by Bryce Meerhaeghe

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The dream opened on a white void, and Esme sat before a blank canvas at its center. With a palette of paint resting in her left hand, she dabbed her brush in the blue pigment and added a bit of white. She swirled the mix at the bottom of the wooden slate and, satisfied with the shade of cyan, she brought the brush to the canvas. She began with gentle stippling, patting the color against the canvas to texture it; as the paint took to the blank vellum, cyan bloomed above her in the void, shifting like smoke with each impact of her brush.

The dream cut out her rinsing the brush, but she knew it was clean when she mixed the red and yellow. She slashed orange across the canvas and the color burst across the void, cutting beneath the cyan sky in a vibrant trail.

“I don’t know,” her patron groaned. “Is this all you have?”

Esme turned. Simone Roche stood behind her, rubbing her chin as she looked over the colors. Her usual black attire shifted, as though it were made of shadow. “You really need to apply yourself to stand out.”

“I concur,” a faceless man stepped out from behind her. “You need to ask yourself, ‘what does Esme Whistler bring to the table?”

Esme opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She reached for her neck, but could only feel the empty space that once held her throat.

“Now, this is more of what I expect!” Simone exclaimed. Her patron was now behind Esme again, but the artist could not turn to look at her. Rather, she now found herself sitting naked on a plinth, the white marble a stark contrast to her brown skin. “Human novelty comes from curation, and this is absolutely brilliant! Strip the canvas now so we can begin to shop it around.”

Esme looked up: the canvas she was painting on had vanished and an inky black had overtaken the colors of the void. Esme swallowed as she remembered what came next. A faceless man in a dark suit grabbed her shoulders as a stinging sensation began to radiate across her back. She tried to scream, but only hollow air escaped her missing throat. Her attacker kept the flap of skin taut, pulling on the muscle as his blade carefully sawed through the connective tissue binding hide to muscle.

By the time he was done, Esme’s vision swam. Her attacker stepped around to face her. He crouched to meet her eye, and Esme took in the sight of intense scarlet splattered across the polished, blank metal face of the machine. He held up the skin from her back, displaying the tattoo inked there: line art of an angel ascending.

*–***–*-*-

Esme woke with a start, the flesh of her back tingling as her pulse raged in her ears. Her eyes darted around the room, but she quickly got her bearings: the lights of the movie theater had just come up and the final credits disappeared at the top of the screen. Credits were far faster now that the executives were named, exclusively.

She took a moment to catch her breath. Her heart returned to a steady beat, so she rose from the faux leather seat and walked to the theater’s exit with a tired stride. The lobby was packed, welcoming customers for the Friday premieres of new AI-generated blockbusters; mindless entertainment fit for the masses down to the lowest common denominator. She gently pushed through the crowd, thankful she had the day off so she could get in early and avoid this exact rush. Finally outside, the cool neon of Detroit’s February evening cast itself across her body. With a tap against her temple, her augmented reality interface faded back into view, offering the time as 18:36. “Won’t be due at the gallery for a few more hours,” she sighed and began to walk.

Her hometown hadn’t changed all that much, but where she hung out certainly had. When she was a kid, she loved the holidays when her parents took her to Greektown or Campus Martius; she knew money was scarce, and these trips made that period of the year special. She would bask in the cool blues and greens of the holiday tree that occupied the center of the ice rink, or giggle at the holographic Santa Claus that soared over the streetlights.

These days, she got to see the richer neighborhoods without the holly and cheer. When she first moved, she spent weeks exploring the amenities it offered with voracious excitement. Now, it had faded to little more than background noise. She couldn’t rely on any brick-and-mortar shop sticking around for long: whether it be because the independent store couldn’t afford the rent, or the parent company was forced to downsize when the store no longer made a profit. Coffee shops and craft breweries stuck around, thankfully, and Esme took advantage of the social interaction they offered for a time. This too eventually became subsumed into the background hum that occupied her life, as the artists she drank with came to remind her too much of work.

For tonight, she passed these places with little acknowledgment; she didn’t care if any of her colleagues were drinking, and they didn’t care that she could have joined them. She continued her trek, passing her apartment building to simply exist in the brisk evening air. The cool concrete was awash in the glow of advertisements for Rocket Mortgage and Comerica Bank. She found the battle between the reds and blues splattering across the pavement to be far more engrossing than the film she just slept through.

