“The painting was framed in a misty view of sky, sea, and valley.Newt's painting was small, black, and warty.It consisted of scratches made in a black, gummy impasto. The scratches formed a sort of spider's web, and I wondered if they might not be the sticky nets of human futility hung up on a moonless night to dry.”

“She opened her eyes once again and let them drift across the scene laid out before her like a page from a storybook. Inky blackness hung above them as though painted in impasto in an opaque Prussian Blue. The impression it gave was of a sky hand-crafted out of felt with a pearl of a moon and a generous dusting of diamonds sprinkled on for the stars. A night dreams were made of.”

“It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobbledstreets silent and the hunched courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.”

“It was any outcast's nightmare.If I looked carefully, I suspected I might find it beneath the black paint of the small acrylic by the window.”

“It’s a Harley Night Rod. She’s the love of my life, so don’t scratch the paint when you get on.”

“It was a bird. A bird struggling through stickiness: a bird coated in paint, floundering in its nest, splashing color everywhere.Red. Red. Red.Dozens of them: black feathers coated thickly with crimson-colored paint, fluttering among the branches.Red means run.”