Dark Art Ch. 06

( ˘ᴗ˘ ) a pov change...?!

Episode 6: Now, we drink Ancient latin. "Nunc es bibendum"

Serafine was standing at the kitchen sink, sluicing water down her face and picking out tiny white clumps of semen from her hair when she heard the bathroom door open.

With trembling fingers, she reached for a towel, blotting the water from her cheeks as she tried to make herself look normal before her roommate rounded the corner.

At the sight of her in the kitchen, the other girl drew a hand to her chest, visibly startled.

"Oh, it's you. I didn't know you were back yet and I heard voices out here and was like, um, I'm pretty sure I turned off the TV," she laughed nervously. "I thought it was going to be, like, a burglar or a rapist or something."

"You just missed him," said Serafine into a hand towel, but Elizabeth only giggled, oblivious to the events that had just unfolded.

"So, how was your thing at the Burling Mansion? That was today, right?"

By The Burling Mansion she meant the historic building downtown that the professor had sent her to. Ivan's place, or his dead father's place, or whatever he'd said, anyway.

Some opportunity.

Serafine washed a few dishes, glad to have a reason to keep her face turned away and let the redness go down.

"Uh, it was...fine," she shrugged. "It's just a house."

"Fine?" Elizabeth echoed, sounding disappointed. "Just a house? Some of us would kill for a private tour like you got, you know. It's not open to the public."

Serafine fixed an emotionless smile to her face when she turned back around. She doubted very much that her small-town hailing roommate would have even survived a tour like the one she'd received from Ivan Masters, but all she said was, "Well, I hear he's selling the place. So it'll be open to the public soon enough."

"Selling it?" Elizabeth gasped. "Oh no. How horrible. What if someone buys it and puts a Tao inside, like they did the old Society building?"

"A Greek tragedy," Serafine agreed monotonously. "You should protest. We can make signs."

"Did you get any pictures at least?"

Serafine blinked, thinking back to the time she'd spent alone with Ivan in the attic. The way he'd watched her from the darkness, then explored her body like it was his own personal plaything.

"They're on a different camera."

"Bummer," said Elizabeth, opening the refrigerator door and staring at its contents for a long while. It was almost empty. Water bottles, a few hard limes rolling around the top shelf, a bottle of Sriracha. "Oh, you know, I'm meeting up with Noah tonight, you should come."

"Uh-" Serafine searched for an excuse. "Isn't it raining?"

"We're just going to be downstairs," Elizabeth smiled.

Serafine hesitated, biting the inside of her lip as she she tried to figure out what to do. She could barely think straight right now, let alone talk in complete sentences. It was as if the world was completely different, like she was seeing colors nobody else was aware of...but for some bizarre reason, she was desperate to seem normal, and didn't think she could bear answering questions about why she didn't want to go out tonight, so she shrugged.

"Uh... sure, yeah. Just...uh, let me take a quick shower."

Serafine felt relieved to walk away, but it was still difficult to focus. Alone in her bedroom, she touched her neck and winced, wondering if the skin would bruise. Then she remembered she needed to find a change of clothes, and scooped up some garments from around the floor.

Locking herself in their apartments tiny, shared bathroom, Serafine turned up the heat on the shower and looked at herself in the mirror while she waited for the water to get hot. Her face was red, her eyes were red, and her neck was definitely beginning to swell.

So, why didn't I tell Elizabeth what'd happened? she wondered anxiously. And why wouldn't her heart stop racing?

The act of pulling off her clothes brought back more uncomfortable memories, but she forced herself to strip and step into the shower, the hot water pleasantly stinging her skin.

The pain was a welcome distraction, but it didn't last, because she quickly got used to the temperature, and soon, there was nothing to keep her mind off of what'd happened.

It wasn't that she cared about keeping Ivan's secrets, but the idea of admitting what he'd just done to her felt somehow... worse.

Especially when she thought about how her straight-edge roommate would react. Elizabeth would insist on going to the police, the school counselor, their professors. By the end of the night, there wouldn't be a single person in Chicago who didn't know what'd happened to her — and for what?

