InsaneJournal

WHO: Stephanie Fawcett (narrative)
WHAT: Insomnia, obsession, and a mural.
WHEN: The wee hours of the morning until some time way up in the afternoon on the 28th.
WHERE: Her studio flat.
RATING: PG // References to drunkenness.
STATUS: Complete // Closed


Ever since the night she couldn’t remember, Stephanie had been plagued with ideas and thoughts that she couldn’t satisfy. The constant wheels turning in her refused her attempts to sleep. In the past, she’d had bouts where it was difficult to sleep sometimes, but never before had she been up for this long. No, this was approaching insomnia. Not only that, but it was torturous. Dreamland was often an escape for her when she was having problems, and she would feel better with sleep and a refreshed view point. Now, however, she fell into exhausted stupors for a few minutes and then found herself strangely unable to settle down and relax when she sleep seemed near.

No matter how hard she tried, Stephanie couldn’t stop her mind from wandering. It went to two places right now and two places only. The first was her concern with the night which had unrecoverable events. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something significant had happened. All she could recall were drinking games and waking up the next morning with an aching head and tears dried on her face. She considered that she might have gotten sick, but there was no evidence, and her throat would have felt rawer. She wondered if maybe she’d just been upset to leave Stephen’s, or if something had caused those tears. After all, wouldn’t she normally have just bunked out at his place? Still, she had no idea what her drunken subconscious was telling her to do that night that she could only remember chunks of.

The second thing that occupied her mind was an image. This wasn’t overly surprising. Stephanie often thought in pictures, and had the uncanny ability to bring those pictures to life. Most of her ideas were fantastically dreamt up in three dimensions and textures. This image was slightly different, like a photograph, yet with a fair amount of depth. It was warmth and love and contentment. It was romance, guarded and guided and forever lasting. This was abnormal because she usually didn’t think in those terms, but there they were...taunting her. The picture was simplistic and elaborate and felt like home to her, like she had some bigger role in it than she thought. It was an image she could not shake, one that she had to draw. Even as she tried to ignore it the picture became on obsession.

There was a blank wall. She had been staring at it for hours, really. Stephanie didn’t often stare at blank walls without doing anything to them for so long. With her knees pulled to her chest, and her arms wrapped around her legs, she stared at that wall imagining every last line that would come to be....the image that would fill the void of the wall and her obsession. Stephanie sat there silently, eyes roaming, for several more moments, and then she stood up. Work began immediately. It was 4:03 am, but she didn’t care. She pulled out her paints and brushes, and started in without a moment’s hesitation now that she had decided. Even though she'd been quite content with not painting the walls in her flat, to not put anything permanent there, this one was going to be the home of a new mural.

Yellows, oranges, reds, just a little of a dark, dark green, black...simple and warm, but complex in its own right. She outlined the place for the couple with her pencil, and then started dabbing in her yellows. The evening sky bloomed with those warm colors. A moment before sunset....a moment before the night began and brought out a whole new section of the day with just one more bright flash of light that led to darkness. She painted in distant objects, distant lands, and tweaked it to her liking before pulling out the black. She was patient and meticulous with the silhouettes of a young couple. They were walking towards the last bit of light, holding onto one another’s hands, linked through the bond. Stephanie didn’t know what their faces looked like, but she thought they would be smiling over the horizon, even though their backs were turned to the viewer.

It took her dedication, her obsession, to keep her on her feet. Though the people were small, they took a great deal of care. She rolled black into some of the surrounding edges, faded it into her sunset at places, and then gave the illusion that there were closely clumped trees. Detailing branches and leaves all above her couple until they were framed pushed her subjects even further into perspective. Stephanie didn’t, couldn’t, stop until every last bit was done to perfection...to her picky satisfaction.

Real sunlight poured in her windows onto the scene long before she was done. And when she had put the final touch on some small leaf that no one would ever really notice, she took a step back. Before her was a blacked out forest with a couple strolling through an opening in the trees towards the rest of the world, that far off unknown, but she knew wherever that road took them, they would be walking hand in hand. Together. They would always be together.

She collapsed onto her couch, a bit paint smeared, but totally exhausted. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she finally drifted into sleep that sunny afternoon. All she could think of, all she knew, was in that painting. Together...together...together.