He reached blindly for the string and pulled, and the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling flickered before shining steadily. The people on home improvement shows would hate this place, Sam thought grimly, shutting the door behind him. The hinges creaked annoyingly. Sam ignored them.
Turning, he glanced over the room and grimaced. They'd be horrified by the rest of the room, too. Patches of cracked white paint were scattered over the walls, and there were places where there was absolutely no paint at all. On the back wall, above Sam's bed, a bland picture of a meadow was hung on a rusty nail. The frame had been spray-painted an overly shiny gold color. The landlords had put it there; Sam supposed that it was probably their way of attempting to make the room feel inviting.
Good luck with that, thought Sam as he set the crinkly plastic bag from the gas station on the floor. If they really want this place to feel inviting, they should get rid of the rats and the smog and the dirt and the thin walls and the people next door who are always fighting and, well, everything. Or, thought Sam, they could give me another month to come up with the rent. They weren't going to do that, either, so he stopped thinking about it. It wouldn't help.
The only thing that Sam actually liked in the room was his easel. It stood next to the window, holding a clean canvas. It was his last unused one. The used ones were stacked neatly beneath his bed; he never hung them on the walls. Seeing them everyday would've broken him. Sure, he wasn't in good shape as it was, but at least he possessed some muddled sort of sanity compared to the madness that had been his life only weeks ago. So, he stacked them beneath the bed. Out of sight, out of mind, isn't that right? They were out of sight, but were they out of mind? On second thought, Sam wasn't so sure. There were lots of things that he couldn't see but still thought about all the time, like Rosalie.
He pushed the thought of her to the back of his mind. Don't start that, he thought. It's not good for you. Leave it alone.
He walked to the curtainless window, the only one he had, and looked out, light from the rising moon shining in on him. Of course, the moon didn't shine as brightly here as it did in places where the air was actually clean. In one of Sam's foster homes, a place outside of the city, he'd seen the moon without pollution blurring it, and the clearness of it had actually startled him. It just goes to show you, thought Sam, that you can't know how bad things are until you've seen how good they can be.
Picking up the plastic bag again, Sam walked to the easel and sat down in his chair. It was missing one arm, the left one; Sam had rescued it from a dumpster. It was very scratched and beaten up, but it was a place to sit.
He would need water to rinse the brushes in and to dilute the paints; they were watercolors. Taking the plastic cup he used to hold the water, Sam stood up again and went to the bathroom. All of the tenants on his floor shared it; it was down the hallway to the left. If Sam was lucky, no one would be in there, and he wouldn't have to wait in the dark hall. As Sam walked, he saw the line of light at the bottom of the bathroom. He wasn't lucky. He stood in the hall until the middle-aged man who was using it walked out and past him, bumping into him as he went. Sam supressed the urge to shove the man back. It would only make trouble, and Sam didn't feel like causing trouble tonight.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the dirty bathroom mirror. He looked at his shaggy brown hair, stubbly jaw, sunken eyes and thin shoulders as the faucet bubbled, slowly filling the cup. I wouldn't look too bad if I weren't so skinny, thought Sam. Oh well. It's not as if I have anybody to look nice for anyway.
His cup filled with water, Sam made his way back to his apartment and shut the door. He could begin painting now. Sitting down in his chair, Sam set the cup on the floor and removed a can of beer from the plastic shopping bag.
He was underaged, but only by a year. The gas station cashier hadn't objected when he bought the beer; he was too immersed in his crossword puzzle. Sam's twentieth birthday had been only a week before, but he hadn't celebrated it. There wasn't a reason to. Celebrations were only nice when there were people to celebrate with, and Sam had no one. He'd sat on the front steps of the apartment building and watched the world go on all around him, without him.
You could've had a party with Rosalie, Sam thought. She would've danced with you, and you could've held her hand, and you could've...
No. Stop. Don't think about it.
The can made a popping sound as he opened it. Tipping the can to his cracked lips, Sam took a swig. It stung slightly as it gushed down his throat, but Sam didn't mind. The alchohol would stop the thoughts, or at least dull them. Picking up his brush in his right hand, Sam began to paint.
He knew it would turn out the way all of his paintings did, but that was irrelevant. Painting helped Sam. He wasn't entirely sure why; it just did. He found solace in the strokes of color applied by the brush, by the way the white canvas slowly filled with the pictures in his mind. It was too bad that he was almost out of paint. He had no money to buy more, but he didn't have any more canvases anyway. Tonight's painting would be his last.
Sam painted, periodically sipping his beer, and, when that one was empty, he threw the can into the corner and opened another one, and then another. His eyes never left the canvas. He intended to enjoy painting this last time.
The canvas slowly filled with autumn colors, the hues of leaves: oranges and golds and reds and browns. In the midst of them all, a girl's face took shape. It was delicate, with pale skin and long blond hair that flowed all around the girl's shoulders. Her mouth was slightly open, almost tilting towards Sam as he worked. He filled in every single detail on the leaves and the girl's face except for her eyes; when they were all that was left to paint, Sam stopped working and took a particularly long drink of beer. He had a decision to make.
He could never bring himself to paint her eyes open. It would be too much, thought Sam, because then Rosalie would be looking back. But, then, this was his last painting; all it would take would be a few strokes of his brush to create her entrancingly beautiful blue eyes. He could look at her. I'll do it, thought Sam. I'll be brave, just for tonight. But when he reached for the tube of blue paint, it was empty. Oh well. The decision had been made for him. He used the last bit of his black paint to paint her closed eyes, the lashes dark against her cheeks. He wouldn't get to see her with her eyes open after all. Just like on every one of the paintings in the stack of paintings beneath his bed, her eyes would be closed forever.
Signing his name, Samuel Higgins, on the bottom right corner of the painting, Sam sighed. That was it. He was out of paint and out of emotion and out of time. Tomorrow, he would leave the apartment, and he couldn't bring the canvases with him. He didn't feel like carrying them. Perhaps it was better to leave them behind, anyway. But through all of the rationalization, Sam knew he needed to pick at least one. They were his, and they were partially Rosalie's, in some sort of a twisted way. They were all paintings of her, after all.
I'll choose one tomorrow.
Peeling off his stained white t-shirt, Sam walked to the window once more and stood looking out. The moonlight shone in on his bare chest and arms, illuminating him. Silhouettes of buildings rose up all around him; in the distance, he heard the shrieking of police sirens and the angry sounds of people screaming at eachother. I need to get out, thought Sam. There's too many people, too much dirt, too many bad things here. I need to leave.
I'll leave tomorrow.
He finished his last beer and flopped on the bed, tugging the dirty sheets around him. They felt grimy against his bare skin. They needed to be washed, but the washing machines in the basement voraciously devoured his quarters, and he didn't have money to spare.
You bought the beer. Now you've only got two dollars left. You could've spent the beer money on clean sheets, you idiot.
Shut up, Sam snapped back. Just shut up.
He flipped around and pressed the side of his head into his flat pillow. This was when it was the worst. The beer had numbed him, but there was still an aching emptiness within him. He pulled the pillow out from beneath his head and wrapped his arms around it, trying to fill the space between his empty arms, and closed his eyes. Go to sleep, he thought. But he couldn't, so he laid awake trying to chase the thoughts of Rosalie from his mind and feeling the buzz of the beer. At last, nearly an hour later, he felt sleep begin pulling at him, and just before he drifted away, he heard the beating of rap music from a car driving down the street.
What a lovely lullaby, thought Sam sarcastically. And then, he slept.
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