Veronica always fancied herself a writer. Ever since she was young the art of writing glazed her with a sense of awe. She loved the strokes of the letters that created words that created sentences, all dancing in unison to create the tales inside her mind.
She'd yearned to be a writer, a storyteller, to have a book with her name right on the cover.
Life, as always, had different plans.
Long ago were the days of youth, childhood blown away in a spark. The days where she dreamed of Harvard and Duke, of acclaimed bestsellers in the libraries, of an endless passionate love that held her heart high in the sky.
Now, she sits on the computer, typing away numbers that lost meaning ages ago. Faded hair and crinkle lines, a coffee stained sigh the only sound that accompanied the keyboard's endless clicking.
Life was not miserable, do not get her wrong. It was joyful, and peaceful, and sometimes fulfilling. However, in dawning days like these, where the night sets before her eyes, her wandering mind escapes even her own comforts.
With a tremble in step and a shiver in hand she stood from her desk. The moonlight hid through her curtains, winking at her with its cold distant light.
Her feet carried her on their own, bare and cold and wise on their path, the steps already set in the trail. The destination was hidden away under the stairs, shadows casing from clueless eyes the gate to the depths of her mind.
She often pondered how she got to this point. One purchase, one brush, one line. A thoughtless action, a meaningless move. One became two became three, and soon the rabbit's den hit no limit and no end. It engulfed her in her land of wonders and fears.
Her hand reached for the knob, nervous yet serene. Tranquil with the mold of familiarity and routine. Jittery with the spikes of memories and ghosts. She turned the knob, and took a deep deep breath.
Veronica Sawyer fancied herself a writer.
But she never truly considered herself a painter.
Her eyes, overcast with the outlines of the night, gazed upon the room. Dark and hidden, silhouettes revealed a sketch of her secluded mind. Locked away from her consciousness, memories she herself had banished under the sea's depth.
To that, a flash of electricity became the keys to the lock deep within the water. The light bore away the time's sand, resurfacing events no one but her knew about. The bright flash awoke the room's creations.
Paintings. A room filled with paintings. Golden frames, silver frames, wooden frames. All spotlighting the running of the brush and the color of the paint. The warm light made the pictures shine, dull and dark, but captivating in their own regard.
Veronica, still dry and tired, ignoring the shivers the hanging collections brought to her, walked to the center of the room. In it, a canvas stood in its wooden set up. The brush was submerged in inking water, it's colors muddy and revolting.
Her eyes, tired and heavy, blinked up to the working portrait propped in the easel. And as though a veil had hauled from her eyes, a gentle shine bloomed within them at the sight.
Rough, unfinished and messy. The painting was far from done in this state, the pencil strokes and guiding lines still adorning parts of the page. Peeks of the white canvas accompanied the dark ridges of the paint, blending in a whirlpools of clashing hues.
A chaotic mash-up of colors and lines.
A soft giggle painted the air, the tiring eyes soft and careful in their watching, fond of the picture before her. What would he think about that?
Her hand gripped onto the paintbrush, drying and wetting the tip. Her fingers, delicated and graceful, caressed the brush's tip to the canvas' surface. A stroke of dark vermilion, spinning and sliding to shape the nebulous figure that hid in her mind. Rapid yet gentle, the coursing bristles brought to life the evocations of the past.
At the edges of her memory, stretched and blurred with age: A face tired and malnourished, beaten and rusted with the time, yet still so clear and proper on this visage.
Her paintbrush was small and frail, yet the supernatural faculties it possessed took away all her breath. It was otherworldly to her eyes, always eerie and disconcerting how it bewitched her hands to rise and fall to unfold the memoirs deep under her mind.
Necromantic, that was the power it held. A spell to bring back the dead.
Because the face within these portraits isn't around anymore.
Her hands, still guided by the haunting spell that brought her here, moved on their own with the image of the man. So old and tough, jaw clenched and expression aloof. The barriers built within his cold gazing eyes scaring away everything and anything that could hurt him inside.
Yet deep within, something only her brush could see: A warm, gentle sight. The casing of a teardrop full of agony and dread. A boy, gentle and fearful of those around him. Everything he saw, everything he said, a potential explosion that could go off in his face.