Without realizing it, she found herself wandering to a familiar area. As the city restructured and wealth began to consolidate in the northern districts, the Riverfront became an area of focus for the ambitious and, albeit rare, altruistic city governments. The Spirit of Detroit, a bronze statue that once sat in front of the Municipal Center, became the centerpiece of those efforts: a means to unite the city around a common symbol and garner support for more affordable housing. When the statue left, having been sold by the city to Ilitch Holdings before they relocated to Los Angeles, local investment had ceased entirely and the area fell into squalor. The families that moved in now did so for the cheaper rent and proximity to the rest of the city, even as its amenities became unaffordable.

Walking through it now, Esme’s heart skipped with the beats of nostalgia. She remembered taking a similar route to school with her friends: discussing trends, crushes, and other adolescent nonsense that felt monumental at the time. A familiar smell wafted across her nose. Anai’s Japanese Steakhouse, while a bit more decrepit, stood proud on the ground floor of an apartment complex, still offering the great food and entertainment as it did when she was a kid. Just as it did then, the scent of salted pork and roasted vegetables offered a sweet tang and a bit of heat that cut through the acrid smell of piss and rot. She salivated, feeling the ghost of warm broth and spongy noodles slipping down her throat but her stomach protested. The popcorn was a bad idea, she silently groaned and pressed on.

With the statue gone, the municipal offices moved to a newer town hall off Cass Avenue, leaving the old building abandoned. The walls were a cacophony of graffiti now: local gangs looking to pass signals to their allies or simply kill time with a can of spray paint. While some of the work on display was mindless, the locals dubbed the wall the New Spirit of Detroit; a mural showcasing local talent. For every crude rendering of city management or hyper stylized “fuck,” there were symphonic self-portraits or cathartic typographies of the word “fuck.” It was art generated by human beings for themselves and their neighbors; and it’s where Esme Whistler got her start.

Her first piece was gone now, washed away in a failed revitalization project but Esme didn’t mourn. She stood in the cold, looking over the new works that had taken its place. Among the tags and profanity, someone drew a scene of two swordsmen clashing on a hill. It was painted with exterior paints and rendered to ensure every brushstroke acted as action lines for heightened intensity. Next to it, as if the impish figure was enjoying the show, Le Nain Rouge danced to an unknown rhythm. The local legend was rendered with red spray paint, but the finer details were lined with deep, black strokes. As a result, his face and torso were ringed by a red halo, yet he still offered a mischievous smile with devilish eyes. Around the corner, another person painted the image of a young black woman in a yellow dress standing in the midst of overwhelming shadow. The artist clearly used stencils to get the shading just right; evidence of their experiments could be found along the sidewalk in the form of random shapes surrounded by browns and yellows. Esme couldn’t speak to who the subject of the portrait was, but while contributions overlapped with each other all over the wall, the painting remained untouched by its neighbors. It may be a memorial, she thought.

“Oh!”

She turned toward the voice and found a young person slipping headphones from their head. They looked to be in their early twenties with sepia brown skin that contrasted with their white undercut. They were dressed in a simple Los Angeles Red Wings hoodie, unzipped to expose their white tank top, as well as blue jeans stained with various colors of paint and ink.

Esme smiled and gestured to the wall. “Anything yours?”

The artist hesitated. “A few of them, yeah.”

“Who did the portrait? It’s impressive.”

The person slipped past Esme, slinging the duffel bag from their shoulder to settle in front of the piece. “It’s a communal effort.”

“Huh.” Esme looked closer. She now saw the myriad of styles layered upon each other: one artist approached an arm with sharp, defined lines only for another to come along and soften them. The face of the young woman herself seemed to be particularly controversial, with the ghost of various expressions painted over each other. The resulting effect provided an air of uncanny uncertainty to the subject, as if she wasn’t sure if she was content with the fate dealt to her or ready to stir a fiery rebellion over it. “Did everyone use spray paint?”

“Most,” the artist replied, setting out their own cans. They looked up into the woman’s face, and their eyes swam. “She’s my mom.”

“Oh,” Esme’s follow up questions died in her throat. She looked over the portrait again; no matter the artist, they all seemed to agree what would befall the subject. “I’m sorry.”

