<div class="row">
<div class="column title"><div class="cover-text">Night<br/>Guard<hr>Morning<br/>Star</div></div>
<div class="column cover-links">
<div class="box"><p>
An Interactive Story by
<br /><a href="http://astriddalmady.com" target="_blank">Astrid Dalmady</a></p>
</div>
<div class="linkblock">[[Play|intro]]
<p>playtime: 20-30 minutes</p>
[[About|about]]
<p>Spoiler-free description <br />and content warnings</p>
[[Credits|start credits]]
<p>credits and thanks</p>
</div>
</div><p>My mother made a deal with the manager of the art gallery. He'd get access to her paintings for a special exhibition. She got "her little Leonora" a job as a night guard for it.</p>
<p>At 23, I want to say I'm not exactly little anymore, but my mother's always had a unique perspective on things. I should be grateful. With no degree, and no experience, getting a job would have been rough, even one as dull as this one.</p>
<p>I think I came prepared though. [[I just hope I remembered everything.|gallery hub normal]]</p>
<<silently>><<include "variable init">><</silently>><p>My mother's name, FATIMA SANTILLANA, is written in bold at the entrance to the room and the walls showcase the length and breadth of her career. Now <i>my</i> job is to watch over them.</p>
<p>I haven't seen some of these in a while, but they still spark the scent-memory of open tubes of paint, and being shuffled out of her studio.</p>
<p>I hope she's happy with the exhibit. She's wanted it for a very long time.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">The Gallery</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Bird</strong>, 2004, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A grey bird sits in a dark grey cage. It's impossible to tell what species it is besides "bird". Behind it, the sky is almost blue, but it looks as if some grey paint got left on it by accident.</p></div>
<p>She painted this while I lived with my aunt as a child. I don't remember her coming over often, but my aunt's parrot is the obvious model for it.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Bird</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Bed</strong>, 2018, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A blue canvas, brush strokes obvious and crooked. In the center is a red bed, and a figure lying alone. In the distance is a small window, revealing the space to be a vast room, rather than the sky. The figure on the bed is broken into segments, and a dismembered hand clutches a paintbrush. The figure has my mother's eyes, and no mouth.</p></div>
<p>She painted this after her accident. It was a rough time — I had to stay home and take care of her — but she turned it into art just like everything else.</p>
<p>It's a little derivative though. Kahlo did it first.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Bed</td>
</tr>
</table></div>
/*essential*/
<<set $bed_seen to true>><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Doll</strong>, 2006, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A medium canvas, twenty by twenty, slathered in black paint. A single white splotch sits in the corner. The opposite corner is artfully torn.</p></div>
<p>I recognize the splotch as a doll in a frilly little dress, one I used to have as a kid. Without the label, most people can't figure that out. I'm also pretty sure the tear was an accident.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Doll</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Fruit</strong>, 1997, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A pomegranate spills bright red seeds out onto a bed sheet. The window in the background throws shadows on the bed that look like prison bars.</p></div>
<p>She painted this one before I was born. I like it though. It's vibrant, though I don't get the metaphor.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Fruit</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Flowers</strong>, 2013, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A still life of red flowers in a blue vase on a brown table.</p></div>
<p>This one doesn't really match my mother's flair for the dramatic, but I suppose it's a serviceable still life.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Flowers</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Flames</strong>, 2005, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A brown-skinned woman sits between two candles, looking directly at the viewer. There is something wrong with her anatomy.</p></div>
<p>I always felt weird about this painting. My mother painted it right after my aunt died, though it only barely looks like her. But I guess she wanted to remember her somehow.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Flames</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div>
<<set $flames_seen to true>><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Fall</strong>, 2017, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A massive raw canvas with a broad red line across its surface. It is the cleanest line in the entire gallery, a single flawless arc ending abruptly right before the edge of the canvas.</p></div>
<p>This painting was an accident. Hell, it was THE accident. I don't like to look at it.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>The Fall<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div>
/*essential*/
<<set $fall_seen to true>><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Morning Star</strong>, 2019, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>An almost beautiful man sits by a window that opens out to an inky night sky. In the distance, there is only a single shining star, a thick glob of white paint.</p></div>
<p>This is her newest piece, and the centerpiece of the exhibition. His face is a blend of all the men I've imagined could be my father.</p>
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<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>The Morning Star<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Exit|the exit]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div>
<<set $morning_seen to true>><p>The manager said that I should stay here most of the night but that, if I wanted, I could look at some of the other wings for a bit.</p>
<<if $fall_seen and $bed_seen and $morning_seen and $flames_seen>>
<p>[[A little break can't hurt|done]]. I've seen these paintings often enough, haven't I?</p>
<<else>><p>But I want to do a good job. Maybe after I've looked around a bit more.</p>
<<endif>>
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<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Fruit|the fruit desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bird|the bird desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flames|the flames desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br>[[The Morning Star|the morning star]]<br><br>[[The Fall|the fall desc]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Exit</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">[[The Gallery|gallery hub normal]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Doll|the doll desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Flowers|the flowers desc]]</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">[[The Bed|the bed desc]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>The rest of the gallery is spectacular. It reminds me of the places I went while I was still in school. I'd been thinking about some kind of art degree but after I had to take care of my mom, it didn't really seem like an option.</p>
<p>[[I suppose I'm lucky|back]]. I almost have a job in my field, despite not even graduating.</p>
<p>Inevitably, I'm drawn back to my mother's gallery. I walk past her name, the bio she wrote herself, and look up at the Morning Star.</p>
<p>Who looks…[[different.|morning star change]]</p><p>The Morning Star has changed. Before, I could see each sloppy brush stroke that formed his lackluster, judgemental gaze. Now, he's radiant and smiling.</p>
<p>It isn't a nice smile.</p>
<p>The eyes of every painting in the room follow me as I approach him. Could I have remembered it wrong?</p>
<p>My hand reaches up, as if to assert reality by touch, and stops. It's no longer just a canvas my mother slathered paint onto. It's not one more piece of clutter to be shifted from room to room, stored behind doors and stuffed inside closets.</p>
<p>It's Art now, so I can't touch it.</p>
<p>The Morning Star's hand reaches out from the canvas, and decides to [[touch me|morning star hub]] instead.</p><p>I open my eyes inside of a painting of a memory. It's completely still — I see one of my mother's sketches frozen in the air as it fluttered to the floor — and the air feels thick and smells of linseed oil.</p>
<p>It was our house, the larger one we'd gotten after the accident, with its own studio and bedrooms for each of us. Everything looked exactly as it should, perfectly rendered as if by an expert hand.</p>
<p>There is a copy of me laying on the sofa made of paint. I raise my hand to confirm that I'm still able to move, that I'm still made of flesh and blood and not paint and canvas.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me morning]]<br></td>
<td>[[Her Sketches|the sketches]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bedrooms|the bedrooms]]</td>
<td>[[The Studio|the studio]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div>
<p>This is the first time I've seen myself in my mother's colors. If she's painted me before, I certainly haven't seen it.</p>
<p>And I probably don't want to, if she uses that blue for the bags under my eyes, that raw sienna for my skin. Caring for her after the accident was exhausting, but I can't believe I ever looked like this.</p>
<p>Even the sofa I'm lying on, that we stole from my aunt after she died almost two decades ago, looks more put together than I do.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>The Past Me<br></td>
<td>[[Her Sketches|the sketches]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bedrooms|the bedrooms]]</td>
<td>[[The Studio|the studio]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div> <p>My mother worked like a woman possessed when an idea gripped her. The floor was covered with sketches: iterations of the Morning Star's face, each different, all wrong. When I was younger, I would try to pick them up, neaten them into a binder or a sketchbook, but she said it disrupted her creative vision.</p>
<p>I thought I'd gotten used to the mess, but looking at it now, framed within a memory, it bothers me a lot. I wish I'd cleaned it up.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me morning]]<br></td>
<td>Her Sketches</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bedrooms|the bedrooms]]</td>
<td>[[The Studio|the studio]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div> <p>The house has three rooms: the master is hers, the second largest is her studio, and the last room is mine. I have to share her shower, since I only have a half bath near me, and the studio got the other full bathroom.</p>
