Encounters with Enoch Coffin
W.H. Pugmire and Jeffrey Thomas
Enoch lost his calm tone when he replied, “I’m sure your own difficulties had a lot more to do with her decision, Will, and your difficulties existed long before I met the two of you, so I won’t have you laying Shoshana’s suicide at my door.” Ashman cackled wildly, then clamped his hand over his mouth. “Sorry…sorry…but what an image you just put into my head! Me laying Shoshana’s dead body at your doorstep. You should paint that, don’t you think? Better yet, let me exhume her for you, maybe in a few years when she’s more like the rest of the things you paint, and she can model for you once more!” “You must leave this instant, Will,” Enoch said in his most composed tone of voice. It was also his darkest, grimmest tone of voice. Ashman ignored him, moving – as Enoch had feared – to the skeletal framework upon its crude pedestal. He didn’t touch it, however, and didn’t even remark upon it. To his layman’s eyes, it was too insubstantial a form as yet to register as anything. Instead, the man went on, “As further proof of your perversity, in the painting of my dear wife I commissioned – yes, I introduced you to her myself, didn’t I? – in that painting you made the beautiful Shoshana appear ugly, haunted, close to madness.” “I painted what I saw in her.” “It was a mirror she couldn’t handle. Do you know she slashed your canvas to ribbons before she slashed her own flesh?” Enoch made an involuntary sound of pain.
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