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Artist Unknown

Part 52 of my story! Read the index and content warnings here! Yes! YES! The tiger is out!

London, Ontario. Crossroads of the world. Harry stood on the corner of the intersection that made up the entirety of the city’s downtown core and searched for the storefront that supposedly held the entrance to the Wilkins gallery, though it was not easy. A layer of fog had draped itself over the city, thick as the mists on the Atlantic, leaving only the windows visible from a distance. They flickered like jack-o-lanterns as shadows passed over them, and the further he moved blindly through this city that was not his, the more foolish he began to feel. It had been four months of fruitless searching, four months of empty barn houses, tiny fights, and failed police calls. Now he had dragged himself and his bike – quite literally – to a backwater repository of Toronto’s finest rejects, and for what? A newspaper advertisement and a hunch. If it was a testament to anything, it was a testament to how desperate he was, and as he prowled the corner in search of the gallery building something animal inside of him shifted and clawed as if trying to find its way out. It was this raw instinct that carried him forward, past any true logic and reason, twisting him moreso into a thing with a purpose than a person with a goal.

Harry Avery had never known love, yet he could not turn back, for he did not have the choice to any more than love itself was a choice.

The bike had been stashed in the horse paddock at the Brunswick Hotel several blocks away for a handsome fee, and now he was in search of a jeweler’s, seasick with unease. The storefront he was looking for was supposedly near a bank and a department store, both of which Harry had already found. Keeping an eye out for streetcars, he crossed the gravel road with hands in his pockets, and reached a corner where a newsie was shouting something about a doctor murdered by some Montreal mafia. Before Harry could stop and ask him for directions he was nearly knocked off his feet by a figure racing zig-zag through the fog.

It appeared to be a youth in a suit and hat, though Harry couldn’t quite make out his features, for he didn’t stop and turn to look at Harry until he was several yards ahead. When he did, he seemed to pause and lock on to Harry for a moment – only to teeter and collapse, much to Harry’s shock and dismay. That was when a stout police officer pushed Harry out of the way and dove towards the unconscious youth.

Harry slowed his pace as he walked by the unbecoming scene, and sensing his presence, the officer stooped over the boy said,

“Nothing to see here. Just another degenerate for the wagon.”

As the officer turned towards the curb with the limp youth in tow, his flashlight revealed that there were indeed a number of degenerates in the wagon, and Harry could tell from the whooping and hollering nearby that there were still more wandering about on the streets. He kept moving, and it wasn’t long before one accosted him.

“Got any pennies?” Asked a voice that reeked of gin.

A grubby hand reached out to Harry before he could even see the toothless face attached to it.

“No, sir, I don’t have any.” Harry was speaking as quickly as he was race-walking away from the man.

He had barely finished the sentence when another man approached him with his hat out. He slouched over his pockets protectively and ducked into the nearest shop front. When he saw where he was, he was met with a pleasant surprise.

The smell of old wood filled his nose as the building’s floorboards creaked below him, and as he turned around he was greeted with an elegant display of small, red, rectangular boxes, each of which held gold rings set with sparkling diamonds. There was a wreath in the window above them, a Christmas display no doubt, and a long line of people snaked past it, packed like sardines into the tiny storefront in fear of coming rain. Harry could tell by their dress alone that they were high society, and they weren’t so much shopping as they were waiting for something to happen.

This was the jewelry store he had been looking for, and above it, so far as Harry could tell, was the Wilkins gallery space. As he followed the line of people to a staircase at the far side of the room, it became clear that these were not shoppers in the traditional sense – they were patrons of the arts, who were being detoured through the jewelry store as part of what could only be some clandestine business arrangement between mister Wilkins and the store’s owner. It was certainly making for good marketing on the jeweler’s behalf, for the women in their fine fur coats tittered and gossiped over the jewels as their bored chaperones stood their place in line. Harry could only wonder how long they had all been standing there, for the line was barely moving. He headed towards the back of the queue while his skin itched to get inside.

