Caught
The beauty of art that veered from the traditional, he thought as he drove the van closer to his destination, was that one could capture the essence of the thing in any number of ways within a framework that could eschew the traditional forms of media for those that really spoke to the soul of the subject. And to capture the essence, one had to document all the senses, address all the modes of sensation. Hadn't the native peoples found soul within the natural world? Hadn't others tried to soak their canvasses in the very lifeblood of their subjects?
Behind him, he heard the muffled whimpering that leaked from deep within the canvas bag.
This was his calling: the ultimate portrait of suffering.
He checked the rearview mirror, checked the open box that housed the bag that held the canvas on which he would create his masterpiece.
"I need you to feel the emotions," he murmured to the bag. "I need you to feel everything."
His other attempts—the finger bones, the foot, the ribs—had prepared him for this. In them he had caught small twinges of regret.
It had been his highest hope, to create portraits of the human condition to rival the recognized masters, but he feared his first works had not been received with the same kind of investment he had made in them.
"It's just a few more miles," he said to the bag that had gone still before the contortions began again. "A few more things I have to do."
For a moment, he imagined what she would see in this newest image, if she would feel the emotion he was trying to portray.
"It's getting closer," he said, then glanced at the canvas bag. "No. How rude of me. We're getting closer."