He sat quietly in the simplistic square room. The walls were bare: patterned rectangles of painted brick, lines scouring from ceiling to floor, zigzagging in a sequence less than desirable, perfect vertical lines never quite meeting, like broken cell bars. The floor, neatly swept white tiling, was hard, cold, and unwelcoming, unyielding to the rear of a tired old man. A bed stood solemnly in the corner, blankets pulled tightly around the edges of the worn mattress, a pillow slumped up against the wall, eagerly watching the tattered man, waiting for any sign of sleep in his crystal blue eyes.

            Breaking the perfect horizontal lines of the brick in one wall was a door. A small window cut towards the top allowed for the exhibitionists to come for the freak show, donning their crisp white coats, clipboard and pen in hand to make notes of the man’s progresses or regressions. They stared out behind masks of indifference and felt behind hearts of steel, struggling to comprehend the matter of this man, and without both they would not succeed, would not know his suffering or pain.

            Opposite of the door, the wall held a slightly larger window overlooking the town below. It was a welcoming break in the monotonous desolation of the confines of his room. Stars twinkled gently in the dark night sky above, lights blinked on in the warm-loving homes below. Lush green hills rolled in the distance, a church steeple stood proudly overlooking the houses, reassuring their salvation.

            He sat propped up against the wall, his knees bent against his chest, arms crossed gently over both. His brazen red beard grew shagged, outlining the worn wrinkled face. Below bushy red brows sat two clouded blue orbs, once brilliant as the sky above, had been worn by the loneliness of the passing days. His hair, disheveled and wispy atop his rounded head with a slight recede, stood testament to the many days it had gone without knowing a comb. Among all the ordinarily exceptional beauty of the man was a new addition to the portrait: a neatly wrapped white gauze bandage around the mid of his head. What wound it held was a secret as strong as the locks on the door which kept him in this prison, but the cause was the secret locked in the prison of his own mind.

            None had come to see him here in this place. The others saw friends, family. Some were not always present-minded enough to enjoy the visitation of loved ones, some held no memory of them. Wasted. The love, the compassion, wasted on the incompetent who could never truly appreciate the intentions, the time taken to see them in the melancholy state they dwelled in. The pain it must have caused the family, to not be remembered, to not be acknowledged, to not be known. And yet they returned. They always returned. No one came for him. The light of the sun danced across the painted brick walls through the window before disappearing, then arose again the next day for another performance, the same as the day before, sometimes crawling, at times leaping from one side to the other. No encore was given. It just disappeared, and came back again the next day, anew, afresh. And no one came. He thought of his friends. Did they know where he was? Perhaps they didn’t. Or perhaps the state of the prison was too much grief for them, they were not as strong as the families who came. And what of his brother? Perhaps the distance to come was too far. Perhaps the time too long. He was always busy. The thought that none cared enough to visit was pushed back deep into his mind, and he refused to humor the idea. But in his heart, he knew this to be the case.

            He gently touched the bandage at the side of his head. Pain shot through him from the contact, and he flinched, jerking his hand away. He recalled the knife, the episode with Paul, and the haggard woman who refused his gift, the verification of his love, his devotion. He revisited the exact moment where his dreams had shattered, he desires slipped away and his fears returned, when Paul left and he found himself alone once again.

            The loneliness was the worst of his despair. To wake each morning without a face to greet him, without one with which to carry a distinguished conversation, to learn from and to teach. Did he want lust? No. Only companionship, from any willing to provide. He had none. It seemed the prison was not so far a concept from his regular life.

            He missed the colors. The lack-luster walls resonated his captivity, not so much from the outside world as from the beauty that it held. It dulled the sharp edges of his mind and drained from him the passion he once worked so fervently with. The shriveled heart which lay lifeless below his rib cage ceased. The confines of the room beat with chronic pulsations against his head with a force which often found him in a fetal ball on the floor. Faceless whispers in his ears left him wrapped in fear and delusions. A fog crept over his better judgment, a curtain hung over the face of reality, and he reverted into his troubled mind.

            When the storm finally cleared slightly, he allowed himself to resurface for a breath of air. Sputtering and choking, he rejoined the living, the functioning, and once again found himself in the colorless prison. It was his hell, but he was allowed one piece of salvation. An easel, canvas, and paint.

            Plucking the brush from the box, he dipped the soft hair into the paint and dragged it heavily across the white canvas. The smear of color was refreshing. Breaking the steady current of the tedious blank-faced cloth, each stroke relieved a stress on his mind. He moved his hand stealthily in deep stabbing slashes with the brush, which laid comfortably in his crooked fingers. Slowly, his heart pulsed with a fiery passion once again.

            None visited. Not yet. He longed to be outside the walls once again, if only for a moment. He acknowledged now that none had an interest to visit a crazed old man, despite their histories and friendships, their years and shared passions. Bits of paint clung to the dull red hair of his chin, his bandage had been removed to reveal the ragged stump of an ear, or where one used to reside, and several wiry stitchings. His clouded blue eyes were red and swollen, blotted with tears, old and new. His heart rarely beat any more. His soul had seeped out of his toes one night when he wasn’t looking. His mind fluttered off with the bothersome black crows that lingered in the trees outside his room and cawed any normal man to the brink of insanity. Desperate and forlorn, he finally freed himself from the prison and wandered the world alone and wasted.

            As he lived the rest of his days painting away his perceived failures, he kept that piece from the prison close. A beautiful, masterful depiction of the landscape he had seen outside his window, the painting bore deep blues and blacks streaking in a fluid movement across the surface, the warm-loving homes lit below in the town, a hearty glow flowing from the small windows. The church steeple stood proudly overlooking the homes, assuring their salvation. The lush green hills rolled in waves in the distance along the horizon. And all were settled below the sleek velvety curtain of the night sky, bathed in the harmonious light of the bright stars above, the full moon a resonating halo, keeping watch over the sleepy town. All illuminated the darkness, chased it away till the sun’s dance to come in the morning.