The sound of a man clearing his throat from behind the counter snapped him back to reality.

“Excuse me! You there.” Said the tinny voice of the bespectacled man at the counter. “Can I help you, sir?”

Harry lumbered over to the warm glow of the oil lamp by the counter, and at the sight of the polished jeweler he suddenly felt foolish for even being there. There was no way he would fit in among these people, not with his scarred face or his ragged getup.

“I’m here for the exhibition.” Harry explained, growing ever sheepish as the jeweler’s hawkish eyes looked him up and down.

Weakly he pulled out the newspaper clipping from his pocket, only for the man to wave it away.

“Labourers enter through the other door.” The jeweler ordered, and pointed him to the doorway.

“Labourers?”

Harry glanced from the jeweler to the doorway and back again.

“Quickly now, would you!?” The jeweler snapped. “We have an image to maintain, you know.”

The look of disgust in the jeweler’s face alone was enough to send Harry running with his tail between his legs. Just as suddenly as he had entered the store he found himself back on the street corner in search of this fabled other door. He soon found it some six feet away, propped up with a cinderblock.

Through the doorway was a short hallway with a punishing set of narrow wooden stairs. A team of men, each of them tall, not unlike Harry, scarred, not unlike Harry, and bedraggled, not unlike Harry, were taking turns hauling goods from a wooden trailer into the waiting stairway above. One man was struggling with a large, stone pot, and without a second thought Harry jumped in to help him pick it up as rain began to spit down. He seemed to fit in with these so-called labourers a little too well.

At the cost of the well-being of his lower back he found his way in, and he grunted and heaved his burden up the stairs, taking care not to lose his grip on the pot that weighed about as much as he did. When they finally reached the top, Harry and the mover made the mistake of setting it down and resting for several seconds, earning them the ire of a black-tuxedoed servant who was ushering the rest of the men along.

“Don’t just stand there, you animals! Bring it in! We’re about to open!” The footman barked at them.

Harry resisted the urge to argue as the footman marched about the hallway like some little tin monarch. Treatment like this was something Harry kept on running into ever since the Tiny Town fire, and the injustice of it was starting to nip at his fraying psyche. He bit his tongue and hoisted the pot upwards again as the servant kept careful watch of him all the while. Without time to so much as remove his rain-soaked jacket – something that Harry would later be grateful he had not done – the two of them were moving again. Seeing that Harry was eager to make it into the gallery, the man he was lifting it with, an older fellow of about fifty, didn’t pull his share of the weight nearly as well as Harry wished he would. He persevered nonetheless, lugging the pot down yet another long hallway. This one led to a back doorway that seemed to be a hidden entrance into the gallery proper.

Turning inside of it, Harry passed what appeared to be a storage room which was now in the process of being emptied out and converted into a coat check. He passed that doorway, and found himself in a much larger open space where the artwork was being placed. He had no idea that what he was actually moving through was not a gallery, but a dance hall that had been rented out for the occasion, a hidden place that would be the stuff of local legends in a hundred years’ time.

It wasn’t the gallery that Harry was truly focused on, or the pot in his hands, which was now swiftly turning his arms into rubber. It was the narrow possibility that he might find the whereabouts of Joe Piccoli, and he kept his eyes peeled for the paintings he had seen in the newspaper to no avail. The space seemed to host everything but Joe’s art, and it felt more like Billy Hill’s old living room than anything else, filled with masks and plates and exotic artefacts from faraway places that Harry couldn’t name. It reminded him of the display of maiolica at the art gallery, albeit on a much larger scale, and the more time he spent there, the more uncomfortable he became with the place.

He thought back to the question Joe had asked him during their trip to the art gallery:

“Do you giants only like my art because it’s really small?”

It was more than just the art that people liked, Harry had since learned. There were people out there who liked Joe himself for no other reason than because he was really small. As he studied the passing art pieces, he sat with the uncomfortable realization that he too had been one of them. There was a point in his life where he would have loved to gaze in fascination upon Joe’s tiny paintings with little care for Joe himself. Only now, when it was becoming far too late to change anything, did he see the error of his ways.

