Chapter 4: Erasing the Rainbow

Chapter 4: Erasing the Rainbow

The day of the reckoning dawned gray and overcast, the sky a flat, primer-like canvas that seemed to mourn what was to come. Inside the Storybook House, the boxes were gone, moved to Elara’s new cottage. All that remained was the furniture, shrouded in plastic drop cloths like sleeping ghosts, and the vibrant, defiant art on the walls.

Alex arrived not with his usual crew, but alone. He carried a single, brand-new paint roller, a tray, and a heavy, five-gallon bucket of primer. He set the bucket down in the center of the living room with a solid, definitive thud. The label read, in stark block letters, “ULTRA-HIDE STAIN BLOCKER 5000.” It looked less like a can of paint and more like a piece of industrial ordnance.

Elara stood before the living room wall, her hands clasped behind her back. She was dressed in her old painting clothes, a final, somber uniform. Her gaze was fixed on the mural she had chosen for the sacrifice: the valiant knight on his charging steed, his silver lance aimed at the heart of a magnificent, smiling griffin. She’d painted it for a neighborhood boy, long grown, who had been terrified of monsters under his bed. She’d told him some monsters were just misunderstood friends.

“Are you sure about this, Elara?” Alex asked quietly, his voice rough with an emotion he couldn’t quite name.

Elara didn’t look away from the wall. “He wants the decorations,” she said, her voice a low, steady hum of resolve. “He will not have my stories. He will not have my memories.” She turned to him, the fire back in her kind eyes, now burning with a cold, white-hot intensity. “He will not have my soul to put on display.”

Nodding once, Alex pried the lid from the bucket. The smell that filled the room was sharp and chemical, the antithesis of the familiar, earthy scent of Elara’s oil paints. He poured a thick, viscous river of brilliant, unforgiving white into the tray. It was the color of forgetting. The color of nothing. He soaked the roller, every turn a thick, greedy sound that echoed in the empty house, then offered it to her, handle first.

Her wrinkled, paint-stained fingers, which had held the most delicate of brushes, wrapped around the plastic grip. It felt alien, a weapon instead of a tool of creation. She took a deep breath, the acrid fumes stinging her nostrils. She walked to the wall, her steps measured and deliberate. For a moment, she hesitated, her eyes tracing the confident brushstrokes that had formed the knight’s determined face, the joyful glint in the griffin’s eye. A universe of color and love lived on that plaster.

Then, she raised the roller.

With a long, steady motion, she pressed it to the wall and pushed upwards. A stark, white stripe, as wide as a banner of surrender, obliterated the knight. His silver armor, the proud crest on his shield, his brave face—all vanished beneath the soulless white. The act was a desecration. A murder. She drew the roller down again, erasing the griffin’s golden feathers, its playful smile swallowed by the advancing tide of blankness.

A single tear traced a path down her cheek, but her hand did not tremble. She rolled again, and again, the rhythmic, wet slap of the roller against the wall the only sound. Each stroke was a painful, cathartic reclaiming of her work. She was not just covering the paint; she was setting the stories free, releasing them from their prison before the warden could take possession.

When the entire mural was a rectangle of wet, glaring white, a ghost of what had once been, she stopped. She stepped back, her chest rising and falling with a shuddering breath. She had landed the first blow. She had fulfilled her promise.

She handed the roller back to Alex without a word. He took it, his knuckles white where he gripped the handle. Their eyes met, and in that silent exchange, a lifetime of affection and a new, terrible alliance was forged.

“Go on now,” he said gently. “You’ve done your part. Don’t watch the rest.”

She nodded, turning her back on the white wound she’d inflicted on her own home. She walked out the front door, past the sleeping fox she’d given his final whisker to just weeks before, and didn’t look back. She couldn’t bear to watch the rest of her world die.

An hour later, Alex’s work truck pulled up, followed by a battered panel van. Two men, burly and efficient, got out. They weren’t artists; they were demolition experts who happened to use paintbrushes. They nodded to Alex and began unloading their tools: industrial-grade orbital sanders, shop vacs, and boxes of heavy-grit sandpaper.

The quiet, respectful silence of Elara’s act was shattered by the high-pitched, furious whine of the first sander touching a wall.

It began in the kitchen. The cheerful dragon, still waiting for its glittering scale, was the first to face the onslaught. The spinning disc of the sander bit into the layers of paint, and a storm of color erupted. Forty years of magic, of patient, loving work, were ground into a chaotic blizzard of pulverized memories. The air grew thick with a choking cloud of dust, a multi-hued fog of dragon-scale green, badger-fur brown, and the deep, rich blue of the midnight sky from the bedroom ceiling.

From across the street, behind a slightly parted curtain, Mrs. Gable watched with pursed lips. She was the kind of neighbor who considered everything on the block her business. Seeing Alex’s crew, she immediately pulled out her phone and dialed the number the impeccably dressed Mr. Sterling had given her, promising a generous reward for any updates.

“Mr. Sterling?” she cooed into the phone. “It’s Beatrice Gable, from across the way. I thought you’d want to know. There are workmen at the art house. They have sanders. It’s making a dreadful noise.”

On the other end of the line, in a high-rise office overlooking the city, Richard Sterling leaned back in his leather chair and smiled. “Sanding? Excellent. Are they being careful?”

“Well, there’s a great deal of dust, it looks like,” Mrs. Gable reported, squinting. “They seem to be… prepping the walls.”

Sterling’s smile widened. Of course. The contractor fellow, Alex, was smarter than he looked. He was probably smoothing out any imperfections in the plaster around the murals, ensuring the surfaces were pristine for his daughter’s arrival. He was polishing the gemstone he had acquired. It was a sign of professional respect. Perhaps he’d even throw the man a bonus.

“Excellent, Mrs. Gable. Thank you for the update. Let them work. They’re just improving my investment.”

He hung up, chuckling to himself at his own cleverness. He imagined the priceless murals being carefully prepped, their colors soon to pop against freshly painted white trim. A perfect backdrop for Tiffany.

He had no idea that back in the Storybook House, the sanders whined on like a funeral dirge. The colored dust, a fine powder of reds, blues, greens, and golds, settled on the plastic-shrouded furniture like festive ash. The crew, wearing respirators, moved with methodical efficiency from room to room. They weren't prepping the art. They were grinding it, and the very memory of it, into nothing.