Orfyn

 

 

I’m in the Bat Cave for five minutes before realizing something is wrong. He isn’t here. I mean, where else could he be? “Bat?”

The screens flicker to life, and my New York Rangerized version of The Last Supper fills the wall. Christ. His twelve disciples. And Bat.

He’s in an electronic version of my oil painting. Wearing a pink bathrobe over a faded Metallica T-shirt. Standing behind Jesus Christ.

“Is that really you?” I ask.

He looks himself up and down. “Yeah.”

“Uhm, do you realize you’re in the painting?”

He scans the scene da Vinci painted five hundred years ago and smiles. “Yep.”

It looks like he’s inside the room. Not a painting of a room, and not a two-dimensional room like on TV. A real life room. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was actually sitting across from the disciples and watching Bat hang out at Christ’s last supper.

“How did you get in there?” I ask.

“You tell me. It’s your dream.”

“I thought you controlled the dreams.”

Bat shrugs, then picks up a piece of bread and takes a bite.

This is now beyond weird. “Is that real? I mean, does it taste like bread?”

“As close to bread as you painted it.”

Bat walks around the electronic painting, and as he moves, the scene shifts with him. “It’s awkward that they’re all sitting on the same side of the table, but that’s da Vinci.” He gets up and puts his hand on Christ’s shoulder.

Bat is literally touching Jesus Christ!

Bat looks out at me and wrinkles his nose. “Man, this place even smells like the Renaissance.”

“There are smells in there?”

He nods, as if all videos games have a scratch-and-sniff feature.

“What’s it smell like?”

He waves his hand in front of his face. “Like the fifteenth century, and it’s not as enlightened as you’d think.”

I can’t take my eyes off Bat acting like this thing he’s doing is perfectly normal. “Is this the first time you’ve done this?”

“Done what?”

Sometimes it takes the patience of a saint to talk to him. “Gone into my painting. Do you do this when I’m not here?”

He frowns. “I don’t know what happens to me. I think I go back to being nothing.”

I knew that, but I kind of forgot. I’ve been too hung up on trying to get Lake to like me. A lifetime of lessons about helping thy neighbor prod at me. If someone living in your brain isn’t considered a neighbor, who is?

“Bat, is this life okay? I mean, should I be sleeping more?”

“Are you tired?”

I can’t help but smile. “No, Bat. I feel fine.”

“Then it’s all chill.”

He moves to the back of the room and looks out the window. “Madison Square Garden. Nice add, Orfyn.”

“Thanks.”

“I think I owned it.” He leans out the window and teeters on his dirty, bare feet. He regains his balance and shuffles to the front of the painting. “Don’t you think da Vinci could’ve done a better job in the original making the landscape look like Jerusalem?”

And, now we’re back to his useless questions. “I don’t care! There’s nothing we can do about it.”

He drops his head. “Just asking.”

I take in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Bat, I didn’t mean to yell. But everyone else is working on really important things. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing nothing. I want a purpose.”

“Okay,” he says, as if I’d told him it’s time for lunch. He licks his index finger, dabs up crumbs off the tablecloth, and sticks his finger in his mouth.

He touched the crumbs. He tasted the bread. He smelled the stink. He hears me talk. And he’s able to see my painting from a completely different viewpoint—inside.

“What if we can do it?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Create a new form of Art. We could combine what you know about writing video games and what I know about painting so someone can experience a painting like you are right now.”

He nods his head energetically, which is probably the most athletic thing I’ve seen him do. “I think that’s why I chose you.”

The dark weight of bitterness pushes hard against my chest. “The Darwinians picked me because I was disposable.”

“They didn’t choose you. I did. They were going to make you an example.”

“The Darwinians?”

“No, the Anti-Graffiti Task Force. You were days away from getting arrested. I didn’t want you to have to stop painting.”