<p>It's a nice place, not as nice as my aunt's where I lived as a child, but nicer than the place after. It's big, with wide hallways that gave us room to maneuver the wheelchair and let my mother's belongings sprawl out the way she preferred.</p>
<p>I peek inside my bedroom. It's neat, and mostly empty. Just how I prefer.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me morning]]<br></td>
<td>[[Her Sketches|the sketches]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Bedrooms</td>
<td>[[The Studio|the studio]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div> <p>I don't go into my mother's studio much. She hates it when I clean it up, so it's often locked, as if she doesn't trust me to stay out when I'm not wanted.</p>
<p>Right now, the door is unlocked. Perhaps [[she was right|enter studio]].</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me morning]]<br></td>
<td>[[Her Sketches|the sketches]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bedrooms|the bedrooms]]</td>
<td>The Studio</td>
</tr>
</table></div> <p>The studio while in progress is a fallout zone of color. There are tarps laid everywhere and cups full of brushes that won't be usable again no matter how long they soak.</p>
<p>I know, because I was the one who ended up at the sink and the washing machine once a canvas was sealed and complete.</p>
<p>This seemed excessive though. It seemed that the Morning Star hadn't come easily to her and there were dozens of paintings of him everywhere: some small, some sketches, some larger than the one in the gallery, hidden and folded up, only showing a quirk of a lip or the white of his eyes.</p>
<p>For months (years?), my mother has been doing nothing but paint Morning Stars, each one worse than the last. It's like she keeps forgetting all the ways a human face should be, as if whatever muse possessed her did not react to light and shadow the way anything else did.</p>
<p>Though there was one, a small portrait, old by the look of the paint, that was almost good. I wonder why she didn't submit this one instead.</p>
<p>Then the man in the painting blinks and [[moves]].</p><p>The Morning Star, the man, not the painting, steps out of his canvas towards me.</p>
<p>He is made of paint, but every moment he comes closer he seems to become more real, gaining more detail. A single stroke of yellow turns to fibrous hair, the eyes gain sheen, the skin pores.</p>
<p>He is close to me, the thing that my mother failed to capture in an image, and he smiles and opens his mouth to speak.</p>
<p>He doesn't have a voice, just the gong of a clock so loud I [[shut my eyes|shut eyes]] against the noise.</p><p>When I open them, I'm back in the gallery. The air smells like bleach and floor polish.</p>
<p>And the Morning Star is [[gone|back in the real world]].</p><p>I stare at the empty space where the Morning Star used to be and shudder. The paint remains. Someone who didn't know better would just think it's abstract art. But to me, whose past few months have been nothing but this face, it is a scar. It hurts to even look at it.</p>
<p>I reach up to touch the painting again, like that might repeat the whole affair in reverse, when I hear someone [[cough|aunt speaks]] behind me.</p><p>The portrait of my aunt is moving. She crosses her arms against the canvas, the candle flames next to her still static.</p>
<p>"It won't help, you know?" she says, ignoring the fact her lungs are oil and canvas, ignoring the fact she's dead.</p>
<p>If she can ignore it, so can I though, right? I look up at the empty Morning Star and feel something like a soft brush stroke in my mind, blacking out my doubts.</p>
<p>Besides, it's been so long since I've heard her voice.</p>
<p>I can't remember if it's right or not.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Hi Tía.|hi tia]]</li>
<li>[[Is it really you?|is it really you]]</li>
</ul>
<p>She has my aunt's eye color, the earrings she wore every day. I step closer, almost expecting to smell her perfume.</p>
<p>"Hi Tía," I say, and mean it.</p>
<p>The slash of black that's supposed to be a mouth curls into a smile. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"</p>
<p>There's a million things I want to ask her and all of them are pretty rude. We haven't gone through the proper flow of pre-conversation yet. She hasn't even asked if I have a boyfriend. She died when I was so little, so I never got to tell her no.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[How are you?|how are you]]</li>
<li>[[What's happening?|aunt happening]]</li>
<li>[[What's it like being dead?|like being dead]]</li>
</ul><p>"Is it really you, Tía?" I ask. She has my aunt's eye color, the earrings she wore every day. I step closer, almost expecting to smell her perfume.</p>
<p>"Well I'm not anybody else, chica." She crooks a finger towards me. The slash of black that's supposed to be a mouth curls into a smile. "Come closer, let me take a look at you."</p>
<p>There's a million things I want to ask her and all of them are pretty rude. We haven't gone through the proper flow of pre-conversation yet. She hasn't even asked if I have a boyfriend. She died when I was so little, so I never got to tell her no.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[How are you?|how are you]]</li>
<li>[[What's happening?|aunt happening]]</li>
<li>[[What's it like being dead?|like being dead]]</li>
</ul><p>"How are you?" I ask, because I can't think of anything else. She never did tolerate rudeness.</p>
<p>"Oh, you know, better than one could expect being a painting." She smiles as if she's said something tremendously funny. I try not to think of the mechanics of it. Can she breathe? Does she feel starved for air inside the canvas? I feel like I have to wash my hands if I even get a little charcoal on me. What must it me like to <i>be</i> paint?</p>
<p>Some of this must show on my face because she laughs. "Always a tragedy with you, isn't it? Worry about yourself for once, niña. You need it." She says, gesturing towards the empty Morning Star.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[How did it do that?|how did it do that]]</li>
<li>[[Do you think I can fix it?|can i fix it]]</li>
</ul><p>"What's happening?" I ask, and feel like a child again, begging for Tía Estela to make sense in a world that, before her, only contained my mother and her <i>art</i>.</p>
<p>The feeling isn't helped by her answer. "Well, it looks like you're in a bit of trouble." She smiles and nods her head towards the empty Morning Star.</p>
<p>That's that. I look at the empty canvas, my head still feels fuzzy. It's all too much, like a dream.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[How did it do that?|how did it do that]]</li>
<li>[[Do you think I can fix it?|can i fix it]]</li>
</ul><p> I blurt out what I actually want to ask before anything else. "What is it like being dead?"</p>
<p>Both sisters would be on my case for hours for being that rude but <i>this</i> Tía Estela just laughs and laughs. The sound creeps up towards the ceiling, and echoes down through the empty room.</p>
<p>"Oh, not too bad. I'm a painting though, not a ghost. It's different. Your mother <i>made</i> me." She says, leaning on the frame as if it existed within the painting to lean on.</p>
<p>"Though I suppose she made you too. And it's better in here than out there." She nods her head towards the empty Morning Star and raises her eyebrows. "You've gotten yourself into a bit of trouble, haven't you?"</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[How did it do that?|how did it do that]]</li>
<li>[[Do you think I can fix it?|can i fix it]]</li>
</ul><p>I stare at the empty canvas and feel anxiety bloom, dull and aching, right below my sternum. I had ONE job.</p>
<p>"How did it do that?" My voice cracks. My boss is going to be so mad. My mother is going to be even madder.</p>
<p>Tía Estela rolls her eyes, an unnerving wiggle of black dots on an almost formless face. "He does what he wants. I'm surprised he even waited this long." She shrugs. "But he likes you. If you call him, I'm sure he'd come back."</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Call him.|call him]]</li>
<li>[[How do I do that?|how do I do that]]</li>
</ul><p>I stare at the empty canvas and feel anxiety bloom, dull and aching, right below my sternum. I had ONE job.</p>
<p>"How can I fix that?" My voice cracks. My boss is going to be so mad. My mother is going to be even madder.</p>
<p>Tía Estela rolls her eyes, an unnerving wiggle of black dots on an almost formless face. "He does what he wants. I'm surprised he even waited this long." She shrugs. "But he likes you. If you call him, I'm sure he'd come back."</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Call him.|call him]]</li>
<li>[[How do I do that?|how do I do that]]</li>
</ul><p>"Morning Star?" I say, barely above a whisper. It feels stupid.</p>
<p>Tía Estela laughs, a short bark that makes the canvas ripple with her movement. "Don't be stupid." She confirms. "It takes a bit more than that. I'll make you a list of what you need. They should be in the other paintings."</p>
<p>She smiles as she reaches into her dress, and claws out some of the white paint. It looks like it should hurt, but she smiles as she writes [[the list|the list]] onto the blank space above her, gouging into her torso for more paint as she runs out.</p><p>"How do I do that?" I ask, and she waves her hand to tell me not to worry.</p>
<p>"I'll make you a list of what you need. They should be in the other paintings." She smiles as she reaches into her dress, and claws out some of the white paint. It looks like it should hurt, but she smiles as she writes [[the list|the list]] onto the blank space above her, gouging into her torso for more paint as she runs out.</p><ul>
<li>ELDNAC</li>
<li>REHTAEF</li>
<li>LLOD</li>
<li>REWOLF</li>
<li>TIURF</li>
<li>ELCRIC</li>
</ul>
<p>I stare, and frown.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[I'll figure it out.|figure out]]</li>
<li>[[Ask what she means.|ask]]</li>
</ul><p>"Uh, thank you." I say. I can figure it out. I'm not stupid. She obviously believes I can get it.</p>
<p>She smiles, then looks at the text and frowns. "Oh! Why didn't you say anything?"</p>
<ul>
<li>CANDLE</li>
<li>FEATHER</li>
<li>DOLL</li>
<li>FLOWER</li>
<li>FRUIT</li>
<li>CIRCLE</li>
</ul>
<p>"You could have said something," she says, disappointed. "But then again, you've always thought you could do it all on your own. Pride is a [[sin|gallery hub 1]], mija."</p><p>"Uh," you start, and she looks up at her list and scowls catching on.</p>
<p>"Just a moment. I suppose I have to fix that for you," she says, and redoes the list, agonizingly drawing the paint from her breast.</p>
<ul>
<li>CANDLE</li>
<li>FEATHER</li>
<li>DOLL</li>
<li>FLOWER</li>
<li>FRUIT</li>
<li>CIRCLE</li>
</ul>
