sanctum | short stories

the birthplace of imagination

'We suffer more in imagination than in reality.'

~ Seneca

☀ ☼ ☀

This abandoned warehouse is a birthplace of imagination.

I come here during the hours following a long day at work to escape reality. The derelict building offers a blank slate for a whole new realm to be built upon, and for a fleeting half hour or so each evening, I find myself lost among the shadows and shades of grey to the whims of my own imagination.

Tonight, my thoughts are drawn to the two chairs standing in the far right corner, lonely and neglected beneath the light filtering through the broken skylight. One suffers a case of crooked legs and lies in pieces on the ground as if it was crushed by a sledgehammer, while the other remains upright and in near-perfect condition. The only similarity between the two is the suspicious red stains that could just as easily be blood as they could be ketchup. To anyone else they might look just like what they are; a pair of dirty, splintered seats that have been abandoned just like the warehouse they collect dust in now. But to me, they are the same character in two entirely different stories.

In one, two friends relax into their wooden embrace. Both of them have a smoking cigarette dangling precariously between their fingers and juggle some form of greasy fast food dripping with sauce in their hands. They're laughing, too. Flinging easy banter between the two of them as they chill with alternative rock music playing from a cheap speaker resting on the concrete at their feet. One of them tries to stand on the presently broken chair, imitating someone they know with a cheeky flair, but it bends and topples over, breaking when it slams into the ground in the echo of their boisterous cheer. It's a peaceful scene, and unconsciously, a ghost of a smile sneaks to play on my lips at the thought.

However, it is quick to fade, as the other story is of a darker sort. Two men sit on the wooden seats, their arms tied together behind their backs with heavy-duty cable ties—the kind the police use in detective shows on TV. Their faces, all angles and made hard from years of surviving in the corrupt hierarchy of a criminal syndicate, are bruised black and blue. The dust bearing sunbeams from the skylight cast harsh shadows over their hollow cheeks and the contours of their skulls, accentuating the crimson weeping gashes marking their mottled skin. In this scenario, there is a third person—perhaps even a fourth and fifth—and they approach the men sitting helplessly in the chairs. All are armed with an arsenal of illegally acquired firearms, but the most noticeable weapon is by far the steel mallet in one man's grip, the metal head tarnished by flaking dried blood the colour of rust. He lifts it into the air with beefy hands, but I let the image die before he brings it down, crushing the victim and the seat with him.

I shudder as the two chairs return to their current state, pleased to have deserted the violent daydream for a much safer reality, and my gaze drifts over to the wall about one hundred feet to my left.

Unlike the rest, it's made from the same grating slabs of concrete as the floor beneath my feet, not corrugated iron. And decorating the grey are numerous portraits, painted flares of vivid colour and brightness amidst the monochrome interior. I have no idea who they depict, but I don't need one to know the young girl with wispy bangs stuck to her golden glitter paint cheeks, or the man with years of history etched into the heavy wrinkles of his brow each have their own story to tell.

They're as beautiful as they are interesting, but even more intriguing is the artist himself. He's here today, a creature of unconventional beauty with his Draco Malfoy blond hair, skin as blindingly pale as the sun's glare and a sui generis persona just as bright. He has specks of colour in his tousled locks from where he's unconsciously run his fingers through the fine strands, and eyes like sea mist that leave me wondering if the veil of reality even exists for him. With his puckered brow and palms carelessly ingrained with paint, he seems so out of place in this world without colour, and yet the warehouse wouldn't be the same without him.

I often imagine what his own story might be. If he's a runaway, who hides from his family here, finding his haven in the endless blank canvas available to him beneath the resident pigeons' black and white dotted rafters? If he uses this place to escape the dreary routine of classes followed by the evening shift at an afterschool job? Or if the overall blandness allows him to forget everything beyond these cast-iron walls as it waits to come to life with the gentle sweeping of his brushstrokes?

I've imagined asking him these things, too. With how often I watch him from afar, it's almost too easy to visualise how he would startle like a spooked colt, sucking in a drowning man's breath through pursed lips. Perhaps, he would even drop his paintbrush as the realisation he's not alone sets in. Although I could have it all wrong. Maybe he's one to curse in my direction as he whirls around to face me, his hands—delicate in the way most artists' hands are—curling into fists at his sides? Unless I actually approach him, I have no way of knowing how he'll react to my ghostly presence here.

But today might just be the day I find out. Unwarranted confidence effervesces within me like bubbles in a can of Coke, and I feel weirdly optimistic. It might be from the twenty-dollar note I found in the gutter on my way to work this morning or the unexpected call I received during my lunch break from my sister telling me I'm to be a first-time uncle, but today, I want to talk to him.

Albeit a little hesitantly, I step around the graffitied skip filled to the brim with mutilated chunks of concrete, metal and other industrial rubbish. My heartbeat is no longer restricted to the confines of my chest, fluttering like a sparrow's wings in my ears and the tips of my fingers.

With the suspiciously knowing smile that flickers across his silent mouth, I wonder, briefly, if he can hear it too.

"Finally, he decides to show himself. I was beginning to think I might have to paint your face on the wall to get you to come forward."

It's not him who startles like a spooked colt, but me. The way he twists around to face me, a hand on one hip and his grey eyes flashing in the tenebrous light, has me just about jumping out of my skin.

"You... you've known I was here?"

He laughs, the sound almost fond as it tumbles like the tinkling of brass bells into the space between us. "Of course. No offence, but it's like you're not even trying to hide. I've caught you staring at those chairs in the corner three times and counting!"

"Oh," I mutter. All the self-assuredness that pulsed through me mere seconds ago having dissipated into thin air. "That's—"

"What? Embarrassing? Mildly creepy? Sure, but I literally paint strangers I've seen in passing on the walls of an abandoned warehouse. If we're delving deep into the strangeness of things, I'm not much better." He shrugs loosely, pinching the blue-tinted blond lock that cuts across his gaze between his fingers and tucking it behind his ear with his free hand.

The hand that held a paintbrush just seconds ago.

I stare at the smattering of azure and ochre pigments staining his palm with a furrowed brow as he holds it out to me. Behind him, the portraits remain visible on the wall, an opaque display of brilliance comparable to a hall of fame, but the brush is nowhere to be seen.

"I'm Sagey." He says it with a vivacious grin, but the expression doesn't last.

"Tarquin—" My name dies on my tongue as my fingers slip through his, and I stumble forwards into the still, cruel arms of nothingness. The artist, Sagey, he... he is not real. Not solid matter and not tangible before me. But instead, as much of a character of the stories this place tells as the chairs behind the skip.

I suppose I was wrong before. It's me, not him, the veil of reality doesn't exist for. I never saw his Draco Malfoy blond hair or his skin as blindingly pale as the sun's glare because he is not real. He's the protagonist I envisioned for the narrative behind the portraits; the pretty painter with an eccentric flair who could stand for hours twisting this castle of grey into a colourful paradise. As I straighten, catching a tear with the pad of my thumb, I know I shouldn't be so surprised.

This abandoned warehouse is a birthplace of imagination; it makes sense for him to only be a figment of mine.