Still Life

On an evening like any other, Edgar was ironing his clothes for the Big Day, when he had a troubling thought. Thoughts were not common for Edgar, let alone troubling ones. Usually, he bumped along from A to B to C in a lovely soup of apathy. The thought was this: What is the Big Day?

Soon after he’d had the thought, there came the smell: an overwhelming scent of graphite and pencil shavings. He didn't even have any pencils or paper in his home. In fact, he thought, taking inventory for the first time, he didn't have much at all. Just a kitchen table, an ironing board, and a bed. He had a single window through which he could see the branches of a fluffy green tree made of spirals of green atop rich brown bark. The realization of his relative poverty hit Edgar like a wall, and he gave up looking for the mysterious smell, standing and blinking like a deer in headlights. Finally, he hung his freshly ironed suit up on the closet door in his bedroom as usual. Tomorrow was the Big Day.

…But was it? It occurred to Edgar that he couldn't remember ever putting the suit on the next morning. Each day, he found himself back at the ironing board pressing hot steam down into the folds of the same suit, rumpled and creased all over again.

Panic grew inside him as he lay back on the sheets. Was he stuck in some weird time loop? He had no memory of anything, much, not even the day before. A steady panic grew inside him as he lay back on the sheets, throwing them up over his head. Maybe going to sleep would reset him somehow. He'd wake up and there would be no more lead smell, no more anxiety. With that plan in mind, Edgar shut his eyes.

Sleep did not come easily, and when it did, he was bombarded by the sound of a voice, omnipotent and rolling like thunder. He only caught snatches of what it was saying, but when he did, he had the uncomfortable feeling it was talking about him.

I just can’t decide what should happen with him.

Honestly, he’s not that interesting, I should just scrap it

Edgar sat up, foreboding sinking deep in the pit of his stomach. Scrap it?

His little room suddenly felt unbearably claustrophobic. Feeling like he was fighting some godlike force, he slid out of bed.

Today is the Big Day, he decided. Or no day is. I will make it so.

Edgar put on his freshly pressed suit and walked to his front door, opening it wide. A gaping expanse of white stared back at him. He took a breath and jumped.

.

The young man in the chair across from Bob shifted. "There's really not much at all, just a few frames so far.”

“I’d like to see it anyway, if you don't mind.”

The agent had been working in this field a long time; artists were notoriously hard on themselves.

The young man dug in his bag and surfaced, flush-faced, clutching a sketchbook, which he handed over.

“Just don’t expect much,” he said. “It’s in the early stages.”

Bob took a moment to look through it.

He was right- there was very little here. The interior of a house, a bedroom, a kitchen, an ironing board laid out in a few frames, but with no article of clothing in sight.

"I love your style," he said to preface. It wasn't a lie. The kid had even colored in the tree outside the window of this little house, in slashes of color that might seem random, but really cast a unique contrast on the whole thing, making the insides of the house pictured seem bland and gray, a prison. He cleared his throat.

"I was hoping, however, that I'd get to see this Edgar."

The artist's brow creased. Pulling the sketchbook back towards himself, he paled. The character he’d drawn, with the special suit and the obscure purpose- a purpose the artist himself had never quite ironed out - was simply…gone.