<p>"You could have figured it out, though" she says. "Don't forget. Sloth is a [[sin|gallery hub 1]], mija."</p><p>The Morning Star is empty, and the other paintings start to warp under the fluorescence.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Bird</strong>, 2004, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>[[A dead bird|bird hub]] rots inside an abandoned cage. Real maggots spill from painted eyes, leaving a slimy trail as they wriggle down the wall and coat the floor. It smells terrible.</p></div>
<<include "temp hub">><p>I lived in my aunt's house for a few years in elementary school. It was a big two-story townhouse she'd kept after the death of her husband, and it was my favorite place in the world. My memories are all rose-tinted and lovely, unlike the cool colors rendering this.</p>
<p>The painted world is a rare scene: one of my mother's few visits. The sisters sit talking on the old sofa. I'm on the floor by the big cage on the side of the room, cleaning up the magazine scraps I'd tried to stuff inside. The old African grey that lives in it is reaching threateningly for them.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Bird Cage|bird cage]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Aunt|aunt on sofa]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Magazine|magazine]]</td>
<td>[[Past Me|child you]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>The cage is huge and useless. It takes up most of the wall, but the bird barely lives in it. Tía Estella gave the thing free rein of the house, which is certainly more than I remember having.</p>
<p>The list said I needed a feather, and the floor of the cage is covered with them, as though a dozen birds lived in the cage, instead of just the one.</p>
<p>The bird looks like it's lunging for me. Did I ever get bitten? I can't remember.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>The Bird Cage<br></td>
<td>[[My Aunt|aunt on sofa]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Magazine|magazine]]</td>
<td>[[Past Me|child you]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">[[A Feather|feather]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>Tía Estella looks better here than she does in the frame of the other painting. Still not right, still not true to the eye the way a good rendition is, but true enough to be recognized.</p>
<p>So what if her hair is grey, almost feathery. So what if nails appear like claws. It is still her, frozen chatting with my mother with tightness in her eyes. No one but a relative could look at my mother with such a mix of love and disdain.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Bird Cage|bird cage]]<br></td>
<td>My Aunt</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Magazine|magazine]]</td>
<td>[[Past Me|child you]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>In the past, I'm picking up the ripped up pieces of a pretentious art magazine I had tried to line the cage with. The paper is thick, almost plastic, and it must have taken forever to try and rip into strips. On the larger chunks, I can see they'd written a feature on my mother, the up-and-coming Venezuelan-American artist, defining the voice of a diaspora.</p>
<p>It settled oddly with me, even then. I couldn't picture my mother being the defining voice of anything. But I suppose when you're close to someone you see the reality of them. Instead of a painting, all they look like are dots.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Bird Cage|bird cage]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Aunt|aunt on sofa]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Magazine</td>
<td>[[Past Me|child you]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I don't remember being that small, or that angry. I look like I'm ready to take all the ripped up magazine bits and make the parrot choke on them.</p>
<p>But even though I don't remember the anger, I understand it. I am in a cage, in the corner. My mother is on the sofa, not speaking to me. Did she greet me as she walked in? Would I have remembered if she did?</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Bird Cage|bird cage]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Aunt|aunt on sofa]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Magazine|magazine]]</td>
<td>Past Me</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I bend down to take one of [[the feathers|take feather]] from the bottom of the cage when the shrieking begins. The bird hasn't moved, and yet its open maw, reaching towards my younger self's fingers is shrieking, loudly and without pause.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Bird Cage|bird cage]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Aunt|aunt on sofa]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Magazine|magazine]]</td>
<td>[[Past Me|child you]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>As I pull away, the screams fade. It becomes a little game. Closer, louder. Further, softer. Then I move, and grip the feather, and it moves and flies at me, SCREAMING.</p>
<p>Its claws tear at my arms; it is screaming.</p>
<p>Its wings batter my face; it is screaming.</p>
<p>Its beak rips out my cheek; [[I am screaming|back to aunt]].</p><p>And then I'm back in the gallery. Intact, except for a scar down my arm, one that might have always been there since childhood. And in my hand, a pale grey feather, soft and downy and real.</p>
<p>I could sit here all night, breathing, and feeling the fleshy inside of my cheek with my tongue. But Tía Estella has never been patient, and her portrait is no different.</p>
<p>"Get up. Let me see it," she says, so I do, holding out the feather for her. "I bet you enjoyed that: plucking Angel. You always hated him."</p>
<p>Did I? I hadn't even remembered the bird's name. Before I can deny any of it, she smiles. "At least getting one of these things was fun though."</p>
<p>I don't have the heart to tell her [[otherwise|gallery hub 1]].</p>
<<set $bird_visited to true>>
<<set $paint_progress+=1>><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Bed</strong>, 2018, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>Sheets spill from [[the bed|bed hub]] on the canvas onto the floor, ready to tangle and trip me as I approach. They are disgusting, covered with all the fluids of human misery. It smells like our apartment did for months after the accident.</p></div>
<<include "temp hub">><p>I am brought back to something I'd hope I'd never relive: the months of my mother's recovery. She was bedridden for quite some time with a broken leg and a bruised hip. Caring for her had been difficult, but she's my mom; what else could I have done?</p>
<p>It's hard to see the place as it was. Mugs are piled up in the sink where past me is standing, head bowed and exhausted. The doors have all been removed to make room for her chair, even the one to my bedroom despite the fact that she never went in.</p>
<p>I'm glad that we moved out once she got better. I don't think I could have tolerated this place for long.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td colspan="2">[[The Past Me|past me bed]]<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bathroom|bathroom]]</td>
<td>[[The Bedroom|bedroom]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>Now, a few months out of the hell that had been physical therapy, I can only hope that I look better than the me from before. I look exhausted, hands vanished into my hair in both a show of exasperation and an amateur artist's move to not have to draw them.</p>
<p>The causes of my misery in this moment are twofold. One is lying on the bed painting in the other room. The other is a letter on the floor. Apparently this was the day I learned I'd taken too long to write back to my school. I'd been unenrolled for the semester.</p>
<p>I actually don't know if any of my credits count anymore. Once I could breathe, she rushed and got me this job, so it all seemed pointless anyway.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td colspan="2">The Past Me<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bathroom|bathroom]]</td>
<td>[[The Bedroom|bedroom]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>The changes to the bathroom cost exactly as much as a semester's tuition. But then again I'm not very good at math, so do the two even compare.</p>
<p>There were handrails everywhere, and a stool in the shower. She'd hated every change, but it was either that or have me keep helping her to the bathroom, and she hated that even more.</p>
<p>I kept her pain medication in a cabinet I hadn't made accessible. I didn't trust her with it. The pills weren't as cheap as wine, no matter how much either helped with her "creative process".</p>
<p>The cabinet opens easily in the painting, and I can see the orange bottle there, but it's empty. Looking in the toilet, I can see the little white pills at the bottom. Weird.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me bed]]<br></td>
<td>[[The Pills|pills]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>The Bathroom</td>
<td>[[Her Bedroom|bedroom]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>An item on the list was a circle, wasn't it? And [[the pills|take pills]] certainly apply. Looking closer, I can see a design etched on them. Not a number, or a letter, or anything else mundane.</p>
<p>Instead, they're all marked with a swooping sigil. <<if $seen_painting>>The same one my mother is painting. <<else>>It's a hideous design: the lines flow in ways the eye can't predict, each circle is too perfect, everything is too detailed to be the size that it is. I could stare at it forever, and hate every second of it.<<endif>></p>
<<set $pillsfound to true>>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me bed]]<br></td>
<td>The Pills</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bathroom|bathroom]]</td>
<td>[[Her Bedroom|bedroom]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I try very very hard (and fail) to not think about the fact that I'm sticking my hand in a toilet.</p>
<p>The water, which before had only been a few semi-circles to hint at ripples, gains form as I try to pierce it, becoming thick and viscous. It clings to my skin, pulling at the hairs on my arm as I sink to grab the pills.</p>
<p>And when my fingers touch the tiny pills, it becomes solid, with my arm still inside. My bones are crushed, ground to powder by impossible pressure. The pills in my hand are intact.</p>
<p>Like a fox in a trap, I'm ready to gnaw my arm off to free it, but a single tug and [[I'm falling back|leave bed]].</p><p>My mother is lying on the bed, already working on the painting of the same name. The sheets (my sheets) will never be the same. I practically moved the studio here, under her careful supervision.</p>
<p>She's frozen in her work now, brush poised above canvas. She looks miserable though, face drawn and lines pronounced. I suppose she must be in pain.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me bed]]<br></td>
<td>[[The Painting|painting]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bathroom|bathroom]]</td>
<td>The Bedroom</td>
</tr>
</table></div><<set $seen_painting to true>>
<p>The painting is barely started. I see the sketchy pencil outline she never bothers to erase properly, but the way she's blocked out color is… unique.</p>
