A klaxon sounded, far off in the grey city. He curled his lip, seeing in his mind's eye the short but deadly farce that was playing out in the soulless canyon. People, dressed in sombre black, sober brown, and ghostly grey, were stopping in their tracks to dose themselves. Like rats in a lab, going for the food pellet that they'd been trained to want at the sound of a bell.
It disgusted him.
The wooden floor was rough under his bare feet, and a splinter sliced up between two of his toes as he resumed pacing. It wouldn't be that much longer now. It couldn't be.
His reflection caught his eye as he walked in front of the window again, glancing out. Not yet. In the filigree mirror frame, he was emaciated, mad, a cross between a street lunatic of the old world and a mountain guru. His ribs stood out, as did the angular bones of his hips, and his eyes held the slightly crazed gleam that his wife had once greeted with a smile. His 'painter's eyes' she'd called them.
"Oh what a piece of work is man," he murmured as he resumed his pacing. It should have disturbed him that he could no longer remember the rest of the speech. It'd garnered him a prize in school, after all.
Where could they be? He didn't like to be kept waiting.
For variance's sake, he took a full turn around the room, carefully skirting the sad pile of splintered wood and shredded canvas that was almost all of what remained of his work. If such tripe could truly be called that.
He made a curious noise, half between a snort and a snarl at that thought. He almost wished he'd made a few more of those sterile wastes of paint, for the sheer pleasure of destroying them.
"Prozium, our savior. Our armor against the destruction of feeling," he mocked in a querulous old man's voice. It was how he imagined the so-called Father, a frightened old fart that was scared of the notion that something wasn't in his control.
But why had an entire world decided to follow his whims?
"Cowards to a man," he whispered, turning the corner to face his last work, his magnum opus. When he had freed himself, that was what the paint had called out for. He smiled at the gentle blue eyes of his Lucy, the same color as the ocean after a storm. They were full of promise, hope, and peace, the same expression she had worn the morning she'd lovingly sweetened her coffee with arsenic instead of sugar.
He heard the sound of a car, pulling up under his window. Rough knocking on the front door. It was finally time.
Wordless now, he drank the dregs of the mug of tea he'd left sitting on the window sill and took up his rosary. He wasn't religious, but Lucy hadn't been either; she'd always loved making jewelry, painting beads with a brush that was composed of a single hair. Most of her work had been rosaries, for the beauty she saw in belief.
This had been her last, each white bead painted with a single rose, perfect and unique. He knew her so well, even after three years of loneliness, that he could recall each mood she'd been in as she painted by the look of the flower. He grimaced as his stomach began to burn.
Rough feet stamped up the stairs. Without even a yell of warning, his door was blown from its hinges, and two men in long black coats strode inside. Clerics, he believed they were called. The latest conceit, the final tainted insult.
They spoke, but the words ran into a murmur of colors, like the impressionist work of his that had once hung in a museum. Burned away now, most likely. They bracketed him, grabbing his arms with rough hands that left bruises on his pale flesh. Not that it mattered now; his knees had gone to water.
"Forgive me, fathers, for I have sinned," he murmured. Then the darkness took him into her loving arms and he felt no more.