Fatal Consumption

Pink on blue, he's so into you.

The paint is opaque. The texture suits the attitude he carried. It was smooth but unpredictably rough in rare patches. He's been painting for months, but the picture keeps changing when he returns to pick up where he left off. He's frustrated by the change. Why did it have to transmogrify? The blue would be deeper, the pink would be too bright, but tomorrow they were both too dull so he had to paint over them again.

Again and again he dwells on the sin.

Frayed curtains winnowed by the wind, flick, flick. A dust storm comes but he doesn't see it. Into the house, into the sullied water, freckling the painting, and into the congealing palette and then into his eyes. It's rough, it scratches. His eyes become bloated and pink. But it's still there and it's still changing and he's still there clawing at it with the paint biting under his nails, digging deeper, piercing to pain.

He's destroyed it.

Destiny was satisfied, but the boy, unable to cope, grabbed a gun and shoved it down his throat. Bullets, tearing, searing down a raw gullet to a stone-hard stomach. Burning, boiling, blood coughing. Waking, struggling but bleary-eyed and ambiguous, where do we go from here? His fingers wrap around the splintered leg of the easel.

What easel?

There was no painting to begin with.