His name is Khael, Khael Reyes, a sophomore law student, the top and youngest in his class. He is 22 years old but has already seen the harshness of life. He goes through his day in gloom that one could not see a trace of emotion on his face. Not a smile or even a frown. But he wasn’t always like this.
Two years ago, on his graduation night, his mom called him. He could barely understand her through the sobbing. On that day, his sister was found drowned in her bathtub.
His sister: the only one who believed in him; who held him when his father felt violent; the one who took him in when their mother threw him out; the one he knew to be more of a mother to him than their own mother, was now gone. Just like that, he was alone. His mother too busy and his father still a vegetable on a hospital bed, he had no one to turn to but himself. That night, amidst the celebration, he swallowed himself whole. He decided never to betray any hint of emotion and in the process make himself numb.
True enough, he has not felt any emotion, nothing but the grief of loosing the only one who showed him affection; his shelter; his home.
Since then, he seemed invulnerable; a serious young man on a mission. Yet the mission was unclear and his goal was nothing. He became a puppet of the system. Top scholar, good in class but nothing inside: an empty shell. At least as how the world sees him.
Every day he starts with the same routine; work from 9 to 5, cross the street and study law. Come night time, his world thrives. Every night he toils seeking inspiration and models. But every night he finds none. He is a proper artist with his knife, a beautiful shredder of wood and ice. He walks the city streets looking for a familiar face, or rather a face to make him forget his home. Yet he never finds one. Instead he sees his sister. And every night he carves his sister’s soul on wood and burns it by the time he finishes.
If one could only behold his art, he would be hailed. If the world could only see his work the world will celebrate. And that is the very reason he dose not show it. He works all night to exalt his sister yet burns her memory before dawn. Every night he stages a reenactment of how life deprived him of his home. He deprives the world of his art.
On the night of his sister’s second death anniversary he tries a new medium for art: graphic skin art. He buys a machine and starts to scribble. A month later, his skin was an abstract mural in memory of his sister: the first mistake to his act of numbness.
His art was a wondrous display of shapes, shades and emotion and the world started to notice.
“Atty. canvassed skin” was what his employers called him. “Khael the brute” dubbed by his professors and “a beautiful, tormented soul” was what another student knew him as, even before he placed his art on his skin.
He thought of it as a good turn of events. “I will tear this beauty away from all as life tore me from my home.” That was the plan. He planned to end it all as soon as the world learned to love his art.
Khael started a new career. He opened up shop near his school and started to give the cheapest yet most beautiful art from sculpture to charcoal sketches and tattoos. Two months in the business, he quit his job as safety supervisor and poured his time to art and law. Unknowingly, he started to learn how to smile but he never did give one.
One summer evening, when he was alone in his shop ready to close up for the night and tend to his studies, some one came in the shop. Not even looking up to see who it was, he said “I’m about to close up but feel free to look around.” And he went on tidying up.
The visitor voice was unfamiliar to him but spoke as if he knew him. “Why just now that you graced the world of your art?” the visitor asked? “Excuse me?” he asked back. “From what I’ve seen from you, you are art’s child.” Khael turns to his visitor and says “no sir, you are mistaken.” “I am Khael Reyes, son of Dr. Susan Rodriguez and Engineer Karl Cunlo Reyes. I am not an artist’s son, nor was I born in art. I am but a victim of life as all men are evidently will be.” Khael’s visitor was a young man in his early 20’s, but what Khael noticed was the jacket he was wearing. The jacket was vintage brown leather, with words written all over it. It was obvious that the writings were not from the manufacturer and Khael figured his visitor was a poet or a writer of some sort.
“I am Michael” the visitor introduced himself and took out a piece of paper from his jacket pocket. “I have here a design,” Michael started but Khael interrupted him. “I’m closed for the day.” Michael smiled and handed him the piece of paper. “I’m not asking you to do it for me; I’m asking you to study this design.” Khael was intrigued and took the piece of paper. Khael tried to examine the design but was distracted by the age of the paper. It seemed as though it was years old and was once submerged in water. The ring of his shop door took him from his revere and he was once again alone in his shop.
That evening, curious about the design, Khael rushed back to his shop after his classes. He hunched over the design on his well-lit working table to study it. Hours passed as he turned it over on its’ side and upside down but he couldn’t seem to understand the inspiration of the abstract design. Not wanting to give up on understanding this weird art, he fell asleep hunched over his table.
The next morning he wakes with someone knocking on his shop door. He opens his door and finds Sarah, his fellow law student, looking worried. “Are you okay?” Sarah asked. “Why would I not be okay?” he answers. “I saw you last night come in here and turn a light on and this morning, the same light was still on. I was just worried about you.”
Still not fully awake, Khael invites Sarah to come in and he washes his face on the sink. Sarah looks around and finds the design. “This is quite a beautiful impression of a girl,” she says picking up the piece of paper. Khael rushes to Sarah’s side to try and see what she sees. “How could that be a girl?” Khael asks. She points out to the jagged outline of the design and says, “it’s a charred image of a girl. As if her image was burned into wood or a sculpture saved from flames.” Khael peered closer and saw the image of her sister as if he carved it himself. “Oh. Now I see it.”
Much more to that, Khael also saw something that Sarah didn’t. He saw formations of words on the edges of the design. It read “I’m sorry for leaving, but I am happy now, Khael.”
What he read did nothing to appease his anger towards life, but only fed it. That night, as the world slept, Khael took his art from the world as life took his home from him. He burned all his art and his shop with him along with it.
-Orville “chubby” Basas-
