The months continued to pass. Time was accelerating, or at least his sense of it. He had placed the sketch pad, open to the blank page, on a small stand in his bedroom. It reminded him of who he was now. It was a reflection of the soul currently inhabiting his body.

Though he physically saw the blank page every day, he rarely gave it much consideration. Occasionally, he would catch himself sneaking second looks at it - both in the morning, and in the evenings.

Every so often an energy would pass through him, even sometimes an idea. The brief smile across his face was subtle in these moments. He knew it was fruitless. Perhaps even an illusion, a psychic artifact of nostalgia. And then, like the clouds, it would thin and disappear. The sensation gone as soon as it had appeared. The smile rescinding back to his now normal, content, scowl. It was very like a deja vu experience, where it comes on strong at first, then you are in the moment, then the moment fades in a way that you can’t hold on to it. He thought about the voice in these moments. But there was no booming whisper. No sage advise. No questioning authority. Nothing.

***

Day after day continued in this same way. Occasionally considering the blank page, always leaving it where it was.

At night, he would sometimes have dreams of creating. They would always start with what, upon wakening, was some very weird and abstract idea. He was never able to comprehend the idea in the morning. And the idea was always different. Different things he wished to express. Different ways to express it. Different mediums. And they always ended essentially the same - with failure.

The most common ending was one in which his creation became animated, and attacked him. An object or person or thing would escape the medium and become real. And they were never benevolent. Like the clouds, they would morph, into antagonistic evil presences. And though they wanted to kill him, what they really wanted was to consume his soul.

The other common ending was enslavement. The process of creating would become compulsive, and he would create work after work. He might be enslaved in a dungeon, shackled to walls, and ordered to create by roman warriors, vikings, or some other long-gone violent aggressor. Whipped or beaten into submission to make new on demand.

Every so often, the endings would intertwine themselves into a strange experience where his creations would take over him. His appendages would be formed into theirs, and he would become their puppet, like a rag doll dance partner. And they would force him to create, laughing at him, mocking him, mocking his creations.

The shame, guilt, and terror would eventually waken him. The realism of the experience would leave him scared and cynical, as the lingering sensation of doom and dread carried over into the real world.

And worse, on those nights - in those mornings - there was the sketch pad. Its power a threat to his soul. He would look at it, feeling its stare. Feeling its desire to consume him. Feelings deep in himself that had died long ago, and were incapable of resurrection.

And so it was.

These time-lapsed, but lingering days. Those sprints from morning to evening, and then those long marathon evenings of being alone. He could imagine a million things in a single tick of a clock. But those things he would imagine were trite and mundane. Obscene and worthless. Derivative and stock and mediocre and cowardly. His thoughts the dullest butter knife, having once been a samurai’s blade.

Everyday haunted him. Every hour was a molting. His former self, his former life, the essence of it fading in the dead skin cells exfoliating from his person.

It had been so long since he not only created, but since he had even appreciated others’ creations. Galleries had become like churches for former catholics who were now atheists. Buildings of faith for the faithful, and meaningless for the faithless.

He had gone from artist, to supporter, to apathetic. He had no care to see what anyone else had created. No concern for their vision or point of view. He couldn’t care less what they had to say. Their naive impressions of the world. Their curmudgeonly, cynical, aggressive discontent with how their lives had turned out. Their misplaced anger and rage. Their confused sexuality and spiritualism.

He didn’t want any of that. It would only leave him disappointed. It never invigorated him or inspired him. It was always no better than his own mediocrity. So, what point was there? All of their blades had been dulled as well.

***

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

There were days when he would look up to the sky and see nothing. No clouds, just the blue atmosphere. The empty canvas. The blank page in the sketch pad.

In a way, it was comforting. He wasn’t the only one devoid of inspiration. Apparently, God had felt nothing that day too.

It made him wonder where the clouds go. They were things in the sky, then they weren’t. They were there some days, others they were absent. Where did they go? Where were they when he couldn’t see them?

He imagined some great vault of ideas, of concepts, of abstractions. A vast collection of shapes and forms, stored away. He considered how they might be catalogued. By initial shape? By density? By evolution? How was it decided which ones would be released, and which would be kept warehoused? He wondered how delighted Plato would be to know of such a library.

Again, he considered it like a metaphor for himself. How had he decided which ideas to pursue and which to ignore, or file away for some future potential?

