Life in Paintings

Chapter 13 - The Last Day of Pompeii

A gigantic bang wakes me up in the next painting. I'm not lying comfortably on a couch in Tanya's apartment anymore. No, I'm standing in a Greek-or-Roman-I-can-never-tell-the-difference city and the sky is on fire.

People are running and screaming and it's basically a freaking mayhem around me. It feels like the ground is slightly shaking under my feet and dust is falling from the sky. When I look ahead, from the way people are all running away from I see it. It all makes sense.

Suddenly, I know exactly where I am. I'm in Pompeii and the Vesuvius is erupting.

I don't run the way everyone else does. I know it's pointless. For one, I'm supposed to die anyway so it's not like I'm surprised by that fact. And also, I know it's worthless. Everyone around me is probably going to die. This is the way history goes.

"Quick children, quick!" a woman yells beside me. She's trying to urge her two kids to follow her, looking over her shoulder at the volcano every ten seconds and I see it in her eyes, the fear and the grief and resignation. She knows that is it.

This is real, I think. It might not be real, but it really happened. Suddenly I realize how awful this painting truly is. All of these people running away around me-some with their belongings, some just holding on to the hand of their loved one-they're all going to die. There's no escaping this. There's a young couple a few feet away from me. They stopped running and they're standing under an arch, protected from the falling ashes and they're holding onto each other, the boy cupping the girl's cheeks, the girl gripping to the boy's clothes. I stare at them and I can't move and my eyes fill with tears. They're going to die. I don't know if they really died, if that's how history went for them, if these two people were really there when it happened, but even if they weren't they were probably thousands of couples just like them when it really happened.

Those poor people...

"Run!" an old man yells at me as he sprints past me.

For a second I'm reminded of Gustave asking me if the Romans ever spoke in Latin to me. It's a fleeting thought but it does help to put things in perspective. This might have really happened, centuries ago, but it's not real right now. It's not reallyhappening to them. They're not real. And it's not really happening to me. This is just a painting. And the Romans are not speaking Latin.

I start running. The problem is, before I was standing under an arch so I was somewhat protected from the falling ashes, but now I'm not anymore and it actually hurts when it falls one me. The ashes are scorching and it's everywhere. More and more keeps falling. It wasn't as bad a few minutes ago but now it's getting worst and worst.

Soon I find myself coughing barely able to breathe properly because of all the ashes. This is a freaking nightmare.

I don't know what to do. Should I hide in some house? I know I'm going to die in this painting, but the thought of being buried under ashes and burned with lava really scares me. Like, the whole apprehension thing, and knowing exactly what will happen, it almost freezes me again.

Maybe I should just stab myself and get it over with...

I don't have the time to find a sword or a weapon to do it though because the ashes falling on me are scorching and they're burning my clothes on my skin and I shriek with pain and fall on the ground and ashes fall and fall and fall and soon I'm covered with it and I can't breathe and I can't think and I want to die, but I don't really want to die and I want to shout more but if I do I open my mouth and I swallow ash and fire and the ground is burning too and I claw my way around, nails digging in earth, trying to pull myself away but it's worthless because there is nowhere to go and my lungs are filling up with ash and fire and I don't want to die that way but I do.