I did not like art. I was repulsed by brushes and scalpels because of their vicious brethren from rooms of fluorescent reflections upon the tools of barbarism. So too were the rooms of the gallery sterile and bland as though exsanguinated. The skin lacked the deep darkness of blood, pale and firm under my feet. The walls too resembled great sheets of endless death, pure white brightened by fluorescent bulbs whose hymns were long and high pitched above the muttering viewers who had assembled to bear some witness to the things which were put upon the walls. 

Tattoo’s. Rather, or even, scabs upon the skin. Blisters. That was what I had decided they must have been. Oil and plaster scabs that must have hardened upon the flesh before its post-mortem petrification. This one was still red from the half-solid blood, and that one was yellow from the healing pus of biological expulsion. Diseased pus framed in by a bandage of thin black metallic frame. Then the blue bruise, underneath which the muscle had been traumatized, and the green which had become rotten and would need the treatment of the scalpels and brushes who had originated the art of cutting apart the human form. 

A woman in an oversized beige blazer approached me from the side. 

“Do you like this painting?” She asked with her hands behind her back. 

Caught off guard, I focused my eyes to observe the scab that was on the wall closest to me. It must have appeared, from my loitering nearby, that I was very intrigued by the thing. I was not, but I had business with the place and so needed to wait for an agent. There was no point to any of my standing at that specific spot, but rather than say as much, I regarded the framed bandage. 

Two blue orbs stared back at me. They were wide and covered in red veins strained across by the water which rushed around and leaked from the bottom of the orbs. Beneath the skin of the creature, though it glimmered like porcelain, was covered in purple clouds and valleys of scarlet from which small oleander flowers crept out on vines. The pink lips were creased, each corner reaching high and gaping wide as the browned enamel within was exposed before a pitch deeper still. The figure was collapsed on the ground like roadkill, its torso covered by tattered rags of deranged colors. Its legs and right arm bent and twisted like the branches of a dead tree. The canvas behind the figure was drenched in every variant of red and brown and purple. Chaotical thrown upon it in a frantic haze of passion and intent. In the foreground, two enormous hands held the torn and bloodied wings of a bird. The figure's left arm, still as purple and blue as the other, with black dripping from its outstretched gesture, was pointing at the viewer. 

“It’s funny. I find it very funny.” I said. 

The woman looked at the canvas and then back at me before responding. 

“That’s a very unique opinion. It’s called The Vanity of the Puca. It’s supposed to be the gruesome murder of a shapeshifting fairy, you know? I don’t think it’s very funny at all, it makes me a bit uncomfortable, if I’m being honest. She looks like such a nice person, it’s hard to imagine she’s a monster. But, well, I guess she must be, what do you think?” 

The fingers were thick, and the strands of hair on them were wet with the blood of his prey. Yet they held their quarry with no reverence, with no victory. They were low, observing the treasure as though it were water cupped in palms. So were they, that the blood could not flow from between his pressed hands and leaked from the gaps between the fingers. 

“I think the artist needs his head checked.” It was a scab upon the brain made real. The gallery was his desiccated remains made plain to all, each frame a wound covered over with temporary healing. A fragile bandage so paper thin that were one of the viewers in that room to merely peek behind the canvas, they may just see the pulsing muscle and the flowing nerves. 

The woman did not answer my reply, and she stood there looking at the painting before stepping away with a satisfied look. Too firm were her steps to have been without intent, too slow her gait to have been escape. She continued to view the gallery, expending upon each frame the same tilted head and half smile as she had upon the Puca. Whatever she had gained from the thing, I could not know, but I knew, at least, that the artist had not given her that boon. 

A person tapped my shoulder and I turned. It was a young man in a white button down. 

“Here you are Mr Carter. The visit was very surprising, you know, because we really don’t do business like this regularly. But for you the director was willing to make an exception. We are so pleased you chose us, after all, when there was the Foundation, who would have been able to pay you so much more. Thank you again, on behalf of the staff.” 

I creased my lips. 

“It’s an honor to be able to support smaller galleries. I am sorry for the short notice, I just heard that you were getting good sales, and I had a few things to take care of. I’m sorry for the bother, can you tell the director that I’ll be back next week? Maybe I can get him lunch to make up for the inordinary visit?” 

“I’m sure he would be honored, Mr Carter. Have a wonderful day.”

“To you as well.” 

I took the envelope with those blue eyes on my back. I could feel the smile digging into my spine, burrowing itself through my chest and laughing at the man who gave me that parcel of cash. How easily the Puca had defied its own desires and sold the wings. Sold to be rid of them, sold to heal them. The Puca too simply had fooled others into believing its own scabs were wings, and so simply had his form become that of something which could have sold them. 

The man shook my hand and disappeared through a white door into the darkness of the building's organs. A blood cell, carrying valuable oxygen to the host. I held it in my hand and let a breath leave my throat. It weighed twice what it should have, twice what the canvas it was traded for was truly worth. Twice the punishment that the Puca should have wrought from the murder of his better. For the vain brutality, for the ambition. She pitied him, and in her pity, she laughed with frenzied and hateful ruth. He too was a beast of his kind. He shifted for them, changing faces to the company he kept. Spitting upon the beautiful to taint it with his vulgar palette. Fleeing back into sin. 

I hated art, because it was no more than a scab.