Render Me Dead

Speed is my enemy.

I’m a long distance runner, this sprinting malarky is the very definition of hell. Breathe, breathe, I repeat to myself as I race through the narrow streets of Yarrosh, cursing the cobblestone ground as it threatens to trip me. Every gods damned road in this forsaken city is concrete smooth, yet I’ve somehow ended up running here. 

Typical. 

I’m Betty, sinner of Yarrosh, burglar of justice, and as of tonight, a wanted woman. A modern day Robin Hood, if you will. I’ve stolen hundreds of paintings from hundreds of different dictators, and I have always escaped unscathed, not a single bead of sweat broken. But tonight, I made a mistake and now they are after me, Jules and his brutes. 

The small frame fits perfectly under my arm while I protect it from the drizzle under my trench coat. Detective Lamber gave me the tip. We work together, you see, he’s a law-abiding, do-gooding, bad guy catching enforcer, and I am the criminal in his pocket. He is also my husband. Tonight, Jules was supposed to be out of the country on business, taking his bodyguards with him, leaving his frail old wife alone in their manor. I was to sneak through the library window, lock pick his office and take the goods, yet as soon as I walked through that hidden study door, they were upon me. I’m pretty small and nimble so I got away, swiping the canvas in my struggle, but they carried on after me. 

It better be worth it. In the chaos amidst recognising a few other artworks hung up about the room, I saw a green meadow basked under a grey sky, daisies and butterflies aplenty, and a metal door in the centre, a way into a dark, small, stone cell. A pair of hands held onto the bars and a menacing set of yellow eyes stared out of the painting, like the prisoner was watching me. I’m not a connoisseur, but the oil seemed rotten, this piece of art is probably more than a hundred years old. 

The thunk of their hasty footsteps echoes through the alley, my own masked under the pounding of my heart, and the thundering breaths oozing from my near collapsing lungs. They are not far behind. 

There’s nowhere to go, no lowered walls to climb over, no windows to break through, only tall buildings made of brick and stone and an endless alley. 

“Psst.” A faint whisper reaches my ear. 

Perhaps a rat, or a bat. Maybe one of the brutes is attempting to distract me, so I keep running, ignoring the throbbing pain in my knees. 

“Psst.” I hear it again, whatever it is, it’s close. I keep going. 

“Psst.” It comes again and this time I stop, because the call is coming from my armpit. Or rather, something under my trench coat. 

I pull out the painting and hold it in front of me, those yellow eyes still watching. But the cell door is ajar, the eyes are staring at me from the depth of darkness through an opening. I could have sworn the door was closed when I first saw it, but then again, I merely glimpsed it amidst chaos, my eyes may have deceived me. 

“Who’s there?” I loudly whisper to no one in particular. 

My chest rises and falls more rapidly than I’ve ever experienced, matching the speed at which my eyes dart around the place, like they are in a race. A result I have no interest in. 

“Here.” The voice, as screeching as tracing a nail on a chalkboard, comes from the very centre of the cell. From the yellow-eyed figure. 

What?

Its fingers stroke the metal bars seductively, as if teasing my senses and without an ounce of control my hand reaches for the movement, desperate to feel the oil and colours, to judge my own sanity. Then, as if in an instant that feels like a lifetime, a flash of bright light blinds me, the last thing I see is my shadow being sucked into the frame I’m holding as it drops to the ground. 

Skin and muscle and bone rips and cracks, forced apart in a torturous agony while I feel like I’m trapped in a hurricane. Round and round I whirl in an endless suffering. One, ten, a hundred, a thousand years seem to go by before I plummet into stone. Somehow pieced back together. Somehow whole. 

My palms push against the cold, dark ground and I force myself up, rubbing my arms as I head for the light that seeps through the gaps in the door. Voices reach my ears from all directions. 

“Got her.” One says. 

“Don’t touch it for too long, put it in the bag.” Another voice orders. 

“Let’s get out of here.” Someone else chimes in. 

Then they are muffled into nothing as the light dissipates and I am left frozen in shadow. 

***

I wake to the sound of squealing hinges and find the light has come back. I get up once again and head for the metal bars. The door is locked, I press myself into it to have a better view. A better understanding. 

It’s John, he’s standing in Jules’s office. My husband is facing the old scoundrel who sits in his mahogany chair, smirking. 

“You’ve surrounded yourself with the blood of the city,” John says. 

He’s come for me. 

“It seems that way.” Jules rubs his chin. 

John walks about the room, looking at paintings hung up haphazardly, a tainted smile tugging at his lips. “You got her, then?” 

Jules pushes off his chair, mahogany scraping against oak. He strides towards me and stares into my soul with yellow eyes. “I did indeed,” He replies as John joins him, watching me. 

“She put up a fight?” 

“Of course, don’t you know your own wife?” Jules chuckles, “she’s been enormously helpful, bringing me everything I desired, but the Starry Night was the last of it. We no longer need her.” 

The Starry Night. The last tip John gave me. The last thing I stole and gave to him as I had always done with everything I took. He told me he sold them to spread the money amongst the poor and homeless. 

“She’s trapped for good?” There’s no remorse in John’s tone as he removes his coat and plumps himself into the crimson armchair where he lounges. 

My eyes scan the room, I vaguely recognise each painting. All of them, every single one, are what I took from the wealthy assholes across Yarrosh. They are worth millions. 

Jules nods. “I found it for all my enemies. There,” he points to where I stand, “they’ll remain.” 

A quiet clack draws my attention to the back of the cell, in every dark corner lies bones and flesh, old and new. Skeletons of those who have opposed Jules. And my husband, the love of my life, the hero of Yarrosh works hand in hand with this, villain. 

“Any other orders, father?” John asks. 

Father? My head snaps back to see the bald, stout man pat my orphaned John on the back. The breath in my lungs catches, my mouth as dry as the desert sand as my knees give way. They hit the ground with a thud, and I stay there, limp and unfeeling, ignoring the bursts of pain that spread from my bones. Tears hesitant while my shock is still so raw. Every moment of the past five years has been a lie. 

I’m no longer the Robin Hood of the people. Instead, I am an imprisoned woman, a trapped wife within the colours of the painting that will render me dead.