<p>Each block of color, each segment, has [[a circle|touch circles]] on it, almost a pentagram, of neat lines and overlapping triangles. They're hideous shapes, in angles and repetitions that make them as unpleasant to look at as possible. Every line jerks slightly left of where you expect the next line to be. The weight of it varies in a way that makes them seem to be almost wiggling. If I saw this in a gallery, I would recoil, then stare, and keep staring at the sheer absurdity of the lines.</p>
<p>And my mother covers it all up with sloppy brush strokes and over-worn symbolism. She's out here drawing something unique and terrifying, making art that genuinely strikes a chord and makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, and she covers it up.</p>
<p>For a moment, I'm glad that she's in pain. It's what she deserves for destroying the first genuinely beautiful thing I've ever seen her make.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me bed]]<br></td>
<td>The Painting</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Bathroom|bathroom]]</td>
<td>[[The Bedroom|bedroom]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I need the circles to call back the Morning Star. I'd say these count. I look around, and find a paper and pencil my mother had left on the bed. The painted world allows me to pick them up, and test it. It drags unlike a pencil, but marks the page all the same.</p>
<p>But when I start to draw the circle, it doesn't mark the page anymore. The circle appears on the palms of my hands, and it marks like a scalpel.</p>
<p>I find that I can't let go, can't stop, as my hands, possessed by a deadly muse, continue to draw the shapes.</p>
<p>They draw them perfectly, no matter how I scream or cry. No matter how it hurts, my hand stay steady. That's something to be proud of, isn't it?</p>
<p>When I'm done, my fingers convulse and drop the pencil, and [[I fall back|leave bed]].</p><p>And I land in the gallery. Both arms intact, except for my palms, now scarred over with an eldritch design.</p>
<p>My aunt sees the designs when I raise my hands to the light. I've had these scars forever by the looks of it.</p>
<p>"Hmmm, I suppose that's okay. I'm sure you'll get better at making those [[with practice|gallery hub 1]]," she says.</p>
<<set $bed_visited to true>>
<<set $paint_progress+=1>><p>The gallery is oppressively quiet. Some paintings have gone back to how they were. New ones have been perverted. It feels like barely any progress was made.</p>
//linkhub<p>Do I want to risk [[leaving|weird end 1]]? I know the consequences: a lost job, my mother's disappointment. There might be others.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p>At first, I walk, expecting each step to suck me back into a painted world. I hear my aunt trying to call me back, but I ignore her. I'm good at that.</p>
<p>Eventually, I stop walking and I'm running out of the gallery, heading [[back home|home weird]].</p><p>Home looks different now. I catch myself staring at fabrics that look too much like canvas, and shuddering. I definitely don't go near the studio.</p>
<p>I scrub at my hands, at my arms. The warm water helps me feel more grounded. I pick a soap that smells nothing like linseed oil.</p>
<p>I try to forget what I saw. [[I go to bed|wake up weird]], and hope the morning feels real.</p><p>I wake up in the middle of the night to an empty room. Empty, except for one of my mother's paintings on the wall. It used to be a landscape, a portrait of the mountains back in Caracas.</p>
<p>Now, it is the Morning Star.</p>
<p>He steps out of the painting easily, with no regards for size or form or physics. There's nowhere for me to run as he comes closer, and closer. He picks up one of the pillows on the bed. I close my eyes.</p>
<p>"You had one job," he says with my mother's voice. They press the pillow over my face. I find that I can't even struggle. "I won't let you ruin everything."</p>
[[END|end credits]]<p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Doll</strong>, 2006, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>The rip at the top corner has expanded, as if someone tore at the painting with their fingernails. In fact, I think I see one left behind, embedded where [[the doll's|doll hub]] face would have been.</p></div>
<<include "temp hub">><p>I'm in the first studio I remember clearly. After Tía Estella died, my mother dragged me back to the little apartment she kept, and rarely took me to the studio she rented not far away. She preferred to leave me alone. I guess I didn't give her the option that day.</p>
<p>It was a cramped little room that she filled to the brim with supplies, to the point that she'd stolen a dim lamp from the living room because the windows were all covered by shelves and canvas. The floor was carpeted, and she hadn't put down enough tarp. We probably never got that deposit back.</p>
<p>The scene is set up for her to paint: a stool for her, an easel for the canvas, and a table for her subject, one of my old dolls. The past me is somewhere behind this tableau; I can see the edge of my dress from here.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|doll past me]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|doll past mother]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Other Paintings|doll other paintings]]</td>
<td>[[The Doll|doll]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p> The past me is bent down over a painting of La Virgen de Coromoto, one that never ended up in a gallery. And I was the reason why.</p>
<p>I'm rubbing my fingers all over the canvas, and while the paint is dry, I can almost feel the oils in my fingers breaking down the painting. I can almost hear my nails chipping at the virgin's cheeks, ripping away the red of her shawl.</p>
<p>I'm going at it with a single-minded focus for destruction. I must have gotten into a lot of trouble for doing this, because I've blocked it from my memory.</p>
<p>But I do remember that my mother doesn't paint Virgins anymore.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>The Past Me<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|doll past mother]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Other Paintings|doll other paintings]]</td>
<td>[[The Doll|doll]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>This snapshot in the painted world shows my mother the way she wishes to be seen. Her gaze is down towards the canvas. Her long brown hair is pulled up and fastened with a paintbrush. She has an artful smudge of charcoal on her cheek, even though she almost exclusively worked in oil.
<p>She looks every inch an artist. I suppose that's what she is.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|doll past me]]<br></td>
<td>My Mother</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Other Paintings|doll other paintings]]</td>
<td>[[The Doll|doll]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>My mother's style is simple, almost childish. It's gained her a lot of critical acclaim, though I'll admit I never understood it. When I was in school, I remember studying other art periods, trying to find my mother's artistic lineage, to see what rules she learned so that she could break them.</p>
<p>I never did figure it out, so maybe it's for the best I didn't finish art school. If I can't understand the art of someone so close to me, then what hope did I have to understand anyone else's.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|doll past me]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|doll past mother]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Other Paintings</td>
<td>[[The Doll|doll]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I remember when I got the doll, but not when I lost it. It was a simple cloth doll, with a little white dress, and yarn hair braided to frame her face. She had little button eyes, that in this painted world, seemed to glimmer.</p>
<p>I remember naming her and [[carrying her everywhere|grab doll]]. But the name itself escapes me. I wonder if my mother remembers.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|doll past me]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|doll past mother]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[Other Paintings|doll other paintings]]</td>
<td>The Doll</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I pick her up, gently, as though she was as old as the memory. I wait for the attack, for the blood and the violence.</p>
<p>But it doesn't come.</p>
<p>Instead, the doll begins to cry, big wet tears that drip down my arms. I start to cry as well, gripping the doll.</p>
<p>There is no horror here. Only misery and grief.</p>
<p>[[I close my eyes|back at gallery doll]] to blink away the tears.</p><p>And open them back in the gallery. The doll in my hands is dry, my face still wet.</p>
<p>"Don't cry, mija." Tía Estella says. I almost expect her to magic up a tissue and scrub my face, and am both relieved and disappointed when she doesn't. "[[There's so much left to be done.|gallery hub 1]]"</p>
<<set $doll_visited to true>>
<<set $paint_progress+=1>><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Flowers</strong>, 2013, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>Rotting [[flowers|flowers hub]] spring from every painted bloom on the canvas, filling the room with the mingled scent of beauty and decay. The wooden frame takes on a life of its own, twisting back into the gnarled wood it was carved from.</p></div>
<<include "temp hub">><p>I'm standing in the living room of the old apartment, the one we lived in when I was in high school. All the furniture was taken from my aunt's after she died and crammed into a space too small for it. I remember feeling the same, crammed into a space too small for me, and the past me in this memory reflects it.</p>
<p> I'm curled up on the sofa, taking as little space as I can. Behind me, in the entranceway, my mother stands with a boy I don't recognize.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|teenage me]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|flowers mother]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">[[The Boy|classmate]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I had some cherubic grace when I was little, and lost all of it the moment I hit puberty. I look exhausted, a child grown into a corpse. While we lived here, my mother and I shared a room, and she'd have screaming nightmares every other night. She dreamt a lot of fire, screamed that everything was burning.</p>
<p>I remember covering my ears with my pillow, and hoping they would pass. I remember falling asleep in class. I failed my AP History test because of her.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>The Past Me<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|flowers mother]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">[[The Boy|classmate]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p> My mother smiles like the Morning Star, like the Mona Lisa, like someone made entirely of canvas and lies. Her hand is on the boy's wrist, nails digging in slightly.</p>
