It doesn’t matter. Because he’s got rid of her just like he got rid of your bitch mother.”

“What!?” The Artist cried openly. “Why would you say that!?”

“Don’t you know?” She whispered in his ear and kissed his lobes. Her hands trailed down to his limp manhood and began to touch. “He killed your mother to get her out of the way, just like my mom.”

“Y-you lie!” He cried and bit his lip. A complex mix of emotions, anger, hate, jealousy, and lust filled his mind.

“It’s true.” She whispered, “He told me one night as he laid next to me, drunker than a skunk. Told me that she wanted to leave him and take you. But he wouldn’t let her. You belong to him you see. Isn’t that funny? Like anyone would want you.”

“You’re lying!” The Artist cried openly.

“Call me a liar you filthy shit?” She hissed angrily. Her probing hand gripped tightly and twisted his manhood so hard he thought she’d tear it off. “He’s a fucking killer and you know it. He killed your whore mother and he killed mine.”

“You’re hurting me!” The Arist yelped and struggled, but her free hand gripped him tight.

“You think I care? You’re just like him!” She yelled now and twisted harder. “Like father like son! You’re going to learn your lesson you worthless pup! You’ll learn!”

“You’re hurting me!!!” He yelled again and thrashed. They tumbled around in bed in a near silent fight, surrounded by darkness in a home that was not fit for any child. With a grunt he threw back his arm and the point of his elbow caught her squarely in the nose. A spurt of blood flooded the bed and she fell back grasping her nose.

“You little shit!” She cried through the blood, “You worthless pup! I think you broke my nose!”

“You were hurting me!” He cried and tried to comfort her, but she pushed him off and began to scramble to her feet.

“You worthless pup!” She cried and stumbled towards him, “Like father like son. How dare you hit me? I’ll call the guards, I will!”

“NO!” He cried, knowing what would happen if the Redoran guards thought he had hit her. Worse yet, if the Guards didn’t beat him too bad, then surely his father would kill him.

“Yes!” She cried in triumph, grim realization filled her eyes. She had him. “Yes! I’ll call the guards and they’ll take you. I’ll say you tried to seduce me. The guard will believe me if I tell them.”

“No please!” He begged, mounting emotions of pain and sadness welled. He balled his fists and took a step forward.

“I’ll tell your father. I’ll take it back if he gives me his money and lets me go.” She hooted through the blood, “I’ll be free and you’ll be beaten you worthless pup!”

“NO!” He said more firmly. Rage had overtaken sadness now, and the tears flowed freely. He flexed his fingers, feeling the power inside.

“Yes, yes!” She did a mock jig, “He’ll beat you and beat you, and you’ll die! Just. Like. Your. Whore. MOTHER.”

The Artist let loose a feral roar, worse than any beast, and tackled her. They tumbled about in a heap, knocking themselves silly against the floors and walls. She stood up when she had a chance and began to kick him savagely. Each blow was enough to knock the wind out of him, but his fury wouldn’t allow any abating. After several kicks he saw his chance; her foot drew back a little too far and became entangled in the fallen bed sheet. He grasped a corner that was close to him and drew, pulling the bedsheet tight and throwing her off balance. He pounced on top of her, more sure of what to do next than anything in his life.

“You little shit!” She screamed out her words, “It was mistake! If it I hadn’t tripped you’d be dead! It was a mistake!”

“There are no mistakes.” He replied and curled his fingers around her throat.

The storm gusted and bellowed, drowning out the cries of help that marked the last of her breath. No one to hear her scream. Her eyes flew wide and she battered him but he felt nothing as he felt the life within pulse and fade. She chocked and goggled, eyes boiling from the blood vessels bursting, but he never let go. This was meant to be. She turned red, then purple, and blue before finally dying.

For the first time in forever, the Artist felt alive.

He laid on top of her body and stared down. What power, what magnificence he felt. What agency he lacked in life he had known exercised. Was this what true living felt like? Yes he decided. He was alive. His manhood swelled painfully, almost bursting with blood.

He briefly considered that this was a mistake, but shook his head. This wasn’t a mistake. There were no mistakes. NO. This was a happy accident. And happy accidents lead to greater discoveries. He had discovered life.

He buried her under the floorboards in the cellar. When his father came back and made inquiries as to his whereabouts, the Artist tapped his foot merrily on the floor and said she had gone out. When his father began to grow frantic, obviously worried about his gambling debt, the Artist laughed and insisted that she had simply gone out. Maybe she had a happy little accident.

The memory faded and only he remained. Back in the present and more alive than he had ever felt before.

“You’ve made a mistake.” The Potter said and leaned over. The Artist was brought back and noticed what he had done. The orange/yellow had mixed too harshly, and his mindless spreading had turned the canvas a blood-red.

He stopped and considered what he had done. With a smile he shrugged his shoulders and started again. A sun-up would become a sunset. Those sold too. He began to hum a jaunty tune and set himself to work. There was much to do.

“There are no mistakes.” He hummed to the confused potter, “Only happy accidents.”

Submitted December 28, 2018 at 08:18PM by TheBravestarr http://bit.ly/2QZb0kN