Free Sunruined: Horror Stories by Andersen Prunty

athletically inclined in the least and he was relatively bright.
    During high school, he was the daily subject of beatings, taunting, and general disdain directed in his favor. He was once shoved into a ditch and called “nigger,” even though his skin was quite pale. Samuel guessed that the fine rednecks of Raven Creek, Kay-Why, population 512, had never even seen a black person outside of the television, which made the KKK carvings in the school desks pretty much irrelevant.
    He became involved with Gina his junior year, bringing her into his dull realm of pain. Her first taste of that, other than the rumors, was reaped when he had tied her up. Before him, nobody even knew who she was. With him, she enjoyed wide fame under such names as: poor white trash, bitch, slut, whore, freak, as well as many others that were much less pertinent to either her gender or socioeconomic status.
    So, after graduation, Samuel and Gina moved as far away from picturesque little Raven Creek as they could while still remaining in the beautiful blue mountains of Kentucky.
     
    Still traipsing in the midst of his funk and wallowing in self-pity, Samuel sat himself in front of the only window in his studio. In the mist of a gray morning, through the window, across the river behind their house, Samuel found his muse. His ugly, decaying, wasted muse. A river mill of some sort that had slowly devolved into an industrial wasteland unveiled itself in all its desolate grandeur.
    Positioned between two objects of sheer beauty, the river and the lush green hills drifting steeply upward to meet the sky, the mill sat like Satan ready to be cast out of heaven. Lifeless smokestacks rose, brown brick streaked with black stains, to probe the surrounding magnificence. The mill seemed immense in its horizontal gray-brown-black structure, a line of shattered windows sitting on top of its ‘X’-shaped steel supports. It looked like someone was trying to smudge it out of existence.
    This is it! Samuel thought, excitedly grabbing his sketch pad that had sat beside him ever since his slump began.
    He didn’t know where to start. It was all so voluptuously ugly!
    Once started, Samuel realized he wouldn’t be able to quit until it was finished.
    At first, Gina brought him coffee and ran to the discount tobacco store to get him Sampoerna clove cigarettes, happy to see him working on his ugly art again. Then her visits became less frequent, punctuated with grumbling complaints. His body, which should have been aching with unnoticed nicotine, caffeine, and general sustenance withdrawal was fueled by the painting. Eventually, Gina would only come up to practice her dance and, without speaking to him, storm out of the studio, slamming the door.
    When too tired to stand up or move his arms, Samuel collapsed onto the floor, waking to the developing painting before him. A beard burst through the smooth skin of his face. New smells from various areas on his body reached his nose. He was thankful there was a toilet on the same floor.
    When it was light, he could not stop staring at the vast industry, trying to capture and detail every last trace of ugliness. By no means was it a photorealist piece, but there was some nuance forever jumping out at him. Something he had to incorporate somehow. When it was dark, he couldn’t stop thinking about it while he applied layer after layer of thick oils. The scenes that must have been played out there! The horrors that no doubt lurked in the minds of some of the extinct employees. The pain that seemed to surround the mill, envelop it in bleeding red. The stink of those who had, for whatever period of time, become machines or parts of the machine, fighting to keep themselves and their families alive.
    Eventually, Samuel reached a point that would have been called finished if it would have been any other subject, but there was something he felt was missing. It wasn’t one single thing. It was the feeling, the mood. His painting just