Fractured Mirrors

“20,000 dollars.”

The words escape my lips as slow as the thick fog from the sewer lids below.

I stare into my circular shaped window and see all the people below moving about, like small gears in one big mechanism.

I know that this is my chance to prove to myself that I really am better than the rest. 

I look above my window and see my favorite quote, sticky noted on top of the window.

“For an artist, there are no winners. There are those who compete, and those who finish.”

I walk through my apartment and step past all the white walls that have my work plastered on each side.

Elegantly placed brush strokes fill the void of my apartment walls.

My work.

The best in the city.

It came to my attention that an opening for a contest came up. 

The contest winner will be announced today.

They are looking for “unique pieces that display the world in its natural light,” whatever the hell that means.

What I do know, though, is that the piece I entered will be the first place winner.

I will be the winner of 20,000 dollars.

I walk back to my room and plummet on my bed. My hands wrapped around the back of my neck, I cross my ankles and look at my eye lids for a few.

I wake up to chirping of my phone. It was an email notification. My eyes widen as I quickly unlock my phone to check.

The email reads...

“Joseph, we are pleased to announce the winners of the natural light challenge. Click on the link below to see the winners.”

My eyebrow raises as I click the link. 

Why would it want me to see the winners? Am...am I not a winner or something?

I click the link and find...winners. I scroll through the list aimlessly. I don’t see my painting anywhere. Okay, clearly this is a mistake. Maybe they lost my canvas? The first place winner is a painting of cows in a grassland of Sweden. 

Fucking Sweden.

I quickly shoot up from my bed and head to my laptop. 

Surely, there has to be someone that I can get in touch with? Like, maybe the asshole that made such a colossal mistake. 

I surf the website of the contest until I have him.

The proctor of the contest.

It’s some old guy that looks like he lost his taste in everything 40 years ago. 

This is the guy that chose the winners?

I continue to search the website. There’s got to be a way I can find this guy’s office.

Got it.

11304 Remains Lane.

I throw on my coat and take the elevator down to the street of my condo. The weather is breezy. The wind bites at my skin as I walk to my car. I unlock it long before I come in contact with the handle. I dive into my car and slam the door behind me and head for the address. 

The city’s busy as always. What was supposed to be a 15 minute drive, became a 30 minute drive instead. But I made it. I pull into a parking spot right in front of the towering building. It’s design screams art museum. It is shaped like a long, glass spiral. Each curve is wildly exaggerated as can be, as if it was purposely created to look like a sketch of a building. I walk inside and see the put together interior. It all looks like it’s something out of a great Gatsby novel.

“Good afternoon sir, is there something I can help you with,” the lady at the front desk asks me.

Me, still admiring the building, jumps at her question. 

“Uh, yes, my name is Joseph Sui and I am here to see...”

I quickly pull out my phone to find the man’s name, but before I know it, she is already buzzing him.

“Sir, you have a Joseph Sui here to see you.”

We wait for a few moments without a reply.

“Sir, are you there,” she repeats.

“Send him up.”

She presses a button under her desk and and the elevator behind her clicks.

“Okay, it’s open. Just go in and take it to the 32nd floor.”

Holy shit, just how many floors are in this place?

I do as the woman says and stand in the elevator for what seems like an eternity. I’m pretty sure I hear an entire album of jazz music before the feminine elevator voice announces the 32nd floor.

I step off and my eyes flicker around the office. It’s huge. Like, really huge. I see taxidermy all around. Masks from different countries lie scattered about the big walls. Paintings from centuries ago are pieced on each wall as well. Just how old is this guy, really?

“Joseph, is it?”

I look up at the man sitting in his fancy leather chair. The desk in front of him is covered in Knick knacks and whatchamacallits. Probably shit from the 20s.

The man looks about as worn as the picture of him online. His hair reminds me of a bag of tortilla chips. It was a lot more salt than it was pepper. His skin was like a strip of leather: Firm and wrinkled. He is wearing a weathered, brown trench coat. He looked a lot more fit than I would’ve imagined someone like him to look.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

I slowly walk towards his desk while looking around his spacious lair. 

“So, I’ve got a question.”

“I might have an answer.”

“I entered the contest you oversaw about a month ago.”

“Yes.”

“And I happened to look over the winners and didn’t see my name this morning.”

“Yes, you were not chosen. What is your question sir?”

My eyes squint at his dismissal.

“My question, sir, is that my painting should have placed. Why was I not a winner?”

He pulls out a portfolio of what appears to be photos of the contestants. 

“Let’s see...Joesph....what did you say your name was,” He looks up and smiles as if he knew all along.

