Suicidal moment of scission

She looks at the table. The table reads “Mind”. Weapons of choice. She takes the scissors. The silver killing edge glints light into her eye. Pupils dilate, but she does not squint. It’s just another pain.

She looks at the artwork. Grey buildings towering over a small, cowering homeless person. She hates it so much.

She is wearing a shirt. It says “I do not exist”

She raises the scissors to cut the canvas. Just before the moment of scission, she withdraws. She sees who the homeless person in the painting is. It is her. It is also wearing a shirt that says “I do not exist”

She hates it even more. She tells is so. Shouts at it so. Raises scissors…

“All seems a bit melodramatic, doesn't it?” says the Observer

She wheels, seeing nobody. “I hate it! Look, I am confined in that painting! I am freeing myself!”

“By slashing it” says the Observer “the whole painting ceases to be”

“What does it matter if I slash it?!” she screams, tears streaming from her face “I am nobody! I do not exist! My slash at the painting means nothing; it will live on! But I will be free!”

The Observer walks without walking, down to the painting. It strokes the canvas. “This is your life” the Observer says “It is all life. You are the only real thing in the painting”

She falls to her knees. “Who would make such a sorrowful painting?! I curse the painter! The figure is so alone, pressed in from all sides by a society it dosen't understand! Who painted it?!”

“You did” says the Observer. The girl looks down to see herself holding a paintbrush, but a blink later it is scissors again.

“When somebody paints their paintings, they are given scissors” the Observer calmly says “when they realise the truth, they are given back the paintbrush”

The girl looks at her hands. How silly of her, she got paint all over her hands! Red with the blood of her sins, blue with the peace of her good deeds. She goes to wipe her hands on her clothes…and stops.

She turns to the Observer. It is holding a towel. She takes it “Nobody ever looks up anymore” it says, and is gone. Was never there. Is never going to be.

At that exact moment, she lifts her eyes from the ground. She looks at her painting…she never noticed the sun creeping over the top of the buildings…

She looks at the instrument in her hand. It is a paintbrush, it is a pair of scissors; it is all of them at once.

Her shirt reads “I am all”