The Tens, Vanessa Jones [i like reading books .TXT] 📗

Gathering her work suit, she bundled it up and shoved it in a garbage bag, which she stuffed straight into the outside bin.

Opting instead for saggy leggings and a faded turtle neck, she plopped herself on a stool in front of her easel. She liked to draw back the curtains when painting. The wide windows that she sat in front of offered her generous light and a reprieve for her eyes and brain when she needed a rest from staring at the small woven squares of the canvas. Her painting area was the sunniest and brightest spot in the house. But she was careful not to fall into its trap of false optimism, the warmth of the sun liked to trick you into thinking that everything was going to be okay.

Grabbing a jar of brushes, she swirled one around, tapped it on the side and held it under her chin as she contemplated the empty canvas. Her brow furrowed and her face became tense as she navigated her unruly artist’s block.

Sophie tried to paint away some of the darkness that had been plaguing her. All whilst skirting around the real things that got to her: Alex leaving, the rock from her nightmares, the clown lady... and tried to paint her feelings manifest. There was a convincing sense of whirling in her head, of settled mud been shaken up in a glass of water. So, she painted a bottle of muddy water, sitting atop a featureless person's head. It left her unsatisfied, so she tipped the canvas off her easel and discarded it on the floor. With a fresh canvas awaiting her, she sighed and looked across her front yard trying to squeeze a commercially palatable image to mind that she could paint, something that would look good in a modern Hampton's style or minimalist style home. Although it bored her, the less evocative it was, the better, for mainstream production. She needed to make some money, somehow.

Through the window, she contemplates her garden. There’s a painful stabbing realisation that she would need to attend to it sooner rather than later and that she wouldn’t have Alex by her side to pull out the weeds with. In between the plump geranium bushes that line the front fence, something catches her eye. A shiny, white van with dark tinted windows sits directly opposite and Sophie swears she sees a flash of light coming from inside. With held breath, she watches it and waits. Remembering her overactive imagination from the clown incident, she rolls her eyes at herself and captures her loose hair back in a hairband so she can go back to concentrating on painting.

But a figure, dressed mainly in black and khaki, sweeps tactfully from her neighbours' bushes, that border her driveaway, to the opposite side of the road. So swiftly, in not much more time than it took her to blink, the person had alighted the cabin of the van. Sophie didn't catch their face, only a black plain cap. Unsure what to do, she ran to her bedroom where she'd left her phone and pressed open the camera function, only to discover that the van had completely gone by the time she'd reached her front step. This time, unlike the clown, she was sure she hadn't imagined it at all. Although she did convince herself to look for an innocent explanation, to stop seeking the sinister, still very much haunted by the embarrassment of her reaction at work. There was no real reason that anyone should want to harm her or her neighbours. She lived in a middle class, safe suburb and even break-ins were notoriously rare in the area.

Stepping back from the window and abandoning her painting, Sophie Googled 'increasing jumpiness' and self-diagnosed some anxiety. It was true, her increasing hypervigilance came with, or fuelled, her anxiety. There was no question. She glossed over the words 'active stress response', which made complete sense, since Alex leaving was an incredible stressor on her. One that she felt utterly out of control with.

Sophie sighed with despair and finally plucked up enough courage to phone Bree. Sophie clears her throat as it went to voicemail. ‘Hey, Bree. It’s Sophie. I know we haven’t spoken in a bit but I…’ Sophie faltered a little. She had no idea what to say or what she wanted from Bree. ‘I… can you call me back when you can? Thanks, bye.’

‘It's just a bit of cortisol,’ she told irritably herself as she rummaged through her cupboards for some camomile tea bags. 'Seriously Sophie, you need to relax. You are making yourself insane.'

With an afternoon yawning before her and a fire inside of her, she scooped her hair up on top of her head and filled a fresh jar with water, thrusting her paintbrushes into it. Sipping at her camomile tea, she focussed her mind on her painting in the hopes it would still her and distract her from her jitteriness. Mindlessly, she squeezed blue, teal, white and grass green worms of paint onto her palette. The strokes came swiftly, deftly and fluidly. The thick streaks of paint seemed to swirl and float back in one itself and made her dizzy. This happened sometimes, she got so focussed on painting that she forgot to eat or hydrate and she'd get dizzy and experience mini hallucinations. She expected this happened to everyone who experienced intense closeness to their work. 'It's no different to people getting swirls in front of their eyes when they stare at a computer screen all day,' she told Alex once. Who just looked at her like she was lying.

Sophie dropped the paintbrush she was holding when a solid thunk hit the window above her. She looked to her toes, a cobalt splatter marring the cool white tiles. She took her shirt off and used it to wipe up the paint, tense that it had stained. If he were there, Alex would have chastised her for