ART FOR ART'S SAKE [BxB]

• beauty is ugly •

CHAPTER ONE: beauty is ugly

Beauty exists for the sake of beauty.

The world around us, filled with joy and pain and suffering. Distorted blurs of nature and images of anguish and misery. It was beautiful. All of it.

Smoke dripping from the end of a glowing cigarette, alcohol twirling in a stained glass, eyes illuminated by neon signs hanging carelessly above bars. Killing us, destroying us, beating us down to nothing. We don't wonder with wide eyes and struggle to comprehend why the things that hate us appear to be so fucking beautiful.

We just admire them.

Nothing profound or intellectual. It was to be admired, marvelled at, made to brew a storm of emotions deep within your consciousness. You're meant to feel something. But feel what exactly? The only logical answer to that question is, who cares?

Aestheticism was what mattered. Things looking pretty, words sounding beautiful, sentences that made no sense appearing to be the answer to all of humanity's problems. They never actually said anything, meant anything. They were just words and we were just people, trying to understand something impossible.

That's what Corey Winters loved about poetry.

His teacher said he had a talent. He wrote from the soul, from the depths of his mind, from somewhere inaccessible.

He disagreed. He wrote from beauty.

It didn't mean anything, it didn't say anything. To attempt to decipher his poems would be pointless. They couldn't be interpreted. They just existed within themselves, within his own head.

As his pencil scratched against the paper, his eyes grew heavy with sleep, his consciousness wearing away, losing its grip. He rubbed his glassy forest eyes, suppressing a yawn as he wrote the last line.

Corey folded the piece of frayed paper in half, pressing down onto the crease. He left it there, sat on his desk beside a wilting flower that's petals were dying with age. The pink flower was meant to bring some life into his room, Velvet had told him.

It didn't bring life, it brought death. It brought the ending. It brought everything that life was not.

Corey, with reluctance heavier than his head of contaminated thoughts, picked up the post-it note stuck onto his desk, heaving a sigh.

eat

That was all it said. It's impact was greater than any poem he'd ever written, ever read, ever studied. It meant so much more.

It was just a reminder. A simple, everyday thing. Maybe it would mean less written by someone else. A Mother, a sibling, a friend.

But it was written by him. His handwriting, his ink, his paper at his desk.

The only person he was disappointing was himself. So what did it matter? He let himself down all the time, that was nothing new.

So, he ignored it. He brushed his teeth, changed into his pyjamas, ripped up the note, threw it in the bin and crawled into bed.

The first thing he did when he woke up the next day was grab a pen and a fresh post-it note.

EAT!

This time in capitals, underlined, circled, highlighted. Everything. He poured his effort into something he already knew would be ignored.

And it was ignored. Every day.

When Dorian Price awoke that morning, his spirits were high. It was going to be a good day, a good week, a good life. He was happy.

Happiness was a temporary emotion but not to Dorian. The boy always had a smile on his face. In class, at lunch, during training. If there was ever a time when Dorian wasn't happy, then he could comfort himself with one simple concept: This isn't permanent. Tomorrow, I will wake up happy again. It worked. It always worked.