PodCastle 828: The Museum of Living Color

* Author : Ryan Cole

* Narrator : Hugo Jackson

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published in Museum Piece, from Metaphorosis Publishing

Rated PG-13

The Museum of Living Color

by Ryan Cole

Red lust, as usual, comes in the morning. Red in the way that you whisper my name, in the tender caress of your fingers on my neck, where my dry skin soaks up your technicolor world. Where you are my brush, and I am your canvas: pliant, eager, ready to be drawn.

I smile as your scorched-earth skin comes to life. I swallow the vermilion heat on your tongue.

And I take. I steal as much of you as I can.

But it’s never enough. Not for me, or your family, or the portrait of us that they want you to create. The one that will hang in their gallery forever.

And you and I both know that your red never lasts.

Revised placard text for: The Portrait of Maurice and Henrietta Mildrin (1925; Great Falls, VA; property of the Mildrin Family Gallery).

Maurice and Henrietta are pictured along with their six children on the azalea garden lawn of the Mildrin family estate. As is shown by the way that they gaze into each other’s eyes, red played a prominent role in the artists’ lives. Note the crimson undertones, the unabashed desire. Red lust is used to hide all of their flaws.

Note also, however, the smear on Henrietta’s chin — the dark-golden anger, the same gold that glimmers in Maurice’s right pupil. The artists claimed that these were due to the aging of the portrait, and that they never would have used such an impure color — especially gold — to paint themselves. Mrs. Henrietta Mildrin, the original curator of this Gallery, took pride in showing which colors made an appropriate marriage. And until her recent death, that marriage — and its portrait — was what every Mildrin relative strove to achieve.

 Gold creeps in like the sun between the clouds. Your lust becomes a shadow of the fire that it was when you sculpted my skin with red-smeared hands. When you hadn’t yet dipped into your palette of emotions, the reminders of who you are and who you have to be — who we have to be — to have a place in your family.

“I don’t think we should go,” you say through your tie. You wrangle the ends into a paisley knot around your throat. “You’re still not ready.”

“I’m not ready?” I say, unsurprised, because I am no stranger to your swiftly changing colors — the inconvenient shades that you aren’t allowed to show. “It’s been seven years. I’ve learned what I need to know.”

“Maybe it’s not enough.”

I pull on my loafers, absorbing the words. Your gold never comes without a fine, serrated edge, forged in the heat of your growing frustration. At me. Your parents. Your bottled-up emotions. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I say with years of practice.

You sigh and rest the back of your hand on my cheek, staining me with all of your dark, dirty gold. One of the scant few colors you can share. “Alfie,” you whisper. “Don’t make me do this.”

I try to pull away, but the color won’t let me. It continues to flow. “You can’t just cancel,” I say, my cheek burning. “We’ve had this scheduled for months.” As if there weren’t anything strange about scheduling an appointment to see your great-aunt, whom you’ve known since you were a child, who has probably already seen what you’re trying to hide. Don’t blame me for showing you who you really are.