"There is nothing beautiful here," he whispered.
Sixteen had wrung it's unforgiving hands about his skin and made him shrink from his reflection. The mirrors were black, each shrouded like two-dimensional mourners in his room, their ugly truth hidden into silvery shadows that neither denied nor confirmed the deformity masking his teenage features. Yet, inside Joel felt beauty that seeped from within and flowed through his hands to the clay that lay lifeless before his touch. The brushes and paint tubes lay open, and little pools of untouched color lay on the palette as he dipped first in black, then bronze. In creativity, Joel was beautiful.
He hummed the theme to "Candyman" as he worked, excited television voices drifting through the quiet room from the floors below. Joel cradled the concave face in his hands while his brush worked in slow, fluid strokes of leafing. Halloween was tomorrow and Joel's room might have been the throne of all creation had the world been carved beneath a dirty banker's lamp and dipped in bronze.
As Joel's weary head lowered to his arms, his mind drifted away in a slumber filled with images of autumn sunlight running its cool fingers across his clear beautiful face. As he dreamed of Halloween, the mask in Joel's narrow hand rocked silently to the table where it peered blankly at the ceiling; a hollow, soulless mime. A woman's laugh, the clink of a plate on a wooden table, sounds of the world below the room with shrouded mirrors, below where Joel slept in dreams of Halloween.
In his mind's eye he could see the masked children as they drifted about leaf-strewn sidewalks and brightly lit steps like costumed marionettes dancing upon a haunted stage. Joel slept quietly on the eve of Halloween as red clay and bronze leaf dried upon his ruined face. The mirrors like blind eyes watched, secretive in what they beheld, the brushes and paint tubes forgotten for dreaming: In creativity, Joel was beautiful.
Sixteen had wrung it's unforgiving hands about his skin and made him shrink from his reflection. The mirrors were black, each shrouded like two-dimensional mourners in his room, their ugly truth hidden into silvery shadows that neither denied nor confirmed the deformity masking his teenage features. Yet, inside Joel felt beauty that seeped from within and flowed through his hands to the clay that lay lifeless before his touch. The brushes and paint tubes lay open, and little pools of untouched color lay on the palette as he dipped first in black, then bronze. In creativity, Joel was beautiful.
He hummed the theme to "Candyman" as he worked, excited television voices drifting through the quiet room from the floors below. Joel cradled the concave face in his hands while his brush worked in slow, fluid strokes of leafing. Halloween was tomorrow and Joel's room might have been the throne of all creation had the world been carved beneath a dirty banker's lamp and dipped in bronze.
As Joel's weary head lowered to his arms, his mind drifted away in a slumber filled with images of autumn sunlight running its cool fingers across his clear beautiful face. As he dreamed of Halloween, the mask in Joel's narrow hand rocked silently to the table where it peered blankly at the ceiling; a hollow, soulless mime. A woman's laugh, the clink of a plate on a wooden table, sounds of the world below the room with shrouded mirrors, below where Joel slept in dreams of Halloween.
In his mind's eye he could see the masked children as they drifted about leaf-strewn sidewalks and brightly lit steps like costumed marionettes dancing upon a haunted stage. Joel slept quietly on the eve of Halloween as red clay and bronze leaf dried upon his ruined face. The mirrors like blind eyes watched, secretive in what they beheld, the brushes and paint tubes forgotten for dreaming: In creativity, Joel was beautiful.
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