Her paint continued to flow, dripping and splashing with the wills of their master. Her eyes, blind and unseeing with the sprouting tears.
Maybe, if he had been the way he was before, things would have ended differently.
But its too late for that now, isn't it?
The him in these pictures isn't around anymore.
She bit her lip, willing the tears away. With trained motion, the brush slipped and cleaned and colored. The hues were muted and cold, yet the highlights were vibrant and vivid. It scared her how much life it could bring.
Her eyes wandered around the room, circling the decorated perimeter. Paintings from top to bottom, countless hours of life thrown away into buckets of paint.
What was she looking for? What did she gain? What were the motives, what were the reasons? Why did she have a room full of his likeness?
It's not like she missed him. He was a passing fling. The first of many lovers. A thought at the edge of her memory. He was only the face of her past. It's not like she loved him.
The tears, both his and hers, finished wetting their desolate faces. She never saw him cry, not really. Not until the end of it all, where the fire and the pain was too harsh to ignore and flames scorched all protection and restrain. The gunshot could have easily caused those tears.
Even so, those goodbyes cries, clouded and bloodied, echoed with sincerity. The shattering of walls, the fall of the tower. No longer a hidden monster nor a merciless God, but Jason Dean in all his truth.
He had changed. Within the last few weeks of their time together, the boy had been burnt and rawed to a mangled version of himself. He would say that was the real him all along, damaged and demented, but she didn't believe that. Not really.
She knew the reasons now, at least she thought she knew. With every painting and every sketch and every drawing, the picture of him became clearer and clearer as his face became blurrier with time.
He had hated himself. She knew he had. The disgust at every mirror, the shame when looking down. He had never loved himself, because the world had never loved him. Hatred and disgust was everything he was shown. Resentment from his father. Indifference from his mother. Mockery from his peers. Disappointment from his teachers. Disdain all around. As such, he had to hate the world, just as it had hated him.
He made himself hate them, all of them, to bring himself up and up to a height no one could reach. A God they could not hurt. A boy with higher power over them, so they could not have power over him.
With these paintings, these windows, she saught the real him, as he was then, and as he would be now. She saught the answers that had haunted her all this time. What had he lacked? What was he missing?
Endless buckets of paint. Countless splattered canvases. Infinite aging paintbrushed. Unending hours of painting. All centered, all revolving around one simple answer. One resolution that clicked the pieces of his puzzle. That ended her wandering thoughts.
All along, what he had really needed was to love himself, just as he was. But he was never able to realize that.
They were never able to realize that.
Maybe she had loved him. Underneath all his spikes and all his cracks, the gentle boy that laid within. She was soft for that boy, smitten and compassionate towards his life. After all, he was indelible to her own.
That's why she first picked up the brush. The image of his self, engraved and transfixed in her growing mind. Even when she tried to escape it, to condemn it her mind, his face and his touch was not able to leave her.
So one day, when all her walls were broken through, all her reservation tired by the wear of time, she picked up the brush. And with the tears floodgates released, she painted her first portrait of him.
When the doors to the pain could not close again, reluctant to be sealed and ignored like before, the art of painting became a thing of days. Days where she furious, days where she was lonely, days where where she was confused and had nowhere else to turn.
An then, days turned into months turned into years, and soon enough she had gallery worth of pictures. His life portrayed within her fingertips, growing and changing as she did. From a monster that hid underneath her stairs, to a piece of art that lived within her house.
Maybe she did love him. Maybe she has loved him all along.
He continues to live through the pictures she has created. Alive and breathing, growing with her. The memories she keeps, although messy and unfocused, kept him alive as the vulnerable boy she remembers.
Even if it wasn't the him he would have wanted alive. She lives happy knowing in some way or another, through all the painting that have been done, all the hours spent on them, all the love poured into each one. At least from all that, a part of what he is now, loves himself as much as she has loved him.
She sets down the brush.
Her eyes, glassy and relieved, with all the care of the world stare down at her painting. A creation necromantic in nature, for she was once more seventeen. She was there and he was here, and all she could have said and all he could have done to make them whole was true.
Maybe the real him was there all along. But neither her nor him were able to realize thag.