Shadow Prince

She just wanted to forget about what had happened during her coma. But she couldn't. Her personal demon could only be exorcised with a paintbrush. She captured the joy and pain of her fantasy world on canvas, painting people and places that she had never seen, and pouring out her feelings until her heart was empty and she could fall into an exhausted sleep.

The lure of the fantasy world tugged at the edges of her mind, trying to draw her back, and she knew she had to end the conversation. She had to get back to her studio and paint the feelings away.

"You took me by surprise with this, Donald. But you're right. It's the chance of a lifetime. Give me some time to think?"

Donald smiled, confident of her eventual answer. "The gallery needs an answer by Wednesday. You can take until then."

* * *

Angelique dropped her paintbrush into the Mason jar with the others, and stepped back to look at her new masterpiece. She'd have to check her color book and see what her subconscious was trying to tell her by the heavy use of brown in the painting. Dark wooden planks and beams filled the background, fading into deep brown shadows at the edge of the painting. In the foreground, a suntanned teenager with ginger hair, dressed in a brown tunic and tan hose, clutched a wooden lute. The only things in the painting that weren't brown were the crackling fire behind the boy, and the silver-handled knife plunged into the wood beside his ear.

It was good, if a bit on the spooky side. Too bad she couldn't choose her own subjects. Or create such detailed and lifelike paintings without being in an artistic trance.

She carried her brushes to the sink and held them under the cold water tap, watching the paint spiral down the drain. Donald said her painting ability was a gift. If so, it was like the cursed gifts from the old "Friday the Thirteenth" television series. She could paint with almost magical detail and speed. All she had to do was give up control of her mind.

The water sluicing through the brushes ran clear, and she squirted soap into her hand. Crushing the bristles against her palm, she worked up a brown-stained lather, and rinsed more paint away. She repeated the process until her hands were numb from the cold water and the brushes were free from paint, except for the residual stain that would never wash away.

After shaking out the brushes, she upended them in another Mason jar to dry. She was like those brushes, her world colored by her time in the coma. And the stain would never go away. It would just build over time, getting darker and deeper until the brushes had to be thrown away.

Drying her hands on her paint-spattered jeans, Angelique walked back over to her easel. Ten years ago, when she'd first come out of her coma, the doctors in the clinic had tried art therapy to get her to reveal her inner mind. That's when she'd discovered her new gift.

She'd been able to paint whatever she chose, then. Traditional still lifes, landscapes, or scenes from her hallucination. On a whim, she'd taken some of the fantasy paintings to a local science fiction convention, hoping to sell them for enough money to cover art supplies. She'd sold everything she brought, and left with orders for more. That's also where she'd met Donald.