The Resin Artist

The Resin Artist

“Michael! Michael!” A loud ringing buzzed in my ears, while my vision blurred with crimson colours. Sirens wailed in the distance. A peculiar substance moved with painful sluggishness over the asphalt. Crowds started gathering around the horrific scene. A man lay face down on the sidewalk of Fourteenth Avenue. His briefcase was only metres away, his business suit drenched in blood. A crane had dropped a large container of some sort from the top floor. It had fallen with such enormous velocity that it crushed its lifeless victim. Everything, except the left side of his body, remained intact. A scarlet river graciously flowed from his corpse, right before my eyes.

Only moments ago, this unrecognisable man was alive and breathing. Moments before his death, he pushed me aside, greedily searching for more space on the sidewalk. He scoffed at me with disdain, phone in hand. He hurriedly walked past on some seemingly urgent business call. And now—there he lay, lifeless—a feast for my bewildered eyes.

“Step back, son!” A hand grabbed my shoulder tightly. You see, contrary to my father’s belief, I stood frozen out of amusement instead of disgust. You wouldn’t believe it, but seconds before my distressed father made his way to my rescue, something next to the man’s body caught my eye– a finger. The strange, solidifying liquid perfectly covered his finger, swamping his attire.

Something came over me. I am unsure of who was watching, but it mattered not. I leaned down to create a makeshift scene of tying my shoelace, before snatching the sticky monstrosity and stuffing it into my trouser pocket, my fingernails stained with dried blood. “Are you alright?” my father asked me frantically.

“My God—say something—it’s a miracle that you’re standing. Your eyes – you have just seen a ghost… We’re leaving now!” He didn’t give me any chance to provide a response. Before I knew it, we pushed through hundreds of nosy pedestrians who mindlessly made their way towards the fatal scene that unfolded.

It would be New York City’s scandal of the month—a deadly destiny, if you will. The headline was bland: “Intermodal Cargo Container Kills NYC Worker”. I, even as a mere child, was disappointed by the tasteless Times article a week later. It failed to describe the meticulous details of the scene. As we made our way to the car, I fiddled with the dead man’s finger in my pocket. It was smooth like glossy marble. Would I dispose of it? My father marched on strenuously, tugging my arm with monumental force. All I could see were distorted silhouettes floating by in my periphery.

My father remained silent the entire drive home. He pulled out a cigar and lit it without opening a window. A suffocating cloud of smoke formed. I couldn’t decipher how he could see where we were going. It dawned on me that it was he who had seen a ghost that day. The smoke singed my eyes. My father’s silence hung heavily, like a chandelier on a spindle of thread. The minutes dragged painfully. He finally cracked open the window when we pulled into our street. We never returned to the city again, at least not together.

The finger remained in my trouser pocket for several days. I left it there in hopes of coming up with a decision on where to store it. My father decided to do the laundry, which was highly unlike him. He usually left household chores up to the maid. He knocked on my bedroom door.

“Come in, father,” I urged.

“Listen, son. We haven’t spoken about what happened the other day. I am so relieved that your life was spared. You were nearly crushed under that intermodal container. The construction company is being sued for wrongful death by the family members of that man. I nearly lost you.” He stood, defeated, in my doorway as he uttered these words.

I responded in a weak attempt to console his sadness, “I’m still here.”

He nodded briefly. “And that you are, son. Now, let’s get those clothes cleaned up.”

He walked towards the laundry basket, picked up the dirty clothes from the incident, and, before I could discourage him, carried them towards the door. I stared, horrified. It felt like witnessing a moment captured in slow motion. As he turned to bid me goodnight, my possession fell with a loud thud to the floor. I sat on my bed, legs folded, book in hand, frozen with fear.

“Michael, what is—?” He didn’t manage to finish the question. He would take my prized possession without a doubt. The blood drained from his face, and his striking blue eyes turned a ghostly grey. He hesitantly picked it up and examined it.

“This is horrific—I am mortified! What have you done?”

He searched my face for an answer, or perhaps some sense of humanity, neither of which I could offer him.

Even in such moments of great despair, I showed no remorse. I only deemed the situation to be an uncomfortable inconvenience. Finally, when I opened my mouth to speak, “I can explain,” he raised a hand, cutting me off. He left my room with the dead man’s finger. I searched high and low for it that night and couldn’t find it—not in the trash can, not in the garden. How did he dispose of it? My father scrubbed my trousers tirelessly that night. Muffled sobs and steam escaped the bathroom as he rinsed my clothes. It was the first time that I truly traumatised that man, though it wouldn’t be the last.

