The Muse

    The painter threw his brush at the wall and cried in frustration. His name was Albert, and the Muse wasn't helping him. The Muse was a small statue of a beautiful woman sitting on a wave of water. The stone water twisted into several spouts which at one time long past, held different colors of paint. But now the paint was dry, and with it his inspiration.
    He had acquired the Muse when his grandmother, an accomplished painter, passed away. At first he despised it, for his grandmother was rich, and his two brothers got everything. As he was broke, it, along with some blank canvases, was his only possession.
    Sitting in his one-room apartment, he stared at a canvas, brush lying across the room. The Muse sat on a small table, giving its cold stare.
    "Goddamn it! That old woman could do it, so why can't I? Is it really so hard to make art?"
    His ear twitched and he heard a buzzing in his head. Using his pinkie to dig in his ear, he looked around and leveled eyes with the Muse.
    ".....rat...rat...rat..."
    "What the hell was that?!" he jumped up and walked to the statue. The whispers got louder, and then there was silence.
    He left his apartment with an eerie feeling looming over him. Walking down the alley by his crumbling building, he saw some rats gnawing on a dead cat. Being used to these sights, he didn't even think of it as gross.
    "....rat...rat...rat..."
    "What the hell?!" he walked to the rats and the whispers grew louder. He spotted one that was completely white. Dirty, but white. Once he saw it he felt a random urge to take it.
    Lunging at it, he wrapped his fingers around its wet body, pinning his head so it couldn't bite him.
    He rushed back to his apartment with the rat, his steps loud and uneven. He stomped through a puddle and a splash of muddy water hit his eye. A reflex, he wiped his eye. The rat slipped a foot out and clawed his nose.
    He didn't even notice it. He stormed up the stairs, oblivious to the thin trickle of blood running by his nostrils. He burst through the door and flung the rat into the kitchen sink. Albert slammed the door behind him, causing wood to splinter and neighbors to shout obscene threats.
From the kitchen sink came a series of squeals and scratching sounds while Albert searched his drawers for a knife. There were no knives he could find, but there was an old rusty fork.
Squeezing it tight, poised himself to strike at the rat. He squinted his eyes and tried to have a moment of sensible thought. But when the rat got halfway out of the sink, he rammed the fork into its neck. Albert picked up the dying, paralyzed rodent. He quickly stabbed it again to draw more blood.
    Carrying his ragged offering, he walked to the Muse, holding it over the statue slowly. Blood dripped upon its head, disappearing into its stone skin. From the water spouts sprang up fresh paint, and clear images filled his head.
    Albert threw aside the corpse of the rat, and picked up his brush. Carefully, he dipped it into a spout filled with blue paint. From there, the statue guided his mind, sending images of beauty he could never portray on his own.





    Three months later Albert was rich. His paintings were sold quick and at high price. There was never any haggling; people just had to have them no matter what they cost.
    The paint dried up after every other painting, and it called for some unique creature to be offered up. The first, of course, was the white rat. The second was a mutated crow with an extra set of wings (they were slightly smaller than normal and completely useless, making it easy to catch.) And lastly, the third one was a crossbreed between what he guessed was a cat and a dog. The thing was entirely unstable, and would have died soon regardless.
    He now lived in a very comfortable house, in a pleasant neighborhood. But bills were stacking up. Yet the Muse stayed silent, so he waited patiently.
    Albert sat in a lawn chair in his front yard, napping the afternoon away.
    “Get back here!”
    He jolted up to see a big golden retriever running towards him and a pretty brunette woman following behind it.
It jumped into his lap and started licking him.
    “I’m so sorry! He’s not mean, I swear! Bruce, stop that!” the dog leaped off him. He couldn’t help but laugh.
    “I’m sorry,” She said again and again.
    “It’s fine, what’s your name?” he smiled at her.
    “Jennifer,” she smiled back, “you?”
    “Albert. You live across the street?”
    “Yea, I do.”
    They made small talk, and it wasn’t long before he heard the Muse’s call.
    “The girl…the girl…”
    His stomach keeled over immediately. But it eased when he realized it wasn’t the woman he was talking too.
    “Mommy!”
    A little girl in a yellow dress came running up and hugged Jennifer’s leg.
    “This is my daughter, Samantha. Samantha, this is Albert.”
    “Hi Albert!” she yelled as children usually do.
    He saw something strange about her almost immediately; she had one green eye and one blue.
    “The girl…the girl…the girl…”