He was standing on the balcony of what served as both his house and his workplace: an old lakefront house near downtown, the bottom floor of which he had converted into a coffee house to attract the town of Lakeshore’s college and pseudo-intellectual crowd. So far it had proven to be fairly successful, which is to say, successful enough to pay the bills. As the sun rose over Lake Morton and the neighboring streets of Lakeport, Mr. Strand inhaled deeply from the cigarette he held in his left hand and let out a sigh. He hadn’t been able to accomplish the job he had been sent to do, not yet at least, but he had kept himself busy enough in the meantime. Appetizers, he thought, while awaiting the main course, and no one had yet noticed the missing.

And yet, for the past several weeks, he had felt that the time for action was approaching, and so he had slipped from the usual laid-back demeanor that had caused his business to be popular among the beatniks, to a more alert one, capable of sniffing out the components he would need to enact the scheme. His employer had once told him that all good schemes required three things: the schemer, the fool, and the wise man. In all his years of work, Mr. Strand often reflected, this had never proven to be untrue. The position of the schemer was filled by himself of course, and just last week he had become aware of the wise man. A local artist by the name of DeLanoe had had a small episode of notoriety when he had written a letter to the editor of Lakeport’s paper, decrying the state of the town’s art gallery. It was, he had said, overrun by people who had no concept of what art was and was not, and he considered the whole building a personal affront to human decency. Last month’s featured display had been Emotions on Canvas: The World of Modern Expressionism. DeLanoe had loudly declared that the swirls of color and slashes of hues were not, in fact, a reflection of the artist’s purported inner strife, but rather a reflection of his insanity. Pretty much everyone in the Lakeport art community had greeted this with a smile and a nod. DeLanoe, after all, had plenty to be jealous about, because his own art, useless stuff that emphasized the end product and its theme rather than the process of creation, had never sold well enough to support him. Mr. Strand, however, had taken special notice of the letter and had in fact clipped it from the paper to peruse more deeply many times over the next several days. Unlike most others, he immediately recognized DeLanoe as a genius among madmen, and knew then, of course, that he was to be part of the plan.

Now then, he thought, just to find the fool.

Mr. Strand’s job was now and had always been a simple one. He orchestrated the downfall of the brilliant and brought to power idiots. This he did in the service of his master so that his reign might never end, and even though few knew of his master anyway, much less of the fact that he was responsible for the majority of human events, he had always been fair to Mr. Strand, and so Mr. Strand had been a faithful employee. He had been doing this for some thousands of years now, and still, he thought, it never really differed too much. It was easy to rally the public opinion against the ideas of the minority, but he had never taken the risks involved in doing such rallying himself. No, he preferred to stay in the shadows. This is where the fool would come in. 
 The trait of the fool was that he showed most clearly the flaw that allowed the masses to be manipulated: the willingness to give up his own mind. Mr. Strand had never found it too terribly difficult to tempt these characters with any of the various goods and services he was capable of rendering, and in return they did his bidding, and he went on to the next job. In this way, he had been the downfall of countless rulers, kings, emperors, lords, and quite a good number of common men who were capable of rising to those positions as well. Nothing like nipping a problem in the bud was his motto.

It was a cold morning, and Autumn had just been beginning when he took notice of a young man walking down the street before his place of business. He had been tall and lanky, wearing an obviously confused sense of purpose across his plain-looking face, and Mr. Strand watched as he marched down to the end of the street and disappeared into the convenience store that stood there. Less than five minutes later, he had come back out through the same door, the look of purpose replaced by a lopsided grin that spoke of what was going through his head more clearly than the boy himself would ever be able to. He paused for a moment in the parking lot, and then leaped into the air thrusting his fist skyward and giving out a shout of victory. With that, he was off again and around the corner in a matter of seconds.

Mr. Strand saw all this from his position on the balcony and within the space of three breaths he had reached a conclusion to all the questions of the past five years. A thin little grin spread across his face then, and he stood there for a great length, taking comfort in the salty sting of the wind coming off the lake.

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Mark was a good-natured guy, but also a stupid guy. That his stupidity outweighed his good nature is something that his few friends would have heartily contested, but those looking on from the outside would have shaken their heads and sadly agreed: Mark was stupid. However, in recent times, something that even those realists would have agreed to is that stupid isn’t necessarily to be equated with unsuccessful, or even unhappy, for after all, the majority of people these days were quite stupid, often by choice. This was not the way it had to be, they would reflect, but this is the way it was, for now at least, and so they would content themselves with that much and continue to watch the subject in question go about his foolish errands.

