Screams and Memories

🩸 Monologue — The Becoming Canvas I wanted to be an artist. There was a time when I’d carry a sketchbook in my bag and charcoal under my fingernails, seeing the world in vibrant color and stark contrast. But life got in the way, and I buried my art beneath shifts, bills, and the crushing weight of fear—fear of being irrelevant, of failing, of waking up with nothing. So I stopped chasing anything.  And now? Now I wake up with black smudges on my arms I didn’t draw, and my dreams are filled with static and screaming faces. My body aches in places that weren’t sore yesterday. Something is changing within me, subtle yet insidious, like a slow, deliberate repaint of my very being. I used to ignore the strange things I saw—the flickers in crowds, the colors that didn’t belong, the auras leaking from strangers like oil slicks.  Just yesterday, the woman serving my coffee had eyes that seemed to ripple like stagnant water, a fleeting distortion that vanished when I blinke...