“Did you kill her?” The question was muffled by the respirator the artist fit over their face.

“No?”

They met her with a glare that held a wry smile. “Then why are you apologizing?”

Esme smiled back. “How’d it happen?”

“Robbery. Cops opened fire and she was one of the bystanders they hit.”

“Jesus,” she cursed beneath the soft clacking as the artist shook a paint can. They held a stencil in place, adding texture to their mom’s yellow dress.

“You an artist?” They asked, punctuated by the soft hiss of their work.

“Yeah,” Esme replied. “I actually have a gallery opening tomorrow.”

They paused for a moment. “Good money in that.”

“Yeah,” Esme adjusted her heated jacket, rubbing the polyester mesh between her fingers. It was soft and smooth, but echoed the ghosts of the rough fabrics she wore as a child. She paused and lifted her hand to look at it. In her focused state, the metal installed into her flesh felt heavy. She could feel every push of the actuators in her fingers as well as the subtle grind of the gyroscope in her wrist.

It’s all mechanically designed to improve your art down to the atomic level, Roche pitched to her back then.

Cybernetic accuracy over humanity, Esme thought now.

“Do you like it?” The artist asked and glanced briefly at her hand. “Having a patron, I mean.”

Esme looked at them, meeting their eyes. “It has its moments. I’m more meant to be seen and not heard, though.”

She felt the artist scoff as they returned to work. Her eyes glanced back at the mural. It was a myriad of designs, styles, and characters; none of the artists were paid for their time or effort, nor will the city recognize it as art when they try to gentrify the area again. It is art with an audience, but art with no monetary value.

Yet, she still felt her heart leap at the kinetic energy of the combatants; she felt her legs tense to join Le Nain Rouge in his dance; and she felt the love this community had for the mother they lost. No monetary value, but it is appreciated, she thought.

“I miss this.”

They turned back to her. “Sorry?”

Esme smiled. “Did you recruit me for my patron?”

They paused, eyebrow arched as they balanced themself with their can. “No?”

“Then why are you apologizing?” She returned their wry smile from earlier. The artist held their quizzical expression, watching the strange woman turn on her heel and depart up the street.

*–***–*-*-

The gallery was alight with life hours later: solemn, dignified, but life nonetheless. Esme adjusted her sunglasses. This was the opening of a new gallery for Simone Roche, renowned art dealer and Esme’s patron; the one who liked to remind her how she “was saved from the gutter” once she had a drink or two. The exterior walls of the gallery were modest brickwork that complimented the exposed metal supports and pipes that lined the ceiling. In contrast, the white pop-up walls that displayed the paintings radiated with light as if to rip the eye from the building’s humble supports to the elite work they contained.

A few pieces were Esme’s, brought out from Roche’s private storage. From her vantage point, Esme could see only one piece: “Neon Ascent.” It was the first painting she made under Roche’s brand, one her patron felt captured Esme’s life story. It depicted an angel, awash in white, flying through a turquoise sky to Heaven’s embrace and away from a Hell lit with magentas and blues. Roche loved the piece, claiming it captured Esme’s desperation for a better life. In a way, she was right, but Esme felt the overdesigned composition was more out of desperation to get paid than one of escape. They could be one in the same.

“I have no idea how you do these sober,” Roche lamented, snapping Esme back to the present with a wave of her hand. The woman was in her late 60’s, but the various modifications she made to her appearance ensured she’d never look a day past 35. The only immediately obvious ones were her cybernetic eyes and ears, both deep silver. She wore a black turtleneck dress that went to her knees at an asymmetric hem, exposing her left thigh which was clad in black leather pants.

“Have to be if I’m going to sell this one,” Esme responded, nodding to her piece. She ran a hand over her cybernetic forearms, gripping the cool metal to steady her heart. She worked on the piece over a year ago, but left it purposely unfinished to keep it from Roche’s attention. Her visit to the New Spirit of Detroit last night finally motivated her to put the final touches in the painting’s hidden code. Her patron’s eyes shifted to the piece, and she adjusted her silver rimmed glasses accordingly.

“Back to minimalism, I see,” Roche sighed. Esme dubbed her latest piece “La Mort Rouge” and made sure it lived up to that moniker. On the surface, the canvas was coated in barred red paint, textured with every stroke. “I knew I should have checked what you were submitting.”