<p>I wonder how that made him feel, but this memory doesn't include his expressions. His face is a blank. The only people that are real are me and my mother.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|teenage me]]<br></td>
<td>My Mother</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">[[The Boy|classmate]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>The boy in the doorway has no face, but I recognize the hair, the khaki shorts, the polo shirt. I had a crush on a boy who looked just like him once, who's name I can't recall now. It never went anywhere, nothing ever did, but I don't remember him ever coming to the house.</p>
<p>He's holding a [[bouquet of flowers|flowers]] out to my mother. I suppose that's why I never had a chance. She did have all the admirers.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|teenage me]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|flowers mother]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">The Boy</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I take the flowers. I don't hesitate. I don't wait for anything to strike.</p>
<p>So of course, nothing does.</p>
<p>The painting begins to fade, as it always does. I clutch the bouquet in my hands. For a moment, my classmate has a face again; he looks miserable and [[so does my mother|leave flowers]].</p><p>I don't know why she made a painting about this. It was an ordinary day, just like all the others. I never even saw that classmate again after this, he faded out of our lives just like everyone else.</p>
<p>Back in the real world, the painting is back to normal, though it still smells lightly of rot.</p>
<p>Tía Estella looks at the bouquet in my hands and asks, "Well well well, who gave <i>you</i> flowers?"</p>
<p>"No one," I say, and hold them tighter.</p>
<p>"Ah. [[That makes sense.|gallery hub 1]]"</p>
<<set $flowers_visited to true>>
<<set $paint_progress+=1>><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Fruit</strong>, 1997, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>This painting is the first to smell good once twisted. [[Pomegranate|fruit hub]] seeds spill out and stain the floor, and it smells sweet and lovely.</p></div>
<<include "temp hub">><p>The moment I open my eyes, I close them again. This is something I never wanted to see.</p>
<p>A child should never have to see a parent having sex. But there she is, rendered in bright garish colors.</p>
<p>The half-finished painting, The Fruit, is on the easel next to the bed. I look at that instead. I look out the windows into nothingness. I look at the room, a mess like always. I don't recognize this apartment, no matter how much I study it. It's hard when the only thing rendered with any detail is the couple on the bed.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[My Mother|mother fruit]]</td>
<td>[[The Man|the man]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>She doesn't seem like she's having a great time. There's no flush in her cheeks, no softness in her gaze. This is pleasurable, but only as a conquest, a triumph.</p>
<p>At least, that's what I figure. I can't look at it for very long. It's my <i>mother</i>.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td><<if $visitedman is false>>[[The Man|the man]]<<else>>[[The Morning Star|morning star fruit]]<<endif>></td>
</tr>
</table></div>
<<set $visitedmother to true>>
<p>The man, whoever he is, isn't finished. His face is a smear of paint, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, white, as if the memory couldn't pick a shade and instead made his face a mash of every skin toned color she owned.</p>
<p>He seems as unimportant as the rest of the room, just a sketchy backdrop to my mother's rapture.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td><<if $visitedmother is false>>[[My Mother|mother fruit]]<<else>>[[The Morning Star|morning star fruit]]<<endif>></td>
</tr>
</table></div>
<<set $visitedman to true>><p>I blink, I turn my head, I do anything that takes my eyes off the man for a second, and he is changed. He's no longer faceless, instead it's a face I know very well.</p>
<p>It's the Morning Star.</p>
<p>He pushes himself off the bed. My mother stays frozen behind him.</p>
<p>He steps towards me, and opens his mouth to speak. No words come out, no air moves in this frozen place and he stops, and laughs, his shoulders shaking soundlessly.</p>
<p>He smiles at me, and it's almost like being loved.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Who are you?|who are you]]</li>
<li>[[What's happening?|whats happening]]</li>
<li>[[Can you please just get back in your painting?|back in your painting]]</li>
</ul><p>He gives me a look of extreme disappointment, and points to his side, exactly where his placard would have been.</p>
<p>He's the Morning Star, he says. And what else needs to be explained. Before I can ask anything else, he's moving past me and towards the easel.</p>
<<include "offer fruit">><p>He laughs, soundlessly, for a very long time. I feel stupider and stupider as it goes on. In the end, he reaches out and takes my hand, tracing the sigils on my palm.</p>
<p>He feels real, not painted, and it gives me goosebumps.</p>
<p>He traces each hand once, then steps towards the easel.</p>
<<include "offer fruit">><p>He shakes his head, laughing and steps around me. He comes so close, I expect to feel a rustle of air as he moves, but in this painted world one of us is a ghost.</p>
<<include "offer fruit">><p>He reaches up into The Fruit, and plucks a pomegranate from the basket. It leaves a void in the art just like the one he left in his own painting.</p>
<p>He holds it out to me.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Take It|take it]]</li>
<li>[[Don't|reject fruit]]</li>
</ul><p>I take it, and he lays his hands on mine. [[He's proud of me|outside fruit]].</p><p>It looks so tempting, but I keep my hands to myself. He takes the choice from me, quick as a viper. He places it in my hand, cupping them inside his own.</p>
<p>I look up at his face. He mouths something to me. [[I don't understand what it is|outside fruit]].</p><p>I wake up in the gallery. Unharmed, and holding the fruit in my hands. Now that we're in the real world, it's sweet and fragrant, almost cloying.</p>
<p>I speak before my aunt does. "Do you know who the Morning Star is?"</p>
<p>"It says who he is right there," she responds.</p>
<p>The shell of the pomegranate cracks in my grip, I can feel the juice running between my fingers as I turn. "That wasn't what I meant!"</p>
<p>My Aunt laughs, cutting me off. "You'd like if there was some deeper answer, wouldn't you? It'd make you feel special, to know he wasn't one of your mother's thousands of paramours. To know that he's here for you." The candles in her portrait seem to flicker. "Does it matter if he is?"</p>
<p>"Yes—" I'm cut off by an echoing ring through the gallery. It's my phone, and with that ringtone, it's my mother.</p>
<p>"You better go get that. [[She doesn't like to be kept waiting|phone rings]]," says Tía Estella, wretchedly pleased to have gotten the last word.</p>
<<set $fruit_visited to true>><p>I rummage through my bag and pull out the phone. She's calling.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Pick Up|pick up]]</li>
<li>[[Hang Up|hang up]]</li>
</ul><p>I pick up, and she doesn't let me say hello before she starts.</p>
<p>"Leonora! Good, you picked up. I realized I forgot something at the gallery, so I'm coming over."</p>
<p>"M-"</p>
<p>"Has it been hard? Never mind, of course it has. Listen, no one is good at their first job, and I'm sure the manager will go easy on you."</p>
<p>"B-"</p>
<p>"And you definitely shouldn't be on the phone while at work. You should know better."</p>
<p>She hangs up before I can say anything. I try to call her back, and [[she doesn't pick up|gallery after call]].</p><p>I hit the end call button, leaving a smear of pomegranate juice all over the screen, and breathe easier. I can't talk to her right now.</p>
<p>She, of course, doesn't let that be the end of it, and a second later a little red bubble pops up. I have a voicemail.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Listen|voicemail]]</li>
<li>[[Ignore|ignore]]</li>
</ul><p>I listen. (I always listen).</p>
<p>'Leonora? Pick up. Mierda… Leonora! If you don't pick up, I'm coming over. (distant, she's rummaging in her bag. I hear her huge keychain). I never should have let her have that job.'
<p>click.</p>
<p>Well, [[that's not surprising at all.|gallery after call]]</p>
<p>The notification feels like a splinter beneath my skin, but I put the phone away. [[I don't want to talk to her|gallery after call]].</p><p>There is an uncanny silence in the gallery now. Looking around, I can see that it's because my aunt has vanished from her painting too.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<colgroup>
<col style="width: 62px">
<col style="width: 67px">
<col style="width: 88px">
<col style="width: 83px">
<col style="width: 100px">
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Fruit</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Bird</td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><span class="corrupt">[[The Flames|flames corrupt]]</span></td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;">The Morning Star<br><br><br>The Fall<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"><span class="corrupt">[[The Exit|leave after call]]</span></td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">The Gallery</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Doll</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Flowers</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Bed</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I've had enough.</p>
<p>I leave.</p>
<p>Screw the job.</p>
<p>Screw my mother.</p>
<p>Surely, I can take the [[consequences|demon bag]] that will come?</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<colgroup>
<col style="width: 62px">
<col style="width: 67px">
<col style="width: 88px">
<col style="width: 83px">
<col style="width: 100px">
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Fruit</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Bird</td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><span class="corrupt">[[The Flames|flames corrupt]]</span></td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;">The Morning Star<br><br><br>The Fall<br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Exit</td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3">The Gallery</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Doll</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Flowers</td>
<td class="tg-nrix">The Bed</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>I'm surprised I make it home, driving this late and this angry, but I do, and start packing a bag. I don't know where I'm going except that it's away from here.</p>