The pot jerked, bringing Harry back to his senses. To his horror he realized that the other mover was not only faltering, but they were both about to run into a well-dressed man in a white suit standing in the center of the room.

“Easy! Easy!” Said Harry, though the other mover didn’t seem to hear him.

“Where is he!?” The wailing of the man in the white suit was drowning Harry's protests out.

Harry, who was heading towards the man in white whether he wanted to be not, noted that he was inspecting a gilded cage on a stand.

“Easy now!” Harry said again, and pulled backwards on the pot for good measure in the hopes of slowing the mover down.

The mover started pulling the pot away from Harry in turn.

“This is a disaster!” The man in white continued. “The last thing we need is a loose tiny running about! He’s going to frighten away the guests, I just know it!”

At the sound of the words loose tiny Harry’s grip weakened, causing the pot to fall towards the mover and narrowly miss his feet. He yelped in fear and went hopping backwards into the man in white as the pot toppled onto the floor with a thud, and while it luckily didn’t crack, it did roll halfway across the room.

Harry stood there cluelessly as the man in white shoved the mover away from him and then suddenly pulled him in again by his collar, spitting venom like a snake.

“What on Earth do you think you’re doing you ugly, brainless, good-for-nothing idiot!? Pick this thing up, will you!?” The man in white barked. “Don’t you know I have bigger problems to attend to than babysitting you trained monkeys!?”

Bigger things like catching an escaped Joe Piccoli, it seemed. As the mover blubbered his sincerest apologies, the man in white jabbed a finger to a spot over Harry’s shoulder, near one of the beams that held up the ceiling.

“Put it over there.” The man in white growled.

He let go of the mover, and that was the end of it. The men obeyed the orders to the letter, though the mover side-eyed him all the while.

“Of all the people you had to piss off, it had t’be the richest man in London. Well done.” The mover grumbled. “Thanks for nearly breaking my feet, by the way.”

“I’m sorry.”

Harry set the pot down gingerly, taking care not to mash either of their toes this time.

“Who was that?” Asked Harry.

Being the richest man in London, Ontario, to Harry, was a little bit like being the prettiest pig in the pig pen. The mover’s face went blank in exasperation at the question.

“Walter Wilkins. Haven’t you heard of him!? He’s writing our paycheques, you know!”

The disgruntled mover limped off, giving Harry a moment to brainstorm.

So that was mister Wilkins: a short, angry little man with too much money for his own good. Supposedly this was the man who had bought Joe from the snatcher, and Harry had in all likelihood just blew any chance he may have had to speak to him one-on-one. Harry kept his eyes locked on Walter and watched as he crawled on his hands and knees about the gilded cage towards the table beside it, in search of Joe no doubt. Harry’s blood ran hot in his determination to find Joe before he did, but he knew that however he managed it, he would have to do so discreetly, out of sight of Walter or the servants or any other villains lurking in the gallery.

He had just finished that thought when something dark met the corner of his eye, and as he turned and saw what, or rather, who it was, terror froze him in place.

It was an old man in a long cloak and sleek top hat, with a sharp, birdlike nose and wispy white hair. A man whom Harry had learned to fear and obey implicitly. He was headed straight for him and he looked like he was about to kill.

“Father!? Wh… what are you doing here?” Harry did everything he could to make the panic in his voice sound more like good-natured curiosity.

“Buying art.” Said his father as he looked down his nose at him. “What else would I be doing?”

“Uh…” Dumbly Harry looked from Richard to where Walter was crawling about beneath the table and then back again.

“Now that you’re here, everything is starting to make sense. Do you care to help us find that foul-mouthed tiny of yours?” Richard continued.

The blood drained from Harry’s face.

“Excuse me. Whose tiny?” Walter looked up from the feet of the table as if activated by Richard’s words.

