The Loudest Season

Boots trail along the frosty pavement, loud in the early morning. The boy smiles sadly from under his bandanna. Out with the bag, the cans of spray paint. There’s a message to be shared and only he knows it.

Sweat trickles down his back, freezing to his shirt as the temperature continues to plummet. Colors on colors, desperate streaks against frozen brick and mortar.

Hours pass, the sun inching above the dark city. Paranoia is a fickle thing, the boy thinks, pressing himself behind a dumpster as a suit walks by, smart hair and glossy shoes. No project had taken this long, none of this gravity. He couldn’t afford to get caught.

Winter is the loudest season. Everything is dead, leaving the living even more vulnerable. Painstakingly, painstakingly he works, trampling brown leaves and cigarette butts.

He hums, oh so quietly, a song he had heard on the radio. What was it the Other had said? How the world would end? He found he could no longer remember the encounter, only the need to spread his gloomy message the way he knew best. That is, destroying public property.

The sun smiles at him, knowing his message is futile. She casts her light on it anyway. He steps back, air trailing into the sky. Frozen, painted fingers rummages through his bag and slaps a piece of paper on the wet paint.

He ducks out of the alley, pulling his hood firmly over his brightly colored hair. One street artist and seven days to save the world. He laughs, “Well, isn’t that something?” The druggies huddled on the cement ignore him. He tosses a couple bills at their feet. Not that it would really matter. But he supposed it would be better to die high as the sun, than sober.

Behind him, the mural leers over downtown. Seven days, it proclaims. How paint on walls would stop apocalypse, he didn’t know. But he knows that the Other does, so he strolls toward his next target. A blank canvas, ready to scream doomsday.

Far above him, the sun laughs, watching the humans scurry around, living their precariously fragile lives. She leans down, observing the boy’s murals. What will happen? The sun thinks, When the Other needs him to take the next step? It’ll be a spectacle, for sure.