As a living space, it was… Pathetic. Clothes and empty ramen cups were strewn about the creaky floorboards, there was an uncovered mattress adorned with all sorts of stains, and the only lamp present was just bright enough to hurt one’s eyes.
But as an artist’s studio? It was a treasure trove. Paintings upon paintings decorated the walls, each more stunning than the last. Some were bright, colorful depictions of a less taxing life. Others were somber, melancholic; grief given substance, made metaphorical yet tangible. Then there was the surreal—alien and entropic landscapes that scraped the very edges of rationality, disorienting as they were dreamlike.
“And absolutely none of it means jack.”
The speaker was a haggard young man, unshaven and unwashed, garbed in nothing but old, shabby pajamas. His voice carried a frenzied intensity, fueled by the caffeine and spite he deemed suitable replacements to sleep.
“Oh? And why is that?”
The second speaker was a finely groomed gentleman, likely in his fifties. With his custom notch lapel tuxedo and immaculate mustache, he stood in contrast to the surrounding environment—while being completely unfazed by it. In fact, he appeared amused at the chaos, contemplating it just as pointedly as he did the artwork.
The young man scoffed. “I thought my art could change the world, once. Give people new perspectives, teach them to live a little; that sorta crap. Never worked.”
“An admirable goal,” the gentleman said, very nearly sounding truthful. “Yet you haven’t answered my question. Why didn’t it work?”
“Hell if I know. Blamed everyone else, at first. Kept telling myself they weren't looking hard enough, not trying hard enough. So I got better, made my stuff more, I dunno, ‘obvious’…”
“But?”
“...I guess I was kidding myself. Art’s just art; people take a look and move on with their lives.”
The gentleman clapped the young man on the shoulder. “Art is just art. What an exemplary way of putting it! And as it so happens, that is exactly why I’m here.”
In a fluid motion, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a paintbrush. Long and thin and black; it was quite unimpressive, were it not for the oddly dyed bristles. The young man squinted, realizing that they were damp, as if recently submerged in paint.
“This,” the gentleman continued, “is no simple brush. It is a key to the very depths of your mind. A means to give your art not just substance, but verisimilitude.”
“So it makes whatever I paint real?”
“In a sense… Whatever you paint becomes a world unto itself. Realities for all to observe and enter.”
The young man almost seemed surprised, for a moment. But he pursed his mouth and narrowed his gaze. “And what? They walk around like it’s a fucking zoo?”
“They become one with the paintings—characters, backdrops, auxiliary details. You wish to teach others to live, yes? To undergo new experiences? Paint with this brush, and they will.”
“They won’t want to. There’s no way people’ll leave their own lives to, what, play pretend?”
The gentleman smiled. It was an eerie smile, just too wide to be natural. “My dear, they won’t have a choice.”
The young man looked at his trash heap of a home, the paintings he’d poured his heart and soul into, and the brush the gentleman was holding. This would be a really, really bad decision, he realized.
But it was one he’d make easily.
He was, first and foremost, a painter. He lived for his work, breathed for his work, and, time and time again, eschewed his own health for his work. So if one says “he painted,” one does not mean “he made a picture.” For when the young man painted, he entered a frenzy, creating and creating and creating until nothing else mattered.
Basically, he was excited to try out his new toy.
His head was buzzing with worlds to create, each idea spawning several more—he’d reach them all, eventually, but he needed to start somewhere.
Keep it simple. Recognizable. Something with impact that was, at least to an extent, an offshoot to this reality.
His first piece had a distinct palette. Streams of ashen sunlight descended upon silvery houses and their white picket fences; an antiquated neighborhood, populated by handsome men in dapper grey suits and their fashionably monochrome housewives. It was a scene straight from those old movies, yet even more… Stylized. The citizens were tall and beautiful, their homes picturesque and massive.
The painter stood back and beamed at his creation. But his smile soon faded as the paint converged to a single point, forming a massive, grey bubble. Leisurely, it floated off the once-again blank canvas towards the open window, out to the open world.
He blinked at this, hesitantly and tiredly. “That… Kinda fucking sucks. At least it’ll probably get exposure.”
He began the next work. Unlike the previous, he was thinking colorful. Exciting.
He made an ocean, bright and blue and vibrant. He gave it an island, and that island, a town—no, a resort town, that he’d make as gaudily idyllic as possible. High rise hotels and quaint little shops, tourist traps and age-old shorelines; each new addition adding a new color, until the piece was a veritable explosion of hues and shapes meshing into a single, perfect puzzle. Those running the island, he decided, would be as close to normal people as his strokes could allow. But the vacationers? The eternal guests to be waited on? Absolutely godlike in their beauty, as if they were created to be served… Or, more accurately, preserved like artwork.
The painter let out a sharp breath, his vision growing dim. However the magic brush worked, it was exhausting to use—but he couldn't stop now. Not when he had so many ideas.
Just one more painting. He could do that much, right?
It was a race against his own body, so he kept it quick and simple. A pine forest, coated in layers of soft, white snow. Clean shapes and colors—again, quick and simple. Then a cottage, lacking real details but oozing with some kind of cozy warmth. He wanted to populate it, just as he did the first two paintings…
But he could barely hold the brush, much less keep his eyes open. How long has it been since he started? It felt like minutes, but that couldn’t be the case.
He watched as the piece melded to a single point and hovered towards the window; he felt sad, almost, that he couldn’t finish it. But also curious; who would live in the cottage, if he never had the chance to create them? Would the magic fill in those blanks, or would the bubble simply not transform anyone?
The painter shook his head. That question could be answered later, for now, he had to recover. Because the sooner he managed that, the sooner he could get back to work.
