The Insanity of a Wallflower

Deserve- XXVII

The journal containing the layout of the mural was still on that spare bed in Hayden's house. But I didn't need it to recreate the manifestations of my thoughts; I knew where every smile would go, every structure, object, and simile. I could envision where the basic lies would be lay despite the fact I still had yet to gather physical evidence and paint them within.

But that could wait, all else could wait. I needed to change this wall's face like it represented the end of all my pain. The natural colors I chose to balance the darker hues already whispered to me the blending ratio to recreate a roman cathedral masterpiece. The brushes, and string, and rulers, and sponges at my feet all chuckled the precise technique and dance it would take to create the cracks, the flakes, and engraved affects.

Harder again my fingers pushed. Paint-can after paint-can fell empty to the ground as I stepped higher and higher on the ladder against the wall. Finally I stopped, and let my body slide loosely down the rickety metal. The jarring landing did nothing to startle my heart; the daze of my mind was always hard to penetrate like this.

I glanced up greedily at my work, my shoulders rising and falling in time with my elevated breathing. A small smile formed against my lips as I watched the silhouettes and base forms of so many people and objects. There were no details, nothing to be hidden yet- but my mind's eye could see both coming layers. The truth and the cloak. Just like the reality of those around me, the sheep and their costumes. And where I couldn't rip them off there, here I could.

I turned and reached for a bundle of paint brushes and acrylic colors; the demon of my thoughts leering now. It knew what was about to come; the psycho release I carved out for myself...

The fault I had in my own person.

I judged those around me; I had no right, no claim.

I had the only right. I had the only claim.

I walked absently to the silhouettes in front of me, my imagination clouding my vision as it formed over the featureless pane. I traced the smiles projected in my head, rotated the brush to capture the shadow of a throat. I instinctually measured the proportion of a nose, of the lines around the corners of the face... of the slight gap in the teeth.

Slowly, agonizingly, I recreated that student's face; the one who would be the poster child to them all. Behind him I sketched the mass of other faces, of all the students who stood witness to the fake self-harm in the cafeteria halls.

He stood in the forefront of the group; an idiotic grin spread greasily across his face and across the faces of the others. They had no idea of what was beside them; of the impending fate that could, and would, claim them all.

Across from them I traced the frame and finally the full structure of a slaughter house, a snow white sheep hanging loosely inside. Older, decaying carcasses lay further in the back, yet the shadows I cast over them would not draw your eye easily. My fingertips strained to make the small precise lines; to draw the red that was beginning to stain the wool. The tools for the slaughter were white plastic butter-knives scattered below. They remained cleaned, as if there was no way they could do so much damage and harm, but the evidence still lay above them. The slaughtered lamb; the insignificant death.

I traced the teacher's forms, standing in the shadows of the barn, the blood-splatter patterns across the wall and across them seamlessly. For they had watched the slaughter happen, witnessed the lies, and had done nothing to save her. But if they thought the blood wasn't on their hands, they were wrong. I drew the droplets slipping between knuckles and joints. I drew their silhouettes in the blood pattern precisely; clearly depicting they have never moved once throughout the butchery; background objects that were nothing more than just in the way of the spray. Useless. Worthless.