Page 228 - TheRedSon_PrintInterior_430pp_5.5x8.5_9-22-2019_v1

The most difficult part of the undertaking was the draining
of all my father’s blood. I finally accomplished this through
the painstaking process of positioning his body such that
pressure forced it from his veins. Replacing his vital liquids
with paint proved a much easier task to achieve, and I was
careful to use every color, every shade and intensity I could
evoke. Next, I removed all his major organs, delicately
replacing them with artist’s tools. Each item was placed in
corresponding importance to the organ it substituted. I used
my father’s skin to replace the hemp of my canvas—he was
a traditionalist, of course—and then re-skinned him with the
aforementioned hemp. Certainly, the eyes were essential to
my piece. Natural eyes had a nasty habit of decomposing, so
I procured a set of the most beautiful glass eyes I could find.
Finally, there was the staging of the piece. It took me
some time to affect, but I arranged the entire gallery so
my father was the black sun around which his dark worlds
wheeled. I situated all the heads of his works such that they
seemed to look upon him, perhaps thanking him for their
transformation.
In the light of the few candles by which I worked, my
father’s true self was dimly exposed. He was art incarnate.
He was the hand that held the brush, the paint that fell to
the canvas, and the very canvas that held his dream. I had
inextricably fused my father with his craft.
In the darkness of the extinguished candles, I whispered
my father’s new name, the name of my very first work of art.
“Red Ouroboros.”
Through the medium of my small hands, guided by
dreams dimly guessed, I’d cultivated the truth buried
beneath my father’s flesh. I kept in mind, of course, one of
my father’s principal lessons—truth is merely the fleeting
property of a dream, caught momentarily at the scale of the
universe, not to be confused with permanency. Still, my
tears came as never before. They had been well earned for
the first time. My father’s gaze joined my real mother’s,
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