1 CHAPTER 1

The drab air accompanying the night fell still and silence reigned for a moment. In that moment of silence, the young man with long, dark brown curls, realized it wasn't what he wanted. The silence in itself only seemed to make things worse. It seemed to bring everything going wrong into focus and quite frankly, it felt like he was being judged.

With his light brown eyes fixated on the window and his sight cast past the presence of his room, he dared not look around. He wouldn't dare take a sneak peak at the ground, or the table before him, talk less at himself and the failure he had been struggling with for some hours now. Glaring into the darkness outside his window felt better.

It felt better for a whole lot of reasons.

Slowly, the accustomed chirps of the midnight crickets began to air once again. One by one, they burst to life, before culminating in the wholesome to grant "him" the much needed impression that he wasn't alone. Yet he was alone. He was by himself and in need of something else other than the loneliness. Something was missing for the past few hours and while his hand hovered in the air. He bit his lower lip and clamped his eyes shut.

It was the umpteenth time he would slam his eyes shut, but with good reason. It was an action bearing a great degree of hope. It was an act sheltering an immense level of personal tiredness mixed with the desire not to give up anytime soon.

"Please", he whispered as though he was speaking to someone in the room.

His voice echoed through the empty room and ceased to exist the moment it coursed towards the window. It was just another cry for assistance gone unnoticed and untended to. His sleeveless vest and torn jeans were a mess with all the ink while his right arm adorned with a tribal tattoo shivered. He could see nothing but darkness on the inside, all he wanted was a glimpse of light.

The night definitely wasn't meant to turn out the way it was in that moment and point in time. Everything about it had promised to bring enough inspiration. The night had crept up on him without notice, but the skies had been beautiful for days now when it did. In fact, just the day before, he had willed himself to make do with the following night should things look as pretty as they did while he sat on the front porch by himself.

Luckily, the current night had begun in the most beautiful manner too. The blue-rimmed moon slowly tucked itself into the darkened cloud, while millions of glistering stars lit up the heavens. Asides a few dark patches which seemed to blend perfectly with the silhouette he could make out from the heavens, all he could see while he stared into it was beauty and perfection.

That alone was more than enough for someone in his position. He had willed himself to get it affixed into his imagination and further transcribed into a rightful body of art. Yet, saying he had failed to make progress was an understatement. Saying he had managed to succeed in failing every single time was another understatement.

Pointing out a host of things related to his past failures and inability to properly affix his desires into action was the grandest form of failure currently haunting and hurting his soul. It was what caused his hand to shiver with the paint brush tucked in between his fingers, not the fact he was growing tired. It was responsible for his heightening breath mixed with a somewhat clamped throat.

Attempting to stabilize his breath, he held off from breathing for some seconds before exhaling out aggressively. "It is right there! Dig in deep and take it!'

The words blared aloud again and this time around, with some level of conviction and verve. His hand moved and skillfully so too; he swept the paint brush he had been holding for the past few hours across the canvass, feeling the intricate relationship between the brush and the canvass begin to gladden his heart as he went on without attempting to stop or even hold back.

"You might lose it when you stop… you could lose it if you paused for a moment to think", he reprimanded himself from halting to check out what he was painting.

There was definitely no room for self-doubt again. The other times had been brought to an end with overwhelming feeling of self-doubt crushing his chest and causing his windpipe to shut down. He had almost passed out on one occasion out of anxiety, before deciding to cast off the particular canvass and to begin afresh.

For the umpteenth time, the young man had begun afresh and this time around, he seemed to be making progress. His hand continued to dab the brush it held into paint, while he swung and swerved hard without allowing whatever image was forming on the canvass to bother him for a moment.

"Just keep on going!' the inner voice, birth from frustration and pain, urged him forward and he willfully agreed.

He swept east and dabbed through the canvass, before majestically heading north to continue his painting. In that moment, the intent behind his painting didn't seem to matter; what mattered was being able to get something down. All he wanted was something drawn from his emotions in that moment.

Time and time and again, they've been taught to trust their emotion while they paint. They have been taught to respect the outburst of emotions and to channel it into painting. There had been great tales and examples of premium painters over the years, making masterpieces from allowing their emotions take over.

"Emotion over logic", were the words the young man had ringing in his head.

Logic was fallible and too complicated. Logic came with endless reasoning and the desire to second-guess his actions before he would even get them done. So, he would stick with his emotions and allow them lead the way without attempting to hold back one bit.

