Author's Note: This story takes place in the tenement housing of New York where Rent takes place. Evelyn is an artist living there and this is her story. We investigate the way an artist (at least this artist) views the world around her and how the character's consciousness is so vastly different from the people around her. This is a story of living verses watching life be lived.
If You Don't Believe the Sun Will Rise
The snow had just begun to fall on the cold pavement. Evelyn could hear the melodic beat of a radio looming through the cold air from a nearby window. She was carefully piecing together the world she heard around her; the sounds of people walking and talking on the street, the few cars inching past, and the occasional yell. The snow was beginning to accumulate on the railings of the disheveled fire escapes. The buildings seemed to be stand up only because the structure beside it was leaning against it in the opposite direction. Evelyn thought of a roll of film she could shoot of this place, of her home, the people she saw each day but would never meet. As she walked by herself, duplicating this place in her own little world, she nearly forgot what she was doing. The place in her head only she could translate and understand fell away as she felt something against her and found herself falling. She stood up quickly and went to pick up the papers and sketch books she had dropped. The man she had run into was picking up her things too and handing them back.
"I'm sorry," She began, "I wasn't really paying attention."
"My fault, really, good night." He said with a surprisingly clear voice, smiling weakly back at her before walking away into the world of orangey street lights, littered roads and car alarms.
I've seen him before. Evelyn thought to herself, but she couldn't remember where. His face was expressive and youthful, pale skinned with eyes deeply blue. His lips were pale with the cold and his hair covered his forehead. He was not a large man but tall and strong-shouldered, Evelyn noticed. He looked like someone she'd like to paint, she thought as she watched him walk away. She watched everyone in that same way, like they were a painting, in some way significantly meaningful or aesthetic. She looked at the world in this way; how would she paint it or take its picture. What words would she describe it with and what color would she tag to its memory. Yes, that's how it always was; the world was art and she was the observer and interpreter.
She heard raised voices and a flickering street light over head startled her. She was looking up at the illuminated orange glow when it happened. The voices grew louder and then she heard the first shot. Bang. And the bullet lodged in a wall. Bang Bang. One bounced off the street light she stood behind, the second ripped into her stomach. She heard the noise clearly in the night. Suddenly her hands were warm with the blood spilling from her body. She stood expressionless in the side walk, the pain not yet registering in her brain. Her toes felt numb. Bang. Another bullet splintered the bone of her shoulder. Her eyes grew wider. The pain crept into her as thick molasses in her veins, thick, in searing waves over her body. She fell, vision blurred from shock and fear. All she saw was the orange street light and all she could hear were the voices yelling again and then feet against the wet street running away. The snow was still lightly falling on her paling face. She looked down at her broken body, covered in blood and beginning to shake. Her hands were drenched in thick red liquid. She tried to scream but her throat refused to make anything more than a scratchy cry.
So this is where it will end. Evelyn though, We all have to die sometime, and this is how I will; alone on the street, killed by people I don't know for no reason at all. For once see saw no art here, only pain and stinging injustice. Her eyelids felt heavy and her eyes we blurry.
She tried to move her head and realized she couldn't. She could taste the death around her. Didn't anyone see her there? It had probably only been a minute or two but in her mind ever second was drawn out, her heart slowly beating like a clock, though this clock was constantly ticking less and less, fading further and further from life. She was lying in a pool of her own blood. Finally she yelled, calling out in agony and desperation. It was over and she knew it. Her body felt warm for a moment even though she knew the wind was blowing relentlessly over her dying body. She'd be found soon, Evelyn tried to tell herself. Take her to the hospital, she'd wake up tomorrow morning in a lot of pain, but still alive. She felt her mind slipping to ordinary memories. The art studio. Her first essay published. The canvas she left unfinished in her living room. Snapshots of her childhood backyard. But all that soon faded too.
What does one think about when they feel their life dripping from two bullet sized holes in their body? They ask what it was all for and if they lived a full life. They young woman lying on the floor, she had to ask herself the same questions a old man who'd lived half a century longer than she could ask himself and answer with some glow of hope and remembrance of a fulfilled life. Evelyn was the fly on the wall. The observer. She walked and breathed and touched the world, but above all she was the watcher, not the liver. Her life was through a camera's lens and on a white canvas. She was the artist. Her life was lived within her own mind and that was the toll she paid; her life was spent being inspired by those who lived and making art to open windows to the world only she could ever see.