Scary Stories and Urban Legends

Cynthia

"Little solace comes to those who grieve
When thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting
And this great blue world of ours
Seems a house of leaves,

Moments

Before

The

Wind."

-House of Leaves. (Pg. 563)

Greg was asleep. He had been for some time, as was normal. Depression has a way of sapping ones energy. Well, not really "sap," so much as "make the real world so un-fucking-bearable that sleeping for sixteen hours a day is preferable to being aware of your own life" kind of thing. Not to say that he slept well, not even close. The problem with sleep is the possibility for dreaming, and dreams have a way of reminding one of reality. You see, Greg was in a rough spot in his life; he was virtually broke. His job didn't pay all that well, which was to be expected considering that fine arts majors have a tendency to ruin their lives by becoming fine arts majors. To him, the best option available was to get a job as a gas station clerk, which gave him enough down time to allow him to utilize his sketch book while still technically being paid to do it. He kept telling himself that he was working toward something better, but to what exactly, that was still unknown. He had been telling himself this for his entire life.

Greg shifted beneath the blankets, his face knotted into something unpleasant, but relaxed back soon after.

It had been just over a year since Greg had spoken to Natalie. At this same moment, Greg was the last thing on Natalie's mind. She had ended it with Greg the previous year before leaving for the west coast to do... something or other. Something that involved not being around Greg, something that involved getting away from the pathetic little town, something that involved living an actual life. At the same moment that Greg lay asleep, alone in an apartment he could barely afford, alone in a bed beneath a few blankets, Natalie was with her new boyfriend, having the time of her life on some moonlit beach, watching the Pacific Ocean tides caress the shore. Despite a sincere desire for her to be happy, Greg would not have been content to know this. Affection has a way of bringing out jealousy in people, human nature and all.

Greg let a small noise exit his lungs, the sound of a whimper.

Greg's bedroom consisted of a futon, a small glass table littered with empty beer cans and overflowing ashtrays, a bookshelf, and a closet. On the walls of his room, Greg had thumb tacked the majority of his pencil or charcoal drawings, the ones he liked anyway. The same went for the few of his oil paintings, the ones that he cared to mount. These were the sort of paintings that border on classic realism, usually with the aid of photographs of whatever he found interesting, but also with the particular style of blending several images together haphazardly next to each other resulting in a sloppy transition area that gives one the thought of active decay.

The subjects themselves were always bleak in nature. Greg was often disappointed that he never had to look very far for inspiration. On the glass being half full point of view, at least Greg didn't have to spend too much money on primary colors. "You'd be surprised what you can do with only shades of grey." He liked to tell people.

Greg's closet was used to store his yet to be used canvas, seasonal cloths, and one mannequin head. The head in question is the type of model most often used by students studying the field of cosmetology. For one reason or another, the details are not important, but for one reason or another Greg had managed to acquire a female mannequin head, along with several interchangeable wigs. He kept these things in his closet, because Greg was not in fact a creep, but because Greg had an artistic spirit. And an artistic spirit has a tendency to see potential where others see random piles of crap.