On one particular day in late Autumn, Mark’s errands were decidedly different from his usual fare of purchasing groceries on which to subsist, and paperbacks with which to wile away the hours. The groceries usually consisted of microwave dinners and potato chips. The selection of books, while demonstrative of a better taste than the food, were mostly general fiction from myriad authors, none of whose names Mark would remember afterwards. Occasionally, he would stop into the classics section of the used bookstore on Central Avenue, and pick up something he had heard about on television. His most recent acquisition from the dusty racks had been Crime and Punishment, and on his way out of the store, the clerk had smiled at him approvingly. Though he would not admit it to himself, this is the only reason Mark went into the classics section at all, and it was also why he only read the books he got there when he was in a public setting. He wanted to be acknowledged. On that cold and windy day, however, nowhere on his list of things to do would one find either Yaeger’s Groceries or Books-for-Less. On that day… Mark intended to acquire, instead of frozen pasta and Dostoevsky, fame. 

He had set out from his house sometime near noon and quit his job, rather loudly, at the convenience store down the street. From there, he turned east and headed for downtown, ready, he thought, to start his new career. After ten minute’s walk in the cold, he approached the thrift store, went inside, and purchased a beret for half a dollar. He collected his change and made his way back out onto the streets, pulling his newly bought trademark onto his head and grinning a foolish grin. From here on, it was another five minutes walk to the art supplies store and the beginning of his new life. He was almost hit by three cars during his short, blissfully unaware journey but eventually he made it, and pulled open the door to Aaron’s Art Supplies and Photography, eliciting a sharp jingle from the silver bell hanging above the jamb. 

The inside of the store was dim, as he had expected it would be. Along the walls were paintings, produced mostly by local artists, Mark presumed, each with a small white tag bearing the price. Surprisingly, Aaron made the majority of his profit by selling the mediocre works of fledgling artists from his walls, and collecting ten percent on each one. Mark wasn’t here to purchase someone else’s work, however, and his eyes turned to the shelves stacked in the midst of the small store, containing paints of all types, brushes, pads of paper, rolls of canvas and every other supply one could name. In a bin near the back, half-used tubes of paint were stacked three feet over the top of the container and threatened to spill themselves across the carpeted floor at any given moment. A sign hanging over this array proclaimed:

Mark frowned lopsidedly and promptly made up his mind that anyone who had to buy half-used tubes of paint needed to give up and get a real job. This thought was gone, like most others he had, moments after it entered his head. Before another could enter, however, he was quickly interrupted by the proprietor of the store, who had appeared from a backroom only moments before.

“Can I help you with something?”

Mark jumped at the sudden sound and it took him a moment to collect his thoughts.

“Ah…. Yeah. I need some paints.”

“Okay, yes…. What type are you looking for, specifically?”

Mark was surprised to find he didn’t know the answer to this question. “What kind do you have?”

The store’s owner glanced at his watch briefly and noted with agony that he still had eight hours before closing; another great day. He responded and ticked off each item he spoke on his fingers.

“Well, sir, we sell more than just paints. A variety of mediums can be found on our shelves, such as oils, pastels, acrylics, pencils, you name it, we have it. Which of those would you be interested in?”

Mark shoved his hands into his pockets as he did when he was in a mode of deep thinking, and then looked around at the pictures crowding the walls. He finally stopped at a perfectly boring depiction of two sailboats upon a crudely executed lake, with a mundane setting sun as the backdrop. He pointed at it, hesitantly.

“What’s that one use?”

Aaron did his best not to show his obvious distaste, and said, simply, “Acrylics.”

“That’s what I’ll be using then,” Mark replied, adding, “I’m going to be famous.”

Aaron clapped once and smiled falsely.

“Well, I wish you the absolute best of luck in your ambitions. If you’ll come with me, I believe we have a set for beginners that contains all the rudimentary colors one would use when learning to paint.” He cast a glance at Mark’s hastily assembled clothing, and added, “It’s very reasonably priced, too, I’m sure you’ll find.”

Ten minutes later, Mark walked out of the store less three hundred dollars, two weeks of wages from the convenience store, carrying with him three pre-assembled canvasses, an easel, and a two hundred dollar set of acrylics from Germany. It did not occur to him when buying it all how difficult it would be to carry it home without a car, and as a result, he was forced to stop after ten minutes of labored trekking at a small diner to take the load off his feet.

He stepped inside, carrying all his belongings with him and clumsily slipped into a red-colored booth, wherein he picked up a grease-stained menu and read it without really thinking about what he was seeing. When a waitress came to serve him, he simply ordered a plain hamburger as he had planned on doing all along.

“Fries? Drink?” the waitress inquired.

“Uh… sure… yeah, and a coke, please.” Mark mumbled, uncomfortable as usual when speaking with strangers. The fact that he had spoke with relative ease to Aaron of the art store did not cross his mind. While waiting for his food, he opened the wooden case in his bag that housed the paints and looked at the neatly arranged rows, reading labels. Before him were colors he had never heard of in all his life. 

