((A.N.: As of 03/22/18, this chapter may not line up perfectly in factoids/plot with the chapters that follow, as this chapter is newly edited. Yes, years after I published it on Wattpad.)
Well, this just won't do, Julius thought to himself, staring at the milk white canvas with squinted eyes and a caustic self-scrutiny. You dumb paint virgin, sitting there on your chaise lounge, my easel. The predicament he found himself in was, tragically, a common one; an everyday curse he put himself through for art's sake, for creativity's sake. Behind him, lined against the walls like an abject and silent crowd of voyeurs, a heap of other identical canvases leaned against one another in various sizes, warm from the sun pouring in through the wide window on the opposite side of the room.
A painting a day, who I am kidding?
His bare feet kicked at the bare hardwood floor underfoot, victim of his daily crime, colors splattered unevenly in the wood grain, in the gaps between planks, effectively ruining the ancient dark finish. A painting a day to convince his father he was being productive, the older man's uneasy acceptance of his son's artistic proposal still lingering in the air as Julius' personal ghost. You have a year to make a name for yourself, and today needs to be that day. Not tomorrow, not two days from now, and yesterday is long over, so forget about it. Make today the day you prove your worth to everyone who doesn't know you.
That was the mantra for the first three months. Now, deep in the wet hot month of June, the drive was fading, and more and more canvases found themselves waiting on the floor untouched, backlogged, ignored. No more mantra, not even a half-baked one, kept that paintbrush moving.
This house, this stupid fucking house, was the worst of the blessings. Deep in the middle of the woods of Oregon, Julius stole himself away like a wannabe hermit, some hidden intellectual honing his outsider art that would blow the world away once he reentered society. I need somewhere in the woods, he recalled himself saying during the proposal, somewhere with lots of light. If it weren't for his father's massively successful paper business allowing such a move, Julius wouldn't have made it as far as his father's front doorstep. How he couldn't recognize his own privilege that six months ago was beyond him now, this lush mini mansion thoroughly undeserved and far bigger than he could ever possible need.
Make a name for yourself, sell your art, and you get to keep the house. Those were the rules, and Julius needed to work harder to keep up his end of the bargain.
A thought emerged. He saw the disdain for his vices bloom in the center of the canvas with an effortless stroke of the brush, his new muse all slate, navy, mulberry, gray. He saw the lines emerge, the curves, the shadows, as if they being made beyond his own mind, their intent only traceable if he let it happen without thinking. Bright noon sun intensified to afternoon orange, and the back-lit canvas transformed, slowly, into that of an intense blue stare, inhuman, honest, terrifying, One eye to represent himself and the other to represent all the expectations stacked against him. It wasn't a new feeling, this pressure; not in the slightest. The rules put upon him in this house felt all too similar to the running suggestion that he was just not good enough for his family. Not even born the first son, Julius always understood he was to limp in the shadow of his brother's confident stride.
In a moment of spontaneity, he smeared black paint onto his palette and transferred it, the thick, near-gelatinous whole of it, onto the half of the painting that remained a burden to his everyday life. A sign of wanted freedom, of independence without the precedent of a looming, disappointed father figure. It felt powerful to ruin his work, it felt like a statement, and after his brush left the canvas, he gave himself a moment to breathe.
Suddenly, his world collapsed around him in a blink, the physical space he previously inhabited merely a suggestion. He saw, felt, heard in one fraction of a second what could only be described as trains crashing, windows shattering, the earth crumbling beneath his feet. His thoughts became useless, stolen, occupied only by the need to witness these great and terrible feats. As fast as they arrived, they were gone again, and whatever fraction of omnipresence he unexpectedly attained only lasted a second.
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HUMAN SPIRIT
ParanormalJulius Wolfgang is alone in the world, and he likes it that way. Secluded in the forests of Portland, Oregon, he truly thinks he will never have to leave his house. That is, until he receives a very peculiar urn in the mail. With the arrival of th...