<p>I don't have much to put in the bag. Clothes, mostly. I think for a moment, about packing the school books I'd left forgotten in my closet, but they will just weigh me down.</p>
<p>There's no one I could call. No one I could stay with. I'm running, directionless, but it was better than staying in that gallery.</p>
<p>All that matters now is [[moving|demon painting]].</p><p>I move around a lot, staying where I can, working where I can.</p>
<p>I feel free for the first time in my life.</p>
<p>Mostly. (I still avoid museums.)</p>
<p>My mother's fame continues to grow, and with it, the Morning Star follows me. I see his eyes on the covers of magazines, in the strobing lights of a TV.</p>
<p>Months from now, I wake up in a shitty apartment and see a billboard going up across my window. The Morning Star is so much bigger than me now.</p>
<p>And I know he will find me.</p>
[[END|end credits]]<p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Flames</strong>, 2005, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>The only thing that's left on the canvas is the almost completed list. The painting almost looks better [[without her|flames hub]] in it.</p>
<li>CANDLE</li>
<li><s>FEATHER</s></li>
<li><s>DOLL</s></li>
<li><s>FLOWER</s></li>
<li><s>FRUIT</s></li>
<li><s>CIRCLE</s></li></div><p>The scene, at first, doesn't make sense. [[My aunt|aunt]] is standing the middle of her living room, alone, her mouth open as if screaming. Her face is a mask of anguish, her fingers are contorted into claws, her eyes rolled back. Even her hair is flowing upwards as if driven by the force of her silent scream.</p>
<p>But there's nothing else here.</p><p>I move closer, and every step feels harder. I start to sweat. It's hard to breathe. I come up close to her, inspecting every brush stroke of her agony, when her face snaps towards mine and she screams.</p>
<p style="letter-spacing:.5em;"><em>THIS IS YOUR FAULT</em></p>
<p>And flames leap to life at her feet,<i> [[real flames|flames hub 2]]</i>, scorching away my aunt and the painted world she's residing in.</p><p>The flames rise around her and her agony is matched by the intensity of the heat. At her feet is a toppled over candle, the spark of her demise.</p>
<p>But the fire throws light upon the rest of the canvas, showing what was previously shadows.</p>
<p>There's past me, eyes wide but not frightened, staring at my aunt burn alive. The Morning Star has my arm in his grip, and he's pulling me away from her and towards my mother, who is watching with resignation.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me flames]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|mother flames]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">[[The Morning Star|morning star flames]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>The fire has turned my face into nothing but highlight and shadows. I am wide eyes, set in an inhuman face. When the fire flickers, I see fear reflected back at me. When it wanes, joy.</p>
<p>The past me stares at my aunt, at the flames, at the toppled over candle. She takes in every inch as if to create her own art later. The present me doesn't remember any of this.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>The Past Me<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|mother flames]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Morning Star|morning star flames]]</td>
<td>[[The Candle|candle]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>My mother, I'm now learning, wouldn't spit on her sister if she was on fire. Her gaze focuses on the past me instead, burning with anger. She doesn't scream the words like my aunt did, but I hear them all the same.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me flames]]<br></td>
<td>My Mother</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">[[The Morning Star|morning star flames]]</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>This Morning Star is static, a statue grabbing the past me's arm and dragging her back to our mother. I can almost see the motion complete itself, with his arm pushing me forward into my mother's legs.</p>
<p>I'm her problem now. That's what he wants.</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me flames]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|mother flames]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">The Morning Star</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>The candle at her feet doesn't burn or blister the way the canvas that makes up my aunt is doing. I think I can [[grab it|grab candle]].</p>
<div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<tr>
<td>[[The Past Me|past me flames]]<br></td>
<td>[[My Mother|mother flames]]</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>[[The Morning Star|morning star flames]]</td>
<td>The Candle</td>
</tr>
</table></div><p>Skin burns differently than canvas. While my aunt blackens and peels away, my own hands blister and crack as I reach for the candle.</p>
<p>It barely hurts at this point, even when my skin sloughs away and bones curl around [[the candle|gallery candle]].</p><p>And I come back, hands fine, sigils on my palms and the memories of pain only existing in my memory.</p>
<p>My aunt's painting does not recover. Instead it, and the list, have burned to a crisp, leaving a trail of ashes from the frame. I feel a pinprick of grief. For what, I can't tell anymore.</p>
<p>Behind the frame, a final item had been hidden.</p>
<ul><li style="letter-spacing:.5em;"><em>BLOOD</em></li></ul>
<p>Behind me, [[The Fall|fall corrupt]] and its garish red arc, begins to drip.</p><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Fall</strong>, 2017, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>By the time I reach it, the bottom half of the painting is almost exclusively red. The further it gets from [[the wound|fall hub]], the darker it becomes, coagulating in a way that paint doesn't.</p></div><p>This painting is the snapshot of a tragedy: the day of my mother's accident.</p>
<p>The canvas takes up the entire wall. My mother's ladder is two lines of brown on pristine white.</p>
<p>My mother, a comet falling, keeps the paintbrush in her hand, drawing her trail as she plummets, an artist until the end.</p>
<p>And [[me|past me fall]], at the bottom of the ladder.</p><p>The me in my memories held the ladder tightly. My mother at the top, careless, turned and fell.</p>
<p>The me in the painting is barely holding it at all, except to tilt it in the same arc as [[my mother's descent|blood]].</p><p>There is already a stain on the floor where my mother will land (did land, was pushed?).</p>
<p>I reach down and touch it, blood now on my hands.</p>
<p>[[And the list is complete|doubt]].</p><p>That isn't how it happened.</p>
<p>I don't remember that being how it happened.</p>
<p>Everything else I could doubt, but this happened last year. This ruined my life.</p>
<p>I was going to go to school. I was going to get away from her, and then the accident shackled me back to her side. It's not like I could leave her to fend for herself.</p>
<p>She's my mother.</p>
<p>The phone rings again. I look up at the Morning Star, and his empty canvas. I finished his stupid list. Don't I deserve some answers?</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[From The Morning Star|begin ritual]].</li>
<li>[[From my mother|mother arrives]].</li>
<li>[[I don't deserve answers|dont deserve answers]].</li>
<li>[[I don't want answers|no answers]].</li>
</ul><p>I look at my blood-stained hands, and know that I don't deserve answers. I know all I need to know.</p>
<p>I pushed my mother off the ladder.</p>
<p>I knocked over the candle that burnt my aunt alive.</p>
<p>I can even see some smaller sins: the bird I hated, my childhood destruction<<if $pillsfound is false>>.<<else>>, the pills in the toilet.<<endif>></p>
<p>All things I did, then forgot to keep up the illusion that I was a martyr, not a demon. I feel a warm hand on my shoulder, and the Morning Star is there. He smiles so kindly. I'm sure I smile the same way.</p>
<p>"Do you want to fix it?" He says. I nod. "Good. It's what you were always meant to do."</p>
<p>His hand touches my forehead, a gentle brushstroke, and [[everything goes black|ruin end]].</p><p>There is a painting of me hanging in a gallery now. People come from around the world to see me, to see The Fallen. She painted me in white and red, places me next to The Fall, and calls it a collection. They eat it up.</p>
<p>I'm making her famous. That was the deal. I wonder if she's finally happy with me.</p>
[[END|end credits]]<p>I don't need answers. I know what happened, and it wasn't what I saw.</p>
<p>I would remember knocking her off the ladder. I'd remember wanting to.</p>
<p>Those painted worlds belong to her, and act as windows into her perspective, which means that I can't trust them.</p>
<p>But <i>something</i> is happening here tonight.</p>
<p>The Morning Star is back, watching me, and waiting. I walk right up to the frame, and smear a bloody streak across his placard.</p>
<p>"I'm done," I whisper, a promise signed in blood.</p>
<p>Something in his face changes, bitterness or pride. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into my mother's subpar art.</p>
<p>On the way out, I pass my mother's car going in the other direction. [[I don't stop. Neither does she|leave future]].</p><p>Months pass, and she fades from the art world's spotlight quietly, like a candle expertly snuffed out.</p>
<p>She tries to call me once. I stare at the phone for a long time, debating whether or not to pick up. Whatever happened back in the gallery, she's my mother.</p>
<p>The choice is taken out of my hands when a man bumps into me, and my phone falls and shatters.</p>
<p>I recognize him as he walks away. I've forgotten a lot of things, but the Morning Star is etched in my memory.</p>
<p>She never tries to call again. For once, the Morning Star did me a favor.</p>
[[END|end credits]]<p>I didn't go through all this to talk to someone I could call on the phone.</p>
<p>My body knows what to do: the sigil gets painted on the floor. The candle, fruit, doll, feather, flowers at the points, with the last pointing right at the canvas.</p>
<p>I knew how to do this, because the instructions were carved into me now. I knew it like breathing. Everything else was up for debate, but THIS was clear. This was easy.</p>
<p>[[Is that what it feels like to make art?|morning star resplendent]]</p><p>Once everything is set, I sit outside the circle, and it happens in an instant. He is inside the circle, which is better than missing, but not as good as being back in his painting.</p>
<p>But nothing tonight has gone my way, so I'll take it.</p>
<p>He looks around the gallery, licks his lips, and smiles at me. "Thank you. You're very good at your job." His voice sounds wrong, a human voice spoken through a canvas mask.</p>
<p>I look at the charred remains of my aunt, up at his own empty canvas and raise an eyebrow.</p>
