Short Story-Stella Pt. 3

My family and their friends played along with me in their adult wisdom. I was teased about her and asked all kinds of questions. “I’ll bet she looks just like you doesn’t she Jessie?” my mom would say. “No!” I would cry in frustration, “I’m me, not her! Her hairs are red and she’s big.” I was a very small child for my age with golden brown hair, nothing like her at all.


I tried to ignore her but she was strong.

I’m sure it was considered quite cute and sweet by the adults in my family to set an extra place at the dinner table for my friend. How come I couldn’t see her, could they? But how was it possible to feel something that you couldn’t see? It confused me.

I didn’t want her beside me, I made them put her next to my father. Maybe he could control her because I sure couldn’t. Naturally, she did as she pleased anyway, and I would get blamed for the beets on the floor or the finger prints in the cake icing. No one ever saw her when she was bad, not even me.

But I paid for it every time and I knew she was there.

My grandmother stopped over for a visit one day and found my mother in tears. I was, at the time, standing in the corner because I had been a “very, very bad girl”. My mom had seen a nasty, mean drawing in my book of a kitty with blood all over it and had caught me breaking all of my crayons. I was crying because I had snapped all of my crayons on purpose and it broke my heart to do it. I was crying because I didn’t do that drawing or any of the rest of those nasty ones in my book! She had!

I was crying because my mom was mad at me and I had made her cry again.

When I tried to explain that day, my mom yanked me to the corner and said “You stay right there until I tell you that you can move you bad girl! Don’t lie to me! You did this and I will not put up with this kind of behavior!” I was scared. I couldn’t make her go away and she was getting stronger.

“Maybe this invisible friend thing has gone too far, Jill.” my grandmother said that day to my mother. “Jessie is such a good girl. I don’t understand this willfulness and temper all of a sudden. It just isn’t like her.” My heart soared! My grandmother knew! She knew it wasn’t me!

“She’s just being a mean, nasty brat!” my mother cried angrily, “She’s not your daughter to coddle, and she needs to stop this! Don’t you go making excuses for her again!”

My shoulders sagged. Even Gramma couldn’t help me now. I was alone with her.

The years passed, my brother arrived and family focus was on the new baby. He was cute, happy and always had a smile for everyone. I loved him with all my heart but I would not stay alone in any room with him. My parents consulted Dr. Spock who said that jealousy of a new sibling was perfectly normal and that the older child would come to terms with it on their own if given time.

I wasn’t jealous of the baby, I was protecting him from her. She didn’t like him being there. I knew… I knew she wanted him gone! She wanted to hurt him and make him cry! I had found the drawings in my sketch book that told me how she felt about him. I shuddered as I remembered what she had done to that cute little face. He was safe though, because I had figured it out.

You see, as the years had passed, I had come to realize that the horrible drawings that appeared on the table in my room during the night weren’t what had happened, but what she wanted to happen, what she wanted to do. I had also discovered quite by accident, that if I erased some of what she had drawn or changed it, things didn’t happen at all. I had to check though, every day to make sure I didn’t miss one.

Sometimes I did.

One time she put my cat in the dryer and just as I opened the door to get him out, my dad caught me and smacked me hard on the butt. “I thought you loved Frisky!” my dad yelled at me. “Don’t you know you could kill him doing this? What is wrong with you sometimes?” I found the drawing of a cat strangled by my blue and green striped knee-sock under my bed later that afternoon.

So I learned to be vigilant. I learned to be quiet, to listen for her, to feel her coming. Already a contemplative child, I became more so. I locked myself in my room when I felt her coming and fought her as best I could. I found that reading kept her occupied and kept me out of trouble, so we read. We read constantly, because she was always so hungry.

When reading began to bore her, I made up stories and wrote them down in the set of bound blank journals my grandmother had given me. “Perhaps if you write down your bad dreams and do some drawings of what you remember from them,” she had said, “maybe they will go away.” They didn’t go away, but I did figure out a way to keep some sense of control. She would read the stories I came up with, draw wonderful images to go along with them if she was feeling kind and if she liked them.

When she didn’t, well, that was another matter.

My sketch pads and journals are numerous and kept hidden away from prying eyes. I rarely share “my” drawings with anyone. I don’t think I would be able to explain or even be believed if I tried to say why some of the drawings are signed like they are. In what looks remarkably like blood, they are signed simply

Short Story- "Stella" Pt. 2

Oh, but you’re probably wondering how it all started. It was innocent and simple at first. I was an only child until I was 11 years old. I had a good life and a great upbringing. My mom didn’t work and I had three sets of adoring grandparents. Yes, three. My mother’s parents had divorced and remarried, so lucky for me-grandparents were everywhere! I always had lots of pets like white mice, hamsters, a turtle, a dog and a cat. I was a quiet, solitary child happiest when I was alone with my imagination. I liked to draw and color and would spend much of my time on the living room floor on my stomach, propped up on elbows in a patch of sunshine that came through the window. Everyday it was in the same place and it felt so nice on my hair. My crayons were always spread out around me like a rainbow because I wanted to see all of them at one time.

