The Haunted Traveler Vol. 1 Issue 1

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her contours drabbish, the sheer incongruity of the picture
she made might compensate for it all, as would the breathtaking
view.
They were remarkable, even in the flesh. The young woman
was porcelain and her man was boiled gold. They needed no
highlighting, but like most people they daubed themselves
in color. People had a habit of self-painting, as if their skin
wasn't enough. They tatted, dyed, and bejeweled themselves,
made themselves up, and they depended on their clothes (her
shirt was lemon yellow, his red plaid). They were too hip
for jewelry or makeup, but Yocelin spotted tattoos around
wrists and forearms, inked in sophisticated black.
Skin was enough for Yocelin. So was broken skin. It glistened.
It wept. It offered up the best of reds. It could be filigreed
like marble, if you knew where to cut.
The couple neared Yocelin at the wrought-iron gate that
welcomed visitors to MacLaren Cemetery. They sized her
up among easel, canvas, palette, and paint-box. Unless they
could stand to embarrass themselves with a prudish turning-back,
the pair was forced to engage with the half-naked
artist. They seemed game enough. Wakefield would not get
the best of these Torontonians.
Yocelin lifted her brush at them. "Degemer mad," she said,
knowing it would fascinate them.
The Anglophones cocked their heads, arrested. There was no need on
Yocelin's part to guess ethnicities. They were clearly from out of province,
else coddled by an English-speaking microculture in downtown
Montreal. Either way, their expectations were successfully upended.
"Is that Scandinavian?" asked the pale young woman in the
yellow shirt. Her dark hair was sleek, her eyebrows delicate
wings.
Yocelin laughed amicably. "No, sorry, it's Breton. I was
showing off." She gestured at her painting. "What do you
think?"
The couple repositioned themselves in order to assess
her work against the subject that spread before them. This