<p>He laughs, and takes a step towards me. "If you think that taking care of her paintings is why Fatima brought you here, then you haven't been paying attention." Another step. "Pay attention now. " Another. "You couldn't before, but now you can see clearly, can't you?"</p>
<p>He is right at the edge of the circle.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[I can.|i can]]</li>
<li>[[Nothing makes sense.|nothing makes sense]]</li>
</ul><p>"I can." For once, I can see clearly now.</p>
<p>"Good. I knew you were clever." A final step, and he's out of the circle. He grabs my chin, hands warm and soft. He brushes away a fleck of blood that had smeared there during my work. "Your mother regretted what she did her whole life, you know?"</p>
<p>His smile is so much more beautiful in the real world. My mother truly never did him justice.</p>
<p>"Will you regret it, I wonder? If I offer you a choice: [[A new deal|new deal]], or [[a way out|way out]]."</p><p>"Nothing makes sense," I say.</p>
<p>"Then let me explain it to you." A final step and he's out of the circle. "Your mother made a deal. She wanted to be a famous painter. And the price of that was you."</p>
<p>He grabs my chin, hands warm and soft. He brushes away a fleck of blood that had smeared there during my work. "And she regretted paying it her whole life."</p>
<p>His smile is so much more beautiful in the real world. My mother truly never did him justice.</p>
<p>"Will you regret it, I wonder? I'll offer you a choice: [[A new deal|new deal]], or [[a way out|way out]]."</p><p>"What kind of deal?" I ask, though we both know I've already made my choice.</p>
<p>"Same as hers, in reverse," He says, and I like the sound of it. It's karmic in a way I can really appreciate.</p>
<p>We shake on it. His fingers don't stain, even though everything else I've touched is still coated in blood. It isn't long until my mother arrives, and sees us standing side by side.</p>
<p>"Hello Fatima," he says and grins. We both delight in her surprise. "It seems like you've just been [[outbid|accept deal end]]."</p><p>There is a painting of my mother hanging in a gallery, much bigger than the one before. More people come to see my paintings than ever saw hers. The Morning Star delivers on his promises, and also, I'm much better at art than she was.</p>
<p>Sometimes, at night, I find myself back in the galleries facing her.</p>
<p>Is she happy?</p>
<p>After all, she's my most popular painting, and all she ever wanted was to be famous.</p>
[[END|end credits]]<p>"The way out is simple. You were the price of her deal. She will be the price of yours."</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Do it.|do it]]</li>
<li>[[I don't know.|i dont know]]</li>
</ul>
<p>"Do it," I say, before I have time to regret.</p>
<p>He reaches out and grabs my palms, and easy as anything, wipes the scars away, like they were never there (were they ever there?).</p>
<p>"You're free to go now. Fatima and I will discuss the rest of the details." He sounds like he will enjoy that.</p>
<p>"Will you hurt her?" I ask. She's my mother.</p>
<p>"That's up to her," he says, and nudges me. "She'll be here soon. You should [[go|go end]]."</p><p>I pass her car on the way out. She doesn't notice me. [[I'm not surprised|go end 2]].</p><p>Perhaps there's something perverse in me, but I chose to major in art history again. You think I'd have enough of it, but it turns out there's plenty to love when it's made by people with talent.</p>
<p>And pretty soon after I left, everyone finally noticed she didn't have any. The exhibition flopped. The reviews were all negative, and the world quickly forgot about her.</p>
<p>I didn't, of course, but I certainly made an effort. It seemed like I was good at forgetting things. </p>
[[THE END|end credits]]<p>"I don't know," I say, unsure if I can do this.</p>
<p>"Shame," he says, reaching out and grabbing my hands. He traces the sigils with his fingertips, gentle as feathers. "That was a one time offer." His fingers sink into the palm of my hand, not even bothering to use his nails, but drilling into my palm with an inhuman force.</p>
<p>He reaches for the fragile bones connecting wrist and fingers and drives through them until I scream. No matter how much I struggle, he won't let go.</p>
<p>I hear footsteps behind me, and he smiles. "Fatima. Right on time." He twists, bones snap.</p>
<p> I feel a soft hand, smell my mother's perfume. "Let's finish this."</p>
<p>"Good things take time," the Morning Star chides. The center of my palms begin to burn away (just like my aunt). Eventually, [[it all stops|the painting of you]].</p><p>The phone stops ringing, and I hear footsteps through the other empty galleries. I wanted to see her, and for once, she doesn't disappoint.</p>
<p>She strides into the gallery limping; I can tell she ran here. Her face is a little flushed, her hair a smidge out of place. Her eyes land first on the paintings, and I can see the thrill of pride at seeing her work up on the wall. Only after she's soaked that in, does she turn her eyes to me.</p>
<p>"Leonora, what have you done?" she says, disappointed. She's looking at my bleeding hands dripping on the floor, she's looking at the burnt up painting of her sister, and the vandalized Morning Star behind me.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li><a data-passage="focus action">What have I <em><strong><u>done</u></strong></em>?</a></li>
<li><a data-passage="focus self">What have <em><strong><u>I</u></strong></em> done?</a></li>
</ul><p>"What have I <i>done</i>?" I say, and feel my voice rising into hysteria. "I did what you asked me to. I took care of your paintings."</p>
<p>She looks back at the burned up painting. "It looks to me like you destroyed my sister… again."</p>
<<include "focus pt 2">><p>"Again? I didn't do anything to her!" I say.</p>
<p>"She burned alive because of you." She sneers, moving closer to the ashes. Will she collect them, I wonder, and place them in the same urn as the rest of her sister?</p>
<p>"Yeah, well last time you said she had a heart attack, so what am I supposed to believe?"</p>
<p>She bends down, drawing her fingers through the soot. "I suppose you'll believe what you want to believe. You always have." She sighs. "But it's fine. We can fix it." She straightens. "I have an earlier draft of the piece, we can replace it and you can keep the job."</p>
<p>"…keep the job?" I whisper.</p>
<p>"Yes, not that you were any good at it, but you're still my daughter. I won't allow this kind of failure."</p>
<p>There's a million questions crammed in my throat, but I can't get any of them out. I'm just so</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Confused.|confused]]</li>
<li>[[Angry.|angry]]</li>
</ul><p>"What have <i>I</i> done?" I say, feeling my voice rise into hysteria. "What have <i>you</i> done?"</p>
<p>She takes in the blood, and the ashes, and raises a skeptical eyebrow. "I haven't done anything here. But it looks like you destroyed my sister…again."</p>
<<include "focus pt 2">><p>I'm just so confused. Her words and my reality don't match up, and that doesn't match up with what I saw tonight. I feel like my mind is made of different puzzles, and none of their jagged edges match.</p>
<p>She sighs at my silence, and opens her arms. "Come here. It's been a long night, hasn't it?"</p>
<p>I can't remember the last time she offered me a hug. But for all I know, it was this morning and I just forgot.</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Accept|accept hug]]</li>
<li>[[Reject|reject]]</li>
</ul><p>"No," I say, and take a step away. "You don't get to do that now."</p>
<<include "anger pt 2">><p>I feel the pressure in my throat turn into rage, as if I'm swallowing a hot coal. "Failure? Don't you think you're the failure here?!"</p>
<<include "anger pt 2">><p>She snaps. "What are you talking about, Leonora? I've done nothing but take care of you for years. I've fed you, and housed you, and clothed you."</p>
<p>"But you were supposed to LOVE me!"</p>
<p>Nothing changes in her eyes. She does not claim she does. Instead, she looks around the gallery. "After all you've seen, after realizing what you ARE, can you blame me?"</p>
<p>"YES!" I scream. "I was a child!"</p>
<p>"You were a little demon, is what you were." She sneers. "Always ruining everything. I tried to send you away, but you saw how that ended." She smears the ashes between her fingertips. "And then the 'accident'. Are you pleased, Leonora? That you've destroyed more of me. More of my art."</p>
<p>It always comes back to that, doesn't it? She only loves</p>
<ul class="dialog">
<li>[[Herself.|herself]]</li>
<li>[[Her Art.|her art]]</li>
</ul><p>It has been a long night. The past few months have been a series of long nights, and I'm tired. I take one step towards her, then another, then another until I'm in her arms.</p>
<p>Her arms hook awkwardly under mine, her fingers gripping too tightly right between my ribs.</p>
<p>I try to pull away, and she doesn't let go, only digs nails in deeper into my side.</p>
<p>I hear a man's voice behind me, but no footsteps to herald his arrival. "Cutting it a little close, aren't you, Fatima?"</p>
<p>"Whatever," she says, tightening her grip with every struggle. "She's your problem now."</p>
<p>Warm hands land on my shoulder, a soft brush stroke across the crown of my head, and [[everything goes black|the painting of you]].</p><p>There is a painting of me hanging in a gallery now. People come from around the world to see me, to see The Fallen. She painted me in white and red, places me next to The Fall, and calls it a collection. They eat it up.</p>
<p>I'm making her famous. I suppose she must finally be proud.</p>
[[END|end credits]]<p>She only loves her art. I've seen her throw away money, health, me, all in service of her tacky art. I turn around, and the Morning Star is back in his frame, as if he never left.</p>
<p>No wonder she's looking at me like I'm crazy. Well I'll give her a reason to look at me.</p>
<p>I reach up for the painting, plunge my fingers into the middle of it, and rip through canvas like it was nothing but newsprint.</p>
<p>The painting bleeds all over me, from within it's frame I can see the Morning Star's eye widen. Even he didn't expect this. My mother yowls, and rips me away from him, but [[the damage is already done|the morning star bleeds]].</p><p>The Morning Star is in ribbons on the floor, the canvas oozing blood as if I'd torn apart something real. She cradles the pieces as if I'd torn apart her lover.</p>
<p>He looks up at me, moving almost in stop motion within his painting, and mouths a single word.</p>
<p>[["RUN."|morning star end]]</p><p>I don't. I walk out of the gallery, calmly, hearing my mother sob behind me. She doesn't follow me, not when I get in her car, not when I take my things from the house.</p>
<p>I don't know why I'm surprised.</p>
<p>Months from now, I see a piece in the paper about her, the artist who lost her mind and destroyed her own gallery.</p>
<p>Months from then, I think I see the Morning Star in the background of paintings. He's only ever in shambles, an eye, a hand, a wretched wing.</p>
<p>I look away, and forget I saw anything at all.</p>
