Creative Writing: The Art Museum

The dried filth, plastered to his frayed jacket, cracked as the fabric underneath contorted, setting forth a shower of grit. Settling down on the ground, he sat in front of the painting, a halo of dirt surrounding his body. Then he was still. Silent. His eyes stared into the canvas. Visitors flowed through the museum, pausing for a moment at each piece, but the man was static, a rock in the current. It was only after the last visitors had left and the guard shouted with irritation, “It’s time to leave, old man,” that he rose feebly and hobbled down the marble staircase, the pitter-pattering of his bare feet echoing across the emptiness of the museum, and out into the dark street. The first beams of light peeking above the horizon and filtering

They were fearful of the anger disturbing him might invoke, and willing to brush his actions off as manifestations of mental instability. Some would stand behind the man, peering into the painting with curiosity, attempting to see what he did, but invariably left without a greater understanding. Nobody truly wondered about the man except a small boy. The son of a guard, he had spent countless hours wandering through the white, sterile halls of the museum during his childhood. Once, after the museum closed and the boy was waiting for his father to finish his last rounds, he made his way into the upstairs gallery and stood, quietly observing the ring of grit on the floor. “What does he see?” whispered the boy to the silent painting. Suddenly the boy felt an immense desire to sit in the man’s ring and look at the canvas as he did each day. Timid, the boy crouched down, moving into the ring and picking up his eyes from the ground, slowly directing them towards the

“I just wanted…” but the boy’s voice trailed off. He knew not what he wanted.
“That man is dangerous,” scolded the boy’s father, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him quickly away from the exhibit with frightened haste. “I don’t ever want to see you doing that again or going anywhere near that man.”
“Yes, father,” murmured the boy, but the allure of the old man’s mysteriousness only grew greater. Over the night, the ember of curiosity grew into a raging fire of inquisitiveness oxidized by the vivid imagination of youth. The boy awoke with a start. Lying in his bed, sprawled out with his blankets thrown off he peered out his window into the cold night. “What could an old man possibly see that I can’t?” he asked the stars. But in response they only twinkled and he drifted back into