Cedar, Cerulean, Rose Madder, Pompeian Red.

He closed the case, shaking his head in wonder, thinking that red would always be red to him, and that’s the way it was. He was enlightened, he felt, not because of any degree in art like those windbags up at the civic center’s gallery, but because of something much simpler: genetics. His grandfather had been a painter, and that alone had been the catalyst for today’s sudden change.

He replayed the events of the past week through his head.

Anytime that Mark would buy a book from the classics section at Books-for-Less, he would usually travel to the coffee house on Third Street to read it. He didn’t really know why he liked the atmosphere of the place so much, but he surmised that it was probably because most every time he read there, someone would strike up a conversation with him. During those conversations when he didn’t really have an agenda of any sort, Mark felt comfortable and at home. He also didn’t have to worry about embarrassing himself, because any one he spoke with at the coffee house never returned to talk to him twice, and he assumed correctly that it was because they found him stupid.

He had gone down last Thursday night, tucking himself away in a corner and cracking open Golding’s Lord of the Flies. He had read no more than a dozen or so pages of it, not really focusing on what was going on in the story and just waiting for a conversation, when someone had come to him and sat down.

“Lord of the Flies!” they had cried, as if meeting an old friend. “I can really dig that one, man. What do you think of it?”

Because the conversation had asked a question of him, and was not the usual palaver he was used to, he found himself at first unable to answer. At long last, he had replied, “It’s good.” The person who had sat down across from him, a man in his 20s with a goatee and dark glasses, just nodded. 

“Yeah, man, it’s a good one, but what do you think about the social implications? If you ask me, it more or less proves that man is evil at heart. It’s the book that made me an existentialist!” the man proclaimed proudly.

Mark did not know what the term existentialist meant, and so he just looked down. Seconds later, the man had nodded, and said, “Well, see you later.” and then he was gone. Mark had sighed, then, wishing he could be like the people he saw around him. Here, he thought, were the true movers of the world. The artists who wore their profession on their faces and in their black felt caps, the poets on open mic night who shared the arcane knowledge that art was felt not created; that the artist was simply an instrument for conveying the art, not the creator of it. He had listened to these things for years and nodded knowingly, feeling like a student in a monastery, counting himself lucky to be the recipient of such wise words. 

It bears repeating: Mark was a stupid man.

On that particular Thursday, he had read no more of Lord of the Flies, merely sat there with his head down feeling ashamed of himself. As he did so, his thoughts had turned to his grandfather who had been an artist. He had not been like these artists, granted, with their inner knowledge of how art worked, but Mark felt that perhaps he would have been if he been born fifty years later. Mark remembered how, as a child, his father had hung his grandfather’s painting around the house. At the time, Mark had wondered why anyone would do so, thinking that the works were sloppy things that really weren’t much better than the pieces he brought home from seventh grade art class. Looking back on that, he felt foolish, realizing that his grandfather had been a true artist, allowing the work to flow through him. He had never been successful, but as those who frequented the coffee shop often said, success be damned. The true measure of an artist’s value is how well he can feel, not how well he can paint.

Mark had listened to all of this, and at long last had come to think in these terms himself without realizing that he had never stopped to be critical of the ways of thinking he heard all around him. He did not, and had never, trusted his own intellect, and as a result, he decided then and there in that dingy coffee shop that he was going to become an artist. He couldn’t do it immediately, no, because he had a few bills to pay. At the end of the week, however, he had made up his mind that he was going to quit his job at the convenience store and use his savings to buy paints. He longed to become a member of this crowd, to at long last be able to discuss intelligently the books that he thought he was reading, to have friends beyond his now former co-workers at the store….

“Here you go, sir.”

The voice of the waitress interrupted his reminiscing and he looked up at her with blank eyes. Upon registering who she was, he leaned back, giving her room to place his tray of food down on the table, and then mouthed a word of thanks.

He had taken no more than three bites when he realized that someone was standing over him. He allowed his eyes to travel up the stranger’s body to his face and took in all that he saw. The stranger was a young man of indiscernible age, dressed in dark blue jeans, a black t-shirt, and a ragged flannel shirt. In one hand he held a limp cigarette, despite the fact that Mark was sure that smoking indoors was illegal nowadays, and the other was busy stroking a thin black goatee that framed his pale white face. The man had dark eyes that looked down on him from behind tiny silver glasses, and his long black hair had the metallic sheen of iron. Mark thought at first that he looked like someone from the coffee shop and tried to decide if he had seen him before. Before he could think of anything else, the man spoke:

“So you’re an artist, are you?”

Mark smiled at that. “I want to be… that is, my grandfather was, and these kinds of things are genetic, you know? So I think I’ll do well at it.” Then, after a pause: “I bought some paints.”