No good would come of it, and who knows what Ivan might do in retaliation.

He was a member of a powerful family in the art world. Trying to confront him and causing trouble for the university or bringing any negative attention on the people in charge of things could easily backfire. Her scholarship was already on the line with her absence last semester... the last thing she wanted was for her personal life to be put on display.

By not talking about him, she felt she maintained a sense of power over the situation; like, if she just refused to acknowledge it'd happened, she could somehow bend reality to make that the truth... but when a tangle of hair came away on her hand as she was shampooing her hair, she took a shaky breath and started to cry.

In hindsight, she was ashamed to admit that she had been attracted to him at first.

Ivan Masters was well-dressed and tall, with a chiseled jawline and tousled black hair like a book character. To a cash-strapped teenager trying to make ends meet in Chicago, meeting him in person was like running into a real life prince, and the more details of his life that were revealed — a vast inheritance, his family's influence in the art world, his new executive title — the more like royalty he seemed.

Initially, she'd found his attention flattering.

She thought it must have been the dress and heels she'd been wearing at the collector preview that made him come on so strongly that night, but she was quickly left feeling intimidated and scared.

None of the boys from school acted like he did. Sure, plenty of them were assholes and enjoyed catcalling and making little comments about her in class, but it stopped there.

Ivan was different.

He was much older, for one. All action, little talk, and more disturbingly, she got the sense he was used to putting his hands on people the way he'd done to her. That he did it all the time, like it was some kind of twisted hobby.

She'd only read about guys like him before, or seen them portrayed in films — the domineering, cocky types, cursing loudly and usually seen driving flashy cars at reckless speeds. In person, it was a lot harder to be around than pop culture made it seem, and there was a dark side to that personality type that she'd never had to really confront until now.

He made her feel small. Physically small, but also, like her words somehow mattered less in his presence, the way he talked over her, or ignored her questions altogether.

"Fucking asshole," she winced as another knot of hair came away on her fingers.

She went through a range of emotions in the shower, regretting over and over again that she'd ever met the man at all. He was an evil piece of shit and her thoughts rapidly twisted toward fantasies of him meeting a short end on a dark street on his way home that night, the headlights of a screeching semi-truck rendering him flat as a sheet of drawing paper.

Or maybe he'd get attacked by a stray Rottweiler. A pack of them, all rabid and snarling, tearing him limb from limb, starting with the one between his legs; the beasts willed into existence by the sheer amplitude of her hatred.

That would be nice. And it felt nice to dream, but after a while, she realized she was just standing in the shower staring. Not moving or thinking about anything at all, barely aware of the waters warmth starting to slip away... when she suddenly snapped out of her reverie, and turned off the spigot.

Act normal, she told herself as she stepped out of the shower and toweled off her hair. Don't think about it. Don't think about him. Just, don't think at all.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and an oversized t-shirt, the standard outfit for someone who spent most of their day mixing pigments and working with the dusty tools in the MFA program. In class, she'd usually add an apron or smock, but otherwise, she'd dressed this way as long as she could remember, her wardrobe primarily made up of clothes with holes, bleach splatters, paint stains, or all three.

It'd never struck her as a problem. Although she did sometimes wonder how the skirts and dresses other women wore would look on her, she rarely braved such outfits in real life. The attention cute clothes got her always made her feel deeply uncomfortable... that night at the gallery, for example, she couldn't wait to get home and change into something more comfortable.

She had been practically on her way out, when she ran into Ivan.

She did her hair into two long braids to keep it out of her face and then opened the bathroom door to find Elizabeth standing in the living room, staring at her phone while she waited.

"Are you ready?" her roommate asked. "I'm dying of hunger out here. The boys are already downstairs."

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Serafine replied, pulling on her shoes as she thought of what the boys implied.

Noah Divello was a computer whiz, and Elizabeth's current crush. He went to a different school, so they rarely saw each other and weren't officially dating yet, which is what prompted her roommate to always be setting up these little hangouts, but Serafine didn't usually mind. It was Noah's friend she was interested in seeing herself, and if "the boys" were downstairs, she had no doubt it was his best friend Ricard Forza that was with him.

