The Painting

She stared at it, not believing what she was seeing. The painting had an ethereal quality to it, drawing your eyes instantly to the bright silver-blue water of the river. You couldn’t help but notice that as the rest of the painting was dark, done in the blacks and greys.

She stood as if in a trance, watching as the river seemed to twist and turn… flowing through the painting and about to spill out onto the floor. Blinking did no good. The more she blinked, the more she could see that it wasn’t an illusion – that the river really was running towards her.

Carefully, she took a step closer, touching the canvas with her fingertips. The canvas felt cold and wet, as if it really were water instead of paint. Rubbing them on her pants leg to dry them off, she took another step towards the painting.

She reached towards the river, pushing her hand at the water. Instead of stopping, her hand went right through, as if breaking the surface of the water. She kept pushing and pushing until her arm was in the water up to the elbow. Looking around and seeing that no one else was looking, she continued pushing her hand through the painting until she had been swallowed by the river.

She looked around the countryside in the painting. The dark colors clashed even more brilliantly with the vibrant river and gave the landscape an ominous, threatening feeling. She looked up at the sky and saw dark storm clouds had gathered, promising pounding rain. Not seeing any shelter close at hand, she ran.

I have to find shelter, she thought, but where? There is none in this landscape anywhere. She kept running, running far past where the painting’s borders had been, running until her legs just wouldn’t carry her anymore. Spying an abandoned house a little ways off in the distance, she hurried to it. Opening the creaky door, she stepped inside just as the first wave of rain began pelting the earth.

The rain fell hard on the dilapidated old roof, sounding like rocks pelting a wooden plank. This isn’t an ordinary storm, she thought. There’s something wrong here.

She glanced out the window and immediately wished she hadn’t. Where it had once only been dark and ominous outside, the ground was now littered with color – color from the bodies of helpless dogs and cats that had fallen from the sky.

What kind of place is this, she wondered. What kind of place actually rains cats and dogs? She scratched her head, perplexed. Nothing was right in this harsh, alien landscape the artist had painted. Had this been his intention all along – to literally trap someone within the confines of his painting, subjecting the poor victim to the cruelties of his imagination?

She watched in horror as the storm progressed, first raining cats and dogs and then flinging other animals to the ground. She saw sheep, cattle, moose, and hens falling from those seemingly normal clouds. The house she was hiding in was narrowly missed by a falling giraffe. Oh God, she thought, please don’t let this get any worse. Please protect me from the savages of this storm.

As if God had been waiting for her plea, the storm broke. The sky was still dark and threatening, but those clouds had disappeared from the gloomy sky. She looked out at the land and noticed the animals that had fallen during the storm had also disappeared – as if she had imagined the whole thing. The only evidence that it had happened at all was small reddish patches of slick, bright blood here and there among the weeds.

She stepped outside once again and wondered where to go. No longer willing to experience the otherworldly qualities of the painting, she started making her way back towards the river.

She ran up hills and through the valleys that appeared out of nowhere. It was almost as if the landscape was changing with each twist and turn – like some fevered imagination was influencing each bend and dip in the path she had found. She ran past trees that seemed to reach out and claw at her. She ran past the ruins of a building that had once been standing out in the middle of this insanity and had probably been destroyed in one of the freak storms.

She finally made it back to the river. Looking around, she tried to see if she could see out through the painting and into the gallery. It was useless. The effect was obviously one-sided.

Jumping into the bright silvery blue waters, she prayed that the effect could be reversed… that if she pushed up hard enough and long enough, she would find herself standing in the gallery. But fighting through those waters was so difficult – so horribly difficult. All she wanted to do was stand there and watch the gentle waves, hypnotized by their movements and the electric color.

She shook her head violently to snap out of her mood – to break the hold the water had on her. She swam under the water and came to rest on the river’s bottom. Pushing off with both feet as hard as she could, she kept swimming – pushing against the current and aiming for the spot where the river seemed to fade into nothingness. With one last prayer, she pushed again… and wound up standing in the exact same spot, looking back at the painting in fevered awe at how the river seemed to actually move with a life of its own.

Was it all a dream, she wondered? Had I actually been in the painting? She looked down and saw all the proof she’d needed… the shoes she was wearing were still damp from jumping into the surreal waters. Hastily, she walked away from the painting and out of the gallery.