“Yes, I saw. A fine set they are, too. Mind if I have a seat?”

“Go right ahead. My name is Mark.”

The tall man took a seat and proffered his hand for shaking. “You may call me Mr. Strand. That’s not exactly right, I think, but it’s close enough.”

Mark had already decided that he had never seen the man before. This, he thought, was someone important. He could tell by the man’s voice that he was a man who knew the reality of things.

“Okay, Mr. Strand.”

“Tell me, Mark… what made you decide to take this journey into the land of the starving entertainer, to make your innermost reflections a public spectacle?”

Mark at first thought that there was no way he would be able to respond to such eloquent speech, but before he knew it, the words were rolling out of his mouth.

“Well… you see, Mr. Strand… I like to consider myself a pretty enlightened young man. I’ve had the honor to learn from some very smart men, all of whom are great artists. Artists who really understand how things work. They’re not pompous like those jerks up at the gallery; they know that the art is bigger than the artist… I had always wondered about that myself, and when I first heard them say it, I knew it was right, man. I just knew.”

Mr. Strand nodded, and a grin spread across his face like a flower unfolding.

“Excellent to hear such from such a young man as you. Normally young artists spend years trying futilely to find inspiration, and it isn’t until they’re old and gray that they realize you just have to let… it… flow.”

He punctuated those last three words by pointing at Mark with his cigarette. Although his words caused Mark to nod enthusiastically, Mr. Strand was thinking inside his head, This man is truly a fool. Delightful.

He leaned back in his seat and took a drag on his cigarette.

“When I saw you walk in the door, I said to myself, ‘Strand, there’s a man who knows what’s going on.’ And here you are, my suspicions confirmed! Tell me, young Mark, would you like to attend a meeting tonight? A meeting of artists like you and I, men who truly understand?” Mr. Strand knew that those last two words were the clincher, and he also knew before Mark’s overly loud acceptance what the boy’s answer would be.

“Great! We’ll be glad to have you, Mark. It’s at eight o’clock”, he said, and passed the boy a card with his address on it. He favored his watch a glance and then said, “If you’ll excuse me, though, I believe I must be going. A busy day, you understand.”

“Of course, Mr. Strand. Thank you very much for the invitation.” Mark replied and stood up to shake hands again with the man before he left.

Mr. Strand nodded, and then he was gone.

Mark sat back down; a foolish grin spread across his face and he thought that today was indeed a good day. He finished his food and twenty minutes later returned home with the tools of his new trade.

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Mark began to prepare for the meeting at six, getting increasingly nervous with each tick of the clock. He had already made up his mind to wear his new beret, feeling already that it gave him some kind of power he couldn’t explain. That was okay, he thought, he was about to make his living by doing things he couldn’t explain, and that caused him to smile. A calm came over him and he spent the last 20 minutes before leaving his small apartment putting the finishing touches on a piece he had created for tonight’s gathering. 

The painting, created on a square piece of canvas, was beyond definition. Its base was a deep purple hue, upon which a spiral mélange of blues and blacks were splattered, along with some abstract shapes rendered in yellow. He felt particularly proud of it, and when he signed his name in the lower right corner, he had dispelled all sense of nervousness that might have been plaguing him earlier. He picked up the canvas, careful not to smear the as yet un-dry signature and left, locking the door behind him.

When he arrived at the address on Mr. Strand’s card, he found the environs to be incredibly familiar and it took his slow and plodding mind several moments to realize that it was the same coffee shop he had been coming to at least once a week for five years. He shook his head to clear it, and then started down the narrow walkway that led to the shop’s door. He opened it as he had hundreds of times before, but this time he felt something distinctly different in the aroma that filled the place. No sooner than twenty seconds after he had entered the shop, a man approached him and shook his hand, saying “Congratulations, man. Strand said you’re a real smart kid. Said you know where it’s at.” Mark thought, but couldn’t be sure, that this was the man who had asked him earlier this week about Lord of the Flies. 

Mark found himself saying, “Yeah, I guess so. I met him this afternoon. He’s a really cool guy, isn’t he?”

The man, one of Strand’s appetizers though he didn’t yet know it, smiled. “The coolest.” He walked away before Mark could respond.
Mark shrugged and found his way to the counter, where a young girl with soft black hair and a nose ring was busy taking orders. He produced the address card that was given to him and said, “Excuse me. I’m here to see Mr. Strand.” It came out sounding like a question. 

The girl, whose nametag read “Cynthia”, glanced at the card and nodded. “I’ll be right back.”, she said and took off up some stairs in the corner of the room, behind the counter. Mark stood looking around, and noticed again that the place felt more alive. He was almost certain it was because of the liberating decision he had made to become an artist. He had never felt happier.

