The Mess I Made | Malum

♡ the heartbeat of art ♡

The field had an aromatic, sweet odor to its skin, and Calum found himself becoming addicted to the pheromone. His elbows invigorated on the steering wheel of a rented car, his hands almost inconceivably having little to no room to hold up the tarpaulin, but he managed, just like he managed to do everything else in such an infallible manner. The Raven pen sneaking between his fingertips brushed against the paper like water melting into sand, and an uprising of satisfaction drove through him at a last minute resort. This was art, a slice of life forgotten by those who needed a retreat the most. Everyone has lost their way, their meaning, and Calum wanted to be the one to repair that feeling, to remind them that there is a heartbeat of art, and only certain people can feel it. It's not because they're the selective chosen ones, but because most people don't want to dig down inside of the hole because they're too afraid of getting their hands dirty. He doesn't care about being hygienic when being covered with different pigmentations is an assonance of this reality that his mind pushed away a long time ago.

He was sketching the moon in its closest form of darkness. It portrayed so little, yet materialized to be something spine-tingling, in a sense where nothing else in the universe was. There was no matter to a world of being perfect, but he still strived to have every last breath of being the most ideal formalist known to mankind. The stars surrounding the orb of night were almost indistinct, contrasting pastel colors in the light of what was real and what wasn't, and Calum could feel his chest tightening. Today wasn't a very good day, but drawing helped him forget about it all for a while.

Aside of him in the passenger seat ensconced a half eaten box of pizza hiding underneath his favorite black football jacket. He wore it often, it was warm, like a steamy pool on an incredibly cold morning, or a waterfront bonfire where water crawls into your soul and gives you a source of peace just for the night. He wasn't all that hungry anymore; eating too much made him feel less perfect, and really, he couldn't have that. It wasn't idealistic.

Time was just an intellectual phenomenon made by somebody who wanted to find where the cracks of insanity rested when people could finally find something to smile about. The car was on park, and Calum felt like banging his head into the steering wheel, because his art wasn't perfect enough. There was no sentimental value lingering behind the portrait, only a pessimistic male looking for hope. This could sell, for sure, he thought, maybe not for much, but enough to be proud. He added a stroke of paint to the crescent, and with each detail added, he could feel his shoelaces wrapping themselves around his ankles, and it was difficult to move. It was difficult to breathe.

Calum sighed, gradually changing his hand movements when the art just wasn't perfect enough. This would be critical to his career, he couldn't afford to make any mistakes. His head was pounding, begging for a break, but he wouldn't take one. It was five sixteen in the morning, a little less than an hour before the sun would come up, and he needed tea, but he couldn't leave. The thread on his scalp was pulling against the seat, and it was almost as if something was giving him a warning to stop, but he didn't, he wouldn't. But then his phone rang, and a groan escaped his coral lips that used to be so soft, but grew chapped from all of his frustration popping in and out of his lungs like fireworks on the "coolest, brightest holiday ever."

"Hello?"

"How's the picture coming along?"

"Great," Calum bit at his lip, watching the moon slowly trace its way out of the ceiling zero sky. It was almost morning. It would have been rude to yawn on the phone, and he could hardly keep his eyes open from the sudden change in light, but he had to. He had to. "It's almost finished. Just giving it the taste of a heartbeat, a taste of life. You know, what I always do at five in the fucking morning."