The Painter

Scholastic Honorable Mention

Excerpt

The first blade disappears under my brush. Ah, as I suspected–the ocean. Waves pass underneath me, exposed by that blade of grass. The larger impossibilities were usually in your oceans, and now I can continue my work with the peaceful sound of churning water in my ears. Blade by blade, I paint the meadow. Each blade of grass is treated with just as much importance as the last. Even the smallest speck of green floating above the ocean could lead to all kinds of trouble. When the brush grows dry, I run it across my mask, soaking the brush in reality before continuing to paint.

Places were decidedly easier to paint than people. The impossibilities love to fight. I paint their feet first, so they cannot run. Yet they still scream bloody murder, crying for help from a world they’ve spent their short lives deceiving. Impossibilities are wonderfully hypocritical sometimes. I paint their mouths after their feet.

Sometimes I’m noticed, and the aftermath of such a situation is never fun. I must take the impossibility and run as one of you frantically dials for the authorities. I never paint while I flee. If even a splash of reality were to land on a brick wall or a metal banister, I would be creating, not destroying.