He gripped the canvas in his hands, and stared at it with dull, green eyes. The blood flowed into his mouth, and with each breath a fine mist shot into the air. At that moment, he turned with the canvas, and faced the bed. Something stirred in his mind, and something stirred under the sheets, and a moan could be heard. He got out several colors, and started painting.

He started with black hair. It covered the pillow like oil in an ocean, creating rainbows locked in crude liquid. A shot of ink seemed to have dripped from the ceiling onto a bluish mass of strewn pillows and stained sheets. He remembered the smell of something, but he couldn’t take the time to put the scent into imagery, so it disappeared. With every passing moment, his painting changed, and he needed to get it all out of his head before it was gone forever.

After the black hair came the bed itself. From under the sheets came an arm, which he painted as brown. He painted this arm in motion. It searched over sheets, as if looking for someone.

And when a face appeared he added it to the black stain. He made sure to color the half hidden eyes blue. Another arm appeared on the other side, and soon her chest was showing. Small breasts upon a slight frame appeared on the canvas, and soon the impression was that a ghost slowly ascended from the bed; a phantom rose, blackened and browned with only a hint of red still remaining in her lips.

The space around the bed and the figure remained the color of the canvas. The painting seemed done with the abruptness and arbitrary nature with which it began. “You’re bleeding again,” the canvas said.

“I’m painting”

“What are you painting?”

“You”

“Don’t paint me. I look horrible”

“Too late. You’re already art”

“You’re so pretentious”

“I prefer pretentious to boring”

“Me too. Come to bed”

“Let me get some Kleenex”

And he left the painting. When he came back to it, he found it to be incomplete, but had no way of knowing what to add. It was just a bed floating in space, with a ghost of a woman sleepily beckoning with a tired tongue and pointed breasts.

I’ve got her up in my room right now. She looks good incomplete.

Alexander shifted the garbage with his feet. He stared at the refuse, and ran his eyes over every used coffee filter and crumpled paper. His feet moved slowly, spreading out the garbage until only the lawn showed beneath. Alexander looked for several more minutes, and then went back inside his house.

“Honey!” he called, “I didn’t find it!”

A voice came muffled back. “Look harder! You’re not getting to put on clothes until you find it!”

Alexander shifted a bit on his garbage covered feet, and looked down at his boxers.

“I’m getting cold,” he said in a softer voice.

“Tough,” said a softer but still muffled voice. Alexander walked back outside to section of the lawn covered in garbage. He went to the highest mound of garbage, which came up to his knees, and started sorting with his feet again.

After a while, he found what he had been looking for. He reached down with a look of distaste, brushed away an apple core, and picked up the sleeping baby. The baby’s back felt sticky to his touch. The baby woke up when Alexander straightened up. Alexander didn’t look at the baby, and walked back into the house with his arms outstretched in front of him.

“Honey!” he called, “I found it!” A door opened, and Rachel walked out.

“His name is Ben, not ‘it’,” she told Alexander. “Put him in the crib and- oh my god he’s filthy!”

“Well, he was playing in the garbage, so…”

“The garbage? Are you fu- freaking kidding me? For God’s sake, clean him off!”

“Can I put on pants first?”

“No.”

Pantless, Alexander carried the baby to it’s room. He lay the baby down in the middle of a white crib. As his arms left the crib, the once white crib glowed a soft blue, and a computer screen to the left said, “HI DADDY.” Alexander’s eyes shot momentarily to the screen, then away. He reached for some moist napkins. The words on the computer screen disappeared, and new text said, “CLEANING TIME?” The baby in the crib stared at Alexander, but his only response was to reached down into the crib, turn the baby, and quickly run the wet napkin back and forth over the sticky area. The crib lost the blue glow when Alexander put his hands and forearms inside the crib, and when he backed off the glow came back, with new text on the screen. “CAN WE READ A BOOK NOW? THE ONE WITH THE PRINCESS?” Alex left the room.

In the kitchen, Rachel made coffee. “What was he doing in the garbage?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, didn’t you ask him?”

“No, I just cleaned him.”

Rachel sighed and turned to face the still pantless Alexander. “We’re supposed to ask as many questions of him as we can.”

Alexander stared down at his boxers. “It’s creepy,” he said in soft voice.

“We’re not getting into this conversation again.”

“It’s just a 4 month old baby! They’re not supposed to talk and ask questions and understand what we say. They should be pooping and smiling because they farted. How can you say it’s not creepy that it’s learning multiplication tables, but it can’t even talk because the body isn’t mature enough?”
Rachel turned her back on Alexander to keep working on the coffee. “It’s name is Ben. His name is Ben, I mean. You know, the told us what to expect way before they started the in utero injections. You had plenty of chances to say you didn’t want this.”