Cynthia returned minutes later with Mr. Strand following close behind her. He saw Mark and again a smile spread across his face.

“Mark! I’m glad you could make it! Care to come upstairs and chat for a while? The meeting can get underway now.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Strand.” Mark replied and walked behind the counter, the very act making him feel important. He followed Mr. Strand up the dark wooden stairway and arrived at a small landing that opened into a narrow hallway lined with doors. For the first time, he realized that this coffee house had once actually been a house. The upstairs had been left unconverted and seemed a world away from the business downstairs.

Strand walked across the landing to a mahogany door, bowed once to Mark, and opened it with a flourish of the hand, bidding him to enter first. Mark passed through the portal and looked around. The room was dim, like the downstairs, and was sparsely decorated. Its walls were covered with paintings, signed with names that looked slightly familiar to Mark. It took him a few moments to realize that some of them were the same names he had seen on paintings hanging in Aaron’s art supply shop. A large rug covered the space in the middle of the room and in the middle of it sat a large wooden table, a leather sofa on one side and a large velvet chair on the other.

Strand entered the room behind him and shut the door. “Have a seat, will you? We’re ready to begin.”

Mark looked around the room and realized that he and Mr. Strand were the only ones here.

“Where is everyone else?” he asked.

At first, Strand appeared to have no idea what he meant, and then the smile on his face spread further. “All my meetings with potential clients are one on one, Mark. Would you have it any other way?”

“Clients?” Mark asked?

“Sit. Have a drink with me to loosen the tongue, and then explaining will be easier.”

Mark did as Mr. Strand asked, taking a place on the leather sofa and accepting a glass of deep burgundy wine whenever his new friend poured one and offered it to him. He was not used to the taste, and its bitterness was unpleasant to him, but he tried hard not to show it. Suddenly, he remembered the painting he still had tucked under his arm.

“I brought a piece of my work, Mr. Strand.”, he said.

“Oh? Let us see it then, Mark. Come now, no shame.”

Mark produced the painting and passed it to Mr. Strand. The man looked at it over the top of his glasses and studied it for what seemed like several minutes. At long last, he spoke again.

“Mark, my boy, I must tell you. You have true talent here. I can… I can feel the confusion you’re expressing in the twisted lines of this mad spiral. The confusion at entering a new profession… a new lifestyle, as it were.”

Mark smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Strand. Thank you very much,” was all he could manage to say. 

“Not at all, my boy. Genius deserves praise.” Mr. Strand responded, puffing on his cigarette as he spoke. “Tell me something more, just this one more thing, and then we might get down to business.” 

“Anything, Mr. Strand” Mark said and leaned forward in his seat.

“You’ve told me how you feel about the how of painting. Now tell me what you feel about the why of it.”

Mark thought for a moment and then said, “I don’t think anyone can really explain why they do something like painting… it’s just something that you do because you have to. It eats at you, and you just, you know… you feel it.”

Mr. Strand interrupted, “Of course, of course.” Concealed from the boy, he thought: Idiot.

Mark continued, “If I had to tell you why, I guess it’d be because I want to give something back to the community. I think it’s important to feel a sense of social responsibility and I want to express my displeasure with the system through my art. Of course, I don’t expect anyone to interpret it that way, because I don’t believe that any piece of art can have any one meaning. The meaning is up to the viewer to decide, and I wouldn’t want him to be limited just because of what I intended the painting to mean. I mean… I have a good deal of humility, you see.”

Mr. Strand grinned. “Go on, Mark.”

“It seems to me that the artist who claims to know the real meaning of what he does is performing a discredit to himself and to… to the cosmic. I don’t know the word, but you know what I’m talking about right? Where all the good ideas come from… where real artists get inspiration. It seems to me that they’re greatly disrespecting this great force, this force that gives them their ability to work… I guess I just can’t explain it.”

Mark took a deep breath and leaned back in his seat, thinking that those were the most words he had ever spoken to a single person at any one time, but not realizing that it was a mere recitation of every spiel he had ever heard given in the coffee house below.

Mr. Strand, realizing that the boy was now done, thought that he was perhaps the stupidest person he ever had the displeasure of speaking with. What he said, however, was, “Quite right on all counts, Mark. You are a very bright boy, and I’m going to enjoy working with you.” Mark found his grin to be comforting.

“What do you mean, Mr. Strand?” Mark asked.

“I’m in the business of employing artists, Mark, but it is just that: a business. To that end, I only employ the very best, and that is why I had to have this little talk with you, friend. Those people meandering about below us… they know what you and I know, but only on the basic level. You and I… we live it. Do you understand me, Mark?”

Mark nodded that yes, he did understand.

“You are very talented, Mark, this I can tell without even looking at the fine piece of work you brought with you tonight, but you cannot do it on your own. You said yourself you want to make a difference, and I am here to tell you that one man cannot make that difference. Two men, however, can.”
“What do you mean?” Mark asked again.

