Enjoy this Interlude from the forthcoming Book Four of the Scarabae Saga Shadows Amongst the Moonlight. Publishing date is as yet unscheduled, but hopefully will be in 2012.

Interlude

            Masks. We all wear them. Some are pretty and ornate, destined for the grandest of balls. Most are mundane and nothing to notice. Some are ugly and twisted creations, unlike anything one would wish to see at a gala.

            When I was growing up, I remember being told from time to time by adults, mainly my parents and grandparents, at certain times it wasn’t safe to play outside, especially at dusk or after dark.

            “The panthers’ll be coming through this year,” they said.

            I heard it but I didn’t know what they meant by it. What panthers? We didn’t have big cats in the area.

            Remains of farm animals and wildlife, and sometimes people, were often discovered in a grisly state, but the authorities chalked it up to the work of bears or coyotes. Never the elusive panthers. They scoffed at the tales told by folks in my neck of the woods.

            Until the year I was thirteen.

            That was the year a man named Dyce Lorenzo, who owned the pizza shop in town, was discovered—at least what remained of him was discovered—one Sunday afternoon after his wife reported him missing. Seems he failed to come home from work. His car was in the driveway but he never made it into the house he shared with his wife and two children.

            His body was found behind the shed in the backyard. Apparently, whatever got hold of him between his car and the front door of his house had brought him down and dragged him there.

            The coroner brought in the Wildlife people who hemmed and hawed and dismissed the tales of the panthers. They never did give their own theory, but they sure spent a lot of time telling anyone who’d listen there were no authenticated sightings of any sort of large felines in our area.

            One of the local vets went on record stating the wounds on Lorenzo’s body were very close in nature to those found on the bodies of various animals that summer—they appeared to be the claw and teeth marks of a large feline. Went right along with the old people scaring the hell out of us with their terrifying tales of the time of the panthers. Lurid, vivid details. Obviously to frighten us into following the rules so we wouldn’t be at risk of being torn to shreds by the big cats.

            I’d never seen any of the animal bodies people talked about, but I did see Dyce’s body for a couple minutes before it was zipped up in one of those black bags—body bags, I learned they were called.

            The beauty of the scene struck me: Red against the tan flesh and green grass. At that moment I knew I was gazing with admiration at a fantastic work of art.

            Inspiration struck.

            Even at my tender age, I knew the beauty which mattered most was what’s inside a person because that’s the way I had been raised. Inner beauty made a person special. I wanted so much to be able to bring the inner beauty out for the world to experience.

            People were to be my canvasses and the earth my easel.

            I desired more than anything to be able to use the body’s palette to create magnificent works of art. In death, my chosen canvasses would be given life—no, I would bestow upon them the gift of eternal life: Immortality.

            They would live forever as splendid works of imaginative art, and one day I would be praised as an innovator, a genius. Our names would resound through the centuries, remembered by all those who live and love fine art.

            If feline members of the animal kingdom could arrange such gorgeous tableaus, there was no reason I could not find and hone my skills to do the same. Not to mimic but to take my visions and create masterpieces for the world to gaze upon and appreciate as fine works of art.

            The reds of the scene—some dark, some shiny—still stick out vividly in my mind; when I close my eyes and concentrate, I still see them and they appear as fresh now as the day I first laid my eyes upon them. Every minute detail etched in my mind’s eye, there for my viewing pleasure.

            People were so fascinated. My work made headlines and was the mainline story on the newscasts. A primary showing worthy of the publicity.

            But all the stories and reports and the glory-hungry reporters got one important thing wrong: it was not my first.

            Far from being the first in my artistic process, it was the first I allowed anyone to discover: my first perfect piece of art. No one would ever find the others; they were inferior practice canvasses, not worthy of being placed in a gallery. And like any artist would do, I disposed of them after I refined my techniques, enhanced my visions.

            So what I presented for them, what they saw, was perfect.

            Practice made perfect.

©Frank E. Bittinger 2012