Girl of Despair
As I sit in this dismal gloom, I wonder at the darkness…and at the silence I can so clearly hear.
It's maddening, the vastness of this dark.
I shy away from the shadows, my left hand moving as if in slow motion to shield my face from the predators that aren't there. I feel, not so much see, the filth that clings to me.
The crawling sensation across my scalp, as if tiny bugs fester and make their homes in the tangled mass I call my hair. The dirt that lies beneath my fingernails, and the putrid smell of odor that rises from me. I feel hopelessness rise in me, and so I lean against the painting, the only thing that casts a dim fluorescent ray…like a single ray of sun.
Of warmth.
The painting…although my eyes do not rest upon it, I see everything clearly in the front of my mind. I have gazed at it many times, and memorized every line.
The sun…its rays shine brilliantly, a beacon of hope to those who fall in despair. Birds fly freely in the bright blue sky…but free they are not, for how can anyone be free when they're frozen in place?
A tree stands alone, its branches made to sway forlornly in the nonexistent breeze. Few leaves are left on its limbs, but those that are seem to cling to it, like a child clings to its mother. A castle stands in the distance, a fortress of safety and security…things that I have never known, nor ever shall. Its walls seem impenetrable; but how can they be, when with one smooth stroke I can send its walls crumbling down?
Nothing is what it appears to be.
I shudder involuntarily, my head still resting upon my filth-ridden hand, at the last figure that remains in my picture.
A child…a child no younger than I, with a smile on her face and arms outstretched to greet the new day.
But, is that what is really there?
What if her arms are outstretched, not in greeting, but in a last desperate plea for salvation?
Instead of a warm smile, what if it's a forced grin of fleeing sanity?
Do you not see it in her eyes?
Can you not see anything?
My right hand jerks, and the silence is shattered by the noise of my pencil clattering against the cold, hard-tiled floor. My body twitches in surprise, and my ears ring with the unexpected harshness of its sound.
I shy away from the sound and fall, back again, onto my painting. I press my face against the coolness of my creation, as if doing that will replenish my soul that has been breaking.
A wail escapes through my lips. Feeble, but still a cry that would surely send shivers down your spine.
My hand tries to muffle the sound, and it does…but it does nothing to the unbending sorrow that slips from between my teeth. I clutch at my side, the anguish building inside me.
I don't know how to stop it, how to stop the anguish, hopelessness, the confusion. The loneliness, the sorrow…how to stop the grief.
But wait.
There is a way…the same way I have done it before, the countless other times these feelings have threatened to overwhelm me.
I must get my pencil!
I must get another canvas…one that is hiding among the countless others that have already been used.
The others that hide in the shadows…the white predators that watch me with unmoving eyes; with lines of black menace etched upon them. The predators that aren't there.
…Soon I will have to start another painting.
A/N: Thank you for taking time out of your schedule to read my short story. For any reader's who are wondering about my other (uncompleted) works, have no fear! The next installment of "Kenshin's Interview" will be posted tomorrow morning/afternoon.
Feel free to comment & review. I take any and all criticism! :)