The melting man

Archie Smith

Karin stood shocked unable to connect canvas with canvas. Her mind had turned blank and she felt around her pockets until she found her cellphone in the back left pocket of her jeans. The melting man then filled the silence with his dripping voice, " call her, she involved herself, and as it seems the involved knows nothing", and with that she did not even hesitate to call her best friend, Ayesha and although it had been a late hour, she knew that her blind friend would no doubt still be awake busying herself with the recitation of her noble Quran.

Karin had sent Ayesha a call me back, she would wait until Ayesha was done with her recitation because she had no doubt that Ayesha would call her back. They waited now longer than an hour and Ayesha had let herself in through the third-flour bedroom window which was left open. She had done this many times before, so she expected to see her friend sitting on the on her bed, but she was surprised to see that the fort her friend always built was not there. She went through the entire third-floor not seeing Karin anywhere around.

Ayesha come around the kitchen she couldn't really ask Uncle Daniel or Ana because she had sneaked into the house. She was stuck for a moment, not knowing what to do. An idea suddenly struck her, she immediately took out her phone and she sent Karin a quick, "where r u?". She silently scold herself for not thinking to do so sooner. Her phone made a ping and Karin said that she was on the forbidden fourth floor. Ayesha then made her way into the elevator to meet her companion. When the doors of the elevator opened, she saw them.

Well most of them, Karin stood there, as confused and terrified as the day as laid eyes on that original painting. Ayesha's eyes traveled next to Mihle sitting silently in an office chair. She hurried over to them with her scarf getting tangled into another office chair that she had not noticed here before, the chair used her momentum, bumped the back of her knees and she fell seated comfortable on the chair. When she tried to stand up the same thing repeated itself and she was once again seated into the chair. She tried to untangle herself but failed.

Mihle and Karin looked on in pity, as they saw her struggle against the chair, Ayesha could not see nor understand that it was the melting man who was keeping her down in that chair. Karin spoke, "it is fine, don't worry about it, you just have to relax and be here for me". Ayesha looked into the cold eye's of Karin thinking if she should blindly trust her friend, but she smiled at Karin putting her faith in Allah's plan. With that in mind she relaxed into the chair, there was an unspoken truth in the three of them.

With all three of them here it was time for Archie to take the stand, a pair of them with heads and one without, a pair with wings and one without, he could see it clearly standing among those three. He thought that there would never be a more fitting audience made for him. It made it all the more magical for him. Today he would face his truth, today stood in front of the fate his actions has created. These people deserve to know the melting man, his faults and all the things he has weighing down on him.

Today, he will be free. The purple curtains swayed with the anticipation of the event about to be pulled apart from the seams, the strings of cotton, that waves the tale of the melting man, things were about to be unraveled. He cleared his throat and made eye contact with the young somgoma making certain that he knows what to do. They acknowledge each other and Mihle understood the part he had to play in this. Their was no more messing around. Today this will end, soon everything will be all good and right as should not as it was.

Karin was damb struck by the situation she found herself in the melting man, Archie Smith, who has become more than just a painting, more than just a strange tingling connection. He had become something much more concrete but he has remained as intangible as he ever was. The ghost of a long forgotten past. Archie Smith was something to her, he had been someone to her. He was the reason she had not seen any baby pictures of her because he had been real all this time and he had been hers all this time how unfortunate a story.

They all stood waiting, expectly like vultures hungry for the truth, hungry for the words, the words so sharp that it could cut us all open, the painful, bitter taste as they all feast on what the words had left behind, the blood and flesh of all that was involved, the pretty colours of red and pink raw and open, but the truth has to be swollowed. We all know this, it is what made us hungry in the first place soon the purple and grey hues of this room will become violent reds and pink shades. It is time.

They say that a picture can tell a story but a gallery can tell a life. They sat suspended in Dr Van Wyk's art gallery witnessing they story of my life like slides through the light of a projector and they all had eyes and they all could see. Mihle's eyes light with visions his blessing and curse from the an ancestors the will be seen with heavy eyes as heavy as the red curtain that closes at the end of the show. Ayesha's eyes pink from the agitation of all the dim lights and dust. Karin's red with tears.