THE SEA OF TREES

PROLOGUE....

White. Just like the colour of the snow that spreads everywhere on a cold winter morning. A deep silence reigns the leafless trees staring at the sky. For a moment everything freezes. Even the flow of time. And there's a peace all around that no one can ever describe.

But nothing lasts forever. Soon spring will lay its foot on the horizon and everything will come to life. The plants will dance with a green smile, the flowers will open their petals and look at the birds singing their hearts out. The pure white snow will turn into clear drops of water when the rays of sun caress it and will flow through the scene filled with life and laughter carrying with it the memories of the hearts that chose to stay frozen forever.

..........

As the brush moved on the coarse surface of the canvas, the silent room was filled with a variety of hoarse sounds. Stripes of colour ran wild on the white space while my hands restlessly moved on their own trying to give a shape to the thoughts being projected by my mind. I felt dizzy, my vision was hazy. My body felt weak. Yet I was being driven by an uncontrollable urge to draw the scene that was taking shape somewhere deep within my consciousness. It was one of those moments when inspiration rises from deep within the core of an artist and tears him apart, drawing out every last drop of his talent to express his art.

By the time I was done with the finishing stroke a wave of nausea had swept over me. I didn't want to be in that place anymore so I stood up and left the room at once. My legs were wobbly but somehow they managed to carry my weight.

Returning to the kitchen I put the kettle on the gas and glanced at the clock. Seven it read. Three hours had already passed while I had locked myself in the room. Outside the window the soft rays of the winter sun were playing hide and seek beneath the leaves of the trees.

I poured some warm tea into a mug and walked back to where the painting was. This time around I didn't feel that uneasy. What lied before me was a painting of a dead body of a young man. Lifeless eyes staring into blank space, hands clutching tightly the rope hanging from a tall tree in a dark forest. His shoes lied nearby in the dense grasses along with a small photograph whose contents were hazy. I kept on staring at the picture till each detail of it was printed on my mind.

So much for being an artist...

.......

It was not the first time I had drawn something like that. It had first happened to me in the first summer of middle school.

Ever since childhood I always had the wish to be acknowledged as a painter. The very idea of painting different things and showing it to others filled me with endless joy. But sadly all my works would end up as some average scribbling. No matter how hard I tried and how much efforts I poured, I could never create something impressive.

I had almost given up on my dreams when one night suddenly I woke up with an unbearable urge to paint something. It was as if someone had a cast spell on me. I dragged my half asleep body to the study room in the middle of the night and was right at it. But once I was done with the painting, chills ran down my spine. It was the image of a dead young lady whose body was sprawling on grassy grounds, untied hair crawling out in all directions and lifeless eyes staring at the sky. I didn't know her, I couldn't remember seeing her ever either. Her face had just come to me out of nowhere.

I hid the painting in the shelves and didn't show it to anyone. I was too scared to take a look at it myself. But it was just the beginning. Before I realized it, I was already creating more and more paintings like that. In each one there would be a new person in a new place, but all of them were dead. Someone by cutting, someone by starving, someone by hanging and someone by stabbing, but dead nonetheless.

Soon it was no longer possible to hide them from others. At first people were shocked to see them but with time they started to treat it as a talent. I was starting to get famous in my school and locality for my vivid and almost real descriptions and my paintings had earned me the nickname, 'the Artist of the dead'. Since it was what I had always wanted, I had no reason to complain either. But somehow it all felt a bit disturbing to me.

Everything was going well until that day when I painted something completely different. Something the like of which I had never created before. Little did I know that it was going to change my life forever.