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A vase that asks the question, “How the hell am I supposed to pretend everything is normal when a fucking monster lives right around the corner?”
When the wheel finally stops, I smash the clay under my fist.
“No! Don’t do that,” Glynnes shouts, nearly diving out from behind her own wheel to stop me. The five-foot-nothing elderly woman grasps my wrists, stilling my hands over the clay. “Your work has been so good. So different. You’ve got magic. Don’t stop.”
I can’t deny that the creativity has been flowing, but the direction is too strange for me to feel comfortable.
Glynnes and I’ve been working for hours. After she interrogated me about my bruises and cuts, I explained what happened, with some heavy editing. Since then, she has been diligently practicing beginning throwing techniques. I, however, have been failing miserably at the wheel to keep my thoughts from Colossus. I tried to return to yesterday’s lush, curved shapes, but all my hands seem to do is sharpen and cut.
“Just as I predicted—you’re using monsters as your muse, aren’t you?” She releases my wrists with a smile and turns to eye the few pieces I did manage to complete. “I can see…hmm… a demon in them? Maybe a minotaur? I see horns in the pointed angles.”
“What about a gargoyle?” I blurt out.
The piece she’s looking at is inspired by Colossus’ claws, the way they are curved sharply on one side into almost a semi-circle and blunt on the other, all coming together to a dangerous point. It was an impractical piece, but neither of us can stop looking at it.
“Gargoyles?Hmm.” She frowns, leaning in close. “Not the standard monster direction. I like it. This is your muse. I see it. You’ve just got to follow it.”
Biting at my bottom lip, I hold back an eager, hopeful smile.
“They’re going to love you in LA, honey,” she coos.
“It’s a really competitive residency. I still have to finish at least three more pieces and—”
Glynnes narrows her eyes at me, forcing my self-doubt into silence, before moving back to her station. She gives me a wink and drops into her seat, cutting her latest soup bowl off the wheel.
Placing the claw-inspired piece onto a wooden plank, I carry it into the drying room. I position it next to the sumptuously curved vases. I test their dryness by running my hand over yesterday’s now leather-hard vases. I pull back sharply. Slowly, I place my palm back on the still slightly damp curve of the vase. The clay is tough at this stage, leathery like its description, and while cold where he was hot, it feels exactly like Colossus’ stone skin.
I can’t escape him.
That dizzying feeling from this morning never left me. It only gained steam and clarity. I might’ve been scared of Colossus, and maybe I should still be, but I can’t stop thinking about what he said before I knocked myself out.
He was right: I didn’t know he was real, but I was seducing him from my window. I wanted him to watch me, wanted him to want me so badly that he would fly across the courtyard and replace my fingers with his stone cock. He told me he was mine.Mymonster.
What the hell did that mean?
“You okay, honey?” Glynnes is suddenly at my side, her own work on a wooden plank in her hands.
“Yeah, yeah, great. Just need to rest.”
What I need are answers.
“After everything that happened, of course.” She gives me a sympathetic smile as we leave the drying room, taking off our aprons and washing our hands. “I’ll walk you to your residence.”
“No, it’s light out. I’m good, I promise.”I have someone watching out for me,I almost add as I lock up the studio.
It takes several more minutes of assuring her I’m safe and promising to text her once I’m home before we finally part ways, agreeing to meet up again in a couple days. In that time, I’ve come up with a plan. This anxious, uncertain feeling won’t go away without answers; it will only fester. I need to talk to Colossus now.
I head for the bell tower.
“Colossus,” I call out timidly once I make it to the courtyard. Moving closer to the base of the tower, I repeat his name, this time a bit louder. “Colossus, can you hear me? Colossus!”
From so far below, he is backlit by the sun, and I see only the outline of his wings. I narrow my eyes at him, willing him to move, but all I see is a bat-shaped mass of black.
I round the corner on the tower, searching for an entrance to the stairs. Whatever original door the structure had has long since been replaced with a modern metal one, several heavy locks, and aNo Trespassingsign.
Shit.
I head up to my apartment, taking stairs two at a time.