“Hush.” Mr. Strand responded, “You’ll see what I mean. You’re a smart lad. If you want to make a difference to better society, you’re going to need fame, and I have an idea that that’s just what you had in mind when you set out from your apartment this morning, isn’t it, Mark?”

“Yes sir.” Mark admitted.

“As I thought. That is one of the reasons I approached you. I can do this for you, Mark. I can make you famous, for rest assured you cannot do it yourself. It takes a window, a door of opportunity to make it these days, and is it safe to assume that you do not have one?”

Mark nodded again.

“Yes. Well, Mark, now you do. I will be your window into the industry, and I will allow you to exact the changes you want upon the world. You will be as others who I have helped, and I can promise you, no one who has accepted my offer has ever regretted it. Need I name the names of those who I’m responsible for, Mark?” Mr. Strand’s face now had an intense aura to it, and Mark began to feel slightly uncomfortable.

“I believe you, Mr. Strand,” he said, “but I’d like to know anyway. Just out of curiosity, you see.”

“Of course, Mark.” Strand responded and then began to read off a list of names. Mark remembered being very impressed, but oddly enough, afterwards, he couldn’t remember a single person that the man had named.

“Why do you do this, Mr. Strand?” Mark asked, and knew that his new pal must have expected the question, because he answered immediately.
“I do it so I can change the world, Mark. The present state of things disgusts me more than I call tell you, and rather than enact the changes that one man is capable of, I prefer to give the opportunity to others to allow them to make the changes for me.” Mr. Strand turned up his glass of wine, and then began to pour another.

“That’s very noble of you, Mr. Strand,” said Mark, who at this point thought that Mr. Strand was perhaps the grandest man he had ever met, even if his intensity was slightly off-putting.

“Thank you, Mark. It means a lot to hear kind words from a fellow artist.” He then paused and looked out across the room, taking a drag of his cigarette. After some time, he began speaking again.

“Of course, Mark, you must realize that I do not do this for free. You’ve heard people tell you that fame comes with a price, but have you ever stopped to think exactly of what they mean? One does not become famous or recognized by his own devices, for surely no man alone is capable of that, do you not agree?”

“You’re right on that one, Mr. Strand.”

“Of course. So it’ll come as no surprise to you when I tell you that your success will come at a slight cost to you. Can you accept this, Mark?”
“Yes, Mr. Strand, I can.”

“Excellent, Mark. Then we can begin to talk about the specifics of our arrangement. One last thing…” The grin widened. “Are you ready to change the world?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Strand.”

“Then pay close attention.”

Mark leaned forward, and Mr. Strand spoke of many things.

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An item from the Lakeport Gazette,
November 19th, 2002

Local Artist Found Dead in House Fire

Lakeport - Local artist Francisco DeLanoe was pronounced dead this afternoon in Lakeport Memorial Hospital at 3:17pm. The cause of death is being attributed to complications resulting from smoke inhalation when his house was burned to the ground last week. DeLanoe was a striving artist who unfortunately never found the break he needed to get into the industry. Though his work hangs in a few select galleries across the States, he never knew commercial success. He has no surviving relatives and was never married. This reporter was able to procure an interview with one of his only close friends, local opinion columnist Vladimir Eres, who said of DeLanoe:

‘He was one of the most arrogant men that I’ve ever known, and I thank him for it. He didn’t buy into the existentialism or the newfangled ideas that art is the result of some great cosmic forces aligning and being channeled into the artist’s brush like radio waves. He knew that each stroke he painted belonged to him and him alone and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it.’

A memorial service for DeLanoe will be held on Thursday at Viewpoint Funeral Home at 7:00 pm. The public is invited, and there will be refreshments afterwards.

A few months later, Mark won the Steinbaugh Award for the book he wrote about his work, entitled Art and the Cosmic: A Look at the Unexplained. It spent three weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and to promote it, he went on a tour of lectures on college campuses all across America, during which he won many new converts to the new movement. During all of this, he stopped to thank Mr. Strand.

Three years later, Mark had paintings in most every gallery in the northern United States and he began to write a monthly article for The View wherein he critiqued the work of up and coming new artists, always careful to point out where each one needed a healthy dose of humility. His writings won him over three dozen awards from various organizations across the world, and the name of Mark Allagorn became a hot item in the news for several months, before settling down into a mere household name. The critics said that if he kept up with the same pace he had now, he was destined to be listed among the greats.

Ten more years passed, a blur of cocktail parties, lecture circuits and articles on the great, unknown forces of paintbrush guiding. During this time, Mark married and separated twice and fathered four children, all of whom were placed in the finest private schools in the country. Whenever praised for his deeds, Mark never forgot to mention that he couldn’t take all the credit, and that, indeed, he was only the instrument. The real artist was the art itself.