Jiminy Cricket became part of my life when I was around 4 years old. My aunt Betty took me to see Pinnochio at the local theater in Jamestown and he came home with us. Jiminy Cricket was a character that accompanied Pinnochi on his adventures in his quest to become a “real boy”. The Blue Fairy was the one who made him Pinnocio’s conscience, to guide him and teach him right from wrong. I find it odd now that I did not develop an affection for the Blue Fairy, or Pinnochio, but with a cricket. I was a strange child.

After seeing the movie, I spent my time talking about Jiminy Cricket, who sat on my shoulder. I knew really, that he wasn’t there but I pretended. I suppose I was lonely in some ways.

For weeks I walked around with shoulders straight and stiff so he didn’t fall off.. Jiminy had to be consulted about everything-from what to eat for dinner (do we really want to eat those beets?) to the color of the rubberbands on my braids (one blue and one green is good, right?). Whispering in my ear, Jiminy was friend, confidant and advisor. Like Pinnochio, Jiminy steered me in many directions, sometimes not very good ones,but nothing all that bad. My parents and grandparents played along with this. After all, imagination is good in a child, right? Oh, if only the cricket had stayed.

I don’t remember when Jiminy Cricket left my life or why, but it was around the same time that the nightmares started. The dreams always had a common theme: being bound, held too tight or wrapped up in something so that I couldn’t move. I had lost total control in these dreams: of my body and of my mind.

The dreams were always dark and shadowy, eerily quiet and very scary. I had these dreams quiet often and it didn’t matter if it was at night when I was alseep, or if it was nap time during the day. They still came. Time after time, I would wake up with tears streaming down my face, heart racing and my hair sticking to my face.

I never could explain them to anyone with my limited 4 year old vocabulary.

How do you express feeling stifled and smothered when you don’t even know the words yet? I could not verbalize the fear or what was causing this fear to anyone. I couldn’t explain the blood to them, or the pain.. It was there, it just was and it scared me because the dream, or something in it, had total control. It was around this time that my invisible “friend” made her appearance.

Short Story-"Stella" Pt. 1

I couldn’t get warm. Huddled on the sofa wrapped in blankets, I still shivered. I am sure if I had looked into a mirror, even I would have seen the desperation and fear in my eyes. I did not want to know. Knowing always hurt too much. Who ever said, “knowledge is power” was not in my situation. The question, “Where were you last night?” would open up wounds that had just started to heal over. I didn’t want to ask her. I knew that the blood on the sketchbook gave me the answer anyway. She could be very bad.

I loved her and I hated her.

I should call Dr. Franklin.  He had been a part of my life as long as I could remember.  I knew he would rush over here and try to talk to Stella. He knew about her; had in fact helped me meet her so many years ago. Only Dr. Franklin can get away with calling her “Estelle”. I have always thought she was just humoring him. She knows why he calls her that and secretly is amused by it.

Stella is everything I’m not. She is confident, bold and brassy. She’s an artist and fits the stereotype to a tee: talented, eccentric and temperamental. Me, little mousy Jessie…well, I am happiest with my cat and my books. I’m an author; children’s books mostly. Stella helps me out by illustrating them with bold and vivid drawings that children love.

Most of the time, Stella and I deal exceptionally well together. I normally don’t even know she’s been here until I wake up and find a stack of finished drawings in the studio we share. Sometimes I can faintly hear the music she plays while she works, but it’s usually very muted and I drowsily go back to sleep. Stella understands my fears and protects me as best she can.  Stella is kind but can also be very cruel when the mood strikes her.

The blood on the sketchbook proved that.

I shivered again as I gazed at the bloodied book. Should I open it? Should I put it in the studio and just walk away from what was inside? The last time I ignored Stella’s offerings I paid for it dearly. Tears welled as I remembered the heartbreak.  My shoulders tightened, as if someone was standing behind me, glaring at the back of my head. Even though I knew I was alone, I could still feel Stella’s fury simmering.

Sighing, I stood up and walked over to the sketchbook. Heart pounding and with shaking hands, I slowly opened it.  Stella is always so proud of her work and never understands my horror.

You see, Stella does not know that we share the same body.

Artwork 2

"Rain"-Kind of an abstract dyptik.

Oil on gessoed paper
   

"Ritual"-Chalk pastel

"Self Portrait" Charcoal

Untitled-Charcoal

Untitled

Charcoal

Fox-Charcoal and Chalk Pastel

Fox

Pastel

Nails

Hello all! Funny, I said I'd be posting more and I haven't done a thing since. There's been a lot going on in my life lately so please be patient.

This piece is done on a piece of broken slate using modeling paste for the 3D effect and painted in acrylics. One of the nails is a real nail. You can tell in the photo because of the shadow it casts but when it is not affected by flash, it's a bit difficult to see which one is real and which one isn't. This photo isn't very good and I'll try to get a better one. This is just something I'm experimenting with so this was kind of a "let's see what happens" project. It's...interesting.

Haven't finished the canvas painting yet. It was not going well one day so I just put it away for awhile before I tossed it into the firepit. Have to do that sometimes!

I actually did toss a painting into the firepit one time, It was a huge panting of (naturally) a shag bark hickory-also done with modeling paste for texture-and Kevin pulled it off. Of course, it got a bit scorched on the back of the panel so it always had a woodsmoke smell to it. JCC bought it from me and it hangs near te bookstore. Go take a sniff!

I didn't charge them extra for the aromatherapy.

More later, alligator.