The thief (standard:horror, 856 words)
Author: jopoguerrero	Added: May 30 2009	Views/Reads: 3036/2005	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Despair

Bliss wallowed in Mario's heart as he applied the finishing touch on his
obra maestra – a painting of a man and a woman interwoven on a burning 
altar of skulls, naked and feeding on each other's sex organ. 

“Salvation!” cried Mario. “This piece will bring salvation to my name in
the world of art! Plus the cash, of course, bundles of cash!” 

He sat viewing his work, giggling frantically as his tears comingled
with the spots of paint on his cheeks, turning his face into a web of 
dark, liquid colors. 

A week ago, Mario's application for membership in Arte was again denied.


Arte was the region's elite art group which held the primary market and
promotion leverage for art works. In the last five years, Mario has 
been seriously trying to join the group, but his sample works 
consistently fell into Arte's garbage bins. 

The group's reason for junking his application was simple: his works
lack imagination. 

Mario spent more than a year for his most recent sample works for Arte –
thus, the latest rejection hit him hard, very hard. It crushed his 
strongest spirits, his staunchest hopes, even the last morsel of his 
will to live. 

Mario locked himself in his art room at the basement of their house. The
room was filled with painting equipment, paint containers, crumpled 
magazines, soiled clothes and leftover food and drinks. It was a nook 
of scatterings, like uncertain colors splattered on a messed up 
canvass. 

For hours, Mario remained recoiled at a corner of the room – crying,
trembling and cursing Arte. 

He was about to gush another soliloquy of curses when something on the
floor tugged his interest. 

The floor was a spread of large slabs of cut marble, refined and
polished. Each slab held a series of waving and colliding lines in 
different length and thickness. There Mario saw the images. 

The lines in each slab seemed to form appearances, scenes and events. It
was like clouds outlining beings. But in the case of the marble slabs, 
the forms were more vivid, dramatic, some were even highly radical – 
certainly worthy of serious works on canvass! 

“Masterpieces,” Mario mouthed. “Yes, these are materials for
masterpieces! Much better than the best of the Arte snobs.” 

Hastily, Mario set his painting equipment and poised to render the
images on his blank, seemingly hungry canvass. 

“Which should I paint first?” he asked himself as he looked intently at
the slabs. 

“What's this?” he stared at the slab near his feet. “Naked couple?
Burning altar of skulls? Man and woman nibbling each other's organs? 
Dark winds lapping the flames?” 

“This is it! This will be my first obra maestra! Mario cried as he
commenced on his initial strokes on the canvass. 

All night Mario worked on the piece. It was near dawn when he finally
applied the finishing touch. 

“Salvation!” he cried. “This piece will bring salvation to my name in
the world of art! Plus the cash, of course, bundles of cash! 

“And this is just the first! I will translate all the images in these
slabs into my own masterpieces!” 

Then he sat viewing his work, giggling frantically as his tears
comingled with the spots of paint on his cheeks, turning his face into 


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