The Arthouse

Stefano

I hate Krimson. Not the color, though. I think the color crimson is quite alluring. No. I hate Krimson City. It's soggy and bland and this stupid mental hospital is at the heart of it. The only logical reason I can think of to hate it is the fact that it's not an art museum. In fact, there aren't any art museums at all. It sucks. The closest thing to it is that stupid asylum. The building itself is so beautiful on the outside. I wish it was just as beautiful inside, too. The city is horrible. It's dark and grimy and the cops are all dumb. I could probably go on a murder spree and no one would notice. What's even worse than this rain-drowned city is the fact that we don't even live in it. We live far outside the city borders, away from everything. I hate this city, but hate the countryside even more. My whole life I've lived in cities. I love living in them. I can't live in the country. I'd die of cliché and boredom. Ugh.

I guess the benefit of living in the country is I don't live in a cramped apartment anymore. But all the space... I don't know how to fill it. There are more walls to paint, sure, but what about the air? It's empty. You can't paint the air. There's something forbidden about it. If you throw paint in the air, I guess the air would technically be painted. The thing with air is the fact that it cleans itself up quickly. If I could find a way to freeze the paint in the air, I could paint the air.

There's no way to do that, though.

My bedroom is huge. Its giant gaping windows are the first thing you see when you enter it. Bare white walls freeze you out while the wooden floors creak to announce your presence to the empty halls. The walls are thick like rock. If you scream with the door shut, no one will hear you. The walls don't care. Just like people. People don't care. They never care. They don't care that you were perfectly happy the way you were, that they are a constant reminder of a change that rocked your life! They don't care that everything you know and love is miles and miles away, across an ocean of time that can't be returned to! They don't care!

They don't care at all!

I hear a loud crack made up of the collective screams of several little ones. I look down at my foot, hanging limply in my wool sock.

I don't remember kicking the wall, but now my foot is broken.

That's when the pain hits me like a thousand of those walls crumbling. I can't drive and my mother is downstairs. Screaming won't do me any good. I take one step, putting pressure on the crushed phalanges. I thought the initial pain was bad, but this is far, far worse. The sensation of ice cold railroad spikes digging their way through the muscles and bone until they've clawed their way through my injured foot is almost too much to bear. I crawl my way to the stairs, doing everything in my power to keep pressure off my already swelling foot.

In my pain, I must have judged the height of the stairs wrong. That's when my body and gravity conspired against me. I now realize I never want to fall head over heels in love because I broke my nose falling head over heels down some stairs. And that's when my mom finds me on the ground, covered in my own blood, my nose acting as my own personal fountain.

As she panics and gets a cloth for my nose, I watch the blood pour from it like a hose on high. It's beautiful, in a weird, twisted way. It's almost worth all the pain that caused it.