An artist struggles with his creation  

Olga Steblyk/ Lead Photographer

  The faded curtains swayed in the warm August night air, lapping at the empty bed. The sheets were pulled taut, undisturbed for weeks. The only active area of the house was the sunroom, the only room with space left to work.  

     He sat on an uncarved stone, his latest creation opposite him. The statue stood there, still rough and unfinished. That was his fault, he accepted that, but he just couldn’t pull the pieces from his mind. They wouldn’t come, oh they wouldn’t come at all. Its features were blurred like a dream, pits where eyes should be and yet he knew it was looking at him, staring into his soul and judging him for all its mistakes.  

     Some days he wanted to shatter the whole thing, watch the shards fall to the ground in a broken symphony. But on days like today, he simply sat across from it, daring it to verbally test him instead of burning two holes into him.  

     His hands were stained with clay, his nails ragged and grey. Normally he’d use tools, but this figure had beckoned him, demanded no time was wasted, it had to materialize. Yet it stopped him here.  

     The moonlight shone through the panes of the glass ceiling and walls, giving everything a slight glow. His other figurines stood about, watching him beneath a veil of dust. He could feel their piercing gazes from all sides.  

     When the moon reached its highest point, he rose on unsteady legs. 

     “I have given you every shred of my sanity, every drop of blood and tears and yet you remain unsatisfied. What more is there to take? My hands can only mould you so perfectly, can only hold so much clay.”  

His voice shook. He turned slowly, glaring at the figures surrounding him, bodies of stone and clay.  

“A house so full of people, I can hardly breathe and yet I am the only one who speaks, who thinks and lives. You can feign movement all you like —  I’ve carved you so every muscle is visible, every pose on the cusp of flowing into another —  but only my feet are worn, only my hands wrinkled. Only I am warm.”  

     The half-realized clay face radiated pity, it felt like it was consuming him. He couldn’t escape. Each time he closed his eyes, its image was burned in his mind. It haunted him, weighing on him.  

     He struck it, wildly, again and again, until his palm became a bloody fist. A small crack turned into many, spidery veins working their way across its face, until soon a hole formed. Inside the figure beat a human heart, not one of stone but of muscle and tissue. With each beat, he felt an increasing emptiness in his own chest. The constant rhythm wormed its way into his head, pounding against his temples until he couldn’t take it anymore.  

     One by one, sculptures scattered across tile floors, hands he once used to create now used for destruction. Each figure held something real, something living: eyes and ears and fingers.  

     With each fallen creation, his own form began crumbling till he could no longer tell the difference between himself and the debris. He collapsed in the ruins, hollow.  

This article was originally published in print Volume 24, Issue 3 on Thursday, November 7.