“His tiny.” Richard responded before Harry could so much as open his mouth. “I’ve seen the little bugger before. Herman here is the one who trained him.”

“Oh, really?” Walter pranced over with the cage in his hand to where Harry was standing, and all Harry could do was brace himself for the worst.

He had to think of a lie to sell them. Something that wouldn’t let them catch on that he was looking for Joe.

“I… well… you see…” He stuttered.

“No need to explain yourself, I know exactly what to do about this.” Said Walter.

After the fiasco with the pot, Harry was fully expecting that Walter would call security or the police, or at the very least cause another scene. As Harry drew back with his hands at the ready, he wasn’t expecting Walter to thrust something into them with a smile on his face.

It was the gilded cage.

“Take him back to mister Lessard’s then when you find him, will you?” Walter asked cheerily, as though he had suddenly become Harry’s best friend. “Why, I’ll tip you handsomely if you do. I’ve a feeling the little bastard is out to ruin my show, so if you could be so kind as to take him off my hands...”

As Harry looked down at the cage it took a moment for the words to register. Walter must be mistaking him for a snatcher, and if so, he had just made Harry’s life a thousand times easier. Now all he had to do was find Joe and convince him to get into the cage. If he could manage that, the both of them could walk right out of the building Scot free.

Harry nodded at Walter, too afraid to say anything that might upset their delicate arrangement.

“Wonderful.” Walter clasped his hands together and grinned. “Tell mister Lessard I’ll be in touch.”

His father gave the cage a quizzical look.

“That pastime of yours is certainly… interesting.” Richard said of the cage. “If you’ll excuse me.”

His father turned down the rows of artwork, in all likelihood hoping to get first dibs on whatever early bird specials Walter had offered him. Harry could only hope that the direction Richard was headed led far away from Joe.

Dutifully Harry clutched the cage and scanned the gallery space as Walter turned his attention to the contingent of tuxedoed footmen, all of whom were frantically rushing about and trying to make the gallery presentable. The faster they moved, the faster Harry’s heart pounded. He would only have so much time to look before the guests started pouring in, and once there were a hundred feet on the ground he would have no chance of finding Joe at all.

He started his search around the wooden table that had so fascinated Walter. It bore a guestbook and ink well, and Harry soon noted that the quill had been upended from it and the feathers on the end mangled. Leaning closer, he spied a set of tiny shoeprints soaking into the tablecloth, seemingly leading to nowhere.

Harry had learned to think like a borrower, and he followed the table cloth to the tassel, then to the curtain that hung next to that and concealed a work of some great import. He was about to peer behind it when a pair of striking black eyes caught him off guard from the corner of his eye, and his gaze snapped to them.

Hanging a foot away from the curtain was the portrait he had seen in the newspaper, part of a series that grew increasingly abstract, Harry noted. Each canvas was barely the size of a post card, and they surrounded the curtained work as though someone had built a shrine to the artist who had made them. There were other paintings still, a sad circus elephant, a painting of a man – with features uncomfortably close to Harry’s – wading through a swamp, all of which repelled him in some way.

They felt like Joe’s paintings, and yet they also felt alien to him. The colours were tired and faded, and there was something inexplicably listless about the brush work and the detailing. Harry was stricken by just how few of them there were, and whoever had hung the paintings seemed well aware of that, for a slew of landscape paintings clearly not made by the same artist surrounded them and padded the contents of the wall out.

The artist behind the landscapes had a name, but the miniature painter did not. Harry’s skin prickled as he noted that the placard for each miniature piece read, Artist Unknown.

He turned his attention back to the curtain and was just about to open it.

“Have you found him yet?”

Harry flinched as Walter clutched his shoulder in a manner that could only be described as desperately genial. Walter, Harry could see, was smiling from ear to ear, though the beads of sweat dotting his forehead were betraying him.

“I—no, I—”

“Could you perhaps look over there, then?” Walter asked politely, pointing Harry to some nebulous corner of the room. “We’re about to open you see, and as they say, the show must go on.”

