Chapter 5: Anger is Easy

"Do you still have the paint supplies I gave to you?" Dr. Johnson peered over the rims of her glasses. It wasn't really a question Charlotte realized, Dr. Johnson was simply reminding her. At her hesitant look, Dr. Johnson continued. "I want you to use them. I don't care what it is, I don't care if you finish it, and you don't have to show me if you don't want to. I just want you to paint. I want you to try."

"Sure." The agreement sounded uncommitted to even Charlotte, as she stood to leave, the session over. Once out of the room, she wiped at her face, trying to dry it. She'd been crying. Again.

It had been three days since her encounter with the soldier. She had gone back to the same routine. It was like nothing had happened, like nothing had changed, but she knew better. She was struggling. Her feelings that had been so neatly repressed before were overflowing. The constant tears were enough to push her to insanity.

Hours later, she was sitting her on little twin-size bed, considering the blank canvas across the room. It was propped up on its own easel just waiting for her to alter it. Before she might have painted something tame like a flower in a vase or a bowl of fruit all done with muted colors. Something someone could hang in a hotel room for all its lack of originality. Painting had never been a true outlet for her. She had never had the confidence to just paint what was in side of her.

But she'd never been so angry before, or humiliated. She had never been in such pain.

She stood up from her bed and walked the couple of steps to the desk next to the easel and canvas. The paints and brushes lay unopened next to a white mug and clean palette. She started to pull out a yellow and some white to mix together, but stopped. She stared at the red and the black for a moment. The woman she had been before would have diluted them, watering down their intensity. She would have made them mild.

Fuck it, she thought. She wasn't that woman anymore. She didn't care if what she painted wasn't what other people wanted to see.

Before she had always focused too much on techniques, and never just letting herself enjoy the experience. This time she picked an emotion and tried to get every bit of it that was trapped in her on to the canvas. Anger was easier to handle than the others things festering in her. Its colors were easy to identify and each stroke was done brazenly.

It was days later, during the free time before lights out, when she stood back and stared at what she had created. She was nearly done, but something was missing. There was something important that seemed to not be making it completely to the canvas and she struggled to figure out what it was.

"That's pretty good."

Charlotte started at the unexpected voice. Leaning against the door frame of her room was Mary.

"I heard he was the one who dragged you back after you escaped." Mary stepped further into room. Her eyes were roaming over the canvas.

Charlotte kicked herself for having left the door open. She had never intended for the piece to be seen by anyone.

"You know," Mary stood next to her. "They kept him in a cell a few down from mine."

"What?"

Mary nodded, but kept looking at the painting. "Before you sent missing I thought it was empty, because no one ever went near it. But then when you didn't come back they went in there and it seemed like hours before they dragged him out. Whatever they did to him after that was pretty bad, because we all hear his screams."

Charlotte stared in confused horror at Mary.

"You didn't know he was one of us?" Mary frowned at her.

"No." Charlotte looked back at the painting. She felt light headed.

"So then why did you try to help him the other day?"

Charlotte was a little surprised that Mary knew about that.

"They were trying to tie him down." She wondered if that would even make sense to anyone but herself.

Mary nodded, like that was the only explanation she needed. Charlotte realized by the sudden hardness in the other woman's eyes that she did understand.

"Fucking pricks." Mary was looking at the painting again, but her words weren't directed at the soldier depicted in it.