In the Meantime

The quickness of human hands was a marvel of a thing. After the initial blast, when Kyle had let Gabriel loose in a crowded church, Marsh had survived the best way he knew how - hustling. Three card monty, shell games, poker tables, pool - he’d done it all. Almost got his hands broken for his trouble, and then Tabris came up with a solution.

Go straight.

Odds were, Tabris said, no one would think to look for Marsh in a real job.

Tabris always knew the best odds, and it had always been in Marsh’s favor to go with them. At first the notion of physical labor repulsed him, but eventually Marsh realized that there was something...soothing. In painting. The repetitive motion - long, smooth strokes of the brush - gave him time to think.

Plot. Hate.

It was a sheer stroke of luck - and Marsh didn’t use the word lightly - that Marsh had stumbled across the art section of a paint shop one day. He’d been hoarding his money for important things like weapons and food, most of it carried in covert wads of cash, but - but there hadn’t been word from any of the other choirboys in a while, and maybe - maybe it was safe to settle down.

So on his day off, Marsh purchased a supply of watercolors, brushes, and set up at a local park to learn to paint trees. The first few came out looking more like green lollipops, but between some self-help books at the library, Tabris’s blunt, honest critiques, and time, Marsh became a fairly competent artist.

Sitting in the sun, paying attention to nothing but color and shape and line - it was almost heaven.

Marsh had glimpsed heaven, and he wasn’t ready for it yet.

In the meantime, he had a landscape to paint.

(301 words)