He wakes up each morning and pulls himself out of bed a bit quicker than the usual person, and maybe brushes his teeth or puts on deodorant or does his hair depending on how he’s feeling and what he remembers. He skims along the sidewalks, body twisted sideways, a panoramic shot of those who surround him; they are tinted with bits of gold and silver from the movies, maybe a bit of garish maroon along the edges. He has no unique hue or vivid texture to offer, just a pale white projector screen. Taking a seat on the new oak bench, he gazes. Those cinematic schemes are the paint that colors his canvas as they like it, reflecting back what they want to see.

Every night he scrubs it all off. The hollow, cracked paint comes out in streaks of vicious red and agonizing black. He mutilates it until all that is left is that thing that most would call the negative, but is really the neutral. Smears can stay longer than others, but in the bright light they too shall pass.

Floating on air, one day he comes across something he can’t quite comprehend. After swimming in water for so long, how could one expect the only bubble to recognize another bubble? But when she doesn’t paint him any color but brighter, it becomes quite clear.

Light shines between them, bouncing off one another stronger and stronger, blinding others who dare look and turning the water surrounding them into a blanket of heat and calm, passion and peace.

But then a dot forms behind the glow; a drop of paint falls on a canvas; a pressure is felt on the bubble. The canvases could not prevent it, others painted on them. And just as light reflected between the mirrors and became stronger, the smudge reflected itself as a smudge in the other, and back again until both canvases were murky with themselves.

When he turned away, the blemish no more reflected itself, but the mark had been made on both. That night, and many nights long after he continued to scrub away the darkness where he saw it, but he had grown too big for himself, or maybe he saw too little. Shortly after one part became clean, another grew dirty. To get out from behind this mind he wanted so badly, to see the emptiness again. But each time he faced her, saw the fades and lines still on her skin, they came back onto him.

He could only hope she would clean them, before he shattered.