"O, Brother, Where Art Thou?" - [Alexander Dysis]

[Verity (DELETED 3963)]

I deserve a break, she reaffirmed to herself as she prepared to lock up the studio early to be greeted by a wall of cool air and a subtle breeze that would have pulled goosebumps from her skin.

She’d been stuck in the studio for what felt like years, working tirelessly on commission after commission, creating pieces to sell “off the rack” whenever she hit a block with the pieces sought. Each day, she’d get up, shower and get ready for the day ahead of her. A cup of coffee was brewed on a timer, going off and freshly made as she’d leave her bathroom, picking it up as she did her collapsed cane and keys, footsteps carrying her to a doorway. The same hand daily—left, carrying the cane—clasped the cold door knob and turned it, descending out into town. Stopping just before it, she used the key to feel around for the lock, the satisfying click as it disengaged was heard and she’d moved through it to, closing it behind her. And, where did that lead her?

Her studio: her home for around twelve hours daily, committed to her art.

A little too committed at this moment in time.

When was the last time she’d gone out in the world? When was the last time she’d lost track of time doing something she loved? Reading in the sun at the park on a lonely, forgotten bench? Sitting near the docks to listen to the water lap at the shoreline while people walked passed, their conversations and the scuffing of soles on the pavement washing in and out, as though on the current itself? When had she taken a day to herself, let Aurelia run the shop on her own? Was that not the reason for moving to Port Arthur in the first place, the separation from the constancy of her art to allow herself a mental breather?

How had she gotten so wrapped up in it without noticing?

That was all about to change.

The sounds of Skylar Grey crooning over her speakers drown out anything and everything while she tried to wrap her mind around this latest piece. It was a piece born in turmoil, something to get out the inner frustration she was feeling at her lack of a life, but what was left unsaid. Something to try and work through it and break free of the block she currently found herself in.

Nimble fingers trailed over the piece as it stood then, trying to find where she wanted to take it, trying to feel where it would naturally flow next.

It wasn't her usual sort of piece. No, they normally were realistic, something of a subject that she was meant to immortalize in clay. This...this was different. It was something she couldn't quite place, the lines within its abstract form at war with each other. There was a definite connection between the two figures depicted, but then there was something else. Something coming between them? She wasn't sure, allowing her hands to work as they needed while her mind drifted over the conversation they'd had and how it'd ended.

As the song swelled, her annoyance did with it, and the hands that had been molding something instead started to tear the piece apart, whatever clay was unlucky enough to be caught in her grasp becoming nothing more than a smushed semblance of whatever it once was. But that wasn't enough. Oh no, this needed more than to be squeezed to death. Her hands punched into it, tore into it, threw a few bits here or there to hear the satisfying splat against other tables, and some of the wall. She didn't care that she'd have to explain it eventually; She was more than done with that piece.

Getting up from her bench, she went to wash her hands, slamming the faucet on and off, along with the towel finding itself thrown haphazardly across the room. It was…oddly satisfying to create a piece only to destroy it on a whim and had her feeling much better. Happier, in fact. The contentment she felt at destroying it, though, was her cue to get out of the studio and go for a walk. Without much ado, she gathered up her coat and hurried up the stairs to her apartment. Rex met her at the door, sniffing her legs and nuzzling into the palm of her hand as she gave the pup some much-needed affection.

“You and I are going for a walk,” the woman cooed at her, the dog’s bark and quick retrieval of the leash proof enough that she wanted to go on this walk as much as Verity did.

Leash secure, cane in hand, she left Veil Towers following the familiar path to the park. Why did she always go to the same place? It was perfectly situated in the midst of the chaos of the city, a happy blip forgotten on the proverbial radar that allowed her to remain connected while simultaneously disconnected. She could still hear the traffic as it zoomed past, the honk of horns reverberating off of the buildings that surrounded the oasis. She could hear the water of the river, lapping at the banks not far off. It was the perfect marriage of the wanted solitude she craved without having to become a hermit to find it.

As if reading her mind, Rex stopped at the same worn bench she’d been stopping at since the move. Were it a more pliable surface, there’d surely have been the wear and tear of her indent left upon its cracking and splintered planks.

