Watercolors, Philip Wendt [e reader TXT] 📗

front of me. They copied the letter in their notebooks, matching it to whatver object fit, cats, cucumbers.... Some four-hundred miles to the east in Littleton, Colorado under the looming shadow of the rocky mountains, a much thicker notebook lay in the hallways of Columbine High School. A stray page of algebra problems had slid itself half out of the notebook's pocket. The corners were folded up and freshly painted with the blood of a young sophomore girl laying motionless beside it. The heavy army issue boots belonging to Dylan Klebold stepped over the notebook as he made his way to the library. He chambered a fresh magazine in the rifle he carried under his long trenchcoat.

When I watched the camera footage from that ill fated morning, I never thought of Jared's painting. Hundreds of adolescents fled in a panic, tripping over bodies as they went, trying to outrun the bullets that chased from behind. I never put together the pieces to that puzzle of madness. All i remember is wondering how this young boy had learned to spell the words he painted just an hour before the Columbine massacre. Jared drew a small school building in front of hastily painsted mountains. To the left of the school were a pair of monsters only a small boy could draw, however, these monsters held rifles and wore (what i know now) to be black trenchcoats. Across the front of the school Jared had spelled out "Little High School".

April 19

Ashley Steadman wore a baby blue sun dress that morning, laced with a white trim and stenciled with hundreds of small tulips. She reminded me of a young girl from the pioneer days, and i could picture her rolling out flour dough in the small kitchen of a log cabin while pa tended to the hogs out back. She blossomed with the look of innocence and I struggle to understand how her tiny hand could have painted the massacre that soon followed. Where she found the bumper sticker i do not know, maybe from a nightstand drawer or a family scrapbook. She had pasted it at the top of her easter watercolor that was anything but. This painting resembled Jareds in the sense it was of a school. A large group of stick figures danced around the school, some missing legs, some missing heads which were haphazardly placed around the portrait. Ashley had stroked a shade of red through each stick figure and above it all was a larger figure, a man with a pistol. Ashley made a point to illustrate the mans face in detail above everything else. The face showed a man clearly of asian descent, thin slanted eyes and a small disproportioned mouth. THe asian mans expression was of evil, pure and cold, an expression that i never believed could be put on paper. Most of the top portion of the paper was covered by the bumper sticker. The sticker didn't fit into the color scheme of Ashleys painting, over a light pink background in fat purple letters it read "Virginia is for Lovers."

Precisely two hours later Seong ho chi walked with a slow mechanical stride from the entrance to Norris Hall, which he had chained and locked behind him, to the second floor. Reaching the top of the stairs he peeked his head into classrooms gone silent, and unleashed an onslaught of hot lead from twin 9mm pistols. While they hid under desks, in bathrooms, and dorm rooms, Seong ho chi's bullets ripped open fifty bodies that morning, ending the lives of 33. Screams resonated through the walls of Norris Hall, the air was thick with agony and death, when he decided he was finished. Seong ho chi knelt beside the theatrical arts event board where the cast to the upcoming "midsummer nights dream" was posted, then put a one hundred fifty grain hollow point through his brain

After the massacre at Virginia Tech University it was all to much. I knew it all to be far beyond coincedence. I could brush it all away no longer, as i had done all these years, just as those four children brushed away the lives of so many. I kept those four paintings for proof but burned all fifteen sets of water colors. THe parents of these four children, needless to say, never recevived their child's painting. There was nothing to pin on the refrigerator that easter and i made up a variety of lies to explain why. It did not take much to recognize the connection between the tragedies and the paintings, but i didnt realize the dates until i spoke with Dr. Hobbs. All four events occured during the third week in April between the 16 and 20th. Dr. Hobbs and his associates are experts on the subject of the bermuda triangle and other releated mysteries. I went to them for help, for some sort of explanation. They came up with many theories, speaking of magnetic anomalies and planetary alignment, all centered around the fact that the points of the bermuda triangle are some sort of doorway to another dimension. THey explained how the watercolors, being comprised of elements from the triangle itself, acted as a catalyst during the third week of April, and opened the doorway. I soon stopped listening. Theories and explanations are fine, but there is still no proof. So after all those conversations with doctors and physicists i can only tell you that i know nothing. As i stated earlier i dont think these events are able to be understood by the brain of a homo sapien, they are well beyond it's capabilities. All i know for certain is that Shady Acres sits on a trianglular point of an area lost in time. And i know those four small children sat upon that trianglular point during the third week of April, held a paintbrush in their tiny hands, wet it with watercolor, and painted to life four nightmares.

So that's how it happened, think of me what you will. I will attempt to bury this all in the dark recesses of my mind, locking it away as i hide deep inside the Koreas. I fear however, that i am to far gone. I fear my mind has passed the point of no return, But I must go now, my pen is growing shaky and my palms sweaty. A young boy in the seat ahead is bothering me. He turns around and grins at me when his mother isn't looking. He holds a paintbrush in his hand.

 

Mrs. Dawn Lockhart

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Publication Date: 09-29-2014

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