[[END|end credits]]<p>She only loves herself, and that's why she doesn't see me coming. She considers herself a work of art, something that should not be desecrated, which is why I'm able to shove her so easily.</p>
<p>That and her leg never healed quite right. I suppose she blames me for that too.</p>
<p>Once again, she falls.</p>
<p>Her head cracks on the parquet floors and, this time, [[she doesn't get up|mom death end]].</p><p>I stare at her for a long time. She doesn't move. After a while, she doesn't breathe either, and once that happens, I feel a hand on my shoulder.</p>
<p>"You did what you had to do," says the Morning Star. His voice and hands are warm. The blood on my own is cold and tacky. "Come on. Our business is finished here."</p>
<p>He pulls me away from the body, sprawled out on the floor like the centerpiece of the exhibition. He pulls me up, back into his painting. I can forget about her now.</p>
[[END|end credits]]<<include "all credits">>
<div style="font-size:1.5em;text-align:center;"><<click "Back to Start">><<script>>SugarCube.State.restart();<</script>><</click>></div><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Morning Star</strong>, 2019, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A <br><span style="letter-spacing:.5em;"><em>wretchedly empty</em></span><br>chair sits by a window that opens out to an inky night sky. In the distance, there is only a single shining star, a thick glob of white paint.</p></div>
<p>The painting looks wretchedly unbalanced now. The place where the Morning Star used to be is huge, and it makes the whole piece look wrong on a fundamental level.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Flames</strong>, 2005, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A brown-skinned woman sits between two candles, looking directly at <em>me</em>. She moves sometimes, restless. A list is written beside her in dripping white paint.</p>
<ul>
<li>CANDLE</li>
<li><<if $bird_visited>><s>FEATHER</s><<else>>FEATHER<<endif>></li>
<li><<if $doll_visited>><s>DOLL</s><<else>>DOLL<<endif>></li>
<li><<if $flowers_visited>><s>FLOWER</s><<else>>FLOWER<<endif>></li>
<li><<if $fruit_visited>><s>FRUIT</s><<else>>FRUIT<<endif>></li>
<li><<if $bed_visited>><s>CIRCLE</s><<else>>CIRCLE<<endif>></li>
</ul></div>
<p>My aunt is watching me as I move around the gallery. She mostly stays quiet, just staring with her black beady eyes. Whenever I open my mouth to just talk to her, her gaze skitters away from me and looks up at the empty Morning Star.</p>
<p>I know how to take a hint.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Fall</strong>, 2017, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A massive raw canvas with a broad red line across its surface. It is the cleanest line in the entire gallery, a single flawless arc ending abruptly right before the edge of the canvas.</p></div>
<p>Nothing had changed, yet. I keep looking at it out of the corner of my eyes, waiting for it to betray me.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Fruit</strong>, 1997, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A pomegranate spills its seeds out onto a bed sheet. The window in the background throws shadows on it that look like prison bars.</p></div>
<p>If I step too close to this one, the air fills with the smell pomegranates and musk. So I don't.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Bird</strong>, 2004, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A grey bird sits in a dark grey cage. It's looking at me, beak open and furious.</p></div>
<p>My ears ring slightly when I look at it.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Doll</strong>, 2006, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p> A medium canvas, twenty by twenty, slathered in black paint. A single white splotch sits in the corner. The opposite corner is artfully torn.</p></div>
<p>Now that I have my old doll back, I can tell that they look nothing alike. She took it just to have a model, but couldn't even bothering drawing from it.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Flowers</strong>, 2013, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A still life of red flowers in a blue vase on a brown table.</p></div>
<p>I look around the edges of the painting, hoping to find some hint of the boy's face so that it could slot back in to my memory. But my mother didn't care enough about him, and it seems like I didn't either.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Bed</strong>, 2018, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A blue canvas, brush strokes obvious and crooked. In the center is a red bed, and a figure lying alone. In the distance is a small window, revealing the space to be a vast room, rather than the sky. The figure on the bed is broken into segments, and a dismembered hand clutches a paintbrush. The figure has my mother's eyes, and no mouth.</p></div>
<p>If I look closely, it's almost like the eyes are screaming out at me. I suppose I should give her some credit. The figure does look like it's in pain.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Fruit</strong>, 1997, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A pomegranate spills bright red seeds out onto a bed sheet. The window in the background throws shadows on the bed that look like prison bars.</p></div>
<p>I keep coming back to this one. It was the first one my mother painted, but I can't tell why.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><div class="tg-wrap"><table class="tg">
<colgroup>
<col style="width: 62px">
<col style="width: 67px">
<col style="width: 88px">
<col style="width: 83px">
<col style="width: 100px">
</colgroup>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><<if passage() is "fruit corrupt" or passage() is "the fruit pre" or passage() is "the fruit post">>The Fruit<<elseif $fruit_visited>>[[The Fruit|the fruit post]]<<elseif $paint_progress is 4>><span class="corrupt">[[The Fruit|fruit corrupt]]</span><<else>>[[The Fruit|the fruit pre]]<<endif>></td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><<if passage() is "bird corrupt" or passage() is "the bird post">>The Bird<<elseif $bird_visited>>[[The Bird|the bird post]]<<else>><span class="corrupt">[[The Bird|bird corrupt]]</span><<endif>></td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><<if passage() is "flames talk">>The Flames<<else>>[[The Flames|flames talk]]<<endif>></td>
<td class="tg-nrix" rowspan="3" style="padding-top: 0px;"><br><<if passage() is "morning star corrupt">>The Morning Star<<else>>[[The Morning Star|morning star corrupt]]<<endif>><br><br><<if passage() is "the fall pre">>The Fall<<else>>[[The Fall|the fall pre]]<<endif>><br></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"><<if passage() is "sure leave">>The Exit<<else>>[[The Exit|sure leave]]<<endif>></td>
<td class="tg-nrix" colspan="3"><<if passage() is "gallery hub 1">>The Gallery <<else>>[[The Gallery|gallery hub 1]]<<endif>></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="tg-nrix"></td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><<if passage() is "the doll pre" or passage() is "the doll post" or passage() is "doll corrupt">>The Doll<<elseif $doll_visited>>[[The Doll|the doll post]]<<elseif $bed_visited || $bird_visited>><span class="corrupt">[[The Doll|doll corrupt]]</span><<else>>[[The Doll|the doll pre]]<<endif>></td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><<if passage() is "the flowers post" or passage() is "flowers corrupt">>The Flowers<<elseif $flowers_visited>>[[The Flowers|the flowers post]]<<else>><span class="corrupt">[[The Flowers|flowers corrupt]]</span><<endif>></td>
<td class="tg-nrix"><<if passage() is "the bed post" or passage() is "bed corrupt">>The Bed<<elseif $bed_visited>>[[The Bed|the bed post]]<<else>><span class="corrupt">[[The Bed|bed corrupt]]</span><<endif>></td>
</tr>
</table></div><p class="info">Fatima Santillana, <strong>The Doll</strong>, 2006, oil on canvas</p>
<div class="description"><p>A medium canvas, twenty by twenty, slathered in black paint. A single white splotch sits in the corner. The opposite corner is artfully torn.</p></div>
<p>I try to remember what happened to the doll I had, but it's almost like once she painted it, it stopped being real.</p>
<<include "temp hub">><<set $visitedman to false>>
<<set $visitedmother to false>>
<<set $paint_progress to 0>>
<<set $bird_visited to false>>
<<set $bed_visited to false>>
<<set $flowers_visited to false>>
<<set $doll_visited to false>>
<<set $pillsfound to false>>
<<set $fruit_visited to false>>
<<set $flames_seen to false>>
<<set $morning_seen to false>>
<<set $fall_seen to false>>
<<set $bed_seen to false>><<include "all credits">>
<div style="font-size:1.5em;text-align:center;">[[Back to Start|Start]]</div><h1>About Night Guard/ Morning Star</h1>
<p><strong><em>Night Guard / Morning Star</em></strong> is an interactive story written and designed by <a href="http://astriddalmady.com/" target="_blank">Astrid Dalmady</a>. It was released for <a href="https://ifcomp.org/" target="_blank">IFComp 2019</a>.</p>
<h2>Spoiler Free Description</h2>
<<link "Toggle View ">>
<<toggleclass "#blurb" "hide">>
<</link>>
<span id="blurb" class="about hide"><p>My mother made a deal.</p>
<p>So here I am, working the night shift, alone with her work.</p>
</span>
<h2>Content Warnings</h2>
<<link "Toggle View ">>
<<toggleclass "#content_warn" "hide">>
<</link>>
<span id="content_warn" class="about hide"><p>Real Messed-up Family Dynamics, Gaslighting, Animal Cruelty, Blood, Violence, Death</p></span>
<div style="font-size:1.5em;text-align:center;">[[Back to Start|Start]]</div><p><strong><em>Night Guard / Morning Star</em></strong> is an interactive story written and designed by <a href="http://astriddalmady.com/" target="_blank">Astrid Dalmady</a>.</p>
<div class="description"><p>If you liked this, and want to to help me make more things like it, please consider:</p>
<ul>
<li>• Joining <a href="http://eepurl.com/bjxE5b" target="_blank">my mailing list</a> to get alerts for each new story.</li>
<li>• Becoming a <a href="https://www.patreon.com/dastridly" target="_blank">Patreon patron</a>. Every little bit helps me continue to make and release these kinds of projects.</li></ul></div>
<p>Made in: <a href="http://twinery.org/" target="_blank">Twine</a>
<br/>Backgrounds: <a href="https://www.transparenttextures.com/" target="_blank">Transparent Textures</a>
<br />Cover Image: <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435984" targer="blank">Sibylle by Camille Corot</a></p>
<p>Special Thanks to Sam Kabo Ashwell, Katherine Morayati, Melanie Marie Martinez, and my writing group for all the advice and support.</p>
<p>And a huge THANK YOU to these generous <a href="https://www.patreon.com/dastridly" target="_blank">patrons of the arts</a>:</p>
<p>Adam Easterling, Alicia Neptune, Alina, Amy Linsamouth, Ayuramy Alcala, Dumbo adorabilis, Eva Anderson, Flameysaur, Liza Daly, Michael Potter, and Some Strange Circus.</p>
<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-nd/4.0/88x31.png" /></a>