Life in Paintings

Prologue

Life in Paintings

Prologue

When I set fire to that art museum, I hadn’t been thinking about everything. In fact, the only thing I had been thinking about was that awful grade I had gotten in my mandatory art class. Why I had to take it in order to get my degree still baffled me. It had nothing to do with engineering. It was not going to make me a better citizen, or a better worker or even a better person. It only made me infinitely pissed about everything. If anything, taking an art class made me a worse person.

Art. Art was so useless. It took up space and couldn’t help with anything. It was supposed to mean something but everyone could have a different perspective on it, but only the one of your teacher was right, and this was all utter bull and there was no fairness in grading your opinion on something that could be anything. Where were sense and logic and order?

I had always been a hot head and mixing that with alcohol, frustration and an unreliable and slightly shady boyfriend had only been a recipe for disaster. Back in my hometown people had known not to set me off in fear of my legendary retaliations.

I hadn’t been acting alone either. The shady boyfriend, Jarvis, who had failed the same class just even more atrociously, had been the one with the plan. Who would have thought that all of his burning down our school theories would ever be useful one day?

            It hadn’t been premeditated either. We were just drunkenly stumbling back, complaining about how we wouldn’t be getting our degree with high honours because of that ridiculous excuse of a course and then BAM. An art museum. Right in our faces. It was nothing fancy, just a little museum with probably nothing special or grand in it, but it was staring me right in the face, like a smug ex boyfriend that knows he won the breaking up contest. I could almost see the museum and all of its useless junk in it mocking me.

            And so the plan had been quickly formed and quickly executed. A run to the closest gas station and things pretty much escaladed from there.

            The building was old and a good part of it was in wood, so it helped to feed the fire. And I hadn’t known if I was suppose to celebrate or feel like a vandal but there was a strange sense of vengeance in my actions. Art was ruining me so I was ruining art.

I stood outside, on the sidewalk while people started to come out of their houses around and scream for help. I wasn’t going to help.

And then everything happened quickly. One minute I was looking at the museum on fire and the other, the fire obviously hit some source of stronger carburant because something was exploding and I was thrown back by the force of the blow, my head hitting the hard asphalt first.