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I yanked on the door, letting out a grunt at how heavy it was, then staggered into the dim hall lit only by the afternoon sun filtering in from a few tall windows.
I hurried down it, opening door after door, frustrated when I saw nothing but dusty old, unused offices, storage closets, and a spare bedroom.
Dammit.
I was just starting to lose hope, the end of the huge, high-ceilinged hallway stretching ahead of me, when I stumbled upon a place that changed the whole world.
I opened the door to darkness but stayed for the scent within.
It was comforting.
I’d gone to elementary school, like most kids. But when I reached high school, my father was sick of dealing with the headache. We’d never done well for money, always had foster kids in and out, and he didn’t want to risk social services being called when I was constantly getting in trouble with other students. I didn’t understand the kids and the code, and the way everyone was supposed to talk and get along, and I got into fights a lot.
But before he’d pulled me out (claiming to home school me) the art room had been my favourite.
The earthy, crafty scent stuck with me, and something about this room felt the same. I poked around the wall for a light switch with no luck, and instead made for the windows. I tugged a set of massive curtains apart, and light streamed into the room of my dreams.
There were canvases everywhere, a broad wooden table that was all scratched up, and shelves spanning a whole wall with dozens of different sorts of paper in huge sheets or rolls. Scattered about on ledges of easels, and upon the table were pencils, sticks of charcoal, and more.
I stared for an age before realising my mouth had dropped open.
I drew bunny tight, rubbing my eyes like it might all vanish. “A real lifeart room?”
Thiswasa dream.
I glanced back at the door, realising it was still open in panic. I crossed toward it and shut it quickly, knowing I wasn’t allowedin here. I couldn’t get caught—not when I hadn’t had a chance to look around.
This room wasmagic.
Sometimes I found places that meant so much to me that time could just… slip away.
Thiswas one of them.
I could justbe… right now. Made of feelings and dreams with no past or future.
I set Bunny down gently on the windowsill and circled back to the easels, peering at them curiously.
Oddly, they were all black—in fact, every piece of art paper on display in the room was. I tugged a few from a rack, laying them out on the massive table, and sure enough, they were pitch black, too.
Only… I glanced down at my hands to see they were covered in smudges.
“Oh…”
I frowned.
I’d only ever had crappy pencils to draw with myself, but there’d been a few different mediums in those old art rooms in my run-down school. I reached for a little object on the table, small and sorta pencil shaped.
I rubbed it between my fingers watching as it stained my skin the same black of the paper.
It wasn’t dark paper at all.
Delicately, I picked one up and crossed toward the window, squinting at the darkness.
I held it up to the sunlight since it was the size of a poster and wouldn’t fit on the sill. And sure enough, in the light, I could see the ridges on the piece.
Thepaperwasn’t black—it had been turned black with a thousand strokes, each leaving a dent in the texture.
Someone had taken time to turn a white canvas black.