My eyes squint with disapproval.

“Sui.”

“Ah, yes. Here you are.”

I place my body in an akimbo position, knowing that he’s obviously realizing his mistake. 

“This is easily one of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

My face drops like rain on a rooftop.

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“Your portrait simply has no shape. The lines serve no purpose. It tells me nothing.”

Tells him nothing?

I’m sorry. But what the fuck does that even mean?

“Okay, I actually have no idea what you mean.”

“The other contestants brought something to the table that you unfortunately did not. Anymore questions,” he says while looking back at his desk. As if, he was swatting me away like an annoying fly.

“Yeah, but here’s the thing,” I say walking closer to his desk while throwing up my hands.

“You said that you were looking for works that were ‘unique,” I say with air quotes.

“You mean to tell me that the paintings that you received met that criteria, and mine didn’t?”

He looks up at me and glares at me blankly.

“Unique,” he says plainly.

“A word that stands out all on its own, regardless of the definition. Oh, I have short hair. Oh, I have a pink bracelet, not a green. Are we as different as we seem, or are we doomed to remain the same, like time itself?”

The air clears as his long rehearsed, rhetorical rant flows through the air.

“Your work was not as good as you thought it was. You’re young now, but eventually you’ll understand that things are not what they seem.”

“Look, I don’t know what you are babbling about, but if ‘uniqueness’ is what you’re looking for, I’ll give it to you,” I say as my neck stretches out at him, like rifle on target.”

With that, I turn around and stomp towards the elevator. 

I said my peace.

I’ll prove to him that his decision was the wrong one.

I ride the scattered traffic back home. Noises of the outside chatter and construction work fill the air. I look over and see people moving about the sidewalks.

Children run closely to their mother’s grasp.

 A woman smiles as she types on her phone.

A distressed man clinches his camera bag and looks around the city.

I pull into my parking space and run to my room upstairs.

What happens next is like an obnoxious montage scene from a movie.

I open the blinds and let the sun in.

I throw open my closet filled with blank canvases.

I line up buckets of paint all around the room.

I prepare my brushes.

The nights bleed into one another like the red strokes of paint on my canvas.

My eyes are bloodshot and my hair is tangled like the lines on my canvas.

I hold the finished work against my head board and admire its beauty. This...this is unlike anything I have ever painted before.

It is an amalgamation of the city view from my window and the waves of sound that the view produces, twisted together, like an eerie horror film.

He said that he wanted something unique, so this is what I am giving him. He’ll see how wrong he was about me. 

The old fool.

I take a shower and watch as all the colors of the rainbow slithers down my legs and down the drain. It was as if I was painting the floor of my shower. The water washed over my face, kissing at my pores.

I throw on my favorite, brown trench coat and black slacks and head towards the door with my work. 

I fly down the street, heading towards the office building.

After arriving at the building, I park at the front, slamming the door behind me.

I walk inside and the woman at the front desk smiles at me and presses the button under her desk, unlocking the elevator behind her. I hop on it and ride it to the top floor.

“Alright, this will make you realize your mistak-.” My words are cut off from the elevator when I notice that he is nowhere to be found in his office.

It’s completely empty.

Clinching my canvas, I walk through the office, looking at the decor. I go up to his desk that has an orgy of miscellaneous items scattered about it. Everything was still somehow laid in an organized fashion. Looking down, I see a few things that hold my attention. I pick up a little black notebook that seems to be made of moleskin. I open it up and find nothing written in it. I shrug my shoulders and toss it to the side, like trash. Then, I see something covered with a tan handkerchief. 

I lift the veil and find a sculpture of two men.

One man is older, while the other is younger.

The older man is holding up something that looks finished. He looks fulfilled with the amount of time he put into it.

The younger one though, appears as though he is still working on something. He looks like he is feverishly working, to not be done with it to the best of his ability, but to be done before the man beside him.

Like he’s skimming to compete.

I look down the sculpture and see a quote engraved in it. My eyes widen as I read it aloud.

“For an artist, there are no winners. There are those who compete, and those who finish.”

But...how did he know about this quote? Did he...did he make it or something? Why else would it be engraved on his desk?

“Sir, you have a Joseph Sui here to see you,” a voice from somewhere in the office says.

Okay. What the hell is happening right now?

I look around the office to find out where the voice is coming from, or how I could even go about responding to it. I turn around and see a painting hanging above the proctor’s desk and I look at the one in my hand.

No fucking way.

“Sir, are you there,” she repeats.

My eyes squint.

My skin creases.

I understand now.

I sit at the desk and depress the button underneath the desk.

“Send him up.”