Ric for short.

With his heavy black eyeliner and matching nail polish, it was impossible to know he was rich by looking at him, but he was. Everyone at school knew his family, the Forza's, with the huge lake house in Evanston, and two yachts at the Playpen. He was a bit of a campus celebrity.

He also sold the best weed, and Serafine could use a re-up on that right about now. He usually gave it to her for free, and paid for dinner too, which were both things she hated to admit she also almost always needed help with.

It'd been her dream to go to art school, but now almost two years in, she was keenly aware that her university experience was not going quite as it had been advertised on the pamphlet.

When she'd gotten a scholarship to the elite school, she'd had this rose-tinted fantasy of how life would go after that point; she'd spend her days drawing, painting, being intellectually challenged and learning from an expansive collection of works by the old masters, before becoming a wealthy collector herself and retiring.

All before the age of 25.

In reality, college turned out to be a constant struggle of making rent and trying to keep her checking account from getting so many fees it went negative. Things were usually so bad she had to ration her food, which was part of what attributed to her slender figure.

Everything in the city was just so expensive.

She didn't understand, at first, how her friends seemed to be doing so well, with credit cards or even their own cars, like it was nothing. Until she gradually realized that this was not actually a school she was enrolled in, but a playground... for rich kids.

Her peers were here to make connections, do drugs, and stay out of their parents hair for a little while, not actually pursue a career in the arts after graduation. They were all born into money, so the idea of a "career" meant very little to them, with the exception of her roommate, Elizabeth, who was the only person around that Serafine knew for a fact was as broke as she was.

Everyone else just talked nonstop about trips to Europe, their parents bougie jobs, or their expensive hobbies like horseback riding and rowing. The stories were grating, and also, tantalizingly out of reach.

Serafine hated that she was so curious about their lives...in truth, what she really wanted was to become one of them somehow, living in the same modern renaissance that her peers described; summers in Italy, yachts and estates, never worrying about getting screamed at by a landlord for being fifteen days past due.

Must be nice.

When Elizabeth opened the door to the apartment, Serafine half expected to see Ivan there waiting and flinched, but then forced herself to walk outside with a shake of her head. Act normal, she reminded herself, but she was a little concerned by the way her imagination seemed to draw him everywhere now. Behind every door and in every shadowy nook, she feared him lurking.

Their apartment was conveniently situated above a small ramen restaurant, which had become the de facto location for their friend group primarily because they served beer and nobody hassled them for ID. It was also the reason their living room always had the lingering smell of pork grease, but they both chose to look past that for the steep discount they received on rent.

The food was really good, too. Big bowls piled with noodles and toppings. When they got to the street level, they only had to walk a couple of feet before they were at the front door of the restaurant, where Elizabeth lead the way to a cramped table with two boys were already seated side-by-side.

One of them had a laptop open in front of him, the other, with the black hair and tattoos who looked like he'd just stepped out of Punk Rock band practice, was grinding a pair of chopsticks back and forth, talking.

"...no excuses, Divello. You have to be there, it's the big two-one."

"We'll see," said Noah in his usual distracted, analytical tone, before looking up at them. "Sup."

"Hey," said Elizabeth, picking the chair closest to him, while Serafine sat across from Ricard, who nodded at her in greeting, licking the silver rings that ran through both corners of his bottom lip.

"Hello, beautiful."

Serafine smiled a little and looked away, recalling the first time she'd ever seen him. His towering height and bizarre gothic clothing were impossible not to take notice of, and when she'd asked Elizabeth if she knew anything about him, she informed her that he was Noah's friend. A graduating senior, who spoke Greek and studied Ancient Art.

All traits that, to her, made him seem intensely unapproachable and cool.

"How was your day?" Ricard continued from across the table.

Serafine knew she still wasn't prepared for this conversation, but cleared her throat anyway, a sensation that turned out to be unexpectedly painful.

"Fine," she said softly. "Just the usual, you know. School stuff."

Overhearing this, Elizabeth chimed in. "She said the same thing about the Burling Mansion earlier," miming Serafine's clipped tone. Fine. Nothing. Just a house. What's wrong with you today?"