“Right.” Said Harry.

Walter’s voice was thin with tension, and his head bobbed about as he nodded profusely at Harry in a way that felt more puppet than man.

“Good, good, jolly good.” Walter warbled.

Harry had no choice but to bumble about with cage in hand as Walter took his place before the table and patted down his pristine suit. There wasn’t a hair out of place on the man, Harry noted, though whatever shoe polish he had put in his hair was beginning to run.

It was only when the doors opened and the army of impatient guests spilled in that Harry spotted a flutter of movement from behind the curtain next to Walter, and as the giants surrounded the table he hoped against his better judgement that it was only the wind.

One of the servants rolled a silver cart of hors d’oeuvres through the crowd, and with wine glass in hand, Walter commenced his opening speech with Harry as a captive listener.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I must thank you all for joining me here today, to celebrate the birth of a new era of cultural enlightenment for our humble, but no less extraordinary, city…”

More and more patrons filtered into the gallery, to the point that Harry, cage still in hand, could hardly see where Walter stood. He tried to push his way through the crowd nonetheless.

“As we all know, London is sadly well known for its ah, high concentration of the less fortunate…” Walter continued.

Sensing that the cart of hors d’oeuvres was the crowd’s weak spot, Harry very politely shuffled towards it and joined the waiting line, squeezing through any odd break in the crowd that brought him closer to the curtain.

“I wanted to ensure that we remain mindful of that upon this gallery’s opening. It is, after all, the duty of men of our standing to take to the betterment of the world and the lives of those in it. Without our steady hand to guide them with kindness and compassion, the less fortunate are apt to fall to ruin, and take us along with them.” Said Walter, as a ripple of dignified laughter ran through the crowd.

Harry’s head bobbed above the curious onlookers as he kept careful watch of the curtain. His heart skipped a beat as it moved again.

“What’s that?” A woman behind him whispered.

“I can think of no better example of this than the Tiny Town Tragedy.” Said Walter, his eyes gleaming with sadness that had no doubt been carefully rehearsed. “There are few souls more unfortunate in this world than the miniatures, and as that tragedy taught us, they cannot be trusted to govern themselves. We have seen, first-hand, the horrors that befell the ones who tried.”

Walter reached out and pulled the tassel beside the curtain, and as it opened the whole room gasped. Harry, who was fourth in line for hors d’oeuvres, could not yet see what they were gasping at.

“And so, as people of wealth, let us not lose sight of what happens when the natural order is disrupted. Let us instead inspire the lesser among us to be their most useful, their most productive, their most respectable selves. It is my hope that in showcasing this collection we will keep them in our thoughts and – ”

A wave of shocked whispers rippled through the crowd, and finally Harry caught a glimpse of what scandalized them so.

“TINY!” One lady shrieked in terror.

“Get it out! Get it out!” A gentleman barked.

“– and ensure that our… society remains… a civilized place to…” The words tumbled out of Walter’s mouth as the crowd fell into disarray, and his head turned slowly in wide-eyed horror to look at what was really behind the curtain.

Sitting atop the picture frame was Joe Piccoli, presently giving the crowd the finger. His entire forearm was covered in ink, and in his hand was a tuft of slick, black feathers. The canvas within the frame had been vandalized with the face of each figure blacked out completely and the clothing painted over with exaggerated genitalia.

As the onlookers screeched in terror and fled to the corners of the room, Harry watched Walter Wilkins turn white as his suit.

"Excuse me." He said.

Calmly, Walter handed his glass of wine off to a waiting footman. Then his hand shot towards Joe, who leapt from the wall down to the floor, prompting more shrieks from all the well-to-do gallery patrons who huddled into a circle and left Joe Piccoli alone in the room’s empty center.

Alone with the exception of Harry, of course. Clutching the cage, Harry gently pushed the silver cart aside and stayed put as he studied the ring of frightened faces that gawked at the both of them. His father’s was among them, scowling at him, and as Harry stepped towards Joe, who sat between him and Walter, he felt like a part of some twisted circus act.