“Yeah, but-“

“Just think of it, Alex.”

“Alexander.”

“Ben could grow up to solve all the world’s problems. A brilliant scientist or mathematician or something. Don’t you want to be one of the people who made his existence possible? The parent of the savior of humans? Plus with the all the money they’re paying us, we’re set for life now.”
Alex turned and started to walk out of the kitchen. “It’s still creepy,” he said. He walked by the room with the crib to the bedroom. He closed the door and locked it. He took off his boxers, and put on a clean pair. After that, he put on his pants, a comfortable shirt, and running shoes. He checked his wallet, and put on his watch. Faintly, he heard Rachel talking to Ben. “Hey, honey. How are you? I’m happy you’re happy. You silly little goose. What were you doing in the garbage? Playing with daddy? He put you there?” Alex opened the window.

“I’ll be right back honey. I’m going to go talk to daddy a little bit about how to play nice.”

The doorknob shook, and the banging started just as Alexander’s feet touched the rose garden soil under the bedroom window. He was halfway down the street before he heard faint yelling behind him, and soon all he could hear was the wind in his ears.

His sunglasses no longer worked. He couldn’t see, because the light that mysteriously glowed from his eyes would reflect back into his eyes. That Halloween night, his lights were two headlights of clear, white light, spreading out through the fog and bouncing with his steps, focused somewhere near his feet. The lights shuffled and disappeared with his sidewise glances and rapid blinks. He walked away from the residential areas, and took a concrete path into the flat fields of some produce that surrounded his town.

From somewhere off to his left he heard a scritch scritch of wood on dirt. He followed the sound.

The boy with lights in his eyes followed the sound to an area between two fields, to a shallow canal. The water trickled slow as a small stream, barely enough to propel a leaf more than a foot before giving up and finding another route. And in that small stream was a man in a boat.

He wore a red hat with flaps, and long grey hear poked from underneath. His dark red vest showed stains from past liquids. It frayed at the edges. His boat looked like a small wood kayak. The boat seemed homemade, just like the single oar he used. When the boy looked at the grip, it shone with small amounts of blood where the splinters and rubbing had broke the skin. He kept digging on his right side

“Huff. Huff. Huff.”

The old man didn’t seem aware of the boy with lights in his eyes.

“Huff. Huff. Huff.”

The boy with lights in his eyes looked at the disturbed dirt behind the boat, and the old man’s footsteps. The man had thrown the boat down the bank of the shallow canal. Then he had walked to it, righted it, and gotten in. The boy with lights in his eyes figured the man had not moved since getting in, his oar scraping the hard dirt over and over again.

“Huff. Huff. Huff.”

The boy with lights in his eyes walked behind the boat. With the old man’s next tired effort of dragging the oar against the ground, the boy with lights in his eyes pushed as hard as he could.

“Huff. Huff. Huff.”

He slipped, the top layer of dirt too loose to provide any sort of stable leverage and ended up laying prone in the tiny stream of water. The man continued without noticing.

“Huff. Huff. Huff.”

The boy with lights in his eyes stood up, and looked down. Thousands of tiny rocks clung to his black zip-up and jeans. A stripe of moisture ran from his groin to his forehead, where the stream had touched his clothes. He felt embarrassed about falling. He readied himself for another try.

“Huff.”

The boat moved. A tiny bit, but it moved. The old man switched the side of his oar to the left. The boy with lights in his eyes readied himself to push.

“Huff.”

They moved again. The boy with lights in his eyes put his head down to add more power to his next push.

“Keep your eyes up, boy. I can’t see.”

The boy with lights in his eyes looked up and the old man continued down the canal. The old man’s hands bled, and the boy with light in his eyes became light headed and breathed heavily.

“Huffhuff. Huffhuff. Huffhuff.”

After some time, the old man put down his oar. He got up, and walked out of the boat. He walked out of the canal.

“You can keep it, if you want,” he said to the boy with lights in his eyes. “I don’t need it anymore.” And the old man left into the fog.

The boy with lights in his eyes looked at the boat. His breath got in front of his eyes and he was momentarily blinded by an intense light. But it faded when he cocked his head, leaving only the lit up light colored small boat and a single bloodied oar. The boy with lights in his eyes put the oar in the boat, and dragged it out of the canal, finding it to be relatively light without the old man sitting in it. He dragged it all the way home, and left it in his backyard. Years later, he’d take it to California and paddle out into the water. That’d where he’d drown and die. But a lot of things would happen before then.

He walked into his house where his parents were watching TV. They hadn’t made him dress up, and for that he was thankful. He went and took a shower, and went to bed.
He turned off the lights, closed his eyes, and saw red, the glow of light on his eyelids.