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Stroll

August 1, 2021 By Steve Gergley

Stroll

For what would be her final performance piece before the cancer claimed her life, the artist slathered her hairless body with the darkest substance on earth, a highly-toxic, ultra-black paint comprised of carbon nanotubes. Once the paint had dried, she slipped on a pair of dollar-store sunglasses and walked naked through the streets of her Brooklyn neighborhood, her paint-glazed skin absorbing 99.96% of the light it came in contact with.

During the brunch hour, diners held up their phones and tried to take pictures of the knife-slash black hole that was the artist’s body. But she walked on without a word, crisscrossing Brooklyn for hours, ignoring the cacophonous noise of the bustling city in which she had cried and smoked and fucked for the past forty-eight and a half years.

At sunset her legs went numb and she experienced the sensation of floating above the pavement like a spirit, the sharp October cold chilling the fibrous ligaments linking her bones. But on she walked, staring into the depthless voids of her feet, her body slowly dissolving into the blue-black darkness of the encroaching night.

In the morning, bars of gold sunlight sliced between the buildings and stretched across the sidewalk. Speed-walking pedestrians sucked fruit-flavored smoke from electronic cigarettes. A pair of dollar-store sunglasses lay unscratched in the center of the street. The artist’s body was never found.

About Steve Gergley

Steve Gergley is a writer and runner based in Warwick, New York. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Cleaver Magazine, Hobart, Pithead Chapel, After the Pause, Barren Magazine, and others. In addition to writing fiction, he has composed and recorded five albums of original music. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/

Artist Credit:

Based out of Orlando, Katiana Robles is a multidisciplinary artist who sculpts, paints, and illustrates in a variety of media including some edible ones. Her work has been exhibited throughout Central Florida; most notably at Orlando City Hall, City Arts Factory, and Osceola Arts. To see more of her whimsical work follow her on Instagram @kat_robles.

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