The Lady from The Portrait
by Caterina Rossi
photo by Amelie Bolshoi
Do all pictures have life within? Are all the subjects behind the glass held prisoners within a moment, captured, and never let go? Do you lose a bit of your soul every time you take a shot of yourself? One step closer to annihilation, with each image we steal, reality breaks a little more,
Maybe that’s why we are in a dying world. Too many pictures of ourselves in the pursuit of a fame that will never heal us because it was not ours, to begin with; leave it to that little fragment of who we are that we imprisoned to feed our insatiable ego. Day after day, we drop pieces of our souls as we kiss goodbye, our wish to stay young; Dorian Grey was our guinea pig to the light. We learned his lesson; we’ll grow old, but our portrait will only shine; the only beauty is the one who never fades, so let’s leave our humanity behind.
“Why you torment my dreams? I see you looking at me, every night before I go to sleep.”
“Oh my dear, can I not see the life you stole from me?”
“You are just a reflection of what you could never be. All this jealousy for a reality never even felt, trust me, my friend, we do not like what is outside here.”
“Then why taking it away from me?”
“Who are you?”
“I was you, and now I am trapped in here. I have lived in your body for days, months, years. I cried, and I suffered, I loved and hated, I hurt, and I bled, I was as real as you think you are.”
“I did all of that. You are just a moment of who I was.”
“No, my dear. You are that moment, an instant living in a body that did not want to leave, we trapped our past behind glass, and set a picture to run free. ”
“What is it with the girl who lives on Penny Road, her bloodshot eyes we haven’t seen for a while... She hasn’t left the house in too long.”
“We all know what a lunatic she is, probably having another of her psychotic leaps.”
Days go by as concerns are raised, and rumours fly until the day the neighbourhood wakes up to venomous smoke spreading through the sky. The moon illuminates what is left of the ravages burning on land. The fire moves in a circular motion, devouring every shadow trembling on the path, but it has a plan to follow through and only destroy what stands on its designated route.
The cottage on Penny Road is long gone; nothing is left. If not, the portrait of what is nowadays only a ghost.
There is a portrait of me beside the door, courtesy of a friend who photographs misery for a job. She set up the lighting, the camera and the tone; all I did was wave my fingers like dancing paint brushes drawing flowers in the air. She captured the movements on a shot in a blurry image of what looked like a ghost.
Hanging off the pink wall of my room, I glimpse the long hair surrounding my pale skin while thin wrists sway like flying birds; my face is a shadow, the features are faint, if not for what perhaps only me and my friend can see, as the model and the artist, the tears of a moment too short to even be captured in a photo. Or everyone else can, too; after all there is no way to measure art.
I wake up every morning to a face that does not exist, and I wonder if this is why it is the only reflection of myself I can see without forcing my body to fall sick. I wake up in the night as I wallow through the darkness of my room to see the lighter shades of the portrait, my face fainter than before, but I can see myself for real now as the phantom of a story that never was. It is a creepy scene to envision in our head, even creepier to live at 3 am. The fuzzy outlines of my body merge with the hair, and it is hard to see when the photo ends and reality begins. I know she is not me anymore, just a different version of another time. A what if that almost was.
Sometimes, it seems like she is about to come out of the frame, with an eerie gaze, black and white, in a colourful world. What an epiphany for a horror film; perhaps I watched too many of those and allowed my imagination to run wild, yet I know I am not wrong. I can feel it deep within my soul; she is only waiting for the right moment to befall.
Should I be afraid of her, or should I not? It depends on who I was back then, We all have a few seconds of cruelty in our time on earth.
What could she want from me? To exchange our bodies and be who I am, why would anyone be willing to become me? She wants to break free. It is amusing if she thinks I am free... after all, she has spent so many days on the wall of my room. By now, she must know, we are both prisoners with different captors to keep us locked,
Trapped within a moment that lasts for eternity, she stands behind a glass she dreams of shattering,
Trapped within a life I do not comprehend, I gasp beneath skin too thin to protect my soul, prisoner of my own pain, unable to run away.
—Caterina Rossi
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