| A blank canvas lay before him and still nothing came to Ryan’s mind. A day of staring produced nothing and at the end of it he felt drained and tired, yet still he hoped to see it, the faint flicker of creativity, his muse, to cry out and strike him with her venom. Nothing. The blank canvas started to laugh and pale acrid laugh of taunts and bitterness. It began to feed on the negative creativity, grew stronger and stronger until in the end it had morphed into it’s own entity a neo-god made from negative space, a virtual black hole that sucked in all ideas. Ryan reached out to touch it and quickly retracted his thin arm patterned with scars; a badge of self-contempt he displayed proudly to the outside world. He felt its white newness move and shift until it was just another mask hiding the evil blackness that it had become. He reached out again and he felt the silky smooth fabric rub against his fingertips and in that instant he knew it was only an illusion, this creature was hiding itself to him, hoping it could fool him, but Ryan was too smart to be deceived by a simple illusion. Then it spoke. It told him the secrets of the world, all the while making it clear that if he were set free that then he could free Ryan’s mind, send it beyond any realm knowledge, to perfection. And in a shaky voice Ryan asked how to free this emptiness from the canvas of white. A blood sacrifice would be required said the beast, the creature that was becoming more and more hungry by the second. Anticipation ran through the creature’s veins yet he did not show it to Ryan, ‘he mustn’t know till its too late’ the beast thought. And when Ryan decided that the knife would be his paintbrush and his vein his palate he dragged the blade and saw the blood well up and spray onto the canvas, freeing the creature from its prison and in those last seconds of living, in those few conscious breaths, Ryan realized he had just produced the finest painting of his life. |
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