"a real you? What do you mean by 'the real you'? and why? i don't understand"
Thomas Maxfield has received a strange painting during his working time at a museum as an art restoration expert and a museum archivist. However,things started too change...
I groaned weakly as I stood back up, with all my limbs shivered like an old man with his live nigh at the doors of death. My memory was also totally fuzzy and couldn't remember anything. The only thing I remembered is the moment I damaged the canvas while enraged by that old man, and passed out after I used up all my energy.
And once again, the empty canvas stood before me
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"So.... it's really the end,huh?" Not even my breath caught up with me as I panted heavily and tiredly. I turned to my back and walked to the staircase, but stopped when I heard a meow behind me. The cat I had, Nyx, came back holding something in her mouth! "Nyx? How did you..." i was too shocked of her return and ran to her. I gave her a little pat, and took the earring. "You're staying here? Well, it's your choice. It's a shame I couldn't bring you home" i stood up and examined the earring. I couldn't remembered what colour i gave her, nor I ever remembered even given it to her. All the memories of everything happened here, was now became an untidied library, with books scattered around the floor.
Thankfully, the palette and the brushes are still on the benches so I took them all and prepared to paint that beautiful earring with titanium white. Nothing happened...at all, I sighed and walked back to the staircase until a voice came from the canvas behind me. "Hee hee! You're back again? What an odd person you are." I turned back and saw the canvas had turned into a white over black painting, with that one familiar face appeared on the canvas
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"And I'd finally fallen asleep,too..." She sighed and continued "I sleep and you wake me, I wake and you put me to sleep, you can't make up your mind, can you?"
"Milady! You're....still alive?!" I was too shocked to say anything but i couldn't hold back that emotion. "No, my dear painter, I'm not the girl you used to get along with..." The girl shook her head with disagreement, but sure enough, the silhouette of this painting resembled much of that girl I know, wearing a flower ornament and a dress. "But thanks to you, i remembered everything...
"The painter who painted me. Those six.....no,seven days I spent with him." I seized the opportunity of truth and asked her this: "if you're not the girl, then mind tell me why you fell out of the window?"
"Hmm? You want to know how I fell out of the window?" I nodded, which she gave me the answer i couldn't believe. "I didn't fell, it was my modal...that girl. I only watched it all unfold from my canvas. I'm certain it was the sister's curse.
"They both fell out of the window and died,yes? She had the same room, appearance, demeanor. And so she met the same end." I kept silent and tried to deduce what had actually happened to her, everything is so confusing in my head. "No, I'm only teasing you. Her manner of death was..." She kept silent for a second and continued "too embarrassed to talk about, it was so foolish..."
"Embarrassing?" I am not sure why she described it that way. Perhaps she was raped before death? Or the way she was hanged like a marionette wass absolutely awkward? I kept silent and continued to listen. "After all, I was covered in a sea of colours. I forgot everything as I sat here in the dark. Why was I painted, who painted me, what that model...the girl was thinking. I kept thinking that something wasn't right. And so, I began to think I wasn't complete.
"I asked everyone who came to me but..." She cleared her throat before continued. "*Ahem* i do apologize for getting a little rough! I'm a portrait, so I tried to act like that girl who was my model." She sat back a bit while adjusting her posture. "Perhaps I got carried away." She stared at me for a while...like a scientist observing the result of an experiment, and continued. "You,too, are very much like that painter"
"huh? What do you mean?" Her words made me puzzled even more, I am my own, I don't follow people footsteps or cowering myself under my seniors' shadows, I even have my own way to create artworks and learn more artstyles. And yet, I'm similar to that painter? Not a bloody chance. "Despite you trying to build a relationship with the girl, you are in fact still gloomier and quieter than the others." She immediately switched the topic to the moment before that painter got thrown out of her room.
"On the sixth day,he presented his sketches, they were all such murky landscapes.Sunset maybe? They made me feel dreary too." She then changed her tone with such furious intent that I know how that girl feels when she drove the painter out of her room. "And yet, he showed them to me, said that he wanted to keep painting me even after that job was over. Me, A model for such dismal paintings! How completely disrespectful!
"It was too much to take so I scattered his sketches and threw him out of the room" she paused for a while to reconstruct her words before continued "or rather, the girl who served as my model did."
"But I don't think she was actually all that upset. Afterward, she in front of the mirror and..." She quickly changed the subject but I already what she was doing, which is, of course, dancing with joy of with that beautiful blue flower of hers. "Oops, it isn't polite to divulge a lady's secret" well, it's too late as I had witnessed it during the fifth day.
"Anyway, his dreary hue still haunts me. That girl, and I, as her portrait, had put him through many ordeals. It's time i ended it..." She looked at me but I couldn't make out any expression on her face, perhaps she's smiling at me "Thank you, my humble yet silent painter."
"Say hello to your colleagues and art dealer friends for me. I'm sure they'll like anything you paint." She continued "After all, a masterpiece like me vouches for you."
"Speaking of myself, hmm..." She gave me one last thing before i prepared to leave. "Please hang me in a large art gallery, with famous artists' masterpieces beside me. And the paintings of tea, snacks and tea. As well as one of a cat and a bird to chat with. Oh, but paint the bird and the cat separately." And somehow,her neck twisted and hanged her head upside down. "Oops there goes my head" she adjust her head before continued, which I don't think it is funny to joke about, especially during Halloween.
"Well, it's about time you put that sheet over me, I have difficulty sleeping when it's bright." She then let out a long sigh "May I never wake again. I look forward to a nice, dark exhibition room." I walked to the canvas and prepared to cover the canvas. "One day I may have one of your paintings beside me. I hope you keep practicing until then." With that, she bid me good night and finally fell into eternal sleep.
The truth is indeed too much for me to handle, even too heavy for me to carry. But as long as I know it, there must be something I should do after I get out of here. I walked to the staircase and ascending to the exit, and yet I turned back at the midpoint. "Farewell,my fair lady. May your soul rest in peace with the blessing of Jesus and the holy trinity" i said a silent prayers before I finally left this dimension created by that poor lady's loneliness and negative emotions.
