Lone Traveler

Alternate ending v1.0

She valued her cleanliness, as did I. I’d watch as she spent hours, sometimes entire days, washing and organizing each and every inch of her home, always to perfection. Now it was a mess, a chaotic wreck of turmoil and struggle. She’d never done this to me before, never forced me to see her in such a shape of sheer humanity. Her walls, once rife with the beauty and life she painted, now lay bare, the art scattered and broken upon the floor. I clenched my teeth as I righted them, muscles tensing as I tried to hang them back in their correct places, but they were simply not the same. I let them fall back to the floor as I continued up her stairs.

The door to her studio was splattered in a ruby red, which ran from door handle and down into the crème carpet. I softly placed my hand onto the knob, the still-warm liquid soaking and staining my flesh, and turned. The door opened with a soft, wooden creak, a rainbow of color invading my vision.

Her studio had long been our favorite spot, the place she spent most of her time in. When she wasn’t working, I’d silently watch from the nearby trees as she created masterpiece after masterpiece. No one else knew of the perfection she created, the beauty she was capable of. Every piece was better than the last, each one the key to saving the world. All she needed was a way to be seen—all she needed was me, the hero.

She lay motionless in the center of the room, a ruby trail leading up to her slit wrists. Cans of paint encircled her, their contents spilled out into a liquid rainbow of reds, yellows, whites, blues, and every other imaginable hue atop the linoleum floor. She stared at me with a faint glimpse of familiarity, her eyes slowly studying me like old friends reunited. Her breathes were shallow and deliberate, her lips slightly open and tinted purple. I knew she would still look beautiful, even in death.

I stared at her, the blood from her wrists blending with the spilled paint, as her head slowly tiled back. She was supposed to die in my care, for it to be displayed to the world alongside her art. She was supposed to be a martyr; I was supposed to be the vessel to her fame. We were going to free this vile planet from its incestuous decay, become names that were synonymous with each other. She would have had fame, immortality, success. The world would have embraced her as more than just a faceless name on page 17, but as a hero.

I closed my eyes and turned back toward the staircase, closing the door as I began back down the path I’d become so familiar traveling.