"You're so strange,
I'm glad you didn’t change."
In the corner of the room, a homunculus with multicolored teeth smiled at the sky beyond the ceiling. The homunculus gazed through the ceiling like a window, his gaze passing through 10 floors full of people. He saw through dusty carpets, through tall cabinets and long beds, through the surface cleanliness and the hidden messiness. He stared straight through the apartment building like it was an aquarium, watching the hidden souls in their skulls, glancing from one floor to another.
The people on the first floor were lame and mono-colored, on the next floor the people were like children and did not understand the world. One floor above that, stray dogs were remembering the good times. And so it went all the way to the roof, where, after passing a bald head tanning its self, the homunculus finally saw the sky.
"What's that on your mouth?" a feminine voice addressed the heap of unsorted fabrics and uncombed tissues from the corner of the room.
The feminine presence had appeared quite unexpectedly from the door. The creature trembled at the sound of her voice, withdrawing his gaze from the walls, he turned back into a half-man to answer.
"It's blue," he answered with an unexercised voice. He felt the need to clear his throat, but he abstained, too many sounds would have given him away.
"Blue, from what?" asked suspiciously the woman that the homunculus recognized as his better half. She looked at him as if she deserved some answers.
"From currants and blueberries, from cornflowers, from sadness ... from these oil paints" he finally admitted when there was only one thing left to say.
The creature had grown fingers and pointed to a corner filled with strangled colors. The woman could not tell if there were more empty paint tubes than usual, his room was always messy.
"What did you do?" she asked with a hint of panic in her voice.
The homunculus looked at her slightly bemused, he could see little creatures gathering on her forehead, working to make an expression of worry. All their work pulsating under her thin skin. The wrinkles gathered at the edge of her eyes like a storm. The homunculus reformed to humanity, returning to the constitution of "the painter". She was pulling him back from the lunacy and wildness.
The painter remembered how much he liked to see her angry. She looked better angry rather than happy, her face caught a vigor and suppleness that he enjoyed. When she smiled all her lines would brake and nothing flowed anymore, her cheeks would lose their shape, her face would widen, and her eyes would squeeze in. The painter disliked all these things, and with this aesthetic sense he felt selfish. He liked to see her upset, and even angry. She looked sharp and cutting when furious, with a pulsating rhythm what wouldn’t let her stand still, a fiery beauty. But now her face only showed worry, her expression drew confused feelings in him. What did she want? Was he not clear?
"I ate some colors," the painter continued, with a smile that disclosed his colorful teeth.
"Are you crazy, come on, are you serious? You have to vomit! I'm gonna take you to the hospital."
"No, please, let me die," the painter replied melodramatically.
She pulled him up by the armpits and pushed him to the bathroom. The painter dropped without resisting. It was amusing to be dragged around, and if he had opposed the game, it would have ceased.
"Let me be, I want to be colored on the inside," he tried to explain.
"God knows what's in these paints, you have to puke them out, do you hear me?"
She put his head down in front of the toilet bowl, pushing him towards the water.
"Put your hand down your throat, you have to vomit, do it or I’ll do it for you."
The painter finally understood she didn’t have any appreciation for his gesture.
"Leave me alone."
"You idiot, do you want to die?"
The girl shoved two fingers down his throat, irrespective of his opposition. For a moment the painter contemplated whether to bite her. The thought of such enormity shamed him. A deep sense of guilt pressed his chest and he spewed his guts in the form of an apology.
He regurgitated a multicolored rainbow of sick. Red, yellow, blue, green and purple splashed the toilet bowl again and again, each pulse bringing up a new composition. Now the painter wanted to vomit, he wanted to produce more, more and more. Feeling it end, he pressed his stomach to squeeze out the last drops.
They both fell exhausted near the bath's porcelain fixtures, she at the foot of the sink, and him with his forehead glued to the cold toilet.
"You are like a flower ... so pleasantly dour," whispered the painter.
"You want to be a poet now? Why do I keep fooling myself. You’re driving me crazy? I'm gonna blow my brains out."
"If you want to do it, do it, but look for a white wall, and leave a note with the name of your opera. Now that's an idea, to literally paint your brains away.
"As you can see, the artist's brains have oozed in the most extraordinary way. This testamentary work can not be assigned a value", she sighed. "Didn't you say that all critics are idiots. Why am I playing your game?"
"You're attracted to tragedy."
"Like fly's to shit, but what's so tragic about you?"
The painter looked in the toilet bowl and then turned to her.
"As you can see, all my potential is going down the drain."
"And what did you want me to do, let you die?"
"Yes," he replied with a sob. "Then my work would have achieved its end."
"Shouldn’t you actually make something, so you are remembered after you die?"
"It's all about the audience. The man who will do my autopsy will be marked for life, he will live with my work in his head, "the painter with the colored insides", he will think of me at night. I will pop in his thoughts when he least expects it."
"Dreams of colored guts ... idiot," she said pushing him with her foot.
"Did I miss something?"
"Did you forget about me. I love you, doesn't that matter to you at all? Did you ever think of me?"
"This isn't about you, I was thinking artistically, if I manage to get in someone's head even with a single work, then I can really say I'm an artist, it doesn’t matter if I die."
"One coroner will see you at the morgue, once, after you die, is that your audience?"
"You're right, okay, it's over. I was trying to put some excitement back into the idea, but I can’t, bugs are crawling all over it. Are you happy now?"
"Why exactly the colors?"
"I wanted to feel something. I wanted to be depressed, to feel melancholy, I wanted something to long for ... so I ate the blue."
"You're crazy, that’s insane. I can’t even talk to you anymore."
"I would have died happily painting my insides, but no, you couldn't have that. Don’t flush it, look how beautiful it is."
Paint splashes were mixing between them. The painter was lost in the color of the toilet bowl, smiling absurdly at his moving work.
"I'll be right back, don’t do anything stupid." The painter’s better half returned with a bottle of mineral water.
"You'll drink it and puke the rest of the paint out."
"You want to drain me. Have you no pity?"
"You either drink it or I'll take you to the hospital and there they’ll scrub it out of your insides."
"Can’t you see this is my first original work. This is all that matters."
"Let's get some air."
The two half-joined into a two-headed old man. The old man crawled up to the balcony where he sat down on the floor. With one of his mouths sucking on the water bottle.
"Why do you make me do all these things, do you want to hate me?" her mouth asked.
Crooked with shivers the painter received a clean sheet over his shoulders.
"Do you think I like this life?" she continued. "Do you think I'm happy? I love you, but you have to help me out. Go on, drink all your water."
The painter spooned in the last of the water.
"And now?" he asked, rising from below, wearing his sheet like a cloak.
"Now you have to vomit … again."
In the bathroom, a dazzling geyser of different colors came out from his nose and mouth.
"Sea water," he said, "from which comes Aphrodite in all the paintings."
After a moment of silence she asked gently.
"What do they taste like?"
"Extraordinary, they taste great, except somewhat unexpected. The blue looked cold and melancholic but it tasted like autumn ice cream, while white tasted like toothpaste..."
His consort raised a pinched tube from the tiles.
"This one was the toothpaste," she said playfully.
"They all look the same", the painter excused himself.
"I hope you didn’t eat my hand cream."
"Coconut...", the painter said after a moment of thought.
"I'll buy another one. Are you better now?"
The painter examined his hands, they looked almost human.
"Yes, I think so," he replied.
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