No one ever found out that he had burned down Francisco DeLanoe’s house.

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Mark sat in an oversized white chair in the corner of his penthouse suite, drinking wine straight from the bottle and thinking about nothing in particular. Thinking never was his strong suit anyway, he thought, and smiled to himself. His thoughts had begun to turn to his younger days and his first wife whenever a voice spoke from behind him. 

“Hello, Mark.”

Mark spun around in the chair and saw Mr. Strand standing there, the same old grin on his face, and in the back of his feeble mind, Mark thought, he hasn’t aged a day. 

“Mr. Strand!” he cried out.

“The one and only.” Mr. Strand gave the same little bow he’d given back on the day Mark had first come to his room in the coffee house. 

“I haven’t seen you since the first tour! Where have you been?”

“Traveling. Here and there, seeing the sights, finding more people to support my… our cause. May I sit down, Mark?”

“Of course! Take a seat anywhere!”

Mark never realized that he had neglected to ask how Mr. Strand had gotten into the room. Maybe it was the wine.

Mr. Strand crossed the room, dressed in a dark and ragged flannel, blue jeans so dark they were almost black, and the typical black t-shirt. He still wore his hair long, Mark noticed, and he had the very same silver glasses after all these years. He took a seat opposite Mark and glanced around the room, nodding approvingly. “I love what you’ve got here, Mark.”

“Thank you, Mr. Strand.”

Mr. Strand leaned back, crossed one leg over the other and sighed. To Mark, he looked like he was getting ready to go to sleep, and then he lifted his head slightly from his reclined position and looked directly Mark.

“Do you know why I’m here, Mark?” he asked, his voice very low and thin.

Mark thought for a moment, and then said, “No sir, I don’t really think I do.”

“Well, I suppose you must be told then. I will be as brief as possible in telling, and don’t interrupt me.”

Just like that, Mark was swept from the relaxing pace of his everyday life and into the stream of change. He reflected for a moment on how it’s always a gradual change in the movies, but always so sudden and jarring in life, and then Mr. Strand began to speak.

“To begin with, I must divert your memory to a conversation we had many years ago, Mark. You came to my office and I made you an offer. That offer was the chance to make your mark on the world in the manner in which you chose, and in return you would perform a simple task for me. I must say that you carried out that task remarkably well, and I had little hand in ensuring that no one ever found out it was you who torched the old man’s house. I had thought to myself that it might be dangerous asking you to commit such an act, but after hearing you talk about how you’re inspired by things you don’t understand or question, I knew that you would not question me either. That is why I chose you.

“You, Mark, have never asked yourself why… why a man like myself would want to have a fellow artist, albeit a bad one, killed, and if you did think about it, you assumed it was part of some grand scheme to further the movement, yes? That all my work was for the good of society, for the propagation of the ideals you and my coffee-house elite held. I must tell you now that when you thought these things, you were terribly mistaken.”

Mr. Strand rose from the sofa and stood, and to Mark he looked a good deal taller than he ever had, and a good deal paler as well. 

“Let us start at the very beginning, as friends should. My name is not Mr. Strand, nor has it ever been. I have been called many things, none of them ever quite right, and most of them given to me by others, but I will give you the most common. You may call me Discord.”
 For reasons he couldn’t or wouldn’t understand, Mark began to get a little worried.

“You may be comforted to know this one thing. You have been correct in your life’s  belief that your work has not come from you, but some outside source. I am here to tell you that it has come from me. It is fitting that one should learn many truths on the night he is scheduled to die, and you are no different. I will tell you now that there is no grand cosmic scheme and that your beliefs in that area have also been a terrible mistake.

“Yet, to each his own, or so I’ve always said. I gave you the opportunity to present your views to the world, and you did as you promised you would. Whether or not those views are correct is another matter entirely.

“Whenever I agreed to give you your fondest desire, that golden ticket into the high society you so respected and looked up to, I named the price. I told you that you were to burn down Francisco DeLanoe’s house, and as I’ve said, you’ve done well in that respect. I can now tell you why. DeLanoe was our enemy, yes, but not because he held the wrong views, but the right ones. He believed that his faith in himself was the ticket to the creation of true art, and he was correct in that matter, I’ll give him that much, but none of this matters to you. Do you know something else, Mark?”

Mark blinked.

“He arrived at his methods of thinking by himself, of his own volition, and that’s what made him dangerous to me. Have you yet realized that all your ideas came from the denizens of my humble little coffee house back in Lakeport? By the look on your face, I’ll take that as a ‘no’, my old friend. Do not fear, though, you are not the first to never think an original thought, and let us hope, you shall not be the last.

