The Short Stories from a Woman (Wattys2016)

The Scream

It eased her mind from the troubles she experienced day in day out as she walked through these halls. Some were not difficult ones, others were, but art, creativity helped her to escape.

She loved to write and be creative. Paint paintings like the next Picasso. All just to escape reality and escape in an unrealistic world full of fantasy and or possibility.

She lived in a close apartment, a two bedroom one. It was her own save haven, but she still needed to go out and surround herself with art, the fresh air of the outside and everything else that could ease her mind.

She was a broken being, a bird trapped in a cage without the chance to spread her wings. Even that she tried to find her way to set herself free and being creative helped her with just that.
So now she walked here through the halls, looking at the different creative pieces of paintings and sculptures.

That's when she found the painting she came for. The Scream. Her favorite piece of art. She took out her notebook and started to draw in it. Like making a picture of it, only by paper and pencil and not with the use of an electronic device, a camera. To draw the art in front of her made her to really look at the painting, with true admiration of what the creator had made. All the lines, the colors, everything seemed more into detail when she tried to capture it on the paper in her hands.

That's when a young man came to stand beside her, someone else alone in a room, mesmerized by the Scream.

She knew she had to talk to people, she learned to open herself up more. And to do it in an environment she felt safe in and another person who seemed to like and maybe even love the same thing as she did, made herself to feel comfortable enough to speak.

Daniel walked through the National Gallery of Oslo, located in Norway. He saw paintings that told him their own stories, and their own journey's they had taken over the centuries.

That's when he saw the painting he came to Oslo for, the Scream, but that lost his attention. A beautiful young woman stood before it, drawing in her notebook. It was a pretty sight and he came closer to her to look up at the painting from a different and better angle and because he liked to say hello.

Daniel stood there watching the painting for a few minutes, minutes of human silence that was present next to the footsteps of tourist and locals who walked the halls.

"It seems like we know him more than the ones close to us." Her voice soft, a whisper, filled the air in the Museum. He replied without thinking his actions through.

"Yes we do. We understand each other more than we do ourselves a lot of the time." That was the truth after all and the only thing Daniel said while they looked over at the art, the Scream, a famous painting made by Edvard Munch, that was haunting in its own tragic, yet beautiful way.

People always tell someone how to be, how to act. That is how we live in society. We judge others for things we would do too. We are hypocritical creatures, telling others how to be, while we don't even know ourselves or be our own selves.

He thought. "How he has suffered in the years he was alive, it is tragic, sad." Sadness crept in her voice as she spoke. Her eyes became watery with emotion and tears that couldn't fall. She felt the same pain Munch felt during the periods he made this painting. How he felt during the making of all of his other works.

"I know what's suffering is like. To suffer because of your own self. Because of experiences in life that have left scars on you that you will carry on forever until the day your soul will leave the mortal life it lived from the moment you were born" Her eyes didn't leave the painting, she seemed mesmerized by it. 

"It has something. Something you can't really describe other than that it in some way understands you." She looked up at him now.

And how she looked at him, with her brown eyes the color of the wood of the most gorgeous trees, he knew that at that moment he fell in love with her.

'gl