Once I’m sure I’ve cleaned the glass from the wounds, I bandage them. The cut on my neck has stopped bleeding, leaving a thin scab where the razor slipped. Not deep enough to scar, but I clean that, too, and apply a bandage.
My fragmented reflection in the mirror stares at me, an eye here, the curve of a jaw there, split across dozens of brokenpieces. I lean closer to the largest shard still intact, studying the stranger reflected in it.
“Ren Mercier,” I whisper, testing the syllables.
It’s a name I haven’t worn comfortably since my grandfather went to prison. It tastes of dust and disuse, an antique pulled from storage. It sits exposed in my mouth, stripped of protective layers, skin torn raw after ripping away a bandage.
I say it again, louder. “Ren Mercier.”
The name echoes back to me, bouncing off broken glass and hard tile, but offers no revelation, no sudden clarity about who I am beneath all the facades I’ve constructed.
I turn away from the destruction, feet padding across the wooden floor of my loft toward the studio area. Light filters through the tall windows, casting long rectangles across canvases both blank and half-finished. My fingers twitch with purpose, a familiar itch that demands satisfaction.
If I can’t speak my truth, perhaps I can paint it.
An empty canvas sits on my main easel, pristine and waiting. I gather my supplies with the efficiency of decades of practice, squeezing paints onto my palette, arranging brushes by size, uncapping turpentine, its sharp scent clearing my head. The smell reminds me of my grandfather, of his patient hands guiding mine across canvas after canvas, teaching me to become someone else through art.
But today, I don’t want to become someone new. I want to remember where I came from.
Eyes closed, I summon the image ofAnatomy of a Ghostfrom memory. My grandfather’s masterpiece. The ghost that haunted us both. The painting that first connected me to Ezra, that began this strange, twisted dance between us. I’ve studied every brushstroke, every subtle blend of color and shadow. I could reproduce it perfectly.Havereproduced dozens of paintings just like it over the years.
Instead, my hands mix colors with violent intent, creating hues that bleed into each other, crimson pulsing like an open wound, blacks deep enough to swallow light, blues that scream rather than whisper.
My brush attacks the canvas, movements sharp and decisive where my grandfather’s were controlled and precise. Paint splatters across my bare chest, speckling the love bites Ezra left, merging with spots of dried blood. I don’t bother wiping it away.
The ghost at the center of the painting emerges not through careful rendering but through absence, negative space where the brush skips, where white canvas shows through like bone. Its edges blur into the surrounding violence of color, a figure trying to manifest and disappear at the same time.
I step back, chest heaving from exertion. This isn’t my grandfather’s forgery, perfect in its emulation. This isn’t Knox’s studied recreation or Lorenzo’s flashy interpretation. This is raw, unfiltered Ren, spilled across canvas in a language I didn’t know I spoke.
The ghost in the original painting was ethereal, elegant in its haunting. The specter on my canvas screams with a nonexistent mouth, its form both dissolving and solidifying. It’s more real than the man who created it, more honest than any alias I’ve ever worn.
Sweat trickles down my spine as I make final, aggressive strokes, my signature nowhere to be found. Let Ezra wonder if this is my work. Let him question what part of me created this chaos.
I reach for my phone, the web of cracks distorting the camera’s view.
Perfect.
I photograph the canvas, the fractured screen adding another layer of brokenness to the image. Without thinking, I send it toEzra. No text. No explanation. Just raw, violent truth splashed across a canvas meant to capture ghosts.
Only after it readsDelivereddo I notice the darkness outside, the city quiet. It’s deep into the middle of the night, long past when sane people sleep.
But the message switches to Read immediately.
My thumb hovers over the screen, waiting for the three dots that indicate he’s typing a response.
They never appear.
Minutes stretch into an hour. I sit on my paint-splattered floor, phone clutched in my hand, dried paint cracking on my skin like fresh wounds. The ghost on my canvas stares back, incomplete yet more honest than anything I’ve created in years.
Two hours pass.
The phone remains silent. I pace my loft, returning to check the screen every few minutes like an addict seeking a fix.
Nothing comes.
By the third hour, understanding settles into my bones. This isn’t punishment. It’s patience. Ezra has always been steps ahead of me, calculating moves I didn’t know were being made. He’s waiting. For what, I’m not sure.
For me to crack further? For me to come to him? For me to stop fighting what we both know is inevitable?