And there she sat, listening to the sounds of the world passing her by, enjoying the warmth of the sun as it poked through the flurried clouds, as Rex laid her head in her lap and snuggled up to her.

Perfect.

[Alexander Dysis (DELETED 5855)]

A prison gray building stood tall against the city sky, as itchy as a bruise, as solemn as a scab. Inside the cracked brick archway, long since smashed twice by drunk drivers, up three flights of stairs, and around a balcony as the fourth had collapsed, and down the hallway of sulphuric curry like wallpaper, the door to room four-oh-nine slams the hundredth time since its amiable resident moved in one month ago, Alexander Dysis. He grunts primordially as he adjusts his wallet, passing the teenbopper with atomic pink hair and impossible breasts flailing like migrating salmon as she jumped on the bed, radio blaring. He didn't bother stopping to admire her wayward fishes as they wobbled like Frisky-jello over chafing shorts and a pail of ice cream; he'd seen them before and didn't feel her musical nuisance was worth the flattery.

He picked up the note on his door and a string of his own music easily drowned out the music from the door ajar. Curses followed as loudly as the summer sun, as vulgar as a miscarriage. The landlord had promised him an introductory rate, he cursed. He was supposed to be getting a discount, he raged. He didn't put up with this **** for this kind of price, he yelled. Inside the papyrus-thin walls, the trypophobia honeycomb of cockroaches sunk their heads back in their putrid hidey-holes, and the termites covered their children's innocent ears.

He'd been fired from his last job. And the one after that. And somehow he'd ended up here in this shitty apartment and everyone hated him and he hated everything and he was always tired and nothing had any meaning and he wanted to be a sun and wreathe the planet in fiery destruction.

He found himself walking. Found himself down the street. Found a two-dollar black coffee in his hands on his credit card he couldn't pay off with cream that he hadn't ordered but had given the barista a melt-down for. Found himself thinking about how he'd just gotten back from Numinous Phylactery and asked with grins and wide, drywall white teeth to leave the in person interview before someone **** themselves a brick.

Found himself staring at the water, the coffee having gone warm hours ago, leaving little excuse for his vacant expression. His mouth a vegetable. His eyebrows an empty house, large and looming. His eyes the center of a hurricane where the sunshine falsely drowns any notions of insecurity and the whipping breeze is the faintest whisper of laundry flutter. Found his ears bombarded by thirty decibels of agony as a tongue, gigantic, dripping, and terrible crossed a forest of thistles with an equally sickening slop of swamp as it disappeared back into its sheath.

The slow-motion world began to refocus around him, a snails-pace steps over a syllable of conversation, drowned by the wind the loudness of color, a dog licking its chops in sheer joy, and the atomic boom of a crinkling fabric from the person who'd suddenly appeared beside him.

He snarled silently in his head and considered the repercussions of lashing out. And then he cursed safety and security and repeated the actions outwardly, bearing his broad teeth as he spoke rapidly and kindly, the words as fake as dollar store faux furs, as empty as soda calories, and as menacingly as the inner hurricane of frustration he kept as tied down as a PETA posterchild pooch.

"Why, gosh goley! This is such a wonderful day that I think I'll go to the park to enjoy the sunshine and act as normal and boring as zombishly possible and I'd even love it if someone bombarded me with their cheap perfume and is that a hint of bod-o-deur,", he was an auctioneer, emphasizing words and especially the body odor insult, his eyes supernovas of rage pointed directly as the lady who'd dared sit next to him. So angry he was blinder than the blind. So petty that dogs saw more colors than his embittered, monochrome heart. He was waiting for the woman and the dog to get up and leave, secretly hoping she'd hiss some foul language of contempt back at him so he could have all the enjoyment a successful troll needed. " and wet dog? Oh boy, how many times did you lick your penis today, little guy?", he switched his dial to uncomfortable, as he leaned to query the dog and continue himself. "Two hundred? Well that certainly explains that smell, right there. I'm so happy that two bitches have ignored my clear and undeniable '****-off-this-is-my-bench' face so I could have such a pleasing conversation.", he made a big show of drawing his breath, puffing his cheeks like a chipmunk so that the little vein in his forehead bulged as inappropriately as morning wood.

Blinder than the blind, he had taken no time to notice who it was.