"Yes! Yes! Yessss!" the voice in his head seemed to grow louder as his brush met against the canvass again and again.

He splashed, brushed, dabbed and marched his emotions all through the canvass before finally coming to a halt. The chirping sounds from the midnight crickets coming from outside his window seemed to stop. It felt as though the world had taken a break in that very moment to witness and access the work he had done.

The blue-rimmed moon had peaked through the clouds properly now and it too looked down to bear witness to the young artist through his window.

Beads of sweat trickled down his face in countless numbers. They ran along his body and finally blended with the already consuming sweat drenching his body surface. His eyes clamped shut intermittently, trying to fight off the salty liquid attempting to breach the safety of his eyes, and in that moment, he struggled to clearly see what he had created.

It was the best he had given the canvass for the night and while he took a step backwards to access it from some distance, he stomped his foot into a rolled up canvas paper with sticky paint atop of it. It was a reminder of one of his failings and he quickly looked away and attempted to set his eyes solely on the prize ahead.

"Something finally came through… something came through", he smirked to himself sheepishly even without seeing the entirety of whatever he had done.

It felt more than perfect that he could summon that much out from himself. The colors remained a perfect bled in the darkness before he slowly began to part his eyelids. In that moment, his heartbeat began to heighten and his hand began to tremble gently on the side. He braced himself for whatever was about to come, but sadly, his strength wasn't about to be enough.

"Oh my God", he muttered with realization, lacing his tone of voice.

There was no sugarcoating what he had created. There was no overhyping it either. He glanced at it over and over and again through different angles in the room. Hoping the different reflection of light bouncing off the surface of the canvass would grant him a lifeline, he ducked to the side and held his breath for a very long period.

Finally, after no less than five minutes of attempting to see the best in his painting, he marched over to it as he had done for countless times through the night, ripped the canvass off of the board, crumpled it with so much anger coursing through his veins and tossed it into the farthest corner of the room as it landed with some others failed canvasses which had previously found their way over there as well.

"Aaaaarrrrrrggghhh!" he screamed in frustration, fuming and cursing underneath his lips and he kicked and punched against everything in sight.

He lowered his head into his hands and felt the hurt from every ounce of failure he had been dealt through the night, coming back one at a time to his memory and haunting him.

"Why?" he asked himself.

He needed an answer as to why he couldn't quite make something compelling or even build from the inspiration he felt. He needed answers to why his work turned out horribly every single time and why he just didn't seem to be apt at doing what he had finally settled for and what he claimed he enjoyed. His heart broke into a million pieces as he gawked at the crumpled canvasses lying all around.

His floor was littered with strokes of failure, masterfully done and overwhelmingly present for him to gawk and marvel at.

"Oh God!" he heard himself murmur before slowly crawling to the ground and holding his head atop his knees.

"Vukan!" a raucous voice called aloud from somewhere within the house in the oddest manner.

Vukan looked up, realized who it was and felt himself wet with despair.

"Not now… any other time but now", he begged within himself before jumping up from where he had crouched and hoped to enjoy the silence.

Heavy thuds from footsteps approaching his room felt like the loch ness monster was coming his way. His heart thumped in accordance with the aggressive foot and he readied himself for whatever aggression was bound to walk through his studio door. There was one person and one alone, capable of letting out such disturbing screams and in such hours of the night and it wasn't about to be a better night.

"Vukan", the voice echoed from the other side of the door before an eerie silence followed.

Vukan could feel his lungs overworking as he struggled to keep a sane breathing pattern, with his most troubling critic standing just on the other side of the door. It wasn't what he wanted on what was already becoming a daunting night and a negative one at that too. He watched the door knob turn, slowly, and almost as if the entire world was about to come to an end with it.

If he could plead for the figure not to walk in, he would. If he could pay the figure not to come in and witness his moment of failure, he would. If Vukan could ask the man whose shoe he could clearly see, not to step into the studio situated in the house he bought with his hard earned money, he would.

Sadly, that wasn't about to be the case and it just wasn't about to happen.

A man who has the same features as him but well groomed, stepped into the room and looked around before spotting him. "Vukan", Henry Adamson muttered with the door agar, his full frame visible to his son and a look of despair slowly crawling across his face.

With the little breath Vukan could muster, the little strength he had left, he responded through his tightened lips, "Father".

Both men stood in silence after verbally acknowledging each other's presence in the room. The night was about to be an even longer one for Vukan.