“Well don’t just stand there!” Walter said to Harry. “Grab him and be done with it!”

The room fell silent as Harry and Joe trembled in unison. Harry looked down at him, utterly lost as to what to do.

There Joe stood, in the ring of gawking giants, looking up at Harry and standing rigid as a boy whose father was about to beat him about the ears. The cage rattled in Harry’s fearful hand with utter disgust, not only with Walter, but with himself as well.

He couldn’t shake the thought of how easy it would be to grab him up and take him. He could keep up the act and put Joe in that cage at that very moment and run right out of the building with him, no hassle, no fuss. He could let Joe out and beg for forgiveness later if he had to. That was the easy way, the path of least resistance. Wasn’t Harry used to taking the path of least resistance?

Even if he was, by now he had seen the snatcher’s den and the jars and the cages. He felt the weight of the metal in his hand as he held it over Joe like some untouchable god. How naïve he had been to think he could ever convince Joe to get into such a monstrous invention after what had happened between them! Joe’s little black eyes sparkled as he looked up at him with a terror Harry himself had put there. This was a bridge that Harry could not cross, for it was one he had burnt long ago. He already knew where it would lead them.

“Go on…” Walter prompted him. “Just pick him up already!”

The crowd gasped as Harry threw the cage aside, and his throat tightened in revulsion as he said the only thing he could think to say to Walter in response:

“Fuck you, mister Wilkins.”

A chorus of scandalized chatter rose from the crowd.

Walter froze in bewilderment.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said fuck you, mister Wilkins!" Harry repeated, louder and more forcefully this time, as the frightened guests looked on in shock. With nothing more to lose he nodded to where Richard stood and added, “and fuck you too, father.”

Walter glanced back at Richard and did a double take. By now the entire gallery had collapsed into a state of barely controlled chaos and more and more guests shuffled hurriedly out of the room.

Harry stooped down towards Joe, sensing the perfect moment.

“Run.” He said, though Joe still quivered in place. “Go. Now!”

Before he could convince Joe any further, Walter cleared his throat.

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave, mister… Avery, is it? Is this really your son, Richard?” He said, glancing coldly at Richard once again. "Whoever you may be, Herman, I suggest you get out!"

“I’ve never met that man in my life, and I want no part in this.” Harry heard Richard reply, and it neither surprised him nor mattered to him anymore. “Good day, Walter.”

Harry watched in silence as his father walked straight out of the gallery. He could only hope — incorrectly — that Richard had also just walked out of his life forever.

"If you could be so kind as to join him..." Walter said, turning his attention back to Harry.

“Oh, I’ll leave, mister Wilkins,” said Harry, “and Joe can come with me if he likes to, but I’m not putting him behind bars. I tried that once and it didn’t do either of us any good. Why can’t I just let him go free?”

Harry’s eyes darted nervously between Joe and Walter. Why wasn’t Joe running? Walter, meanwhile, was smiling at his shoes with his hands on his hips. When he looked up at Harry his eyes were hair-raisingly empty.

“I see what this is. Some activist demonstration, is it? Have you come here to embarrass me in front of my buyers? Stay put, then. I'm sure the police will be here soon.” Walter snarled.

Harry stepped right over where Joe stood and placed himself between the miniature and Walter as white hot rage coursed like venom through his blood.

“After what you did to mister Piccoli you’re the one who ought to be locked up.” Said Harry.

He jabbed a finger at Walter as the final drop of human decency evaporated from him.

Walter’s eyes shifted from left to right, taking stock of his art exhibition that was now in shambles. He had the look of a cornered animal, one that Harry was poised to kill. Walter’s eyes, Harry noted, were fixed on Joe Piccoli as he said what came next.

“We’ll see who gets locked up, then, you filthy, tiny-loving degenerate.” Walter’s voice was eggshell thin. “If you won’t cage him for me, then I will take him away myself!”