Esme’s hand shifted to the seat of her stool, and her nails dug into the leather cushion. “This was more of a last-minute decision on my part. I assure you there’s more to this one, though.”

Roche glared at her. “An AI and a 3D printer can get the same effect.”

“Scan it,” Esme replied.

Roche glanced back at the painting, then smiled. “You clever little minx.”

Her eyes switched to terahertz mode: just below the first coat, a scene unfolded. A robed figure stood at the top of a staircase, high above the revelers though one seemed to be giving chase. Beyond them, a grandfather clock stood at the center with its hands missing.

“Now that’s more of what I was expecting,” Roche said.

“Glad to —” Roche cut her artist off with a raised finger.

“Did I sound done?” She tsked. “It’s a fun trick, but my earlier point still stands. Besides, the original colors are now lost. The whole thing looks red and yellow under a terahertz filter.”

Esme’s nails threatened to crack against the metal supports of her seat. “Why not go one level deeper then?”

“Are you serious?” Roche rubbed her temple.

“I promise it’s worth it.”

Roche rolled her eyes but acquiesced. She turned her cybernetics to the more powerful X-ray and went one level deeper. Beneath the scene, a pattern of black and white squares popped before her. Her eyes’ digital interface then highlighted the whole thing yellow, with a small text box directing her to a link. “A QR code?”

Esme nodded.

“A little outdated,” Roche threw up her hands. “And again, the augmented reality aspect is unique, but an AI can also do this.”

“An AI can’t curate the experience though,” Esme said, a small tremor in her voice. “It’s part of the novelty of human artistry, right?”

“I guess,” Roche tapped the link floating in her augmented vision. A browser window popped up briefly, glowing a gentle white. It faded just as quickly, replaced by scrolling code in the corner of her vision. Red Death.exe has been installed, the text notified her.

A wall of text exploded across Roche’s eyes as the world slipped between filters: green, blue, red.

“Fuck!” The patron doubled over, crying as a migraine burst across the front of her skull. She stumbled back, knocking over a waiter and sending a silver tray of canapés across the concrete floor. She threw off her glasses and clutched her eyes. The small processors tried desperately to make sense of the cacophony of visual information the virus uploaded. However, the power required caused the implants to overheat, and the patron could feel the surrounding muscle contract in response. Roche collapsed and screamed.

Other patrons watched her, halting all conversation as the host wailed in agony. Blood began to mix with the tears cascading from Roche’s eyes, lining her face with scarlet. Her nails dug into her face in a vain attempt to rip out her eyes; anything to alleviate the pain. Her chrome nails released the steam trapped by her skin and added congealed blood to the growing mix of fluids dripping from her face, but did little else to save her. With her brain still boiling and an audible pop, Simone Roche crumpled into a twitching mass until she stopped moving altogether.

Silence rested over the group of wealthy attendees.

A seat screeched across the polished concrete floor to cut that silence. Esme stood and walked to the bar, little more than a dispenser with a screen, to order an Earl Grey Martini. The gentle rumble of the machinery within the wall harmonized with the growing commotion behind her. Other patrons were now receiving similar notifications as the virus used the gallery’s private Wi-Fi network to upload itself to their cybernetics. Just like Roche, the wall of code gave way to a plethora of filters to effectively blind the viewer. The onslaught of information caused their cybernetic eyes, implants intended to help them appreciate their acquisitions, to overheat and cook the surrounding flesh.

Esme glanced at her augmented vision’s interface, confirming she wasn’t connected to the network. Drink in hand, she returned to her stool and watched as the revelry screamed in horror and pain, filling the room with the smell of cooked pork. A pleasant contrast to the citrus notes of her cocktail.

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Bryce Meerhaeghe has previously been published in the University of Michigan-Dearborn
literary arts magazine, Lyceum, with the short story “Whispers in the Corridor” (2017). Another
short story of his will appear in the charity anthology Howlin’ for You (in press) from Voices from
the Mausoleum. He justifies his degrees in psychology and law by incorporating these elements
into his fiction, along with various influences from the media he consumes. Currently, he works
as a clinical research associate in North Carolina and lives with his girlfriend; one day, they will
get a dog.

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