Life in Paintings

Chapter 30 - Echo and Narcissus

Chapter 30 – Echo and Narcissus

I wake up in a sort of field, under a tree. There are trees scattered everywhere around, and a small river running. As I try to get my bearings, I notice two people standing around the river, a man and a woman a few feet from where I sit. I head towards them. The two of them are very loosely covered with freaking table cloths, the girl is actually flashing a tit. I'm thinking Greek painting. The man is lying on his stomach, looking at the water. I see brown hair and I automatically think Gustave. There's a little air. But it's not Gustave. It's just a man. An incredibly good looking one, but not the one I want.

"What are you doing? Fishing with your face?" I ask when I'm close enough to them. I'm standing on the same side of the water than the woman. The river separates me and the man.

The woman giggles. "There's no use, you can talk to him all you want, he'll ignore you. Nothing matters but his reflection."

It dawns on me suddenly. "That's the narcissist, right."?

"Narcissus yes."

I frown a little, trying to think about that myth. Something about a love sick girl and a self centered boy. "You did this to him? Aren't you supposed to have disappeared or something?"

She looks at him with a sort of perverse glee as she answers me, "I'm not Echo, Echo is gone. I'm Nemesis. I heard her prayers and came for her revenge. Someone had to punish him."

"For what? For not loving her? Why did he ever need to love her?" I think about the poor maiden that was being chased by the idiot on a horse many paintings back, chasing her every Fridays because she didn't love him. How is this any better?

"Did you know that some women killed themselves for him? To prove their love? And he rejected them. All of them. Humans and nymphs, no one was ever good enough for him!" She's getting worked up answering me, but it still makes no freaking sense.

Narcissus is the bad guy in the story, obviously, that what we kind of assume, since being called a narcissist is not a good thing. So why does it feel like he's not actually all bad here?

This doesn't make sense. I look at him, just staring at his reflection, trying to touch his own face mirroring on the water. "But... how was that on him? Did he ask any of them to love him? Why would he even need to love any of them? He didn't owe them anything."

The woman is getting angry now. It's obvious. I should shut up. Getting people worked up usually gets me killed. But when have I ever done what I should be doing?

"He should have loved one of them, he shouldn't have thought himself so superior. He should have loved Echo. She loved him so and just disappeared because he ignored her. She faded to nothing because of him."

It's like talking religion or politics with family. There's no changing anyone's mind even if someone is wrong. "I don't think you get it. Why must her own feeling be on him? It's not his fault. When someone doesn't love you back you don't go and kill yourself. You move on and find someone else to love."

"But how could she love anyone else after seeing such a beauty?"

I shake my head in disbelief. "Unbelievable. The narcissist wasn't the bad guy..."

And just as I mutter these words the man starts wailing, "Oh gods, this is impossible, I'll never be loved... Nothing will ever extinguish this burning passion."

The river is narrow so I jump on the other side of it to reach the man and try to snap him out of it.

Nemesis automatically appears beside me, grabbing me by the arm. "Let me go," I tell her, trying to wiggle out of her grasp. "There must be something I can do to help."

She looks at me with the same perverse glee she had given at Narcissus earlier. "There's no helping him for you, just drowning."

And she takes me completely by surprise by dragging me down and then she just dunks my head in the river, holding it under water right beside Narcissus while he does absolutely nothing. He just keeps staring at himself as I drown.