Harry knew what was coming next, though he barely had time to brace himself as Walter lunged for him. His instincts kicked in and he dodged Walter’s first strike, then narrowly missed landing his own. Walter only flinched for a second, but it was a precious one, for when Walter struck out at him a second time Harry timed it perfectly. He seized Walter’s right hook with one hand and hammered him in the ear with the other, then shoved him back towards the wall.

Harry’s capacity for violence had hung over him like a sword on a thread since the great war, and his encounter with Lessard had sent it roaring back to the forefront of his psyche. He was a big man, built more like a piece of farm equipment than a person, and his hands fit perfectly around Walter’s starched collar. As Walter struggled against him, red-faced and sweaty, Harry wasn’t thinking about him in that second, or his father, or the frightened patrons of the gallery. He wasn't even thinking about Joe. Harry wasn’t thinking at all, for instead he had become a dreadful thing with a dreadful purpose: the terrifying and exhilarating duty to kill. Whether Walter lived or died was secondary to him, as were the terrified people fleeing the gallery, or his father talking to the officer on the street corner.

Harry Avery had never known love, but war had taught him that its purest expression was murder.

He slammed Walter against the wall once, twice, three times, until the canvas behind the curtain shook off and fell to the floor. Walter, half his size, howled like a hyena during the valuable seconds in which Harry gave him any opportunity to breathe.

Harry was contemplating all the ways he might rearrange Walter’s face when a little voice from behind him stopped him cold.

“Doc, that’s enough! Let him go! He's not worth it. Let's just go home.”

It was Joe Piccoli, who still had not run when he should have. Harry’s humanity came rushing back to him at the sound of his master’s voice, and he tossed Walter aside like a rag doll.

"Please?" Joe continued as Harry turned and scooped him up in his hands. "Let's just go home."

There was a snapping sound from behind them as Walter thrashed about, one that filled him with dread. He couldn’t tell if it was a bone, let alone what bone of Walter’s it was. Not the neck, he hoped. Perhaps he had done it — perhaps he had killed in the name of love. In front of Joe, no less! Cage or no cage, surely Joe thought him a monster after this dreadful display—

“MY ART!” Walter howled. “The ugly brute destroyed MY ART!”

The sound had been the tiny canvas, snapped to pieces under Walter’s own weight. Relieved, Harry paused, clutching Joe as though he were the last thing he had left to hold onto. In one vital miscalculation he turned to face Walter a final time.

“Joe’s art.” Harry corrected him.

For a split second Harry stood triumphantly in the now empty gallery, his purpose served and his good deed done. There was nothing left to do in his mind besides walk out and return to business as usual. That was, after all, what society had allowed him to do up until this point, and what Harry was unaware of was this: the world was one big club, and Harry was no longer in it.

The second he turned back around he was hit not once, not twice, but three times over the head with a baton and then wrestled to the floor. His vision blurred in and out and the voices surrounding him grew distorted. The most he could make out was Walter shrilly asking,

“Did you see the way he lunged at me, officer!?”

The dark-circled eyes of the stout officer he had encountered earlier came into view. By the time he was coherent enough to realize what was happening he was already in handcuffs and being marched through the doorway – with no sign of Joe Piccoli once again. His fingers curled and his eyes darted as frustration burned inside of him.

“Wait—wait!” He protested, though the officer didn’t wait.

He dug in his heels as the officer dragged him down the stairs, across the street, and tossed him into the paddy wagon on the corner — one final degenerate to be added to the collection. Nothing more, and nothing less.

-

Harry woke to the cold sensation of a prison cell floor against his missing ear as an unfamiliar voice echoed through the stone building.

“…the man at the gallery, Richard, identified himself as his father.” Said the officer – a different one than the man who had arrested him. “Richard told me Herman here showed up at the gallery to harass him and recommended we lock him up in an asylum.”

“Really?” Asked another officer who was clearly half-listening. “Geez.”

