The small stuffy apartment was only enough for her. It was crowded with her things. There was barely any room for another chair. That was okay, she didn't have another chair.
She liked it this way, barely any space. She felt as though, if there was no room that there was someone with her. Someone there was celebrating her home with her.
The only problem though, was there was no room for a couple left over boxes. The boxes all held the same items. She had spent the longest time on those boxes. She couldn't decide on putting the items in the boxes and taking them with her or simply just throwing them out. With the rooms to full now for the items in the boxes to fit anywhere she took it as a sign to just leave them on the corner. And as she placed them on corner she sighed. Why did she even bring them with her?
They were nothing to her now. She had already left them alone. She had said her goodbyes. She had said her goodbyes to the paintings she had drowned herself in. She had spent her hours on them.
He watched every time she worked on one. To the earliest of the hours to the latest of the hours. He calmed her down, cheered her on, agreed with her, and helped her. He watched her every step of the process. He was the only one who knew her secret, her dream.
And there he sat casually on her couch. He was watching one of his sitcoms. There was a beer in his hand. And when she had entered back in to her home he had rather quickly set down the beer down and turned the television off. He stood up and asked her one question.
"Why'd you stop?"
"What?" She had to be delusional.
"Why did you stop?" He asked again, slowly.
"I-I don't get it."
"You stopped painting after I left. Why? You were magnificent. What happened?" His face obviously clued at confusion. There was sadness and guilt laced into his face too. And when he had said that, she had decided that it was only good to answer his question.
"I didn't stop, I slowed down," she answered rather weakly.
"Why did you slow down?" He followed up.
"The world took things away from me that I couldn't get back." Her voice cracked as she tried to hold a few stray tears.
"Really?" His face held sadness as he caught sight of the few stray tears stream down her face, "like what did this unholy place take from you?"
"My canvases, paints, paper, paints, brushes, pens, pencils, crayons, oils, creativity, light, love, hope, dreams, inspiration, home, happiness, saneness, emotions. It took everything from me. Everything."
"Maybe you took everything from yourself," He raised his eyebrows; the sad look had suddenly disappeared. "You always loved self-destruction. It was what you did best."
"What do you mean?" Her body shook as she tried to keep herself from bawling.
"You let yourself do everything; everything you ever did was your choice. You're the reason you just threw everything you ever worked for on the street. You let it go. The worst thing is that you just cried it off and then pretended it was all right when you were dying inside ready to slit your own throat."
And it only took those words to break her. Her tears came in oceans and when she closed her eyes, she yelled louder than ever.
"You're not real, you're dead. You died a year ago. You left me like everyone else. You're with everyone else I ever loved. You're just an illusion."
And when she opened her eyes she was alone. The room was empty. She was alone with her balled up presence, crying.
And when she was finally done with the crying she grabbed a knife, pills, a box of cigarettes, and bottle of vodka and shoved it all in her purse.
She ran down the apartment building's stairs at three am and out the door to boxes that still lay on the corner. She took the knife out of her purse and ripped opened each box. She threw the framed drawings watching the glass shatter and slit the paintings and broke the sculptures until everything was trash. When she was finished she didn't care about the sidewalk being trashe, she just hopped into her car and drove.
And when she drove she took drinks of the vodka and breaths of the cigarettes. She hoped that nothing would leave of her when she threw the last cigarette out of the window and swallowed the pills and drowned them alcohol. She took her hands of the steering wheel and pushed down on only the pedals until she couldn't gasp for her last breath.