What followed appeared in fragments of amalgamated memories. I saw a therapist for some time—a short, dwarf of a man with white whiskers for a moustache. He had enormous eyes and a tiny, pointed nose. He wore spectacles that were much too small for his face. He gifted me not only with his unsolicited advice but also spat on me many times while speaking. I would ask to go to the bathroom mid-session to wash my face. He showed the abstract pictures in black and white, asking eagerly what I saw. He’d lean forward and narrow his eyes, waiting for some insightful response or gesture. There was nothing concrete for me to grasp with those useless illustrations. He urged me to conjure up answers I did not have. It infuriated me. I wanted to, quite frankly, rip the tiny white hairs off of his face, one by one… Though I refrained from expressing it.

He often made remarks about my seemingly calm conduct. I did, however, grace him with deep, exasperated breaths whenever he dared ask inept questions like, “How did that make you feel, Michael?” He asked numerous questions about the dead man, to which I remained silent. He’d then scribble notes in that silence. What could Sir Whiskers possibly gather from the air? It baffled me that I said nothing, yet he wrote pages about it. You see, the only reason I visited a shrink, though his spectacles painted him impressionably as a sir, was because father made, as he called it, a “horrific” discovery of the dead man’s finger. He thought I had utterly lost my mind before lighting yet another cigar and smoking like a chimney.

Father no longer told me stories at night, nor did he invite me to his clandestine meetings with his friends. He cast me aside, avoiding unnecessary interactions. Several years passed, and nothing significant unfolded in therapy sessions. The shrink had told my father that I showed no more signs of PTSD and that I “was becoming a man”. My father solemnly accepted these words with finality. Sir Whiskers had no more pages to fill about either my morbid curiosity or my impending silence (or whatever it was that he cared to write about in the tanned, leather notebook).

As I said, the memories came back to me in fragments. After my father scrubbed holes into my trouser pants, all those years ago, he never laid hands on my clothes again. By the age of twelve, I would’ve made countless trips alone to the laundromat. I often daydreamed about that curious little finger. Would I ever stumble across something quite as peculiar again?

Later in life, my curiosity overcame me. I became fascinated with the idea of recreating all the things we didn’t learn in school. They failed to teach us about the world, about the dangers of obsession. I needed redemption, but nothing taught in school could restore my lost possession. And so, I taught myself about obsession, or at least I tried. “Out of sight, out of mind.” This was what that shrink had said years back. The phrase circled in my mind repetitively when intrusive thoughts led me down dark alleyways.

It echoed when my history teacher took my test paper from my desk with soft hands. I grabbed her silky hand and squeezed. If the bell hadn’t rung at the very moment she lifted the paper from my desk, I am not sure what would have unfolded in that dimly lit classroom, with a blunt pair of scissors readily within my reach. The dust in the air settled perfectly in my lungs. I took the deepest breath imaginable upon realisation– I had a ravenous hunger that demanded to be fed. It would break loose sooner or later. It was only a matter of time before somebody lay in front of me, facedown, in a bloody puddle, and this time by force rather than fate. That afternoon in the principal’s office, I blamed my behaviour on gripping anxiety, to which the teacher’s face softened. I was let off the hook with only a misdemeanour.

I spent hours in the library whenever I wasn’t observing my classmates on the playground during recess. They entertained meaningless conversations with fickle minds and delicate limbs. Later, I found out that the strange liquid, which perfectly encased the dead man’s bloody finger in New York, was epoxy, or as some may call it, “resin.” I used my pocket money to purchase two cans full at the hardware store. I felt guilty when I had done so, as if I’d already committed some gruesome crime. I spent my afternoons after school wading past the perimeters of our garden into the forest. I collected various organic forms: butterfly wings, broken bird eggs, snail shells, and recreated works of art. I learned, rather sooner than later, that such activities failed to satisfy my hunger.

I presented these creations for my art project in my final year of high school and won Artist of the Year, which won me a scholarship to the University of Yale. I leveraged my success to fund minority communities with art exhibitions. I took on new approaches to art, emphasising the importance of realism in a materialistic society. New York loved it. The elite students from Boston travelled by train to meet me. They craved ‘intellectual discussion,’ as I was the first man to care less about finance and more about humanism.