“Must I tell you as well why exactly DeLanoe was our enemy? Yes, I believe I must…. My name is Discord, as I have told you, and it would serve you well to realize here and now that I am not of the mortal coil.”

He cast Mark a glance that he could have done without, then went on talking. Mark did not doubt a word the man said, and realized all at once that it was not the wine’s doing. He had felt this way on the day when he had first heard the boys in the coffee house talking of the great cosmic; he had felt a sense of truth, and here he felt it again, only different. This time it was a good deal more powerful.

“I am Discord, yes. I sow myself, and thus is my crop always abundant, Mark.”

Discord took a deep drag on his cigarette, and Mark suddenly realized that he had never seen that cigarette dissipate in the slightest. He suddenly felt very cold.

“My agenda is a simple one, and after all my fancy talk, you might think to yourself that it’s a very basic one for one such as myself. I am hungry, and I wish to feed.”

Mark simply stared forward.

“What I feed upon is desire. I seek the stupid and their misguided beliefs, and then I lend a part of my power to them. In return, I may feast upon those swollen and bloated beliefs when they are shattered… as some will be tonight, no?”

The grin on Discord’s face spread even wider.

“My master has given me dominion in these times. It is really his agenda that I serve, but you would do well not to hear of this. He is far greater than I am, and even I am so great that your pathetic heart is about to burst in your chest, I sense. All you must know is what I shall now tell you. Listen here, most of all.”

Mark opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again.

“On the night that you agreed to become my servant, I also requested a second price. Do you recall what it was?”

Mark shook his head; he did not.

“I merely asked from you a part of yourself that you never have and never will use. Your mind. I knew from the way you’ve always spoke and thought that you believed your work and your fruits and your results came from places other than your mind, and so I knew that you’d willingly offer it. In fact, when I asked you for yours, your reply was ‘Mr. Strand, I’d be honored to deliver my mind into the global consciousness. One must act for the good of the all, right?’

“How it delighted me to hear you say that, and now that you know this, I must tell you one last very important thing. I cannot take from you what you do not offer. The power of my master does not extend that far.”

Mark rose to his feet and almost fell back down immediately. He closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths and miraculously found the ability to speak.

“Then I refuse,” he said, “I refuse your request and will keep my mind as my own. Now leave me, and god let me wake up from this.”

Discord only laughed, and to Mark it sounded like madness made flesh.

“Your kind always thinks that there will be second chances. I’m afraid that you’ve misunderstood the rules of our game, Mark. Once you accept me once, the taint will always remain. Once you voice your agreement, the price must be paid… and it is never… never as small as it seems. Are you aware of the number of lives you’ve touched with your mindless blatherings? How many people you’ve taught to forsake their very minds? For, isn’t that what your little philosophy boils down to, Mark? The forsaking of the mind?”

Mark fought again for words. “You lied to me.”

Discord spoke truthfully, “Yes. I lie and I cheat, and I murder, and I steal, and I pillage and I rape, and do you know why? Ask me why, Mark. Ask me why your kind is so willing to forsake the very thing that sets them apart from a lowly dog.”

Mark spoke his final word, and it was one that he, unfortunately, had rarely spoken before: “Why?”

Discord took a few steps towards Mark, and he noticed that the creature’s large black boots did not make contact with the floor, but rather came to rest scarcely half an inch above it. The motion of walking caused strands of Discord’s iron-black hair to swing in front of his face in fat, pendulum arcs, and this movement attracted Mark’s eye. When he stared into the inky blackness behind the tiny silver glasses, his reaction was the same as thousands who came before, and thousands who would come after: he felt like screaming.

Discord spoke at last, “Because you allow me to.”

He raised his hand to his face and extended a long, tapered finger that ended in a nail that was manicured, but not short. “Here’s hoping that your kind remains this stupid forever”, he said and reached out with that finger, bringing it to rest on Mark’s forehead. The last thought that went through Mark’s head was that what he had previously thought was silence was nothing compared to this total lack of activity, and then he thought no more.

He stood there, mouth opening and closing, as if he were trying to think of something to say, and after some time, he went to his knees and fell over unconscious. Discord chuckled and gave his body a swift kick. When he got no reaction, he couldn’t help but feel just a little sad. This one was weak but he had done well. That old fool DeLanoe could have stricken a serious blow to his master, and Discord knew it. In the old days, he thought, people were much tougher than they were now. It sometimes took him years to find a decent meal back then, and now he feasted at least twice a week. Humans, it seemed to him, were all too willing to throw away their lives and as a result they had lost some of their flavor. He took another lengthy drag on his cigarette, turned his face to the ceiling and was seemingly lost in thought. After a few moments, he let out three concentric rings of smoke and reached his conclusion. 

He would take the quantity over the lack in quality any day.