It felt like a mechanism that once operated with efficiency within himself, but was now dilapidated, run down, rusted for years. The gears no longer moved, the engine inoperable. It wasn’t simply out of fuel. It was defunct. Unrepairable. Parts no longer available.

And that was why the the sketch pad remained empty. The machinery was gone. Or at least, unusable. Too many stuck gears. Too many parts broken. He was now just a person. A regular fucking person. No aspiration. No inspiration. No creative spark. No emotive factory. Just a regular, mundane, day to day human.

He wanted to feel inspired. To feel the rush, the intensity, the focus. He wanted to waste the hours planning, and sketching. Studying and creating. He wanted to be the one who showed at galleries and was fawned over by the crowd, and the critics. He longed for the recognition. The adulation. In ways he never did before. Previously, he had written off the critics and buyers as accomplices to a worsening world. He had thought the pretentious patrons and surveyors toothless puppets, thoughtless clones.

But now, he thought such attention might be wonderful. It might be momentary or false love, but he would still feel the affection. It would still feel like love to him. And who doesn’t want to be loved?

His love for others had evaporated long ago now. When Flo died, he wanted to blame someone or something. God, if he had ever had faith. The universe, if he had felt something spiritual. Himself, if he could make a connection. But there was no one and nothing he could point a finger at. It was something that just was. And it was so was that he could do nothing about it, nothing to influence it. He had become human apathy.

And so it was. With no outlet, his anger turned inward. He partitioned it throughout his being. Some here, some there. Everywhere it went, it consumed his spirit. He was left as a shell, with a soul, but his spirit had thinned and turned to nothing, like the clouds. A shell containing fragments of depression.

There was no hope of regaining his spirit. Once it leaves you, it’s gone. You cannot capture another spirit, or a spirit from someone else. If he thought it was possible, he would have tried. He wasn’t too proud to steal someone else’s vigor. But, alas, it was impossible.

So he continued in this existence. He continued in his shell. His continuous molting, leaving behind more and more of his former skin. More and more of his former self. His new shell, his new skin, lighter and less potent than the last. More and more transparent.

The only good thing was that he was also shedding his own shame. His own guilt. His own remorse. His own past. It was a volume, complete. No more words to be written for that life. That life was now in a mausoleum. It was in the ground. Cremated. No resurrection. No Easter. No headstone. No flowers. No epitaph.

It was simply all gone. Like the clouds. And there was no vault, stocked with reserves.

***

And so it was. The long tail of the artist’s life.

The final years of his suffering.

Each night would culminate in a new idea. Not a creative idea. A destructive one.

How to end it?

How to escape?

How to thin and disappear?

No one was watching his shape evolve anymore. And his shape was nothing. A thinning approximation of a life. A disappearing collection of molecules. With no connections. No strands of neurons. No synapses firing in others when his name was brought up. Or when he met others face to face. It was all empty. It was all vague and blurry.

Despite all his life’s tragedies, he was left with a lonely story.

And so it was. Each night, the sheet, the belt. Taunting him.

Take me. Use me. What could be worth this suffering?

A small hint of the voice could be heard faintly saying something. But he could not make it out.

And night after night, he would relent. He would form the belt into its fatal shape. He would create the knot, and secure it in the door way. He would test the circumference to make sure it could slip over his head. He would consider whether to just hang there himself, or fashion a step stool he would eventually kick out from under himself. And he would take it to the edge. He would wander into the darkness, enough to sense the finality of the final step. And his courage would always falter.

It always felt like a final creation. A last expression. But he knew he was incapable of such things. He knew he couldn’t give the world such a finale. Partly because he felt expressionless, emotionless, and uncreative, and partly because the world did not deserve it. They didn’t deserve to make comments about the when, why, and where. They hadn’t earned the right to comment on his life, on his death.

And though his name was never on their lips, they wanted to. They didn’t know it, but they wanted to. It would spread like wildfire, like an epidemic virus. Every mention of his name would generate discussion and debate. Had he really been that great? What had happened to him. Remember that time at blah blah blah gallery? Remember that particular work?

But like the clouds, he had changed. And thinned. And now. Now, he was nothing. Lost to the sky and wind. No remnants of the man, the person, the artist he had once been. He was no longer the artist, but now just another person. He was just indiscernible water droplets in an empty blue sky. Or possibly in some random name brand bottle of water.