An artist always commemorates his muse—the retrieval of the dismembered finger sparked a blazing fire within me, one that my father couldn’t bear to acknowledge. I still had the very newspaper article neatly folded and stored in a secure spot. I had sculpted beautiful, lifelike works of art from clay with my bare hands and used the funds to serve the greater good. It’s what they didn’t know. They couldn’t see through the double lens. They blindly applauded my selfless work, just as my shrink wrote pages that meant nothing. Nobody knew the truth. To this very day, I craved the crimson colours that so beautifully covered the asphalt. I longed for that same heaviness to linger in my trouser pockets. I wondered what it must feel like to have the weight of solidified fingers to interlace with mine. And so I made it happen. I gathered my resources, resin included, and I created human art.

I repeatedly perfected the craft in front of their eyes. Yet, they’d never suspect any of it to be real. I’d smile knowingly, because they were lifeless remains instead. Father was no longer alive to see “such monstrosities.” After he lay on his deathbed on my twentieth birthday, I could continue with my passion in peace. Had the man lived another year, smoking religiously, my artworks wouldn't have existed. After he gave his final breath, my destiny unravelled spectacularly.

Vogue found my art intriguing because they defied misogynistic idiosyncrasies that most male artists adopted in their work. The University Press labelled me as the man who “balanced femininity with masculinity—art with numbers.” Ironically, the reporter who headlined the cargo container incident had a son who, nearly two decades later, wished to pursue journalism. His name was Claude Reagan.

I nearly gawked when he asked to feature my exhibition in the New York Times.

“Mr. Wolfe, we would be delighted to feature your next exhibition in our article,” Claude implored, beaming.

“Ah, but you’re here now, yes?” I replied evenly.

“Yes, well—” he stammered.

I had seen Reagan at previous exhibitions. He was a rookie in the field. I found it admirable how eagerly he followed his father’s footsteps like a puppy. Had I followed my father’s footsteps in the same manner, I’d have run far away from myself, just as my father had run away from me. Reagan shifted uncomfortably under my gaze. It dawned on me that this young, charming man had likely spent weeks pleading with the editor to interview me. I knew, despite his efforts to impress me, that this was not the case.

“I’ve been working on other projects, I’m afraid. I only feature major stories, like yours, when I have less on my plate,” he pleaded. “I’m sure you can understand.”

“Of course, I understand. Walk with me.” He nodded; his shoulders relaxed at this remark. The white of his shirt was visibly stained with sweat. On nights like these, I glided ostentatiously in and out of conversations with the admirers, ‘friends,’ and reporters who approached me. I had no interest in the superficiality of the conversations that surfaced from these interceptions. East Siders were hopelessly materialistic. There was no saving them from their one-sided social construct. They valued assets over intellect in most cases. If you possessed both assets and intellect, you were considered elite. I remained silent whenever groups engaged in superficial discussions about political issues, primarily because, in their quest for validation, these so-called intellectuals would often turn the conversation to their upcoming weekend trip to the Hamptons. Their ignorant, surface-level understanding of the sociopolitical ecosystem was appalling. However, this time something was different.

Reagan amused me. I was bewildered by his humility and the way he carried himself in my presence. He showed true admiration, granted any falsities were a result of his nervousness.

I had not realised I’d been staring at him, and he shifted under my gaze, visibly aware of my unusual attention. I didn't fake my smile this time. I was mystified. “Usually, at this point, I’d have been asked a plethora of questions,” I offered.

“I see,” he responded. “I’ve only been in the industry for several months. I sometimes am unsure of which questions to ask.” A waitress walked by with a tray of champagne, to which I gestured. He took two glasses sheepishly and handed one to me.

“Well,” I stood dumbfounded, “a reporter with no questions… That’s a first.” I laughed while he took several sips of his champagne.

“The problem is—I have so many,” he moved closer to me and lowered his voice, “for instance—where do you get your inspiration? Your delicately created pieces—they’re fragile. The lips seem to be your speciality. Although you display them effortlessly, it must have taken weeks, if not months, of layering and crafting to achieve perfection. It’s more than art,” he paused. He cleared his throat before laying a hand on my shoulder. “It’s brilliant.” Reagan met my eyes and held them steadily in a way nobody had done before, not even my father. I was deeply moved. Time froze, and my thoughts became momentarily indistinguishable. I felt seen. The fabric of my shirt warmed quickly under his touch. It was now my forehead that glistened instead of his. He did something he never should have done. My curiosity, my maddening hunger for something more, all led up to this moment. This reporter, this stranger who stood before me, changed something unnameable. His hazel eyes, shimmering with golden amber, met mine. He moved just an inch away from my body, resting the palm of his hand on my shoulder. The satisfaction felt all too familiar. I broke my gaze and looked away.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Out of sight, out of mind.