Vivid Visions in Monochrome

I

Do I have the guts to think I am insane?

Absurd. I would not admit that I was insane. Anyone but I could. I absolutely refuse to admit the truth that I do not wish to seek.

What are these inconsequential things I've been thinking of as of late? It's not like I have been loosely set free only to suffer. Is this insanity's doing? What is my doing?  What is my purpose? What should I live for when there's nothing alive?

I take that back. I should say that everything is alive, if everyone weren't so...lifeless. What happened these centuries--no, millennia--that I have been gone for? Was I really gone for millennia, anyways? My body was grounded in this world, yet I don't feel young anymore. I feel...matured, in some way. My soul feels as if it was yanked out of its shell and thrust into mine. Why? I still have yet to know. Know what? What is there left to know?

Everything. What is the meaning of my existence? What is there left to live for?

Hahahaha. I'm so funny. I can't act all too pitiful, else I can no longer ground my heart and body. I must remain aware.

My laugh resounded within the deserted city, my ultimately fake chuckle muffled through the mask which covered my face. The landscape seems all too barren--too monochrome--for me to bear. This is a perfect location to paint.

I must hurry before the rain returns and all life ignores me once more. The still rain, now cleverly sculpted into painfully slowly falling spherical beads of water, painted a pleasant addition to this black-and-white scene.

For some reason, the Lieder ohne Worte returned to my head. Every time my brush was stroked against the canvas, I could feel a string tugging at my heart, like it was trying to stop me from doing what I hated most.

Yet I did not stop. I could not bring myself to stop. The song without words still continued playing; louder and more intense still. But it was pleasant, like the satisfaction and the overwhelming sense of relief that finishing a painting brought me. No--pleasant was not the word. I would say it was disturbing, but it was more of the pleasing type. Yes, that was how to describe the feeling I could feel when the once monochrome scene before my eyes was painted upon the canvas. My illustrations tended to be more colorful despite the grueling plainness of my surroundings.

That was it--I shall name my painting, "Deadly Heart of the City." It is named after the feeling I felt while my brush wove across the canvas, drawing colors from my palette onto my empty new world. The scenery, I had not focused on, but it was the colorless hues of my emotions thread onto the painting that mattered more than its beauty.

Why did I hate painting so much to where I had to flee? I wanted to run. Run far from it--but my eyes remained glued onto the canvas, and my legs refused to move. I was admiring it in pain. In suffering. Yet I felt like I needed to praise it; to worship it for my phenomenal skills. But I required and needed departure--time would return soon and chase me until I was no more.

And every single day it happens that when I depart, my artworks always disappear before I could even look back.  Yet it seemed as if this one had a soul to it--a conviction. A conviction so strong that it could defy its own fate and remain at the scene while I fled.

The rain slowly began to fall faster and faster still as time passed from a second seeming like an hour to becoming what it is. People who were once frozen in time now wandered around the city with their coats and umbrellas. While on the sidewalk, as I pitifully left the scene, I couldn't help but look back at that painting that still stood firm in its place.

And I couldn't help but wish that my body could remain as grounded as the canvas.