The Picture Frame
Written by: Betty
A faded student residence building abruptly disturbs the sanctity of the neighbourhood, with it’s drab and vague presence, obnoxiously grey. The land of the rising sun, yet the blood of the light is cast solemnly to the side on empty streets. The air is absent of a nightly rhythm, dead and hanging like the trees of the forest. Houses seize to snore, sleeping quietly but paced with a controlled peace. Blocks from the university, the seaside tourist trap town finds itself in a waveless slumber. In the dense student residence building, Aiko Ledge, an ocean side window is cracked open to the air.
A girl with long blonde hair and green eyes, tucks herself away into a crunched window frame. Peeling white paint strips antagonize the top of her head, as she rests her head upon one knee, her other dangling above the streets. White slippers contemplating vertigo. A cheap sketchbook with stiff, flimsy pages, screeches upon every flick and scratch. Half past midnight, she glances at her digital clock.
A few hours past curfew, and a gist to the lines and edges have developed into a story.
My father always said every great painting is never a story, only a peek into the artist’s point of view. If I can show other people the way I see the world, in a moment in time, it would be a marvelous picture. The artist’s touch is when they can feel and think the way I intended. Then the painting would prove to be a living and breathing memory.
Finishing the final touches of the sketch, she shades and plucks her pencil to and fro, conducting a ceremony of lines. Craning her sore and bent neck up from its slouched position, placing her pencil into a pouch, from whence it came.
The waves retired long before. The sky is almost navy. Another starless night. No breeze at this hour. Just hot and tense air.
Standing up and stretching, Olive drifts to the bathroom, still fully dressed in her school uniform, of a black blouse and navy skirt, she begins to tie her hair up, and brushes her teeth. Staring into the mirror, the bristles scraping pearly whites, scratches and scratches, harder, faster, louder, SCRATCH! SCRATCH! Plastic bristles, continue to scrape across clean and cleaner teeth, aching, sore gums, inflamed and red, veins bulge in hands, saliva drips hungrily from her chin like a dog, unfazed eye contact, unblinking, claws clutching the brush, intruding the silence with a deafening aura. STOP. Blood seeps from gums, rivlets of crimson, dripping from a faulty tap. Gurgling with water, spits, then looks up at herself again. Wiping the spit away, she exits the bathroom and falls into an unmade bed. Covering herself in the white sheets, still fully clothed in her uniform, she lies on her side staring out the window, at the fiendish memory she created.
The ocean dauntingly stares back at her, returning a sleepy, lifeless gaze, daring her to fall asleep. Olive turns over to her other side, hearing no comeback from the open window, but the threat of silence. Uneasy and drained of energy, she gazes longingly at a 5 by 7 picture frame of wildflower fields, endlessly beautiful fuschias, violets, and sunset oranges, enveloping her father and herself as a child, smiling from ear to ear. The warmth of that day fills her heart, distracting any thoughts, bringing her back to a place of the past. Tonight the red Japanese Sun seemed to be drowning in a pool of its own blood. Sinking beneath the stark white of the flag, leaving no stain or mark that it had ever passed. Overcome by weakness of man’s desire, to outlive his own futile passion. The beam of the crusty lighthouse casts ripples of creeping light to flutter across the vacant ceiling and the peeling walls, the curtains flutter like the wings of a ghostly butterfly, wavering and flirting the midnight air. Rocking side to side, fidgeting and falling, flimsy and fighting the knit covers immobilize her in a state of rest. Breath stopping and starting, her ribcage unleashes a stampede of wild things. Her gaze vying for a place that does not exist, engaged in the murmurs of the invisible world. Body flowing into the bed frame, weightless as her matter meshes with the mattress, a void of particles and molecular space. Time is irrelevant, eternal in the imprisonment of the mind, an endless ceasing and ravaging of chaos. Waves shuddering down shoulders to elbows to arms to fingertips, chills caressing skin, a pervasive emptiness, in a nebula of blue. Scrunching and squeezing of the heart, cardiovascular abnormalities, the unknown is only that which is not visible or comprehensible, but is actually known in the way our soul reacts. Sunlight filters in through the open window for yet another tentative morning, tanning the room in a gentle light, the warm aurora lulls her into a calm, nurturing embrace.
Olive finds herself upon the shore of the ocean in the small town. Bending down she grasps a handful of sand that appears to be pure white, unfiltered grains of diamonds. Dropping them she lets them run smoothly through her hand, falling like a white water stream in the mountains, hearing them clatter in a synced chorus. The sky is an onyx black, an abyss of glowing dark light. The water is mostly clear, tinted with black. It creeps like the crooked hand of an elder, knowingly, but hesitant and late, reaching beyond its means. Olive resides a good distance from the water’s edge, shadowed with grey, peering into the ocean, and out across it’s murky depths, trying to make sense of this dim and curious predicament.
Olive! Olive!
Turning around, her father is calling to her from across the street, on the side of the bustling life of the shops lightly colored and shaded from the sun, reflecting off of her father’s glasses.
Don’t get too close to the water! The weather forecast said it will be a cold spring. Put on your shoes! Come over here and we can walk to get that soup that you like.
Ok I’m coming!
Bending down to put on her sneakers, shaking the diamond granules off her toes, she stands and turns to leave, before a habitual sense of fear strikes her in the pit of her stomach. Not enough to run or scream, enough to be alarmed or informed of an unknown danger. Glancing over her shoulder to peer at the ocean, a faint grumbling runs its way across the waves, suddenly dying before hitting the shore, against an unforeseen blockade. Silence follows, uneasily and tentatively. Olive winces, as if she was slapped by the sound, muscles tense and unsure. Walking towards her father, slow and steadily, he waits for her on the other side of the street with an eerie and knowing smile. Her feet sinking into the sand with each step, she climbs the flights of cracked and groveling stairs, finding herself on the beautifully peaceful ocean view side of the street.
The alarm screams and shouts, right on cue. Rapping on the door her international friend Ichika, is bustling with papers and textbooks, and an armful of coffee and biscuits. Olive’s backpack lazily swings across her chair beckoning her to class, as the chatter of students chitters like birds in a busy morning song. For the first time in two years, one since she's been in residence, Olive smiles a small smile to the world outside her window. Holding her fathers picture frame, she lays it flat down on her nightstand, grabbing her backpack and skipping out the door.
