[The Game] Paint It Black

Chapter 3

"The score never interested me, only the game."
- Mae West.

Press Play

August 2001

Claudia wasn't feeling well. At all. So unwell in fact that she stopped her guided tour of the gallery early, apologising to the patrons and offering to get them all a refund for the price of the tour from the gift shop downstairs. Andy, a fellow tour-guide had been in a nearby room and overheard what was going on. He was one of the ten men in the gallery who was secretly in love with her and before he'd really even thought about it, had taken the group over and carried them away out of the room.
'I really shouldn't have eaten that sandwich' she told him with a wince.
'What was it?'
'Chicken salad, I think' she groaned.
'Listen' he told her, 'don't worry about it. Take a seat, get some air and drink this' he ordered, handing over a bottle of water.
'Thanks' she mumbled with a weak smile. She brushed the black hair from her face and slumped in her seat, trying to breathe easy as the tour group were hustled out of the room by Andy. After a few moments she was the only one left in the room. Just her and the paintings. She breathed deeply, closing her eyes.
'Psst'.
She opened her eyes and scanned the room. There was no-one there.
'Psst' came the noise again. She twisted in her seat, looking in all directions.
'Over here' said a male voice, somewhere in front of her. She looked up at the painting before her - The Taking of Christ . She said nothing, swallowed deeply.
'Give a brother a hand, ha?' came the voice. It seemed to be coming from inside the painting. She stood up, and slowly, carefully walked over towards the wall. Outside, she heard a child laughing, feet skipping down the stairs, her mother calling after her.
She looked both ways, saw no-one and then looked back at the painting.
'Getting warmer' said the voice with what sounded like a snigger.
'What the fu...'
'Language'
And then she saw him. The face in the top right of the painting, young, bearded. Peering over the shoulder of the throng of bodies jostling to get at the figure of Christ. He looked at her. Right at her. And winked.

Slumping to the floor, her vision swimming, sounds and shapes pouring over her, she gasped for air.
'Oh man. Why do they always faint?' he said, his voice starting to echo in the distance, his sighs receding under the slosh of aural distortion and belching, white noise that were surrounding her as she went down.
'Anyway, ' he continued, 'I really should warn you. This is probably gonna get a bit weird'.

Claudia slipped down, into darkness. And burst back into the light. She could see hands. Her own hands. But not her own hands. As though she was looking at someone else's hands through their eyes. She looked left and right. She stood on the grass, people around her, peering at her. A man beckoned at her. This way, the priest told her. Over here. Through here, he motioned with a hand. He stepped aside, circling his hands in cajoling waves. This way. This way please. She moved, slowly at first, reluctant. Through here he said again, pointing to the tent. The flap of the door squirmed in the wind, shallow raindrops splashing off the leather. This way my girl. The priest's headgear fluttered, the feathers rustling. His beads shook in a musical jitter. This is where we make you ready, he said calmly. She entered. Sit please. Many before you. Many after you. Nothing to fear. Nothing to harm you. Just to protect you. Protect me from what, she asked. From yourself, the priest said. A young girl sat in front of her, a bowl in her hand. She scooped out a black mud and moved to her face. She flinched. Nothing to fear, she told her. They will fear you, not you them.

The girl brought her hands to Claudia's face, smearing, slathering, covering in until only her eyes were visible in the darkness. Her arms. Her shoulders. Her legs. Her feet. But leaving her hands clean. As she worked the priest sang, low at first, but rising and rolling upwards. From outside she could hear other voices gradually joining the priest, slipping into the downside-up melody: a keening wail, giving way to a low, growling animal sound. Down and up. Up and down. Rising and falling, the voices were joined by a drum. Then a second. Claudia let the smell of the mud fill her nose, the sound of the drums and voices fill her ears.

Outside. A rain falling. Feet moving, she watched the legs below her move, pitch black with mud, carrying her on. Across a field. Through high reeds. Towards the trees. Branches moving, the music growing and growing. A cave. Through the entrance. This way they told her. This way please. She moved with them, her legs bearing her on into the dark, the outside world dissapearing in dead silence. Down and down they moved, spiralling and spinning, scampering over rocks and trickles of rain water leaching through from above. Images adorned the walls - figures of men and women. Figures of men and animals. Figures that were neither and both. Running, hunting, dying and fucking, they danced across the walls. Not far now, they said. Here we are. Here you are. Drink this, a voice commanded her as a bowl moved to her face. She drank, gagging and coughing, a vile, lumpy brew forcing its way down her throat. Swallow. Let it burn. Now dance. Dance like you've never danced in your life. Dance like the world is about to end. Dance until your bones shake, your skin splits and you can't think, smell, feel or fear anything. That is your gift. You can dance through time. You can dance time itself.

Now, to the gate, a voice told her. The drums beat on, wings in the dark, an animal sound growing below her skin. She was carried across a space, her body still rolling to the beat. The shape of a vast wall loomed out of the dark, black-burnt with pitch, white hands in the middle. White hand marks, where the flames and the filth had licked the wall black around them. Her hands were forced against the handmarks. The drone growing. A scream rising and the rhythm shattering the air around her. And then she jumped.

Forward, faster and faster she fell. She felt nausea wash over in waves, puke bursting up her throat like a volcano. She flailed, spinning in the dark. Noises echoed in the distance, swimming closer and closer, bouncing from side to side. Slowly, agonisingly a shape began to blur into focus, like a photograph developing. Brown, curved, glistening. An animal. Or, the shape of an animal's body, she told herself. Perhaps, she thought to herself in a fraction of lucidity, this is some kind of an animal spirit who can guide me... no, it's a horse's ass. A giant, brown horse's ass. On a wall. On a painting. In a chapel, lit by flickering candle light. More came into view. The horse's ass was pointed across the small chapel at another painting, almost like it was insulting the one opposite. Claudia saw figures streak in and out of the gloom, moving at incredible speed. Backwards, reeling, their movements leaving trails in space, tentacled cell structures leaving a white, temporal wake as they shifted through time. They over-lapped, criss-crossed and bumped off each other, lives and ages colliding and sliding against each other.

Momentarily the blur slowed to show two men standing there, all sound slowing to a groan and then clarity. One had long, black hair and was posing in front of the painting, the other with his back to Claudia, raising a camera. And you're sure the dude that comissioned this piece of crap was an ancestor of yours, the unseen man asked. Irish accent. One she knew. A voice she recognised. A voice that she knew intimately. A voice that seemed to have a cord coming from it - attached, she realised as she followed it, to her. Abso-fucking-lutely said the other man with a grin. A flash fired and the room span like a toilet bowl, sucking her back in time, back through a blizzard of days and nights until she felt the bile rise in her throat again. And just as she thought her mind might burst, it stopped.

She looked and she saw three men. Old clothes. Very old. Centuries old. One was incandescent with anger, screaming, waving his arms, his face a mask of rage and indignation. Next to him was an older man with clothes that suggested a religious order and wealth. The third was a face she almost knew but couldn't place. A face that she'd seen in a painting. Young, dark-haired, moustache on his upper-lip, a small beard below - a face with a wicked grin. The first man was screaming and pointing at the third, alternating between threatening to have the third gutted like a pig and pointing at the painting on the wall which showed a horse's ass before the prone figure of St. Paul on the road to Damascus. She tried to focus on the third man's face, to put a name to him. And then it clicked.
'Told you it would get weird', he said.

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