THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE BLOCK. A short Story.

THE HOUSE AT THE END OF THE BLOCK

     Sam Loward's funeral was a very short one and there was only a few mourners beyond Loward's mother and his cousin Lisa. Sam really did not know many people.

     He really did not care to know many people. Lisa was glad that it was finish early in the day.

     Aside from wanting to get away from the depressing atmosphere of the funeral home she wanted to get to the business of cataloging the artwork of her cousin Sam.

     She wanted to get it over with as soon as she could.

Sam Loward's small home was at the very end of a dead end street in one of the older parts of town. It was all alone there since the other houses around it burnt down to the ground in a huge fire that swept through the neighborhood about five years ago. It was a strange miracle that Sam's house was not touched by the flames.

     The other houses were not rebuilt due to a series of on going lawsuits over the fire. Loward did not seem to miss having neighbors at all.

     Lisa drove into the driveway. She sat in the car for a little while. She was feeling strange. She came to this place about once a month over the years to look in on her cousin Sam. She felt it was a duly as a close relative to check up on him. He almost never left the house except to go to work. It seem odd to her to be there knowing that Sam would not be home and never would be there again.

     An odd feeling came over her. It was the same feeling she felt during the funeral.

     She got out of the car and walked across the unkempt lawn of dry dead grass and walked up to the door of the small house of white peeling paint. In all the time Sam lived there he never painted the house. Know Sam she thought he just never cared that the paint was peeling or that the grass was dead. Those were not things he cared about.

     She had no real wish to be there if Sam was not there. She was there only as a favor to her aunt. For more than ten years Sam had locked himself in this little house and worked on his paintings. Those paintings were his whole life. He left the house only to work and worked only to pay rent and buy art supplies. Sam's mother had never liked Sam's paintings which she consider unwholesome and wanted them out of the way as soon as possible. Had Lisa not talked her out of it she would have had all the paintings burned in one large bonfire.

     Lisa being an artist herself could not allow the paintings to be burnt. It was unthinkable to her to destroy the lifetime work of any artist. Beside it was her cousin Sam who taught her to draw. She owed it to him to save his artwork. They were the only things that had matter to him.      He really had nothing else. He really wanted nothing else.

     Lisa unlocked the door and after a half a minute of thinking it over she walked into the house. It was like walking back into the funeral home.

     Inside she found the living room as always bare of furniture except for a chair and a large wood table. On the table was a pile of art supplies and paints just sitting there waiting in vain for Sam to come and use them again.

     Lisa made a mental note to herself to take them for herself before she left.

     Other than those few items the room contain hundreds of paintings. They were piled one against the other along the walls of the living room. A dozen of the best were framed and hanging on the walls of the living room and the other rooms in the small house.

     Most of the pictures were only in black and white. Some had a little gray and maybe some red. Only a few were in full color. All the pictures were of monsters. Demons, giants,werewolves, and many indescribable. No people.            Sometimes something half human appeared in Sam's canvas fantasies.

     Lisa thought back to the time her cousin Sam first started those paintings. He was about 13 and she was eight.      Sam as a young man use to watch reruns of the old black and white monster movies on television. As far as Lisa knew he never bother to go out to see a movie in a theater. He never seem to leave the house.

     He taught her to draw the monsters he drew. Over the years Lisa practiced her artwork and became a commercial artist. Sam never progressed beyond drawing the monsters.        He did not want to. The monsters were his one obsession in art and in his life. From between the age of 13 he rarely left his home except for school. He would not have gone if he had not had to.

     He never went out on weekends or out for dates. Lisa wondered if he ever wanted to go out on dates. She could not imagine him talking to a woman.

     Day after day as a young man he sat in his room making sketches of monsters. After sometimes 20 or 30 sketches he would slowly make a painting from those sketches. He would work and rework a painting till he got it just the way he wanted.

     At age 20 he moved away from his mother's home. She wanted him to stop painting and take some interest in life outside of painting. She wanted him to travel and meet people. She felt his artwork was a sick substitution for a normal life. She was right of course.

     But he did not care about leading a normal life. And he did not want to listen to her nag him about it.

     He wanted no one to interfere with his painting. He got himself a job dish washing at a restaurant and rented this small house so he could paint in peace.

     His mother rarely saw him after he moved away. Once a year he would mail her a card on Mother's Day. He only lived six blocks from her. The post office where he bought his stamps was seven blocks away.

     Only his sudden death in that bus crash could make him stop painting. Only his death could separate him from his artwork. When his life flashed before his eyes in those last few seconds he most likely saw his paintings. Lisa could feel Sam's presents in the small living room. Lisa did not believe in ghosts. But she did have a strange feeling as if he was in the room with her. As if he was unwilling or unable to part from his paintings. They were his whole life. He would have never willingly left them behind. Only death could make him do that. They should be out where the public can see them. Lisa thought. When an artist dies his work stays behind to tell the world he was here.

     Lisa then went about the business of cataloging the paintings for the art dealer. She hoped Sam's paintings would find their way into the hands of those who would enjoy them. Otherwise they would end up in the back of Lisa's garage.

     After hours of sorting through the paintings she was surprise to find one painting that was not of a monster. It was hidden alone in a closet as if Sam did not want any one to see it except for himself.

     It was a painting of Lisa as a young woman. 

 THE END.

Copyright 2015 By Teel.