“According to Richard he’s one of those, uh… y’know. Those guys who came back from the war and were never the same after. Shell shock, I think they call it? Some new medical thing.”

Harry was relieved to find that his hands were free. He sat up and rubbed his throbbing temples.

“Shell shock? Sheesh, does everything have to have some fancy label these days?” The second officer scoffed. “I went to war, you went to war, we all did. Just call it what it is: cowardice! Cowardice is not a medical condition.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just what Richard’s telling me, okay?” The first officer shrugged.

Harry lugged himself to his feet and staggered towards the bars as the first officer continued.

“So far he’s wanted on charges of assault, public obscenity, swearing in the presence of a lady, suspected tiny snatching… but if he’s as much of an imbecile as his father says he is then it might be easier to throw him in the loony bin. Could send him as early as tomorrow morning, even, depending on when the doctor gets here.”

Harry’s fingers curled around the bars. With each listed charge more memories came flooding back to him. Where had Joe gone? Where had they taken his coat?

“Hey!” When Harry called out into the blue stone corridor he only half expected a response. “Officers! Excuse me, officers? Where is Joe Piccoli?”

“Is that him?” Asked the second officer.

“Yup… hold on.”

There was a slithering sound as the first officer, who was out of Harry’s view, got out of his chair and drew closer.

“Good morning Herman.” The man cheerily greeted him, though Harry still could not see him in the dimly-lit hallway.

“Where is Joe Piccoli?” Harry repeated.

“Who is Joe Piccoli? He a friend of yours?” The officer asked in turn.

Harry’s aching head slumped against the bars.

“Never mind.” He said. “Is the tiny okay?”

“The one at the gallery? We were hoping to ask you the same question. We have quite a few questions for you as a matter of fact, Herman.” Said the stern officer.

Some small amount of relief came over him. If the officers had no idea where Joe had gone there was still a chance that he was out there somewhere in one piece.

“If I answer your questions will you let me go?” He naïvely asked.

“Not if we can help it.” The officer replied with barely restrained sadistic glee. “We’ll get to it when the doctor arrives. In the meantime, if you want anything, just ask!”

With that the officer returned to his place down the corridor and sat back down next to his buddy, quieter this time. Harry, meanwhile, wracked his battered brain for a solution only to find that there was none.

He backed away from the bars, sat down on the bench, and stared up at the ceiling.

Maybe it didn’t matter what happened to him, he figured. Maybe his freedom was the price he had to pay in exchange for Joe’s, and as he sat there in the sadness of the cell he decided there was no place he would rather be. It was the least he could do after all the horrors the two had faced, and all the ones Harry had failed to respond appropriately to. It was only right that Harry got a turn in the cage considering all the dreadful things the world was constantly itching to do to Joe.

He had realized far too late that the two of them were on the same side. As he sat there, he lamented all the time and goodwill he had wasted trying to appeal to people like Walter and his father. For what reason, he wondered.

Safety. Safety was the reason, a very conditional type of safety that could easily be revoked. It was granted on the condition that Harry drifted through life with his head down and his mouth shut and admitted to everyone, himself included, that although he was a degenerate, he was a good degenerate, one that did what it was told, and jumped when they bid it to jump, and honoured its father and its mother and the likes of Walter Wilkins, richest man in London, Ontario.

Harry Avery had never known love. He had exchanged his capacity to love for safety. What Harry had not been counting on was love’s capacity to find him, whether he wanted it to or not, and turn him into something untamed. Though he was now caged, he had never felt a freedom like this before, and he would see the inside of a thousand jail cells if it meant he would be able to keep it for just a moment longer.

This was love, in its purest and most desperate form. Love he had buried and rediscovered far too late, and could now do nothing with. It was love he had squandered, fragile as a pearl clutched in the teeth of a swine, and he held onto it all the same, for whether he died in the cell, in the asylum, or somewhere in the crossroads of the world, he would die holding onto one fundamental truth:

Harry loved Joe Piccoli.

Next part coming eventually!

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