Painter's Rhapsody

The following has been inspired by Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray."

Many believe art to be a mere imitation of life. That for an artist to be an artist, she must capture the world around her. Lydia Nelson agreed whole-heartedly.

"Lydia. Time's up."

"Yes, Ms. Vane," she'd respond simply, having been in this exact situation many times before. She already knew what to do, moving to put her various brushes and colors away as Ms. Vane looked at her latest painting.

"Another portrait," she noted dully.

"Of Stephanie," Lydia added.

"The person-"

"Stephanie."

"The person in the portrait has plastic "additions" and a second serpentine face..."

"I try my best to be accurate."

"...Your ride's waiting."

Lydia put Stephanie's portrait down beside the rest of her classmates', semi-admiring her complied works as she did so. Though there was another reason why she stared so intently at their portraits. 

It was time for the changes to kick in.

Sarah's portrait had first been a depiction of a human-hyena hybrid, something that seemed fitting for the always jeering girl. It now showed a bruised little girl cradling a purple limb covered in welts and cuts. She was trying to put on a mean face, but her features hinted at withheld tears.

Skylar's portrait once displayed a downtrodden girl with tears running down her face. She was now, or rather revealed to be, a one-eyed panther: watching. Waiting for something only a beast would wish upon its similar.

Others would have wondered why such a thing was occuring, but Lydia understood it clear as day. She'd botched her paintings and the changes were to correct the mistakes. Like an unsatisfied model, the world couldn't stand being wrongfully captured: everything had to be perfect.

It felt quite infuriating to mess up so badly, especially when she couldn't even tell where she'd gone wrong. And, naturally, as an artist, she couldn't sit back and be content with such a failure. She could do better.

Lydia knew she could do better.

Lydia watched Sarah laugh at Skylar as she scrambled to pick up her fallen belongings. The older girl had knocked them out of her hands, again. She'd let out a scoff at the tired scene, but then dimly remembered what she saw in the two's portraits.

"Eating alone again?"

"There's no one I want to sit with."

"I do wish you'd let go of that on-high act, Lydia."

"And I do wish you'd stop talking like an old person, Stephanie."

Ms. Vane's class was as peaceful for Lydia as it always was. She could paint and forget everything that was, conjuring a new tiny little world with each stroke of her brush. It was what she imagined was waiting for her after High School: when she'd finally get away from all the drama her peers made. It was all just so tiresome.

Lydia watched as Stephanie preened under their teacher's praise. It wouldn't have left such a bitter taste in her mouth if she didn't know that only reason she ever listened in class was to show up everyone else. Sometimes, she wondered if the girl could've ever lived without being the most favored in a room.

And then she'd laugh knowing what that snake would do to remain liked.

Lydia stood waiting outside a bathroom stall, wondering how long one person could take to finish "cleansing" themselves. She'd almost jump at how fast the door was slammed open, Sarah speed-walking out of the restroom soon after. She was wearing a hoodie with long sleeves, which Lydia found odd for the always warm girl to have on.

But then she spotted a forgotten knife on the tile floor, blood still fresh and runny.

"They're pretty adamant about learning who brought that knife."

"Yeah."

"It'd probably help a whole lot if someone had saw who left it."

"Yeah."

"Lydia, this is serious. Someone might've been planning to hurt other students with that."

"They already got their target, Stephanie. If you want someone to blab, then do it yourself."

"...Yes, I suppose you would be against doing as such after-"

"Stop."

"But I'm-"

"I don't care. There's nothing left to be said about that."

"...Alright then."

Finals were approaching, and Lydia couldn't have been any happier. Just a few days left until the rest of her life. A new scene, a fresh painting hung over the last. She'd probably have her portrait problem solved by then and could finally make the climb into art relevancy. She would be bigger than all else before her: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, and Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino.

Lydia would surpass them all.

She'd be painting after school again, imagining what her future house would look like before Ms. Vane spoke up from her desk.

"Lydia, you're planning to become a painter after you graduate, right?"

"That's right, ma'am."

"Could I give you some advice then?"

"Of course, ma'am."

"The world hides much beneath its surface, Lydia."

"Ma'am?"

"Sometimes it's not enough to capture it. You must be captured by it yourself to truly make good art."

"...I'll try to keep that in mind, Ma'am."

After a long day of testing, Lydia returned home with bags under her eyes and a smile that fought desperately to stay on her face. She was happy, but really tired at the same time. Thankfully, it'd be the last time she'd ever pick up a pencil. The brush was her preferred tool.

As she was thinking this to herself, however, she saw Stephanie's portrait, now very different from what she had made it into.

The girl's second head was gone, not even a hint of snake remaining, and her plastic implants were replaced with a lean figure, one Lydia remembered from years ago. She was trapped in a cage, man-sized wings laying in front of her, assumedly having been taken from her own back. But what stood out as most striking to Lydia were the syringes Stephanie clung to, grasping at them so tightly she thought they'd somehow start to crack.

She hated the sight of them, loathed to be reminded of her used-to-be friend's problem and the time she pinned those things on her to escape punishment. Anything to be the perfect little girl they saw her as.

She'd laugh at the memory, as she always ended up doing, but it had never been quite as hallow as it was right now.

"-and it is with great sadness that I inform you of Sarah Miller's passing... She was found hanging by a rope..."

Lydia hardly heard anything of what the principal was telling them. How could she when it was all so sudden and surreal? She'd guessed Sarah had her own "problems," but this? She had no idea...

The smirk Skylar wore wasn't helping either.

Graduation was an odd spectacle. Specifically because no one there felt like being a part of a spectacle at the moment. Of all the times Lydia dreaamed of this day, this had never once been what she saw. But then again, she was coming to realize that her eyes were quite the liers.

Lydia was seeing Stephanie a lot on the news. She was off winning beauty pageants and other meaningless contests Lydia had no idea existed. She'd also apparently married some rich guy her family had been working with for the last few years. Business partners had never meant what it did more than now.

Lydia was starting to make steady progress with her dreams, though she couldn't help painting only quiet, forlorn scenes. Her grass was always deeply shaded, never being as green as it could have been. Her sand was always gray and had its coarseness highlighted. And her mountains? Let's just say jagged rocks stabbing the sky meant very few joyous things.

It had been a while since her last portrait. She was honestly a little scared, on multiple accounts. What would she see? How badly had she misinterpreted the person? Could she ever truly make the fabled good art Ms. Vane spoke of?

Lydia had no answer.

Stephanie was dead. Overdosed on whatever things she was using to get by nowadays. It made Lydia think of what could've been had things been different. What if she had let Stephanie back into her life after she had lied about her? What if she had waited to hear what she had to say for herself?

What if...

Art was not an imitation of life: it was life.

To be an artist was not to capture the world, it was to be captured by the world: to be used as its immortalizing tool. Any art that failed to properly display the world was not art, it was a bunch of brush strokes on a canvas: the work of an unknowing child.

Lydia was no child. Not anymore. She'd capture Stephanie, and she'd do it right this time.

In front of her was a girl, one who chased others' love her entire life. She was shackled by her own choices, her own decisions. Though that made her no more free, or at least feel free, hence the bottle of posion she held close to her chest.

Lydia waited for her latest portrait of her departed friend to change.

It stayed the same.

And Lydia wept.