The Rust and the Rain

The eviction notice was pink.

That was the first thing Leo "Sketch" Rossi noticed. Not the bold, capitalized letters telling him to vacate the basement apartment by the first of the month, nor the threat of legal action. He noticed the color. It was a soft, desaturated salmon pink, the color of old bubblegum stuck under a diner table. It was the color of failure.

Leo crumpled the paper and shoved it into the pocket of his hoodie. It joined a graveyard of receipts, losing lottery tickets, and a rejection letter from the Cleveland Institute of Art that was three years old but still burned like fresh acid.

"Whatever," Leo muttered to the empty gas station forecourt. "Art is dead anyway."

He clocked out at 11:00 PM. The rain in Ohio didn't wash things clean; it just made the grime slicker. It turned the smokestacks into weeping giants and the asphalt into a black mirror reflecting the neon sign of the Gas-N-Go. *Open 24 Hours.* A lie. Nothing in this town had been truly open for twenty years.

Leo adjusted his backpack. It was heavy, clanking with the only things he actually owned: twelve cans of Krylon spray paint, a sketchbook that was falling apart, and a half-eaten bag of beef jerky.

He walked past the closed factories, heading for the overpass on I-75. It was his cathedral. The only place where he felt like he existed.

The wind whipped his hair across his face, stinging his eyes. He climbed the maintenance ladder, his Converse slipping on the wet rungs. He reached the catwalk beneath the bridge, suspended above the roaring semi-trucks below. They were headed somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Leo pulled a can of "Electric Blue" from his bag. He shook it. The rattle of the mixing ball was the only music he needed.

* Clack-clack-clack.*

He approached the concrete pillar. He didn't tag his name. He didn't tag gang signs. He painted windows. He painted impossible landscapes on the gray rot of the infrastructure. Tonight, he wanted to paint a door. A way out.

"Let’s see," Leo whispered, the fumes filling his nose, sharper than the ozone of the storm brewing overhead. "A little depth here. Drop shadow there."

He worked with a manic energy. The blue hissed onto the concrete. He layered it with "Inferno Orange," creating a frame that looked like it was burning. He was sweating, despite the cold. For a moment, the debt didn't exist. The disappointment of his father didn't exist. He was a god of aerosol.

Thunder cracked, shaking the bridge.

Leo flinched. His foot caught on a rusted bolt jutting from the catwalk.

Gravity, unlike art, was honest. It didn't negotiate.

He pitched backward. His hand flailed, grabbing at wet air. He saw his masterpiece—the burning door—spinning away from him. He saw the headlights of a truck below, twin stars in the abyss.

Lightning struck the bridge.

It didn't hit the metal. It hit the wet paint.

The "Electric Blue" ignited with a sound that wasn't thunder, but a choir of screaming violins. The world dissolved into white noise and blinding light. Leo didn't feel the impact of the pavement. He felt a hook behind his navel, yanking him sideways through the fabric of the storm.

Then, the roaring stopped.