Serafine was going to cut in to defend herself, but then Ricard raised his eyebrows and said. "Laurent Masters place?"

"I think his son inherited it," said Serafine quietly. "After, you know..."

She didn't say it out loud, but they were all thinking it: After he, you know, died of a heart attack on the museum floor.

Ricard slapped the table unexpectedly, making everyone turn to look at him, his expression now somewhere between amusement and surprise. "Oh, yeah, yeah, what's his name? Father can't stand that guy." He nudged Noah in the arm. "She's talking about him. The guy they called your ma over."

Noah looked at her over the rim of his laptop. He had curly brown hair and a freckled, innocent-seeming face. Compared to Ricard, he seemed like a nice kid — in fact, it didn't really seem like the two of them should be friends at all — but it turned out their parents all knew each other, so they'd been close long before college.

Noah's parents were both lawyers, and Elizabeth had told her he lived in some shiny top-floor condo downtown. Another of the upperclass elite that didn't look it.

"Isn't he like, forty?" Noah asked prudently. "Bit old for you, no?"

Serafine tried not to blush as she explained the situation, careful to leave out every detail that wasn't strictly necessary to getting her friends off her back.

"He came to the conservatory saying he was going to sell some of his dad's collection, and I got volun-told by Beauregard to go take pictures. But I barely talked to the guy."

Everyone seemed satisfied with her answer, but for some reason, even these details made her forehead shine with sweat. Talking about Ivan was still too much, and it was impossible to leave the details of what had really happened out of her memories, even if she could control what she said out loud.

"You should see his TikTok," Noah said before looking back down at his computer, a twinge of disgust pushing his eyebrows together. "Mother loathes him."

"What's his name? Ivan Masters?" said Elizabeth, pulling up his account and turning her phone so that everyone at the table could see.

"I think it's Ivaughn, actually," Serafine mumbled, but the groups attention had already shifted.

Ivan's feed was filled with clips of him in extravagant houses, wearing suits, and leaning against exotic sports cars. Elizabeth tapped on a video that featured him kicking a punching bag multiple times, before scrolling to another one of him waist-deep in pool water, his arms around two scantily-clad women, one of their fake tits in each of his hands.

"He's not even rich," said Ricard, with that sort of holier-than-thou tone possessed only by the super-wealthy. "I hear he does real estate, for God's sake. Laurent was the real collector."

"He seems like one of those guys that talks about stepping out of the matrix," Elizabeth commented, to a few laughs from the boys.

"I'd stay away from him, if I was you," Noah warned. "Mother says he's caught a few assault charges in his day. And his entire family is fighting to get him off the board. The way I heard it, it wasn't even supposed to be him that got the board seat. Total shock to everyone."

"Really," said Serafine lightly. Ivan had alluded to issues with his family, but he hadn't mentioned anything about working as a real estate agent. She'd just assumed he was born rich, like everyone else around her seemed to be. It hadn't occurred to her for a second that that he, too, might be struggling for power.

When the moment passed, Serafine turned to Ric and lowered her voice, eager to change the subject.

"Hey, um. I was wondering. Do you have any...you know... on you?"

"Any what?" he asked coyly.

She shot him an imploring glare. He knows damn well what I'm talking about.

She didn't know why Ric sold drugs. With the type of money he had, he'd never have to work a day in his life, but everyone knew he did it. She suspected part of him just enjoyed irritating his family, as he often liked to say, "For them to do something about it, they'd have to first take notice."

"You know," she said, leaning over the table and lowering her voice. "That... stuff."

At this, he smirked, licking those silver rings again. After a glance at their friends, he said. "Oh, I got what you need, baby. Meet me in the bathroom in five minutes. Last door on the end. Knock five times."

"Okay," she said slowly. She was hoping he'd just hand it to her under the table like he usually did, but was willing to endure this little game, as long as he still gave it to her.

When Ric patted the table and left, Serafine waited a few minutes before following him. Elizabeth and Noah were already deep in conversation and barely looked up when she said she was going to the bathroom.