Blue

Blue
an illustrated novel

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Chapter 5 What to Keep Leer What is Written

Blue has been staring for days at the stack of pages for which John left him no text. He prefers to think about it that way, even though, somewhere in the back of Blue's mind, he realizes that he probably lost the text himself. He paces back and forth across his studio repeatedly and then it occurs to him, there is an old box tucked away in the old safe. The safe is a beautiful old metal safe with thick walls of steel and a variety of little compartments for storing little treasures. Nothing is really safe in the safe. There is no door. The landlords left the safe in the studio because it was just to heavy to move, plain and simple. As Blue thinks again to himself about the various ways they could have managed to bring the safe up to the fourth floor studio, he searches all of her compartments for any missing pages any scrap that might fill in the gaps in the story of Leer.

No luck. He did find his autographed picture of Ann Margaret. Blue had been a scenic painter on a movie she was in that was shot in his town many years back. He always thought that she was pretty hot while he was growing up but by the time he actually got to meet her, she was old. The funny thing about this particular moment is that Blue, standing in his studio, eyesight failing, knees creaking slightly, stood staring at the photograph of the actress and thought, "She actually is pretty damn hot!". He carefully placed her photo back into the drawer and continued looking for the missing pages.

Suddenly a wave of nausea overcame Blue. He began to sweat profusely even thought the air in the studio was pleasant and cool. He became dizzy and suddenly went cold. He looked down at his hands which had turned blue. Blue doubled over in pain, his stomach on fire. He began to vomit. As he did, he distinctly heard the Beatles singing "Help". Blue caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He had turned blue all over. Blue stumbled backwards and fell into a work table. As he tried to hold himself up, he capsized a large cardboard box, spilling the contents upon himself. Books and papers poured out from the box, hitting Blue in the face. He was losing consciousness. At the precise moment that Blue's head hit the floor, Leer, page sixteen fell upon him.

Blue recognized Mona in the opening panels. He instantly felt better. It was as if none of the nausea or even the complexion change had occurred, Blue was fine.

"Weird!" he said to himself as he carefully placed the drawing at the top of the stack.

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