The Crimson Door (Short Story) | A Mixed Media Art Project

As Carmela stepped from the cool, soft verdant field of flowers onto the scorching dirt road, she winced in pain at the immediate attack on her bare feet. She scoured the open fields on both sides of the road. The roar of the wind with a angry grip pushed her forward. She knelt, terrified as only an empty mountain appeared on the horizon. Immediately she glanced up. Had it not been for the blinding rays of the sun beating down on her forehead, she would have noticed the sudden gathering of ominous clouds above.

I must get home quickly overhead, Carmela thought as she bolted down the road as fast as her ten-year-old legs would carry her, stumbling along the way.

Suddenly, tiny openings appeared. Claps of thunder rode in on the wind, then white and blue streaks of lightning descended and landed on bushes in front of her. Several butterflies flitted away as did small animals grazing nearby.

Echoes chased her as a rough voice sang her name.

But Carmela didn't run toward the voice and to the safety of her home.

Instead, two minutes later, she sped up the hill and grabbed awkwardly at the mound of hardened soil. Digging her nails into the earth, she hoisted her shoulders over the edge.

Lightning landed again. This time in front of her face as if tracing her path and forcing her to confront whatever was demanding her attention overhead.

She shrank back, then glanced furtively over her left shoulder before turning over and lying with her back against the side of the hill. Unable to slow the hammer beating against her chest, she closed her eyes and waited.

A moment later, she opened her eyes. As large as diamonds they grew until the outline of a gray figure stared back, blinking rapidly as she peered from the clouds.

A woman's face inside a black and red butterfly came into focus. Sweat rolled down Carmela's temple as her pulse beat faster. Waves of crimson rays mixed with brown rushed toward the mountain range.

Stillness set in as the woman whispered her name. Not the same as before distinguishable from the rough voice of her father. I mustn't listen. My father will come for me. I can't let go of this cliff.

But the woman's voice encircled her tiny body and willed it into the air. Carmela grabbed a handful of rocks, but before she could can quickly separate a large one and toss it into the air to break the connection, the stones caught fire.

"Foolish! I should have known better," she screamed.

Within moments, ashes fell around her as pungent dark gray smoke billowed from the clouds.

The smell of cedar waffled toward her and race up her nostrils causing her to sneeze uncontrollably. The familiar smell she recognized from the lumber mill.

She'd always been afraid to visit the lumber mill where her father was employed. Now, the forest creature would have her revenge.

The forest creature's deep frown exposed the hatred for this world.

As though reading Carmela's thoughts, a crimson door appeared beneath the creature. The door burst into flames that dripped from the burning clouds.

"Why me?" Carmela shouted. "I have done you no harm."

The door merely opened. Inside was her father's gleeful smile as he milled the trees taken from the woods near their home.

Carmela reached up and slammed the door shut, then shivered in a moment of recognition and understanding.

The creature released her. The next moment, Carmela floated down until she reached the soft, cool grass that nature she never appreciated until that day.

Unharmed, she raced home with a message for her father.

For my current mixed media art project, I wanted to share vision of ascending into the unknown. While searching for butterflies, a young girl encounters a vision she believes is real from her nightmares. The encounter leaves her terrified, but in awe of what is beyond her understanding.

To complete my theme, I located several images I felt would provide a dual role in a landscape atmosphere while supporting an alien-like skyline scene. My pure fractals I created in Apophysis 7X, an advanced version of the fractal rendering program. An open-sourced image of a female's head in a tree paired well together to create an outdoor scene. The diffusion image I retrived from StarryAI, a popular stable diffusion program. The generative art image retrieved from Wombo Dream provided the perfect "nightmarish" entrance into the unknown. The Red Door I titled it.

I then uploaded all images into Canva, my design program, to blend the different type images. Below are my steps in which I begin with a blank, white canvas, then added layers of elements, removing backgrounds, resizing, and repositioning items as needed.

Below are my steps:

The complete list of images I used in my theme are set out below. The stable diffusion image from StarryAI was the most unusual I've retrieved yet from a prompt that requests a hammock. But then I didn't specify indepth what I was looking to achieve. The image does work for abstract uses.

Item	Contributor	Source
Female face in tree	Public Domain Pictures	Link
Seagull flying	Contributed to the #LIL by @readheadpei	Link
Red and black butterfly	Contributed to the #LIL by @redheadpei	Link
Pure Fractal titled "Blood Diamond"	Created by @justclickindiva	Link
Pure Fractal titled "Female Whirl"	Created by @justclickindiva	Link